First of all, why do you want people to interact in your website?
Let’s pick a business for example, let’s say that you are a personal trainer or you have a gym.
Why do you want people to interact in your website?
That’s a question I will ask you if you hire me to give a consultation.
Depending on what you want dictates the strategy that you should implement in your website and your business. For example, are you going to have sponsors and your income will be driven by sponsorship. Meaning all these companies will pay you a premium to advertise on your website. The more people coming to your website the higher your fees can be, or let’s say that you offer products and services and by having a lot of people interact in your website you could increase your sales as well.
Alternatively, let’s say that for now you should be building your email list, and by doing so a lot of people will come to your website.
You will then have an option to collect or ask these customers to give you their email. So if you have a lot of people coming to your website and you offer them a newsletter, tips, or videos that you do not make public in any other way, now they have a reason to say yes I want you to send me these updates via email.
We get inundated with email constantly so you have to have a provide a “good reason” so person visiting your website gives you their name and email.
To an extent they have to trust you.
So you want to:
- Upload videos to YouTube
- Publish articles, news and updates in your website
- Give people useful and actionable information
Now that you have your reasons (you might have unique reasons to have people coming and interacting in your website then, because it’s your platform) you don’t want people interacting necessarily in social networks because that doesn’t belong to you. That account can be shut down anytime where you want them to interact is in your platform, in your website, regardless if it’s privately or publicly.
So let me give three ways that you can start adding interaction in your website.
- Website comments
- Facebook comments
- Buddypress
Website Comments
The first one is going to be the easiest one, is add comments in your website.
So you write an article and you ask a question or have a call to action at the end as in a question what do you think about article, what was missing, and people will leave you a comment on your website. If your article is good, if it caused questions, if it caused controversy, if your market is willing people will give you a comment and that’s the first way to add interaction. That’s the easiest one.
Facebook Comments
The second one is really easy as well and you will be adding kind of a sneaky marketing tactic.
For example let’s say that you add Facebook comments in your website. Now every time somebody leaves a comment in your website they also will be leaving automatically the same comment in Facebook, meaning that you are leveraging also their friends.
For example, if I’m going to your gym and I am exercising, most likely I have friends that I talk to on the daily basis that do also exercise. If I place a comment saying I like this routine, or I like this equipment, or I checked in on your website that also will show up in my Facebook wall, which my friends will see, which as a result you will be leveraging my friends for free. You don’t have to market to my friends, but your marketing, your product will be showing up to my friends without me having to tell them hey, come and see me. So we are not selling to my friends, but they also will see and their curiosity will cause them to go to your website possibly getting new clients.
To get the code to add Facebook comments, go here https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/comments
BuddyPress
Now the third option, which it could be a bit technically challenging for some people, is one of the best ones to create a thriving community in your website. This can be accomplished effectively using BuddyPress.
BuddyPress is an easy way you can have all these dynamic conversation forums and groups in your website about, let’s say, crossfit or MMA or boxing and equipment and each forum will have different people in charge and you don’t necessarily will be paying to them, but they will be more than willing to help you because it also gives them credibility. People are willing to help and voice their opinion on many subjects.
Think about the powerful tool that you will have in your website by adding these type of communities like Body Press in your side, groups, forums. It’s a lot of interaction and not only that people will start telling you what they want to see in your business, which in a sense will tell you what you need to do to increase your sales. So, pay attention to your comments, what people say about your business, what people ask you and you will spend less time trying to figure out what they want in turn spending less on marketing.
Get buddyPress here https://buddypress.org
Let us help you
If you have any questions or you need help implementing any of these strategies head down to our contact page, give us a call, send your message or question using the form below. Talk to you later.
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