Six Ways to Supplement Your Website's Content
- By Peter Brittain
- Published 04/20/2010
- Internet
- Unrated
Peter Brittain
Peter Brittain is a search engine optimisation specialist from Slinky, who specialize in website seo
View all articles by Peter Brittain
While many website marketing efforts focus on either content building or link building, many webmasters forget that the new social media gives you many ways to add value to the user experience for free. Adding to your online presence will enhance your site's familiarity - and give users another way to keep track of what you're up to. No matter what form your web business takes, you should be able to use at least one of these:
1. YouTube videos
Having your own channel on YouTube is becoming more of a necessity than a perk. Celebrities, performers, writers, artists, and content creators of every stripe are getting a personalized YouTube channel on which to deliver podcasts, press releases, video-blogs, life-streaming, and anything that would be enhanced by the audio-visual medium. You have to admit, some people watch better than they read! Video content can help reach a new audience, and videos can be downloaded and enjoyed on a mobile device later.
2. An IRC channel
After all these years (The IRC protocol is older than the World Wide Web), IRC is making a comeback. Hip, new social media companies are branching out into their own IRC channels and attracting a new audience. What are the benefits of having an IRC channel available for your site? It's free and easy to use, and also ubiquitous across all platforms. It gives a new option for customer service and support, lets your online community thrive, and gives a nice "the door is always open" feeling to your online business.
3. Twitter
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almost don't have to tell you that Twitter is the hottest new tech in social media. Celebrities are racing to establish homestead accounts on it already. When you get your own Twitter account in your website's name, you can alert users and customers to new offers, news, and events connected with your online business. You can say, "We're upgrading our app to 2.0 this month - watch our Twitter feed for up-to-the-minute notification!" or "We'll be attending the business expo this week, and streaming live updates from Twitter." Users eat this stuff up.
4. Social news sites
A lot more social news sites are catering to webmasters, by allowing them to create custom places on their site for links pertaining just to their business. On some you can start a sebreddit with updates to your blog. Like twitter, you can use social news media to give your visitors one more reason to keep coming back.
5. Profiles
Where's your Linked-In profile? Or your Facebook page? Or your About-Us page? These sites are now functioning as a kind of yellow Pages for businesses on the web. Having a personal page up for your business will give you some credibility. It's also one more smart way to enhance your online presence - search engine optimization sometimes is just a matter of having enough sites verifying that you are who you say you are!
6. Shoutboxes
These are like a special embedded chat room that you can host self-contained, right on the page. This gives your users another way to talk to each other, if you're building a community, or for your customers to write in with comments and questions if you sell a retail product or service.
1. YouTube videos
Having your own channel on YouTube is becoming more of a necessity than a perk. Celebrities, performers, writers, artists, and content creators of every stripe are getting a personalized YouTube channel on which to deliver podcasts, press releases, video-blogs, life-streaming, and anything that would be enhanced by the audio-visual medium. You have to admit, some people watch better than they read! Video content can help reach a new audience, and videos can be downloaded and enjoyed on a mobile device later.
2. An IRC channel
After all these years (The IRC protocol is older than the World Wide Web), IRC is making a comeback. Hip, new social media companies are branching out into their own IRC channels and attracting a new audience. What are the benefits of having an IRC channel available for your site? It's free and easy to use, and also ubiquitous across all platforms. It gives a new option for customer service and support, lets your online community thrive, and gives a nice "the door is always open" feeling to your online business.
3. Twitter
We
4. Social news sites
A lot more social news sites are catering to webmasters, by allowing them to create custom places on their site for links pertaining just to their business. On some you can start a sebreddit with updates to your blog. Like twitter, you can use social news media to give your visitors one more reason to keep coming back.
5. Profiles
Where's your Linked-In profile? Or your Facebook page? Or your About-Us page? These sites are now functioning as a kind of yellow Pages for businesses on the web. Having a personal page up for your business will give you some credibility. It's also one more smart way to enhance your online presence - search engine optimization sometimes is just a matter of having enough sites verifying that you are who you say you are!
6. Shoutboxes
These are like a special embedded chat room that you can host self-contained, right on the page. This gives your users another way to talk to each other, if you're building a community, or for your customers to write in with comments and questions if you sell a retail product or service.