Traffic or Visitors – what kind of busy are you ?

byPoetSx

205 followers

13 years ago

Everybody gets caught up in buzz words. It’s easy to believe they are what business is all about. But just remember it’s nobody’s business but your own. You have to make the choices which suit you to achieve what you want out being busy. So how do you make your choices count?

For online business the No.1 buzz word is Traffic.

Everybody is looking for traffic, for attention – no wonder ADHD is not the rise!

Well, not quite everybody. I moved out of the inner city because it was too hectic with no substance to the interactions. It was like living on a freeway. And how many jokes are there about peak hour car parks? Everybody’s out there but going nowhere!

So I wonder whether you really want an online business where everybody can just drive over the top of you and not want to stick around. I wonder whether you might be move interested in finding others who are interested in what you are on about. If you are, then simply getting traffic is not going to help you achieve your real goals.

Visitors Need Experiences

When Traffic decides to park with you for a while it is because there is an experience worth stopping for. Turning Traffic into Visitors is the process of changing a momentary distraction into a deeper attraction. And the type of Visitor you retain, and how long for, depends upon a few things for building that relationship.

What you don’t have control over is the expectations of potential visitors. What people think they are looking for, and what they actually get out of any interaction, has so much to do with what they have already experienced and who they are missing with. That’s why marketers are looking for groups of people. The more they have in common with others they have already attracted, the more likely that the expectations will be the same, and therefore meet the interests of others from that background.

What is tricky with something so packed with a variety of experiences as the internet is the difficulty in predicting how much and what type of experience your traffic has.

Personally, I like to spend a bit of time getting to know people or situations. Because of my interest in reading I don’t’ visit Amazon very much, because that is a site which seems to me to be all about the sale. It doesn’t matter what you buy so long as you buy.

Instead, I spend my time at GoodReads. While there are plenty of opportunities that lead to sales, this is a site which is more focused on a range of exchanges. Here I can simply glean the start ratings others have given to books I am interested in, or even how many people have read a particular title, if that is likely to convince me to read what I was already considering. Such a decision is a social confirmation of my own choice.

Goodreads has regular bulletins about new releases and top sellers. If your approach to reading is about keeping up with trends this is fine. A lot of readers I know hang around second-hand bookshops. They look out for quirky and unusual titles and experiences. And this is where I find Goodreads so much more rewarding than Amazon. When members post a review as well as their star rating you gain an insight into the less usual experience – even of a very popular book.

Of course, not everyone writes reviews in the same way. Many people take a ‘professional’ approach to writing reviews. They write from the perspective of who the book is already marketed to. They do their best to pre-sell by highlighting those aspects which are already most obvious about a title and its major theme. Their reviews usually sound pretty much like the book jacket, and don’t give you anything extra than browsing in a bookshop.

But when you find someone who regularly writes reviews more as a journal, they give surprising depth about what they personally got out of a book. Here are the gems hidden in the covers which not everybody will get. Here are the ideas about what you might have to bring to the book as a reader to make the time spent worthwhile. On Goodreads you can follow the reviewers who display their own relationship to reading and books, not just what ‘the market’ expects them to glean as passing Traffic. These are Visitors who stick around for what they give and not just what they take from the experience.

So when you are setting up your online business consider:
1. are you a freeway with plenty buzzing past?
2. Are you a drive-through with pre-conception and expectations to be met?
3. Are you a carpark with higher hopes but still stuck in the car?
4. Or have you opened the door to Visitors who want a long term relationship and some kind of on-going exchange?

When you change your offer from buzz to business you will find the long-term relationships are the ones that really count and really multiply what you get out of every exchange. They may seem like time wasters in the beginning as you get to know each other, but once you give them a really good feed of what you have to offer – they will not only Be Back, they’ll bring their friends and turn distant Traffic into more Visitors as well. Their reviews of you will pre-sell, and you can get on with delivery and mutual gain and exchange.

Sure you’ll still have Traffic, people on the fast track just passing through. But behind the buzz you’ll build a business from the Visitors who stay and return. If you like visiting and being visited Follow Me.