Troy HollenbeckRight now, people have more unrestricted access to information, entertainment, and other content than in any other time in history. While that is great for people looking to be informed, educated, or entertained, it can present a challenge for online marketers seeking to capture the biggest possible audience.
That’s because there’s simply more competition for your target audience than ever before. So if the content you are using to attract visitors to your pages isn’t interesting, cutting-edge, and exciting, you are going to have a difficult time getting people to visit or stay on your pages once they land there.
Would You Be Interested in Your Content?
A good starting point in determining whether the content you are providing is vital and engaging for your target audience is to consider whether you’d be interested in your pages if you were an outside visitor looking for content within your niche.
Why would you be drawn to your web pages? What are you offering your visitors that they can’t get anywhere else? How are you communicating to your core audience that the content you offer is unique, entertaining, and engaging?
Think about these questions and then identify the areas where you are failing to live up to your own standards. Those are the areas you should then focus on repairing.
Be Controversial … but Not TOO Controversial!
If you want to attract eyeballs, you need to have something to say. Choose topics within your niche that are “hot button” issues. Visitors arrive on your pages with their own opinions, but if you have something relevant and insightful to say about a current event or a controversial issue within your niche, they are going to want to hear it.
Yet you should temper your words so that you don’t go too far, otherwise you risk turning your visitors off. Stay away from extreme views or radical arguments. You can and should take a stand based on your beliefs, experience, and knowledge, but avoid giving the impression that you are close-minded or fanatical.
Visitors to your pages want to feel as if they are engaging in a conversation, not listening to a diatribe or monologue. Invite others to share their thoughts and let them know you value what they have to say. That way they will be more likely to return to your pages later.
Sex Sells
There’s no way around it: Sex sells. It’s simply the way we are hardwired as humans. We are attracted to anything that turns us on or stimulates our sexual curiosity.
Obviously, this is something that successful marketers have known since the beginning of time–or at least the beginning of advertising. If you want to attract more visitors to your pages, look for ways to ratchet up the sex appeal–even if your subject matter doesn’t ordinarily lend itself to being sexualized.
Sexy images are also always a huge draw, especially when they are used tastefully. Consider what your core audience wants, and then give it to them.
Mimic the Most Popular Sites in Your Niche
With internet marketing, there’s usually no reason to reinvent the wheel. Conduct a little research to determine what the most successful marketers in your niche are doing, and then steal their best ideas and make them your own.
Obviously, you don’t want to plagiarize or do anything unethical, but you can discover the most successful themes and topics and put your own spin on them in order to capture more visitors. Observe market forces to recognize what the public wants, and then provide them with it.
One of the biggest benefits of the internet is its global scale and universal timeliness. Whatever niche you are working in, there are certain to be hundreds–if not thousands–of other people competing for the same audience you are targeting.
By giving your visitors content that you would find interesting, focusing on hot button issues that fans of your niche have strong opinions about, injecting sex appeal whenever and wherever possible, and stealing the best ideas from the most successful marketers in your niche, you can choose topics that draw more visitors to your website.
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