Increase Visitors to Your Website with Groups

You can buy website traffic with banner ads or Google Adwords.  Or you can connect organically with some time and creativity.  I believe organic far surpasses paid advertising in most cases unless you have an emergency service like “24 hour plumbing”.  When someone arrives at your website via an ad, it is a cold lead.  When someone comes to your website via a group where you are interacting, it is a warm lead because they have already begun to know (and hopefully) like you.
Social media is your networking key to finding like-minded people who could be clients and customers. Some of them have very influential groups within them. You can join these groups and gain new visitors to your website.
A good example of where to find influential groups is on LinkedIn. You can easily search for all kinds of groups that are related to your website or business. When join these groups and immediately have access to people who have the same issues and concerns as you, or that you have the solutions that will help them. Sometimes an invitation to join a group will arrive in your Inbox, and it is well worth taking a look at the statistics, members, and activity before climbing on board. Here is an example from LinkedIn, which can be found in the Groups menu:

What these people also have is an extended contact list. If you tread carefully when first joining a group, you may have access to literally hundreds of new connections.
Here’s how to achieve this:

• How often do they promote items in their posts, and what type of products do they promote? Find out if they use videos or a particular type of image. As you discover tactics that are working, you can apply these to your own blog.

• Search for relevant groups. These would be groups of people who could be considered buyers and readers of your content. You want to connect with blog owners, but you also want to get in front of the readers and customers.

• By joining groups with both types of people you will have access to tons of resources. You could learn from more experienced blog owners. Find blogs that you like and then track how often the owner publishes new blog post.

• Begin interacting in a meaningful way with members. As you begin a membership make it a goal to participate in relevant discussions and add valuable comments. Avoid posting links until relationships have been established, and then share your content as trust is built.

• Start your own professional group. Over time a pattern of trust and expertise is established, which is an open door of opportunity to launch a group in your market, and invite people to join. This further enhances your chances of bringing more visitors to your website.

Being in front of potential readers and/or buyers provides you with access to the issues and problems your audience faces. This will give you clues as to what type of content to publish. If you see a particular issue cropping up all the time then address this in a blog post, or even create a short report on the topic.
You can also find groups to join on Facebook and Google+. Just make sure you join groups that will eventually help you in your goal of driving more traffic to your site. Otherwise you may end up interacting and seeing no results.
When you first become a member of any group remember that self-promotion comes much later. Introduce yourself and what you do, but then make a good effort to be helpful to other group members. Answer questions, provide advice and in general just be friendly as opposed to being viewed as someone who self-promotes all the time.
It’s equally important to do an overview of the rules of the group in order to avoid any embarrassing mistakes, which may tarnish your reputation as a member. Each group is different, and if the rules aren’t clear it never hurts to ask the moderator.
Here’s an example from Google Plus, where groups are referred to as ‘Communities’ in the left hand menu:

Being active in one or two groups each day can really help increase traffic back to your website by people who have been impressed, intrigued, or assisted by your group participation.  That’s a good start to turning traffic into a customer.  And these results can be measured right from Google Analytics or Facebook Insights. Keep providing good content, and you could have a life-long connection with them as well as build a stronger level of authority in your market.