Offline Can Pay Off - Ten Ways To Increase Website Activity Without Being Online

Increasing your website activity does not mean you have to be online all of the time, ducking into chat rooms and onto bulletin boards only long enough to scream out the title and url of your website before they cyber drag you out of the room kicking and screaming. There are a number of ways you can promote your website without sitting in front of your computer all day every day. The first way to increase your website activity while you are offline is by adding your website address to all of the printed material your business makes. This includes company letterheads, envelopes, newsletters, fax cover sheets and business cards. This is not to say you should not include your traditional company contact address, but your website address certainly deserves a place on all of your literature. The second way to promote your website activity while you are offline is to write about your site on a regular basis in your company's newsletter. Be sure to announce it if you are re-launching (or launching for the first time) your company website. You also want to announce major site changes, like the addition of a section from your CEO. You may even want to include a regular feature that highlights changes and special sections of the website your customers should check out. The next way to increase your website activity while you are offline is to get the best, and easiest to remember, website address for your company. This will ensure that people can remember it and find it easier to return on a regular basis. If staff members stumble over the address on a regular basis, or customers find it difficult to remember or type into the address bar of the internet service they use on a regular basis, it is unlikely to be visited as often. Another way to increase your website activity while you are offline is to be sure your entire staff is knowledgeable about the site and its contents. Even the person who answers the main phone line should be able to answer general questions about the website. This ensures that any customer who has even the slightest question about the site will find your staff helpful and intelligent, increasing site activity. The fifth way to promote website activity while you are offline is to add the website address to your company's voice mail. If a customer calls after hours and gets your voice mail, they are likely to want to make an immediate connection with your company. Adding the site address to the message they will hear makes it more likely they will turn to an online connection to see your company. An additional way to promote website activity while you are offline is to be sure that your website appears in any printed media attention your company receives. Ask that it be printed with your name or with the bio section of the article. The seventh way to promote website activity while you are offline is to be sure to mention your website address whenever you deal with any type of media. If the local news station is interviewing you about your accounting firm at tax time, it is a good time to bring up your website address. The next way to promote website activity while you are offline is to add your website address to all press releases you make to the media. Press releases can seem a bit naked if you cannot give customers a way to directly connect with the company after the article has been printed. A website address can do just that. The ninth way to promote website activity while you are offline is to be sure that your website address appears on all promotional materials. Most companies have promotional materials like t-shirts, jackets, duffle bags, Frisbees, and notepads, that they offer customers and their employees as free gifts. Printing the website address on these is a good way to reinforce the idea that customers should go to your site. The final way to promote website activity while you are offline is to get a magnetic sign or bumper sticker to add to your fleet of company vehicles and add to your employee's personal vehicles advertising the site. When you are stuck in traffic on the freeway, the guy next to you or behind you might just punch up the site on his blackberry for lack of a better activity.