Need some big help with the direction of my website
Hey guys, I am really stuck and coming at you with ideas. Sorry if this is the wrong section of the website but I am really looking for advice and help with this as I am close to giving up this project and I have invested quite a lot of time and money.
Anyway the site is http://www.tocachat.com and let me try to some it up, it is like a discussion board for literally anything. You can post any sort of media like videos , pictures, links and you can create topics about anything such as David Beckham, email marketing etc.
So anyway with my work the site is getting about 50 hits a day, mainly from google.
However my main problem is getting people to post and join. Obviously the site has no niche and is general, this is a webmaster forum so people join who are webmasters, even though i have related topics, I don't have a niche.
A few questions;
1) How could I get more traffic
2) How can I get people to post, join the community and help me out?
3) Any other ideas? Criticise, what I am doing wrong?
Thanks so much for your time, Matthew
Greg K posted this at 22:11 — 3rd January 2013.
He has: 2,145 posts
Joined: Nov 2003
Well, basically, you need to let people know what it is. From the site I would have had no idea what it was intended for. My first impression is I'm just coming to a blog other than the "Create Topics" button at the top.
It is very easy to get a project in your head and fully develop it knowing the end goal, but then miss getting that goal out to the general public (I'm guilty myself), which is why it is good you are posting here to get feedback on it.
-Greg
glorious749 posted this at 09:00 — 9th November 2017.
They have: 2 posts
Joined: Nov 2017
Hi,
Thanks for raising this important question. As we all know that it has become more important than ever before to be active on the social networking sites. With many sites being launched every year a question might be asked as to which site you'll go to promote your business. So to say what kind of social media platform you would prefer to gain more traffic for your site. The clear answer to this question is the facebook. As facebook has lots of active users spending their time reading posts, commenting, posting their likes we need to take this opportunity to promote our business too.
So how can you do this?
First you need to make sure what kind of users you're targeting. My suggestion is that the more number of people you are connected with the greater is the possibility to gain the traffic. But you need to have good content in order to increase your traffic. I’ve found many high quality writers on contentmart.com that made my work easy.
Greg K posted this at 22:23 — 3rd January 2013.
He has: 2,145 posts
Joined: Nov 2003
Additionally, the heading of the site is "Get answers in minutes". I have yet to come across a topic that has an replies to it, I even scrolled way down to a few days old, and the ones I tried there had no comments, so if I came there looking to ask something and get an answer, I would thing my chances are slim for an answer.
Also, and this is just my personal tastes here. I hate sites that dynamically load more content, especially when to actually read anything fully requires me to follow a link, then hit BACK to come back to the list. Granted, your site does actually scroll me down to where I left off, but you have to wait for it more and more the farther down you are.
-Greg
Megan posted this at 01:47 — 4th January 2013.
She has: 11,421 posts
Joined: Jun 1999
Hi Matthew,
I agree with Greg that it's a bit difficult to tell what the site is for at first. I think it would be good to try to narrow down your market, instead of trying to be about everything. A lot of popular sites started out by focussing on a specific niche and then expanded further once they got popular. It's actually easier to become successful if you focus your audience, rather than trying to be about everything.
Megan
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DavidIpswich posted this at 18:41 — 14th January 2013.
He has: 117 posts
Joined: Aug 2009
I like the concept. In fact I like the concept so much that I created a similar site about a year ago but took it offline with the same problem you have.
What you've created is basically a twitter like site, but without the character limits. Just like twitter, on your site you can write about anything, but unlike twitter you've not put character limits on the post.
Your problems are:
1. Twitter is already in existence.
2. The vast majority of people in this busy life are quite happy with the character limit.
3. Given a choice, new people are going to join twitter, because of the large user base, and not your site.
4. Lots of invested money helped get twitter started. Without a similar input of thousands your site is unlikely to compete with it.
Many webmasters are also seeking this holly grail of 'the next big thing' but as you've found it's not easy. It's not impossible, just not easy.
In order to compete you need to be offering something more than twitter, but your site is probably not different enough. I visited and took a look around, but was I tempted to write something? No!
The truth is that most 'next big things' are created by teams with financial backing. Given that backing and a good team of technical experts the only other thing you need is luck.
There are hundreds, if not thousands, of well financed codewriters and website creators all having great ideas and building thousands of websites. One of the thousands of websites that have been created this week may well be 'the next big thing', but it's not possible to guess in advance which website it will be. If it was I'd be creating it instead of writing this, and all of the webmasters reading this would be creating it too. Such things are dreams made of!
Greg K posted this at 18:05 — 15th January 2013.
He has: 2,145 posts
Joined: Nov 2003
[...]
The truth is that most 'next big things' are created by teams with financial backing. Given that backing and a good team of technical experts the only other thing you need is luck.
So true, and a good portion of the financial backing is grossly spend on marketing when it comes to a "social site". There are the people who will be geek enough to try it new, but the vast majority who you need to build off of are the people who won't join unless they already "heard about it".
Myself, I love people who think they have the next best thing, that is where I get my money from, programming their site for them, then watch as it launches without much put into actually marketing it (they are sure that their own time (which they can barely spend any of) and that of other people who will work only for commissions will be enough to drive it to popularity... Most times, not the case...
ToxicAgenda posted this at 15:50 — 15th January 2013.
They have: 2 posts
Joined: Jan 2013
The problem with social sites is saturation, you need to stand out and offer something that is different. It would be hard to go up against the likes of Twitter and StumbleUpon. However there is the opportunity should you develop something that helps social activity that the big guns do not have. However I do not have that answer.
I would grab yourself an AdWords accon=unt to just try out how that form of advertizing will work for you. Many social platforms do have google ads attached and given the correct keywords this could be a massive boost to you.
Mani posted this at 17:18 — 10th January 2018.
They have: 1 posts
Joined: Nov 2017
Your idea is great and you are doing well. But I wonder are you endorsing your website properly? Have you used different marketing strategies to advertise your website? You need to work on social media marketing which is nowadays the most effective tool for driving people towards a particular website. Take help from some professional content writer from some content selling website like contentmart.com and tell the writer about all your requirements. No wonder with their professional touch-up they would make your website sound like the most promising one and this will automatically drag more people towards it. Digital marketing is a must to make the business successful.
glorious749 posted this at 08:39 — 16th January 2018.
They have: 2 posts
Joined: Nov 2017
You have brought forth very important questions. It is commonly seen that many website owners tend to worry a lot after they start losing their traffic or a few months after launching their site they don't get any success.
So what to do then? For all the netizens traffic is important and what is great when the traffic is from organic sources. I know you might have put a lot of money until today but what you need to do is to consult a professional SEO expert and get a website audit. This will help to find the loopholes for low traffic. The second thing is the quality of content on your website. It is seen that just to save their expenses people tend to choose low-quality writers that ruin their website. You can get fully professional writers on contentmart.com at an amazing price. I hope you would get success in the future.
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