Why Britney’s Website is Doing Better Than Yours
Britney is your typical high school cheerleading captain. She loves her boyfriend, who is the captain of the football team, and she loves hanging out with her friends. Britney has created a simple website for her cheerleading squad which provides information, game schedules, and most importantly, helps with fundraising. There is one thing about Britney’s website that sets it apart from yours: Britney gets over 8,000 hits a month on her site and you don’t.
How is a high school cheerleader able to drive more traffic to her site than a typical small business? What secret is she using? She must be cheating! Right? Britney is not cheating, but she now sees the value of using social media to drive traffic to her site. Not only this, but Britney knows she can target people through social media who might be interested in her site. Britney is involved in ALL of the most popular social media sites and puts them to work for her.
Even though she is only in high school, Britney uses LinkedIn to her advantage. She knows that many professionals use LinkedIn to connect with other professionals and she makes good use of this. Britney’s dad is a doctor and he has over 250 connections on LinkedIn. Britney started a LinkedIn group for her cheerleading squad and started targeting her dad’s connections for fundraising donations. She has received many donations for her team from her father’s connections, and she doesn’t stop there. She uses LinkedIn to drive not only her dad’s connections, but anyone else she has connected with back to her site. Britney has even created her own personal LinkedIn account and has hooked her Twitter account up to it for constant updates.
Britney focuses her attention on Twitter as well. While she may see Twitter as a way to keep up with her cheerleading buddies, using it for her fundraising has inadvertently brought awareness to a much larger audience. She likes Twitter because it’s easy to use between classes and it takes little to no work. Britney has quickly amassed a huge network of connections with whom she can not only communicate, but also grab donations without even trying! A quick search on Twitter got her connected to many local businesses, and now they are following her, getting her “message”, and actually making donations. This not only drives more traffic to her site, but also more money to her squad. Seeing the interest building up, Britney had a classmate help her customize her Twitter account with information about her site and squad, and has changed the color scheme to reflect her team colors. Being a high school student, she’s ALWAYS using it and being an unlikely businessperson, it’s actually getting her donations!
The social media site that Britney uses the most is Facebook. Facebook is the largest and most complete of all social media sites. With millions of users on the site every day, Britney knows that this is her best bet for getting people to find out about her cause, plus- all her friends are there- duh! Britney does have a personal account on Facebook, and she posts all the time. If her squad goes to another school for a game, she will post about it. She also created a “like” page for her squad. She only puts squad-related news on her “like” page and keeps the personal details out of it. This allows all the attention to be devoted to the squad and the website. With her “like” page, Britney and the cheerleaders have a forum that allows them to all share information and keep people interested in their site and their squad. Britney and her friends also had a contest to see who could get the most of their friends to go and “like” the team page. It was a good challenge for them and they also got over 1000 likes out of it! Facebook is the most up to date and relevant of all social media outlets mainly because Facebook adds new features all the time. One of the latest of these new features is Facebook “Places” which the cheerleaders have fully embraced. They all make it a point to “check-in” at their squad’s fundraiser events and their team’s games. This not only keeps relevant information on their Facebook page, but also makes it easier for others to find the location of their events. Facebook locations can be seen by anyone using Facebook, so it gives them a larger audience.
Many businesses don’t see the value in keeping up with social media. They don’t see how taking the time to create new accounts and groups is relevant and beneficial to them. Britney and her fellow cheerleaders may not know either but they are reaping the rewards! That is why they not only have more traffic to their site but also see more and more funds racking up for their organization. Those who have a business and don’t see the value in investing some time into social media shouldn’t be surprised when a little cheerleading squad is passing them up.
Tags: business web site, facebook, linkedin, social networks, twitter
