tips on getting traffic the good way

I was just looking for tips from you wonderful helpful people </suckup>

if you have a new area, that you want to promote, shops that you would like to rent out and homes for rent and a club for dancing and music etc, how would you go about it?
How does one get traffic to a sim without using campers and bots and all those underhanded ways?

Is it really enough to just advertise in the forums? We hold events.. give out prize money.. the stores have a few rented but not all.. it would be good to get the word out but not 100% sure on teh next steps.. does all that make sense?? hopefully it does...

We would love to see this place bustling, its a good build, and a great group of regulars etc,

any tips on getting our place noticed?? SL is huge.. what would make someone want to come to this area??

Thanks in advance

incentives.

1. good estate managers who are addicted and can be around a lot to greet people and most importantly not get flustered by newbie questions.

2. a good meeting area, with 'freebie's' things like drink dispensers, food dispensers, good seating poses.

3. more freebies, it doesn't have to be many, just a few good quality freebies, helps if they're new products too. If you can offer a few nice shapes, skins & clothes and somewhere to try them out, you may well see 'newbies' still coming back in a years time.

4. renting, again incentives, a rent free period to new start up businesses, once a business gets it's feet the attraction of making money, even if it doesn't cover expenses is still hard to give up.

I am astounded at the number of sims that have fabulous builds but appear deserted. Morgaine and I indirectly found ourselves at New Brighton last night. A terrific rendition of the West Pier, we sat and chatted for ages .. but there wasn't a soul about. I can't think how these sim owners can do it. There was a group poster there encouraging you to join for news and events. That seemed an excellent idea .. may have been just lag but I clicked on it and nothing happened.

Word of mouth is a pretty good start. Get a group running and with enough events, offers and attractions, those group members will tell other avatars.

Unfortunately, those "join my group" signs just send a chat message to the owner that you want to join. If they miss the message, you may not get an invite. My sign encourages people to search out the group and join that way.

If anyone has a better "join my group" idea, I'd love to hear it!

thanks for the helpful tips so far

Dekka, the meeting area sounds like a really good idea, as does some quality freebies.
Bilbo, I am hoping word of mouth does spread.. its always good to hear of new places my friends have enjoyed so hopefully we receive the same praise

We already have a group that people can join to keep informed of happenings around the place, which has a good number of people already, which is a real bonus.

I guess with anything new, it just takes time

Thanks again for the ideas

I've clicked some where I was joined instantaneously. Maybe the owner was ready and waiting but I'd be surprised. I think Animania was one of them. You may want to find out what they do.

It's possible they use a bot to do it as it is simply not possible to do this using scripts.

I made a group joiner that sends you an e-mail when someone clicks on the object. The mail is something like

"Jane Doe wants to join your group" IM me in world.

I'll do that tonight when I get home, that would be incredibly awesome!

Advertise in everything: forums, classifieds, events, blogs, podcasts, virtual magazines and newspapers...

Try contacting the "Metaverse Messenger" (M2)--they are good people with a solid virtual newspaper, and a pretty heafty readership. Go to their website for ad pricing and info.

http://www.metaversemessenger.com/

If your product or concept is unique, you don't have to spend a lot of money on classifieds (use proper keywording). If, however, your product or concept has already saturated the market, upping the ante is a good idea.

Another good way to spread your identity and product is by simple collaboration. Find another company that relates indirectly or directly to your product line. Put together events, contests, mixers and socials to pull in some big fish.

Make sure ALL your advertisements, groups, description, and information are clear and understandable--making it interesting is a bonus.

I rarely join random group invites...so that's a no-go there. But if your place of business has a well-placed 'Group Info & Sign Up" poster in a key location...this is very beneficial.

Good luck.

Honeybear dahling -- crystal gadgets has a join my group sign that stores the requesters name so it is not lost plus you can manage two groups(i believe) The system that Bradley is talking about is a script by Cassini Creations that combines the use of a bot to auto subscribe customer. The alt has to be on 24/7 to be effective. And, it appears their website is down. Cassini Creations created the code for it and the script is 5000L -- the crystal gadgets deal is 350L.

Cheers dahling -- (gots my feet LMAO

A good way to get good traffic is pay 30L to appear in places search.

And in land description put keywords related with the things that you have in your land.

A lot of the biggies were mentioned here already, but here goes.

1. Advertise. The Metaverse Messenger, AvaStar, and other papers sell ads. Websites like Snapzilla do, too. You have a forum here for posting announcements and new products. You can put something in your sig in these forums. Take out even a cheap classified, an make sure your location is listed in Places. Heck, jes tell people about yer place, too. Word of mouth is very handy, 'specially if you got a place worth visiting

2. Do regular events. Give people a reason to visit. Come up with fun things for people to come and visit and do.

3. Have things that compel visitors. Make sure there's stuff dat people will wanna do there, too. A lotta people tink dat they should only have a store in their area, but if you make it worth visiting aside from the store, people will feel welcomed to come back an have fun. Few*like* to spend their day in the mall, ya know?

4. Freebies. These encourage people to visit, especially if they're good. Consider changing them out every so often too, to keep it fresh an encourage people to come back by.

5. Groups. Have an update group, an make it fun if you can. At least try to keep it from *just* being "here's my new product." You can also give a group freebie this way, too, which may encourage people to stick around on it,

6. Blogs. An increasingly crowded field, but if you can make a compelling blog for your site -- again, more than jes "here is my new product" then you can get people interested.

7. People attract people. If there are people there, people will be compelled to socialize and hang around. No one wants to be first, however.

I've used a lot of these in Livingtree, an we're starting to see frequent traffic. Still light at times, but better than when we started. We still have some weak spots (I wish more people were aware of the skins available there, which look great under WL, an there's other fun stuff on the island dat do get underutilized, like the campsite an the drum circle), but it's growing well overall.



The ones I sent up on the island do three things.

1. Give a user a notecard that tells them how to join manually.
2. Thanks them for their interest.
3. Sends me a message that a person wants to join; I'll add people when I'm on immediately, or get them in a batch from my offlines.

There is no easy way to add to group, not without a bot involved, from what I gather.

Mari

Don't want to hijack the thread (why can't I pm you??), but ty for the code info...and oooooh, I'll be in touch tonight

Traffic is more than just a number. You have to break this question up into 4 critical components.

1) How do I get people's attention in the first place. This you answer by your marketing strategy and there are a lot of good suggestions upthread.

2) How do I get people interested enough to teleport to my location. This is your text and pictures in your marketing. Make what you have to offer interesting and appealing. Figure out who you are trying to attract and use keywords/descriptions that will appeal to them.

3) How do I get people to stay on my lands once I've got them there? This is making your location appealing and friendly. Give people places to lounge and hang out that are enticing, make it very clear that they are invited to stay and enjoy themselves.

4) How do I get people to buy once they are in my shop? This is where you have to examine your packaging, your layout, your overall organization of products. Again, you have to put some thought into who your customer is.

In your particular case, you've got a lot of thinking and planning to do since you are trying to attract people with very different needs. Your marketing for shop rentals is totally different from your market for residential rentals. Your market for dancing and events is different from both other markets. Each area requires its own marketing plan and strategy. If you haven't already, make each area a different parcel and list each one separately in Search and create a unique "brand" for each area.

What you don't want to do is market the whole sim with SHOPPING/CLUB/COTTAGE RENTALS/SHOP RENTALS/DANCING/FREEBIES/LOVE/FURNITURE/CLOTHES/HAIR...ETC.

Your best customers are going to avoid marketing such as this like the plague because nothing is more annoying than having to crawl and entire sim looking for that one item you are interested in.

thanks everyone for such amazing tips.. we have taken them on board and hopefully we can start seeing lots of people enjoying the area.. its not so much traffic traffic that we want.. we dont want a number, we want to see people coming here to have fun, to enjoy it and to relax kinda thing.. meet new friends.. see new products all that sort of stuff.. and with luck and a lot of hard work i hope it happens

Thankyou again to everyone that took time to answer my questions

Are there "marketing agencies" out there in SL? I'm just completely hopeless.

Lol, tons. Simply search for advertising and marketing.

The ones I've seen in world seem to be giant empty sims that seem to convey "scam." But I'm sure there might not be.