These metal dinosaurs (and other sculptures) are out in the California desert. I've seen videos of these, but didn't know there were 130 different sculptures. These are in the Anza-Borrego park area, look up "Borrego Springs metal sculptures," to find directions. Basically, they're in the middle of nowhere, west of the Salton Sea, and straight east of Carlsbad, California.
Why am I showing you a video of metal dinosaur sculptures out in the Southern California desert? Because they are a great metaphor for building a website or blog for your business, art, or other projects. When you build a website of any kind on the internet, it's pretty much in the middle of nowhere, out there in "cyberland," just like these dinosaurs. A random person here or there might come across it, but very few will.
For over 20 years now, forward looking marketing people have been telling businesses (mostly major corporations) to promote their products and services online. In the early 2000's, after the Dotcom boom and bust, most traditional businesses had websites built, as did many smaller businesses. But they didn't put in the time, money, and staff into really learning how the internet, and now smartphones and apps, have changed the game of business. These forms of communication have dramatically changed people's shopping habits. So that means your business needs to adapt, if it hasn't already.
Now, 20-25 years into a practical world wide web, aka "the internet," many major businesses of the Industrial Age are gone, or bankrupt, and most major businesses have some team doing online and social media marketing for them. But a huge number of small businesses don't use all these "new" tools and platforms to anywhere near their full capacity.
Having become a serious blogger in 2008 (after writing zines, and for magazines and newsletters since 1985), I've been learning how to operate as a writer today's world. One of the big lessons I learned is that when you build a blog or a website (or an app), it's pretty much invisible. It's not like opening a bricks and mortar store next to a busy road, where a lot of people will just stop in and check it out. For any kind of website (business site, online store, blog, etc), you have to "drive traffic" to the website to get people to check it out. This is still an often missed concept by lots of small businesses.
Driving traffic means that you create content of some kind in other places on the web, social media, or phone apps, and you link them to your website. You also can hand out physical flyers, or post signs in your physical store for people to check out your website. You go on social media, in all its forms, and write posts, or post photos and videos, and link them to your website. You find communities of people interested in what you sell, like on Facebook groups, for example, and you let them know about your website. There are dozens of ways to drive traffic to your website, for free. These are just the main themes. You can also pay influencers on social media to mention your website, and send people to it. You can place ads all over the internet, social media platforms, and phone apps, to get people to start checking out your website. This is absolutely critical, to get people to see your work, and to sell through your website, online store, blog, whatever. In time, some people will start telling others about your site, or it may even go viral within a large group. That's what you want. You want people to be able to easily find your website, and have it be interesting enough that they tell other people.
So, in review. Your website is a lot like these metal dinosaur sculptures out in the desert, when you first build it. It may be cool, but no one knows it's there. So you start building paths and roads (links) in the online world, to your website. Like building a bunch of roads to these dinosaurs, so more people will see them. That's the idea of "driving traffic." When you build any website, you have to spend time, daily, if possible, to drive traffic to your website, to be successful at getting views, and making money if it's a business site. Got it? More thoughts on this, and specific techniques, in future posts on this blog.
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