What will be the impact of a free press appearance for your website?
Did you get an interview in a traditional press medium like TV, newspapers or radio and you want to know if it will be a good place to promote your website/blog? Well, any kind of serious advertisement you can do for yourself is good advertising but unfortunately traditional media appearances are close to be no appearances at all when it comes to online traffic.
Although it won’t hurt if you get your URL printed on screen or paper, the truth is that almost nobody will visit your website as a side effect of that appearance. Given that the URL is printed on a medium that’s not online and therefore it’s not a link, the few people that may have an interest in knowing more about you or your website will have to make the additional effort of remembering your name or your company’s name and then search for it in Internet, and you know that human’s memory is fragile.
So unless your press appearance has an online equivalent with a proper link to your web page you won’t get any significant increase on traffic from it. In fact, if you are lucky you will get 5 or 10 additional direct visitors on your website and a few more thanks to search engines.
But there’s something good that can result from this appearances? Sure. The good part is that although very few people will see your website, most part of them will be very interested on what you do and will take the necessary steps to connect with you no matter what. These contacts can be translated in new unexpected business opportunities (people will put at least some level of confidence on your abilities because if you were featured on TV or newspapers you should be good ;)), new contacts for your network (which can open new doors for you) or in the worst case you will only receive a supportive email that can make you feel very good :). Just remember that something is always better than nothing, or as Gauss used to say: paucas et matura (few and good).
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Thanks to Phil BF for the nice mic pic.
May 14th, 2007 at 4:35 pm
Do you have any data to back up these claims?
May 14th, 2007 at 4:57 pm
Sure. I have appeared many times on Chilean newspapers and magazines: 3 examples here, here and here. One of those links is from the most popular newspaper on Chile and what was the extra traffic received? Nothing noticeable.
Why did I write this post? Because yesterday I appeared on a documentary on TVN, the most watched TV channel on Chile. Did it have an impact on my website traffic? Nope. I got less than 10 additional visitors (I’m not talking about this blog, I was interviewed about other topics different than the ones I write about here).
Do you think what I’m saying is incorrect? Check this article by Steve Pavlina and you will see he has gotten similar results to mine when appearing on traditional press.
May 31st, 2007 at 10:19 am
Roberto, I’ve had a similar response to yours.
I’ve been quoted in a zillion pubs. I say that not to brag, but simply because I’m older and have a longer work history. So I’ve had more time to get quoted.
Anyway, I rarely get a meaningful traffic boost from any of the mentions. In fact, sometimes I hear people say, “if I could just get quoted in the New York Times, my book would sell or I would become famous or my business would take off.” But that is just not going to happen.
However, the good part about getting quoted is if you set up a page that mentions where you have been quoted, it does impress potential clients and employers and others. In fact, the best thing is to have a press section or a bio page that links to the online publications that mention you. In fact, I am going to go work on my page right now. Thanks for writing this post — it gives me the incentive to get that done.
Best,
Anita
June 9th, 2007 at 1:40 pm
thanks for the post I like it! But I think its depends on the medium. We have in Germany postcards you can take for free in bars and pubs. I am sure that people will remember a card with “great-monkey.com” and will visit the site!
best regards from Germany