Often Overlooked Places To Leave Your Stamp Online

by Chris Crum

There are places online beyond your site/blog where you should be representing your brand and featuring links. Share some with us.

This is another one of those common sense articles, but sometimes these things just get overlooked or put off when they could in fact be bringing business your way had you just took a few minutes to add some text, a graphic, and/or a link or two.

Bios in Articles

I've been dealing with content coordination across a large range of web sites and email newsletters for years, and I am still surprised when I see articles submitted by authors who don't link to their site in their bios.

Typically, the main reason an author wants to submit an article to a site run by other people is to gain some exposure for their own site, yet often times a link isn't included in their bio. This is a huge mistake in my opinion, because if a particular article becomes popular, the author may be missing out on a large amount of traffic from curious readers who were impressed by said article and want to learn more about the person who wrote it.

Forum Signatures

If you participate in a lot of online forum discussions, you would be a fool not to brand your site in your signature.

The same principle as the article bios applies here. Perhaps even more so, because if you are on the helping end of a conversation in a forum, you are proving to a audience that you are knowledgeable in your niche.

Email Signatures

The email signature is a good place for a branding graphic like a logo. A link to your site is also encouraged. While you will probably not see large spikes of traffic from email signature links, you never know when someone you're corresponding with will be interested in visiting your site. You might as well give them the opportunity to do so, because sometimes it can lead to a new business opportunity.

Social Media Pages

If you have taken the initiative to start a social media marketing campaign for your business, you've most likely already thought to link to your web site and brand your company. Just remember not to make these pages seem too self-serving.

If your pages are clearly there just to make a sale and get people to your web site, I don't think you'll have a very successful campaign. I've talked about this before, but you really need to be engaging in social conversations and branding yourself as a real person, not just a business out to make a buck. When handled properly though, you can get some good traffic from these pages.

Blog Comments

You don't want to go overboard in the linking and branding in blog comments, because the line between promotion and spam is very fine in a venue like this. People reading blog comments want to see insightful conversation and points regarding the article expanded upon and discussed. They don't want to see you advertising your business.

The best way to get traffic from blog comments is to link your name to your site. This will give them the opportunity to see what your business is all about if they like what you have to say. They are not going to click on your link if you just comment to say that you sell jewelry for example.

Some branding and linking techniques require more subtlety than others, and you don't want to create a negative reputation for yourself by not displaying the correct amount. That said, there are plenty of opportunities to brand your business and acquire more traffic across the web. I have listed a few, but they are not limited to the above. What other everyday places do you use to place links or other forms of your brand?