Increase Traffic: Keep Out of the Cliques

Ahh. The life of extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds.

Interesting how the web has so many opportunities to connect with people all over the world and yet most users favor to associate with designated groups they feel comfortable with.

Small groups they can feel a part of. Associations to get a sense of belonging. Cliques that they can lead or cliques to join where you will feel closer to the top.

Yet the thought leaders of the Internet and real world think otherwise. The best part is they are the ones who create the cliques knowingly or not!

How can you increase your traffic you ask?

1. What is a Clique?

According to Wikipedia a Clique is a group of individuals who posses the same patterns of behavior and seek out to compare themselves with others in the same social status.

Call me a chameleon I can jump from clique to clique and never be a member of any given group. That includes online and off.

As an example in most recent years the Seattle Freeze has been a roadblock for many who come to live and work in the region. Is it a bitterness for not being accepted or is it something more?

How come the outcasts don't create their own cliques if they are so disenfranchised by the social scene in Seattle.

Is it that people who come here cannot penetrate the high standards that Seattle's Generation X has touted as The Seattle Chill.

2. Competing v. Being Competitive

That brings me to blogging and the difference between competing and being competitive.

Competitive is being the best you can be. Competing is comparing and wishing you could be the best that someone else already is.

When you are involved with a clique your traffic is limited to the group. Hopefully readers will refer you to surrounding cliques but that is highly unlikely even if the cliques seem to crossover somehow. What seems acceptable and important in one clique may have you look like the laughing stock in another.

Rarely is the clique looking out for other members in the group. They are pushing their own agenda and expect you to do the same.

Have no agenda other than to be the best with what you've got and stay competitive by learning on your own and not what the heads of the cliques are telling you to do.

3. Do Unto Others

How would you feel if you worked hard to market something and it was looked over because readers didn't feel it would be of popular demand. Now is your chance to get back and look over their work, ha ha just kidding.

You would say that's business. What happens when cliques bunt heads? iPhone v. Android. Mac v. PC. Of course those are enormously popular culture cliques but what would happen if instead of competing they joined forces.

Collaboration takes looking beyond a small scope or target market and having a vast market that you can please on a regular basis on a larger scale.

How do you do unto other? Support the best or more original ideas. Not the most popular.

4. Be of the World Not a Part of It

Narrow minded marketing caters to favorites and lets the masses have all the say. As a marketer I want everyone to love my products and not just a small few.

That is the job of a marketer. To spin a product or service that is otherwise useless to most and find or create an audience that will benefit from it.

For some businesses it's a popularity contest. Real business leaders don't want to be popular they want to change lives foremost and make money off of it. The more lives changed the better.

Does popularity pay? Sometimes yes, most times no.

SUV cliques were popular for awhile. Who is paying now? The consumers who fight to the death that their SUV class clique is still tantamount to the rest of the vehicle industry.

Obviously you want to follow course on what has already been researched and established as far as playing your markets. Let others do the work for you and see how they came to their conclusions and solutions. It doesn't mean you have to mimic, copy or sell what they are selling because it seems popular or they were a success at it.

The best thing you can do it to break free from what the majority is doing and start doing your own research, create your own systems, collaborate and look at avenues outside of your target market and see how you can revolutionize your own product, business or site.

Bandwagons are for consumers. Are you a consumer?

Stop looking at what you believe to be competition and do your own thing.

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