Today someone asked me how to drive traffic to their site. I know I’ve written on this before but I thought that if I came up with a list of 7 things to do that Byte readers might find that to be interesting too. So here it is:

1. Give them a reason to visit the site today. Maybe a coupon, a special recipe, a video – whatever you think would motivate your target visitors.
2. Email (call or send a postcard) to past visitors and/or customers. Personalize it as much as you can.
3. Send a link to five well connected friends or colleagues and ask them to send it on. But again give them a reason. “I’m offering a free poster on my web site, would you post it on Facebook?” works better than, “Will you ask your friends to visit my site, I build trucks.”
4. Get connected yourself and post your link (on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter…)
5. Visit blogs that relate to your site. Post a comment. Don’t try to sell your site. Write something so clever or smart that they want to see who you are and link without you pushing.
6. Remember to tell people to visit your site when you meet or see them – draw on that reason to visit.
7. Give them a reason to visit in the future. Change up your reason to visit. Put a time stamp on the coupon, create a new video, have a monthly contest. Allow people to sign up for an email announcement of changes or subscribe via RSS.

It’s hardly an exhaustive list but these are mostly the kinds of things you can do when you have downtime. Most things will also give you an excuse to contact people and strengthen relationships and that’s always good for business too.