This week’s “Help This Hound” question comes from Teri Arnold of Norfolk, Wa.:
“I work for the American Heart Association in the Mid-Atlantic Affiliate and we are rolling out a new interactive website at MyLifeCheck.org that provides a free health score and personal action plan for ideal health.
“You simply plug in your numbers (blood pressure, BMI, height, weight, etc.) and you receive a detailed plan on how to make small changes in seven key areas that will add up to a big difference in heart health. The goal for our Mid-Atlantic affiliate is to have 25,000 people go to the site by June 2011.
“We have it in our email signatures. We are promoting it on our main website at Heart.org and we have promotional materials. Any advice on ways to get more people to visit the site without paying for advertising?”
Add your best ideas to the Comments section below. If you have your own question, email it to me.
Have your local chapters contact assisted living developments, 50+ communities, fitness centers, etc. with information. I’d love to put this in our community’s weekly e-newsletter.
This definitely lends itself to articles and press releases. Being the Heart Assn, people will use it in a heartbeat (pun). I would also do as much talk radio as possible as well as internet radio and TV. I would also give any speeches you can emphasizing heart health but also getting in your pitch for the website. You can also give some free reports and booklets if people check out your site.
Tweet a series of factoids relating to blood pressure, BMI, weight etc. and then publish the link. That should get you some traffic!
Although it’s a few months away, Valentine’s Day is a perfect focus for you to publicise your service – couples could “marry up” their heart/body info, and maybe you could offer a small prize for those who check back in 1/3/6 months with the most improved statistics? Maybe a free membership in a gym, or a certificate for amazon, a 6-month supply of salt substitute, something like that?
I presume that most of your clients will be older, when heart problems are more likely to occur – as they did with my dad. Perhaps oldies aren’t as comfortable with social media as younger people, I know my father never touched a computer in his life. I agree with the above comment that radio would be a great medium to get your word out.
Best wishes for this – I’ll be using it myself!
My daughter and I have a website that is trying to raise money for the Salvation Army through the sales of our funky Christian bumper stickers and I have literally gotten thousands of visitors to our site just by commenting on blogs and online articles (and then of course including our website in my signature).
If you set up a Google Alert you can receive notices of articles that include your selected keyword or phrase (for instance ours is “believe in God”) and then comment on the articles that are relevant and have the largest distribution – i.e., AARP, NYTimes, etc. because they have more exposure.
The only problem we’ve had, which I would love some advice on (Joan… hint hint) is that even when we get hundreds of hits we sometimes don’t receive a single sale. Haven’t figured out what to do about that yet. But offering good advice or a quirky comment on another post will definitely get people to your site.
Good luck!
February is Heart Health Month. You could get chapters in each state to compete with each other for the most sign-ups for the assessment (if they could easily track this information).
You could get media coverage on the announcement of the contest and again at the end of the contest. You could ask those who take the assessment to ask their friends on the social media sites to join them as well.
This definitely lends itself to articles and press releases. Being the Heart Assn, people will use it in a heartbeat (pun). I would also do as much talk radio as possible as well as internet radio and TV. I would also give any speeches you can emphasizing heart health but also getting in your pitch for the website. You can also give some free reports and booklets if people check out your site.