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Have you ever been in a meeting or presentation where a member of the audience keeps asking questions that is off subject or topic? We are all familiar with “chasing the rabbit trail”. In most cases chasing rabbit trails are not beneficial to a conversation. We’d like to suggest that the “Rabbit Trail Principle” will be key part to any successful Internet Marketing presence.

Google Commerical
By now everyone has probably seen the new Google Superbowl Commercial. The fine art of creating a commercial requires the ability to tell a great story in 30 seconds or less.  Some may wonder how would Google, the largest search engine, tell a story about their search engine? Their brilliant idea to tell a story through a simple search is a great example of this Rabbit Trail Principle.

Bounce Rate
If you are familiar with your website statistics you’ve seen the term “bounce rate“.  For those that are not familiar with this time, Wikipedia defines bounce rate as:

“A bounce occurs when a web site visitor only views a single page on a website, that is, the visitor leaves a site without visiting any other pages before a specified session-timeout occurs 1“

So in other words, its like a new customer coming to your retail shop, opening the door, walking in, and leaving immediately because they don’t like what they see. In real life this probably rarely happens, however in the internet world it happens all of the time. You merely have seconds to capture someone’s attention and if they don’t find what they are looking for, they leave. If you don’t believe me, just study your internet browsing for a day.

So by now, you probably realize a low bounce rate % equals better traffic, leads, sales, etc. However before social media tools existed, your internet guests would go to your website look around and once they found what they were looking for they left.

Create Strategic Rabbit Trails
We’ve already elaborated that rabbit trails can be deadly in meeting. However if you create what we call STRATEGIC RABBIT TRAILS on your website, your online presence you will be more successful. In other words, when you drive on a road that is a dead end, you must turn around and leave. On the internet, a dead end is created when the user is either (#1) disinterested or (#2) has no where else to click or go.

Social Media Helps Provide the Answer
Before social media existed, a business or organization limited ability to prevent dead end traffic. Partnerships are key in any relationship because we are stronger together then we are apart. While its important to have a strategy for each tool, its important to have an umbrella strategy that looks at all of your online marketing.

When we look at these tools as a whole we realize that these tools help prevent “dead ends”. By creating strategic rabbit trails you can influence how your online guests browse your content.  We want our guest to chase as many rabbit trails if it means they are engaging with our content. Your online guests should NEVER have to type in a URL to access another tool once they are present on one of these platforms.  Your guest should be able to easily navigate back and forth between your website and Facebook and vice versa via links, thus creating the Rabbit Trail Principle.

4 Tips to Decrease Your bounce rate

1. Embed widgets into your website. Both Facebook and Twitter provide free widgets to embed into your website, use them.
2. Add Links to your Facebook Page: Maximize your message by using every square inch that Facebook gives you by adding links in the Text Box* (below your profile picture) and your information tab. Don’t just add one link, but list ALL of your links (Website, Blog, Twitter Profile, Youtube Channel, etc).
3. Customize your Twitter Background: Your twitter background is valuable space. You may like your pretty flowers, however if you’re a brand take advantage and create a customized background. You can list all of your URL’s on this background.
4. Be Link Happy: If you mention content on one page that is elaborated on other pages within your site, link to it so your user does not have to search for the information.