Traffic seems to be the one thing that people obsess over the most when it comes to blogging. In fact, it’s probably one of the biggest reasons people give for why they don’t start blogging. They’re afraid no one will come to their site.
People seem to constantly look for that “magic bullet” traffic technique… That one method that’s going to send them a windfall of traffic.
It’s true that viral traffic can happen overnight. However, you never know where it’s going to come from. It takes effort on many fronts to get that traffic flowing in.
To accomplish this, be everywhere with your content, don’t use just one single traffic source and sit back and wait… Create a system that works for you and follow it to the letter every time you create a new post.
Over time, you’ll learn which strategies are effective and which ones don’t pan out. You will need to adjust, add new strategies, remove ineffective strategies, and repeat. That’s the true trick to creating website traffic.
To help you understand what I mean, I’ve decided to share the strategy that Bradley and I use to generate a ton of traffic to every single new blog post we create.
In fact, chances are, you found this exact blog post as a result of our efforts with this strategy.
This strategy evolves. We remove ineffective actions and constantly add new actions as we learn them… For the most part, here is what we do with every single blog post.
I’ve broken it up in to 3 sections. “Standard”, “Above and Beyond” and “ROI (Return on Investment) Potential Tactics”.
The “Standard” tactics are what we use for every single post, no matter what.
The “Above And Beyond” tactics are what we use when we really really want the post to go viral.
And the “ROI Potential Tactics” are what we do when we expect a return from the post. They are paid strategies because maybe we’re promoting an affiliate link or maybe the post talks about a new product we’ve created. We will use paid techniques if we see the potential for a return on investment for the payment.
So here’s our blog post promotion checklist:
Standard Post
- Mail your list
- Post to Facebook fan page
- Post to personal Facebook wall
- Post to any relevant Facebook groups
- Share on Twitter account
- Search Twitter for relevant hashtags and @reply them
- Queue up a minimum of 4 more promotions using HootSuite
- Share on Google+
- Share on LinkedIn
- If you use an image, share the image on Pinterest
- Go to Google Alerts and look for relevant blog posts – Run alerts for the week
- Post to a minimum of 5 blogs linking to your new post – Entire week
- Create an image with a quote from your post, share that image on Facebook and Twitter – Ask for shares
- Create a quick YouTube video related to your post, put link to post below video.
Above And Beyond
- One Time – Create blogs on Tumblr, LiveJournal, Squidoo, and WordPress.com
- Post about most recent post to Tumblr (don’t copy – write a synopsis)
- Post about most recent post to LiveJournal (don’t copy – write a synopsis)
- Post about most recent post to Squidoo (don’t copy – write a synopsis)
- Post about most recent post to WordPress.com (don’t copy – write a synopsis)
- Create a post with your YouTube video on each of the sites as well
- Find 2 relevant questions on Quora, answer the questions and link to your post
- Find relevant questions on Reddit and answer them with a link
ROI Potential Tactics
- Boost post on Facebook
- Submit press release to PR Web about topic
Many of these things are self explanatory but I’ll break them down even more…
Standard Post Tactics
Mail your list: This one pretty much speaks for itself. If you know us by now, you know that we are huge proponents of list building with your blog. Once you have a list, you can mail your list whenever you create a new post and bring past readers right back to your site. We recommend GetResponse for list building.
Post to your fan page and personal walls: Every blog post that you make should be shared to your Facebook fan page and shared to your personal wall. The truth of the matter is, friends and family probably WILL be the first readers of your blog. That’s OK! Get them commenting and sharing to build some momentum.
Post to relevant Facebook groups: Find groups that are relevant to the niche that you blog in and, if it’s allowed, share your latest posts with those groups. If your post is relevant to a topic already being discussed in the group, share your post in the comments of that discussion.
Share on your Twitter account: Share a link to your latest blog post in a tweet or two. So many people tend to want to just focus on Facebook. However, we find that, while we get more traffic from Facebook, we get more engaged visitors from Twitter. The people that come from Twitter tend to stay on our page much longer and return to our page more often.
Search Twitter for relevant #hashtags and @reply those people: Find people asking questions on Twitter that your blog post could answer for them. When you find them, send them a reply and link to your blog post. This is SUPER effective because if other people have the same question, they may stumble across your conversation as well.
Queue up a minimum of 4 more promotions using Hootsuite: Hootsuite is a tool that lets you schedule up your Tweets in advance. I always go in to Hootsuite and schedule at least 4 more tweets for that same blog post to go out at different times during the day. People aren’t on Twitter all day. This makes sure you will get more exposure to your post on Twitter as the day goes on. I also like to schedule 2 or 3 tweets for older blog posts at the same time to ensure steady traffic continues to my older, but still relevant, blog posts.
Share on Google+ and LinkedIn: The idea is that you pretty much want to share your blog post on any social media accounts that you are active on.
Share on Pinterest: This one may no be relevant to everyone. If you use images in your blog posts, pin the image of that post to Pinterest. This works better in some niches than it does for others. For example, this is huge in fashion and in cooking type niches but gets a little more difficult and conceptual type niches like marketing and personal development.
Google Alerts: This is somewhat of a “ninja trick” or “growth hack”… Basically, you go to Google Alerts and you create an alert or two related to the topic of your recent blog post. When you receive emails about new posts on that topic, you go to those blogs and comment on them with a link back to your post. In fact, I made a quick video about this tactic.
We keep an eye on the topic for a minimum of a week (usually much longer) and continue getting the link everywhere.
Create an image with a quote and share it: This is a trick that I learned when Pat Flynn interviewed Gary Vaynerchuk on The Smart Passive Income Podcast… Basically, you take a great quote from your latest blog post, create a little image with that quote, and then share the image on all of the social media channels that you use. A great tool to easily create these types of images is called Canva.com.
Here’s an example of an image I made for one of my blog posts:
And here’s an example I saw Pat Flynn share:
These are super powerful because if people like and agree with your quote, they tend to share them on their social media channels as well. They establish your credibility as an expert and really get shared.
Create a YouTube video related to your topic: Once you blog post is finished, create a quick YouTube video that is relevant to your blog post. In the description of the video, link to the post. Anyone who finds your topic via a YouTube search will probably watch your video and then click over to your post to get even more detail. YouTube can be a MASSIVE source of high quality traffic.
Above and Beyond Tactics
The “Above and Beyond” strategy is something that we don’t do every time we make a new blog post. The reason being is that it is very time consuming. Instead, we might do this strategy once per month but do it for four blog posts at a time. However, if we’re doing a blog for the sole purpose of promoting affiliate products, like what I did for Easy Video Suite, we will do this for every post on that style of blog.
Here’s a video I made a while back that explains the steps of the “Above and Beyond” strategy.
The only thing that we have added to the list that’s not mentioned in the video is that we now also look for relevant questions on Quora.com and attempt to answer them, citing one of our blog posts for more info.
ROI Potential Tactics
When we talk about “ROI Potential Tactics” we are talking about posts that will generate us some income. Examples would be posts that directly promote affiliate products, posts that promote one of our products, or posts that promote one of our services. Basically, any post where we can directly calculate the money made as a result of that post we will use these tactics.
Boost Post on Facebook: Facebook gives you the option to promote your posts when you have a fan page. You pick your budget and hit the boost post button and the post will be seen by more followers.
Submit a Press Release: Writing and submitting press releases is a whole topic in itself and will require a whole blog post. Essentially you are writing a news article related to your post and submitting to various news agencies. The agencies that find it newsworthy will publish it on their site and in their publications. PRWeb is probably the most notable press release service.
Here’s a quick read on how to write a good press release.
And that’s about it… That’s our entire strategy for generating traffic to our blog.
I actually created a checklist in Evernote that we use every time we create a new post. We hit publish and then go down the checklist, making sure we do everything on the list to promote the blog post.
Maintain a strategy like this for every single post that you make and you will have floods of traffic to your blog much quicker than you’d think.
What did we miss? What traffic strategy would you add to the list? Which would you remove? Let us know in the comments below!
OMG, love this!
Thanks so much Thomas!
Just like you stated about looking for hashtags, here is what I started to do on my own personal facebook page. 1. use facebook open graph and search for people that may be relevant to your likes or your niche. For my recent blog post, about rich pins, I searched for “People who like Pinterest and are Self Employed and are not my friends” Then I send 5 friend request a day, no more! Once they accept, I thank them for accepting my friend request, comment on a post or two of theirs and then add them to a list called, for example, “eighteen” Eighteen represents the day of the month I received the friend acceptance. As you know Facebook only shows on timeline people you interact with most often and vice versa for your friend. So when the 18th rolls around next month, I make sure I interact with those people regardless and it rotates everyday. Using open graph and Lists, serves 2 purposes, finding people who may be interested in reading your blog and also, by setting up an interaction schedule, (Face it you will not be able to interact with every friend everyday) your posted blog post has a better chance of ending up in front of the your targeted friends. Plus you really have to be and should be genuine! I also set up in hootsuite daily motivational images to post 2 to 3 times a day at the best times just to keep the interaction going, one image got a lot of likes and comments, others did not but I am realizing not everyone likes my political posts. Ha. I will let you know my results in a month, I just started doing this. Not sure if Rankedge is legit but regardless it should help.
That is amazing Thomas! I absolutely love this.
Quite honestly, I have not experimented with Facebook’s Open Graph Search enough. I get to play with that as well in the coming weeks!
Please keep me updated with your experiment. If all goes well, maybe you can contribute a post here with your experience?
I will, but now I need to implement your tips! Open Graph is so awesome. You could search “People who blog and are not my friends” might be a good search. That worked I found over 1000 people on this!
Great tip Thomas. We’ll be testing that for sure.
Wow great idea…will be trying this out too, thanks for sharing Thomas 🙂
Thanks Terri, I learned some of this from another person but then I put it on steroids. Takes me 10 minutes a day to do. I also put my longtime friends on rotation as well because, I do not talk to them all the time but I want to! I just started writing a blog post on this and will post soon. Go over and follow me so you can get the update. Don’t worry I am not selling anything just like to blog. (have a few affiliate links that’s it) http://absoluteadvantagemultimedia.com
Thanks Thomas, I’ve started following you…interesting stuff.
Crystal clear, actionable steps to boosting traffic to your blog. Thank you, Matt!
agreed
Glad you enjoyed it! Thank YOU!
Thank Matt – this one post is like a deep dish pizza with stuff crust and extra cheese! There is so much gold… I’m making a PDF out of the page just so I can reread often!
Chato Stewart
Mental Health Humor
@chatobstewart:disqus funny I did the same thing using printfriendly.com PDF and printed it and put in a binder. Great stuff!
Thanks for the resource Thomas!
Then I emailed it to my kindle. (typed “Convert”) in subject line and it turns the PDF to epub and it reads perfect in my Kindle!
Great idea! I made a checklist from this inside of Evernote and use it every time a post goes live on any of my blogs.
Thanks a lot Matt – there is a lot of great stuff for every type of blogging model and potential audiences here.
Francois Theberge
The Health Of The Matter
Thanks Francois! I will add more to it and evolve it over time too. I’d love to hear what your experience and strategies are as well.
To tell you the truth, I am in a bit of a conundrum. A tenet of my business model is that I will NOT accept any income from ads or freebies. It’ll be a subscription-based only. This way, I’ll be able to give the straight dope to my clients and not care about the PR sensibilities of some “mercantile interests”.
But with what’s in the article, I’ll find a way to build my lists and use social media anyhow. 😀
definitely an article you want to bookmark…
Definitely
Too Kind. 😉
I will definitely be book-marking this article. So many good ideas making up this strategy. Thanks Matt.
I changed to PDF emailed it to my kindle (converted to epub through email) Love this article
Cool idea Thomas.
So awesome! Thank you!
Awesome!!
Why Thank You!
Thank you for sharing, that was very helpful. I am doing many of the things on the list but you mentioned steps that I need to take that were in the back of my mind. You’ve even mentioned some sites such as Hootsuite which I’ve never heard of before. Maybe you can take a look at my blog and lend some advice: nurturednaturallybyc.blogspot.com
So glad I could help turn you on to new opportunities! Which things aren’t you doing yet? And which ones are you planning on jumping in to next?
This is great Matt, I wrote my first blog a while ago but didn’t really know what to do with it except email my list. I’m now going to write my checklist and implement (most of) the rest of your list. Thanks 🙂
Great Terri. Creating a checklist in Evernote is a great way to go. Just go down the list and knock out everything every time you make a new post go live. You’ll see massive results really quickly!
Wonderful post Matt. I received your post through an Email, not sure how. I do not usually open such Email marketing posts, but this one grabbed my attention and I am not actually regretting reading it. I have recently started a new blog http://www.einfohub.com/ and I am quite sure that these tactics can give me good traffic to begin with. Thanks again.
I’m glad ours was the one you chose to open. 🙂
These tactics will definitely help jumpstart any blog!
Matt, I love your work, but honestly, I think this is one of your best to date! Outstanding post! Solid info presented in your easy to understand and then actually implement manner! Thank you!
I would love to have you check out my blog http://www.kristiross.com and give me ideas and suggestions. Thanks again!
Thank you Kristi! That means a lot to me! Expect many many more posts like this in the future.
On first look, your blog looks good… and you’re getting a good amount of comments which is a great sign. Are you a member of the insiders private Facebook group? We spend a lot of time in there giving feedback and tips for people’s blogs.
Your’re welcome! I’m excited to see what you post next! And, thank you Matt. I’m a member now.
Very good and straight forward. Thanks Matt!
Thanks Deb!
Love these tips. I added a few of your ideas to my promotion plan. One tip I can share that works well for me is to email thought leaders who I reference in my posts and let them know that I referenced their work, product, strategy in my post. It’s a quick easy way to reach out to people and you may get your post shared with their large, active networks. I wrote about this and other tactics for making your posts viral here http://www.jolynnoblak.com/7-surefire-ways-to-make-blog-content-go-viral/. # 7 includes a basic email script to use. Always like your stuff! Thanks again
Love these tips. I added a few of your ideas to my promotion plan. One tip I can share that works well for me is to email thought leaders who I reference in my posts and let them know that I referenced their work, product, strategy in my post. It’s a quick easy way to reach out to people and you may get your post shared with their large, active networks. I wrote about this and other tactics for making your posts viral here http://www.jolynnoblak.com/7-s…. # 7 includes a basic email script to use. Always like your stuff! Thanks again
Great tips! Hope you will follow me on Twitter @scottlara1961 and check out my blog at http://www.scottlara1961.wordpress.com
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I would add Yahoo Pipes as a traffic strategy. I watched the video, so I’ll add what I know about how to use Yahoo Pipes to the “SEO Traffic Blueprint,” and then report back. This will take a while.
Awesome. We haven’t played with pipes too much. Our COO, Clarke, uses Pipes for some Tumblr automation and has success with it though.
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I’m Curious Matt for this particular list of things to do. Do you automate some of them with awesome things like IFTTT?
You can automate a few of the tasks, like Twitter posting with IFTTT if you want. However, most of them are pretty manual tasks that need your unique voice to be successful.
I have used all of these tips many times with thousands of contacts; this used to me my advice also– but now these do not work well at all, It has become far more difficult to get peoples attention than it was 5 years ago and it is getting worse no matter how good your contact is. Other good bloggers agree. Way to much hype here
I whole-heartedly disagree and I would love to see links to people who claim these strategies don’t work. This is literally our marketing strategy and our blog’s results speak for themself.
I think your post is to try to be controversial and not to actually add to the conversation. If you disagree, tell us why and what you’d do instead.
Matt, There are some great tips here! Thank you very much!
Thank you! I can’t wait to get to this. I’ve had to put action on hold for a bit so I’m looking forward to checking these out. Thanks for your time on this. Mary Lahti
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Great post! This post about “23 Things That You Can Do To Get Your Blog Post Seen Everywhere” has given me so much enlightenment because all I have thought is I am set for my content promotion but after reading this article, it made me go back to my blogs and do minimal improvisation which I believe will help me reach my target market and also will create traffic back to my website.
Also you may check this checklist for more additional information:
http://jordanvh.com/portfolios/ultimate-content-promotion-checklist/
Hi..just started assembling my SEO Trffic Blueprint. I have my WP.com, Tumblr, Blogger, & LiveJournal accounts; I’m just not clear about how to do the linkage. Do you have an example of the linkage? You’re writing mini-articles; is the same article posted on all 4 blogs?
This was so helpful. I am a video blogger and I usually write after I make a video but I like the idea of trying it the other way around. Heck- it may make the video easier! Thanks again!
This is great information Matt. I’ve just recently started my blog and am doing some of the standard stuff already, but your info inspired me to do better (and more!).
Matt, this is super excellent advice! I have started my own list of places to post. Really good stuff–thank you!
You did an excellent job explaining! Thank you
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