Currently I'm in the middle of doing the live Blog Marketing Kickstart Workshop. We've only got one more day left, and today (Day 4) we're talking about how to drive traffic using your blog.
We've talked about a lot of different blog marketing tactics, but I wanted to devote an entire day just to the traffic tactics you can use when you have a blog.
As I was creating a resource for my students I was thinking I wanted to have a page where I could list what I covered, but also have a page that I could continually update. You can't update a PDF document on the fly, but you can a blog post. So I decided to give them all the below strategies in a nice little PDF document and then directed them here to get the updates I'll be doing.
And since I love all my people (even those of you who didn't join this workshop… I see you. 🙂 ) I'm even giving you access.
So here are the strategies I've taught so far. Some will make sense to you if you haven't gone through the workshop, but some to understand you'll need to have gone through the workshop. You can get access to the workshop by clicking here.
So take a look, use what you can, and I'll update this as I add more strategies.
Enjoy!
1. SEO – This is a BIG time consuming strategy that I only use on small niche sites. If it's not easy to rank in the search engines for keywords then I don't put a lot of time or effort into SEO. It's too risky for my tastes, BUT if you're not scared to lose the traffic from all of your work this is a strategy that DOES work.
2. Social Marketing – This is by far my favorite marketing strategy when it comes to your blog. Create great content, post it to your social media accounts. That's easy. The hard part is building a following on each of these networks. It can be done though and it's worth the time and effort. Plus… It's fun.
3. Share Buttons – Adding share buttons to your blog is quick and easy with a plugin and a great way to get more traffic to your content. Get people to share your content on their favorite social media network and get traffic from their efforts.
4. Guest Blogging – Writing for other blogs in your niche is a great way to get traffic from those blogs. Search for blogs in your niche, see if they accept guest bloggers, if not inquire, create great content, they publish it, you get traffic. There's a lot more that goes into this, but this strategy is worth the effort!
5. Interacting – Interacting where the people in your niche “hangout” online is a great way to get traffic to your site. Most places your people are hanging out allow you to have some kind of profile. Make sure you're linking to your blog in your profile so people can find it if they go searching for more information about you.
Forums, Facebook groups, Reddit, (other social media networks) Quora, etc are all great places to get started, but constantly be on the lookout for places where the people in your niche hangout.
6. Blog About Others – This is a great tactic that can do many different things for you including getting traffic. You simply pick a topic related to your niche, find blog posts related to that topic (5-10 posts are all you need) that are REALLY good, and create a blog post on your blog pointing to these posts.
Many people have “alerts” that tell them when their blog is mentioned on another blog and/or they have Google alerts for their name and will see when you do this.
However you should go the extra mile and contact them personally to let them know. You can do that via email or social media. When I have done this in the past I will post a link to the blog post on Facebook and tag those I've featured. That works AWESOME!
Use this tactic sparingly though. You can wear it out fast.
7. Pay To Play – There are many ways to pay for advertising for your blog posts. There are services out there like Blog Pros, banner advertising, solo ads, and even using social media paid advertising will get traffic to your blog posts QUICKLY!
I recommend taking a post that has proven to get interaction (comments, feedback, lots of views, etc.) and use paid advertising to take it even further.
8. Contests – Contests have been used to drive traffic almost since the Internet began. Now with all the technology to do these you have a lot of options. I highly recommend you do your own research on the best tools to run a contest, and then host a “share contest” with your people to get a piece of content shared everywhere. This will bring in quite a bit of traffic.
Here's an example I'm about to do…
I have a great blog post showcasing email templates people can buy to use in their email marketing. I plan to have a share contest and will randomly pick someone who shares the post as the winner. The winner will get every resource on the page for free as their prize.
That example is the most basic contest you can run and it works REALLY well! As I said you have a lot of options when it comes to using contests. Do your research, see what others are doing, investigate tools, and start using contests on your blog to drive traffic.
9. Viral Posts – Getting a post to go viral isn't the easiest thing in the world, but it can be done. The content for this tactic must be phenomenal and generally it needs to be a tutorial or a step-by-step process to get something done. Using an infographic to SHOW the process is a huge key too. People LOVE infographics and they share them A LOT.
There are other types of content that can go viral too, but it's hit or miss with this tactic. If you can get something to go viral though you can get A LOT of traffic!
More tactics are coming soon…
Liz
