Traffic Generation part 2
Inside this post, I’ll go through the following:
Firstly, five quick and dirty tips for creating multiple streams of traffic to your blog…
And secondly, four powerful tips for attracting *floods* of fresh new traffic to your blog…
Ok, hold onto your hats, because what I’m about to reveal to you can mean the difference between a mediocre blog that dies within a few months, and a magnificent blog that will keep on serving you for years to come!
Let’s get into it…
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1. Five quick and dirty tips for creating multiple streams of traffic to your blog…
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I’ll be honest with you…
You may have come across the following five strategies for generating traffic to your blog.And you may even wonder how effective they are.
But the key with all five of these strategies is that you need to do them consistently and regularly over a period of time.
At first you may not see amazing results, but then, as you keep on doing it, you will start seeing some exponential results.
It’s a bit like compound interest with money in your bank account. To help explain this, say you invest $10,000 and you’re able to get 10% interest on your money per year.
After 10 years, your balance will have increased to around $26,000.
After 20 years, your balance will have increased further to around $67,000.
And after 30 years, you balance will have increased to a whopping $174,000!
As you can see, with each new 10 year period, the amount of money has increased exponentially, even though the interest rate remained exactly the same.
The same principle can be applied the following strategies. If you apply it consistently over time, at first the results will be slow, but then
later on, as you keep applying these strategies, you will start experiencing exponential results.
All of the following 5 strategies are fast and easy to implement. While you certainly don’t *have* to use all of them, using some or at least one of them every day will help you get the long term results you are after.
Ok, so here are the strategies:
1. Comment Marketing
Comment Marketing is where you essentially write really amazing comment replies to posts on other people’s blogs in your niche.
Remember that with all of these strategies, the emphasis is on providing *value*. So, simply writing a few non-helpful comments on some blogs won’t cut it. Make sure you’ve actually read the other persons blog article, that you understood the main principals, and then write an intelligent comment as a response.
This will help you get at least 2 benefits:
First, it will create a link back to your blog (via the link you enter when you create your comment).
This is not such a big deal anymore, but it does allow other people, who are visiting the blog you are commenting on, to easily navigate to your blog if they liked your comment and they want to find out more information about you.
And second, very importantly, if you do this consistently, you will start getting the attention of the blog owner.
And once you have their attention, you can develop your relationship with them. And then at some point in the future you could even ask them to join you in some kind of a joint venture.
(HUGE TIP: NEVER ask for a joint venture deal at the beginning of your relationship. That’s the fastest and easiest way of losing respect from the blog owner and ruining your chances of developing your relationship with them further).
A great idea is to target say 5 blogs in your niche and focus all your attention on them and building up a relationship with them. This will
come in very handy later on (I’ll say more about this soon…).
Next up is…
2. Forum Marketing
Ok, same principal here…
Find the popular forums in your niche, and start providing some exceptional value there regularlyand on a consistent basis.
In other words, blow people away with how helpful you are.
For example, you can respond to people’s questions by first researching the answer if you don’t know it already, and then writing a very detailed and thoughtful response.
Or what also works amazingly well, is if you simply create a new thread in the forum of your choice, and instead of just asking a "one liner" type of question, submit a fully fledged article that talks about a helpful topic to members of that forum.
Then at the end of the article, invite people to discuss the article and keep on checking back for comments and respond to those.
If you do this one right, it could help you drive a nice stream of consistent traffic to your blog for years to come!
Next up is…
3. Article Marketing
Same thing here again…
Find the right article directories for your niche,and start creating some valuable articles and submit them to these directories.
Probably the most popular article directory is http://www.ezinearticles.com.
So, what you could do here, is once again use a very focused approach. And instead of submitting articles to hundreds of smaller directories, simply focus on one, two or three major article directories, and really provide amazing value there.
TIP: Never duplicate the content on your blog inside article directories and vice versa. This could seriously effect your search engine rankings as you’ll get penalized for duplicate content by the search engines.
This strategy is certainly more intense, and could take up a significant portion of your time.
But instead of implementing this strategy once every day, maybe consider doing it only once every week, two weeks or even just once a month.
Once again, consistency here will pay off over the long run.
4. Guest Posts On Other Blogs
This is a very powerful strategy.
If you’ve been able to build up some kind of a relationship with other successful bloggers (for example by using the comment marketing strategy explained before), you can offer to write a guest post for them.
Often, successful bloggers, who have been creating content for a number of years, will welcome the opportunity of you providing them with extra content that they wont have to create themselves.
Of course, when you create these guest posts, you’ll need to present your absolute best writing skills to make sure that your article gets
accepted, and once posted on the other blog, to help drive more traffic back to your own blog.
Just remember to always link back to your own blog somewhere towards the end. Or ask the blog owner what they think would be appropriate in terms of linking back to your own blog.
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As a quick aside, here are some great resources that you can use to help you find other bloggers, forums or websites inside your own niche:
Blogrolls on other blogs
And also the Google Adwords Content Network – Google it!
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Finally…
5. Use Offline Media To Create Multiple Streams Of Traffic Sources
Even though most of your activities associated with blogging will be online, don’t forget that the offline world still exists and that you can
also leverage various offline marketing strategies to help you get more traffic to your blog.
I won’t go into much detail here, but the following list of offline marketing tools should spark some ideas of things you can do to help you create multiple streams of traffic back to your blog. Just make sure that for all of these tools, you have a strong call to action asking people to visit your blog, and also list your blog address very clearly and prominently.
Ok, here is the list:
- Business cards
- Newspaper ads
- Notice boards at shopping malls or supermarkets
- Physical offline newsletters
- Flyers
- Post cards
- Classified ads
- Newsletter, magazine and newspaper inserts
- Radio advertising
- Trade journals
- Brochures
- Yellow Pages
- Window displays
…basically anywhere where you can tell people about the benefits of visiting your blog and listing your blog address.
The only catch with these offline tools is that they can each cost a bit of money. So, if you do want to use offline methods, just make sure you always test your ideas using small quantities before you commit to larger quantities.
I once placed an ad in a magazine advertising complimentary access to a new book I had written.
It cost me around $2,500 and I only got 31 people to respond. That was an expensive lesson for me,and now I ALWAYS first test on a much smaller scale before I commit large dollars to large offline promotions.
There are many more quick and dirty strategies you can use to start driving traffic back to your blog. But I’ve listed some of the most powerfuland effective strategies you can use right now.
My suggestion is to pick one or two of these and do them really well. And then, if you have time left, start getting into the remaining strategies as well.
Now it’s time to look at the second main part of today’s lesson…
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2. Four powerful tips for attracting *floods* of fresh new traffic to your blog…
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The following four strategies can have a far greater impact on the traffic to your blog than any of the previous strategies mentioned.
We’re talking about *floods* of traffic here… not just a bunch of little streams of traffic.
(Note: You still need to use both types of strategies over the long run to ensure the compound effect that I talked about earlier.)
The only catch is, that the following four strategies involve A LOT more work to set up.
But once they are set up and running, they could help you increase your traffic *exponentially*.
The four strategies are:
1. Create a complimentary resource and build your list
2. Make extensive use of online video
3. Get into social media in a big way
4. And start doing regular audio and video podcasts
Let’s dig a little deeper into each one of these strategies now…
1. Create A Complimentary Digital Resource And Build Your List
One of the best ways we’ve found so far for generating truckloads of traffic for your online businesses, is to create some kind of a valuable complimentary digital resource that people can download in exchange for their contact details.
Two great examples of this are:
1. The Roadmap To Become A Blogger Report at
http://www.becomeablogger.com
2. And also the Blog Profits Blueprint at
http://www.entrepreneurs-
Both of these reports have now been downloaded tens of thousands of times, and have allowed us to really spread our ideas all over the whole of cyberspace.
Now, it’s critical that this digital resource is actually something that your target market will be interested in.
For example, if your blog is about gardening, it would make sense to offer a complimentary resource that solves a specific problem for people in the gardening niche.
The more valuable you can make your complimentary resource, the more likely it is that people will download it, consume it, and tell all their friends about it too, that way increasing the chance that your complimentary resource will spread and go viral online and thereby generate more traffic back to your blog.
That’s the kind of effect you want to achieve with this. The more your no-cost stuff can spread over the internet, the more successful your blog will be.
A lot more goes into creating a complimentary resource that has a good chance of going viral on the internet, but I will have to cover that inside a different mini series.
Ok, so that’s the complimentary resource.
Next up is…
2. Make Extensive Use Of Online Video
Online video seems to scare a lot of people.
But there is really NO need to be scared of creating your own online videos at all!
Technology is now so far advanced that they’ve made it extremely easy to start creating your very own online videos.
Of course, the more effort you put into this strategy, the better results you will get.
But at the least, what you can do, is to start a YouTube channel, and to start creating some simple videos that you can embed on your blog.
And to make this even easier for you, I’ve created 13 very detailed videos that show you step-by-step exactly how to get your first video online. It won’t cost you anything, and you can access all of the videos over here:
http://www.GetYourVideoOnline.
In general, people LOVE video. So if you regularly submit new videos to your blog where you cover some important topics in your niche, not only will you start getting more traffic, but you’ll also allow people to "engage" with your content a lot more.
And the more people are engaged with your content, the more they will come back, and also tell all their friends about it.
TIP: Start off with YouTube for your own online videos. It’s an amazing source of traffic that you can tap into at no cost at all. If you’re not
using YouTube as a serious strategy for driving traffic back to your blog, you’re missing out on A LOT of potential traffic.
For an example of how I use my videos to drive traffic back to one of my other blogs, have a look here:
Take careful note of how the videos are put together and how we are driving people back to our blog.
But I reveal everything for you inside my videos at http://www.GetYourVideoOnline.
The next big strategy is to…
3. Get Into Social Media In A Big Way
The previous tip on using online video extensively already touches a little on the potential of social media.
But there is currently a lot of confusion as to how to use social media effectively to help drive traffic back to your blog.
So, I will make it easy for you, and save you a heck of a lot of time. I’ve done all the research for you, and here is my conclusion:
Pick at the most 3 social media sites, and focus all your energies on those sites only.
Sign up for their service.
Get involved.
Start conversations.
Make yourself known.
Add value by providing useful content.
In general, make yourself as useful as possibleand more and more people will add you as their friend on these social media sites.
And because you can link back to your website inside these social media sites, it means that people will be able to visit your blog easily once they become your friend and consume your content.
But which social media should you choose?
Good question! And I have a great answer for you…
Inside "Crossing The Chasm", Geoffrey Moore talks about using what he calls "the beach head" strategy to help you get access to larger markets.
Using the same principal, I recommend you target the largest 3 social media sites in your niche,and focus ALL your attention there only.
The ones I recommend are:
1. YouTube.com
2. Facebook.com
3. And Twitter.com
But of course, you may want to research some other social media sites that are more suited to your own niche.
We’ve already seen some amazing results using these three services alone. And because we’ve had such a focused approach, we’ve been able to build up a nice list of friends and contacts who really trust us and love consuming our information.
Now that you know this "secret" you need to go out there and GET INVOLVED. And THAT is the *real* secret – getting involved!
Finally, for getting massive exposure for your blog, you need to…
4. Start Doing Regular Audio And Video Podcasts
Submitting regular podcasts on your blog is one of the most powerful things you can do for getting a lot of traffic to your blog.
What is a podcast I hear you ask?
Well basically, it’s just an audio or video recording that you make available for streaming or downloading from your blog, or any other kind of website with an RSS feed.
This lesson is getting WAY too long already to go into the details of the "how to" of podcasting, but essentially, if you can create an audio or video recording, and link to it straight from your blog, you’ve created your very own podcast.
Ok, so how do you come up with content for your podcast.
Really easy actually!
There are at least two ways:
1. You could just interview experts and other bloggers in your niche.
Here’s an example of when I interviewed Darren Rowse, one of the world’s most famous professional bloggers:
http://www.becomeablogger.com/
2. Or you could come up with the content yourselfand simply record it onto your computer, using the tools I mentioned inside part 4 of this mini course.
Once you’ve edited your recording, simply upload it to your server for audio or video sharing websites like YouTube.com for video, and then embed your recording on your blog.
To help you stream audio on your blog you can use the nifty WordPress Audio Player plugin that you can find here:
http://www.1pixelout.net/code/
People LOVE interviews, especially when you make them available for download straight from your blog.
If you keep on interviewing experts in your niche, after a while, your blog visitors will start associating you with those experts, and then by means of association start seeing you as an expert as well.
And of course, the more people who trust and respect you, the more they will link to your blog and tell all their friends about your blog too.
The ultimate goal is to get the people who you interview to also promote the interview to their audience. And this is where your "floods" of traffic will often come from.
So, make sure you use this strategy at least once a month. Not only is it a powerful strategy, but it’s also a very easy way of creating content for your blog.
And if you go an extra step further, you could even transcribe your audio interviews and add the text to your blog posts as well, that way keeping the search engines happy too!
That brings us to the end of today’s lesson. We’ve covered a lot of material, and I hope it’s given you some great ideas of things you could use to help you get a lot more traffic to your blog.
Inside the next lesson, I’ll reveal:
- 11 Amazing Tips To Help You Get Zero-Cost
Traffic From Search Engines…
- How To Make Sure You Stay On The Right Track…
- Your Action Plan For Super Boosting Traffic To
Your Blog…
Until then!
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