10 Fantastic Free Ways To Get Customers to Your Website

Here are ten ways you can get new customers to your website, using the free resources available on the Internet. There are many free Internet sites where you can get in touch with potential customers, if you reach out to them. You’ll be surprised how effective they are. Yes, they’re free. You don’t need big bucks to see big results. 

1. Use Free Social Media to Get Customers

• Use the online social media sites to introduce yourself, your business and your products. Over time you will build brand awareness among people there. Set up your MySpace page, your Twitter account, your LinkedIn, Facebook, Friendster and Hi5 profiles, and link each of them to your website. Facebook offers business pages, too.
• Post pictures of your products at Flickr.com and Photobucket.com, together with your profile, description and a link to the website. When you choose your screen name for these online accounts, you might want to use the domain name of your business site, like JoesHVACDotCom.
• A number of online bookmarking sites offer you an online community of people, such as Digg, StumbleUpon, Ask, Google Bookmarks, Reddit, Blogmarks, Simpy, Delicious, Kaboodle, Blinklist, Live, Slashdot, Magnolia, Spurl, Technorati, myAol, Yahoo Bookmarks, Furl or Newsvine. When you post an article of interest to customers on your website, bookmark the article at some of these sites.

2. Try Free Guerilla Techniques to Get Customers

Explore guerrilla marketing techniques that require only time, energy and imagination. Choose a new promotion, and spread the word about it on your social media sites. Depending on your business, you can offer online seminars, free samples, free consultations, and product video demonstrations. Perhaps it makes sense to give away a free toolbar, screensaver, game or utility, all of which can be branded for your business. Many websites get new customers when they give away free coupons. You can promote the coupons on Twitter and on other social media. Give your customers more service than they expect. If your employees have idle time, offer the customer free product assembly. Use your website to introduce yourself to the customers and share your product expertise with them. 

3. Visit Online Groups to Get Customers

Visit the online groups for more free opportunities to introduce yourself. See if Google Groups or Yahoo Groups has a topic that fits your area of interest. Group members will appreciate your help and advice. Build your reputation as an expert in the field, and group members will turn to you when they are ready to buy. Also, participate in related online forums where your expertise will be useful to customers. 

4. Write Online Articles to Market Yourself

• Write an article about your field of expertise. It could be a helpful "how-to" article about using your product, or an explanation of the benefits of your product. Then submit your article tor one of the many online sites, like ezine.com, that accept free articles. You’ll automatically get a link back to your business website along with free publicity.
• Write a press release and post it online. The topic could be your website expansion, your new product line, a new employee, or a charitable project. Include links to your online website and submit it to the free press release sites online. Check out sites like 24-7PressRelease.com, PRLog.org and 1888PressRelease.com. Email your press release to your local newspapers, too.
• Find your business niche on Wikipedia, WikiTravel, and other wiki sites, and become a contributor. You might be able to link to your business site as a reference. It's one more way to keep your name in front of the online public.

5. Optimize Your WebSite to Get Customers

Use the help of search engines to get more customers to your website. Make your website friendly for search engines. The technique is called search engine optimization. Just by changing the title of your page, its description, or your introductory remarks, you can double the traffic to your site. The traffic sent by search engines is called organic traffic, and it’s free. More traffic gets more new customers to your website. 

6. Take Advantage of Free Business Listings

• Use the Google Local Business Center to create your free listing. When potential customers search Google Maps for local information, they'll find your business: your address, hours of operation, even photos of your storefront or products. It's easy, it’s free, and you don't need a website of your own.
• Proofread your business listing in yellowpages.com.
• Check the local online telephone listing for your business, and correct it if necessary.
• Make sure your Yahoo city listing is up to date.
• Submit your website to The Open Directory Project, dmoz.org. This directory is maintained by humans, and getting in is difficult, but the search engines rank your site higher if dmoz lists it.

7. Use Free Online Blogging to Get Customers to Your Website

• Locate Internet blogs that cover topics related to your business. Leave comments on the blogs, and use your business domain name as your screen name; for example, AngiesCookiesDotCom. Your blog comments provide an additional link to your website. You can pick up free traffic from these links, too.
• Read more blogs. Set up your feed reader with the names of good blogs. A feed reader saves time by letting you skim the headlines of new articles. Whenever you have a spare moment, read something in your field. New ideas are always hatching online.
• If you enjoy writing, set up a blog for yourself. It can be a part of your business website, a page where you write informally about related activities and allow your personality to shine. A business blog is a great tool to build traffic and get customers to your website.

8. Use Free Internet Tools to Get Customers to Your Website

• Set up and verify a Webmaster Central Account at Google.
• Submit a product to Google Base. Google Base lets you submit pictures and describe your items with detailed information called attributes, which will help customers find your content more easily. You don’t even need a website to take advantage of Google Base.
• Install Google Analytics on your site, if you don't already have it. Google Analytics is helpful and free. You’ll learn more about customer behavior when they get to your website.
• Set up a CrazyEgg heat mapping test for your most important pages, to analyze what part of the page a customer looks at and clicks on. The results will help you rearrange items on your pages to maximize visibility.
• Show your customers how to find your physical store by adding a link to Google Maps on your website.
• Set up a MyBlogLog account for your blog or your website. When you put the MyBlogLog widget on your website, your customers can see avatars (small photos) of each other. The use of avatars helps build a sense of community among your customers. There are many such widgets available free online.

9. Create a Video to Get Customers

Convert a slideshow of your products into a video and upload it to Youtube or MetaCafe. Be sure to optimize your title and descriptions to get the most traffic from search engines. Set up your own channel on Youtube. With YouTube hosting your video and supplying the bandwidth, embed the video into your website. The link from YouTube will get more customers to your website. 

10. Try Pay Per Click Advertising to Get Customers to Your Website

No, Pay Per Click advertising is not free, but it can be very inexpensive. Signup is free. When people search for the products you sell, your PPC business ad will appear on the search engine report. With PPC, you only pay when a customer clicks on your ad and comes to your website. Each customer who comes to your website costs you only a few pennies. You can set your advertising budget as low as $1 per day, and turn your ad campaign off and on whenever you wish. You can easily track your Pay Per Click customers to see if PPC brings you more sales. The largest PPC advertising networks are those with the most popular search engines: Microsoft Ad Center, Yahoo Search Marketing, and Google Adwords. 

I hope life brings you much success.
I wish you a very happy day. 

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Get Free Targeted Traffic To Your Site

I mentioned in my last post that my traffic is all organic, and highly targeted... and that my traffic continues to climb at a steady rate.

If you missed that post see 2012 Advertising Rates which shares my 2011 traffic stats.

Would you like to get that same kind of free targeted traffic to your site?

I'm sure you would! So follow along - I'm going to outline exactly what I do, what Idon't do, and how you can duplicate my results for yourself. 

If you looked at my stats, then you can tell my site obviously wasn't affected by theGoogle Panda update. Click that link and read that article (again, if you already have) as it gives you a basic blueprint for post-panda site success.

How To Achieve Massive Traffic Growth

First, let's talk about what I didn't do last year to get well over half a million unique visitors (666,014) to this blog alone - not including any of my other properties.

I did not do any major article marketing, outsourcing or link building.

I also did zero PPC campaigns or paid advertising.

Those are all good marketing strategies to consider, especially when your site or blog is newer and you're just starting out. I'm simply pointing out that I did not actively engage in any of those things during 2011 myself...

How I DID Get So Much FREE Targeted Traffic

It's important to note that as of March 2012, I have been blogging for 6 full years on this domain. Prior to that it was on blogger, so I've been blogging consistently for almost 8 years now.

This affects traffic in two ways: 1) the search engines consider you an authority on your topic and/or your domain gets well established in the major search engines, and 2) you build up a readership, a mailing list and a loyal following over time.

Success is not going to happen overnight, no matter what those big red headlines promised you. Be ready to invest in your online business long-term.

Here are the specific things I did to increase my traffic dramatically:

• Blog Consistently
• Proper Web Page Optimization for every page/post
• Some Guest Blogging - when I had time 
• Creating Solid Content That Gets Shared
• Engaging With My Readers
• Active on Social Media Channels
• Add Social Media Share Buttons so readers can share content

Is It Really That Simple? Yes.

I know you probably expected a detailed blueprint giving you a million things to add to your task list. It's really not that complicated. The key to getting free targeted traffic to your site is really as simple as this:

Write great content. Address your market's needs & wants (via keywords & responses). ENGAGE with them. Make it easy for your readers to share your content (for you!). And be consistent until your readership is solid and your site/blog is well established in the search engines.

That pretty much sums it up...

These are the same marketing strategies I am using on my two newer blogs (my video blog and my low carb blog) to get free targeted traffic, including the strategies I listed earlier that I didn't actively do for ClickNewz last year.

I hope that proves inspiring and helpful. 

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How to Get Targeted Traffic to Your Website

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   Publish articles around your keywords on as many sites as possible. There are quite a few article sites that have articles you can use or edit for your needs. Then there are article submitters that will place your article on a bunch of sites at once for you.
   Ad
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   Consider starting a 'webzine'. There are also webzines,(online-magazines), that specialize in articles, and have large memberships that will possibly read your article and hopefully follow a link to your site that you place with the article. Using this method causes links to your site from the sites you've put it on and results in more traffic.
   • Be wary of content farms. Google search is not nice to them.
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   Another great way to get traffic is to join the social sites. They are popping up at an ever-increasing rate. By socializing with others on the net through these sites, everything you join or participate in gives you more people to see your site. And, if you're selling stuff from your site, you'll want to go to the places (interest groups) on the social site where people are interested in what you're selling.
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   Distribute an E-book all over the Internet with your links in it. These can be made quite easily with software you can get by searching on Google or by checking at the bottom of this article for a link. These can also be put on social sites and webzines for them. Again, wherever you put them causes a link back to your site.
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   Set up a blog. These are a very good method for getting traffic to your site and they are free. You can start one at one of many free blog sites. Then you set up a feed for content and then go to other blogs with the same topics or fields of interests and read and comment on their articles. As well a lot allow you to post your article which gives you more traffic.
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   Have a Press Release. There are sites that will send a news type story about your new product or info on your site to a lot of other sites. Some of these are pay sites though, so you have to watch out.
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   Use Google. Google Adwords is the most popular method for traffic. Since they are the top search engine right now it make sense to advertise there if you can afford it. You bid on keywords to get your site at the top of the search when your keyword comes up. There is more involved but it's all laid out at Google. There are a lot of other sites that use this advertising strategy called pay per click or PPC.
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   Submit your site to search engines. Another popular way of getting traffic is with a search engine submitter, where a site will send your link to many search engines at once for a price. The more search engines you want to be on, the higher the price. There are a few free programs you can use but they usually don't submit to too many at once.
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   Buy leads from a lead selling site. These are supposed to be email addresses of people that have signed up to receive offers. You just have to watch that they have good fresh "double opting" leads of people who requested more information about your particular field or you could be marked as a spammer. Some of these sites will email them for you with your own email or you can buy separate leads and use a separate email site for the mailing. There are email programs you can use but then you have a problem that Internet providers usually only allow up to 500 emails per day, and if you're doing it every day they might (rightfully) accuse you of spamming and shut down your connection.
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How to attract new and repeat visitors to your blog

logging is an essential part of a business platform, especially for a writer, because it showcases your work and is an essential part of the branding and marketing process. The problem that writers run into is how to create a blog that consistently attracts readers—both new and repeat. The key is to learn what makes a blog successful, so you can put it to work for your writing business.

Characteristics of a Successful Blog

When you have a blog for your writing business, you have taken the first step to building a business and marketing platform to display your writing expertise. Maintaining a blog allows you to share your knowledge—either in writing or your topic of expertise. Simply starting a blog, however, is not enough. As successful writers have certain characteristics, successful blogs also possess characteristics.

Purpose or Focus

The first characteristic of a successful blog is it has to have a focus. The focus may be on writing itself, or it may be on a niche for which you write. The primary purpose of your blog is to be able to illustrate your skill in writing on the topic. To identify the purpose of your blog, first identify the audience you are writing to attract.
For example, if you are a fiction writer, your blog could cover various topics that revolve around this genre of writing, including industry news, news about you as a writer, your fiction writing business, tips and advice, how-to articles, and book reviews. If the purpose of the blog is to showcase your personal finance knowledge, then you may cover topics such as mortgages, loans, credit cards, and budgeting. The topic categories may still be the same: industry news, news about you as a writer, your personal finance writing business, tips and advice, how-to articles, and even book reviews.
Consider “blog wrangler” and social media expert Anne-Marie Nichols. She manages two separate blogs: The Write Spot and This Mama Cooks. The reason, of course, is that each of her blogs focuses on a different topic and has different audiences. The Write Spot shares information on writing, promotions for authors and writers, and how-tos on using social media and other marketing tools to promote a writing business. The This Mama Cooks blog still focuses on Anne-Marie’s writing, but from the perspective of a “foodie.” While there is some overlap in her audience, it is best for Anne-Marie to keep the two separate blogs, so each can focus on the respective subjects and audiences.

“Blogging is a platform for opening up conversations...”

A Title with Meaning

Start by giving your blog a meaningful name. While you can certainly weave your name or business name into the title, you can also use the creativity you have as a writer to put some thought into naming your blog. For example, writer Brian Clark named his blog Copyblogger. Tom Chandler named his blogCopywriter Underground, while Anne Wayman’s blog is coined The Golden Pencil.

Regular Updates

Successful blogs have fresh content on an ongoing basis. This means, you have to post to your blog at least two to three times per week. Fresh content is the foundation on which blogs are built, so you have to commit to regularly updating your blog in order to keep visitors constantly coming back for more.

About Section

Your blog should contain a page or block of information about you and your business. The about section of your blog adds credibility because it tells readers why you are the expert sharing the information with them.

Comments

Blogging is a platform for opening up conversations, where you share information; but readers share with comments, feedback, or posing questions. These comments may be in response to your post or allow your audience to start their own conversations—using your blog as the platform. Since comments and feedback are readable by all, other visitors to the site can also join in on the conversation.

Rich Site Summary (RSS) Feed

RSS stands for Rich Site Summary. Essentially, a feed is an online subscription tool. When a reader subscribes to the RSS feed of your blog, they receive an automatic alert when fresh content is posted to the blog. This puts your updates on autopilot, so interested parties know when you have something new to share. RSS feeds tend to get picked up by news websites such as Yahoo! News, which can provide exposure you could never put a price tag on.

Categories

Create categories for your blog posts. Each time you write a blog post, choose the appropriate category or categories. Categories are a necessity because it allows visitors to easily find blog posts that cover topics of interest to them. An organized and easy-to-use blog is a valuable resource.

Archives

Your blog should also archive your old articles, either weekly, monthly, or annually. This helps to make your blog posts available to readers no matter how old the posts are. Archives are also searchable by the search engines, so archiving helps boost your rankings in the search engines, which gets your blog in front of the people who are seeking the information you provide.

Contact

Your contact information should be available on every page of your blog. Typically, the contact information is in a sidebar, header, or footer on the pages. Unless you are Gossip Girl, you want people reading your blog to know whom you are and how they contact you, if and when they need your writing services.

Permalinks

Each blog post receives a permalink of its own, which allows readers to go straight to each individual blog post, even as the posts get pushed down off the front page. Essentially, the permalink creates an individual page for each blog post, so it also helps to get each page of the blog listed in the search engines—ultimately increasing the exposure your blog receives.

Trackbacks

A trackback is another type of notification tool. A trackback sends you a message when another website or blog includes a link to your blog. Trackbacks work in the other direction, too, which is to alert a website owner or blogger when you link to or mention their site on your blog. Again, this helps with the whole linking situation, which can boost you in the search engines.

“When you provide relevant and useful information, you are positioning yourself and your blog as the resource.”

Ways to Attract More Visitors

With more than 100 million blogs to choose from, you really have to work to make your blog stand apart from the rest. While you may share useful and relevant content, if your readers do not see the value in your blog, you will have little chance of reeling them in and keeping them coming back for more. Fortunately, you can take three steps to be proactive about drawing in your crowd.

Become Your Audience

Put aside your writing hat for a moment, and put on the hat of the readers you are trying to reach. If you were sitting on the other side of the desk, what kind of information would you seek from an expert like you? When you provide relevant and useful information, you are positioning yourself and your blog asthe resource.
Consider blogger Susan Johnston and her blog, The Urban Muse. As a writer herself, who knows better about the trials and tribulation of a writer than another writer? From how to get referrals from existing clients to how to write your Twitter bio as a writer and author, The Urban Muse shares articles that pertain specifically to writers. And coming from a fellow writer adds credibility to what Susan shares on the blog.

Stay Engaged

Engagement is a necessity for a successful blog. Not only should you be sharing valuable information with your readers, but you should also commit to responding to comments, questions, and feedback from your readers. If your readers seek information you are not qualified to write on, but is relevant to your blog and your audience, seek out a guest blogger that can compose one or more blog posts to fulfill the need.

Integrate Technology

A blog should not be an island or standalone piece of your marketing and promotion efforts. Integrate your blog with your website. Include a link to your blog on your social media profiles. Invite the people you e-mail to visit your blog by adding a link to your e-mail signature. Use an all-in-one update tool such asHootsuite or Ping to send out alerts when you post a new article to your blog with a link to the blog post. As technology changes, adapt your blog to embrace it.

Contribute to Other Blogs

Find blogs that relate to your own blog. Write blog posts or contribute articles to other relevant blogs to draw readers to your own blog. In the author box or bio portion, typically at the bottom of the article, include information about you as a writer and the topics your blog covers. Include a link back to your own blog.
Thursday Bram shares her knowledge by guest blogging for other blogs. While Thursday maintains her own blog, sharing information that novice and veteran writers can use to boost their writing business, she also spreads her knowledge to other blogs. She has guest blog posts on blogs, including Distracted Enterprise, Giagom, and All Freelance Writing.

Comment on Blog Posts

Proactively go to other blogs that are related to your own blog. Read the blog posts and leave meaningful comments or pose questions. Interacting with other bloggers helps provide exposure for your blog as well. When you leave useful and insightful comments, it intrigues people enough to go over and check out your blog.

Offline Marketing

You should find ways to promote your blog offline as well as online. Add your blog address to your business cards and other marketing materials. Speak at meetings and other places on your area of expertise, and talk about your blog. When someone asks you a question, hand over the link to your blog, where an article sits on the topic or a post holds an answer to their question.

“Each blog post should contain one or two links where appropriate. The links should link keywords or phrases to areas on your website or blog...”

Anatomy of a Blog Post

After you get your blog up and running, you have to continue to deliver what you promise with the quality of your blog posts. Since the information you share is so important, you should learn the anatomy of a blog post.

Posts with a Purpose

Each post you write should have a purpose or focus. When you decide to write a blog post, keep the focus of the post in mind as you write it—from beginning to end.

A Title with Meaning

The title of your blog post should contain a headline that makes the reader want to read more. Make sure the headline is meaningful enough to provide a glimpse of what the post is about. Use your creativity to give it a name that truly shines. If your headline or title doesn’t rock, it may prohibit it from being read no matter how great the information it contains.

Links

Each blog post should contain one or two links where appropriate. The links should link keywords or phrases to areas on your website or blog, where readers can obtain additional information or to outside sources to obtain information or buy a related product or service. Links are valuable because search engines love links, so it can boost the search engine rankings of your blog. In addition, linking to products and services can help you to boost sales, and your readers to continue to see you as a valuable source for what they need.

Visuals

As a writer, you already have a love affair with words, but you are not the only one who loves words. Search engines and readers love words, but do not like to be overwhelmed with too many words. Break up the writing in your blog posts by using visuals where appropriate. Visuals may be a picture, photograph, chart, graph, or video. Visuals add meaning to your words and resonate with your readers. Websites such as Morgue File and Flickr are sources for pictures you can use free of charge, as long as they are have a Creative Commons license and you credit the photographers.
Blogging is an essential part of a business platform as a writer and part of the branding and marketing process. Now that you know how to create a successful blog and write amazing blog posts, you can hurdle the obstacle of consistently attracting new and repeat readers.

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4 Creative Ways to Attract More Visitors to Your Website

“How can I get more website visitors?”

This is one of the most common questions I hear from clients, frustrated at the lack of business their website brings them.

Often, there isn’t much wrong with the site iteslf — it’s professionally designed, and the portfolio is full of gorgeous work. But it just sits there, in an obscure corner of the Internet, being quietly ignored.Taking a website from zero to a few hundred or even a few thousand visitors a month is not easy, but it’s eminently doable — as long as you recognize a harsh truth about the Internet:

The online world is an attention economy. Attention is finite, and therefore scarce. So if you want people to pay attention to you, you need to earn it.

You can’t expect your work to speak for itself. Most of the time, it won’t. You need to accept that marketing is part of your job, just as much as making.

But the game changes when you start applying your creativity to your marketing — it becomes more fun as well as more effective. Here are four ways to use your creativity to attract the right kind of visitors to your website.

1. Create an amazing blog.

Note the word ‘amazing’. I’m not talking about a blog you only update when you’ve got a new client or exhibition, or something new to sell. I’m not talking about a personal diary where you to post your musings on art, life, and the universe. I mean the kind of blog that grabs people’s attention by delivering outstandingly valuable, useful, or entertaining material — consistently.

Instead of writing, ‘here’s my latest work’, write about:

• “Here’s how I made it” – with pictures and/or video. Like this or this or this.
• “Here’s what inspired it” – if you like it, chances are your audience will like it too. Like this or this.
• “Here’s how you can make one like it.” Like this or this.
• “Here’s a gadget that makes my work better (and could help  you too).” Likethis.

Instead of burying your opinions in long paragraphs of diary-style ‘musings’, put them out there loud and clear:

• Devote an entire blog post to nailing ONE idea.
• Start with a compelling headline.
• Ask yourself ‘So what? Why should anyone care?’ — and make that the start of the post.
• Give concrete examples.
• Invite comments by ending with a question.
• For example: I’m a designer. Use me better.

And don’t forget to ask for the subscription! Repeat visitors are the best visitors, so one of your goals is to build an audience of loyal subscribers. Ask people to subscribe and offer an email option to make it easy.

2. Give (some of) your best work away for free.

Just so we’re clear: I’m not one of those internet hippies who tells you “information wants to be free”, so you should give away all your best work and forget about being paid. (Have you noticed those guys tend to have a comfortable salary or professorship?)

But as Tim O’Reilly has pointed out, for most creatives obscurity is a greater threat than piracy. If no one’s ever heard of you, they won’t even bother to rip you off, let alone pay for your work.

So take advantage of the spreadability of digital content by giving away something valuable and encouraging people to share it with their contacts:

• the first chapter of your novel (or even an entire novella)
• a free report or e-book, full of insanely useful information
• one of the best tracks from your album
• a design template
• high-resolution images
• a series of tutorials
• videos that anyone can embed in their site

Use a Creative Commons license to make it clear what people are allowed to do with the work. And make sure it’s something genuinely valuable. If you feel slightly uncomfortable about giving away something so good, you’re on the right track. Otherwise, why would anyone get excited enough to tell their friends?But don’t give away the farm. Make sure you have plenty in reserve — products, services, artworks — for the folks who want to take things further and buy from you.

3. Borrow someone else’s audience.

Why build an audience from scratch when you can borrow one that someone else has spent months or years assembling? No, it’s not unethical — in fact, the ‘someone’ in question will love you for it.

Writing high-quality guest posts for popular blogs in your niche is one of the most effective ways to get yourself on the radar of the people you want to reach. Your ‘payment’ is a link back to your site — make a great offer and you could land hundreds of new subscribers with every guest post you write.

And make sure it’s your best work. This is your chance to make a big impression — don’t blow it by sending out second-rate articles and keeping the best stuff for your own site.

4. Get your content into circulation.

Have you noticed that of the three tips so far, only one of them is centered around your site? (No. 2 may start on your site, but the real magic happens when people start sharing it with their friends.) If you really want more visitors, you have to go out and find them.

Social networking sites are not just for networking — they are ideal places to get your content (blog posts, videos, free reports, etc) in front of other people. Use Twitter, Facebook, or Google+ to share links to your content. Make use of portfolio sites like Behance to showcase your work in places where people go to look for it.

And be generous — share more of other people’s content than your own. That way, you not only help others (good digital karma!) you also position yourself as a go-to authority, a source of cool stuff who people want to follow.

***

None of these methods is a quick fix. They require time, effort, and persistence. But the good news is the benefits are cumulative – as your blog attracts links and subscribers, as your free content gets into circulation, and as you get known as a rising star in your niche, you’ll find yourself attracting more and more new visitors for every hour you spend on marketing.And no, website visitors don’t necessarily equal customers — otherwise there’d be a lot more Internet millionaires! Read my next article on turning visitors into buyers here.

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Over To You

Which of these methods is most appealing to you?

What have been your best sources of web visitors?

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How to Get Explosive & Targeted Traffic – An Alternative to Guest Posting

We all know that guest posting is one of the best ways to get highly targeted traffic to your website. Everyone makes it sound so easy too: write a killer post, deliver it to a fellow blogger in your niche, and then BAM…instant traffic, and some new subscribers to boot.

Although I wholeheartedly believe that guest posting is a tactic that delivers exactly the traffic that you need, and one that you should definitely attempt several times throughout the life of your growing site, the truth is that it’s not always as easy as it sounds.

Why?

Because the author of the blog you are targeting has the option to reject your guest post request. It could be for any number of reasons, many of which are beyond your control.

There is, however, a strategy that I’ve noticed being used on a number of blogs lately that is working wonders – driving large amount of traffic, earning tons of retweets and landing tons of new subscribers. It’s a strategy that I wish I knew when I was just starting out, and the best part is that it’s a post that you publish on your own blog, so there’s no need to worry about rejection.

The strategy?

A list post that features some of the top and up & coming players in your niche.

Call it what you want – a “shout out post”, a “tribute post”, or a “community post” (thanks to @5kmission, @PaulCunningham, @Scottshelden &@NicWirtz for the name suggestions!) – the strategy works.

It does take some extra effort to find the top and up & coming players in your niche, gather all of the relevant information and really put together a killer post, but the results can be quite fruitful for you and your blog.

WHY DOES THIS WORK?

There are several reasons why this strategy works:

• Everyone appreciates being featured on another blog. Some (not all) will actually spend time to actually read the post and leave a “thanks for the mention” comment as well. This is an easy and friendly way to connect & network with others.
• Often times, the people you feature (especially the up & coming ones), love the free press so much that they want to share it with as many people as possible. This is why it’s important to make sharing easy on your blog by including all of the necessary retweet, like, stumbleupon, and digg buttons, etc.
• These posts are actually very useful. Anyone who is interested in your niche would love to have a list of the top players and get to know everyone and their importance to the industry.

A fine example of this strategy being put to use recently can be seen on Jade Craven’s post at TheNetsetter.com, 50 Netsetters You Should Know About.

Take notice of how many comments were made, as well as how many of those comments were actually from people featured in that article. Also, although it doesn’t say on the blog itself, bit.ly tells me that this post has been retweeted 458 times (as of about 24 hours after it’s post). That’s a lot of reach, and I guarantee you that many of those retweets came from people featured in that post as well. Just imagine how many followers totalthose 50 people have on Twitter alone.

TAKING IT TO THE NEXT LEVEL

As with most things in life, there’s the standard way of writing these posts, and then there’s the “next level” way.

The standard way is to simply create a list of people and write a short paragraph about each – or, if your post is about a particular subject matter within your niche, you may write about how each of the people you are featuring have made an impact in regards to that.

The “next level” way is wonderfully demonstrated by my friend Corbett Bar from ThinkTraffic.net. In his posts, 10 Blogs with Explosive Growth to Learn From and also 17 Traffic Building Tips From Some of the World’s Most Popular Bloggers, he not only includes a list of featured bloggers and a short paragraph about each, but he also includes an actual quote from each blogger as well. Having a quote from each of the people does a few extra things for Corbett:

1. It increases the social proof of the post.
2. It increases the chances of the article being shared to even more people. Because Corbett took the time to first contact each of the people, and then follow up after the post was written (I know he did this because The Smart Passive Income Blog had the honor of being included in these posts…thanks Corbett!), the authors are less likely to just pass over the post, and will most likely share it with others. If not through retweets and sharing on Facebook, then by posts such as the one I am writing now.
3. And most importantly, it takes the networking aspect of these posts to a whole new level. Corbett contacted me personally to ask for a quotation for both of these articles, and because of that I know exactly who he is, what his blog is about, and that it’s totally awesome. In the future, I’m sure Corbett and I could possibly work together on something, or exchange guest posts, or whatever – because of the trust I now have for him and his blog – all of which came from the initial contact and the quality of his post.

If you take a look at the archives on ThinkTraffic.net, you’ll see that each of the posts before the 17 Traffic Building Tips article average 2 to 4 comments, and the same amount of retweets. Well, after posting this post, he earned 69 comments, and 145 retweets.

It works.

Yes, you will have to work a little harder to first contact each of the people you’d like to feature, but usually they are happy to spend 2-3 minutes to contribute a quote for you. Not all will respond, but the ones that do will be great contacts to have in the future, ones that can possibly help add to the rapid growth and expansion of your site.

So if guest posting just isn’t working out for you (or even if it is), give this alternative traffic building method a shot.

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9 Ways to Generate Insane Blog Traffic in 2014

If you have a blog in 2014, then you probably understand the necessity of traffic.  No traffic means no leads. No leads means less sales. (And we like sales.) 

So, to help with your traffic generation efforts, I have compiled a list a 9 techniques Flight Media used to grow it’s blog traffic more than 1,200% in the first 14 days of 2014.

1. Write 1 Article Per Day

Yes, I know this is the ‘oldest trick in the book,’ but it is for a good reason– it works. 

It sounds easy at first, but by day 7, writers block tends to creep in and takeover your mind. (Here’s how to break it)

Our New Years Resolution (like every other blogger,) was to begin blogging daily. January 2nd, we started and were able to grow our traffic 1,200% in the first 14 days.

And that’s just our story.

Neil Patel created 3 blogs that each receive more than 100,000 visitors per month, Jeff Bullas blogged 5 times per week and grew his traffic to more than 300,000 monthly visitors, and Michael Dunlop created 6 blogs that each get more than 100,000 visitors per by blogging.

2. Tweet For Your Life

Of course, sharing your content on social media is a given, but Twitter, in particularly, will usually generate the most traffic.

Why? Because you can post up to 50 times per day on Twitter and still gain followers. Any other social network site will lose you followers with such high-frequency posting.

In fact, nearly 40% of Flight Media’s traffic comes from Twitter because we currently grow every team member’s Twitter followers and we tweet 6-11 times per day. Posting that many times per day, along with growing your following will generate massive traffic.

Click here to learn how we do it..

Remember: For Twitter, you want to keep a good ratio of what you post. We recommend 20% of your own content, 30% inspirational quotes, 40% of other people’s content, and 10% promotional (i.e Free Offers, Discounts, Services, etc.) Nobody likes to listen to people talk about themselves, so share other people’s content and inspirational quotes to spark interaction and get noticed by the owners of the content you share.

3. Write About People In Your Industry

Along with writing daily, a good way to generate a glorious amount of traffic is by writing a list about people in your industry.

We do this because we like to associate ourselves with the names of these industry leaders, so when people are searching for them in Google, our posts have the chance of coming up.

On top of that, if the ‘listed people’ notice, they often times are flattered and share your post. We actually did this on Flight Drummer’s Magazine several times and received more than 1.9k shares on some of the articles. (Like this one)

We also recently did it with “11 Business Bloggers You Should Be Following.”

So, to get you started, you could write posts like:

• 11 Young Entrepreneurs You Should Be Following
• 11 Business Bloggers You Should Be Following
• 20 Women Entrepreneurs That Rock
• 20 Blogs You Should Be Reading
• you get my drift..

Typically, after we write an article like this, we will email each person we blogged about and let them know how inspiring they are to us. Most of the people have several hundred thousand followers, so if you get just one to share the post, you’ll get hundreds of social shares.

Cakework.

4. Make Your Blog Sexy

The problem I see with a lot of blogs is bad web design. This is vital because, although it doesn’t necessarily generate new traffic, blog layout and design does have an effect on returning traffic.

You don’t even have to be a Web Developer to find some great plugins to make your blog look better, so the more effort you put into creating an attractive website, the more people will want to return.

In fact, Flight Media Blog is built on this WordPress template and uses tons of free plugins.

5. Write Funny Content

While it’s important to provide factual, results-driven content on a blog to position yourself as an expert, it’s also good to provide valuable entertainment.

Your readers are not robots, so they do like to laugh every now and again–especially if it’s industry relevant and they can relate.

This could include “__ Signs You’re a _____” or “Confessions of a _____” kinds of posts. (ex:”40 Signs You’re a Marketing Nerd” or “Confessions of a Content Marketer.”)

These types of posts display your expertise on the subject, as well as give readers a good ole’ laugh out loud. (Very shareable, too.)

6. Comment on Other Blogs

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I need to build back-links.“

No, this isn’t for back-links.

Blog commenting is a huge interaction generator. Typically, when you comment on somebody’s blog, they will visit yours and comment back.

If you’re looking to receive more comments on your blog, search for relevant articles and comment on them. We found that you will receive 40-50% of comments back from blogs you comment on.

This is important because nobody likes to be the first comment on your blog. If people see other people commenting, they are more prone to leave a comment. By commenting on someone else’s blog, it makes it easier for them to return the favor–regardless of how many comments you currently have.

(This creates an interactive community, which can turn into sales.)

7. Guest Blog

Another ‘old trick in the book.’

(If you aren’t familiar with guest blogging or how it can generate more than 60,000 visits, read this.)

Not only does guest blogging improve traffic, but it creates a reputation. The more guest blogs you have out there, the more credible you become in the blogosphere.

On top of that, it also makes it easier to get more guest blogging gigs. For example, if you’ve had guest blogs published on Jeff Bullas, The Huffington Post, and Life Hacker, then it will be easier to get your guest blog posted on other websites within that niche.

8. Participate In Forums

A while back, when I was involved heavily in the internet marketing business, I would participate in the Warrior Forum and receive 150-200 visits per dayfrom my signature that linked to my blog at the bottom of every post I made.

Although this is becoming more difficult to do because Forums like Yahoo Answers and Quora don’t allow footer signatures , it can still be done if approached correctly.

The goal of forum marketing is to position yourself as an expert.

You need to join a relevant forum, created an awesome bio, and then begin answering questions people have that are relevant to your industry. The more questions you answer, the more reputation you establish, and the more people will click into your bio and contact you for help.

Side-note: this takes some time, so I would recommend mastering the previous 7 tactics before diving head first into this. Blogging daily will even help you accomplish this better by expanding your knowledge base.

9. Email Your List

Finally, the the easiest and most obvious step!

After you post an article, it’s important to make sure it gets sent to your email subscribers in your next broadcast. It’s much easier to get subscribers to read and share your content, than new visitors who have never heard of you.

Seeing as subscribers are more likely to share your content, it will also create quick social proof that your content rocks, and more people will share it. (People like to jump on the bandwagon)

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