Neil Patel.
Derek Halpern.
Corbett Barr.
Marcus Sheridan.
Ana Hoffman.
At one point or another, the online world had no idea who these people were.
No one has ever read any of their posts.
No one valued their opinions.
Just look at them now…
Neil Patel‘s name is practically synonymous with KISS-simple analytics.
Derek Halpern confidently sets trends in both marketing and fashion. Thanks to him, most major department stores are still sold out of hot pink sweaters.
Corbett Barr became a master of balancing pina-coladas and his trusty laptop on the beaches of Mexico, living out the dream of most online business owners.
Marcus Sheridan grew too big to regularly stop by TGC like he used to, leaving me with the lion’s share of staying in touch, which I am happy to do.
Ana Hoffman… well, she still wonders why anyone would ever listen to her.
1,000 Visitors in 30 Days?
Paul McCarthy from IMImpact.com has recently asked several of the top online marketers what we would do to get 1,000 visitors to our site within the first 30 days.
There’s no doubt in my mind that you are just as curious as I was to find out how those experts answered the question.
I’ll get to that in a minute.
For now, I’d like to expand on my original response to Paul’s question.
What Makes Me an Expert?
Back when I first started a couple of years ago, I did one thing right – I never told anyone I didn’t quite know what I was doing yet.
And it worked.
Here’s what Dino Dogan, founder of Triberr, said in a comment on one of my posts:
It’s all about your presence.
It’s all about your content.
And the next step is to get others to believe in you just like you believe in yourself.
It’s time to show others what you’ve got.
What Would Ana Do?
The best way to create traffic is to find someone who’s already driving a substantial amount of it and tap into it.
Tap into OTHER PEOPLE’S INFLUENCE (OPI).
The most traditional example of that would be guest posting.
However, I am not talking about “find a couple of random blogs to post for, write a variety of miscellaneous articles (topics varying wildly) and then hope for the best” kind of guest posting.
How to Get the Most Traffic out of Guest Posting
A great guest post is the one that benefits the hosting blog, as well as “primes” their readership to come back to your blog for more.
More of what?
It’s up to you.
It could be a free bonus (preferably requiring an optin, of course), or more information on that specific topic, or your products or services to complement it.
You can learn more about priming the readership in this guest post Gregory Ciotti wrote for TGC:
And here’s a great example of priming in action – notice how Heather Stephens “invited” TGC readers to grab another email list building tip at her blog:
How to Build Referent Authority
Referent Authority is authority that is given to you via charisma and interpersonal skills – often via association with others.
A random guest post here or there won’t, most likely, do the trick.
Rather, you need to aim for multiple guest posts in one week.
You need to bombard the internet with your genius epic content so people see your name over and over all around the web.
“They” say that people need to see your brand/name around 7-8 times for them to remember it.
Also, when people see multiple guest posts by you on popular blogs, they get the impression that you are an authority.
How to Get Your Guest Posts Accepted
Since we have only 30 days to make this strategy work for our brand new site, we also need to think of ways to ensure our guest posts would be accepted.
Epic content goes without a question, but what else?
How about digging into the revenue model of the blog(s) you are targeting?
If it fits within the flow of the article, include a link to a webpage that offers the publisher an opportunity to monetize their traffic reading your guest post.
Use of this tactic alone will, most likely, not get your article published, but it might just be that little extra boost that gets you through the door.
More Ideas to Leverage Another Blogger’s Traffic
Ask to Be Interviewed
Find popular podcasts that target your niche-specific audience and see if you can get interviewed by them.
If you are a newbie, you might need to do some leg work as far as finding an interesting angle to approach them with, but the potential traffic return might be very well worth it.
Other than the initial research and making arrangements for an interview, this is a fairly hands-off technique – the podcasters do most of the work.
You just sit back and wait for the podcast to be published.
Take Advantage of Speedlinking
Approach bloggers who do speedlinking posts and offer some of your best content to them.
Building a relationship first always helps, but if your content is great (which it should be, of course), then it just might get your foot in the door all on its own.
Here’s a short list of blogs I know of that publish regular roundups (originally published in my Promote Your Blog post):
1. Kristi Hines Kikolani.com
Best way to catch Kristi’s attention: every week on Friday, she starts a thread on the Social Media Examiner Blogging Club so members can share their favorite blog post of the week.
2. Anita Campbell SmallBizTrends.com
Best way to make SmallBizTrends roundups: be active at BizSugar.com.
3. Danny Iny FirePoleMarketing.com
4. Francisco Perez IBlogZone.com
5. Ryan Hanley RyanHanley.com
6. Nick Stewart NicksTrafficTricks.com
7. Laura Crest SEOCopywriting.com
If you know of others, let me know in the comments.
Social Media?
Since the original question of how to get 1,000 visitors in 30 days from scratch assumes that you don’t have much social media influence just yet, we need to come up with ways to leverage OPI.
And that’s where we tap into social media networks like JustRetweet and Triberr.
I’d start with JustRetweet.
How JustRetweet.com works:
- Sign in with your Twitter account.
- Earn credits by retweeting or liking the retweets from other members.
- When you have earned enough credits, then you can submit your own retweets into the system and have other members start retweeting YOUR content.
- You can also earn credits by following other members, referring new members, etc.
- JustRetweet doesn’t do automatic sharing; everything you share is entirely up to you.
- The more you give, the more you receive.
Benefits of JustRetweet.com:
- You don’t have to have an established social media presence to get retweets;
- It’ll help you to get some traffic short term, but more importantly establish your long-term presence.
The second network that might help you with your goal of getting 1,000 visitors in 30 days is Triberr.
Triberr is a blogging network designed to increase your Twitter influence through leveraging other bloggers’ Twitter accounts.
Let’s say I have about 1,900 Twitter followers in my @AnaTrafficCafe Twitter account.
*** Learn how to get more Twitter followers:
With Triberr, I can find like-minded bloggers who also produce excellent content in my niche and form an alliance with them – a “tribe” in Triberr terms.
They share my stuff (if they like it, it’s not automatic) and I share theirs.
You can choose to create your own tribe or request to join others.
The main idea behind it is to find tribes with active members who write quality content and love to share each others’ stuff.
That’s how I am able to grow my reach from 1,900 Twitter followers to over 2M.
Triberr might be a bit less kind to newbies since they don’t have much to offer in return just yet, but again it’s a powerful strategy to tap into, even if you don’t see the immediate results from it.
Last time I talked about Triberr in one of my previous posts, I got a lot of “I just don’t get it” comments.
Well, today I am interviewing Dino Dogan, the founder of Triberr, to find out more about the concept behind it, and more importantly about various traffic generation techniques a blogger can use to get the maximum exposure.
Stay tuned for the upcoming post on the topic.
What Would Other Marketers Do?
I’d highly recommend you read Paul McCarthy’s original Ask the Experts: How to Get 1,000 Visitors in 30 Days from Scratch, but here’s a taste of what other marketers had to say.
Neil Patel - focus on business development deals.
Derek Halpern - I’d reach out to as many bloggers as possible to introduce myself.
Corbett Barr - Simply write great content on an interesting topic.
Marcus Sheridan - I’d brainstorm the top 50 questions consumers ask in my industry and seek out *exactly* the way they would type that question into a search engine like Google.
Rob Cornish - create a low-priced product, reach out to potential affiliates, and let them drive all the traffic.
Leslie Samuel - I would create high quality, informative, and helpful videos.
Trent Dyrsmid - I would create content that was specifically targeted to this audience and I would be sure to make mention of several other prominent bloggers in my niche as I wrote my posts.
Bamidele Onibalusi - The number one activity I would focus on is guest blogging.
Sunil - I’d hire a VA offshore, have them reach out to fan pages and groups that include the target audience of my site, and reach out to each one individually and introduce them to my site/facebook fan page (through which I’d encourage them to visit the site).
Casey Zeman - I would make education based videos on a niche, one every two-three days and post them up on YouTube.
Marketing Takeaway
All the different strategies mentioned above came from experience of driving traffic.
They WORK.
They worked for us and they will work for you too.
Your next step should be picking the one you think will work best for your audience and putting it into practice.
Give yourself a deadline of 30 days and push, push, push.
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