What if you bribed YOUR readers?
A couple of weeks ago I decided to run an experiment to see how much extra traffic I can get from Twitter using a simple bribe.
What was the bribe?
It was a lengthy post that combined all my expertise on how to get thousands of Twitter followers per month, keep them happy, and keep them clicking.
Some of this information has been previously published on my blog; some of it was only available to my email subscribers who are getting my exclusive traffic generation tips in their inbox.
In other words, I collected all my Twitter wisdom and published it in one post.
However, the only way you could gain access to it was if you tweeted about the report FIRST.
Read more about what I did and how I did it in these two posts:
- How to Get Targeted Traffic from Twitter with an Ethical Bribe
- How to Get Paid Using Your Existing Content
I am not too much into theory of things, as you probably already know, and I also love results.
So…. Was it worth it? How did I do with my “pay with a tweet” strategy?
See for yourself:
Bribing Results
A screenshot from my Google Analytics is worth a thousand words, I believe; so here it is.
May 24th was when I published my second post urging my readers to get my new Twitter guide by tweeting about it to their followers.
By the way, the widget that I used to make everything happen is still in my sidebar – for a short period of time, at this point. It will give you a good visual as to how exactly I did it and give you a chance to… what else? tweet about my guide before you get to it.
As you can see from the screenshot above my Twitter traffic spike didn’t come until May 26th.
So is this spike related to my Twitter guide?
Hard to tell from Google Analytics, but here’s another screenshot for you. This time it’s from Bit.ly URL shortener service, which I used to keep track of my specially created URL just for this purpose.
Here you can clearly see the spike on Bit.ly clicks between May 24 and 26.
Did It Actually Work?
I can go either way on this one.
Skeptics would be quick to point out that such traffic spikes are not unusual for my blog and they would be right.
Traffic is never flat and that’s the way you want to keep it.
Personally though, I do believe that that particular spike could be attributed to my little bribing experiment.
Marketing Takeaway
I think this traffic generation technique definitely deserves a test on your blog.
Here are some practical tips on how to make the best of it – now that I’ve done it myself:
- You would have to have an existing readership of sorts to succeed with this. Your readers have to trust you enough to tweet about your content BEFORE they ever see it. So if your regular content is weak to begin with, you’d have very hard time convincing your readers (surprised you have any, if that’s the case) to share your content UNSEEN.
- Definitely can’t just add a widget to your sidebar hoping that someone will notice it. Right about it first, like I did in the two posts linked above.
- Tweet about it to your followers; ask them to check it out.
- It worked well for me to make my guide all about Twitter traffic generation – very appropriate for the Twitter audience.
Remember, my post didn’t go viral, but it still brought a healthy number of visitors who, otherwise, might not have come.
Want more Twitter traffic? Try this and let me know how it goes!
Image credit: http://www.mymodernmet.com/
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