In this tutorial, we’ll discuss six simple ways to grow your blog traffic – for free. I currently use these methods in all three of my businesses. You’ll find other videos on the CLVboost blog and YouTube video channel about how to turn your blog into an email subscription machine, but today we’re specifically talking about how to get more traffic for free, and the actions you can take yourself (and with a marketing partner or other related web presence) in your industry or related domain.
Assuming you’re producing solid content on a main blog (this is the first and a must step), you ought to be driving subscribers to your site to check out your valuable material. If you want people to share your content or subscribe to your RSS content, then you need to build these efforts into your weekly regimen. For example, every Monday at CLVboost, we send readers to a video embedded on our blog; we’re not selling or pitching but delivering content on a regular basis (read this article on creating targeted emails for different segments of your audience). Make sure you have share buttons on individual posts so that prospects and subscribers can share on social. Regular email broadcasts are an important strategy for keeping your list alive, maintaining reader relationships, and building blog traffic.
In my other eCommerce business, which sells online fitness products, not only do we produce content, but we pay experts to film videos, particularly areas in which we aren’t well-versed, such as body weights, plyometric training, etc., which allows us to keep a regular flow of valuable content for our various customer segments. In addition to sending out regular emails, you can and should consider forming mutually beneficial email partnerships with similar businesses in the industry (who are not direct competitors).
In a planned, regular email arrangement, maybe the first or the fifth of every month (just as an example), we partner up with similar industry moves and agree to having them send out an email link to our latest blog post and content, and on the flip side we send out a broadcast to our email list about their content (again, as long as it’s not detrimental to our business and is of value to our audience – this is always a consideration). This strategy alone will usually garner a whole new readership group, if done regularly over a 3- to 6-month time span.
Another solid way to drive traffic to your site is to up your game with a solid social media regimen. At CLVboost, we have an active and regular weekly regimen for our Facebook channel, Twitter handle, and YouTube account, though we’ll focus on Facebook and Twitter since YouTube isn’t relevant for everyone. Every single week on every other day, we post once a day, in the morning, for someone else’s material; this is always to someone we respect in the field, like Sean Ellis, or a cool interview on growth hacker.tv, or whatever other content we find useful for our audience. Our second daily post, later in the afternoon, is a link to our own content. In addition to ensuring regularity with our blog posts, the social media posts wave people in, encouraging readers to follow us on different channels or at least lead them back to our blog content and other offerings.
Partnering with another company in the industry that has a large social media presence in your space (again, who’s not a direct competitor) is also a great strategy for social media. You might share a partner’s social media post every day at the same time, and they might do the same for you; you might rotate weeks with different partners. Doing so is a mutually beneficial way to expose your social media followers to more great content, and give this media partner some of your best content for their following. Keeping this process organized can be as easy as creating a Google Doc and ensuring that you track your posts with others. Form three to four active social media posting partnerships and you’re more likely to garner a whole new wave of weekly traffic. The bigger the wave, the more leads you’ll have the opportunity to convert into paying customers.
Linking to other content within your own blogs is another great strategy for leading readers deeper into your content and offerings. In your individual blogs, make sure to include 1 to 2 links of relevant content from elsewhere on your site. If you make sure to create fantastic content that solves readers’ problems and provides unique strategies for subscribers, then you’ll find that readers will stay on you site for longer (you can track this through Google Analytics). If you look at the bigger players in the marketing space, some of Sean Ellis’ old material, MarketingLand, or any other reputable site, you’ll find that they all use this strategy on a consistent basis.
Write for a media partner of some kind, someone with a fantastic blog or site, who publishes or produces content or products in your space. It doesn’t matter if it’s a B2B site for semiconductor services or an eEducation blog about building computers – regardless of the industry you’re in, you can almost always find a reputable, high-authority web site in your domain.
Here’s what I don’t advise – writing a one-time guest post. In my opinion, this is a weak strategy with no long-term gain. If you’re going to write for a media site, aim to be able to write content for the company or site once a month, once a week, etc. – whatever the frequency, you want this to become a regular column. By garnering consistent backlinks from high-authority sites and providing real value to a new base of readers, you not only help that site out but garner your own Google juice by bringing people back to your site and building your ranking through search and traffic.
Straight-faced, I can tell you that this strategy is responsible for about 50% of the readers and customers that we currently have at CLVboost, funneled by regular content on sites like MarketingLand, Business2Community, and Social Media Today.
The 6 simple strategies I’ve shared today are ones that have worked well for me and my three businesses, and if implemented routinely I can (almost) guarantee you’ll see more blog traffic and increased customer conversions.
If you have other ideas or stories to share about your own experiences in funneling blog traffic, share in the comments section or reach out to use a info@clvboost.com Be sure to subscribe to our videos on YouTube and subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get more strategies and case studies from CLVboost.
-Daniel Faggella
CLVboost Founder]]>
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