In this post, I’m going to show you how to promote your blog.  You'll see everything we have done to grow the Time Doctor blog to over 120,000 visitors per month.

In the past year, the blog was read by over 1.3 million people, and is our best lead generation tool.

Here's our Google Analytics for a year.

Blog Traffic

And when we started our blog, we were just like everyone else:  Trying to figure out how to get blog traffic.

We had no traffic, no money, and no connections.

But before I jump into the meat of this post, I just want to warn you:

Growing your blog traffic takes a lot of work.  

And it took us years of implementing these strategies to get to this level of traffic.  It definitely didn’t happen overnight.

Free Case Study: How we grew a blog from 0 to 120,000 visitors per month

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    Quick Note:  This post is quite long, so I created jump links so you can easily navigate the post.

    So without further ado, here are the blogging strategies will show you how to get traffic to your blog.

    1

    SEO Focused Content Marketing

    In order to grow our blog to 120,000 visitors per month, we needed to escape the content marketing hamster wheel of doom.

    You know, where you spend hours writing content, promote it, get a spike of traffic and then it’s lost to the internet… forever. 

    Writing posts that has a traffic pattern that looks like this 

    Non SEO Traffic

    It’s almost impossible to build a blog that way.

    These days, we focus exclusively on SEO Focused content.  Below is a breakdown of our traffic channels for the past year.

    Google Analytics Proof

    As you can see, 1.2 million people came via search.  Dwarfing the amount of traffic we get from other channels.

    Because Content Focused SEO is a huge topic, I created a free email series where you can get a lot more info.

    But from a 30,000 foot view, here’s how it’s done:

    Step 1:  Keyword Research

    First thing we do is pick a keyword that we can rank for AND makes business sense for us.  We try to identify topics that will best convert readers into customers.

    After all, traffic isn’t exactly the goal.  Getting people to use our software is.

    Step 2:  Write a “Damn, that’s good” post

    I know so many people focus on creating 10x content.  But that’s subjective. I like to create content that makes people say “Damn, that’s good”.  This is the best way to create high-quality content in my view.

    Step 3:  Build links

    Finally, we promote the blog post using the methods learned in this post to get traffic and build links.

    Again, SEO Focused content has been a huge part of the success of our blog, and in my opinion is the best way to promote your blog.

    You can check out our case study where we go in depth into how we were able to use SEO Focused content to get to 120,000 visitors per month.

    Free Case Study: How we grew a blog from 0 to 120,000 visitors per month

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      2

      Promote Your Blog in  Forums

      Forums were a marketing hack that I always overlooked.

      I don’t know why exactly.  

      I guess I just wasn’t convinced of the value of posting in forums.  I don’t know why, but it seemed like it was just a waste of time.

      But overlook no longer.

      In October, I shared the post “101 Lead Magnet Ideas to Skyrocket Your Email List” to the Growthhackers forum.

      Forum Post

      And to date, the forum post has been seen 2800 times! 

      Growthhackers views

      These views turned into over 700 visits to the blog!  

      google analytics for forum

      Not too shabby!

      Here’s how to do it (and this isn’t all that complicated 🙂 )

      Step 1:  Find a forum

      Almost every niche and industry has them and they’re pretty easy to find.

      All you have to do is search “niche/industry and forum” into Google.

      For instance, I searched for “Dog Walkers and Forum” and came up with a fairly decent list of forums. 

      dog walking forum


      Step 2:  What Type of Content works best?

      If the forum posts statistics, or some quantifiable metric (like upvotes), then take a few minutes to scan each post and see which types of posts work best.

      One of the reasons my “lead magnet” post worked well is because the Growth Hackers forum appreciates well researched, in depth, and long list posts.

      It wouldn’t have been nearly as successful if I had just listed 7 or 10 lead magnet examples.

      Step 3:  What are the rules?

      Some forums won’t allow you to post a blog post without first being an active contributor first.  This is especially true in Facebook groups and sub-reddits.

      So before sharing your post with the group, take a few minutes to understand the dynamic and what is expected of newcomers.

      Step 4: Promote it

      Once you’ve shared your post with the group, it’s time to promote it.  Many groups have systems where people can upvote your post or provide some way to allow users to give a vote of confidence to your post.

      These votes of confidence usually allow the post to be seen by more people.  The more people who see your post, the more traffic you will get.

      So, what we did was shared the forum post with a few friends and asked them to upvote it just to get the ball rolling. (Again, check the rules about gaming the system.)

      Quick Note about promoting in a forum.

      Each forum has its it’s own unique way of getting your post noticed.  For instance, in the Growthhackers forum, upvotes help get more eyeballs to your post.

      One of the strategies that I use is to ask is ask a few of my friends to upvote my best posts.  I’ll say something like:

      Hey,

      I just posted this on Growthhackers.com.  If you like it, would you mind upvoting the post?

      Thanks,

      Greg

      Figure out how to optimize the forums that you post in.  Don’t game the system. But give yourself the best chance of success.

      3

      Email People You Link To

      Just recently, I published a blog post called 108 Blogging Tools to Grow Your Blog Fast.

      blogging tools headline

      Hey (first name)

      I just wanted to let you know that I mentioned you in my latest blog post about blogging tools.

      You can check it out here.

      Greg

      Some people will simply say “thanks”.  Some people will ignore it. But you’ll also get quite a few people to share it.

      leadpages tweet

      So far, this has been the only promotion we’ve done for this post because we wanted to see how effective it could be.

      blogging tools traffic

      Not too shabby for getting a brand new post off the ground. 🙂

      If you ever need to figure out how to get more traffic to your blog, simply link to a couple more people and let them know about it. 

      Note:  It’s very hard to track this strategy.  So we decided we weren’t going to use any other blog promotion strategy while doing this.  We did email our very small list and that got about 10-15 visitors. The rest all came from emailing people mentioned in the post.

      One more thing:  I like to externally link to 5-10 sites for every 1,000 words.  I learned this from Neil Patel.  So if you have a post that’s 3,000 words, that’s 15-30 people to email.  

      If you have a long list post like 108 Blogging tools or 101 Lead Magnets, then you have a whole treasure trove of promotion material.

      4

      Guest Blogging

      In 2008, when I started my first blog, guest posting used to be my primary traffic strategy.  

      I’d write a guest post on Copyblogger or Problogger and get thousands of visitors and hundreds of email subscribers.

      Man, I miss those days.

      These days, guest posting is best served as a link building strategy.  

      Yes, I know that Google has said that guest posting for links is a “no no”, but we have found that writing high quality guest posts still works very well. 

      For guest posting, I would highly recommend using what you learn in this section and implementing it with a solid Parasite SEO strategy (next section).

      Step 1:  Find a blog to write your post

      So, the easiest way to find a blog to write for is to use Google.

      You can simply enter the terms:

      • “Name of niche” and “guest blogger”
      • “Name of niche” and “write for us”
      • “Name of niche” and “guest writer”

      And you’ll wind up with dozens, if not hundreds, of blogs who are accepting guest posts.

      For instance, if I type in “Marketing” and “write for us”, I get pages and pages of blogs looking for guest posts:

      guest blogging serp results

      Step 2:  Pitch the editor

      Now that I’ve found a blog to write for, it’s time to pitch the editor.

      The first thing I do is look for blog posts that have been successful and come up with an idea around how to spin a new angle.

      For instance, if I notice a blog post called “10 ways to nurture leads” gets a lot of shares and comments, then I might do something like “A Case Study on How I Nurture Leads”. (Totally made up and a bad example, perhaps, but you get the point.  I’d write my article around lead nurturing.)

      Then, I’d pitch them using this script.

      guest blogging pitch


      And it works almost all of the time! 🙂

      guest blogging result


      Step 3:  Write a killer post

      Now it’s time to write a killer guest post.  It has to be really good! You want to endear yourself to both the readers of the new blog AND the editor of the blog.

      You can go the extra mile of adding a couple of images to your post, this is an easy step with mockups.

      You may not get tons of traffic from your guest post, however, if you do good work for them, they will be much more inclined to share a future post or partner with you down the road.

      5

      Parasite SEO

      What is Parasite SEO?

      According to Matthew Barby (where I first learned about this strategy), Parasite SEO is

      “The goal of parasite SEO focuses on tapping into the authority of well-established websites to rank for competitive keywords and consequently funnel through the traffic to your own website.”

      Let me show you what I mean.

      There’s a blog called Codeinwp.com where they published a blog post called “7 Best Time Tracker Software Compared”.

      parasite seo article


      After a very short time, this post actually ranked #1 and did quite well.  (We’ve since built a few links to it to help secure it’s number 1 ranking.)

      Yes, we helped a blog post on another website rank in Google.  And it worked!

      According to Ahrefs, this post gets 3100 organic visitors per month.  

      codeinwp analytics

      Now, I’ll show you where the magic happens.

      On this article of 7 Best Time Tracker Software, Time Doctor is listed first:

      codeinwp article


      Since this post has started ranking number one in google for best time tracker software, it’s driven between 250-400 visitors per month to our site (about 10% of that traffic converts to leads.)

      codeinwp traffic

      If you’re just starting a new blog or launching a new product, Parasite SEO is a great way to help drive traffic in a very short amount of time by ranking your blog post on a high authority site.

      6

      Change your email signature

      Think about this for a minute.

      Let’s say every employee in your business turns their email signature into a call to action to your blog post. How many people will see it?

      Let’s do some math:

      Let’s say you have 10 employees. And each employee sends out 10 emails per day, five days per week. That means 500 people per week would see your compelling call-to-action.

      Multiply that by four weeks per month and you’ll automatically expose your lead gen offer to 2,000 people per month.

      For years, my boring email signature was a wasted opportunity.

      In fact, it looked just like this:

      email signature


      Here’s the simple step-by-step process to turn your email signature into an opportunity to get your blog post more views.

      Step 1: Create a Bitly link for your blog post

      This step is optional. But creating a Bitly link can give you additional data and insights that you might not otherwise get.

      However, I like to create a link just to keep track of the clicks that I get. It helps me tweak my offers over time and get a general feel for what’s working.

      First, you’re going to click “Create Bitlink.”

      create a bitlink

      Then, you’ll paste your blog post’s URL in this box:

      paste blog post


      Enter a title for your link (I usually just use the name of the blog post)

      bitly title


      Then you’ll be able to copy your new Bitly link.

      bitly link


      Step 2: Paste link in your signature setup 

      These days, all email services allow you to create a customized signature

      Since I use Gmail, I’d find the “Signature” section under the general settings tab. Here, I’d paste my Bitly link.

      email signature link


      Step 3: Write a compelling call-to-action

      Next, you have to give people a reason to click on your post by creating a compelling call-to-action.

      To do this, you can simply write “click here” before the headline of your blog post. 

      For me, my call to action is “Click here for complete guide on How to Reach 1 Million People through Guest Blogging”.

      email signature cta


      Step 4: Link your CTA

      Finally, make it stupid simple for people to click your link.

      To do this, I hyperlink my entire call-to-action. That way, no matter where the person clicks, they’ll wind up on my blog post. 

      email signature cta link

      And that’s it. The whole process takes just a few minutes, is entirely free, and is a dead simple way to get more traffic to each blog post you publish.

      7

      How to Promote Your Blog with a Referral Program

      We all know social media shares and referral traffic drive traffic to your blog post.

      However, even if your content is really good, less than half the people who visit your post will share it with their friends on social media.

      But what if you give your readers an incentive to share your post? In other words, when they share it with their friends, you give them something in return.

      Referral programs aren't just great lead generation tools, they're also really good at driving targeted traffic to your site.

      This is known as an incentivized click trigger.

      Here’s how it works:

      Step 1: Create a complementary resource

      On a previous blog, I wrote a post called “How to reach 1 million people through guest blogging.”

      Guest blogging post

      On a post where I show people how to get a guest post accepted on a popular blog, I figured a complimentary resource could be called “101 blogs accepting guest posts”. After all, once you know how to get your post accepted, it might make sense to know where to pitch your post.

      Step 2: Create your referral campaign

      Next, you’re going to head over to Entice’s viral marketing app, or another referral marketing tool. 

      setting up viral marketing


      Next, copy and paste the code into your blog post. (Note: Personally, I put this in the top 25% of the blog post in order to give it the most visibility.)

      Buttons will appear in your post looking like this:

      viral marketing buttons


      Step 3: Create a call-to-action

      Next, you’re going to create a simple call to action. Remember, my complimentary resource is called “101 Blogs Accepting Guest Posts.” So I simply tell my readers how they can get access to it.

      viral marketing cta


      Once the person clicks either the Twitter or Facebook button, they’ll be asked to share the message that you created for them. This makes it as easy as possible for your readers to share your post with their friends and followers.

      viral marketing tweet

      And finally, the reader will be able to download your complimentary resource.

      viral marketing incentive
      8

      Email Marketing

      This is the obligatory blog promotion tactic on the off chance someone reading this isn’t already emailing their list when they publish a post.

      While you’re here, I figured I’d give you a template that works for me to help maximize clicks.

      Here goes:

      Hey (first.name)

      I just published a post called (title of post).

      In it, we cover 

      • Point 1
      • Point 2
      • Point 3

      By the end of this post you’re going to learn (what they’ll learn)

      You can grab it here:

      Cheers,

      Greg

      It’s short, sweet, and to the point. Of all the email tests I’ve run, this has been the most successful thus far.

      9

      Email people who never opened

      I learned this email marketing hack from Noah Kagan of OKdork and Sumo fame.

      You see, whenever you send out an email broadcast to your list, most of the people who receive it will never open it.

      In fact, my broadcast emails receive at best a 35% open rate. (Most of them are even less than that.) Meaning that 65% of the emails that I send will never even be opened.

      I know what you might be saying:  I have a small list, this isn’t going to make a difference for me.

      But if you have a small list and are just getting started, you need to scratch and claw for every single visitor and share what you get. On top of this, you need to use an SPF checker to ensure your emails reach the target audience's inboxes and email communication stays safe.

      Let me show you what I mean.

      I send this broadcast email out when I ad a very small list.

      It didn’t do that well.  It got 23.8% open rate. (When my list was small, I shot for at least 30%)

      email marketing stats


      So, a few days later, I sent the exact same email with a different subject and got another 8% open rate.

      resend email marketing stats

      This brought the entire open rate up to a combined 30% and a click through rate of about 10%.  (My ctr was still a bit low, but better than it was).

      One bonus tip for cold email outreach is to use an email verification tool to clean your list of invalid and non-active email addresses. This will not only help to improve your deliverability rates but also lower the risk of getting flagged as spam. 

      Additionally, using the proper bulk email service provider will make your cold email outreach efforts more effective.

      10

      How to get Traffic to your Blog with Content Syndication

      I just launched a new blog.

      No traffic, no email addresses, no backlinks. No nothing.

      If you’ve ever launched a blog of your own, I’m sure you know there is absolutely no truth to the axiom, “If you build it, they will come.”

      Back on April 6th, I published my first blog post called “How to Reach Over 1 Million People Through Guest Blogging.”

      guest blogging content syndication


      And for more than three months, the post just sat there.

      guest blogging traffic


      I was getting pretty much zero traffic.

      It wasn’t generating traffic. It wasn’t collecting email addresses. It wasn’t being read.

      In order to promote the post, I decided to republish the post on the popular marketing blog, SteamFeed (Now defunct). A strategy called content syndication.

      As soon as I syndicated that one post to that one blog, I immediately started seeing a small (but steady) flow of traffic to the post.

      content syndication traffic


      So, let’s talk about how to get your content syndicated on a popular blog or publication.

      Step 1: Write a killer post

      This goes without saying, but the largest and most respected publications want to publish only the best content.

      Their readers expect it. Their brand depends upon it.

      Step 2: Find a blog to syndicate your post

      In the business space, there are quite a few blogs that are looking for content syndication opportunities, such as:

      • Business2Community: A popular multi-author business blog.
      • Social Media Today: A popular multi-author social media blog similar to Social Media Examiner.
      • Business Insider: A popular business publication. Having a relationship with an editor will help your chances greatly.
      • BizSugar: Popular posts featured on Bizsugar will get published on Small Business Trends
      • AllBusiness: A popular multi-author small business website.
      • Huffington Post: One of the largest blogging platforms in the world.

      If none of these work for you, or if you want more of a variety, you can always use Google to find additional syndication platforms.

      You can use the search query: “This blog was originally published on.” This is because Google requires all syndicated posts to contain this message (or something similar).

      Second, you can use the search query: “Sites accepting syndicated content.” Other bloggers have curated lists for you that will help you broaden your reach.

      Step 3: Pitch the editor

      Here’s the exact email script that I used to pitch my guest blogging post:

      Subject: Syndicate This Post About Guest Blogging

      Hi (name of blog editor),

      I wrote the following post which details a step-by-step guide to getting a guest post accepted on a popular blog. I leave absolutely no stone unturned and I think that SteamFeed.com readers will love it.

      Here’s the link: (include the URL)

      If you enjoy it, I’d love to see it republished on your blog.

      Greg

      Step 4: Tweak your post

      Some publications may want you to make some tweaks to your post so it’s not exactly the same as the post published on your blog.

      Usually, I tweak the conclusion of the post in order to make some sort of call to action. And I tweak the introduction of the post to make it align more with the readers of the blog.

      However, this takes a grand total of 20 minutes of additional work. So even if you’re pressed for time, it’s pretty easy.

      11

      Ask for Referral on Thank You Page

      If you want more attendees and signups to your webinar, then this is the program you’ll need to set up.

      Step 1: Create a High Converting Landing Page.

      This goes without saying, if you want to get a lot of conversions, you need to create a high converting landing page.

      Step 2: Create a Thank You page 

      In a third party tool such as Leadpages, Clickfunnels, or WordPress… or any page you can place html.

      Step 3: Set up a referral program

      To give away bonus content related to the webinar. When your webinar subscribers share your landing page, they’ll get the bonus.

      I'm going to show you a screen shot of Reese Evans of Yes Supply’s set up. 

      Reese referral program


      As you can see, after signing up for the webinar, her subscribers are invited to click the social media buttons in order to get a bonus workbook.

      This is the first campaign that Reese ever set up, and afterward, she sent me the following email and screen shots.

      reese referral program results
      reese referral program results2
      Reese referral program results3

      How cool is that?  Her webinar landing page went "viral" through a simple referral marketing strategy.

      12

      5 Reasons to Write Long Posts will Drive Traffic to Your Blog

      At TimeDoctor, and on this blog too, we have a hard and fast rule:

      No content under 3,000 words.

      There are five reasons for this:

      1.  According to Buzzsumo, content that is at least 3,000 words long gets more shares than shorter content.

      stats for long shares

      2.  Longer blog content is usually more in depth than shorter content. (Please note:  try to avoid filler content just for the sake of making it long.) More in depth means we do a better job of solving the problem for our readers.

      3.  Longer blog content gives you the opportunity to link to more people, who you can then reach out to using the strategy in part 3.

      4.  Longer blog content gives you the opportunity to add more keywords to your post.  The more keywords you can rank for, the more opportunities for traffic you’ll have.

      5.  Finally, longer blog content gives people the opportunity to stay on your page and engage with your content.  Time on page is a strong signal for Google’s ranking algorithm. The longer people stay on your page and site, the more important Google thinks it is, and the higher it will rank.

      13

      Target Uncompetitive Keywords

      At Time Doctor, we have a fairly strong site.  

      We have a fairly strong domain authority, a lot of domains linking to us, and a pretty decent size user base.

      timedoctor domain authority

      This means we can pretty much compete with any keyword that we want to go after.  So, of course we go after highly competitive industry terms. We spend days writing these posts and months building links to them.

      They’re important for our business and they make up a huge portion of our traffic.

      However, we also write posts for keywords that have less search volume and are much less competitive. 

      These are posts that we simply don’t have to build links to.  Because of our strong domain, we can write them and within a few weeks, we’ll rank in the top 10.

      One quick thing:  a lot of these low keyword difficulties have low search volumes. Don’t let that discourage you.

      Let me show you a cool little post.

      The keyword “Rescuetime Alternative” has a very low keyword difficulty and a fairly low search volume.

      rescuetime alternative kd

      Yet, we wrote a post called “7 Best RescueTime Alternatives”

      rescuetime alternatives comparison guide


      Acquired 2 links to the post (which to be honest, I think came organically, so we didn’t do any sort of promotion at all).

      rescuetime alternative rank


      The post now ranks first for the keyword and consistently drives 250-350 visitors a month.

      rescuetime alternative traffic

      Now, this might not seem like a lot of traffic because 300 visitors per month is a small number compared to the 120,000 visitors a month we generate to the blog, but this strategy is VERY easy to scale.

      If you do this 10, 15, 20 times, these pages will soon make up a very significant percentage of your overall traffic.

      14

      Create Jump Links

      Jump links give readers the ability to “jump” to the part of the content that they are most interested in.

      For instance, we created a blog post called Free Timesheet Templates.

      This post is ranked 1 or 2 for a wide variety of keywords, including Timesheet Templates and Timesheet Template.

      timesheet template serp


      Needless to say, it drives tons of traffic.

      When we created this post, we wanted to make it a bit more user friendly.  So we created a jump links.

      timesheet template jump links


      And when you click on them, you’re taken to that section of the post:

      timesheet template section


      One of the cool side effects, that quite frankly we weren’t expecting, is that these jump links started getting clicks on their own.

      For instance, the link for “#weekly-timesheet-template” received 255 clicks in the past 90 days.

      jumplink url


      Not a huge amount of traffic.  But for the 10 minutes or so it took to create the link, I’ll take it all day every day.

      15

      Create Epic Round-up Posts

      A few years ago, round up posts were all the rage.

      In almost every single niche, you’d see something like “50 Bloggers give their best traffic tips” or something like that.

      They were an easy way to engage influencers.  An easy way to create content. And an easy way to get shares.

      The golden age of round-up posts has probably come to an end.  However, there’s still the possibility to create something “unique”. 

      We created a blog post called “Employee Retention Strategies”.

      employee retention strategies headline


      Now, what made this round up post so unique were the people who actually contributed.  We could have found small businesses and other industry insiders to contribute, instead we targeted some of the highest ranking people at  biggest brands in the world.

      For instance:

      If you’re wondering, yes this was grueling.  Yes, it was a ton of work. But it paid off.

      Check out the traffic it gets monthly (and this is highly qualified traffic too!)

      employee retention strategies traffic

      The super interesting thing about this post is that it doesn’t particularly rank for anything.

      employee retention strategies ranking

      Definitely a mistake on our end, but live and learn. 🙂

      The post did get some insanely good domains to link to it, improving our overall domain authority, without doing any active link building.

      employee retention strategies links
      16

      Relaunch Existing Content

      We have a blog post called Time Sheet Templates that we launched a little while ago.

      timesheet template headline

      And after some content promotion, we were able to get it to rank #4 for the keyword Timesheet Template (search volume: 19,000), and #4 for the keyword timesheet templates (search volume 800).

      From a traffic standpoint, the post was doing quite well, It brought in about 4,000 visitors per month.

      timesheet template traffic before relaunch

      We thought we could do a bit better, so we decided to relaunch the blog post in January of 2019.

      In just a few short weeks, we more than doubled traffic to this blog post.

      timesheet template traffic after relaunch

      Some months, we get over 10,000 visitors to this single post.  And the whole process took no more than a few hours. Here’s how to do it.

      Step 1: Strategically Choose a Post

      I know, duh!  Right?

      What we look for in a post that we want to relaunch is a few things:

      1. Where does the post rank?  We typically look for posts that rank between 4 and 20 that we think we can move up to page one, or move higher on page one.
      1. How important is it to our business?  While it doesn’t take a long time to relaunch posts, we still prioritize those that drive new customers to our business.
      1. Does it have links? Sometimes pages have a lot of links and still don’t rank on the first page.  This usually means that the content doesn’t satisfy the user intent, or doesn’t adequately solve the problem the user is searching for, or maybe we didn’t have the keyword in the article for some reason?

      Step 2:  Update Existing Content

      When we update existing content, the two biggest things we look to do is:

      1.  We get rid of anything that is obsolete.  Whether that’s charts, links, tools, advice, data, etc. and replace it with updated content.
      1. We make sure the post solves for user intent.  If every other post in the Top 10 is list posts and we have a “how to” post, then we’ll rewrite the post to make it a list post.

      Step 3: Re-Launch the Post

      When we relaunch the post, it’s like we’re launching for the first time.

      We email our list, we do blogger outreach, else than Community Outreach, learn more about how to start a community outreach program. We’ll build a few links, and all that good stuff.  We will even update the date the post is published so Google knows it’s new content. 

      17

      Promote Using Quuu

      Quuu Promote is a tool that helps you amplify content to a targeted audience.

      You can have access to a list of industry insiders looking to share content.  And before you ask, yes, there is a great chance that your industry is represented on the platform.

      So we decided to give it a shot with our post.

      quuu promote stats

      So far, it’s generated over 1700 shares and 262 clicks.  Not too shabby.

      The total cost for Quuu is $40 per month.  So that works out to be about $0.04 per click.  

      18

      Leverage Partnerships

      Being a SaaS company, one of the things Time Doctor does is build integrations with other tools.

      This allows us to leverage partnerships with those other companies to drive relevant traffic to our site.

      For instance, one of the tools we work with is called WorkflowMax and we are listed on their integration page.

      workflowmax integration page

      In the past 6 months, that integration page has sent over 265 people to the site.  

      workflowmax traffic

      This isn’t tons of traffic by any means, but it’s extremely targeted traffic that converts to customers.  If you look, you’ll see that 35 customers signed up for our software in that time.

      Note:  I get that not everyone can build integrations into existing products.  This is an example I used because I was able to get concrete data.

      However, in the past, we’ve partnered with companies where we’ve done joint webinars, co-sponsored content, and even did joint emails - where we emailed our list their product and they emailed their list about Time Doctor.

      Partnerships are a bit tricky.  But when they work, they can add quite a bit of revenue to your business.

      19

      Contribute to Communities

      This is a strategy that I just learned about and can’t wait to do more of.  

      It’s similar to the forum digital marketing strategy we talked about above, but with one key difference:  Instead of simply sharing the link to the blog post, you share the entire post inside of the forum.

      This takes a bit more work, but with consistency over time, I think it’s going to prove to be a winning strategy.

      A couple of things I did:

      First, I created a quick little TL;DR at the top of the post to summarize everything.

      Next, I created a link to my newsletter where people can go to sign up.

      indiehackers post

      And finally, at the bottom of the post, I created another link to my newsletter where people can sign up.

      Indiehackers post call to action

      I didn’t do any hard selling on the newsletter or anything like that.  Just a simple link telling them what it’s all about, and where they can go.

      As for engagement, so far 220 people viewed the post and it received 9 comments.

      indiehackers stats

      Not too bad for 15 minutes of work.  

      I just joined the community.  So I think over time, my results will continue to get better and better.

      20

      I saw this strategy by Harry Dry from MarketingExamples.com.  

      Harry doesn’t just post a link on Twitter.  No, he shares his ENTIRE post!

      marketing examples tweet thread

      Harry copies the images, the text, all of it and reformats it to work within a thread.

      And at the end of the thread, Harry has a simple call to action Tweet:

      marketing examples cta

      How’s it working out?

      Well, according to Harry, the majority of his over 20,000 come from Twitter.

      Marketing Examples newsletter subscribers
      21

      Embed Tweet in the Post

      Another cool little strategy I picked up from Harry is embedding the first Tweet at the bottom of the post to encourage people to share.

      marketing examples twitter embed

      These days, EVERYONE has social media buttons on the side of their post.  

      So, in order to stand out, Harry embedded the first tweet of his thread at the bottom of the post to make it easy for people to share.

      His tweets tend to get a ton of engagement and retweets too.

      22

      Notify People Who Have Tweeted Other Articles

      This is my take on “cold email marketing".

      But it’s a bit more personal.

      Instead of reaching out to people who have never heard of you to share your article, you’re going to reach out to people who have already tweeted your content in the past.

      Here’s how to do it:

      First, enter your URL into Twitter’s search feature.

      twitter search

      And filter by “latest”. You want to reach out to people who have most recently shared your content as they are more likely to remember you.

      This will bring up everyone who’s tweeted an article that you’ve written. 

      twitter search results

      Now, you can reach out to everyone who’s tweeted you in the past.  

      Simply click their name/profile, and shoot them a DM.

      Pro Tip:  Don’t ask them to Tweet your article!

      Say this instead:  

      “Hey first name, thanks so much for tweeting about my blog promotion list.  I wrote another article that I think you’d love.  Want to check it out?”

      If she says “yes”, then shoot over the link.  And if she likes the article, she’ll definitely share it with her followers (because she’s already done it before!).

      Kind of cool, right?

      23

      Double Down on What Works

      There are a lot of strategies here.  19 to be exact.

      Some of the blogging strategies are going to work great for you.  Others, not so much.

      For instance, what works for Time Doctor, doesn’t work for Entice.  Different stages of blogging. Different industries. Different levels of competition.

      Time Doctor can easily pull in 10’s of thousands of visitors simply by writing a lot of low keyword difficulty content.

      At Entice, we can’t do that.  Our domain isn't strong enough for that just yet.  Instead, we focus very heavily on creating SEO focused content that can be promoted in forums and on blogger outreach.

      Over to you…

      As a business owner and marketer, I know how much work it is to get traffic to your blog post.

      There are no silver bullets or secrets to great marketing. You just have to embrace the grind.

      However, with these strategies, you’ll be able to start to get traffic to your blog in a relatively short period of time.