My next door neighbor grew up a farmer. My grandpa always told me a story about him and the time he wanted to buy a mule from his neighbor. He asked the neighbor if the mule had any problems.
“Not a problem,” the neighbor said. “This mule will do anything you ask. All you have to do is ask him nicely.” The neighbor added, “Just make sure you never mistreat my mule.”
The price for the mule was fair, so the farmer bought the mule. The very next day the farmer wanted to plow his field. He hitched the mule to the plow. The mule had no intention of pulling that plow!
The farmer said, “Git up!” But the mule paid no attention. The farmer tried talking nicely until his face almost turned blue. It did no good. So, he called his neighbor over.
The neighbor came right away. When he heard the problem, he walked over and picked up a two-by-four. He hit the mule right in the head. Then he whispered in the mule’s ear. That mule started plowing the field, turning the soil over without anyone standing behind the plow.
“I thought you said never to mistreat your mule,” stated the farmer. “You said all that I had to do was to talk nicely to him.”
“Well,” answered the neighbor. “You just have to get his attention first before talking to him.”
You might not need to slap your customers in the head with a two-by-four, but you need to get their attention one way or the other. Everybody wants more traffic to their site, but getting people and targeted customers to your site can be challenging. Let’s start by picking up that two-by-four and giving you a step by step way to getting eyeballs to your website and convince them to pay attention.
- Topic Discovery
- Go to Buzzsumo a search tool that identifies the most shared articles on any subject, enter your topic, and find the most popular blog posts.
- Make a list of the most popular blog articles, with the authors names.
- Next, export this list of authors and use Voila Norbert, or Sell Hack, two tools that help you find email addresses.
- Finally, contact these people with what you have written, simply ask them what you are missing or if they would be interested in adding their expertise to the piece. Just like that you have an authority in the field advocating for you. On top of that, you are also learning and becoming better at your craft.
- Join a Facebook Group or two or three.. You get the idea
- Find Groups that are not only involved in the topic you are writing about, but also high quality.
- Engage with the group in discussions, much like a blog, you are trying to present yourself as an authority in the field.
- Share content from your website in these groups.
- Curate Large Link Round-up posts
- Research your topic
- Find the best engaging and value driven content you can provide for your clients.
- Then as you compile that content, message the original authors and ask them permission to use their content in your blog.
- When you publish notify the authors again and have them help you promote that content.
- Promote Content In Other Community Sites
- Similar to the Facebook Group Idea, join communities such as Reddit, or in Marketing we have Inbound.org.
- Promote your content within those groups.
- Republish Content on Medium
- Start a page for your business on Medium.
- Continually republish your blog/other content on Medium using their base to gain traffic that otherwise might not find your content.
- Solve people’s pain/problems
- Take note of the problems and pain points from the people in these communities that you are now part of.
- Create content that solves these exact pain points.
- This creates content that people actually care about in the first place, and solves. problems that people you are already engage with are actually having.
- Guest Blogging for more popular sites.
- Find sites that you want to write for.
- Use tools such as Buzzsumo to find what is their best performing articles.
- Pitch them ideas for guest blog posts based on what has done well in the past and where your expertise can help.
- Email Newsletter
- If you don’t have one, start one.
- Present your best and latest content in your newsletter.
- Concentrate on entertaining and bringing value to your reader’s lives in these, selling will come later.
- Facebook Re-targeting Ads
- Place Facebook pixel on website so you can re-target.
- Present Facebook ads for people who have viewed certain types of content.
- If they go to a blog about one topic, present them with an ad for a similar topic.
Overall, the goal is pretty simple, add value and to educate. To do that you need to become a trusted authority in your field and it you won’t need that two-by-four because people will value what you’re saying and want to listen. Follow some of these and let us know how it goes. We are here to help if you need it.
