For some people, SEO is an extension of what they normally do. Write great content and rankings come for them.
For others, SEO is convoluted. They’re lost in the maze of content, links and tracking rankings. According to research from Userp, 65% of marketers believe link building is the toughest process in SEO. Content and links are the two most important factors that help a site rank. You cannot do without them if you’re using SEO.
Fortunately, we aren’t doing any SEO. We are going to drive traffic to a site using other ways.
Do a Contest or a Giveaway
One way to get traffic to your site is with a giveaway. A contest always holds within itself the potential of going viral. This can attract tons of traffic and new leads for your site.
Let’s say you are a video game review blog. An ideal way to do something that benefits both readers and video game companies is partnering with video game companies for giveaways. You can ask these companies to give you a few copies of their new game to host a giveaway on your blog for your readers.
The people behind the game are able to promote their new product. The giveaway generates word-of-mouth for them. And you get additional publicity and traffic for your blog.
With any contest ideally what you want to do is tap into the viral elements. To build on the viral elements of your contest, here’s what to do. Ask people to share the contest among friends and family.
How? When you create a contest, add a requirement that participants need to share the contest details on social media. This gives participants a big reason to share the contest as much as they can. That generates traffic back to your site.
Post QR Codes
QR codes are great for marketing your site to offline visitors. Create posters with custom QR codes imprinted on them. Upon scanning the codes people will be directed to a landing page.
You can post these posters at college campuses, outside restaurants and bars. Use a creative angle to excite prospects, say with the help of a giveaway or by offering services at discounted prices. This generates traffic back to your site.
You can even post the QR code along with a brain teaser for people to solve. Post the brain teaser on the poster and then give a QR code for them to visit a site and submit answers. Beaconstac is a free tool to use to make this happen.
Use Social Media the Right Way
Social media can and does have the potential for generating plenty of traffic back to you.
Posting content on social media doesn’t need you to reinvent the wheel. Just take short blurbs from your blog posts and repurpose them into social media content. Do it consistently to generate consistent traffic. Next, try and engage with your followers consistently.
Social media opens up a direct line for you to target your audience, interact with them, get feedback and improve customer experience.
Consistent engagement can improve traffic to your sites. Also, this creates a better image about your brand in the minds of customers. A brand that takes the time to engage with customers must also make better products—that’s what your customers are thinking.
Social media management is about engaging audiences consistently. The work you put in builds a seamless identity for your brand. Use that image you built to get your audience to trust and love you.
Know this: social media is a two-way street. Your customers expect replies from you on social media. It’s now a channel for customer service. So regularly answer questions that customers are fielding to you on social media.
You can go so far as to create blog posts and visual content to answer questions from customers. To create such visuals, invest in quality photography equipment or sites. It can either be something you can take from your camera or combine visuals from stock footage with custom fonts from tools like Canva.
Distribute your Content Through More Channels
When you create content on your blog and simply hope and pray that traffic starts coming to your site on its own, you’re not working on a good example to lead by. You can check out Burkhard Berger, founder of Awesomex, on how he started his journey from 0 to 100,000 visitors a month.
Webinars, infographics, podcasts are all different formats you may repurpose your content to. And that means there’s plenty of potential for you to drive traffic and leads to your blog with these techniques.
Webinars are a proven way to attract leads and give people more value. You can repurpose existing content into webinars if you want.
Podcasting is similar in nature. Instead of textual content, you start creating and posting content in audio format. That gets a bunch of traffic.
The advantage of converting content into different formats is you can post the content on directories and content-aggregators. There are directories for podcasts. Share webinars on social media. Use directories for sharing PowerPoint presentations and for submitting infographics.
There are two benefits with repurposing content. The chief benefit is you find more avenues to share this content. The second benefit is doing so raises the perceived value of the content.
Here are mode ideas you can use:
Create eBooks
Let’s imagine that you created a number of articles all revolving around a particular subject. Let’s say there are webinars and podcasts too on the subject. Why not combine them into one long resource? Such resources tend to accrue a large number of shares and can also be propped up as a lead magnet. If you have been blogging for even a short while you have plenty of blog posts on relevant topics. At the very least you are very knowledgeable in certain areas of your blog. Organize these topics neatly into an eBook. Use the eBook as a lead magnet.
Print the eBook
By printing out a physical version of the eBook you get something tangible to hand out. A printed book requires extra work. Not to mention the printing charges. But they are also an incredible marketing asset. Hand out copies of the same in marketing and networking events. Nobody cares about an eBook, but physical books are in an entirely different league of theirs.
Create an expert roundup
An expert roundup is a powerful way to connect with relevant industry leaders. It’s a good way to highlight what experts think and gather their thoughts in one place. By doing so you created a good resource that has the potential to go viral on social media.
When you finally publish the article, you can send all the experts you interviewed a quick heads-up. They will share the content on social media. As a result, your site gets targeted social media mentions and traffic.
Repurpose content into YouTube videos
You can post your webinars to YouTube or create specific content for YouTube. The time people spend watching videos grows year on year. Brian Dean says that all his previous videos continue to net him traffic. This means additional people get information about his brand from existing content. Record videos and post them online on YouTube and also Vimeo to get more traffic.
Use Chatbots to Drive Traffic to Existing Content
When you’re not using SEO to drive traffic, you need to use everything else available to generate traffic.
Chatbots can help. Chatbots can start targeted conversations with visitors based on their visiting history with your site and suggest blog content relevant to which stage of the buyer’s journey they are at.
Tidio is a live chat tool you can use to make this happen. This is one of the ways to market your content and get more traffic.
Conclusion
Follow the 20 by 80 rule. 20 percent of time should be spent creating it and 80 percent of your time promoting the same content.
Super high-quality pieces should and will drive traffic. Stretch the limits of imagination by repurposing content into every imagination possible.
If the original article took several hours, spend several more hours promoting.
About the Author
George Mathew is a writer and blogger at Manswellness. He has over 9 years of experience working with SaaS brands as a content creator and marketer.
