10 Proven Traffic Getting Strategies

| Cody Lister |

HOW TO GET
MORE QUALIFIED

CLIENTS FROM
YOUR CONTENT

10 Proven Strategies For Promoting Content
Online To Get More Traffic, Leads and Sales

I’ve Got A Question For You…

If you’re looking to attract more clients and sales, my first question I have
for you is this: Does any of the following sound familiar?

“I’ve worked myself ragged creating content, but I can’t get any clients. It’s like
I’m working for free.”

“I’ve tried posting to my blog multiple times, commenting on other blogs, guest
posting… pretty much everything. Nothing seems to work.”

“I’ve got no idea how to attract clients from my content. I write a lot of blog
posts, but I can’t seem to get enough traffic.”

If any of this sounds familiar to you, block out 15 minutes to read this
entire free ebook. Because it’s not your fault.

Here’s the truth:

Less than 50% of the articles online receive 8 social shares or less.

We are living in an age of content shock.

According to Nielsen, the amount of content we consume has grown from
two hours a day in the 1920s to nearly 11 hours per day today.

However, the amount of information on the web is expected to increase
by 500%.

Promoting your content online is the key to getting qualified clients
to know, like, and trust you at scale.

In fact, content promotion helped me attract over 20,000 email subscribers
to my blog in the past 6 months alone.

It enabled me to create a business from scratch that is now generating
over $210,000 a year.

I’ll reveal to you later my 5-step marketing system.

But for now, here are 10 ways to promote your content to get you more
traffic, leads, and sales.

-Cody

#1 COMMENTER
PRE-OUTREACH

8/10

DIFFICULTY

9/10

EFFECTIVENESS

5 h.

TIME TO IMPLEMENT

#1 Commenter Pre-Outreach

Commenter pre-outreach is the single most effective content promotion strategy I’ve used to-
date. It’s enabled me to attract 1,000’s of email subscribers and social shares for my blog.

Pre-outreach involves letting people know about your content in advance before you
publish it.

To perform pre-outreach, most people just reach out to social sharers of similar topic articles. With
commenter pre-outreach, you can reach out to the most engaged readers of a competing blog in
your niche.

This makes sense because blog commenters make much better evangelists for your content than
mere social sharers.

In fact, Bryan Harris of Videofruit did a study in which he discovered that blog commenters are 5x
more likely to buy from you. In other words, you recruit your competitor’s sneezers and steal the
spotlight for your new post.

Here is how you can do commenter pre-outreach:

Step #1: Search for similar topic blog posts in BuzzSumo.

Step #2: Curate a list of posts that have at least 10 or 20 comments.

Step #3: Run each post through Import.io and scrape the commenter data.

Step #4: Clean and merge your spreadsheet data (remove symbols and characters).

Step #5: Get the email addresses for all people on your spreadsheet.

Step #6: Verify the email addresses using BriteVerify or EmailHunter.co.

Step #7: Accept the valid email addresses and export CSV file.

Step #8: Import CSV file into your preferred email outreach program.

Step #9: Email the commenters letting them know about your new post.

Step #10: Email a link to your post to the commenters who expressed interest in your post the day
you publish it.

#1 Commenter Pre-Outreach

Your standards for content upgrades should be no different than your standards for writing blog
posts. It’s the last 5% of effort that makes the difference between a guest post that attracts 100s
of subscribers or just a few subscribers.

Make sure to set up a sales funnel or email automation sequence to nurture new subscribers into
potential customers.

Cody’s Take: Embed content upgrades throughout your post to
capture those readers and turn them into subscribers.

Include a popup lightbox, yellow boxes and a bottom of post optin image:

#2 “GUEST EMAILING”
WITH ONE-CLICK
OPT-INS

5/10

DIFFICULTY

2/10

EFFECTIVENESS

1 h.

TIME TO IMPLEMENT

#2 “Guest Emailing” with One-Click Opt-Ins

You’ve heard of guest blogging, right?

You write an article for someone else’s blog as a guest author. Then you offer their readers a
content upgrade they can download in exchange for their email address.

What if instead of a “guest post” on their site, you wrote a “guest email” to their list?

Studies have shown that the more actions your audience has to take, the less likely they are to
follow through.

What if you could minimize the steps your new audience has to take?

The cool new technology that allows you to do this is called a “one-click opt in”.

You click the link and are instantly opted in, or registered for a webinar, or whatever else the
landing page was designed to do.

This yields a 100% conversion rate on your “landing page” – in other words: everyone who wants
to sign up actually does. You don’t lose the subscribers who initially wanted your bonus but then
got distracted because the landing page looked like work.

(Note: Both LeadPages and ClickFunnels offers one-click opt in links. They are called LeadLinks in
LeadPages or ClickOptins in ClickFunnels)

Here is how you “guest email”:

Step #1: Create a resource like an eBook (your “content”).

Step #2: Promote your resource by writing a “guest email”.

Step #3: Make friends. Get a blogger to send your email to his list.

Step #4: Create a one-click opt in link to deliver the resource and opt people into your list when
they click the link in your “guest email”.

#2 “Guest Emailing” with One-Click Opt-Ins

Cody’s Take: You do need to tell readers that they will be
instantly opted into your list if they click on the link. You can
say something like:

“Click here to download your bonus”

(Note: Just a heads up, to make it super easy for you to get your bonus, as soon as you click the
link above you’ll be opted in. Just hit reply if you have any questions about that.)”
Here is how you can set up a one-click opt in:
Step #1: Create a new Leadlink in LeadPages.
Resource: How do I create a LeadLink?
Step #2: Upload a free lead magnet to be delivered to new subscribers after clicking your
Leadlink.
Resource: How to send a lead magnet
Step #3: Connect your Leadlink with your email service provider.
Step #4: Share the Leadlink with an affiliate or fellow blogger to promote your upcoming
webinar or eBook download.

#3 SHARER
PRE-OUTREACH

5/10

DIFFICULTY

2/10

EFFECTIVENESS

1 h.

TIME TO IMPLEMENT

#3 Sharer Pre-Outreach

Step #1: Go to BuzzSumo.com and log-in using your account credentials or register for a new
BuzzSumo Pro account if you don’t already have one setup.

Step #2: Under the Content Research —> Most Shared tab (it’s the default tab you see after you
login), enter a relevant topic, keyword phrase or domain name to find articles with the most Twitter
shares.

Cody’s Take: Ignore articles that have fewer than 100
or 150 shares.

Step #3: Click Twitter Shares column to sort the table data by Twitter Shares in descending order
(highest shares to lowest shares).

Step #4: Identify relevant articles with the highest number of Twitter shares.

#3 Sharer Pre-Outreach

Step #5: Winnow out articles that aren’t closely related to the topic of your upcoming blog post.
Step #6: For the first article you found, click the ‘View Sharers’ button.
Step #7: After you click ‘View Sharers’, you will be redirected to the Sharers page, which shows a
list of Twitter sharers only for that article or blog post.
On the left-hand sidebar, deselect or uncheck the boxes for ‘Influencers’, ‘Companies’ and
‘Journalists’.
Next, select or check the box for ‘Ignore Broadcasters’.
Then click the ‘Filter’ button.

#3 Sharer Pre-Outreach

Step #8: Once you see the updated results after clicking the ‘Filter’ button, click the ‘Export’ button
on the right-hand side of the page and then select ‘Export all results to: CSV or Excel’ (I recommend
CSV so you don’t have to convert the spreadsheet later).
Step #9: The sharers will be automatically exported and downloaded from BuzzSumo to your
computer. Next, create a New Folder in your Documents or on your Desktop and name this folder
the title of the project.

Step #10: Move the file you download from BuzzSumo into the new folder you’ve created.
Step #11: Click the ‘Back’ button until you’re back to the page displaying the search results for your
last search query.
Step #12: Repeat process steps 4 through 11 until you’ve retrieved the Twitter sharers for any
relevant topic articles that were displayed in the search results for your first search query.
Step #13: Search for another relevant keyword phrase or domain name.

#3 Sharer Pre-Outreach

Cody’s Take: If you can’t find many relevant posts for the topic,
go to Google Search and perform a search query for a relevant
topic keyword phrase and identify the most relevant article
listed in the top 5-10 search results. Copy & paste the URL for
that article in a spreadsheet or notepad. Repeat this process
until you have a few article URLs to run through BuzzSumo.

Step #14: Go back to BuzzSumo and repeat process steps 4 through 11 by entering each article
URL (one at a time) into BuzzSumo’s ‘Most Shared’ search box. Do this until you get at least 1,500
to 2,500 Twitter sharers (total combined sharers from all the articles).

Step #15: Copy and paste the data from each spreadsheet (excluding column headers) into one of
the spreadsheets you downloaded.

Cody’s Take: Keep the column headers in the spreadsheet you
paste into so you know what data is in each column.

#4 EXPERT
ROUNDUP POSTS

5/10

DIFFICULTY

6/10

EFFECTIVENESS

12 h.

TIME TO IMPLEMENT

#4 Expert Roundup Posts

Roundup posts can be extremely effective at getting the attention of influencers in your industry.

You look like an expert by featuring other people who are already experts in your field.

Step #1: Find a topic you want to write a roundup post about.

Step #2: Use BuzzSumo to narrow down your post topic and find similar content that went viral in
the past.

Step #3: Identify influencers in your niche that you want to feature.

Step #4: Send a personalized email to each influencer on your “wish list”.

Step #5: Send a “thank you” note to each influencer that gave you a quote and let them know you’ll
be in touch again when the post is published.

Step #6: Write the round up post using their responses.

Step #7: Once you’ve published the post, reach out again to the influencers you featured and ask
them to share it.

This requires some finesse. Remind them what the post is about, who it’s intended to help and the
site it’s published on.

Provide “shareable links” that make it easy for them to share your post on social platforms.

Step #8: Also create a “pinnable” header image for your post so you can share it on Pinterest and
other visual networks.

Step #9: If you haven’t heard back from an influencer after 2 days, send a quick follow-up note.

Step #10: Deepen your relationship with each of those influencers. Connect with them at least
once a month. Don’t just ask, ask, ask. Do something for them – share their posts and let them
know. Create a video testimonial for a product they sell. Write a positive review of their book on
Amazon.

Cody’s Take: A roundup post lives and dies on the originality
of the question you ask the experts.

#4 Expert Roundup Posts

The problem is…
Generic “What are your best productivity tips?” questions have been done to death.
If you ask an expert the same question they’ve answered 16 times before, you’re unlikely to get a
response.
Instead, you should select a topic your audience loses sleep over, find a unique angle on that topic,
and then package it into a question that your target experts would be excited about answering.

#5 FEATURE
INFLUENCERS IN
YOUR CONTENT

3/10

DIFFICULTY

7/10

EFFECTIVENESS

2-4 h.

TIME TO IMPLEMENT

#5 Feature Influencers In Your Content

This is like the “laid back cousin” of the Expert Roundup (Strategy #4).
You “sprinkle” influencer quote into your content instead of writing a roundup post comprised
entirely of their quotes.
Engaging with influencers is one of the best content promotion strategies to use.
Step #1: Make a list of influencers in your niche that you want to befriend
Step #2: Get the email addresses of those influencers using EmailHunter.co
Step #3: Learn more about each influencer’s interests and expertise
Step #4: Write down some notes about that influencer
Step #5: Write an epic new blog post about something that will offer fresh insights and make your
influencers look good in front of their audience
Step #6: Email each influencer that is an expert in the topic of your post asking for a quote.
Ask them no more than 1 or 2 short questions.
When people reach out to me with an exhaustive Word document attached, I ignore them. Never
send influencers or fellow bloggers an exhaustive list of questions to answer for your article. It
comes off as selfish and people are busy.
The goal is to make things fun for them, so they’re eager to participate.
Step #7: Sprinkle quotes from the influencers throughout your post
Step #8: The day you publish your post, email or Tweet each influencer you quoted a link to the
article, letting them know that you featured them in it.

#6 LINKEDIN
GROUPS

3/10

DIFFICULTY

7/10

EFFECTIVENESS

1-2 months

TIME TO IMPLEMENT

#6 LinkedIn Groups

By establishing a LinkedIn group, you can become the go-to authority for whatever niche your
LinkedIn group is about.
You can also use your Linkedin Group to promote your content.
Step #1: Identify your target audience.
Identify and choose a specific niche such as “lemon law” or “residential property management”.
Figure out whether your ideal audience is a partner, a mid-level marketing manager or the owner
of a small business.
Build a customer persona or get clear on the traits of your ideal audience.
Step #2: Search for people who are representative of the different target audience personas you
came up with.
Step #3: Create a new Linkedin Group with a title like “Marketing Leaders of America” or “Digital
Marketing for Plumbers” based what you think would appeal to the people you found in Step #2.
Step #4: Send a connection request to each person that you found through LinkedIn search.
Connect with the maximum number of people you can every day.
LinkedIn caps the number of connection invitations you can send out to 3,000.
Step #5: Once they’ve accepted your connection request, invite them to your new LinkedIn group.
Step #6: Repeat this process every day for 30 to 60 days until you have a LinkedIn group with over
1000 people.

#7 FACEBOOK
GROUPS

3/10

DIFFICULTY

7/10

EFFECTIVENESS

1-2 months

TIME TO IMPLEMENT

#7 Facebook Groups

You can get tons of loyal email subscribers by finding where your audience hangs out.
Facebook Groups is one of the best sources for attracting subscribers to your email list.
• Find the Facebook Groups where your audience hangs out online.
• Request to join them and spend a few weeks contributing non-promotional posts.
• Answer questions people ask in the group.
Follow these steps to grow your email list:
Step #1: Build a landing page that converts 25%-50% of the time
Go to LeadPages and look for a high converting landing page template.
Step #2: Identify different Facebook groups where you target audience hangs out
Search for topical keywords like “Blogging” or “Internet Marketing”
Then filter the search results by clicking ‘Groups’.
Identify the most relevant closed groups that have a large number of members.
Step #3: Request to join those Facebook groups
Click Join to request to join each group.
Wait until you get accepted and then start participating in that community.
Don’t stretch yourself thin by joining 20 groups in one shot.
Focus on the groups that will help you grow your email list.
Choose groups whose members are likely to be interested in your blog’s topics and content style.
Weed out any group which doesn’t allow members to link to their blog posts or landing pages.

#7 Facebook Groups

Step #4: Participate in Each Facebook Group You Join

Write Facebook posts that appeal to your target audience.

Add value to the community over a couple weeks.

Answer questions people ask in the group. Be as helpful as possible.

Don’t be spammy, just offer as much free value as possible.

You will be banking goodwill with your audience by offering substantial free value before you
extract goodwill from them by indirectly asking them for a favor.

Step #5: Hire a Designer or Buy Stock Photos for Your Posts

Start preparing a few short Facebook posts that either promote a landing page or high value blog
post you wrote in the past that will be relevant to that Facebook Group’s target audience.

Find stock photos from a site like BigStock or Getty, hire a designer to create a compelling series
of images or use Canva to create your own.

Make sure the dimensions of your Facebook images are 940px x 788px or a similar default
Facebook image size.

Don’t make the post all about you. Make the post about them (your potential future email
subscribers and fans).

Step #6: Publish Your “Promo” Facebook Post In Each Facebook Group

Create a Facebook post, attach an image and link back to your landing page or blog post. Hit
‘Publish’.

Repeat this process with different variations of the text post and a unique image in each of the
Facebook Groups you’ve been contributing to.

Wait for new email subscribers to roll in.

Step #7: Rinse and Repeat Until You Get 1,000+ Subscribers

Once you’ve gotten the hang of it, just repeat this process (steps 1 through 7) until you attract
1,000 email subscribers to your list.

#8 GIVEAWAYS

2/10

DIFFICULTY

6/10

EFFECTIVENESS

1 week

TIME TO IMPLEMENT

#8 Giveaways

AppSumo used to giveaways to grow their email list from 0 to 500,000.
Step #1: Go buy and install KingSumo Giveaways for WordPress
Step #2: Create a new giveaway
Read this post by Bryan Harris on how to find the perfect giveaway idea.
Step #3: Use a pre-launch strategy with three pieces of content dripped out over the course of one
week to build anticipation for your new giveaway.
Step #4: Launch your giveaway to your existing email list.
Step #5: Run Facebook Ads to your giveaway.
Consider using the faces of famous people as quasi-endorsements of your giveaway merchandise.
One example of this can be seen with the Facebook ads that were used by Cathryn Lavery of Little
Might to promote her giveaway ahead of a Kickstarter campaign.
Cathryn outlines her entire Facebook ads to giveaway strategy in the freebie on her blog.
Step #6: Announce the winner of your giveaway.

Cody’s Take: You can use this as a lead-in to a product launch
to hedge your expenses from investing in the giveaway
merchandise.

#9 TWITTER
INFLUENCER
NETWORKS

1/10

DIFFICULTY

3/10

EFFECTIVENESS

1-2 h.

TIME TO IMPLEMENT

#9 Twitter Influencer Networks

Use Twitter influencer networks like Quuu to place your content in front of thousands of people
on Twitter.

Depending on your niche, this can give your post a significant boost in social shares and traffic.

Another good one to use is Triberr.

Unlike Quuu, Triberr takes time to build a network of influencers to promote your posts. With
Triberr, you request to join different groups in your niche with the hope that someone will accept
your request to join the group.

Once you’ve been accepted to join a group and contribute your content to that group, each time
you publish a post in your blog you can automatically ping Triberr to inform them of your new
post.

Triberr allows the influencers in your group to either automatically or manually accept your
request to share your post.

After your post has been accepted for sharing by an influencer, it will be posted to that
influencers’ Twitter timeline.

With Quuu, you can simply pay up to $25 depending on the category of your niche to have that
post distributed to influencers connected to their outreach network.

Sujan Patel and Jason Quey mentioned to me that they’re seeing success with Quuu. By using
this as one of your content promotion strategies, you can boost traffic and email opt ins for your
new blog posts.

From January 1, 2016 to July 10, 2016, this blog has seen at least 511 unique visitors from Twitter
referral traffic alone.

#9 Twitter Influencer Networks

Not only that… in just about 3 days, I got 5 sales of Content Promotion Summit All Access Passes
from people who visited this blog from Twitter.
Twitter influencer networks is one of most cost effective content promotion strategies for
building your list and making sales.

#10 REVERSE GUEST
BLOGGING

5/10

DIFFICULTY

7/10

EFFECTIVENESS

1-2 months

TIME TO IMPLEMENT

#10 Reverse Guest Blogging

Cody’s Take: As you start writing content for your blog, you
should look for other bloggers who get tons of comments and
shares on their guest posts–and invite them to write for you.

Use BuzzSumo Pro’s Author feature to identify a blog’s most shared authors or just look at
competitors’ blogs for the posts that receive the greatest number of comments.

Make a list of the most popular authors (or guest bloggers) for those blogs in Google Sheets or
Evernote.

Find the email address for each person. Reach out to them via email and invite them to write for
your blog.

Make clear in your email that you pay guest bloggers to contribute to your blog (i.e., $100 per
post, $100 per 500 words, etc.), since no good guest bloggers will want to write for a blog that
doesn’t have a large existing audience.

You can also find high quality guest authors for your blog by posting job listing in Carol Tice’s
Freelance Writers Den job board or through Problogger’s job board.

After you repeat the reverse guest blogging process a half dozen times or so, you will be able to
get free contributors for your blog who want the notoriety of being a part of your blog’s party.

Don’t waste money or time on 500 word blog posts. Your blog won’t see the light of day with
short posts unless you’ve already built up a large audience.

Just write and pay for posts that exceed 2,500 words of incredibly useful advice.

#10 Reverse Guest Blogging

Just write and pay for posts that exceed 2,500 words of incredibly useful advice.

1. Make sure you create or hire someone to create an outstanding content
upgrade for your guest authors’ posts.

2. Create a visually stunning, branded image for every blog post on your home blog.
Go pro and either pay a designer, hire a virtual assistant or use Canva or Photoshop
to create your blog’s featured images.

3. Perform extensive pre-outreach for your blog posts, to ensure you get lots of people
to opt-in to the post’s content upgrade.

4. Start building a relationship with each person that opts into your email list.
Don’t forget this crucial step. Put each person that opts into your list through an email
automation sequence so you can warm them up to your personality and establish
rapport with them. Teach your audience everything you know and give away 90%
of your best content, saving 10% for selling through premium online courses.

5. Your goal should be to piggyback off their writing and double down on your email list
growth by creating a killer content upgrade that gets people to opt into your list as a
result of the post.

6. Each post your pay someone else to write for your blog (under their byline) not only
gives you more free time to land high-quality OPC and position yourself as an
industry expert.

7. It’s pretty hard to maintain your blog with high quality, long-form content, while also
guest blogging, unless you’re a machine that doesn’t sleep (not recommended).

Your goal should be to maximize your output by laser-focusing on the efforts that will grow your
list fast and allow you to start selling an online product for which you’re an expert.

Important: Your goal should not be to endlessly write a ton of content that no one reads or that
doesn’t support your ultimate goal of creating a profitable blog.

Let Me Wrap This Thing Up

The amount of promotion you put into your content directly relates to…

1. Your ability to get highly qualified traffic to your blog.
2. Your ability to convert that traffic into highly qualified leads.
3. Your ability to get your readers to become clients and refer you to friends.

And we covered ALL of that in this free ebook.

I showed you how to find your audience. What to do to get in touch with them. And more.

Now, it’s up to you to take action on this material.

Because education is meaningless without action.

Are you a busy business owner looking for a system to help you grow your
business at scale?

In a few weeks, I will be releasing a course sharing the 5-step marketing system I
used to grow my business from $0 to $216,000 a year.

This system will help you get qualified clients at scale.

...even if you are not a marketer.
...even if you HATE sales.
...even if you can’t figure out exactly how people find you online, consider your offer,

and become a customer for life.

And I’d like to show you that this system can work for almost any type of business.

Be on the lookout for my email announcing my course, Content Marketing School,
that will be release in the next couple days.