The 5 Stages of Blog Growth: How Your Traffic Tactics Should Change as You Grow

If you know exactly what you’re doing, you can build a blog that gets over 100,000 visitors per month in less than year—from scratch.

Chances are, however, you don’t know exactly what you need to do to achieve that, but that’s okay.

The fact that you’re here and ready to learn means that one day, you will know what you need to do to create a fully sustainable business from your blog.

Another factor is the time it takes. Some of you may be able to build a thriving blog in a year, while others may take two, three, or even five years.

During this journey, your blog will progress through five distinct stages:

1. Blog creation
2. Initial growth: finding your 100 “true fans”
3. Scaling up your traffic
4. Reaping the rewards
5. Maintaining your success

In this article, I’ll outline the five stages of blog growth to help you understand where you’re today and how far you have left to go. 

Stage 1: Your blog is born

Expected time to complete: Less than two weeks.

When you read most blogs on creating an online business and online marketing, the sexy parts involve hundreds of thousands of visitors and profit.

But traffic and profit are the result; your foundation is the cause of those results. Figuring out the important details of your blog isn’t always easy, but without a solid foundation, you can’t build a skyscraper.

There are four things you need to do in this preparatory phase.

Even if you already have a blog, you may benefit from going over these things again and improving them if you skipped them before.

1. Define your niche

This is the first step—the step where most blog owners fail. It is crucial to know who is going to benefit from your content.

In other words: who do you want to serve?

You don’t need to know how you’re going to do it yet. The products you will make, the content you will create, and your traffic generating methods don’t matter yet. The audience you want to help comes first.

You need to be able to state what type of people you’re trying to serve and be as specific as possible. It’s better to be too specific than too general as you can always expand later.

For example, you may want to serve office workers who want to learn how to eat healthy at work.

Here are 124 niche case studies, both good and bad.

2. Create a reader persona

Now that you know the people you want to serve, you need to learn more about them.

In order to create content that actually helps them, you must understand who they are, how they act, and what they struggle with.

You can learn about your target audience in many ways, for example:

• in-person conversations
• demographic sites like Alexa and SEMrush

By the end of your research, you should know your target audience’s:

• age
• gender
• job
• hobbies
• beliefs
• values

You can even give your reader persona a name. Note that all of these have to be as specific as possible. For instance, 25-35 years old isn’t an age, it’s a range. Pick one age that accurately describes your ideal reader.

In the end, you want to have one specific person in mind you can write for. This will help you create content that resonates with your readers.

3. Create your blog

If you’re going to build a blog-based business, you will at some point need a functional blog.

Unless you need some really unique features, I recommend sticking with WordPress for now. It’s the simplest option to get you up and running, and you can always redesign the blog in the future. Here’s how to install WordPress—it’s pretty simple.

Alternatively, if you’re already running your site on a platform like HubSpot, it might be even easier for you to create a blog.

What I don’t advise you do is go out and spend thousands of dollars on a custom CMS or design. The first version of any blog isn’t going to be perfect, and it’s going to change a lot down the line.

Focus on getting a simple, functional, and not completely ugly blog up and running as fast as possible. Don’t waste weeks or months trying to make everything look perfect.

4. Discover where your readers hang out

Before you can even attempt to draw your target audience to your blog, you have to figure out where they spend their time.

Note that in some niches, you may have to get offline and go to conventions or local meetings to connect with your target audience and get them on your site.

To start with, find the most popular blogs in your niche. The easiest ways to do this is by Googling “top [your general niche] blogs.”

Create a spreadsheet to keep track of these sites. In one column, indicate if the blog allows comments, and in another, if it allows guest posts. To check for guest posts, Google “[domain name] guest post.”

Go through any big lists of blogs, and visit each one individually. Look for signs of high traffic such as several comments on each blog post or a lot of social shares.

Add the best ones to your list. You want to identify blogs that your reader persona visits so that you can eventually get them over to your site. Ideally, you want to identify as many as you can, but at least 50. If you’re having trouble getting that many, think broader, e.g., “best health sites” instead of “best nutrition sites.”

After blogs, it’s time to check out forums in your niche. Again, search for “[your general niche]+ forum,” and go through the results on the first few pages.

If you find forums you believe your target audience visits regularly, record them in a separate section of your spreadsheet. Note the number of members, or active members, to indicate activity and popularity.

Forums typically aren’t big enough to use as a main traffic strategy at any point, but they can help you refine your reader persona and can be used for certain promotion tactics.

Stage 2: Finding your 100 true fans

Expected time to complete: Less than four months.

Back in 2008, Kevin Kelly coined a concept called 1,000 true fans. It really took off when Seth Godin started referencing it in his advice.

In short, he described how anyone could make a great living if they interacted with and had support from 1,000 true fans.

This article was written in the context of being a musician or an artist, but the same applies to most small businesses. A relatively small group of loyal readers can make your business a big enough success to allow you to become a full-time blogger (if you aren’t already).

If you have a new blog, going from zero to 1,000 is a big leap. Too big, in my opinion, and unnecessary.

A better goal is to gather 100 true fans.

When you first begin a blog, you’re starting at zero. No matter how well you research your target audience, you’re going to make mistakes. The problem here is that no one will tell you what mistakes you’re making—at least not yet.

As long as you defined your target audience well enough, you will have the ability to attract your first 100 fans (although it could take a while). These fans will play an instrumental role in the growth of your blog.

Loyal readers will comment on posts and respond to emails. They will tell you when something resonates with them through comments and feedback. They will also tell you when they don’t like something either through a comment, email, or silence.

If you have 100 high quality subscribers and still can’t get any comments or email replies, the problem isn’t the subscribers: it’s your content.

In reality, you’ll likely fall somewhere in between perfect resonance and radio silence. On some posts, you’ll get a lot of engagement (say 10-15 comments from your 100 fans), while others will only get one or two.

Use this feedback to tweak your reader persona and craft content that helps this updated persona. That’s when you’ll start seeing consistent resonance and more rapid growth of subscribers.

So, where are we right now?

You have a brand new blog but no audience (or a very small one). This is your main challenge. You need to get your first 100 fans.

In addition, you have a ton to do. You need to create content, build relationships, create more content, promote your content, and more. But you’re likely the only one who can do it since your blog isn’t producing any revenue.

You need to spend your time wisely. That’s why I’m going to tell you the optimal strategies that you should use to get your first 100 true fans.

Optimal strategy #1: Guest-posting

The core of your initial traffic strategy should be guest-posting. The most common places that your target audience hang out at are likely other blogs (in most niches).

You need to find popular blogs that have a huge audience. A small portion of this audience will be your target audience. You can then attempt to get these readers to subscribe to your site through a guest post. Guest-posting is an important strategy for blogs of all sizes.

One common mistake people make that you may also make is to try to write any guest post that you think will be popular on a site. However, even if the guest post becomes popular and sends you a lot of subscribers, they might not be the right ones that you want to build your blog and business around.

Instead, find a topic that you think will do well on the blog you’re guest-posting on, but angle it towards your target reader.

For example, if I were writing a guest post on Forbes (which I regularly do), I wouldn’t write a general article on the current state of the economy. Although it might become popular, I would rather write a slightly less popular article about how the recent economy problems affect your business’ marketing plan, or something along those lines.

Always remember that your goal at this stage is to find that small group of 100 true fans and get them to your site. Attract their attention first and foremost before considering the rest of a traffic source’s audience.

Here is everything you need to know about getting results from guest-posting:

• Guest-Posting on Steroids: A 4-Step Blueprint That the Top Guest Posters Use
• 7 Lessons Learned from Publishing 300 Guest Posts
• Advanced Guest Posting Strategies

Optimal strategy #2: Create the right type of content for your blog

As I’ve already noted, your time is extremely limited. While it might be ideal to pump out a ton of content to get your blog rolling, it’s not the most important thing.

Right now, you have very few (if any) visitors. You don’t need to continuously create content because no one’s reading it.

It’s better to spend time trying to get traffic from other sources before creating a high volume of posts on your own blog.

That being said, you do need some content on your blog, but some types of content are better than others. Writing an opinion post is going to be a waste of time: why would anyone care what you think at this point? That’s not an insult—it’s a fact. You need to build up your expert reputation before writing a post like that.

But certain types of content can work well at this stage. In particular, you should create a few posts that can attract quality backlinks and help you build relationships with influencers. If you do it right, it might even result in some decent targeted traffic.

These magical content types are:

• roundup posts
• ego bait posts
• “poster boy” posts

You probably already know what link roundups are. You ask several influencers in a niche the same question and then publish the results. Some influencers will comment on the post, link to it, and share on social media.

Ego bait describes a wide range of posts. Essentially, you want to appeal to the ego of an influencer or company with a large following. Make them look good by showing that their advice solved a problem for you or someone else. Let them know you created the post, and maybe they will link to it.

Finally, you can use the “poster boy” formula. It’s a lot like ego bait, but it takes the tactic to the next level. Find a few particular influencers, and find a particular piece of strategy or technique advice from them.

Then, implement that advice and track the results. Create a case study of your results that make the influencer look amazing. This will lead the influencer to keep linking to your case study as evidence of their awesomeness.

This last tactic is a lot of work, but it produces results. Bryan Harris was able to get over 400 subscribers with this technique on a new blog.

Optimal strategy #3: Paid traffic

If you have more money than time to invest in your business, paid traffic is a way to accelerate your growth.

That being said, it’s completely optional. Many successful blogs never use paid ads, while many other successful blogs do it at one point or another.

The big benefit of paid ads is that despite having no existing traffic base, you can create an audience. It can get expensive, especially if you’re new to using paid advertising. It’s very important that you spend some time improving your email opt-in rate before blowing through thousands of dollars.

Here are some of the best resources on using paid traffic to build a blog’s audience:

• 6 Simple Steps to Start Your First PPC Campaign
• PPC Hero guides
• PPC Advertising is Just As Much About the Audience as it is Keywords

Optimal strategy #4: Develop social media presence

Last but not least, you have to attend to social media.

Popular social media platforms have boatloads of traffic, and the most popular ones—Facebook and Twitter—almost definitely contain your target audience.

The problem is that any good social media strategy takes time to work. If you’re going to use social media, you have to be prepared to consistently use your chosen platform for months before it starts to pay off with some decent traffic.

If you’re really set on using social media to funnel traffic to your site, you can speed it up by using paid traffic. As I’ve shown on the nutrition site case study, paid ads on Facebook are relatively cheap and can help you build an authoritative page quickly.

I don’t recommend using social media as a primary traffic strategy unless you’re willing to continually invest in it. However, you can still identify one or two channels to start building while you focus on other traffic generation methods.

What about SEO?

If you know me well, you know how much I love SEO and benefit from it. But aside from building authoritative links when you get the chance, you shouldn’t focus on it very much at the beginning.

Gaining the authority and trust from search engines takes several months of publishing high quality content. You should start seeing some real organic search traffic after about a year, and that’s when you can shift more of your focus toward SEO.

Stage 3: Attracting swarms of fans—scaling up

Expected time to complete: 8-24 months

Now that you know almost exactly what your audience needs help with and wants, it’s time to kick your traffic growth efforts into overdrive.

Although you will be growing much faster than you did during the last stage, this will take time too.

Look at the NeilPatel.com blog as an example. I began the blog at the very end of September 2014. In the month of May, 2015, my traffic grew to 63,827 visitors—that took about eight months.

Consider that it took me eight months to grow to this point even with my experience and personal brand. Additionally, I’m still in the process of scaling up the traffic to that blog, which means it falls into this stage.

At this point, you have some traffic and a good idea of your target audience. Your main challenge now is starting to create great content on a regular basis. In addition, your time is still limited.

Optimal strategy #1: Continue with your traffic-building strategies 

Since now you have to spend more time on content creation, you will have less time to spend on getting traffic from other sources. Nevertheless, you need to continue your traffic strategies from Stage 2.

Although you may have 100 true fans, your rate of growth will be too slow if you solely depend on those fans to spread the word. Instead, as you gain traffic during this stage, start spending more and more time on creating and promoting content on your own blog.

Optimal strategy #2: Create a content schedule

In the previous stage, you started creating content for your blog. Now, it’s necessary to do it on a regular basis. Think about not just those specific types of posts that we looked at but any type of content your true fans may enjoy.

You need to decide how often you want to post and what you will be writing about.

A thorough content calendar will help you plan out content for up to a year in advance. At this point, you’re still getting a lot feedback from your 100 true fans. I’d recommend planning your content for only a few weeks or months so that it can be adjusted based on the feedback you receive.

Once you achieve consistent resonance, you can plan your content schedule as far in advance as you’d like.

Optimal strategy #3: Start considering monetization

Traffic is nice, but the end goal should always be to produce revenue.

If you’re selling a service, e.g., offering consulting, you can do this early on with no issues. It doesn’t take a lot of time to create a simple landing page. Put a link to it in your menu, and drop it in your emails to subscribers when appropriate.

The long-term goal of your blog may be to sell a product. If you already have a product, you can start selling it during this phase and put some time into improving your conversion rate.

If you don’t have a product, now is a great time to start paying attention to the major pains of your audience so that you can create a product around them. Most products take months to create, so the farther you can plan ahead, the better.

Stage 4: Reap the rewards—getting paid

Expected time to complete: three to six months

The line between Stages 3 and 4 is often blurred. Once you develop a sizable audience (most go with 5,000-10,000 subscribers), you need to monetize your blog as soon as possible. At the same time, you need to keep growing and continuing to do all the growth strategies described in Stage 3.

Optimal strategy #1: Focus on monetization

“Why does it always have to be about the money?”

I know that you might feel like I’m telling you to be greedy by advising to monetize as soon as possible, but it’s the opposite of that.

At this point, you have tens of thousands of visitors a month (at least!).

If you don’t monetize your blog, how can you continue to serve your visitors well? You can’t invest in better content, and you can’t respond to all emails or comments any more. One person can’t service an audience of thousands.

If you really have zero time available to create a product, know that once you have a sizable audience, you will be approached regularly for joint ventures (JV).

Essentially, the other party will create the product; you provide the audience to sell it to; and you split the profit. Don’t immediately accept the first JV offer. Take your time, and only work with someone you trust and respect to provide as much value for your audience as possible.

Finally, you can always promote other reputable affiliate offers if you feel that you’re not quite ready to create your own product.

Optimal strategy #2: Hire

Now that you are deriving some income from the blog, you can start getting some help so that you can continue to help your audience as much as possible.

First, you need to decide which parts of the blog need your attention the most.

Personally, I like to be the one writing my blog’s content (on Quick Sprout and NeilPatel.com), so I can’t outsource that. However, on Crazy Egg’s blog, I’ve hired an editor that has assembled a team of writers to produce content.

Here are the most common areas that blogs usually hire for:

• product support
• product development
• answering simple emails (get a virtual assistant)
• graphic design (images and infographics for content)
• web development (for site redesign)
• content strategy development
• content writing

Once you’ve identified which parts of your blog require your personal attention, start hiring people to take care of the rest.

Do this slowly, and make sure you’re hiring quality people to help you. It’ll save you a lot of headaches in the long run.

Stage 5: Maintain your position on the Golden Throne

Expected time to complete: hopefully, you stay here forever! (or until you sell)

At this point, you have a full-fledged business.

Your blog should easily be generating enough so that you can focus full-time on it. This is the stage that Quick Sprout has been at for quite some time.

In some niches, you will reach this point faster than others, just due to your specific audience and the size of your market.

But if you just sit on your success, you will lose it. Your business is almost always in a state of growth or decline. Obviously, it’s better to focus on growth than let the results of your hard work wither away.

Your main challenge at this point is to continue producing high quality work in the form of blog content and products. Additionally, you still have limited time to take advantage of all the opportunities now coming your way.

Optimal strategy #1: Keep hiring

If you’re doing things right, your traffic is only going to keep increasing. To keep up your quality standards and to free up time, you will have to find more reliable people to add to your small team.

The hardest thing about maintaining a successful growing business is finding and keeping good people on your team. If you find someone who does their job well, pay them accordingly even if you could get them to work for you for slightly cheaper.

This not only keeps them happy while working, but it prevents them from wanting to leave in the future. Not having to continually find, hire, and train people will save you much more in the long run than saving a few dollars on salaries.

Optimal strategy #2: Automate

The great thing about having a significant amount of revenue coming in is that you no longer have to do things you don’t enjoy. Almost all boring parts of running a blog can be automated, either with a paid tool or an employee/freelancer.

Most hires should be for a specific task. When you hire someone, don’t just leave them to figure out things by themselves.

You need to create easy-to-follow systems that outline what you’d like your employees to do step-by-step. Although initial training will take time, in the long run, it will save you from having to waste time correcting mistakes and changing their work habits to suit yours.

Optimal strategy #3: Be selective

At this point, you are going to get offers to do all sorts of things, including guest-posting and conference appearances.

Since you have very limited time, you need to pick your opportunities carefully. Right now, it’s about getting a little bit more traffic and building your personal brand. Pick the opportunities that will have the most positive impact on your reputation and position as a thought leader in your field.

Optimal strategy #4: SEO

No, I didn’t forget about SEO. By now, your domain has a solid amount of authority and trust, and you should be seeing a significant amount of organic traffic from search engines.

At this point, there are three things you should do:

1. Evaluate your blog design for optimal “link juice” flow.
2. Re-evaluate old content, and see if you can optimize for better terms.
3. Strategically incorporate keywords into your future content.

If you don’t have experience with SEO, you could always hire an expert to help you out, now that you are generating revenue.

Conclusion

The purpose of this post was to give you a clear layout of how a blog-based business grows over time.

Growing a successful blog is not something that can be done quickly.

What I hope you get out of this is that if you use the right tactics at the right time, you will strategically grow your blog and take guessing and luck out of the equation.

You can learn all of the tactics you need on Quick Sprout and the NeilPatel.com blog.

As a final note, never stop learning about your readers and trying to help them. Even though this blog is past the initial stages, I’m still learning how I can serve you better every day through your comments, emails, and viewing habits.

To better understand where you are with your business or blog, I’d appreciate it if you could leave a comment below telling me what stage you’re currently at.

How to Write Emails Your Subscribers Can’t Wait to Open

The job of a marketer isn’t easy.

You need to create great content, promote it, and then convert your hard-earned traffic into email subscribers.

Because email is 40 times more effective than social media in customer acquisition, it can’t be ignored.

But your work doesn’t stop there either. You need to cultivate a relationship with your subscribers if you want them to ever buy from you.

In order to do that, you need your subscribers to not just tolerate your emails but to actually get excited about the next email you send them.

The average email open rate depends on the industry, but typically it ranges from 15-25%. That’s not terrible, but it certainly isn’t good.

Would you be happy if only 1 out of 4-6 people who asked for emails from you actually opened them? And that’s just opening, not clicking through or replying.

I hope you said you wouldn’t be happy with the 15-25% open rate. Indeed, you can do much better if you avoid the mistakes most other businesses make.

If the average business has an ROI of 4,300% from email marketing with those kinds of open rates, imagine what you could do if 50-60% of your list opened and interacted with your emails.

In this post, I will show you how to achieve those results. 

Set the stage: after the signup

You’ve convinced a reader to sign up for your email list—great.

To do so, you had to offer them something. Whether it’s just regular content updates or a free lead magnet, there’s something that your new subscriber wants.

There is no excuse in this day and age not to deliver any lead magnet within minutes of receiving a new subscription. Every major email marketing platform has some sort of an autoresponder you can use to deliver your offering automatically.

This is simple, but crucial. People have short memories.

For a loyal reader who just got around to subscribing, it’s not such a big deal. But when it comes to most subscribers, who don’t know you very well, it can be the difference between starting a great relationship and being put in the spam box.

Think about the time when you signed up for a free bonus from someone you didn’t know very well. If they sent your freebie to your email box immediately, you knew who sent it and why you received it—after all, you asked for it.

But if it’s sent to you a day later, or even a few hours later, all of a sudden, you’re thinking: “Who on earth is Neil Patel?”

The average person is very protective of their inbox, as they should be. So when they get an email from someone they don’t know, they are cautious. Sure, some don’t mind, but some get annoyed, weirded out, or even angry.

So, deliver on whatever you promised right away. Simple.

But that brings me to the next important thing you need to do right after your website visitors sign up—while you are still fresh in their minds: set clear expectations.

The first follow-up email gets the highest open rate, often 70% or higher. This is way higher than the overall average open rate. What you say in this email can either help you sustain high open rates in future emails or scare off subscribers.

So, what should you say? It depends on how your visitors signed up.

If they signed up to an offer that simply said “send me lessons,” it’s pretty safe to assume they know who you are and expect occasional emails from you.

In this case, it’s less about what you will be sending (lessons and updates) and who you are and more about the frequency of your communication.

However, if your new subscriber signed up because they want a free report or a course, they may not realize that they just joined your mailing list.

Brian Casel offers a course for freelancers who want to “productize” their services. When you opt in for this email course, you receive an email that begins like this:

Brian does a few important things here:

• introduces himself so you won’t forget him
• includes a headshot
• introduces his product without being overly pushy
• establishes expectations by saying this is the first in a series of email lessons

Most importantly, he knows that almost all of his new subscribers will read this because it’s at the very top of the first email he sends. Then, he delivers what he promised.

I showed you the opt-in for Jon Morrow’s Headline Hacks above. If you use a one-time download as a lead magnet, I want to highlight something he does that you should also think about doing.

At the bottom of every email, he includes the following blurb under the “PS”:

This is a simple reminder of what you signed up for.

On many occasions, a new subscriber will download your lead magnet, enjoy it, but then forget who you are within a day or so. Then they get an email from you a few days later and get angry when they feel they don’t know who you are. This leads to unsubscribes, being marked as spam, and the occasional “I NEVER SIGNED UP FOR THIS!” email reply.

Including this short snippet at the bottom of an email will eliminate almost all of those complaints and calm down anyone who’s angry.

Let’s go through the steps of crafting emails your subscribers will enjoy receiving.

Step 1: Start with an enticing subject line

Once you’ve laid the groundwork, it’s time to start working on crafting future emails that your subscribers can’t help but open.

It always starts with writing a great subject line.

The subject line should be written a lot like the headline of a blog post although you have a little more freedom with it.

Subject line tactic #1: Use numbers

If you’ve followed me on either the Quick Sprout blog or the NeilPatel.com blog for some length of time, you’d know that I love numbers in headlines. I especially love writing list posts.

Numbers are specific, easy to read, and intriguing. Even The New Yorker recognizes the power of numbers:

“Whenever we’re scanning the environment for nothing in particular, our visual system is arrested by the things that don’t fit—features that suddenly change or somehow stand out from the background. A headline that is graphically salient in some way has a greater chance of capturing our eye, and in an environment where dozens of headlines and stories vie for attention, numerals break up the visual field.”

Adding numbers to subject lines is one of the most effective ways to increase your open rate:

Subject line tactic #2: Induce curiosity

Curiosity is powerful. When we want to know the answer to something, it gnaws away at us until we find it.

It takes practice to write a headline that induces curiosity, but it works well when done right:

The key is to be specific about an event or result but be vague about what led to it. Naturally, your readers will want to know how you produced that intriguing event or result.

For example, if I sent an email with the subject line This one tactic led to 60,000 visitors in 2 months on a new blog…, you’re going to open the email to find out what “This one tactic” was.

It’s the exact same principle behind all those “one weird trick” ads:

Subject line tactic #3: Keep it short

Informz found that shorter subject lines generally beat longer headlines. This doesn’t mean that short subject lines are always better than long ones—they aren’t. But in general, short ones are better because:

• the whole subject line can be read (without being cut off)
• short subject lines typically induce more curiosity
• they force you to be clear (readers won’t open ambiguous headlines)

Subject line tactic #4: Test different subject lines

Everyone should test different subject lines, even the President of the United States…oh wait, he did.

Leading up to the last election, the Obama campaign team split-tested several headlines to see how much money they would raise. The results were incredible. The top result was projected to raise $2,540,866, while the bottom result would have raised only $403,603…a 629% difference.

One way to split-test subject lines is to simply send emails with different subject lines to small groups of your list and then send the winning subject to your full list.

Alternatively, many email marketing providers have a split testing function built-in.

If you use Aweber, go to create a broadcast like you normally would (in the “Messages > Broadcasts” menu option), but click “Create a Split Test” below the big green button.

You can then choose how many variations you’d like to create.

Then you can choose to what percentage of your list you’d like to send each variation. It must add up to 100%, so an even split is usually best:

Once you save the split test, go back to your broadcast messages page. You’ll now see two (or however many variations you chose) drafts. Then you just have to edit each email individually with your subject lines and message.

Step 2: It’s all about value

Think about why new subscribers open that first email: it’s to get something.

At this point, you’re not a friend. You’re not even an acquaintance.

But you have something they want, whether it’s knowledge or a tool.

It’s not wrong in all cases to pitch your services right away, or at least say that they are available, but in many cases it is.

In general, people tolerate pitches in order to get value from you.

If you pitch too soon, too frequently, or too hard, you’ll scare away a potentially good prospect.

Think of every new subscriber like a new bank account. Every time you add value to their lives, you make a deposit, but every time you pitch them or don’t deliver on your offer, you make a withdrawal. Take out too much, and the account will get closed.

Trust takes time: You have to earn trust by giving away value, time after time. Once a subscriber realizes that you’re not just trying to make a quick buck off them and that your work is actually making a difference in their lives, they will start to trust you.

Glen Allsopp, owner of ViperChill, runs a hugely popular blog on viral marketing. He is known for creating epic guides and providing new insights within his niche that no one else has discovered yet. In other words: he provides tons of value.

When his subscribers get an email from him, they know it’s going to be something that improves their marketing results. That’s the secret behind his outrageous open rates:

Step 3: Make it personal

Think about how you make a new friend.

You learn more and more about the person over time, as they learn about you, until you become better friends.

You bond over similarities and common interests.

Obviously, you and your subscribers have a shared interest in your particular niche, but at the beginning, you don’t have anything else beyond that. You’re just a name behind some text.

Here is how to make friends with your subscribers.

Share interesting personal stories

One of the best ways for someone to get to know you and get a glimpse of your life is for you to share personal stories with them. You can do this in your blog posts, but email is another great time to do it. After all, when friends want to tell us a story, they don’t write us a blog post. They send us an email.

Bryan Harris often begins his emails with entertaining short stories. But he always finds a way to tie them back to his point. So, not only do you learn a little bit more about him every email, but you also get the value you’re looking for.

Talk to one person—add personality

No one wants to be talked to in a corporate tone. You should write emails just like you write blog posts. Use the words “you” and “I,” and don’t be afraid to include questions and some occasional slang.

When you write your email, pretend you’re writing the email to one specific person—a friend. If you have trouble doing this, go to Gmail, start a new message, and write your email there. Then, just copy the message back to Aweber or whichever email service you’re using.

If you try to rush, you’ll freak people out

I think everyone’s guilty of this at one point or another in our lives, although some more than others. You meet someone, and they tell you their life story right away. It’s like when a person you’re dating tells you they love you on the first date (classic Ted Mosby).

Relationships take time to develop. When it comes to your email list, you need to share stories and personal details one step at a time. When someone first subscribes, they might like to know who you are and one cool fact about you, but they don’t want your life story.

Step 4: Create cliffhangers

We already talked about the power of curiosity.

One tactic you can use to take advantage of it is cliffhangers. If you’ve ever watched a TV show, you know what a cliffhanger is.

It’s when something unexpected happens right at the end, leaving you dying to find out what happens next. If you want to find out, you need to watch the next episode.

TV shows have been using cliffhangers with great success for quite some time, but marketers are still playing catch-up.

Think of every email you send as an “episode” that leads to the next. You should always build upon each email you send.

Near the end of each email, you’re going to reveal some sort of result that you or someone you know achieved, e.g., getting a post to go viral and attracting over 50,000 views.

Then, tease.

Say that you’ll tell them exactly how you were able to achieve that result in your next email. BOOM—instant cliffhanger.

You can create a cliffhanger in a few different ways.

The first is to simply continue a topic your subscribers are already interested in. For example, here’s the end of another email from Bryan Harris. Instead of overloading the reader with too much information in this single email, he tells them he’ll send over the next part tomorrow.

Here’s how you create a traditional cliffhanger, courtesy of Nathan Barry. See how he ends it off? He reveals that he knows a pricing strategy to triple revenue, but he won’t share it until the next email. I’m hooked.

Finally, you can be even more subtle if you’d like. Ramit Sethi is the master at slipping in little teasers throughout his emails or at the end in a P.S. He simply asks three questions that most of his readers will want to know the answers to, which will then prompt them to open next week’s email.

 

Step 5: Email shouldn’t be one-sided

Serious question:

Do you value the opinion of your subscribers?

I really hope you answered yes. If you don’t, what’s the point of all the work you’re doing to make their lives better?

Now, I think most people answer yes to that question, which is great. So why is it that most email lists feel like one-sided conversations?

I talk, you listen.

That’s the wrong way to approach it.

So, what’s the solution? Get your readers involved.

A lot of marketers know this already but attempt to get subscribers involved in all the wrong ways.

Similarly, a lot of okay but not great teachers do the same thing. They ask their students questions, but they do it in a way that doesn’t entice anyone to answer. *Cue awkward silence until the teacher singles someone out.*

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Think about why people don’t answer:

• they’re afraid to be wrong
• the answer is obvious
• they don’t care about the question
• they feel insignificant (“just let someone else answer”)

Let’s deal with these one-by-one.

Reason #1: They’re afraid to be wrong

You are the expert in your niche. Your subscribers don’t want to look dumb in front of you if they answer a question wrong.

Here’s what you can do about this.

The first thing you can do is to let them answer anonymously. If you’re simply collecting data, send them a link to a Google Forms sheet, and give them the option to leave off their name. Make this a clear option in the email.

The second thing you can do is to share what your answer was when you were asked the question the first time (if you were wrong). Challenge them: say that almost no one gets it right the first time (you didn’t), but invite them to take a guess.

The third is to give them an alternative. Many are intimidated by having to reply directly to you. Instead, do what Ramit does: give them the option to leave a comment on your site.

Reason #2: The answer is obvious

I ask many questions in my blog posts, mainly because the answers are obvious. I don’t need you to reply to those questions, and you know that. Sometimes though, marketers will ask ridiculously simple questions in their emails to try to encourage engagement, but subscribers don’t take those questions seriously.

The lesson from this is that you can’t trick people into engagement. Only ask questions that serve a purpose.

Reason #3: They don’t care about the question

This one’s easy, and you probably don’t need to worry much about it. Occasionally, some marketers try to ask questions about unrelated topics that will go ignored for the most part. Instead, keep the questions to your niche. It’s as simple as that.

Reason #4: They feel insignificant (“just let someone else answer”)

This is by far the trickiest hurdle to overcome, especially when you have a big list. You’re trying to make someone feel special even though they are just one of thousands (much worse than a classroom).

One technique to overcome this problem is to target a very specific portion of your readers. Instead of asking:

“What tactics have you tried to increase your conversion rate?”

Try:

“I know not everyone has a huge site, but if you own a site with 20,000 or more visitors per month, what have you tried so far to increase your conversion rate?”

Sometimes it’s better to exclude a part of your list (they won’t mind as long as it’s not all the time) to make another part feel more special.

Another technique you can use to make your subscribers feel special is one I saw Carol Tice use. You ask for answers or feedback to feature them in a future email or blog post.

Finally, never make your readers feel like they are sending their responses into a black hole. I’ve seen a lot of marketers improve in this area lately. When they ask a question at the end of an email, they make sure to point out that they respond to all emails or, at the very least, read them.

Respond to as many as you can. Even though it may be time consuming, it’s the best way to build relationships with your readers and gain true fans. If you’re running out of time, try some of these Gmail plugins.

Step 6: Bigger isn’t better

This is a very general rule and can be broken.

Some marketers write very lengthy emails, even with 1,000+ words sometimes, and do very well with them.

However, if you’re going to write that much, you’d better have something really important to say.

If your subscribers read through all of that lengthy email and get nothing out of it, they aren’t going to do it again.

Another thing to consider is that if you send email updates more than once a week, most subscribers won’t have the time to read multiple lengthy emails unless they love you.

Finally, it takes a long time to write good long emails. Most marketers that do so regularly are strong copywriters as well.

This is why, unless you have a good reason, you should stick to a short clear email.

Informz found that shorter emails get the highest opens and click-through rates. They also found that emails with more links have higher click rates. With less content, every link you include will stand out more.

Step 7: Function over form (make it readable)

If there was a way to measure bounce rates of emails easily, I think many marketers would find the data shocking.

If you don’t make your email quickly loadable and highly readable, your subscribers are just going to delete it and move on to the next one.

Tip 1: Go light on images and fancy formatting

We all know that images are important in blog posts. They break up text, reinforce points, and make your content look better.

And while there are similarities between emails and blog posts, this is not one of them. Images and formatting should be kept to a minimum in your emails. Hubspot found that the more images were in an email, the lower the click-through rate was.

One problem is that they take longer to load on most mobile connections. Considering that 44.7% of email is opened on mobile devices, this is a big deal.

Another concern is that they distract readers from your text and links. If you do include images, make them complement your content, not compete with it.

Tip 2: Format for all devices

Like I said, almost half of emails are opened on mobile devices. That means that optimizing your emails for mobile is even more important than optimizing your blog posts for mobile.

Here are some best practices:

• Keep the line length short: most phones have a maximum width of 300-500 pixels.
• Keep pictures to a minimum: they can show up wrong, bloat the file size, and cause the email to get flagged as spam.
• Use dark text on a white background: light text is often more difficult to read on mobile devices.
• Minimize HTML: even common tags like paragraph tags aren’t recognized by all mobile email apps.

Tip 3: Make links obvious and easy to click

Always keep in mind the point of your email. For most emails, the point will be to get your readers to click through to a page on your website. You need to make it clear.

Additionally, links can be difficult to click on small mobile screens, so the more they stand out, the better your click-through rate will be.

Here are some of the things you can do to maximize your click-through rate:

• Use a bigger font for links
• Put links on a separate line
• Bold links
• Put multiple links to the same post with different anchor text

You don’t need to do all of these at the same time to get a link to stand out.

You’ll notice that I use the same template for most of my emails. You can see that one link is on its own line, and in total, I include three links to the same post.

Step 8: Send consistently and deliver on your claims

Right within your first email, you should indicate how often your new subscribers will be getting emails from you.

Regardless of that, however, you want to send your emails consistently, or else your readers will forget about you over time, and your list will go stale. Express Pigeon found that sending four emails per month, as opposed to one, significantly increases your average open rate.

So, now you’ve got your readers regularly expecting your emails. They’re opening them thanks to your solid subject line, and they’re enjoying the content.

Now you just have to take care of one last piece of the puzzle: what happens after your readers click the link?

If you link them to a disguised sales page or a weak blog post, they are going to feel like you took advantage of them, and you will lose their trust.

On the other hand, if you send them to a post or page that fulfills your promise, you will gain their trust.

Brian Dean gets away with sending an email only about once a month to his subscribers simply because every time they click through, he blows them away with an epic post.

It’s better to be honest in your description of what you’re linking to and have a lower click-through rate than to be deceptive to get more clicks. The short-term greed will lead to long-term declines in engagement and list size.

Conclusion

Email marketing is the most effective type of marketing there is by a wide margin. It’s not going away anytime soon.

When you’re attempting to apply these 8 steps to your future emails, remember that they are guidelines, not rules.

Always think about the underlying concepts we discussed in each section to see which parts apply to your emails and when they should be used.

If you read this post carefully (maybe even re-read it a few times if you like it), you’ll have a deeper understanding of these principles. At first, they will help a bit. But over time, as you gain experience, there’s no reason you can’t achieve consistent 50+% open rates and record profits.

What’s your biggest takeaway from this post on how to increase your email open rate? I’m genuinely curious and will reply to every comment below like I always do.

The Day After: 11 Things to Do After You Publish a Post

Clicking the “Publish” button is one of the highlights of my day.

Working hard on a post and then putting it out there to help others is extremely rewarding. It’s one of the main reasons why I continue to write so much.

But it’s not the only reason…

Content marketing remains one of the most effective strategies to grow a blog—any blog.

Eighty-six percent of marketers in North America use content marketing, and 71% of marketers (overall) are planning to increase spending on content marketing. 

Creating great content is an extremely important part of any successful content marketing strategy. But it’s just one part.

If all you do is hit “Publish” and then move on to the next article, your blog won’t grow as quickly as it should.

And if you’re just starting a blog, you might not grow at all. There’s no point creating content for an audience of zero.

Paul Graham said:

A good growth rate … is 5-7% a week. If you can hit 10% a week, you’re doing exceptionally well. If you can only manage 1%, it’s a sign you haven’t yet figured out what you’re doing.

Although he is talking about business revenue, your traffic and subscribers should be growing at a similar rate. That means you should be doubling your traffic once every 4-5 months.

If you’re not meeting those growth numbers (especially early on), you likely need to spend more time promoting your content.

There are many different promotional tactics and strategies out there that you can use to promote your content in order to grow your business. It’s a good idea to try out different ones and find what works.

What I’ve found, however, is that aside from all those strategies, there are 11 things you should be doing—most of the time—the day of or the day after publishing a post.

These simple but effective tactics will guarantee a minimum satisfactory level of blog growth if done on a regular basis.

Let’s dig in…

1. Answer all comments

Getting people to comment on your blog posts is hard.

You might see my Quick Sprout posts getting hundreds of comments and think otherwise, but I’ve only been able to get those after years of hard work.

If your blog gets fairly low traffic, a few comments can be the difference between more people commenting or clicking off the page.

Why do you want comments? Not all blog owners care about getting comments on their posts, but I do.

Comments are great for many reasons:

• They make your blog look more authoritative (social proof).
• You get feedback from the people you care about the most (your audience).
• It gives you a chance to interact with your readers on a more personal level.
• They can give you more unique content on your page, which can increase search traffic.

And the downside? There really isn’t one.

Even though I typically get at least 100-200 comments per each post I publish, I respond to almost every one as soon as I can. Since most comments come within the first 24 hours of posting, that’s when I block off time to respond to them.

On top of all those benefits I just listed, there’s one more if you have a small blog. If you can get five comments on a post, you instantly double that to 10 if you reply to all of them. As a result, you instantly get more social proof.

If the initial commenter replies back to your comment, you’ll have another one to add to your total.

But besides numbers, the biggest reason to respond is to keep the comments coming.

I am sure you’ve stumbled across those articles with hundreds of comments with no responses from the author. That looks terrible.

It discourages you from commenting on that particular post as well as on any other posts by that author. What’s the point of commenting if the writer might not even see it (or answer your question)?

2. Dominate your topic

I am a huge fan of creating definitive guides.

It’s much better to go narrow and deep on a topic than broad and shallow.

My goal is to create a resource that can and should be mentioned every time that specific topic comes up somewhere on the Internet.

For example, I believe that “22 Gmail Plugins That All Content Marketers Need to Know About” should be mentioned in any article or conversation about Gmail plugins. Not only is this list comprehensive, but it’s current and it’s quality.

The problem is, not all these conversations happen on the day you publish. They are going to take place on an on-going basis.

So, I need a way to monitor these conversations. Once I see that someone is talking about Gmail plugins, I can link to the post, which I honestly think will help them.

Monitoring method #1: Google Alerts

There’s no company that tracks more of the web than Google, and Google Alerts has been a useful tool for marketers for many years.

Here is how to use it.

Set up alerts for the main keywords of your article. Note that if you put the keywords in quotation marks, you will only receive alerts for that exact phrase. This is useful if you’re getting a ton of irrelevant results.

Start by going to the Google Alerts homepage and entering your keyword. Click on “Show options” to set an alert frequency and any other parameters you’re interested in.

It’s best to respond to new mentions as soon as possible, and for that, you would need to choose the “as soon as it happens” frequency. Obviously, this isn’t practical for most people, so choose the shortest frequency that makes sense to you.

After that, click “create alert,” and you’ll get email summaries of any conversions about your topic.

Here’s what the results would look like for a “Gmail plugins” alert (no quotation marks).

Once I get the results, I can go to those articles and leave comments such as:

“This is a great list of Gmail plugins. In particular, I’m a big fan of [plugin #1] and [plugin #2].

I actually just compiled a really thorough guide of Gmail plugins of my own. I think you might find some of the ones not mentioned here useful. Take a look if you get a chance: [URL].”

If you leave the comment early enough, it’ll drive some good traffic, and you’ll have another relevant backlink (although not that strong) to diversify your backlink profile.

Monitoring method #2: hashtag mentions

Blogs and news sites are typically great sources of conversations that you can join. Additionally, social media sites such as Twitter are easy ways to drop your link naturally.

Google will pick up some Twitter mentions and include them in your Google Alert results, but I still prefer a Twitter tracking tool for more reliability and advanced features.

There are many Twitter tracking tools, but most are paid. For a free option, check out Warble. Essentially, Warble will monitor any hashtags or keywords that you enter in an alert and send you a daily email with a link to the results.

Create an account, and then click on “setup a new alert.” Then you can enter a keyword, a specific user (e.g., “@neilpatel”), or a hashtag (e.g., “#gmail”).

Once you set up the alert, you’ll get an email each day with a link to a page like this:

I could respond to any of these with an appropriate Tweet and a link to my article. Be careful, however: if you go overboard, you could get your account suspended for spam. While responding to these, make sure to interact normally with your feed and Tweet out like you usually do.

3. Schedule for success

I’m going to share a revolutionary tactic with you. Are you ready?

Share your post on your social media accounts.

Okay, I lied. Not so revolutionary.

While it’s basic, it’s also an important part of a successful social media strategy.

After you’ve published your article, add sharing it on your main social networks to your to-do list. I recommend using a tool such as Buffer to do it automatically, but it’s up to you.

On Twitter, you should share it more than once the first day, but you should also share it a few times throughout the next few weeks.

Scheduling your sharing activity is crucial because it’s easy to forget. However, it’s important to share your new posts in order to drive traffic to your website and gain new followers on each social platform.

4. Email the world

I’ve been continually telling you to build your email list. One of the main reasons why you need to do this is to promote your new posts.

The subscribers on your email list already like you, and you know they already like the topics you write about. They are the ideal people to see your post first.

I email my subscribers shortly after posting a new article, whether it’s on Quick Sprout or NeilPatel.com.

It’s a very simple template that I use every time, and it works. I include three different links that all go to the post. First, I introduce the post, then I include a short excerpt before signing off.

You’ll also notice that I use the postscript (P.S.) to bring awareness to the Quick Sprout tool (and therefore my services). Alternatively, you could include a call to action (CTA). For example, you could ask your readers to comment on the new post or share it on social media.

Feel free to steal this simple template if you’re stuck.

Once your email list reaches a decent size, this email will drive a decent chunk of traffic and engagement to any new post. How would you like to have 10+ comments before you even start promoting an article?

5. It’s time to call in favors

You might not even realize it, but you likely do favors for at least a few people every time you publish a post.

When you mention and link to someone, it can send them small bits of traffic and also help build their personal brand and increase their search engine rankings. Most site owners know this by now.

The problem is that unless they monitor their content mentions very carefully, they might never realize that you linked to them.

The solution is obvious: tell them about it.

Most unsolicited emails suck, but what about an email from someone saying they liked your work enough to link to it? That’s awesome.

And since you did them a favor, it’s much more likely that they will do you a favor.

After you tell them that you mentioned them, ask them to check out the article and share it with their followers if they think they’d enjoy it—no hard sell needed.

Not everyone will share it, but many will. Obviously, the more recognizable your site is, the more likely others will share it.

Here’s a basic template you could use:

Subject: I featured your work

Hi [name],

I love the work you do on [site name]. In particular, I was blown away by [title of content you linked to] when I was researching my latest post.

Since it was so good, I had no choice but to mention you and link to the post. Just wanted to give you a quick heads up and say thanks for the great supplementary resource.

If you get a chance, I’d love it if you gave the article a quick read and left a comment with your thoughts. Here’s the link: [post URL].

I think you’ll love it.

I’d also really appreciate it if you shared it with your followers—if you think they’d enjoy it.

Best Regards,

[Your Name]

Try to keep it fairly short and to the point, no longer than that template.

To make this tactic really effective, start researching topics more thoroughly in order to create data-driven posts. Not only will this make your content better, but it will give you more people to reach out to.

I have one warning for you, though: Don’t just link to people so that they might share your post later; link to them because they have a genuinely useful resource that some of your readers will appreciate.

Finally, if they do share it or leave a comment, follow up with them! Send them another email thanking them, and find a way to continue building the relationship. It could be as simple as telling them they can ask for a share or a comment from you whenever they want, or you can simply link to them again in the future.

6. Join the secret society of blog owners

This tactic is mostly for newer blogs that are struggling to get readers and comments for their new posts.

When you’re staring at a big fat zero comments, or even just a few, all you want is a few more for the reasons we discussed before.

I’ll let you in on a secret: you’re not the only one.

In fact, most blog owners are in the exact same situation as you are. What if you developed relationships with five or so bloggers in your niche? All of a sudden, you all have 10 comments (five from each blogger plus five of your own) on any new post. You could even add more bloggers if you wanted variety.

It’s a very powerful, simple, and underused tactic for newer blogs.

Here is how to implement it.

Step #1: Find them

We’re really good at finding the most popular blogs in our niches, but no one really searches for unpopular blogs.

You can find them in a few ways.

I recommend starting by just Googling “top [your niche] blogs”:

In most niches, you’ll find a few monster lists of 50+ blogs. These lists always contain the most popular 10 or so blogs, but many of the rest will be lesser-known that were just included to make up the numbers and attract a few links.

The good news is that these are exactly the sort of blogs we’re looking for. Avoid any obviously popular blogs, but check out any that you don’t automatically recognize:

In this case, I didn’t recognize “Experience: The Blog,” so I went to check it out.

We’re looking for a blog that:

• is active, with at least one post a month
• has an average of fewer than 10 comments per post
• is run by one author (that you can connect with)
• features good content

In this case, I think the Experience blog is a pretty good fit. It gets a few comments, but not many, and the most recent post was published a week or so ago. It’s also run by a single person.

This is simply a process of trial and error from this point. Go through as many blogs as you need to until you find as many blogs that satisfy the above criteria as you’d like (at least five).

Another option is to use Alltop. It’s a directory of websites sorted by niche and topic. Although it’s supposed to just contain “top blogs,” it contains pretty much every blog submitted to it.

Start by finding your niche using the navigation menu, or search your main keyword (e.g., “marketing”) in the search bar:

Once you’ve found a relevant section, you simply need to go through the blogs one by one to see if they match the criteria.

Just click on the names of each site to visit them:

Finally, if both of those methods failed to return enough results, you can do a simple Google search for “[your niche] blog.”

The most authoritative ones will, of course, come up first, so skip at least a few pages to find less popular blogs.

I skipped to the 9th page and immediately found a decent target:

Step #2: Post a thoughtful comment 

Now that you have your list of blogs, it’s time to add some value to them. If a blog has a very recent post (within the last day or two), comment on it. If it doesn’t have any recent posts, wait for the next one.

Think about what you’d like to see in a comment on one of your articles. Most likely, it’ll:

• be long (at least 50 words)
• be specific (not just “Good post”)
• recognize the effort that went into the post
• add value to the article if possible 

Here’s a good comment from Maham on a previous Quick Sprout article:

Honestly, I get hundreds of great comments such as this on every article. You guys put a lot of thought and effort into your comments, and it shows.

When posting on these other sites, just pretend you’re commenting on a Quick Sprout article, and you’ll be fine.

Step #3: Get in touch

At this point, you’ve added some value to your target’s site. In many cases, the blog author will reply, and some will even go to your site and comment on your most recent article.

Either way, you want this to be an on-going relationship. 

In a few days (anywhere from two days to a week), send the blogger an email like this:

Subject: A win-win situation for [blog name]?

Hi [name],

You might recognize me from my comment on your article a few days ago (this one: [article title]).

From what I’ve read of your posts, I really like them so far. It’s a shame they don’t seem to be getting the exposure they deserve.

I was wondering if you’d be open to trading a few comments with me.

In short: send me an email after you post a new article, and I’ll be happy to leave a thoughtful comment on it. In return, I’d appreciate it if you could do the same on my blog: [your blog URL]. 

More comments for our posts should entice other readers to chime in, which will go a long way to grow both our blogs.

Please let me know if you’re interested.

Thanks for your time,

[Your Name]

Again, not all will want to do this, but you can probably find at least five out of an initial list of 20 or so blogs.

7. Post to aggregator sites

One of the best types of sites to post your content on are the ones that are actively looking for content to discuss. Aggregator sites serve as a community where links can be submitted to be voted on and discussed.

The most widely known aggregator site is Reddit, which contains subreddits that act as individual aggregators. 

These types of sites don’t exist in all niches, but if you can find one or two quality ones in your niche, you can funnel a lot of good quality traffic from them.

Step one is to find aggregators in your niche.

Everyone should start with Reddit. Type some of your main keywords into the subreddit search (one at a time) until you find a relevant subreddit that has at least a few thousand members.

Treat each relevant subreddit as its own aggregator site. It’s possible to submit your posts to more than one subreddit.

Aside from Reddit, here are some other popular aggregator sites:

• Inbound.org (Inbound marketing)
• Hacker News (Startups and computer science)
• DataTau (Data science)
• Product Hunt (Product creation)
• Biz Sugar (Small business)
• Lobsters (Technology)
• Boxnutt (General)

Most aggregator sites focus on business and technology subjects.

Unfortunately, there’s no easy way to find these types of sites in most niches. This is because most aggregator sites are controlled by editors and site owners, so you can’t actually submit your own content.

The bright side is that there’s a subreddit for just about everything, so you always have at least one you can submit to.

Here’s the key: While you could just register a new account and post a link to your post, there’s a good chance that you’ll get flagged for spam. The more effective strategy is to first join the community and contribute to it here and there for a few weeks before promoting your own content.

You should post your links to your own content 10% of the time maximum. That’s the only way to build up a good reputation and be protected from being banned on these types of sites.

If you’re new to aggregator sites, refer to my Beginner’s Guide to Marketing on Reddit. The principles in it apply to Reddit and all similar sites.

8. Post to forums

Prior to using this strategy, you need to identify niche forums and become an active member.

If you’re new to a forum and post a link to your site, you will be banned. In general, you should have at least 50 posts before even thinking about dropping a link. 

But once you’ve spent the time building up a bit of a reputation, forums can be a great source of high quality traffic. They are composed of people who care enough about your niche to make an account and regularly discuss the topic. 

Not all niches have a forum that is active enough to justify maintaining an active presence, but most do.

Once you publish your post on your blog and do the other steps in this article, head over to any forum that you are active on. 

The days of being able to post a link by itself are long passed. People are on the forum because they want to learn and discuss on the forum. If you just post a link, you’ll get reported for spam and have your account banned. 

Instead, you need to give so much value that forum readers would be impressed enough to take further action to learn from you. 

Create a thorough summary of the post and format it according to the forum’s capabilities. Put effort into this step. 

Then, post the summary in a new thread. Either before or after the post, you can include a sentence along the lines of:

“I originally published this information on my blog, but I thought I’d make a summary just for you guys. If you want to read the full version, click here [insert link].”

There’s no tricking or manipulation going on here. 

Here’s how Brian Dean did it three years ago when Backlinko wasn’t the powerhouse it is today:

One final note is that if people comment on the thread, you need to reply. Not only does this make your submission look even less like spam because you’re actually trying to help forum members, but it also keeps your post bumped to the top of the forum. This will lead to more views and eventual visits to your post.

9. Take advantage of groups

Groups are similar to forums in a lot of ways but typically have more relaxed rules. Because there are no post counts, your reputation in the group is based more on your recent contributions than some join date or post count. This means that you can be active for a week and build a solid reputation.

These are some of the groups you can join:

LinkedIn Groups

Start with LinkedIn groups. First, you’ll need to find the best ones to join.

To do so, search for your niche in the main search bar at the top of the page, but make sure to select “Groups” in the dropdown menu to the left of the search bar:

Get as specific as you can as there are a ton of groups out there.

What you’re looking for are 5 to 10 quality groups to join. While there are some excellent groups, there are also a lot of groups that predominantly consist of people spamming that content.

What you should look for is an active group. Every submission should have at least a few comments or likes on it. That’s how you know that it is moderated and that the members are actively engaged.

Here’s what a bad group looks like:

The first three posts I saw in that group had exactly zero comments and likes. If you posted your content here, you’d be lucky to get a visitor. 

But there are good groups out there if you dig a bit. I found a group where all of the first 10 posts had at least one comment or like. Some had much more:

That’s the kind of engagement you’re looking for. It’s obvious that there are real people in this group. 

Facebook Groups

The other good source of groups is Facebook. Most quality groups will be private, which means that you won’t necessarily get accepted into them. Just like on LinkedIn, there are many groups that are full of spam and are a waste of your time. 

To find groups, search your keyword using the top search bar, and then filter your results by “Groups”:

Just like with LinkedIn, you’ll have to go through each group to see if it has good levels of engagement. Look for at least a few hundred members. 

The good thing about both LinkedIn and Facebook groups is that they are both designed for sharing content. It is expected that you’ll share your own content. 

At the same time, you are expected to share your content appropriately. Making three straight posts with links to your website is not appropriate. Spend a few days commenting and liking submissions from others, and then occasionally post a link to your own posts. 

Ideally, you should stay active all the time so that you can post your article links the day after you publish.

10. Get easy links with roundups

Link roundups are great ways to attract links, traffic, and commenters to your website. They work so well that many blogs do them once a week or once a month. 

The problem with link roundups is that it takes their creators a lot of time to find great content to showcase.

What you’re going to do is create a win-win scenario for both you and bloggers who regularly create link roundups. 

Step 1: Find link roundups

Luckily, roundups are pretty easy to find with Google.

Search for “intitle:roundup” + [your keyword]:

Most likely, you’ll be able to find several ongoing roundups in the first 4 or 5 pages. 

At that point, you can keep digging into those pages or try a slightly different keyword to bring up different results. 

In most niches, you can find at least 20 regular roundups. In niches such as Internet marketing, you can find many more.

Step 2: Reach out to roundup authors

Once you’ve compiled a big list of roundups, it’s time to reach out to the creators. If you want to increase your chances of success, start by commenting on a few of their posts.

It’s extremely important that you frame the email in terms of the benefit to them, not to you.

Here’s a sample template:

Subject: Weekly roundup on [site]

Hi [name],

I stumbled across your weekly roundups a short while ago, and I love how much effort you put into including only the best posts of the week. I know that must take a ton of time.

I hope it’s not too forward, but I just published an epic post that I think would be great for a future roundup. It’s a [length] word guide on [topic] that is incredibly detailed and actionable.

Can I send you a link to the post?

Best Regards,

[Your Name]

If you get a positive response, just send over the link and say thank you again. Once they trust that you can actually create really high quality content, you can email them in the future after publishing a post and get an almost guaranteed link.

11. Start monitoring rankings

Did you forget about SEO?

Assuming you’ve read my post on incorporating long-tail keywords into your content, you should be aiming to get some traffic from the search engines. Granted, it may not happen immediately, but you still need to track your rankings to see if you’re making progress.

If you don’t already have a rank-tracking account, head over to Pro Rank Tracker to create a free account.

After you publish a post, go to “Add URL”, and put in your domain name and the main keyword(s) you targeted in that post.

All you need to do is add it for now. Come back in 2 to 4 weeks to see if your ranking is improving. 

Within a week of my publishing the post about Gmail plugins, the post was ranking on the first page for “Gmail plugins,” which gets about 320 searches per month in the US.

If your post isn’t on the 2nd or 3rd page after a month of being published, you’ve probably chosen a keyword that is too difficult to compete for given your current domain authority.

In this case, you should edit the article to target an easier keyword. It’s better to get a larger portion of a small search volume keyword than zero percent of a high volume keyword.

Conclusion

I’ve given you 11 things to do on the day of or the day after publishing a new post.

Even if you do nothing else but these, your blog will still grow. But I also highly recommend you try advanced promotion tactics if you’d like to speed it up by a lot.

Like I’ve told you many times, the key to your success lies in consistency. You need to make a list of tasks and complete them every single time you publish a new post. That will be the difference between success and failure 6 or 12 months down the line.

Before you go to work, leave me a comment below and let me know what kind of promotion you usually do after you publish a post. As a bonus, let me know what you’re going to do now that you’ve read this post.