21 Strategies to Drive More Free Website Traffic Today

Over the last 11 months, I’ve had the opportunity to work with an awesome client growing a brand new website.

We don’t have a big budget (practically none), but we’ve managed to get some great results:

• 600,000 page views
• 340,000 unique visitors
• 10,000 email subscribers
• A fast-growing online community

Due to our monetary constraints, I’ve had to hone my skills in free traffic generation.

Some may see this as a burden, but in reality, it’s important to diversify your traffic sources. This is so if any number of them fail, you have other strategies to fall back on.

So today, I’m going to walk you through 21 different ways to drive traffic to your website — for free.

I hope you can use these strategies to increase your web traffic, save money, and diversify your strategy at the same time.

You will learn:

• Advanced outreach strategies,

• A little-known tip to hack your email signature,

• How to leverage multiple online communities to bring in waves of traffic,

• And much more to send hungry visitors to your site.

Let’s get started:

Feel free to use these links to navigate to each strategy:

1) Twitter Automatic DM

2) Outreach Strategies

3) Email Signature Hacks

4) Private Cross Promotion

5) Niche Communities

6) Top X Articles

7) LinkedIn Groups

8) Subreddits

9) List Leverage

10) Optimize Your Lead Magnets

11) Content Syndication

12) Expert Roundups

13) Weekly Roundups

14) Content Repurposing

15) Google+ Communities

16) Quora

17) Social Content Locking

18) Triberr

19) Blog Comments (On Steroids)

20) Host a Forum

21) Social Media Strategies

1. Use Twitter Automatic Direct Messages (The Right Way) and Drive Traffic from New Followers

If you’ve been on Twitter for even a short time, you’ve probably received an automatic direct message (DM).

It’s a message that arrives after you follow someone, and it usually has a link to the service that person is using to send the DM.

They’re unmistakable.

Lots (and I mean LOTS) of people despise automatic messages. They think they’re annoying. They think these messages take away some of social media’s personal nature.

But guess what?

As a traffic generation and relationship building tool, they actually work. And most people using them right now are not going about it the right way.

That’s where you can stand out and actually provide value with your message.

Check this out:

I set up a direct message and tested it over a 14-day period. It links to one of my top articles.

Over that same time period, I gained 725 Twitter followers, sent 56 people to my site from that link (7.7% CTR), and got additional shares on the article. I also built relationships along the way:

(People thanked me for showing the article to them.)

(And joined my email list!)

This passive traffic system takes about 5 minutes to set up, and with the dead simple strategy I’m going to show you to get more free Twitter followers, you will be killing multiple birds with one stone.

Here’s how to set up a Twitter automatic DM and drive traffic with it:

There are a bunch of services that allow you to set up automatic DMs, but my favorite free one is Crowdfire.

First, head over to Crowdfire and set up your account. Then click on “Automate” in the left sidebar.

It should be on the “DM Marketing” tab already. If not, go to that tab.

Here you can set up just one direct message, or you can set up multiple messages that get cycled randomly to your new followers. Here’s what mine looks like:

Now, this next part is crucial. You want to provide value with your DM, while making your automated message seem less “automatic.”

Here are some basic principles to follow with your DM:

• Most people don’t want to be sold to in a Twitter message, so try not to promote your products/services.

• Link to something that will provide a ton of free value to them.

• Frame the message as if you checked out their profile beforehand and thought they might like what you’re about to show them.

• Unless your service lets you include a first name field for your follower, don’t say “Hi” or “Hey there.” Saying “Hi” without stating their name reinforces that it’s an automated message, so it’s better to leave it out.

• Respond to the people who respond back to you. Build relationships.

Ba da bing, ba da boom! Your automated message is set up.

Now you just need one more thing:

More Twitter followers.

How do you get more followers on Twitter? Well, luckily, one of my favorite bloggers, Robbie Richards, shared a brilliant strategy to get more followers.

It takes about 10 minutes a day and it’s dead simple.

Over a 16-day period, I grew my Twitter following by 792 people. This strategy gives you immense power over the effectiveness of your DM for driving traffic.

P.S. Robbie used this strategy to get 1,048 new followers and increase his Twitter referral traffic by 159% (with 3 hours of work).

Instead of breaking down the strategy, I’ll let Robbie do the talking:

2. Powerful Outreach Strategies

Reaching out to people for social shares and engagement is one of the best ways to get traffic to your site.

As long as your content is valuable enough, people will be happy that you exposed them to the information you put together.

There are also ways to make sure these people are pre-qualified to want and need your content.

Here’s how to do it:

1) Reach out to influencers you have mentioned

People love being featured. Influencers are no different.

If you’ve created a valuable piece of content, odds are you’ve linked out to other helpful resources produced by people with large followings.

Reach out to these people and let them know you’ve included them.

Why?

Well for one,  giving them a heads up is a nice thing to do. For two, them sharing your content will get more eyeballs on it, which means more eyeballs on the link to their site and more traffic for them. Win-win.

When you mention influencers in your content, reach out to them with an email like this:

Subject: New lead gen guide, you’re included

Hey NAME,

I just published a new lead generation tutorial that breaks down 17 ways to capture targeted leads online.

I included your guide, The Ultimate Guide to Landing Page Design, in the part about creating high converting landing pages. It’s an amazing resource that I think my readers will get a ton of value from :).

Anyway, just wanted to give you a heads up that I featured you in my article. Feel free to check it out here: URL

Have a good one!

YOUR NAME

Short, sweet, and to the point. You also have the option of asking them to share the article. Just say something like this:

“I know you must be busy, but if you have the time, would you mind sharing it on social media?”

If you’ve created a valuable resource, they will probably share it without you asking.

But if you’re in a niche where influencers aren’t getting a lot of these requests, you might want to ask for one. This is so they know exactly what you would like them to do.

2) Reach out to other influencers in your niche

For this one, you’re going to do the same as before except you haven’t mentioned them in your content.

The goal is to find influencers who will have an interest in your content, whether they’re featured or not.

One of the best resources to find these influencers is BuzzSumo.

BuzzSumo is a search engine that shows you a ton of different content-related info, including the most highly shared content for a given search term and what topics are trending right now.

Here’s the key:

It also shows you influencers related to certain keywords.

First, head over to the BuzzSumo app and click the “Influencers” tab. Then type in a keyword related to your content, like so:

Click on “Followers” to sort the list by number of followers.

These are the people you want to reach out to. They have lots of followers AND they’re likely to be interested in your content. Their audience is pre-qualified to be interested as well.

When you’ve gathered your list together, send each of them an email like this:

Subject: An article you might like

Hey NAME,

I just published a new lead generation tutorial that breaks down 17 ways to capture targeted leads online.

I noticed that most of the information out there hadn’t been updated in a while, so I made sure to make this piece as in-depth and actionable as possible.

As a leader in the space, I thought you might like to check it out: URL

Anyway, just wanted to give you a heads up. Thank you for your time NAME.

Have a good one!

YOUR NAME

Again, use your best judgment as to whether or not to ask for a share.

3) Reach out to people who have written similar content

Here’s the thing:

If someone has already written something similar to your content, they’re likely to share your content as well.

It’s a simple notion, but a powerful one for outreach and traffic generation.

In this strategy, you’re going to find content similar to yours, identify the authors, reach out to those people, and present your content.

Here’s how:

Go to NinjaOutreach’s content prospecting tool and search for a topic your content falls under.

Filter your list and choose only those you think may be interested in your post.

Remember, if they wrote something similar to your post, then that’s a good indicator that it may interest them.

You can create a list within the tool and when you have transferred all your prospects to that list, head over to Outreach Mode and send them this templates:

(Or contact them on Twitter.)

Then fire off an email like this:

Subject: An article you might like

Hey NAME,

I just published a new lead generation tutorial that breaks down 17 ways to capture targeted leads online.

I noticed that most of the information out there hadn’t been updated in a while, so I made sure to make this piece as in-depth and actionable as possible.

As a small business owner, I thought you might like to check it out: URL

Anyway, just wanted to give you a heads up. If you have the time, would you mind sharing it on social media for me?

Have a good one!

YOUR NAME

With this email, you can be a little more forward and ask for a share (unless you’re reaching out to more influencers). These people probably don’t get share requests that often, so asking for one doesn’t come off too pushy.

BOOM!

There you have it.

3 powerful outreach strategies to get you tons of social shares, engagement, and visitors.

Let’s check out another useful (yet under-utilized) traffic and promotion strategy:

3. Use Your Email Signature to Develop a Passive Traffic System

If you’re like most people, your signature looks something like this:

It’s got the standard home page link, social profiles, contact details, etc.

(Or maybe you don’t have a signature at all?)

If you’re like me, you send a TON of emails each day. What if each and every email could drive traffic to your site?

Well, it can, and I’m going to show you how.

It’s a simple trick I learned from Bryan Harris at Videofruit. Here’s how to do it:

First, get rid of the same old link that points to your home page, and compel people to click to a high value page on your site.

This could be a blog post stacked with content upgrades. It could be a free download. It could even be a high quality About page.

Whichever page it is, it needs to have a strong benefit to check it out. That benefit is going to compel people to click.

Here’s an example:

My home page is actually optimized for conversion (another hat tip to Bryan Harris).

No one would be convinced to click if I just left my signature as “Home Page.”

But what if I expressed the benefit that page offers? (And it’s a strong benefit.)

Now, every single email I send has the potential to drive traffic, build my email list, and generate leads.

In fact, on my latest outreach campaign, I sent 76 emails and got a 9.2% click-through-rate to my site:

This tiny 2-minute tweak can bring you extra traffic for the same amount of work.

BONUS:

To track how many clicks you’re getting, simply use a bit.ly link instead of the normal URL.

(P.S. I strongly suggest checking out Bryan Harris’s list building course when it re-opens.)

Let’s move on to another traffic gen strategy few people talk about:

4. Start a Private Group to Cross Promote Content and Grow Audiences Together

With all the hype around tools, tactics, and strategies, we tend to forget one important thing:

Good ol’ fashioned human interaction.

Your traffic stats are people.

Your email subscribers are people.

The people who share your content are people.

As our species has done for generations, when we band together we become a more formidable force than when we stand alone.

This is what can happen if you form a group of people who share each other’s content and promote each other’s sites.

Don’t know where or how to find people to group up with? Here are some ideas:

First, find a forum related to your industry using these search strings:

“Industry” + forum

“Keyword” + forum

“Industry” + powered by vbulletin

Next, make sure the forum is active. Look at how many replies and views each thread is getting.

Once you’ve found an active forum, simply create a thread like this:

Wait for people to respond, exchange contact info, and get to know each other a bit.

(You can repeat this in other online hubs as well, like Quora and LinkedIn groups.)

Then, I suggest starting a private Facebook group to make communication easier. Lay out some ground rules for the group’s expectations.

Here’s an example:

1. Only submit your BEST content to be promoted.
2. You are not forced to share anything. (Keep your audience’s interests in mind.)
3. Don’t invite new members without approval.
4. Remember that the more you give, the more you receive.

These types of groups can grow much further than promotion. They can become long term business partnerships and mutually beneficial relationships for life.

The traffic becomes an awesome side-benefit 😉

5. Submit Your Content to Niche Communities

Niche communities bring people together to talk about and discuss similar interests.

These people want to learn, grow, and elevate the community as a whole.

If you’re creating the kind of content that solves problems and helps people, your content is perfect for these communities.

They want to read your stuff. They want to learn from you.

All you have to do is show it to them:

First, let’s start with a few examples.

Inbound.org is a niche community for inbound marketers. It attracts people who specialize in a range of marketing related sub-topics, including content marketing, email marketing, and SEO.

They welcome open discussion, debate, and overwhelming content. Since the community is so big, being featured on the home page for even a small amount of time can bring in loads of visitors.

(Like Robbie Richards, who got 2,000 visits from Inbound.org in 60 days.)

Do you like this article? Upvote it on inbound.org! >>

GrowthHackers is another niche community. It’s oriented toward startups and growing your business at a crazy fast pace.

They love out-of-this-world case studies and revolutionary ideas. The community is so engaged, taking 5 minutes to submit your latest case study can attract hundreds of new visitors.

(Like Bizible, who got 1,200 visits from GrowthHackers in 2 months from a single article.)

Do you like this article? Upvote it on GrowthHackers!

For the time-reward ratio, niche communities are powerful assets for you to utilize.

The trick is finding them.

Here’s how:

To find niche communities, Google these search strings:

“Niche” + community

“Niche” + “online community”

“Keyword” + community

“Keyword” + “online community”

“Niche” + community + trending

Next, find a community that’s active. Usually, there will be an upvote system to rank the most popular (and best) topics.

Simply submit your content to these communities, participate in discussions, and watch the traffic roll in.

6. Use the Inherent Share Value of “Top X Articles” to Get Hundreds (If Not Thousands) of Social Shares

You’ve seen these articles before:

“The Top 50 Food Blogs of 2015”

“The Top 100 Realtors in the U.S.”

“85 SEO Experts to Follow on Twitter”

Note: Learn how I drove 34,000 search engine visits in 60 days (for free) in my 5,000-word cost effective SEO case study.

I first read an article like this on The Start of Happiness. It’s a list of the top 100 self-improvement blogs of 2014, ranked by Alexa ranking. I immediately noticed that it got over 2,000 shares on social media:

These articles offer many benefits:

1. They help you build relationships, because you’re featuring other sites/people and giving them recognition.
2. They’re quick and painless to create.
3. They are inherently shareable and easy to promote.

Re-read that last one.

These articles are some of the easiest to promote, get hundreds (if not thousands) of social shares, and drive free website traffic by the truckload.

My client and I used a top X article to get our highest traffic day at the time and over 200 shares in a niche where social media isn’t a big part of the landscape yet.

Here’s how to create one:

First, select the group of people/sites you want to feature.

I suggest starting out with a keyword you want to rank for.

(If you don’t know how to do keyword research, Brian Dean’s guide has got you covered.)

“Keywords are like a compass for your SEO campaigns: they tell you where to go and whether or not you’re making progress.” — Brian Dean, Keyword Research: The Definitive Guide

To give you an idea, here are a few examples of groups/sites:

• Personal development blogs
• Content marketers
• Food blogs

The key is choosing sites/people that have large followings for you to tap into.

(You’ll see why in a minute.)

Next, you want to gather those sites into a spreadsheet like this:

Then it’s time to put the article together. There are two main ways of doing this:

1. Rank the sites using a certain metric (like Alexa ranking)
2. Rank the sites based on the most popular ones, but put them “in no particular order”

There are pros and cons to both. I typically like to rank them using a metric, as it gives your article more credibility. It’s not just your opinion.

But, if you accidentally miss some sites that deserve to be ranked, then you run into figuring out how to include them without knocking other people off the list. It can be an extra hassle.

If you put them in no particular order, your article lacks credibility. But, you also don’t have to deal with what we just discussed.

Whichever one you choose is up to your personal preference.

Now, here comes the good part:

After you publish your article, reach out to all of the winners and tell them they’ve won. Give them a hearty congratulations and a link to the article.

Odds are, they’ll share the article without you asking. But, if you don’t think they will, simply urge them to share it with their followers.

Most of the sites on your list will be happy to share it, bringing in a wave of traffic from social media almost as soon as you hit “Publish.”

7. LinkedIn Groups

LinkedIn groups are packed with people having discussions, networking, and best of all, sharing content.

You’ll find groups with tens of thousands of people in them. All of these groups are hungry for knowledge.

Let’s learn how to to tap into this hunger:

First, head over to LinkedIn and find the search bar.

From the dropdown menu, select “Groups” and type in a keyword related to your niche/industry.

This will bring up a list of groups filled with people who will enjoy your content (and your site).

LinkedIn places 2 limits when joining groups:

1. You can only have a certain number of pending invites at a time
2. You can join a maximum of around 50 groups

So join as many as you can. The more you join, the more outlets you have to attract traffic.

Finally, head into these groups, share your content, start a discussion, and watch people flock to your site.

(Note: These groups are often wary of self-promotion. So try to participate in discussions before posting content.)

And make sure the content you’re sharing is extremely valuable. If it’s got a high level of value, they will actually thank you for sharing it.

Let’s move on to another community for you to tap into:

8. Harness The Power of Subreddits

Reddit has been dubbed “The Front Page of The Internet.”

It got that name for a reason.

Reddit is a treasure trove of discussions, ideas, and information. It’s broken up into subreddits based on different interests.

These subreddits are where discussions are held and where content is shared. You’ll find thousands of people congregating in these areas on the web.

Just like LinkedIn groups, you can harness subreddits to drive free traffic to your site.

First, stroll over to the Reddit home page. Click on “Edit>>” in the top right:

In the search bar that says “search for subreddits by name,” search for keywords related to your niche/industry.

This will bring up a list of subreddits to choose from.

Pick a subreddit, open it in a new tab, and check it out. Make sure it’s an active subreddit that’s worth your time.

To do this, look at the number of subscribers.

If a lot of people subscribe to the subreddit, it has potential to send visitors your way.

Next, look at the types of content and discussions going on. Redditors are protective of their territory. They won’t give any love (or clicks) to topics and content that are off-topic and solely for self-promotion.

The key is making sure your content is highly relevant to what that subreddit is discussing or is interested in.

Next, just submit a new link or discussion (with a link to your content).

Rinse and repeat this for as many subreddits as you like. If people like what you have shared, your content will get upvoted. This gives it more exposure and attracts more clicks to your website.

9. Leverage Your Email List for Traffic and Shares

It happens time and time again:

People publish a piece of content, share it on social media, get a few trickles of traffic, but completely neglect their #1 fans:

Their email list.

Who are these people? They’re people who have subscribed to your blog or downloaded your free resource because they want to hear more from you.

If you continue producing stellar content, they want to promote you and spread the word.

But if you’re not engaging them, these people are just sitting there.

Don’t make this mistake.

When you produce an amazing piece of content, send it to your email list.

While this immediate traffic aren’t “new visitors,” they’re people who will share your content, link to you, and help you bring in new visitors.

They’re your strongest promotors.

Don’t ignore them.

10. Optimize Your Lead Magnets for Social Sharing

Lead magnets are great:

• They’re valuable pieces of information

• They help you capture leads and build your email list

• And they’re easy to create

However, there’s a way for you to squeeze even more value out of them. Not only that, but your lead magnets can actually help you gradually build your web traffic over time.

How?

By optimizing them to be shared on social media:

First, make sure you have a landing page ready for your lead magnet. Here are a few examples:

1. Example #1
2. Example #2
3. Example #3

Then go to sharelinkgenerator.com. This tool let’s you create custom share links for any of the 5 main social networks.

All of the networks (except for Pinterest) will take your featured image as the image.

For Facebook and Google plus, it will pull information from your meta description for the description.

For Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest, you can create a custom tweet/title and description.

Next, input the landing page link and the information it asks for. The tool will then generate a custom share link. Go ahead and test out the link to make sure it works.

You can include this link anywhere in your lead magnet, but I prefer to do it like this:

Head over to Iconfinder. Grab a social media icon for each link you generated.

Place these icons in each page of your lead magnet, link them with the share URLs, and include a call-to-action to share it.

This means that anyone who downloads your lead magnet has the potential to share it on social media, drive traffic to your landing page, and build your email list.

How’s that for passive promotion?

11. Content Syndication

What if every article you publish gets sent to a publication that already attracts a lot of traffic (with links back to your site)?

You’d get immediate exposure without having to put in extra work each time you publish new content.

Well, it’s 100% possible with content syndication.

“Content syndication is the process of pushing your blog, site, or video content out into third-party sites, either as a full article, snippet, link, or thumbnail.

The idea is to drive more engagement with your content by wiring it into related digital contexts, either to boost traffic to your owned property or just get exposure for your brand or your key personalities or products.” — Andrew Delamarter, Search Engine Watch 

The more places you can syndicate your content, the more exposure (traffic) you can get to each piece.

Here’s how to set this up:

Step 1. Find Syndication Prospects

First, you need to find sites that will syndicate your content.

To do this, check out Kim Roach’s 500 places to syndicate your content. She put together an AWESOME list of sites and broke them up into niche categories.

(She even reveals the search strings she uses to find these opportunities.)

Hats off to Kim for creating that resource.

Step 2. Figure Out the Submission Process

Some sites ask you to email them. Some want you to fill out a form. It depends on the site and the type of syndication.

So make sure you find the instructions.

For example, Business 2 Community asks you to fill out a form, whether you would like to guest post or you would like to syndicate your blog:

Step 3. Follow Their Instructions

Whatever they ask to move the process forward, simply follow it.

Sometimes you’ll need to wait for someone to get back to you. But if it’s automated, you might have your syndication set up immediately.

Now whenever you publish something, you will immediately expose it to new audiences across the web.

12. Tap Into High Powered Promotion with Expert Roundups

You’ve probably seen expert roundup posts before. The titles go something like this:

“85 SEO Experts Reveal Their #1 Link Building Strategy”

“Develop Healthy Eating Habits: 45 Nutritionists Show You How”

These articles are based around one defining question that lots of people would like to know the answer to. The publisher then reaches out to experts in the field to get their opinion.

Finally, all of these opinions get combined into one, meaty, extremely valuable article that people LOVE.

But here’s the thing:

These articles are special. Expert roundups are inherently easy to promote and drive traffic to.

Why?

Because the people you’re featuring are influencers in the space. They have large followings.

Once you gather these answers, promotion is as easy as sending the completed article to them and/or asking them to share it for you. Most of the time, they’ll be happy to do it.

And the more experts you feature, the more potential traffic you can drive.

Got it?

Great.

Let’s learn how to create an expert roundup:

The most important part of an expert roundup is the question. If you don’t get this right, experts won’t answer you. They’re simply too busy to spend time on things that aren’t meaningful, even if it does get them more exposure.

So spend some time researching your question. I like to start off with keyword research to come up with a question.

Next, pull together as large a list of professionals as you can. If you’re in a niche with lots of influencers, pick and choose the ones you like the most (and who have the biggest followings).

If you’re not in an influencer-heavy niche, grab all of the top influencers and simply go down the list to less influential people. Again, the more the merrier.

Then, it’s time to reach out to each person with your question.

When the answers start rolling in, make sure to thank each person for their time and compile the answers into an article. Include a picture, the response, and any relevant links.

Here’s a good example from Richard Marriott:

55 SEO Experts Reveal 3 Favorite Link Building Tools

Here comes the fun part.

Finally, publish the article and reach out to each influencer again. Simply let them know that the article is live, give them the link, and thank them again.

Usually, you don’t need to ask for a share. But if you would like to, go ahead and throw it in there.

If even a small amount of your experts share the article, this can send lots of quality visitors your way.

Check out Richard Marriott’s guide for an even more detailed look at how to create and promote an expert roundup.

13. Get Featured In Weekly Roundup Posts

Weekly roundups are articles that curate some of the best content of that week on a given subject.

(Some are produced monthly or daily, depending on who’s publishing them.)

These articles typically get a good amount of traffic, because they’re nice one-stop-shops for people to catch up on anything they missed the previous week.

Lots of traffic means you want your content to be featured in these articles as often as possible.

The key is finding weekly roundups in your niche that are being published regularly. After that, all you have to do is reach out.

Here’s how:

First, use these search strings to find roundup posts in your niche:

“Keyword” + “weekly roundup”

“Keyword” + “roundup”

“Keyword” + “best of”

“Keyword” + “link roundup”

“Keyword” + “weekly link roundup”

This will bring up roundups in your niche. However, you want to filter the results to only show articles that are being published regularly.

To do this, click on “Search Tools.”

Then click on “Any Time.”

In the dropdown menu, click on “Past Month.”

This will sort the results so it only shows links that have been published or updated in the past month.

Create a list of prospects from these results and gather their contact info. Then reach out.

Here’s an example:

Subject: Loving the roundup

Hey NAME,

I’m loving your NAME OF ROUNDUP weekly roundup.

Last week I found ARTICLE NAME super helpful: URL. I learned a ton about TOPIC and actually applied it to my business.

I actually just put together an article on TOPIC. It’s a step-by-step guide that teaches people how to BENEFIT: URL

Thought you might like to check it out and possibly include it in your next roundup.

Either way, keep up the good work!

I’ll be a reader nonetheless 🙂

All the best,

YOUR NAME

Simply send an email like this to every roundup creator you can find.

Big hat tip to Robbie Richards for showing me this strategy in this article.

14. Repurpose Your Content and Tap Into Other Traffic Sources

When most people publish something, they send it out as a one-off article, video, slideshow, etc.

A blog post is a blog post.

A Youtube video is a Youtube video.

A webinar is a webinar.

In reality, one piece of content can be repurposed into dozens of other content types.

And guess what?

For every type of content, there’s a new source of traffic you can tap into. 

Here are 4 ways to repurpose your content and take advantage of different channels:

1) Turn Your Blog Post Into a SlideShare Presentation

SlideShare allows you to upload presentations, PDFs, and/or documents to be shared publicly or privately.

The site gets over 60 million unique visitors per month and 215 million page views, so it’s a lucrative platform.

The process of uploading a presentation is straightforward, but here are some tips to keep in mind:

1. Make your presentation 800X600 (or 10.67in by 8in) to fit in the SlideShare screen with no black edges. (Thank you, Ana Hoffman.)
2. Include clickable links and images (with CTAs) in your PowerPoint presentations. Make sure your links are in the center of the slides, because SlideShare reserves the left and right areas for people to click forward and backward in the presentation. This HubSpot article notes that if you put your links on the sides, they won’t work. Keep them in the middle part.
3. SlideShare doesn’t allow links in the first three slides, so put them on the fourth slide and beyond.
4. You can’t include live links in the description, so paste your URL in there with a call to action.
5. To maximize view potential, this article says to upload your presentations at 11PM EST (8PM PT). This way, it’s uploaded right after SlideShare changes its Top Presentation of the Day, and you have 20 or so hours to collect views and possibly get featured.
6. Include clickable social icons on the last slide to share your presentation.
7. Google can crawl the transcript that’s displayed below your presentation, so optimize your presentation like you would any other page or blog post. Keywords in the title, body, etc.
8. HubSpot says to disable SlideShare’s option for viewers to download your presentation as a PDF. That way, their only option to get more information is to follow the CTA to your website.
9. Ana Hoffman also notes that you can re-upload your presentations if you notice a spelling mistake, want to change your CTA, or make any other changes. You won’t lose your views, settings, etc.

Simply take the main points of your blog post, put them into a clean presentation, and upload it to SlideShare.

Then promote the presentation exactly like you would a blog post.

2) Turn Your Presentation Into a Youtube Video

This one is simple.

Simply take the presentation you made, spruce it up with background music or a narrator, and upload it to Youtube. There’s your video.

3) Turn Your Presentation Into a Webinar

Webinars almost always involve slides of some kind. They’re easy to follow and they help attendees retain the information.

You’ve already got your slides ready to go. You know the information. Now all you have to do is promote your webinar and get people on there.

Combine this with a special offer at the end and you could generate leads and close sales as well.

4) Turn Your Blog Post Into an Infographic

Infographics are great. You can learn a lot in a short amount of time and they’re highly shareable.

Usually, the only thing you’re missing to create one is the information. Lucky for you, since you wrote your blog post you already have the information.

Now you just have to create one or pay someone to do it for you. If you’d like to pay someone, head over to Elance or a related service.

If you’d like to create an infographic, I personally love Canva for all of my custom image needs.

To drive traffic to it, Reddit, Google+ communities (discussed next), and LinkedIn groups love infographics.

15. Google+ Communities

Google+ communities are similar to LinkedIn groups.

They’re collections of people who discuss and share content about a certain topic.

If you’re creating amazingly useful content that these people will love, you’re doing them a disservice by not posting it in these communities.

So here’s how to do it:

First, head over to Google+. Hover over the “Home” icon and select “Communities” from the dropdown menu:

In the box where it says “Search for communities” type in your niche or a keyword related to your content and hit “Enter.”

This will bring up a list of communities related to what you do. Join all of the ones that apply.

Next, head into one of these communities, check out the discussions going on, and decide if your content would be a good fit.

Here’s why you want to be picky:

When you share something in a community, it shows up on your profile as well. So if you post the article in 5 communities immediately, it shows up on your profile 5 times in a row.

This looks spammy and can deter people from following you and clicking to your website.

To avoid this, you want to pick the best fitting community first and share your content there. Then, a few days or a week later, when you have some more posts on your profile, share it in a different community.

Be picky and move from the best down. Then rinse and repeat this process to bring in consistent traffic.

16. Quora — A Little-Known Long Term Source of Traffic

Quora is a Q&A site.

(Like Yahoo Answers, but more modern.)

People are constantly asking questions and providing answers to every topic under the sun.

Each question starts a thread, and these threads can stay active for months (and sometimes years).

They continue to get views. They continue to attract new answers.

And they can continue to send traffic your way for the life of the thread.

That’s Quora’s hidden traffic generation power.

Take a look at these stats from one of my clients:

Quora is our second highest source of social media traffic and our fourth highest overall.

But here’s the thing:

We haven’t done any active traffic gen on Quora in the last 2 months. Yet it continues to bring in visitors every single day.

This also means that the more you implement the strategy I’m about to teach you, the more your traffic will grow exponentially.

You can’t say that about many other traffic sources.

Let’s learn how to do it:

First, head over to Quora and create an account. Beef it up with the topics you’re an expert in, a bio, your description, etc.

Find the search bar and enter in a keyword related to your content, products, services — whatever you want to promote. (Note: Content works best because you’re providing free value.)

Go through the threads and give in-depth answers to people’s questions. The more value you provide, the more they’ll trust your expertise.

At the end of your question, simply link to a place on your site where they can get more information. It could be a piece of content. It could be a product page. Anywhere they can read more about what you’re discussing.

Here’s an example:

Notice how I lead into my content as a natural place to get more info? That’s what you want to do.

Simply rinse and repeat this for as many answers as you like. Always genuinely help them with their problems and present your content as the ultimate solution.

See the full Quora thread here for a better look.

17. Use Content Locking to Get More Social Shares

You’ve seen me use this once in this post, and maybe you even clicked on it.

Social content locking hides a valuable piece of content from the reader. In order to gain access, the reader must share the article they’re reading. Example:

It’s a good way to provide value to readers over and above what the article offers, and for you to get some more social love. Win-win.

For WordPress, the Social Locker plugin is by far the easiest solution to make this happen. (If you don’t use WordPress, there might be other alternatives you can try.)

18. Triberr

Triberr is a platform for sharing content with other bloggers.

The concept is based around reciprocating and sharing the wealth. The more you share other people’s content, the more likely they’ll be to share yours.

To get involved with Triberr, simply head over to the site and make an account. Then, go to the “Tribes” page and use the “Categories” dropdown to find tribes related to your niche:

Join as many as you like.

When you’re in a tribe, you’re either a “Follower” or a “Member.” You want to become a member in order to get your content shared.

Some tribes have specific rules and some let you become a member right away. Make sure to read the fine print.

To take full advantage, simply hop on for 5 minutes a day to share other people’s content, and when you publish something valuable, request a promotion.

19. Blog Commenting on Steroids

If you’ve been around the SEO space at all, you’ve heard of blog commenting as a link building strategy.

You’ve probably also heard that it’s a low-quality one that isn’t worth pursuing anymore.

This might be true, but in a relationship building and traffic generation sense, blog commenting can still be a viable strategy — if you know how to get the most out of it.

I use this strategy to drive traffic, stay up to date with my favorite blogs, and build relationships along the way.

And I get these opportunities sent directly to my email inbox daily. All I have to do is click and leave a comment.

Let’s see how this is done:

First, make a list of your favorite blogs, and make sure they get a good amount of traffic.

Here are some of my favorites:

• Backlinko

• Matthew Woodward

• Copyblogger

• Unbounce

• Robbie Richards

• Quick Sprout

These are some of my favorite blogs for a reason. They’ve taught me a TON.

But because they teach me and thousands of other people valuable information, they also get a lot of traffic.

If you leave one of the first comments whenever blogs like these post articles, you can drive a solid amount of traffic for little work.

But you can also begin building relationships with these people, networking, and ultimately forming mutually beneficial partnerships. The benefits go way beyond traffic.

Once you’ve got your list, head over to Blogtrottr.

Blogtrottr allows you to set up an email alert that notifies you every time a blog publishes an article — as soon as it’s published.

First, create an account so you can set up multiple feeds. Then click on “Subscribe to a new feed.”

Next, you want to find the RSS feed URL for each site on your list. To do this, go to one of the sites, add “/rss” or “/feed” (no quotations) after the URL, and hit enter. This will usually redirect you to their RSS feed.

Grab the URL for that page and enter it into Blogtrottr. Set the schedule to “Real Time” so it emails you the moment a new post enters that feed.

After that, you should be good to go!

This will set it up so you never miss a blog post. They will arrive in your inbox ASAP so you can leave one of the first comments.

Now, when these opportunities enter your inbox, head over there as quick as possible.

Read through the article and leave an in-depth and insightful comment. Don’t just say “nice article.”

Remember: You want click-throughs to your site.

You want to blow people away with the knowledge you’re dropping. This will also help you stand out to the blogger, and if you end up leaving a relevant link to your site in the comment, it will have a much higher likelihood of being approved.

That’s it!

The more you do this, the more traffic you will drive.

But what if you don’t make it in time to be one of the first comments?

Here’s a sneaky trick:

Just reply to one of the first comments.

20. Host a Forum on Your Site

Forums get a TON of traffic.

They provide a sense of community and offer a valuable place to learn and get help from other people. It’s no wonder they’re some of the highest trafficked sites on the web.

You can grab some of this traffic for yourself by hosting your own forum.

Especially if you’re in a unique niche (or are presenting yourself as a unique part of that niche), this can be a great way to keep people on your site longer and spread the word about who you are.

The only question is, how do you set one up?

One of my favorite bloggers, Matthew Woodward, put together a fantastic step-by-step tutorial on how to do this.

Take it away Matt:

Case study/tutorial — http://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/tutorials/why-you-need-a-forum-how-to-add-one-to-your-wordpress-site/

21. Social Media Strategies to Get More Shares on Your Content

It’s no secret:

Social media networks are some of the best traffic sources.

They’re some of the most visited sites on the web, and they’re especially adept to spreading valuable content.

But there is an issue.

These sites are crowded. They’re overflowing with updates, tweets, content, links, promotions, deals — anything and everything.

To stand out, you have to do everything you possibly can to get more social shares.

I’m going to show you three of my favorite tips to do just that.

1) @Mention and Tag Influencers

In the outreach strategies strategy (#1), you saw how powerful it can be to tap into an influencer’s following.

This tip is another way to get on their radar and make yourself known to them.

Whenever you share an influencer’s content, make sure you tag their Twitter handle or “+” them on Google Plus.

This will send them a notification that you’ve shared their content. The more you do this, the more they’ll see that you’re one of their top promotors.

This makes them much more likely to check out your stuff, read your emails, and share your content.

2) Use Hashtags to Extend the Reach of Your Tweets

#mondaymorningcoffee

#ilovebasketball

#ballislife

These aren’t the types of hashtags that will grow your business. But there are definitely some that will.

Adding a hashtag extends the reach of your tweet to people who might be searching for or browsing that hashtag.

The key is using hashtags that are popular in your niche (not random thoughts like the ones above).

I typically go for ones like these:

#Marketing

#ContentMarketing

#LeadGeneration

They’re general terms that are popular in my niche. So when you share your content, include 1-3 hashtags to get more eyeballs on your tweet.

3) Add Click to Tweet Links in Your Content

You might have noticed that I included a button like this after each strategy in this article:

That button is actually a link that automatically pulls up a window to share this article on Twitter.

Including links like these throughout your content can increase engagement and social shares above and beyond standard share buttons.

To do this, head over to Click to Tweet and create a “Basic Link.”

You get to pre-populate the tweet that pops up when someone clicks the link, but the person can edit it how they wish before sharing it.

I suggest including these components in the pre-populated tweet:

• The tweet itself
• Your Twitter handle (so you get a notification when people share it)
• 1-3 popular hashtags in your niche

Then sprinkle these links throughout your content.

What To Do Next?

As you begin implementing them, these strategies are going to help you drive more free website traffic.

But there are a lot to try, so it can be tough to get started.

I suggest picking one strategy to start with right now.

Seriously.

Pick a strategy and implement it right now. Post your content in a LinkedIn group. Reach out to someone for a social share. Set up your Twitter automatic DM.

Take some sort of action that will get you closer to your traffic goals. Then comment below and tell me how it went.

After that first step, the floodgates start to open 😀

…But Before Driving Serious Traffic, Make Sure You Avoid This Costly Mistake:

If you liked the article, I put together a special bonus for you.

This bonus is going to help you avoid one of the biggest mistakes I see people make when driving traffic:

They don’t optimize their site to capture emails before traffic generation.

Why is this such a costly mistake?

Because, on average, around 98% of your visitors won’t convert right away. This means you’re missing out on potential leads, sales, and customers.

Even if you’re not ready to sell to them yet, having an email list is a major asset:

1. These people share your content and help you drive traffic.
2. They provide valuable feedback about you, your products, and your services.
3. You can develop real relationships with them. They’re often the people you help out the most.
4. When you’re ready to sell, they’ll be your most enthusiastic customers.

I wrote a book entitled The Content Marketing Guidebook.

It’s arguably one of the most in-depth and actionable content marketing guides out there. (It’s a step-by-step process, just like these strategies.)

I am offering “Chapter 10 — How to Capture Traffic and Build Your Email List” to you for free:

(I was going to write up a separate document, but I figured giving you this chapter will be more helpful. And you also get a sneak preview of the book.)

I can’t stress how important it is to optimize your site to capture emails, before actually driving a serious amount of traffic.

You can fully optimize your site within a half an hour, and you will reap the benefits for the life of your website.

To download Chapter 10 of The Content Marketing Guidebook — “How to Capture Traffic and Build Your Email List,” simply click the button below:

Enjoy 😀

Any questions or comments about these strategies? Let me know in the comments below.