How to Use Content to Get More Traffic, Part 2

Celebrity is a Powerful Way to Get People Coming to You

In my last blog post, “How to Use Content to Get More Traffic, Part 1”, we looked at the first way to get traffic by using content.

In this post, we’ll look at some additional ways you can use content to attract traffic to your Web properties.

You know the power of celebrity and being viewed as an expert or authority.

In fact, there is no better way to get traffic, protect yourself from Google, and make easy sales than to be viewed as an authority or celebrity.

To do that you need to be providing amazing and helpful content in a variety of places where it will get seen.

This, in turn, will build your reputation, provide you with opportunities and, most important of all, get you traffic;

The more you build your authority status the more traffic you’ll get to your site.

We can use that fact to be able to generate targeted content that will attract and get traffic; and not only will you get traffic but you’ll get higher quality traffic.

Here’s how to do that…

Give the People What They Want

Another type of content that helps you get more traffic is called by many names “Go to the Pro”, “Ask the Expert”, “The Answer Man”, and other names.

One strong advantage of this type of content is that you’re pretty much guaranteed that the content you create will be of interest because it’s your leads, prospects, and customers literally telling you what they want.

This method is simple in that you provide a method that lets people ask questions and then you answer those questions in a format and venue that is indexed by the search engines, seen by the largest number of people, and brings to you the most authority.

This needs to be a mix of your Web properties — like your blog, your newsletter and your Webinars– and other Web properties.

Places like:

• Other people’s blogs (both in the comments and as a guest blogger)
• Social media and networking sites like Facebook, YouTube, and Scribd
• Review sites like Amazon, Yelp, and others (you’d be surprised at the even greater value of this with Google+ and Google’s Search Plus Your World)
• Answer sites like Yahoo! Answers
• Forums
• Content sharing sites like Squidoo, HubPages and article directories.
• And, of course, more

How to Learn What They Want

Use the Internet to Find What People Really Want to Know

There are dozens of ways to find out what people want to know, here are some of them:

• Your customer support site (don’t forget to mine this for common questions and issues) as well as other people’s support sites (look at their knowledgebase to find out what the frequently asked questions are)
• Your own blog comments
• The FAQ section of larger competitors in your market niche
• Other blogs and forums are great places to find out what people want to know
• Start at places like Google Trends and drill down to find the discussions on the latest trends in your niche
• Social networking sites like Facebook and Tumblr (is this the next big site, I’ve heard that teenagers and early 20-somethings are leaving Facebook and moving to it!)
• Let people ask you by e-mail, make this a formal process and publicize it — this can be done via direct e-mail to a special e-mail address or have a nice form where they can enter their question.

Of course, with e-mail you don’t answer the question directly by replying to the e-mail, you use the various places above to answer and then you can reply with a link to the answer or, as I frequently do, I send it out to my subscribers so that others who might have the same question or issue benefits from it also.

In fact, sometime the question is such a good one that I might add the answer to an autoresponder series.

Oh yes, in addition to distributing the content to one of the above places, I’ll put it in an FAQ section.

Flood the Internet with Your Answers

Remember that every piece of content you create, for whatever reason, is an opportunity to get more traffic and you shouldn’t waste that opportunity; in fact, you can multiply it by distributing it in multiple ways.

For example:

1. Write a blog post
2. Take that post and make a PDF out of it then put the PDF on Scribd
3. Import the text version of the post into PowerPoint to make a presentation which you can also turn into a PDF and put on Scribd
4. Turn on your screen capture software and let PowerPoint auto play the presentation and you have a video for YouTube and other video directory/sharing sites.
5. You could also read the article aloud and add it to the video for a voice over then you can then take the audio and turn it into a podcast.
6. Etc., etc.

Let Them Ask and You Come for Their Cash

Turn Content to Traffic to Cash

As you can see, actively answering questions of your audience can be a powerful technique to get traffic.

You know it is something your audience wants to know about, since they’ve asked, and providing quality and helpful answers starts branding you as an expert.

Of course, most people don’t become instant experts so don’t expect instant results but it’s a tremendous long term strategy.

I’ll end with a personal story on how I’ve used this technique in the past.

Some years ago, in a previous “life” I started answering questions in the main forums in my industry.

I spent a lot of time answering those questions, finding or creating solutions, contributing to the communities, and just generally being helpful and building my street cred.

To keep the story short, ultimately I was writing monthly columns in some of the top niche magazines, I was asked to speak at conferences (both in the U.S. and Europe), I was asked to author or co-author 3 books, I received the primary acknowledgement in a well-selling book in the niche, I was part of the external advisory committee for one of the largest companies in the industry (a multi-billion dollar company) and I was even asked to represent them on an ANSI standards committee.

Of course, I had people coming to me and almost begging for me to help them for big bucks.

And what are those things if they aren’t getting traffic — the magazines came to me, the major book companies came to me, the multi-billion dollar company came to me… and it is so easy to close the sale because they came to you and would do whatever it took to get you to help them.

All that from just the humble start of answering questions and being helpful.

Of course, I wouldn’t have all achieved that quasi-celebrity status without actually being an expert in that market niche but anyone can achieve part of that type of thing by acting the expert even while you are becoming the expert.

Using content in this way can be immensely powerful so bring you hoards of traffic that are already partially sold so definitely add this to your arsenal.

View “How to Use Content to Get More Traffic, Part 3″

Let me know what you think, your great ideas or any questions about using content to get more traffic in the comments below.

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