In this blog post, I’m going to share 11 methods to drive traffic on your blog.

Not ANY traffic…

TARGETED traffic:

…people who will spend time reading your blog posts

…people who will share your blog posts and

…people who will link to your blog posts.

Let’s dive in.

1. Use Your Expertise To Drive Traffic With Quora

Quora is a platform that is growing by the day.

They have millions of users and get literally millions of visitors from Google every month.

If you want to drive traffic to your blog, all you have to do is write a good answer on Quora and link to your article from your answer.

I have written a lot of answers on Quora (you can find them here) from which I still receive traffic:

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The number of visitors might not be a LOT but the quality of traffic is very high. The average session duration for Quora traffic on my blog is “8 minutes.”

Driving traffic from Quora couldn’t be easier.

First, search for categories that your blog comes in.

If your blog is in the personal finance niche, here’s what your search results will look like:

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Now, follow all of these topics and look for questions that don’t have that many answers:

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The best questions to answer are the ones that have a 3:1 ratio for followers to answers.

Answering a question that has 60 followers and only 20 answers is better than answering a question that has a hundred answers.

Don’t worry about linking out to your blog posts in the beginning.

Instead of trying linking to blog posts from every answer, first, write a few answers and then look for blog posts that will be a good fit to be linked to from the article.

For complete guide on Quora Marketing, read my in-depth article on how to get traffic from Quora.

2. Make Friends and Drive Traffic By Sharing Your Articles In Facebook Groups

Facebook groups can be an annoying thing.

People start Facebook groups for everything from parties to one-time events.

But that’s not all Facebook groups are about.

From Personal Finance to building muscle to building websites, you can find a Facebook group in every niche.

All you have to do is type your niche in Facebook’s search box and you will find hundreds of groups:

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These Facebook groups have thousands of members:

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The best way to get traffic from Facebook groups is by becoming a part of the community.

If you spam a group by promoting your blog posts all the time, you will get kicked out.

Instead, join a group, start answering some questions, and then share your content.

You are most welcome to join MasterBlogging Facebook group if you are willing to make connections with other bloggers and add value.

Don’t Forget LinkedIn Groups

In your search for Groups in your niche, don’t forget LinkedIn.

LinkedIn has groups just like Facebook does in every niche.

All you have to do is search for them:

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3. Share Your Articles in Niche Slack Communities

Slack is an instant-messaging application for businesses and teams.

People are using Slack’s free plan to build online communities.

These communities are called Slack communities.

There’s a community for almost all niches.

Look for a Slack Community for your niche on sites like SloFile or SlackList.

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Or check out this massive list of 400 slack communities.

4. Find and Post On Niche Community Sites

Just like there are Slack Communities and Facebook groups in every niche, there are dozens of community sites in every niche where you can share your articles.

Here are some examples:

Growth Hackers – A community for growth hackers and content marketers.

Sidebar – A community for designers and developers.

HackerNews – A community for startups and entrepreneurs.

The barrier to entry with these niche communities is very low.

All you have to do is sign up and share your link.

5. Make It Easy For People To Share Your Posts

Humans are lazy.

If you want people to share your posts, you need to ask them for a share.

Don’t just hope people will copy your blog post’s URL and share it on Facebook and Twitter.

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Give them the option to share your blog posts with just a click by adding share buttons to your site. Use a WordPress plugin like Social Warfare to add share buttons.

6. Drive Traffic From Forums

Although Forums aren’t as popular as they used to be, these sites have hundreds of thousands of active users who come back every day to check what’s new.

Forums can help you drive thousands of visitors to every post.

To find forums, search Google for “Your Niche” + “Forum”:

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Once you find a forum that fits your niche, sign up and start making some posts that add value.

The rule with forums is simple:

If you try to promote your website too much, you get banned.

If you want to promote your website, you need to first build up some respect in the community. Sharing a link to your blog posts on day one is the best way to get banned.

To share your links in a forum, write a summary of your article and then link out to it with text like “Read the full article here.”

7. Mention Industry Influencers In Your Articles And Ask For a Share

Bloggers who are at the top of their niche love to have their ego stroked.

When you mention a blogger in your article, you make them look like an expert.

The best way to get influencers in your industry to share your content is to mention them in your article and then reach out to them for a share.

You can ask for a share by messaging them on Twitter or Facebook. Or with Email or a Tweet.

To find bloggers in your niche, search Google for “Your Niche” + “Bloggers To Follow”:

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Link out to articles written by these bloggers in your articles and then ask them for a share.

A good example of this is in the next technique. I mentioned and linked out to Siege Media.

I will reach out to them after publishing this article.

8. Turn Your Posts Into Videos To Reach People on YouTube

Most bloggers forget about their blog posts after a week or two of writing them.

This is a waste of content that could have gotten you the most traffic.

Instead of writing a new post every time you want to get more traffic, you should instead repurpose your blog posts into other formats such as video and audio.

Here’s a great example of this from Siege Media’s blog:

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They turn their blog posts into videos and upload them on YouTube.

The video in the above screenshot is embedded was embedded in their latest blog post that has the same title:

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They have only started doing this in the last few months and have already started building an audience on YouTube:

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The reason why I like this technique is that it takes very little time and opens door to a whole new audience for your blog.

If you watch the videos Siege Media is publishing on their YouTube channel and then compare them to the accompanying blog posts, you will see that there isn’t much difference in the content.

If you are camera shy, you can also turn your blog posts into audio format and upload them as a podcast episode on SoundCloud or Apple iTunes Podcasts.

9. Get Hundreds of Backlinks and Thousands of Shares By Turning Your Blog Posts Into Infographics

“Infographics are dead.”

If you are active in the SEO community, you will hear it all the time.

And yes, shitty infographics that don’t offer any value are dead.

If you are spending money or time creating an infographic that has already been done in your industry, then you are simply wasting resources.

When infographics were a trend, people over did them so much that their return on investment started to die down.

But there’s still hope…

If you do it right, you can get hundreds of backlinks and thousands of shares.

Here’s a great example of infographics that still work:

The post accompanying this infographic has over 19,000 shares. Think what it can do for your blog.

There are three reasons why this infographic worked for Brian Dean:

It offers a lot of value in a summarized form. It acts as a cheat sheet for On-Page SEO. Brian mentioned other sites in his niche as data sources so that he could reach out to them after publishing the infographic and ask for a share. No one had ever done an infographic on On-Page SEO before.

If you want your infographic to work, make it valuable and add a lot of data sources that you can ask for a share. And most important of all, make an infographic on a subject/angle no one has done before.

10. Don’t Forget One of The Biggest Social Networks on The Internet

Most bloggers don’t use Reddit to drive traffic to their websites.

I will never know why.

Maybe it’s because it can be a little bit difficult.

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Reddit, if you don’t know already, is one of the biggest social networks on the Internet. It is very addictive and has millions of users.

Reddit consists of communities called subreddits. There’s a subreddit for everything from weight loss to anime.

The good thing about Reddit is that it can send enough traffic to your blog to crash your servers.

The bad thing about Reddit is that their communities hate self-promotion.

If you want to promote your content on Reddit, you have to first build up a reputation in the community. Only then are you safe to share your content.

To find subreddits related to your niche, you can use this official list:

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Or you can use the site RedditList:

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11. Use The Secret Weapon Pro Bloggers Use

There’s a tool that isn’t talked about enough in the blogging community.

It’s the secret weapon pro bloggers like myself use to catapult our blogs from zero visitors to thousands.

It’s called Blogger Outreach.

Although it sounds like a complicated subject, it’s a simple technique of reaching out to other bloggers in your industry and asking them for a share.

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Why would other bloggers share your blog posts?

Bloggers who have a large audience NEED great content that they can share with their followers on social media. It develops trust with their audience and keeps them on their audience’s social media feed.

Now, bloggers in your industry won’t share all your articles.

If you want other bloggers in your industry to share your articles, you need to write great content and develop relationships.

I have already written a complete guide on building relationships with influencers using Blogger Outreach.

Conclusion

Stop Procrastinating!

If you are reading this conclusion, then you are probably procrastinating on actually getting people to read your blog.

If you want to grow your blog, you need to start sharing your content right now. It takes a lot of time to build momentum.

Just pick a tactic from the above list and get started.