Many of our IMU posts are specific to various social media channels (such as Instagram) driving traffic to your capture pages and/or website/blog. We have talked about those channels as well as other ways to find traffic like user forums and question and answer sites; this post will dive a little bit deeper into how to drive traffic to your website using more advanced strategies.
This is YOUR business. There will be no one else working as hard as you are to drive traffic from any and every source out there at your disposal. You have only one chance to make your business everything that it can be, this means you must use every day as an opportunity to get as much traffic and attention as you can. Let’s face it; there is a LOT of competition out there. In the case of a direct seller, your competition works for the same company! How will you stand out in a sea of many? What can you do to attract attention to YOU, the brand?
This week’s blog post is all about targeting influencers and gathering attention for your business.
This post will give you proven campaigns plus several different marketing models which you can copy and paste to use for your business.
Let’s get started.
Send free samples to Instagram influencers
For a long time, Instagram was overlooked as a viable marketing channel to monetize. However, let’s look at a few Instagram statistics:
Top brands on Instagram are seeing a per-follower engagement rate of 4.21 percent
All of the usage stats are only as valuable as the engagements that they bring to brands; which is what makes this stat, from a study conducted by Forrester, so significant. The 4.21 percent engagement rate caused Forrester to dub Instagram “the King of social engagement.”
Instagram’s per-follower engagement rate for top brands is 58 times higher than on Facebook and 120 times higher than on Twitter.
These are powerful statistics and one that simply cannot be ignore!
From our own experience with Instagram at Intentional Marketer University, we find that it generates more leads and questions than Facebook, as well as Twitter.
Not only are Instagrammers more receptive when you are using it properly, it is a great method to drive traffic back to your blog or website. When you throw into the mix the ability to target influencers and you will have an unstoppable machine!
In this example, let’s imagine that we are selling health and wellness products online. How would we get attention for your blog and products?
- We will start by looking at popular accounts on Instagram that would consider featuring our products to their thousands of followers.
- We will find popular accounts in the health and wellness niche, by visiting a website like WEBSTA. WEBSTA lists the most popular Instagram hashtags and users. By typing in “wellness” in the search bar, you get to see both the most popular related hashtags as well as users who have “wellness” in their usernames or bios.
We might also check out WEBSTA Hot, which features the most popular hashtags trending now.
By searching through WEBSTA we discover Instagrammer Katie. She is definitely an expert in her field as she is busy hosting podcasts, blogging, and other writing. Her Instagram handle is @wellnessmama, and she has about 24,000 followers.
In her bio, Katie features a link to her blog, wellnessmama.com. You can find there all sorts of advice on wellness.
More importantly, you can find all of the different ways to get in contact with the “wellness mama”. It lists both and email and a contact form from which you can initiate contact.
Targeting Instagram influencers is a big deal. You can easily get in front of hundreds of thousands of people simply by targeting the right influencer.
Here is another option:
- Check the “popular page” which contains photos that are trending and have thousands of likes.
- Look for photos related to your industry and click over to the user’s profile. Look for additional contact sources and a way to get in touch.
For example, here’s how that might look if you sold oil-related products.
Keep in mind, that if a popular account has contact information such as an email address, it usually means they are open to product placements or partnership opportunities.
It is important to be strategic when reaching out to influencers in your niche. Not every Instagram user with a lot of followers is willing or even interested in featuring products from other users.
Remember, you are looking for a synergistic relationship. This means you will both benefit from a working relationship; a give and take!
Reach out to bloggers and press
When you are creating a traffic sanctuary, you should be open to the thousands of other people you can reach out to: bloggers, vloggers, and press, for example.
Depending on who you locate, the size of their audience can be thousands or hundreds of thousands. Reaching out to them is similar to making contact with social media influencers.
- Begin by simply by looking for them on Google.
- Sites such as Feedly.com are excellent sources for trending blog material. Start a search on Feedly.com and find the most popular blogs in your industry. You can also locate trending topics by viewing Facebook trends as well as Twitter trends.
Use the Contact Guide to reach out to these trending influencers.
- On Youtube, try keywords: “wellness advice,” “wellness tips,” and “holistic care.” The next step would be to find the home page of the YouTube account and reach out to them using the contact guide as well.
Have fun with this process! Play around with different keywords and you might find a plethora of people that work full and part time reviewing products for YouTube. By doing this, you stand to get in front of thousands of subscribers.
Using the Press
Another solid method for getting traffic is landing your business in the press. You may not get covered by large newspapers and websites, but if you can tell a unique story or share your product in an interesting way, you do have a good chance of being featured by local news sites and community newspapers. If you reach out to a press source, be sure to tell them about what makes you different. Keep it short, sweet, and to the point; pitching yourself as a local success story.
Just as it would be with an Instagram personality, getting coverage from a popular blog, vlogger, or a press source can drive thousands of dollars to your business.
Note: Do not feel like you have to target the biggest and most popular people. Your chances of getting featured are better for people with smaller audiences, because they’re not constantly swarmed by people who are looking for a feature. For example, make a conscious decision to target YouTube vloggers with smaller audiences. Keep in mind that the loyalty of the audience matters almost as much as its size. Remember that you are targeting your ideal customer. Bigger does not always mean better.
Post your website to reddit
It is probably safe to say that most of the users on the internet have visited reddit at least once. In addition to the main homepage, which groups the most popular content, it also has thousands of niches called subreddits.
Let’s take our example of health and wellness using reddit:
- Find a subreddit on nearly any subject, for example: /r/wellness, or/r/health.
- Let’s look at the/r/wellness We will find tons of conversations happening around wellness routines, foods, mind body connections, etc.
Take a look also at related subreddits like /r/beauty 
Keep in mind that reddit is not a blatant sales marketplace; like our other traffic sources, you should be posting valuable content here and include a link back to your website or blog in addition to including your information in your bio on reddit.
Get friends and family to share
If you are interested in using Facebook to promote your online business, there is a way you can do this without being hyper-aggressive or too salesy.
You can easily share your information about your online business using Facebook.
Reach out in a targeted way to your friends and family without risking irritation. On Facebook, start talking about your business in an update.
Be strategic here! You are an online business! You are not just slinging skinny wraps as a green level distributor, or selling protein drinks as a level 1 distributor. This is YOUR business, YOUR brand!
There are correct ways for talking to your family and friends:
- Don not focus on the ask on getting them to buy your products.
- Instead offer them free samples of your product. (they are your loved ones, right)?
- Ask them to share the business address (use your own website/blog, NOT your replicated website from your company in the case of direct sellers) with their networks.
- Ask for this favor once. You will have a good rate of success and sufficient momentum to keep a regular stream of customers.
Pro-actively engage on Twitter
You don’t need to start selling products before you engage with people on Twitter. There are a lot of ways to get on the radar with your cool new business!
Whether you are selling your own products, or selling products for a direct sales company, remember that you are the brand. YOU are what makes it cool!
First, generate follow-backs by following select people on Twitter who you believe will be interested in your business. These include entrepreneurs and self-declared (your niche) enthusiasts.
A useful tool that you can use to find relevant users is ManageFlitter. Sign in using Twitter and create a free account. You can find users to follow based on information in Twitter bios, and may other options that are available.
Follow a disciplined tweeting strategy; Engage very pro-actively with people who send tweets about the industry and community. Tweet often about what your business is doing, what you are doing, what is on the horizon, and building anticipation on a daily basis. You can tweet as often as every 15-30 minutes. Each tweet moves very quickly through the user newsfeed!
Here’s the central strategy: Search Twitter for keywords related to your business and then look for chances to help people or add value in a way that lacks a sales pitch. Let people discover themselves why your tweets are valuable.
Write a blog post featuring people with audiences and send it to them
“Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.” – Dale Carnegie
What is the ultimate strategy for getting traffic? To answer this, we have to go back to basics and reach out to people with a large audience: Bloggers.
If you can’t afford to send free samples, then reaching out to a blogger could be your strategy.
Follow these steps:
- Find an influential blogger in your industry. You can do this by reviewing the influential users on Instagram, Facebook, etc. Most likely they will have a link in their profile.
- Write a blog post about the blogger.
- Find the bloggers contact information on their website. Email them your article before you publish and let them know when you will be posting it. Invite them to read and share your article to their followers.
Don’t be too obvious when trying to attract their attention. As long as your posts are thoughtful, informative, and well written, they will be flattered. Your main goal is to have them share your work with their audience.
So there you have it! These are researched, tried-and-true strategies for gaining the attention of your niche influencers, and using it to your advantage.
If you’re interested in learning more about doing this yourself, be sure to check out our course in IMU: Influencer Marketing; Getting Traffic Through Influencers.
