Every content creator’s goal is to drive more traffic to their content. We see fellow bloggers getting hundreds of thousands of monthly visitors, and we want in on the action.
But are you actually ready for that surge? Are you prepared?
It’s something most content creators don’t think about. Many people think that their brands will reach the upper echelons of success if they get a massive surge in blog traffic.
Did you ever think of what would happen if you got a surge in blog traffic? Let’s say Gary Vaynerchuk did everything in his power to promote your content to his community. You’d get a massive surge of traffic for sure.
But what happens if that traffic fades away? Do you still have a way to communicate with your audience? Or have you lost all of that traffic?
Most people only think about getting more traffic. If only they had more traffic, they’d be more successful.
That’s not real success, especially from the content brand side of things. All of the top content creators know that you need two things to become successful.
Traffic and conversions.
You can get millions of visitors every day, but if you convert none of them, then you’ll be out of business in no time.
It’s natural for us to want to boost our traffic. More people see our content, and that creates more possibilities with word of mouth.
However, you also need to convert your visitors into subscribers. As you communicate with your subscribers through email, you will significantly strengthen the bond you have with your audience. Your subscribers are the people most likely to spread the word about your brand and buy your products.
Traffic comes and goes, but subscribers continue paying attention to what you offer. And getting an email subscriber is different from getting a social media follower.
On social media follower, millions of people (billions in Facebook’s case) are competing for a single user’s attention. On Twitter in particular, logging in a minute later versus a minute earlier will determine which tweets you see and which tweets you miss.
Inboxes may get filled with about 100 emails per day, but that definitely beats competing with the billions of social media posts that come out every day.
And we love checking our inboxes. The instant gratification is too tempting to resist. We are addicted to our inboxes because we remember the best things that happened to us in the inbox.
My mind subconsciously thinks of moments like when Seth Godin said he’d like to be a guest on my podcast. I don’t open my inbox and consciously think, “When I opened my inbox a while back, Seth said he’d be a guest on my show. This email must be just as good or even better.”
But our subconsciouses think that all of the time. They want that instant gratification. Even if you don’t find something as good as one of the best email you received, you still feel good about marking the message as read.
People don’t have the time to mark every social media post as read. That’s why you need to turn as many of your social media followers, readers, listeners, and viewers into subscribers as possible.
To hone in on this mindset, the big step is to determine your landing page and site wide conversion rates. If you get 100 people to visit your landing page, how many of them do you expect to convert? If you get 1,000 people to visit your website, how many of them become subscribers?
When you’re thinking about these questions and optimizing for higher conversion rates, you’re almost ready for traffic.
Even at this moment, you’re not 100% ready for a surge in traffic.
The final step to ensure you’re ready for a surge in traffic is setting up an autoresponder that leads to product sales.
Yes, the money is in the email list, but if you don’t have an autoresponder, you’re not making money. Sure, there is always the possibility of you promoting an affiliate offer or one of your products later on.
But you need to make money with your autoresponder…especially if you want to earn the right to use Facebook ads.
I’m always testing different approaches with my autoresponders. My favorite approach is to send three emails containing free content and then 3-4 emails promoting the product. In those free content emails, the content is related to the product I’ll sell shortly, and I do some soft sells in the postscripts of some of those free content emails.
Once you get some sales, you’re in business. At that point, you’re ready for a surge in blog traffic.
But even when you’re ready, you’re still not done.
You can run A/B Split Tests to boost your landing page and site wide conversion rates. Once tweak to copy can boost your conversion rate by 10%. To put that into perspective, if you attract 1,000 people to this new and improved landing page, you’ll get an extra 100 subscribers.
You can then optimize your autoresponder. See which messages perform better than others. Tweak the messages which are under performing.
Finally, we have the sales page, the one thing I didn’t talk about. If you get product sales, you have a sales page that converts. However, is it converting at 1%, 2%, or something much higher?
Track the number of people who visit your sales page and see how many visitors buy your product. It’s easier to do this on some sales pages than others, but it’s well worth the effort.
Try changing one thing. Whether it’s the copy or the promotional video you use, make something different. See how that affects sales.
If you can double your sales page’s conversion rate, then you’ll double your income. You also double your income if you do just one of the following:
Double your blog traffic
Double your conversion rates
Double your autoresponder’s effectiveness (sometimes an effective follow-up is all you need, but look at all of the messages in yours)
In Conclusion
If you take action based on this blog post, you’ll be ready for that surge of traffic. Until you are ready for the traffic, stop reading those “How To Get More Traffic” blog posts.
You need to be ready for the surge in traffic. Now’s the perfect time to prepare.
What are your thoughts on the prep work for a successful content brand? Do you have any tips for us? Do you have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below.
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