Hey, it’s Marie Forleo and you are watching MarieTV, the place to be to create a business
and life you love.
And this is Q&A Tuesday, but it’s a very special Q&A Tuesday.
You know why?
BAM!
I’ve got a guest here, and my guest is one of my very close friends and someone who is
just so smarty pants.
You’re gonna love him, Mr. Derek Halpern.
Hey, thanks for having me.
You’re welcome!
So Derek is the founder of an incredible site, SocialTriggers.com, and he is known for his
insanely practical advice that’s also backed up by psychological research.
In addition to his blog, which is read by tens of thousands of people every month, he’s
also got an incredible podcast on iTunes and his own show called Social Triggers TV.
So he is a busy guy.
So, once again, I’m so pumped for you to be here because we’re gonna do a question
that we get asked a lot and I’m gonna read it out loud right now and then Derek is gonna
tap that A to that Q, which is kinda naughty but y’all know what I mean.
Alright, so here’s the question.
Today’s question comes from Nirvana and she writes: “Hi Marie.
First of all, you rock.
Your upbeat attitude is contagious and you actually make me excited about marketing.”
Woo hoo!
“Here’s my question, for someone who is just starting an online business, in my case
health coaching for young busy women, what are some key action steps I should take to
generate traffic to my website?
I’m not a fan of blogging, but if you tell me I have to do it, I will oblige.
Thank you so much Marie.”
So that’s Nirvana’s question and, again, Nirvana is asking, and I know you’re gonna
answer that, but we get so many people that write in about how do I generate more traffic
to my website.
So what do you think?
You got some A’s for us?
So I would imagine a lot of those people also don’t wanna blog that much.
So good news is, a lot of people when they start thinking about a blog, they think they
have to work for their blog as opposed to letting their blog work for them and they
think they have to slave over writing content day in and day out.
But when you’re first getting started building traffic, you don’t really have to do that.
Really?
Yeah, all you have to do is maybe write one or two articles a month and then promote the
heck out of those articles.
That’s all you’ve gotta do.
And then people will start thinking like, “What do you mean promote the heck out of
these articles?
Wouldn’t people get sick of those same articles?”
Right.
But when you’re first getting started, you publish an article, it’ll get, let’s say,
100 readers.
And what if that article is applicable to one million readers?
Right.
Why should those other 999...
I’m bad at math...
Yeah.
No, I get you.
...people miss out on that article?
Right.
So that’s the first tip is to just write less, promote more, and then you won’t get
stressed out about blogging.
I think that’s so interesting and I really, really appreciate you saying that because
I know, for me, when I first started out I certainly fell into that trap.
I wanted to write a lot and even though I consider myself a writer, it was a really
kind of heavy thing to do.
And I love that framework of thinking about you created this amazing piece of content,
let’s get it out to as big of an audience as possible.
So it’s more about quality rather than quantity is what I hear you saying.
Yeah, and a lot of people will think, “Well, is it too late to do that?
Because there’s too many blogs out there.”
And I just launched my site, Social Triggers, and in about 13 months using that same exact
strategy, I was able to attract 27,000 subscribers by updating an average of 2.5 times a month.
That’s why I love you, because you’re smarty pants and you get it done.
Ok, so that was an awesome tip.
What else can we do to generate traffic when we’re first starting out?
So, the next tip is before you build an audience, you need to know who you want sitting in the
chairs.
Ooh!
That was a good one!
And a lot of people don’t really understand that, and to really nail that home I wanna
just share a quick story.
Yeah.
So a few months ago I decided I wanted more massage therapists to read my site, Social
Triggers.
I figured they needed tips about email marketing.
So, what did I do?
I wrote a story about a massage therapist, hooked it into email marketing, and then I
decided that I wanted to find more massage therapists to read my site.
What did I do?
I found massage business communities, I reached out to the people who were in control of those
communities, and I said, “Hey, I’ve got this great article that I believe your people
would love.
What do you think?”
Turns out that I went viral in the massage business communities.
I got a ton of traffic, I had an email from the editor in chief of a huge massage magazine,
and I actually got offered a free massage in, like, 42 states.
That’s amazing!
Yeah.
So you’re gonna be a very relaxed guy in addition to having lots of business.
Unfortunately I didn’t bookmark those, so... but when it takes it back... let’s take
this back to health coaching.
Yeah.
So a lot of people when they wanna build their blog, they’ll think, “Alright, I’m a
health coach.
Let me find other health coaches that blog also and I’ll try to get featured on their
site.”
Right.
But that’s kinda lazy and a little bit dumb because that health coach is competition.
Right.
Why would they wanna feature someone who’s competing with them?
So instead, you wanna reach out to people who you want sitting in your chairs.
Right?
So in the health coach example, you’d wanna reach out to mommy bloggers or daddy bloggers
or maybe even a fashion blogger.
And what do you wanna tell them?
You wanna say, “Hey...” let’s say you’re reaching out to a fashion blogger.
You could say, “Well, I love that dress.
Here’s how to fit into that dress before the summer.”
Awesome.
Now you’ve connected health to fashion.
Fashion people will love it, they’re gonna wanna feature you because it’s not competition.
You’re helping their readers buy that dress that they just promoted and you’re gonna
be able to benefit.
Another extra smart tip, you are just full of them Derek.
I love that one.
Do we have anything else?
Because you gave people...
I mean, if they follow these two tips alone, their traffic would skyrocket.
But I know you, you always got something else.
This is my favorite tip and I tell everyone to do this tip and it’s so simple.
People are always shocked that it works.
When I give a presentation at a conference, I had people come up to me after the presentation
and were like, “Derek, I can’t believe I never thought of that before.”
Love stuff like that.
So this tip is what I call The Drafting Technique.
Now, before I tell you what that is, let me just give you a little back story.
In racing, like NASCAR racing or bicycle racing, you’ll find that the person in first place
is often trailed by the person in second place.
They’re right on top of each other, you think, “Oh my God, what if he hits a bump.
He’s gonna crash.”
Right.
And so they’re so close.
Why do they do that?
Well, turns out the person in first place is breaking air friction and that air friction
creates a slip stream, which means the person in second place can slip in behind that person
and maintain the same speed while expending less energy and less fuel.
Right?
Now what does this have to do with getting traffic?
Right?
So what you do is, instead of finding someone who has never talked about what you’d like
to be featured for, find a blogger that has never talked about that before, what you wanna
do is you wanna reach out to someone who has a history of covering what you want to be
known for.
So let’s say you’re a health coach again.
Right.
And let’s say you wanna be featured on a fashion blog.
Find a fashion blog that has given weight loss advice in the past and reach out to them
again with a follow up.
And what you’re doing is you’re taking advantage of what I call the link slip stream.
They already have a history of linking it, there’s no friction, linking to weight loss
advice.
Right.
And now you have the ability to get featured for the same thing.
So incredibly smart and I remember watching a particular presentation about PR and it
was similar advice and I thought it was, again, so, so wise.
If someone covers a particular kind of story, it doesn’t mean that, oh, they’re done
with that.
It actually means, oh, they’re more likely to cover that again, which is good news for
people like you and I.
Yes.
Exactly.
Really, really smart.
And I’ve got a bonus tip, actually.
About 8 years ago John Stone went on his journey from flab to fit and he documented every step
of the way on his website.
John Stone Fitness actually.
And he took a picture of himself without his shirt on when he was a really flabby guy and
he documented what he ate, his workouts, and he took a daily picture.
And after about 3 months, as he started losing weight, as he started getting fit, he started
to blow up in the bodybuilding community.
Why?
Well, because people like to watch and join in on other people who are going on journeys.
And the reason why they like to do that is because it makes them feel like they’re
going on their own journey.
So even though John Stone was getting fit, they felt like they wanted to get fit.
It was inspirational for them, so they wanted to also join in and also get fit just like
him.
Right.
And to really think about that, you could think back to Forrest Gump when he started
running across America and as he started running, as he started going and made it halfway or
whatever, and then people started joining in with that trail that he was running on,
then more people joined in, and more people joined in.
Before he knew it, he’s got an army of people following him as he’s running across America.
Right.
The same can be done online.
Now, you might think, “Well, aren’t these weight loss stories a little bit overdone?”
Not really, because people always need that inspiration to keep losing weight.
So, in the health coach situation, let’s say you’re already extremely fit so you
can’t go on that journey yourself.
You could take one of your clients on that journey, you could even offer one of your
clients free health coaching in exchange for ongoing feedback and progress that you can
then publish on your site.
So it’s a way to reenact that in today’s times.
Love it.
Derek, you are so incredibly smart.
I just wanna say this, Derek has given me advice on my business and every time you give
me a little piece of feedback and we implement it, it always works and we always make more
money and we always reach more people.
So I really, really appreciate your insight and thank you for A’ing the heck out of
Nirvana’s Q.
Thank you for having me.
It was fun.
Now Derek and I would love to hear from you.
So you’ve got a little choice on this one, there’s two challenges.
Pick whichever one you want.
The first one: if you want more traffic to your website, you’ve gotta go out there,
take a look at a blogger who has an audience that you wanna reach, and send a simple email.
It’ll take you two seconds, go send an email to that blogger right now, then come back
and let us know that you did it by leaving a comment below.
The other option is this: you might have some ideas that you wanna share with us about traffic
generation.
Ideas, tips, strategies that you use that have worked.
As always, all the action is happening back at MarieForleo.com, so go there and leave
a comment now.
If you like this video, subscribe and share it with your friends.
And if you want even more great resources to have a business and life you love plus
some personal insights from me that I only share in email, get your butt over to MarieForleo.com
and sign up for email updates.
You’re gonna love them.
Stay on your game and keep going for your dreams.
The world needs that special gift that only you have.
Thank you so much for watching and I’ll see you next time on MarieTV.