What if you could drive so much traffic to your website you would have to make sure you don’t crash your servers?
Or, more specifically… What would happen to your business if you could drive 150,000 visitors…. in a 24 hours period?! (Yes I just said 150K in 24hrs).
The other day I had a wonderful conversation with a incredible Reddit marketing genius who has done just that.
Not only did he get over 1,000,000 visitors to one of his sites, but he has done it over, and over, and over again. 150K visitors in 24 hours, and 10K visitors in 30 minutes! All with $0 of ad spend!
His name is Brian Swichkow, and you may know him by the guy who pranked his roommate with Facebook ads on an epic level.
In this conversation, Brian laid out some very important strategies for generating insane traffic, of which I will share with you in this post.
So lets jump on in!
Limited Time Bonus: Get the Reddit engagement checklist + the one hour private video chat with myself and Brian. Click here to download.
Limited Time Bonus: Get the Reddit engagement checklist + the one hour private video chat with myself and Brian. Click here to download.
How Brian Got 150,000 Visitors in 24 Hours…He Gave
Several weeks ago, I saw Brian had posted a screenshot of his realtime visitors and I knew I had to talk more about it.
Over the course of 24 hours of launching his gifs store he had already got well over 250K visitors!
Brian was super awesome and spent over an hour chatting with me (you can get the video here) going over the things that led to his success.
Here is the biggest thing I learned…
If you want serious traffic, be human.
I’ll explain…
Think of your best friend right now.
Yes, I mean really think of that person right now. :)
Now, why are they your best friend?
Maybe it’s because they understand you better than anyone else?
Or, because they relate to you like crazy?
Or maybe, life is just better when they’re around?
All of these have one big thing in common…
Your best friends LISTEN to you.
They are showing they care and value you simply by listening to you.
That’s exactly the approach you have to take when developing relationships on forums, or frankly any marketing medium.
A lot of marketers manipulate their audience to get more traffic, conversions, and sales.
But, why not simply be transparent and honest when you build these relationships.
No one likes talking to a robot.
Just.be.human.
How to really listen.
Neil Patel said it beautifully, “Listening is hard work because true listening requires you to respond to every interaction – no one like being ignored.”
Listening requires interaction and engagement.
For example….
Often times you’ll find people asking for help on some topic.
So show them you are listening and engage them in a human conversation by simply… answering their questions.
Another way to look at engagement is giving, giving and more giving.
But there’s a catch…
“A gift with conditions isn’t a gift…. it’s a deal.”
When it comes to Reddit/forum marketing, people don’t like ‘deals’.
When I first started trying to figure out forums I looked at my content to see what subreddit it fits into and then post it there, or just try to keep posting it over and over with a different headline… but thats so wrong! Trust me.
So is there a method to the madness?
I asked Brian what he thought the number one contributing factor to his Reddit success was and he response was awesome!
“Donald Trump is campaigning to say, ‘I am a person who can help you.’ His campaigning is about him.
He (Donald) is trying to campaign to get us to elect him to do stuff for us, VS. Reddit is us getting you to do stuff for us, which is how it should be.
On Reddit everybody gets together as one, and anyone who tries to stand in front of the community, and says, ‘Let me be the leader’, or ‘Let me leverage this for me’ is totally shot down.
It’s so democratic that it rejects the idea of an individual leader.
Anything that I do when I’m focusing on Reddit (which is a lot of what I do) is focused entirely on bringing benefit to that community.
If I benefit after thats fine, but they need to be the overwhelming benefactor.” ~ Brian
Brian Swichkow
Reddit, forums and other mediums you can market on are the exact same… you have to give, give, give.
If members of Reddit smell any sort of pitch or salesy crap you will be shunned! You have to sell without selling.
Here are some basic guidelines when building relationships on Reddit or other forums:
These are some simple things to do that I learned from a mixture of Brian Shichkow and Neil Patel.
Note: While Reddit does suggest that 1 out of 10 be a link to your stuff, some moderators (the people over the subreddits) will not allow any. Which is a another great reason to ‘listen’ to each subreddit and learn what they like.
Again these are just guidelines, but seriously, give and add value.
BUT…. There can be a down side to so much giving, so you have do it right and in the right way.
Why?
Have you ever seen a guy in a tv show try to give so much that he came on too strong? Brian said it like this…
“If you give too much too fast in a dating capacity, people are like, ‘You’re trying to get something from me.’ It’s a balance, and you can’t overwhelm people.
You have to go at their pace, which means you have to know what their pace is. [You have to actually listen to them.] You start giving so much that it’s obvious that you are trying to get something from them. Again, it’s for them and their benefit.” ~ Brian S
Brian Swichkow
So How Long Should I Interact With Reddit Before I Do Any Self Promotion?
Here’s the thing….
Every community and medium is different.
In email marketing it might be a week.
With Brian, and his post that got him 1,000,000 visitors, he only engaged for a little over a month before posting his own content.
With another niche I’m working in (DIY nutrition), it seems to work well if I do a self promotion post in the forms every 4 – 6 weeks.
Here are some engagement guidelines Brian laid out for himself before he first promoted himself on Reddit:
Funny things happen when you give… in the right place at the right time.
Brian said something I thought was brilliant!
“I like to give publicly and pitch/ask privately” ~ Brian
Meaning He would give a ton of value on Reddit, and he shares his successes (i.e.. traffic amount, etc…) in other places like his Facebook page or something. And that’s where the magic happens!
When other people see your success they always want to be apart of it, or want you on their team so they can partake in a similar success.
For example….
He got over 1,000,000 to see the success of one of his posts, and around 20 contacted him for potential work. And now, almost a year later, a partnership was struck that is going to be huge for him. And remember, that post already made him $545,000+ from consulting opportunities.
Another example would be my list. Basically, I announced my coaching service (teaching traffic generation & conversions) & no one bought. Seriously, no one.
But!…. Once I started giving value, and more value, within a week well over a dozen people contacted me.
The idea is this… when you give so much value for free, your audience will be like, “OMG! If they are giving me this much value for free, just imagine how much value they would add to my business if I actually paid him money?!” ~ Brian
So just give, and hold nothing back!
But how do I know what content or value to give?
I look at [it] in reverse. Most people create something and try to market it and get traffic to it. I think of it in the opposite direction. I think of what people want, whether or not I want to create it, and if the answer is yes, then I do [it]. And people will share it naturally.
You take a group of people and say, this group of people that shares something so intimately in common, this mind set of, ‘this is what they love’, and figure out what idea do I have that fits that, and then you build it for them.
Brian Swichkow
This is very similar to the idea of, find a market with a problem and then solve it.
If you recall in the Tim Ferris’ method of learning, Meta Learning, sometimes reversing things can make it more effective. In one of Brian’s recent posts he said, “Don’t sell something and build a relationship with your customers.”
“Think of what builds the relationship and they will sell themselves.” ~ Brian
This comes back to listening to and understanding your audience.
Rounding it up
Listen. Learn. Give feedback. Comment. Share. Add value in anyway possible. If all you do is make some one smile that day, that’s enough. =)
If you want to learn more from Brian, you can watch the whole video chat we had + get the checklist of the key elements for engaging on Reddit for maximum effectiveness. Click here to download.
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