Welcome to the Revive Traffic Challenge!
Who else loves a good challenge? I promise this is going to be worth your while.
If you’re reading this post, I can tell that you’re one that:
- Wholeheartedly believes in your content, even if it may not be reaching your ideal audience yet.
- Truly cares about your content, and know that it deserves to be seen by the right people.
- You’re a fighter. Instead of giving up on a “dead” website, you’re continuously looking for ways to improve. And that’s the spirit!
- You’re willing to put in the work if it produces results.
As a content creator, at the end of this post, you’ll be armed with the knowledge on:
- How to get that traffic you deserve, while promoting and supporting brands you love!
- Getting brands to share your post on their social media
- Earning a backlink on their websites
- Getting your story featured on bigger name publications showing off how cool you are
- … And in return, getting backlinks + a whole new audience going gaga over you/ your work!
BONUS: You can even grow your social media following this way!
When it comes to growing backlinks, I’m sure you’ve heard that doing outreach is part and parcel of it.
When you think of outreach, do you imagine devoting hours and hours of time wondering:
- who’ll even bother linking to your site;
- how to make your post compelling enough to earn backlinks;
- writing a super in-depth, 5000-word research-backed article;
- and then reaching out to each and every prospect to beg them for a link on their page?
Well, my friend, I’m here to show you how you can drastically reduce the time, effectively using this time instead to earn the backlinks you deserve!
This technique will not take more than 1 hour of your time, I promise.
And it has been proven to produce results!
Let’s get right into it, shall we?
At A Glance
Dig out your listicle posts
If you have any listicle posts (e.g. “5 best restaurants in Charleston”, “6 best sustainable products made in Ontario”, etc.) where you’ve mentioned a company, whether it’s a product or a service, open them up.
Create a Google Sheet
Open up Google sheets (not Excel!) and fill up the first row with the headers: Company, Email
Research brands’ respective emails
Go through each post and list all the companies you’ve mentioned onto the Google sheet.
Spend some time going into their websites and pulling out the email addresses that pertain to their marketing or PR department. You can usually find it in the “Contact” page, “Press” page or “Media” page.
Here’s a video walkthrough running through each step.
I know what you’re thinking.. going through all the sites to look for email contacts is time-consuming… especially if you’ve mentioned 101 brands in EACH post.
Well, that’s why VAs (virtual assistants) exist! They simplify your life by helping you with repetitive tasks like that. I can’t emphasize how much delegating work (even a little) made such a difference in my productivity. It freed up time for me to focus on what truly matters for my business.
If you ever need a recommendation, I can send you my VA’s contact who does this exact task for me. Just drop me a message. He’s fast and reliable, and I know I’m putting my money’s worth on him (especially with the return that you’ll get at the end of it). He’ll know exactly what to do to help you out!
Once you’re done collecting all the emails, we are ready to contact them. But wait.. do you really need to send them an email one by one?
Install YAMM Add On on Google Sheet
This is where the magic happens!
With this trick I’m about to show you, you can send bulk emails with just a click of a button, but each email will be sent as if it was sent individually to them. That means that if you have 50 email contacts to send an email to, you can send all 50 emails at once with just one click, and the Add-On will help you send each email individually!
Here’s how.
On Google Sheets, click “Add Ons”, “Get Add Ons.” Search for “Yet Another Mail Merge.” Install it.
Craft a draft Outreach email on Gmail
Next, craft a draft email. Include a mention for them to share it on their socials and if possible, their Press page. End on a united front on how you love to support local businesses/ tourism/ talents.
In essence, here are the 3 main points to include in your email:
1. Open with a compliment. Explain how you’ve enjoyed their product/ service and have delightfully recommended them to your readers.
Make them feel special by telling them why you’re sending this outreach email to this person. Everyone wants to feel that they were carefully selected and not just been added to a mass list (even though you are). This will show that you’ve done your research before contacting them.
2. Get straight to the point about what the whole point of your email is about. That way, the recipient can quickly get an idea on whether or not to continue reading while knowing what is coming.
3. Include a CTA. Share the action that you want the person to take instead of leaving them guessing. If you want them to share your article, state it. If you want a link inclusion on their website, be clear.
By doing this, you won’t just get vague “thank you” replies with no action done on their part.
While it sounds complicated after breaking the email template down, the good news is that once you have a template, you can replicate it across most of the outreach emails you send. This will dramatically help speed up sending these outreach emails!
You can glean the exact template that I use in this video tutorial.
On a sidenote, I’ve also created an Outreach Email Template Bundle, including my secret email templates that i’ve never before shared.
It includes a template of:
- A Backlink Outreach email on how to reach out and get backlinks from other sites
- An Interview Series Outreach email template on how to position yourself as an authority and get interviewed by big-name publications
- An Interview Outreach template on how to reach out to online directory sites and position your site as an authority worth including in their lists
- Product Sponsorship and Brand Partnership email templates that I’ve used to pitch large brands and score experiences like press trips, luxury hotels, tours and other amazing experiences!
With this template, you can easily copy, paste and send it in a matter of seconds!
Grab your Email Outreach Bundle Template here.
Watch the magic happen
Okay, enough of talking about emails. Now that you’re done writing your draft on Gmail, save it and go back to your Google Sheet.
In your Google Sheet, open the YAMM Add On and click “Start Mail Merge”.
It crawls through your Gmail drafts so you can select the draft of your email outreach to be used to send to the selected participants.
Follow the instructions on YAMM. If you’re still confused, watch my video walkthrough here.
The magic that YAMM does is that it sends all 50 emails at one go, each one as if you’ve sent it individually.
Furthermore, it tracks every single Opens, Clicks and Bounced emails under the header “Merge status” that it autopopulates, so you can follow up individually after.
Note that the free YAMM Add On limits 50 emails to be sent every 24 hours.
Now, sit and wait for these companies to start sharing on their company Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram and Twitter accounts, thus giving you extra exposure to their audience!
Follow up based on email status
One week later, look through your YAMM report to see who’ve opened and/or clicked your email, who hasn’t, and then follow up with another email accordingly.
Results from the Outreach campaign
Here are some of the results from dedicating a week working on this outreach project with my VA:
1. Organic Instagram growth
2. Being mentioned on Instagram Stories
By doing this, this exposes my social accounts to their audience, allowing similar audiences (travel lovers) to learn about my profile and connect with me on their own. That’s how you gain real, true Instagram followers and fans in the interim!
4. Potential business opportunities
I’m also now in talks with some of them on additional sponsored collaborations to promote their businesses further on my website.
This was a result I hadn’t anticipated at all!
Who would have known that just doing this would open business opportunities that would otherwise have been non-existent?
Voila! What do you think of YAMM? Did you know such an Add On exists before on Google Sheets?
Now, get crackin’ and spend an hour today working on your listicle posts today!
In my next post, I’ll share more about how to do proper PR for yourself and score interviews in large publications while getting backlinks from them at the same time. Stay tuned!
