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005: Corbett Barr of Think Traffic | How to Get Traffic for Your Website or Blog
Hey everybody, this is John Corcoran and welcome to the smart business revolution podcast episode number five in this episode I talked to Corbert Barr who's the creator of a website called think traffic net He's an expert on how businesses can attract more traffic to their websites or blogs online and convert that traffic Into dollars in the door, so let's get going You say you want a revolution the revolution, it's going on right now Welcome to the revolution the smart business revolution podcast your source for how to grow your small business without working 24/7 now now your host for the revolution John Corcoran Welcome to the show Corbett and thank you so much for taking time to talk to us Thanks, John. Glad to be here. Great. So let's just dive in with a basic explanation of why traffic is important obviously it's important and Then we can get into a more deeper dive explanation of some of the techniques and tricks that you talk about on your blog So why would you say that it's so important to focus effort on generating traffic? Well, and maybe just to take a step back even further for people who are not really familiar with the online world When we say traffic, we simply mean visitors who are coming to your website or your blog or whatever it is that you have online so traffic is first of all a flawed topic or a flawed name I think because when you call it traffic instead of calling it Visitors or people coming to your site then sometimes it can sort of take the human aspect out of it And we'll get into that in a minute because that's really at the underpinning of what we talk about it Think traffic and my philosophy to growing traffic, but traffic is important because I assume that if you're trying to build a business Or you're trying to build some sort of movement or interesting project online It is important to you to have people who care about that project and support that project or business So without traffic really, it's just you writing something on your blog for example and having no one come to visit that And that's usually not the goal that people have when they create an online project I'm glad that you pointed that out that you know the pejorative traffic kind of It separates the humanity from it and you know if we were operating a physical store and people were walking in the door You you know you'd obviously treat each individual like a human being but by using the term traffic It's almost like people forget that that each visitor each reader each person who visits your site website or blog Is a human and you got a treatment such? Yeah, and that's really the I think that's the first step in creating a high traffic site Is realizing that there are people out there and that you have to be serving those people you have to be Giving them something that they value if you want them to visit your site And I think that's a great segue to the way that you that I've read that you've broken down the elements of traffic on Your site think traffic that net and and you basically broke broke it down as number one focus on writing good content and Number two meeting and interacting with readers number three connecting with other bloggers and online entrepreneurs Number four giving people a clear clear reason and easy way to subscribe for email updates and finally kind of a A larger one finally settling setting goals working hard challenging yourself trying new things So I want to break down each of these so starting off first It's kind of funny, but as far as the good content element goes you're known for coining the term epic shit Which I think should be an urban dictionary if it isn't already so can you explain what that is? Yeah, so You know first of all even even beyond epic shit, which I'll talk about in just a second Your blog in general and not just each individual Piece of content, but your blog or your website has a job to do and that is that when someone comes to your website They're thinking to themselves. Maybe not literally, but they are thinking to themselves Why should I spend any time on this website or blog when I already know that there are hundreds or thousands of other ones out there That I visited and that I like and visit regularly so you're already sort of you know walking here you have an uphill battle and You have to answer that question very quickly and and the best way to answer that question is to show someone that you have Something of value that would be helpful to them and you have to do that very quickly and very concisely So one of the best ways to do that and to reiterate that is to create Epic content and by epic content. I mean the kind of content that stops and makes people think it Has the potential to help people get results or even change lives. It really rises above just being oh, that's nice Dear, you know, I read this this blog post and I moved on it reaches out and grabs someone and really tries to make a positive impact In their lives. So I encourage people to aim for that sort of epic level of content And if you create that epic content that really actually makes an impact on people Then that's how you can win fans for life and that's how you can rise above the noise of The hundreds of millions of blogs that already exist out there that are probably just publishing mediocre content on a regular basis That's a great way of framing it. So How do you do that without I'm sure this is a longer discussion, but how do you write? Content that is going to be memorable. It's going to stand out. That's going to be really good without Devoting your lifetime to writing these sorts of things. I mean it seems that it could you could devote weeks and weeks to every blog post How do you balance? You know the amount of time that it takes that it would take To put this kind of stuff up well a couple of things and unfortunately there aren't a whole lot of shortcuts so first off if if you're new to blogging and You're new to writing as well if you don't have a background as a writer or as a communicator of some sort then it's Not realistic for you to expect to be able to create epic content on a regular basis the very first month that you start a blog for example Or if you're running a YouTube channel or if you're doing a podcast like like you're doing now, John It takes some time to learn and the good news is that you can learn over time But you shouldn't put these expectations on yourself that you're going to be world-class right out of the gate so the first step is to looking at this as a longer-term proposition and Really being in it to grow over time and and just to challenge yourself and to make sure that you're improving every week the second thing is that You said, you know, how can I do this without spending hours and hours and hours or weeks and weeks on each blog post? I think a lot of people don't spend enough time on each blog post and and maybe they Decide that they want to produce content three times a week and they just spend a couple hours on each and they're spending a lot of time on their blog But it's sort of distributed over a number of different thoughts and in many cases those people would be better served by scaling back and putting more effort into each individual piece of content and really crafting that content so that it does have an impact on their readers and then the third thing is that you have to Try to create something that is unique and powerful and not just a regurgitation of what other people are already doing it's really easy to sort of go and read other blogs and and You know find out what other people are doing and then sort of mimic that on your own site but a lot of times you're just sort of in the echo chamber that you know other bloggers might read your blog but you're not going to Really reach out and and touch the individual readers that you want so think about how you can do something unique and often that needs to start from actual experience that you've had or Actual experience that you can create in your life or by doing original research or by looking back at very At the source of some research as opposed to using other blogs is the source of your research because those are often third or fourth hand Conversations that are already going on so you need to dig deeper you need to find out the psychological studies You need to find out the origin of the thing that you want to talk about and use that as the foundation of your post instead of just You know regurgitating like I said, so it's interesting what what you're talking about could be Could be could apply to other forms of writing as well such as maybe journalism school And the importance of doing original research the importance of doing interviews and incorporating that into your writing But one of the things that I've been struck with as I my blogging career has evolved over the last couple of years is I particularly had a background as a full-time writer and I'm a lawyer now, so I do a lot of writing and Yet I've been struck with how different writing for the online world is from every other different kind of writing. Can you talk a little bit about? The ways in which writing for the web writing for a blog is different from other types of writing Well, I mean obviously it's different than then writing a book right because People are in a hurry when they're online and and you don't have time to sort of tell your entire story people are sort of coming in you know coming to your blog in midstream so if you think about your entire blog is this giant conversation that's going on Someone's going to be coming in mid conversation. Maybe they're reading just your latest blog post because someone shared it on Twitter or Facebook And no one would read a book that way. They wouldn't just jump into the middle of the book They would start at the beginning and they would have a whole lot of information Before they got to those middle pages So you always have to keep in mind that people are coming from the outside and that means that you have to sort of Give them cues as to the overall value of your blog and why it might be for them Even though they're jumping into that conversation in midstream So you can do that in a number of ways you can obviously do that with the title of your blog with the Tagline with what you put in your sidebar with the way that you guide them through your blog But also within each individual blog post Sometimes you need to give a shout out to the new people who are reading your site And I do this on a regular basis and you also need to sometimes repeat yourself and whatever it is that you figure out is your main value proposition It's not uncommon to see Bloggers who are at the top of their game Repeating that over and over again just because the existing readers that they have and new readers who are coming in probably need a reminder about what that is That's great. And so the second element that you talk about is meeting and interacting with your readers And you also talk about including replying to every email you receive Why is that important to get to know your readers and respond to all the emails? Well every person who spends time online knows of Dozens and dozens and dozens of websites if not hundreds or thousands of different websites, and it's really hard to stand out One of the best ways that you can stand out is by literally making a personal connection with someone And I've seen this in action a couple of times I learned this from people like Seth Godin Gary Vaynerchuk and Chris Gillibo Who spend a lot of time replying to individual readers? In fact, they might spend the majority of their day doing that and I wondered why they did that and at some point I you know, I had written all three of them and they had all gotten back to me and and One person in particular Chris Gillibo became a friend of mine because I met him in person about three and a half years ago He had a meet-up for readers of his blog in Portland and that was my first exposure to these sort of in-person meetings for bloggers and I met Chris and and we kept in touch and one time he was in San Francisco and I went to see him speak at a book signing event and there were about a hundred people who came out in San Francisco to see him talk And he had been on a tour of every state in the United States and all provinces in Canada So he was on this 63 stop tour and in every city he went to he was able to get people out so imagine he was in Iowa and other small places and he was able to get people to come out to his book signing event and While he was talking in San Francisco He actually asked me to come up on stage because someone asked a question that he thought I might be good at answering so I came up on stage and Sort of unexpectedly and then fumbled out my answer, but while I was up there I asked everyone it was sort we were sort of talking about this very topic that you asked about John and while I was up there I asked everyone I said how many people are here how many people who are here have had a one-on-one connection with Chris either in person or because he responded to an email or because you've talked to him on Skype or because he's Responded to you on Twitter or Facebook or something and ninety nine percent of people in the audience raise their hands So there's this powerful thing that happens when you connect with someone one-on-one And you're much more likely to create a true fan out of someone the kind of fan that shows up to a book signing event The kind of fan that buys a product that you produce the kind of fan that tells the world about what you're doing because they are now in the inner circle They're a friend of yours They're not just an anonymous reader on a website, and that's really part of that humanizing aspect that we talked about at the beginning Right, and and you also draw the distinction between this kind of reaching out and building relationships with the readers from Your next element, which is connecting with other bloggers and online entrepreneurs, and I know for me This is this really resonates with me because I really blogged in a vacuum for my first couple of years and only past years So I recognize the importance of this reaching out to other people who are blogging or have online Businesses so can talk a little bit about how that's influenced your career and how that's influenced Careers of those you've coached or you've taught Yeah, absolutely so As we talked about at the beginning visitors are humans and they don't just come out of thin air, right? So the people that you want to attract to your website are already hanging out online somewhere If they're not hanging out online, then you then you have too much of an uphill battle, right? You're not gonna convince people to come online So so narrow things down to the you know three billion or so people who are already online So your job is a blogger or website owners to figure out Where are people hanging out online who might be interested in what I'm doing and how can I get in front of them? They're where they're already hanging out and then bring them back to my website So so one obvious way to do that is by interacting on social media Right because Facebook has a billion users and Twitter has a hundred million users or something So it's clear that you can get on Facebook or Twitter and interact with people there And then some of them will find out about your website and come back So that's one way to do it and that that is an effective way to do it, but a more effective way to get really strongly Related users people who are really interested in what you have to offer because Facebook and Twitter is a very you know They're very generic platforms, and there are a lot of people out there a better way to find targeted visitors people who will resonate with your message is To identify other blogs and other online properties that are very topically related to what you're doing So for example, John you're you're blogging about smart business and small businesses There are blogs out there that talk very specifically about small business For example, you could talk about copy water. This is one of the biggest ones out there They talk about copywriting and it's generally aimed at the small business owner So if you were to become friends with Brian Clark for example or Sonia Simone one of the people who run copy blogger and interact with them Then that relationship that friendship could turn into an opportunity to get in front of the audience at copy blogger In my case, I have become friends over the past few years with people like Pat Flynn who runs the smart passive income blog with Adam Baker from man versus debt with Leo Babouta from Zen habits and a number of other people who run big popular websites and I've done that simply by reaching out to them and offering to help them out in some ways or by attending in-person events that they held or that someone else held where we were able to talk and form a mutual bond around Interest and passions that we had not around networking in the old sort of business-y sense, right? I found that people who operate online and who operate small independent businesses are much more likely to Connect on a one-on-one friend level than they are to connect with people who are out merely for the business benefits for the networking So I always try to put friendship first and then of those people that you naturally connect with and naturally become friends with It's natural to want to know what's going on in their life when it comes to business and these conversations happen about about business and Opportunities come out of that you first, you know offer opportunities up and then other people tend to you know want to return the favor And so that's why I focus so much on interacting with other bloggers and other entrepreneurs partly because of the opportunities, but also partly because In this world if you really want to succeed because there are so there is so much competition out there And it does take a while to actually find success online you need to surround yourself with other people who are in the same on the same journey Who will tell you that you're not crazy? Because you're you know the people in your life that aren't working online probably are thinking that you might be a little crazy for doing it Right, so you need to find people who are going to tell you that what you're doing is perfectly normal They're in this at the same time. They're going through the same struggles and that's where those friendships become really important to lean on That's great and you hit on something you mentioned That when you approach these relationships, you were sure you were certain to offer something initially to to give something in and Recently I heard someone analogizing it to networking in person where if you meet someone and they're immediately trying to sell you on You know life insurance or something like that Rather than offering something It's going to turn you off right and and and it's kind of similar in the online world When you're meeting someone through email or through Twitter or Facebook or a comment on a blog If you're if you don't come with that offer first if you come with trying to take something out of the relationship It's going to turn people off Yeah, I mean especially for busy people so you know if you're talking about someone who is well-known It's likely that they're getting Dozens of emails from people that they've never met every day who are you know asking for something asking for advice asking for promotion of something that they've done and You know, I'll tell you if I if I don't know someone and the first time that I meet them they ask for something You know they sort of Go into a special place in my mind, right? Which is that these people are just out for themselves and don't really care about me personally So you kind of have to rise above the noise of all of the requests that people are getting and one good way to do that Is first of all to customize the message that you send very much for the person that you're writing You don't want to just send out blanket emails to dozens of people that are the same and expect to get a bunch of results back so for example if you were writing Chris Gillabow who's very popular and very busy what I would do is read his blog first of all and Find out what he's up to so I know that Chris just held this conference called the World Domination Summit I might read in his latest blog post that he's about to head off to some interesting place in the world because he travels a lot so find out what country he's going to and Think about the things that you know the knowledge that you have and how you might be able to provide something of value to him That doesn't require him to do anything So for example if he went to if you saw that he was going to Barundi or something and that was some place that you had been to Then you could reach out and say hey Chris I just saw that you're about to take this trip so-and-so to such-and-such place I've been there before and I have a cousin that lives there and he would love to show you around But if not I also have this list of great restaurants that I went to I'm going to include that for you here in case You have time to go out to a restaurant So get someone's attention that way by just offering them something and it doesn't have to be you know It needs to be the kind of thing like I said where they don't have to take action in order to receive that thing Because if you say if you write someone and you say hey, you know, hey Tom I am a web designer and I would love to help you out sometime if there's anything I can do for you Just let me know well if I'm Tom, you know, I'm very unlikely to say hey, you know It would be great If if you could you know redesign this portion of my website and whatever I want things that are going to be make my life easier not more difficult So if I don't know you I'm not going to take you up on that offer essentially So it needs to be very well defined if you're going to come up with something to offer someone and it should be small But meaningful, you know, because like I said It doesn't take a whole lot necessarily to rise above the noise of all of the solicitations that people are getting But it does take a little bit of thoughtfulness and make sure that you direct it Specifically the person that you're writing and not just in in a blanket form. That's great advice So I wanted to move along to the another element that you talk about on your blog Which is giving people a clear reason an easy way to subscribe for email Updates, so first can you talk a little bit for people don't have an email list or don't understand the importance of email list So why that is important to offer that on your site and so prominently? Yeah, well once you Get people to come to your website and then you work hard to engage them and and convince them that your website is worth coming back to you need to have some way to connect with that person because if they if they just leave and Haven't made some sort of online connection with you it's unlikely that they're going to remember tomorrow that they ever visited your site first of all and Second of all the name of your site and how to get back to it, right? So there are a number of ways you can do this Obviously you could connect with people on Twitter or Facebook or you could have them subscribe to your RSS feed but those channels to me are very crowded because the average person might be following thousands of people on Twitter and you just end up going into their overall stream and and sort of become part of that noise on the other hand email is Still this sacred place. I know that people like to say that email is dead You know regularly, but the fact is it's still alive The fact is that most people have an email address if you think about when you sign up for Twitter Facebook It asks you for an email address, right? So everybody has an email Address and everybody spends time in their inbox and the inbox is more of a sacred place. It's less likely to be as cluttered So if you can get in front of someone in their inbox, it means that they have said, okay, John is worth Letting into my inbox the sacred place and it's much more likely They're going to see the messages from you John when you write them So that's why we focus on email. I think it's a great way to grow an audience online And it's a great way to connect with more deeply passionate readers than Twitter or Facebook or something like that so you need to convince people that it's worth signing up for email updates and That comes down to giving them a clear reason to subscribe for me for example over at sync traffic the reason that people should subscribe to think traffic is because we have a series of Valuable subscriber only videos that we've created for people so we give them a literal reason to subscribe sign up And you'll get access to these videos. The other thing is that you need to give them a clear place to sign up I noticed that a lot of people have their email subscription Options buried and they're very difficult to find on on a site We make it very clear we put those in a number of places on our site so that when someone comes It's very clear how they can sign up for email updates That's great, and obviously building an email list is a lot longer discussion But do you have some thoughts on that on just how you continue to other than physical placement on there? Do you have any additional thoughts on? you know ways in which You can get people move people toward your email list or is it you know is it mostly a design issue? I guess is what I'm asking or Is it other other components that go into it? Yes combination of things, but I would say that the biggest I mean definitely need you need to have good placement You know it needs to be obvious and and you need to prioritize that in terms of the the amount of things that are on your website You need to prioritize the the inbox prioritize the email list for your visitors, but It I think mostly comes down to the value proposition that you're making so if you just say sign up for email updates Then people don't know why they would be signing up. What am I getting? What's you know how am I being updated? Are you going to bombard my inbox? Why is there value that sort of thing? so you need to be more specific about it and you need to think about the value that your blog offers overall when someone comes and Then for people who want to take the next step who want to go to the next level How can you help evolve that relationship by letting them into your inner circling and to go deeper? so how can you deliver more of that value proposition that your blog is offering overall and then make sure that the copy the You know the text surrounding your inbox your email sign-up form is very clear about the value that it's delivering Great and so now the final element that you've talked about in depth on your blog is About setting goals and challenging yourself and trying new things in order to engage more and bring more readers to your side Can you talk about this last element? Yeah, so we got into this a little bit earlier on and that is that you know if if you wanted tomorrow to become a Eyed jumper You wouldn't expect to become world-class in a few months, right, but for some I'm really good at the high jump But I'm kidding for you or something But if you wanted to try something that you hadn't done before you wouldn't expect to be world-class in a few months But for some reason when people start a blog They expect for some reason to be in you know the running for world's greatest blogger in the first You know six months or something and they sort of set their goals They set their goals unrealistically, I think and so for me It's actually an exercise of thinking about blogging or thinking about your online business as a long-term goal for yourself and you have to show up every day you have to commit to Actually doing the thing that that your business or your blog it sets out to do a lot of people start a blog They blog for two weeks consistently and then they give up and it becomes a ghost town So you know first of all you have to commit to showing up on a regular basis and not only to showing up But you also have to challenge yourself because I also see people who do show up every week But they get locked in this groove where they're doing the same thing over and over again every week essentially the same Type of content the same voice the same length the same research techniques the same topics over and over again and Somehow they're expecting to get different results and to suddenly break out or be discovered And I think that's what Einstein called the definition of insanity right doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results So you have to challenge yourself to get outside of your comfort zone I know that it's painful every week to come up with a new type of blog post or to you know interview someone new or use a different type of You know a different style maybe write something longer or something shorter or try video or try audio or Find your voice in a different way that it's challenging to do that, but it's critical to your success To challenge yourself every week and to try things different until you find something that works And then once you find something that works and something that people seem to resonate with and they get shared more often online And that attracts more visitors then explore that thing deeper, you know and and dive into that and And you know see that through and then go back to challenging yourself Sort of once you've exhausted the possibilities of that thing that worked for you Great, and you know I did I recently did some work with a business coach And I found it incredibly useful because it was about making yourself accountable to someone other than yourself And I know a lot of people talk about the value of either having someone like that or a business partner Sometimes serves that role or a mastermind group where you're accountable to others Have you used any of these types of techniques or do you recommend these types of techniques in order to keep yourself accountable in a way to others? Yeah, definitely the one that I have used and the one that I recommend most is the mastermind group and Mastermind group is just a small group usually, you know, two to five people Who are all working towards similar goals? They don't have to be working towards the same topic But for example, you would find a few people who are all working to become professional bloggers or who are working to create a startup and you would meet on a weekly basis and You would meet over the phone or in person if it's if it's possible and Basically, you would spend the time talking through issues that you're going through and Getting feedback from the other people in your group and at the end of that each week you would set accountability goals for you to accomplish over the next week and at the beginning of your next call or your next meeting you go over whether or not you met those Accountability goals and you do that very publicly and you tell people whether or not you made those goals why or why not? Did you make them and also in some cases you might have a penalty or a reward for accomplishing or not accomplishing your goal? That's a great way of summing it up. So I we went a lot longer than I expected to and I apologize for that, but I've really enjoyed Listening to you and talking with you and I want to wrap things up But before I do I want to make sure everyone listening knows how they can learn more from you Corbett And I can say that I am planning on taking your how to start a blog that matters course Which can be found through I think how to start a blog that matters.com. Is that right? Yeah, that's right That course basically just a 13 week step-by-step Action plan for creating a blog that that rises above the noise and helps you stand out and it becomes a foundation for a business or or an important online project or movement and You also have some other online courses as well, and you can be found at think traffic.net and Corbett bar So our B-E-T-T-B-A-R-R calm and and anything else that you're working on as well It if if people find me there they can they can follow the thread and they can also reach me directly I'm very easy to get a hold of and on either of those sites that you mentioned you can find my contact information Well, great. It's been very informative. I appreciate you taking the time Corbett So much for having me on John and good luck with this project. Thanks. Thank you for listening to the smart business revolution podcast With John Corcoran find out more at smartbusinessrevolution.com and while you're there sign up for our email list and join the revolution Revolution revolution and be listening for the next episode of the smart business revolution podcast You [BLANK_AUDIO]