Check Out, Link Out, and Reach Out – A Simple 3-step Strategy for More Traffic and Better Relationships

There is a simple, three-step strategy that, if followed correctly, will get you blog traffic. More importantly, it will help you develop better relationships with other bloggers and grow your personal network. This easy three-step strategy will bring you opportunities like you never knew could happen. It may sound like I’m exaggerating, but I’m not. These kinds of opportunities are not special… they just don’t happen to people who don’t follow these 3 steps.

Check Out

Check out other bloggers who are writing for the same audience as you. Do a blog search on Google or just type the niche you’re in followed by the word “blog” (I know, ridiculously simple, right?). Another search you can do is “top [insert niche name here] blogs”. Focus on bloggers with more traffic and subscribers than you.

Choose bloggers who aren’t too far ahead of you. You can go straight for the top blogs, but they’re used to people trying to ride their coattails and get their notice. You can still bust through if your blogging is top-notch, but I think you’ll get better results if you set your sights a little closer to home.

Link Out

Now link to these bloggers. When you find other bloggers in your niche who are a bit ahead of you in traffic and subscribers, begin linking to them in your own posts. Don’t do it in a blitz from outta nowhere. Don’t do it in every single post–that comes across as a little crazy. But you can find natural ways to link to a fellow blogger’s posts from your own in relevant ways. The blogger will notice the trackbacks. Your linking helps spread their message, and so they will value you for that.

That blogger’s readers will also click on the trackback links if their curiosity has been aroused by what they read in the trackback text. This is a piece of the puzzle for how this win-win strategy helps to grow your traffic. This is not some cold, calculated, heartless move. You’re extending value and contributing your own value to the post, if you do it in the spirit I’m suggesting. This is the kind of thing spammers don’t understand or don’t care about: they flood a blog with automated spam trackbacks that don’t make anyone curious enough to click on the links (should the blogger fail to mark them as spam in the first place). Your goal is always to provide value to others, because it’s the right thing to do and because it comes back to you in the form of new friends, new opportunities, and new traffic.

Reach Out

The next step is to make contact. Commenting on the blog is the most natural first step in this, and it’s a must. If you comment at least every few posts on that person’s blog, he or she will begin to recognize you and come to know you (again, don’t go nuts with this or you look like a spaz). Provide value to the conversation in the comments. That is your mantra. I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to comment on a post on other blogs, but didn’t, simply because I realized I had nothing good to offer that blogger or the readers.

The next step after that is to make direct contact. Send the blogger you want to reach a direct message on Twitter (if they’re following you back) or contact them through their blog’s contact form or posted email address. Just say hi, tell him or her honestly something you like about a particular post or about what they do in general, and begin to build rapport.

Be yourself, and be honest. This is not about being a phony and just using people (that will get you nowhere). Tell the blogger you’re interested in getting to know more people in your niche and that you believe there can be a mutually beneficial relationship… which is perfectly true. Then, make an offer. Say something like: “If you ever need anything, like a digg or a stumble, just let me know.” Making that offer can often cause the blogger to write back and, before you know it, that mutually beneficial relationship begins to take root.

Don’t assume that because a blogger is “bigger” in name than you are that you have nothing good to offer.
To most good bloggers, great writing and an engaging personality are far more important. You can suggest links for them to include in posts (not links to your own content). You can offer to write a guest post. Maybe even you can engage them in discussions of what’s important to them. Social media voting isn’t the only thing you bring to the table.

Check Out, Link Out, and Reach Out

This simple three-step strategy can guide you to very profitable relationships, opportunities, and more blog traffic if you carry it out in the right spirit. You can get anything in life you want if you help enough other people get what they want.