No, I haven’t gone off the deep end. I’m a huge advocate of smart social media marketing. But, I got a great email from Neil Patel of Kissmetrics a few days ago with the subject line, Wasted. These emails are not published anywhere. You have to subscribe to Neil’s personal brand newsletter. So, I asked for permission to share “Wasted” with you. As with most of Neil’s emails, it is jam-packed with information that you can easily and immediately put to use.

Enjoy! And, be sure to use the link at the bottom to subscribe to Neil’s newletter…if you aren’t already a dedicated fan like I am.

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Hey Lydia,

Here’s one of the downsides of working in social media like Twitter and Digg and Stumble Upon and Facebook… You sometimes feel like a whirling dervish don’t you?

Like you’re just jumping from one project to another project to another project… and it doesn’t feel like you’re getting anything done.

Well, today we’re going to make that kind of thinking a thing of the past.

You’re going to learn the 2 biggest ways people waste time trying to grow traffic and what you should do instead.

These tips might sound simple… and that’s because they are. But while your competitors are looking for the newest or “most underground” way to build traffic… you’ll be steadily increasing it day after day after day…

And the best part is… a good deal of this can be automated

BIG DARN TIME WASTER #1

By far the biggest time sink people experience (including huge corps — they might be the worst at this) is coming up with new and good blog topics.

Here’s the deal: STOP. Stop wasting time trying to generate ideas on your own.

Instead, create an Excel spreadsheet that lists all your competing blogs. Then list out the blog posts they’ve published in the last few weeks along with how many tweets/facebook likes those posts got. If they don’t have Twitter or Facebook buttons you can find out how well that post did by typing its URL into twitter.

This shows you exactly what your target traffic WANTS.

And then that’s what you give them: once you see which posts did the best, you can write content related to those topics and they’ll typically preform well.

Not only will you avoid wasting time on content your market doesn’t care about… but is also increases your chances of writing a big hit.

If someone just read an article about Topic X, then chances are they’ll be interested in a related article as well (especially if it builds on or goes contrary to the original article they just read). Just think about the dozens and dozens of articles that got written after Steve Jobs passed away.

Let’s say your competitor’s most popular article last week was about “7 Common Headline Strategies.” Clearly your audience is interested in headlines, so you could build on that by promoting your own article on “7 Common Headline Mistakes.”

And that’s all there is to it. Of course, it will take some work to get the relationships that help this… but that will come with time.

Now, I understand this is dead simple. But hopefully you understand it’s also a systematic method for building content your audience showed it WANTS. You’ll know exactly what your market wants. You’ll consistently delight them with content that satisfies those desires. And you’ll be able to do it quickly with no stress.

People often ask me how I come up with my blog ideas… how I can keep writing for as long as I have… and how my articles get so popular.

Well, now you know. I consistently give my audience content I know they want. And I can do it quickly and stress-free, so I never burn out. This is exactly how I grew my blog. It got me far. It’ll probably do the same for you

BIG DARN TIME WASTER #2

Another way people waste loads of time is link building.

(In case you’re new: link building is important because it’s a huge factor in search engine optimization.)

Your competitors are probably trying to build links by emailing websites they think should be linking to them. And they’re doing this with absolutely no way of knowing how likely they are to get it.

Here’s a better way: why not search for websites who LIKE linking to other sites and email them a link request?

For example if I am looking to build links to my Las Vegas website I would search for websites that talk about “Las Vegas” and have a links page.

Here’s the search command I would use on Google:

intitle:”las vegas” inurl:”links”

For each result I found, I’d send a custom email to see if they would be interested in linking to my website.

I know this sounds like a tedious task, but you can get ~ 10-15% of the websites you email to link back to your website. And on average you can typically hire a college student for 10 dollars an hour and have them send out at least 100 emails in an 8-hour period.

That means I roughly pay $6.67 to $10 a link, which is a GREAT deal for links of that quality.

Again, that’s all there is to it.

Don’t let the simplicity disappoint or fool you. The key to traffic victory doesn’t lie in doing things that are hard or take a long time. It’s about following a straightforward plan.

Now you have one.

Last thought.

You can generally tell how much of an expert someone is by how well they distill their methods.

If someone teaches you something and it sounds really complex, they probably haven’t taken the time to think through how to boil it down. Be careful with folks like that. There’s a difference between being good at something and being good at teaching it.

I am doing my darndest to make this easy for you to learn… and the biggest reward is seeing my readers get results. So take action right now… and then hit reply to let me know what happened so we can celebrate together.

Talk soon,
Neil

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