The Top 7 Strategies That Taught My Elephant To Swim

“What? Has she caught Dean Hunt’s bug?”

No - this isn’t some cute attempt to find a new spin on Buzz Master Dean Hunt’s bunnies.  It’s the title of my entry to Mark Joyner’s Simpleology Best-Seller Blueprint writing contest.  We’re a few hours away from the launch of the program (you can still get a back-door pass to tonight’s teleseminar at http://tinyurl.com/2mj475) but I just checked my entry and can’t believe the number of clicks.  All my hard work is right there in those pretty little numbers (2496).  That means that my video has been viewed 2,496 times!

So how did I do it?

First - let’s take a look at the video:

Cute little entry if I may say so myself.  It’s an excerpt from a story I started writing for my nephews.  The idea came to me one night after watching a special on the Discovery Channel.  I’ll be honest and admit that I don’t remember what the special was about.  It definitely wasn’t an expose on elephants and their swimming habits - that’s for sure.  It may have been the Journey Of Man but I can’t be certain.  All I know is that as soon as I saw those elephants calming walking into a river and swimming to the other side, the story came to me.

I wrote the first chapter in a flurry of activity that night.  And then life got in the way, the nephews started to outgrow cutesy little stories and the idea was filed in my story idea folder.

That is, until Mark Joyner announced his writing contest.  As soon as I saw that the submission could be fiction, I dug out my story, convinced that I didn’t have two minutes of content (I did - I had close to five - there was a quick rewrite to make the entry conform to the competition rules). 

Time was of the essence - I knew I had to record and post the submission quickly or I would lose my nerve.  I also knew that the longer my video was online, the greater the chance it had of being seen.  So within a day of the kick off, I had my submission online - I think I was the third person to have posted a video.  I believe http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVoZC-IM0d4 was there and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfUVYlCPr38 were there before me.  There are quite a few entries now but those are the ones I remember being online when I posted my video.

 The first thing I did was attach my video to Mark Joyner’s video announcing the competition.  In YouTube, you can post a video response to another video.  So I did that figuring that his reach was much larger than mine so my video would hopefully get some traffic from anyone who viewed his video.

But that wasn’t enough.  The rules of the competition stated that there would be three winners: one for “The Funniest Moment In Your Life,” one for “The Most Life Changing Moment In Your Life” and then the one I set my sights on: the most viewed video.  I doubted I could win on content but number of views, that was just a matter of driving traffic to my link.

Now I’ve worked with some great internet marketers in my solo-biz so I had a wealth of strategies to choose from.  I’m also lucky enough to have a mailing list of my own and a blog (well a few blogs!).  So after a day of waiting for the numbers to change on their own, I decided to make an effort to see how high my numbers could reach.

These are the top 7 strategies that helped increase traffic to my YouTube Entry:

1. Tapped my personal contacts: I sent an e-mail out to my personal network (i.e. Dad, siblings and friends) telling them about what I was doing and asking for their support.  I asked them to do two specific things: view my video and forward my e-mail on to their friends and contacts as they saw fit.  One friend wrote back that he had posted my entry on his Facebook profile. 

2. Posted on my blog: Let’s face it, I’m a blogging junkie.  I have about four blogs that I post to daily so I included my entry and details about the contest on each blog.  Actually, on my main blog (Partner For Profits - the one you’re reading) I posted the link several times a day over the course of a week.  That’s when I started to see a significant uptick in my views. 

3. Sent a broadcast to my database: I broadcast the link to my entry and details of the contest to various segments of my mailing list.  I took advantage of the fact that my entry was online on Valentine’s Day and did a simple broadcast to my entire database asking them to take a break with me and watch the video.  Again - it resulted in quite a few hits. 

Then I got serious.

4. Launched a social marketing campaign: Since I’m a regular blogger, I am in the habit of bookmarking my own links.  Quite a few of my posts mentioned my entry in one form or another, so the link got a lot of exposure.  I’m also a regular commenter on blogs but I dedicated an hour each day to commenting on blogs.  My profile includes a link back to my blog that included several references to my entry.  Wow - did that strategy pay off.  In one day, I saw my views jump 300 points.

5. Retooled my marketing: Redirected my opt-in thank you to a page that had my YouTube link.  I included it in the welcome message in a few different lists that I had.  I added it to my forum signature file.  Page views creeped up even higher.  I even broadcast details about the competition in my weekly ezine. 

6. Did mini joint-ventures: They weren’t true joint-ventures but I did ask a few clients and contacts to mention my link in their ezine and blogs.

7.  Modified my resource box: I’m a regular article marketer so I quickly modified my bio box to include my link (I acutally set up a redirect script). 

We’ll find out later this evening if my efforts paid off.  Whether I win the contest or not, it can’t be denied that these 7 strategies combined to increase traffic to my website.  Incoporate these strategies into your own online business blueprint and you’re sure to see your web traffic soar.

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