Getting traction for your online presence—especially a new website or blog—can feel like an impossible task when you’re an unknown writer. I remember how slow it was to build an audience for myself, even during the halcyon days of blogging, and even while affiliated with a well-known brand such as Writer’s Digest.
But there are specific steps you can take to have a wildly successful piece of content, right out of the gate, with no existing online platform. And I have a case study to prove the point: the story of my partner, Mark Griffin, who scored more than 10,000 visits in a single day due to a single blog post. (Speaking for myself, I almost never get that much traffic in a single day, despite hundreds of posts that bring in visitors!)
Here’s how it happened.
1. We identified a topic that would be deeply interesting to his audience.
Mark’s site is all about music, and he spends a lot of his spare time thinking about music, talking and writing about music, and listening to music. One day on Facebook, he helped someone identify a song based on a few snatches of lyrics, and it turns out this kind of puzzle is pretty common: someone hears a song on the radio, or they remember only a few details of a song heard years ago, but can’t identify it despite online searching and asking everyone they know.
Mark has a unique talent for helping people identify songs when no one else has been successful. He described his research process to me, and it struck me as something other people would be interested to know. I suggested he write a detailed article describing step-by-step how people can identify a song even if they know little about it. So he did.
2. We researched the right headline for his post.
Next, we wanted to make sure that his post headline was clear, direct, and used the same language as people who might have this problem. That is: If the average person was trying to identify a song they’d heard, and ended up at Google to find advice or resources, what phrasing would they use? Here are some of the things we tried doing:
- We ran searches on Google for various key phrases and looked at the results—how were other headlines written?
- We looked at how Google would auto-complete certain searches and took note of what keywords were suggested or related.
- We used Soovle to look at auto-completes beyond Google.
- We considered the keywords that needed to be included in the headline.
The final title we came up with: Need Help Identifying a Song? Here’s One Way to Find It. The key phrase is “identifying a song.”
3. He created an image perfectly suited to social media.
Mark took the time to source an image that fit the post (an old cassette tape), then made sure the size would be perfect for when the post was shared on social media. This was important considering the final step below.
4. He reached out to influencers with a larger reach.
Often, when Mark helps people identify songs, it’s within a specific discussion group or Facebook group related to music. When his post was published, he wrote a personal email to the owner of a popular music site (with a corresponding Facebook page with lots of followers). He reminded this VIP of his participation—that he’s the guy who has helped people identify songs—and that he’d recently written a post describing the research process that might prove interesting.
Right away, this VIP shared the article on Facebook. And that started a chain reaction of events.
- In addition to hundreds of likes, hundreds of people also re-shared it on Facebook.
- Other music blogs and websites saw the mention and shared it on other forms of social media.
- Other music sites added it to their link round-ups that week.
- A podcast caught wind of the piece and invited Mark to be a guest.
- Several people contacted Mark for help with identifying songs.
And within 24 hours, more than 10,000 people had visited Mark’s blog.
While it might be easy to say the takeaway is “Get someone with big reach to share your stuff,” I believe that would be reductionist. First, the content was something that was high quality. Second, it was packaged to show off its best qualities (headline and image). Third, a VIP share doesn’t guarantee that other people will notice and share. In this case, there was a perfect fit between the content itself and the audience it was being shared with. Basically, Mark chose the perfect person to ask to amplify his message—he knew where to find his audience and he knew they would be interested. That makes all the difference.
The postscript to this story
Mark has had one other very successful post since then, but currently his site traffic rarely reaches more than 100 visits per day. Why? He posts about four to five times per year. Also, it’s now hard to find his post if you’re running a Google search, possibly because he’s not continuing to produce new content and his site authority is quite low (he doesn’t have that many inbound links to his site, mainly as a result of his low frequency).
Finally, Mark didn’t have a call to action associated with the post, or at his site in general. So the benefit to him was limited, although his point in writing and publishing at his site isn’t about monetization or career growth. He just wants to have fun and enjoy himself, which happens to make for pretty great content.
Jane Friedman has spent nearly 25 years working in the book publishing industry, with a focus on author education and trend reporting. She is the editor of The Hot Sheet, the essential publishing industry newsletter for authors, and was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World in 2023. Her latest book is The Business of Being a Writer (University of Chicago Press), which received a starred review from Library Journal. In addition to serving on grant panels for the National Endowment for the Arts and the Creative Work Fund, she works with organizations such as The Authors Guild to bring transparency to the business of publishing.
[…] view post at https://janefriedman.com/get-10000-visits-blog-one-day-no-platform/ […]
Very interesting. I checked out the post and the thing that struck me is that none of this success is evident on the post itself. It has only 15 comments, many of which are trackbacks, and from what I see shows only 5 shares on Facebook (perhaps that plugin isn’t working properly). This isn’t me doubting the success occurred, for it’s definitely true that much more engagement occurs on social media these days. Rather, I’m just reflecting on my own habits and how, if I stumble onto a blog I’ve never read before, I might be less likely to stick around if the site itself lacks a certain level of social validation, especially when the option to leave likes and comments is enabled. What are your thoughts on this? What can a blogger do to make his/her site itself look more lively? Is that even something a blogger should care about?
Hi Janna – You raise a set of interesting points. The first issue is one of social proof, as you say – we always respond better to a new site or source when we see that other people have given their stamp of approval. It’s why so many authors feature the number of subscribers to their site, their social media follower numbers, any awards they’ve won, the logos of major organizations or media outlets that have featured them, etc. Mark could do something effective on this last one (media sites that have mentioned his stuff), but, well, he doesn’t care.
The sharing buttons aren’t necessarily an accurate reflection of the sharing activity, and the social media companies themselves have sometimes pulled that information from appearing—e.g., Twitter no longer allows these numbers to be reflected. Over the years, I have noticed decreased emphasis on displaying these numbers at many sites.
Commenting is another metric for popularity; in the case of this particular post, most of the discussion happened on Facebook, and not on the post itself. This can be very common, especially for new sites/blogs where there isn’t an established community. Some authors/media orgs, as a result, integrate Facebook commenting right on the posts. I don’t favor that solution, but I understand why it’s done.
So yes, a writer should care about making their site look validated on some level. The first steps toward that are: a professional, customized design (which goes a long way toward instilling trust), indication of recent activity (recent comments, recent news, recent anything), social media widgets that may show engagement/activity not reflected on the posts themselves, and testimonials/blurbs/praise/endorsements of any kind, even if only one.
And sometimes, posts are popular for none of these reasons. I wrote a post in October 2014 that received a total of 60,715 views. Half of those (30,513) were on one day. This post was made to a blog I seldom post on. It’s my homesteading blog that talks about gardening and raising goats and chickens. I have averaged about 10 to 15 views a day since I started it in 2011.
My post didn’t have an image nor did it have a snappy title. It was an open letter to my local grocery stores stating why I wouldn’t be buying a turkey from them that Thanksgiving (In Canada, Thanksgiving is in early October) because of what our government was doing to the small local shops that processed home-grown turkeys.
I was at work when this post went viral. It was shared on social media and my kids watched the stats explode. They were refreshing the page and the hits were increasing substantially each time. Every half hour, they were calling with updates: you hit 10,000. You’re at 20,000. It’s all over Facebook.
Then weirder things started to happen. They called and said our local newspaper wanted to interview me. Just as I was getting ready to leave work, they called and said the largest paper in Nova Scotia wanted to interview me. I had messages from three radio stations with the same request. When I visited the grocery stores to deliver my letter to them, they already knew about it and expected me.
The post is here: https://moonmeadow.wordpress.com/2014/10/04/no-turkey-this-year/
The post is quite simple, but obviously it hit a nerve in my small province. Having popular posts are a hit and miss. I’ve written hundreds of posts on my writing blog and while I’ve had days with more than 1,000 views, I’ve never repeated that success with the turkeys.
Perhaps the key is hitting that nerve in society.
Appreciate you sharing your story, Diane. Sounds like the right piece at the right time, or hitting a nerve as you say.
If the link was shared in a closed group, I think the analytics can also be hidden.
Commenting was much more popular when the commenter got Google juice from their participation. For a brief and surreal moment in time, Google had mistakenly categorized me as a contributor to Copyblogger due to frequent commenting. I didn’t have a clue until I tried a Page rank tool. (Now defunct, I believe.)
Lightning strikes are fun, but I would prefer a steady stream of visitors. And what I really crave is community interaction. Gives the writing efforts more meaning.
Thanks for sharing the tips, Jane. And to note, the post didn’t have anything to do with doughnuts, cream-filled or otherwise.
Good points all around – thank you, Lori.
[…] How to Get 10,000 Visits to Your Blog in One Day with No Platform (Jane Friedman) Getting traction for your online presence—especially a new website or blog—can feel like an impossible task when you’re an unknown writer. I remember how slow it was to build an audience for myself, even during the halcyon days of blogging, and even while affiliated with a well-known brand such as Writer’s Digest. […]
[…] of our marketing is online these days. Jane Friedman tells us how to get 10,000 blog hits in one day with no platform, this infographic shows how to get your first 100k Twitter followers, Frances Caballo suggests it […]
[…] How to Get 10,000 Visits to Your Blog in One Day with No Platform […]
[…] How to Get 10,000 Visits to Your Blog in One Day with No Platform […]