When I first got into travel, every summer I used to go to places like Ibiza, Ayia Napa, Faliraki, Kavos and Magaluf.
If you’re British, you’ll be familiar, I’m sure.
But for anyone who doesn’t know, they’re nasty party resorts that are full of barely-dressed British 20-somethings who drink a lot of alcohol and get into mischeif.
In all of these places, there are people whose job it is to get you into their bar.
As a gang of girls, they would often give us a free fishbowl of alcohol (that took forever to drink with foot-long straws) so that we would make the bar look busier.
Sometimes, they would grab hold of your hand and not let go, repeating the message of ‘free cocktails’ until you were in the bar.
And I’ve even been picked up and thrown over someone’s shoulder and carried into a bar.
You see, getting the first customers into an empty bar is hard.
Once some people are in, the bar looks popular and anyone passing will walk right in – no free drinks needed.
I promise this is relevant to your website. I’m getting there…
Whether you’re aiming to drive traffic with Facebook, Pinterest or email, it’s vital that your blog looks popular.
Social proof is everything!
Just as with these bars, you don’t need to actually be popular, you just need to look popular, and the rest will take care of itself.
If you see something like this on a blog…
You’re more likely to share it, right?
What about this..?
Even more likely?
What if If you see something like this…
You’re more likely to sign up to their newsletter, aren’t you?
That would give me FOMO for sure!
So, how you get the very first people to interact with each new article on your website?
You can’t give them a free drink.
How do you make it look busy?
Easy – comments.
I love comments.
Pretty much every post on my site has them.
This is how many I have right now…
If you don’t have enough visitors to generate hundreds of comments yet,
There’s a WordPress plugin you can use that will generate real-looking comments with one click.
And these aren’t the awful spam comments you get already, these are top-quality, relevant comments.
Like these…
They even reply to each other!
Once you have a few comments, you’ll find that real visitors are much more likely to join in the discussion.
They’re also more likely to share your post on social media, and sign up to your emails.
Another bonus is that when people are reading comments, they’re spending more time on your site.
I have ads in between the comments on my site, so I’m making money from them.
More comments = more cash.
I love being able to set up a one time thing that makes me cash on auto-pilot. It’s the best feeling!
Here’s a link to Comment Goblin plugin, if you’d like to check it out.
(It’s new, I’m not sure how long the launch offer will be on, so sorry if its finished when you get this, but the annual pass is still a good deal IMO.)
Until next time
– NSL
P.S.
Are you going to Affiliate Gathering in York next month?
If so, I hope to see you there!
If you’ve been before, you’ll know that the day before is actually the best day (Sorry, Carl).
I’ll be kicking things off at the very first AG Fringe event with a private mastermind and would love to see you there.
It starts at midday so the infamous Jamie IF will (probably) still be sober and coherent at that point haha.
P.P.S
Yesterday I said on Twitter that I’ve started implementing a really powerful new technique.
I’m still on the fence about whether to share it,
I want to make it available for you, but I also don’t want my competitors doing it.
I might just share it privately in the Conversion Collective and with the people at the mastermind.
I dunno, need to sleep on it before I do anything silly.
If I do spill, it’ll be in this email next week.
If you have a travel site, unsub now please 😉