Create Fans for Life

Neil Patel Has a Great Strategy to Increase Traffic by Turning his Readers into Partners

An effective way to increase traffic and earnings, and convert visitors into fans is to build connections by suggesting you need your readers’ help with something from which they’ll benefit.

Anyone who has ever tried to start a blog or website from scratch knows how difficult those beginning months are. I know that many of you probably already have all the real answers to how to grow your blog, extend your reach, gain more followers, avoid sleep, skip meals, live in your PJs, ignore loved ones and pets, live off coffee, sleep in short bursts with your laptop in your bed, and have your computer, tablet and phone all running different searches to write multiple posts at once. As I learn how to do all this, I’m sure it will come as no surprise that my blog failed spectacularly.

While all of these methods may or may not seem tried and true, there are other ways to gain readers who you can turn into followers and ultimately loyal fans who talk you up to the moon and back. It all starts with connection moving into partnership.

Who is Neil Patel?

For those of you who aren’t familiar with him, Neil Patel is an extremely well-known entrepreneur, analytics expert, and investor who is known as “The SEO Guy.” He is a New York Times Bestselling author who has been recognized by The Wall Street Journal as a top influencer on the web. Forbes calls him one of the top 10 marketers, and Entrepreneur Magazine says he created one of the top 100 most brilliant companies. He was recognized as one of the top 100 entrepreneurs under the age of 30 by President Obama and as one of the top 100 entrepreneurs under the age of 35 by the United Nations.

If you are a content writer and don’t follow him, you would do well to correct that quickly. He provides an enormous amount of free information, advice, step by step instructions and free SEO tools. He also sends out a fabulous newsletter with the latest updates about how to be a successful content writing through marketing and constantly increasing your traffic and reach.

What I Learned From Neil Patel About Making Fans Feel Connected to You

This subtitle is a bit misleading because I’ve learned a ton on this subject from Neil Patel’s blog, which won’t fit in this post. For the purposes of this article, I am focusing on one really smart move he has made in regards to his site and Ubersuggest, one of his SEO tools, which builds on other strategies he already has in place.

Patel has hundreds of thousands of followers on his blog and various social media accounts. With that many followers, it’s impossible to connect personally with each one or to write content that will satisfy each one while establishing or reinforcing a connection. One of the ways that Patel creates a sense of a partnership with his readers is a simple one. He asks them for help.

When you are worth almost $4.5 million, have founded and sold multiple companies, and are considered the go-to guy for online marketing and SEO strategies, there are few people who can genuinely relate to you on the same level. Even though his content is very conversational, clearly presented and engaging, many readers might feel a bit overwhelmed by his persona and all he has accomplished. This would set him apart or distance him from his readers.

So Patel has done something that doesn’t just level the playing field but which actually brings his readers into the fold, so to speak. He turns to them and asks, “What do you think I should do?” By doing this, he immediately establishes the sense that his readers have just become his partners.

Capitalizing on an Existing Infrastructure While Turning Your Readers Into Partners

While I have said that Patel’s strategy is very simple and consists of simply asking his readers for help, there is actually a good bit more that goes into it. This is the infrastructure that he has already set up including different defaults for when you perform certain actions in response to different parts of his blog.

First, he has set up push notifications for all of his followers and subscribers. This includes those who follow his blog, subscribe to his newsletter, have opted in on various offers and his fans on various social media sites.

Most recently, I received a pop-up notification saying, “I Need Your Help With Ubersuggest.” Ubersuggest is a great keyword research tool that can help you come up with topics to write about that people are searching for.

Notice that he doesn’t just say, “Please help me,” he says, “I need your help.” Psychologically, this makes it such that we feel like he is suggesting that there is something that we know that he doesn’t. This puffs us up a bit, so to speak, making us feel gracious enough to want to help him out.

When you click on this notification it takes you to a landing page on his blog. The page gives you a lot of information on Ubersuggest, and lists all the new functions he intends to add. This potentially will lead to more users for his SEO tool.

But he doesn’t stop there. He provides some options as possible suggestions like a free email marketing tool with unlimited emails and contacts and automated SEO. After this, he says he will also take suggestions and is open to everything. He asks for your feedback in the comments which contributes to his google ranking and to send the comment you enter your name and email so he captures your email to add to his own email list.

You are willing to give him your email in order to help him out further and because he has made you feel like you are a part of something. He replies every so often, thanking various users for their replies, which continues to reinforce the fact that he is a real live person who is engaged with and connected to his followers.

The landing page where you are directed also has tabs for his regular blog, his newsletter, SEO tools that he has developed and the services that he offers.

The page on the blog has a prompt asking, “Do You Want More Traffic?” Clicking yes directs you to another landing page describing his amazing success, which establishes his credibility. This is followed by an offer to work with you to grow your business and drive traffic to your site, which helps him gain new clients.

Patel uses free content and services to drive people to pages that also offer additional paid services they can take advantage of should they choose. Establishing goodwill and a connection between his readers and himself combined with useful free material makes readers more likely to be willing to pay for some of his other services.

Summary of Strategy

Neil Patel is a master of marketing and self-promotion. Yet, being knowledgeable about these areas, won’t necessarily do much good unless readers are willing to engage with content and take advantage of additional services or the products offered.

A big part of Patel’s success is that he gives a lot of free advice and makes certain tools available free of charge. He also uses help-seeking as a strategy that he puts on top of an already existing infrastructure.

In this way, he makes readers feel like valued partners with connections to him. This creates goodwill which increases the likelihood that they’ll at least look through his sites that he provides inks for on the notification landing page, with some of them possibly enrolling in his paid programs. Even if they don’t then, in the future if they need help with something he provides, they are more likely to use his services rather than search for someone else’s.

When you establish a strong connection to your readers, they will usually support you over time and help you further grow your audience by encouraging others to visit your sites.

Takeaway

A great way to make someone feel connected to you and your business, website or blog is to create the impression that they are your partner. You can do this by requesting help from them related to something you actually and which will ultimately benefit them as well. When you have already established yourself as someone who has provided readers with a lot of value this will make them even more eager to help you out of a sense of appreciation or perhaps just to identify with someone they admire.

Making readers feel like they are your partner will make them feel invested in your work and your site or blog as if they have a stake in it. Once that happens you don’t just have an ordinary fan, you have an enthusiastically supportive fan. Establish a handful of these fans and you’ll find you need to promote less, which leaves you more time to create new content.

Natalie Frank has a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology and often writes about the importance of social support and interpersonal connections for all kinds of life success. She is an editor for The Partnered Pen, One1Infinity & One Table, One World and is Editor in Chief for Promposity & Mental Gecko, which she created. She is also the Managing Editor for Novellas and Serials at LVP Publications.

If you enjoyed this article you might also like these:

You can find links to my other work on Medium and follow me here. Thanks for reading!