The most frustrating part of blogging is dedicating so much time to writing quality content on your site, only to have absolutely no one read your articles.

I’ve been hearing the same advice for the past few years on how to grow a blog.  “Write good content, post on Facebook, post on Twitter, post on Linkedin, and watch the magic happen.”

For the rest of this article, I’ll assume that you’ve already seen that advice and are convinced that posting your articles on social media channels is a good idea.

But what if you don’t have a lot of Facebook fans, Twitter followers, or Linkedin connections?  Posting in social media isn’t going to get you very far.

You need to increase your subscribers, build credibility, and drive traffic to your blog some other way.

Enter webinars.

A 2009 study by Business.com found that 67 percent of business leaders who rely on social media for business information seek out relevant podcasts or webinars.

Now you just need to get people to your webinar.  Below are six tactics that you can implement to get traffic to your webinar sign up form.

So to quote the Black Eyed Peas: “Let’s get it started”.

Interview Industry Insiders

Find 7-10 companies in your niche that you greatly admire.  If you admire the fan page of a particular company, find out who is in charge and ask for five minutes of their time to interview them.  These 7-10 interviews will be the foundation for your webinar.

Once the webinar landing page goes live, alert each company and tell them that their interview is an integral part of the webinar.  Chances are, they will be more than happy to help you promote your webinar on Twitter or Facebook.  This will give you more exposure than if you just promote it to your own network.

Guest Post

The single best way to gain credibility with an audience, drive traffic to your landing page, and help with SEO is through guest posting.

But, if you want to double the effect of your guest post, write your guest posts around your interviews.  This will build “street cred” with the bloggers who are allowing you to post, and it will make you a hero to the company that you interviewed.

Here’s what you do:  find 7-10 blogs in your niche that would be interested in hearing about your slant on a company’s Facebook page.

(This is why I suggested you interview 7-10 companies.  Now you have 7-10 different interviews to build your guest posts around.  It’s a simple way to provide unique content to each blog.)

After you’ve written your guest posts, the by-line is going to be the place where you get to direct people back to your blog.  It seems that most blogs allow somewhere between 25 to 35 words for the by-line, which isn’t that much.  So you have to make the most of it.

I find that the best bylines have a call to action.

For instance if you do Facebook marketing, your byline might be something like:

“[Your name] is hosting a webinar that will show you how to get 1,000 fans in 30 days, even if haven’t set up a Facebook account.  Sign up here.  Space is limited.”

Press Release

About two weeks from the date of the webinar, you can write a press release and distribute it via PRWeb.  Chances are, your press release won’t be news worthy, but distributing a press release via PRWeb usually gets 50 – 70 targeted sign ups to a webinar that promises to be information packed.

Here’s how I structure my press releases.

Headline:  Have a catchy headline that will draw the reader in.  Just like in blogs, “How to” and “List” headline formulas are quite effective.

Opening Paragraph:  The first paragraph is going to announce your headline.  At the very least, it should contain the title of the webinar, the day and time, and a link to your landing page.

Tips:  Next, you should spend a paragraph or two being educational.  This will help with your credibility.  Remember, you are asking total strangers to take an hour out of their day to listen to you.

What they will learn:  Once you’ve given them tips that they can apply immediately, now you just tell them what they are going to learn.  This should be three to four bullet points demonstrating how their lives will be improved after spending an hour listening to you.

Call To Action: Finally, end with a call to action.  Again, this should be a sentence or two stating the title of the webinar, when it is going to be held, and a link to the landing page.

Barter

Let’s say your webinar is going to be about creating fan pages for businesses.  One of the things that you can do is work for free for a blogger in return for an endorsement for your webinar.

Here’s what you can do.

Find bloggers in your niche with large audiences who could benefit from both reading your blog and your fan page service.

I’ll assume that if the blogger has a large audience, he also has a fan page.  Chances are, even if the fan page is good, it’s probably not perfect.

Send the blogger an email pointing out a few ways that you can improve the performance on the fan page.  Share with him the results that he can anticipate with his improved fan page.  And then tell him that you will fix it for free, in return for an endorsement of some kind.

This will make your expertise incredibly obvious to a large audience and build trust for your business and your blog.

Run Ads

There are several advertising platforms that you can use.  Whichever you choose is going to be dependent on your audience.

For instance, my target audience is marketers.  I know that I can reach them in almost every ad platform.  Since Facebook offers the cheapest ads, I would probably start there.

If your target audience is the CEO or president of businesses doing at least $20 Million in revenue, you should consider Linkedin for your advertising.

Just a caveat, advertising can get very expensive.  You should have a very specific budget and a clearly defined goal for what it is that you want to accomplish with your ads.

Ask Subscribers to Forward

The last tactic is the most obvious, yet often the most overlooked.  Once someone signs up for your webinar, you can ask them to forward the information on to their friends.

Simply set up an auto-responder that explains that you are looking to find attendees who are interested in what you have to offer.  Then ask the subscriber to do you a favor and send a link to the landing page over to any friends who might be interested.

You can even offer an incentive.

If they send over five friends, you can give them a free 30 minute consultation.  If they send over ten friends, you can give them an hour long consultation.  Simply take the material in your webinar and customize it for their business.

Conclusion

If you are looking to gain more subscribers and more readers for your blog, then you need to have a plan of action.

Chances are, only two or three of these six tactics are going to work for your business.  My suggestion would be to build out your marketing plan incorporating all seven tactics and test and measure