While there may be plenty of products (particularly on the Warrior Forum) that promise you can sit back in your room, put up some spun content, automate some link building and watch the visitors (and cash) roll in, to truly succeed with marketing any business online you have to get involved.
You have to make connections and, as the title of this section says, you have to put yourself out there!
You want your name, and your website, to be synonymous with the niche you are in; anywhere people are talking about your industry, you want to be there - in fact, you've got to be there.
You'll be building your brand, building trust (which will aid conversions), and even better... picking up some nice links along the way. What's not to like?
So what sort of places do you want to look out for?
Top blogs in the industry
This one is a no-brainer.
You'll probably already know who the influencers are in your niche, and the quickest way to get yourself on their radar is to simply become an active commenter on their blog.
You will generally get to leave a link back to your own site, and if you take the time to leave insightful comments, or questions, then you will find that other visitors (often including the site owner) will click through to find out more about you.
While the links will generally be no follow, they are great to have as part of your overall link profile.
As a regular commenter you are also starting to build a relationship with the influencer, which will help with any future outreach.
Industry forums
Most industries will have at least one active forum (if yours doesn't then create one yourself!), and that's definitely somewhere you want to be hanging out.
Remember though, this is all about building your reputation and networking, not easy link dropping.
Answer questions, get involved in threads and be an active member of the community. Only include a link to your content, where it genuinely adds value to a conversation.
If the forum allows you to add a link in your signature, then you'll want to do that, but don't be pushy or overly promotional.
One caveat to the above...
Sometimes you might have created some content that crosses into another niche outside of your regular industry. Forums can be a good place to promote this content, but if you are doing so, then be completely transparent.
Here is an example of a thread I started in a history forum, promoting a piece of content on my own site. I was completely honest - I was the creator of the content, and I thought that it would be of interest to the members.
The link was well received and brought some nice referral traffic.
Notice that I didn't just link drop and go. I checked back and got involved in the thread I had started.
Ok, I'll say it: Reddit is a tricky one.
It's a smart, fickle, tech savvy community, and they can sniff out those who are just there to drop links very easily.
But get it right and you can get some serious traffic. Traffic which can lead to some great links (notwithstanding the link you get from reddit itself).
Generally, just like forums (actually reddit is a kind of forum of sorts), transparency is the key and growing your reputation before you start sharing your own content is a must.
Find a subreddit that is closely related to your niche and get involved. Build your 'karma' by sharing content from other sites, and commenting on links other redditors have shared in the sub.
When it comes to sharing your own content, you might want to seriously consider adding [OC] (which means original content) to your title. This tells the other redditors in the sub that you are the creator of the content you are sharing, i.e. you are self promoting, but you are not trying to be sneaky about it.
It's not essential, but generally if you have a good rep in the sub, other redditors will appreciate your transparency and are less likely to downvote your submission.
I have had had good success using the method above, and while I haven't been lucky enough to have any content hit the front page (yet), I have had many posts right at the top of the subs homepage, which drives great traffic.
In a nutshel ... don't spam and don't be annoying (that applies to a lot of this section).
Default Subs
Aside from niche specific subreddits, here are some tips for a couple of the default subs in which I've had some good success: -
http://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/ (pardon the french) – data driven posts work pretty well here, infographics, and well, anything that's interesting. Really good sub and drives great traffic.
http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned – this is a hugely popular sub. If you have a post that contains a really interesting fact (it can't be brand new), then it can work well here. You have to include the fact in the title with TIL before it, i.e. 'TIL that (really interesting fact)'. You'll get good click-through.
http://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/ - data visualisations (but not infographics). This sub often hits the front page.
Honourable mentions to...
Quora – this is a great place to make a name for yourself as an expert, by answering questions specific to your industry. You can drop your links in, but again, only where relevant to the conversation and to add value.
Yahoo answers – not quite as good as Quora these days, but still worth checking in on occasionally to see if there are any questions you can help out with.
Further Reading
Recommended Tools