How Neil Patel got our online readership to jump 50-fold

Last week, a New York Times best-selling author called something I wrote “fascinating.”

The author was Gretchen Rubin. She has had several New York Times best sellers, including a book that was on the best-selling list for more than two years. To say she is one of my heroes is an understatement.

Just knowing that she read my piece from start to finish would have been a life highlight. But, she did a lot more than that. She shared a link to it on her Facebook page. A week later, she included the link in her newsletter and recommended that her subscribers read it.

As a result, that blog post has had over 4,300 hits. To give you context, our best blog posts usually clock in at around 80 views.

That’s a 50-fold increase!

We at Cat's Cove have Neil Patel to thank for Sasha's blog getting 4,300 hits!

I would like to say Gretchen just found my blog post organically, but this is not fairy-tale-land: no blog with 80 regular readers is getting ranked high enough in Google for a famous person to trip upon it.

So, how did she find it? I gave it to her.

Prior to writing the post, I watched a video by marketing-genius Neil Patel about writing blog posts that get views. All of his tips were good, and I followed them to the letter, but it was his bonus tip that changed the trajectory of my blog post.

Neil Patel's tip: share your blog post with people you have linked out to and ask them to share it.

That’s right. I emailed Gretchen Rubin and asked her to share my post.

And she did.

It is a tactic I never would have thought of on my own, nor had the brass to do if not prompted by a YouTube video. But when I did, it worked. Now our Cat’s Cove blog is ranking a little higher in Google and I have giddily checked an item off my bucket list.

Conclusion

Don’t be afraid to share your work.

The chances of the right person finding your work organically is small - regardless of how good your writing may be.

If you want to get your work seen, you’ve got to share it. And if you want your reach to be amplified, you have ask your hero to share it, too.

Have you ever shared your work with someone big? How’d it go?