We were given the following task:
Pick a colleague’s post, and explain why you chose that one. Outline a plan for the post to get 1,000+ views. Imagine that you have a US $20 budget to work with.
I decided to choose a post from my colleague Cristel “Swag pour WordCamp Europe: Réussite d’un travail d’équipe à distance!” because:
- Not everyone speaks English and it’s a great article that could be shared with the French-speaking community.
- It’s about working as a team remotely which is what we do daily at Automattic.
- Articles about illustrations and swag interest me.
So now here’s the tricky part… how could it get more views?
Based on experience, a good way to attract traffic is to offer something for free. People love free stuff.
Do we have some extra swag from the WordCamp? Insert a form and give away a free t-shirt (or whatever is left) to a random subscriber (max delivery fees of $20).
If not, give away wallpapers, or why not share the .psd/.ai/.sketch files since this was done for the Open Source community.
Note: This can be applied to a large spectrum: a photographer can give away stock photos, a food blogger can discount subscriptions to online videos, and, an author can offer a book to download.
As beneficial as it is to offer something for free, you’d still need to promote it.
WordCamps and particularly WordCamp Europe has many followers on social networks. Why not ask them to cross-post the article?
Use your personal social networks to promote the post: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Dribbble, Behance, Instagram, and anywhere else you can think of.
Another idea would be to use your connections to share the post, whether it’s a colleague, family member or a friend.
And finally, you can always visit the WordPress.com documentation page for more tips: https://en.support.wordpress.com/getting-more-views-and-traffic/
Automattic Design 