Expand your reach by courting influencers rather than paying for them

It's tough finding influencers who will publicly support your content. To get their attention, start courting them early by interacting with their posts. Then request feedback on a piece of content so that they feel invested when you ship it.

Before launching his blog, Alex Turnbull of Groove created a list of influencers he hoped would share his first post. Then he got to work devouring their content, leaving insightful comments, and blasting their content from his own social media platforms. A month in, he emailed these influencers to let them know about his own blog idea, giving them a link to what he'd planned for the first post and welcoming their feedback. Thanks to the relationships he'd built, 85% of influencers said "yes" to providing feedback and by the time he actually went live with his first blog post, he'd already validated it. After posting, he got some big-name comments which boosted his credibility — not to mention 1,000 subscribers within 24 hours.