How to get 10,000+ eyeballs in 72 hours

Helloooo content connoisseurs.

It’s Perrin from Content Bites.

Sometimes we just need to promote stuff, like, NOW. We need to get content out the door and people in the door. I’ve done this a few times, and I’ve come up with a loose framework around it. So today, I’m letting you peek behind the curtain, and I’m doing a bit of theorycrafting to show you how to do it even better than I did.

• Appetizers: Links from Social Media Examiner, Copyblogger, OnCrawl & more…

• Main Course: How to get 10,000+ people to look at your content in 72 hours

Let’s dig in.

Appetizers: Content about content 🤯

• 5-Step Guide to Creating a Content Repurposing Workflow (link)

• SaaS Content Marketing Examples: 4 Successful Stories to Learn From (link)

• Build Better Marketing Teams with the Marketing Competency Matrix (link)

• How to respond to a sudden drop in website traffic (link)

• Creating Viral Reach on YouTube Even if You’re Brand New (link)

Main Course: How to get 10,000+ people to consume your content in 72 hours

Marketers are conditioned to play the long game. 

We’re supposed to create “machines.” We’re supposed to build sustainable marketing campaigns. We’re supposed to drive predictable, consistent growth that looks good on a spreadsheet. 

And most of the time, we like it that way. It’s how we sleep at night.  

And that’s all well and good…

…but what about the short game? 

What about those times when we absolutely, positively must create traction RIGHT NOW?

Those situations exist. 

Maybe it’s a hard product launch with a time-sensitive promotion. Maybe it’s a short window when your customer has to get something done (e.g., if your customer is a nurse who needs to purchase continuing education by X date to renew their license). Maybe it’s an idea you want to prove but can’t spend tons of time trying to prove it. 

Maybe you’re just feeling froggy. Maybe you just feel like pounding 5 coffees and growing your damn business.

Whatever it is, sometimes there are short games to play.

So how do we do that with content? 

How do we create something super attractive – and then promote that thing as aggressively as humanly possible to get as many eyeballs per hour as we can?

That’s what we’re going to talk about. 

Here’s the premise of the thought experiment: 

We’re going to imagine that we’re trying to get 10,000 people to consume our content (from zero) in 72 hours. 

3 days. 10,000 sets of eyeballs.

And 10k for this thought experiment? Because 10,000 people is more than enough to get some leads now. To make at least a handful of sales tomorrow. To generate reach and exposure today. If we can get 10,000 people to look at our content, we can almost certainly move the ball down the field somehow (regardless of the specifics of what we’re doing).

For what it’s worth, I have done this a few times before. 

I’ve generated 11,000 eyeballs in 48 hours for a business with no established audience. I also generated 30,000+ eyeballs and 6,000+ email signups for a product that didn’t even exist yet in about 4 days. 

Have I done it hundreds of times? No. Are there more impressive case studies out there? Certainly. But I have done it a handful of times. 

PLUS… the last time I did something like this was several years ago, and I know much, much more about content marketing now. 

That said, this is still just a thought experiment. 

It for sure incorporates a bunch of tricks of the trade I’ve used in the past – it uses my own experience – but some of the stuff on here I’ve only dabbled in. 

So, ya know, grain of salt and all that. 

There are also OTHER ways to do this than what I’m going to lay out below. There always are. This community is full of amazingly good marketers, so I’m sure some of you also have done similar stuff or have even better ideas. 

If you do, let me know, and maybe we can update this down the road. 

Anyway, let’s jump into our thought experiment. 

Here’s how I’d get 10,000+ traffic to my content in 72 hours or less. 

A couple assumptions to get out of the way…

I want to give this context that makes sense for the biggest chunk of the bell curve for our community, which is small- to medium-sized businesses with somewhat established audiences. 

So, to give our thought experiment more legs to stand on, let’s assume the following: 

• We have small, existing audiences in a few place (think: a few thousand followers on 1-2 platforms, an email list of 1,000-2,000 leads/customers)

• We’ve been operating long enough to have a handful of good relationships (partners, VIPs, influencers)

• We have a small budget to spend; let’s put it at $2,000 of discretionary spending earmarked for this campaign

If you have bigger audiences, you might be able to get a lot more than 10,000 eyeballs (and with less effort), but the principles below will still let you ratchet up the power of a content marketing sprint way beyond normal.

If you have smaller (or no) audiences, I still think you can get 10,000 eyeballs in 72 hours. You’d just ignore the bits where you’re using your owned audiences and index more heavily on the promotion stuff. 

K. Now onto the actual steps.

Step #0: We need good, engaging content (does not need to be viral).

None of this will work if we don’t have content people want to engage with. 

That does NOT mean content with viral potential. 

We can’t manufacture viral potential. And in this thought experiment, we NEED to get 10,000 eyeballs. We’re not “publishing and praying” here.

No – we’re chopping wood, baby. 

So we’re not going to bank on viral content, but we DO need content that will draw people in and make them likely to engage. 

I wrote a whole guide on this: My Recipe for Outstanding Content (includes a checklist). You can definitely go poke around that if you want to.

But this is the 10-second version:

• Content should be one of the following: tactical, inspiring, or enlightening

• Content should be interesting at all costs (great hook, strong pace, etc.)

• Content should be extremely clear (confusion = bounce)

Usually, for a business that needs traffic to sell a product – we’re almost always gonna go with tactical content.

How to X. 

Get X outcome without Y pain point. 

5 steps to do X specific thing.

That kind of thing. Tactical. 

The rule of thumb for tactical content is that you want to create something people can read and then take action on immediately. 

That’s because if we’re in a situation in which we need to generate 10,000 eyeballs, we’re usually trying to sell something. 

And of all types of content, tactical content is usually the best type of content to sell stuff. 

And if we don’t go with tactical stuff, any kind of case study is good (especially for B2B businesses)

But we need content that engages as a foundation. 

Step #1: (this is the boring step, but we have to cover it) promote the content on all our owned channels

Spend: $0

Expected traffic: 500-3,000 eyeballs (working on the assumption that we have small audiences on a handful of channels)

Wherever we normally operate, wherever our audience is, we should be posting our content there as a first step. 

Duh, right? 

If we’re in an all out sprint, we usually want to 2x the posting frequency. At minimum, we want to post daily on all channels for 72 hours. 

We also want to dedicate our promotion on those channels to this sprint. 

Stop everything else on the calendar. Don’t just mention the content in other stuff. Really promote it. Posts/emails/statuses should be about our content. 

CTAs should be clear & compelling & strongly nudge people to our content. 

If we have compelling enough content & we promote, we should expect a couple thousand eyeballs from our own platforms alone. 

We don’t want to stop here, though. 

Because (1) we give ourselves a ceiling if we limit our promotion to our own audiences, and (2) we want to reach people who haven’t heard of us before. 

So this is very much a step #1. It’s a no-brainer first step, but it won’t get us to 10k eyeballs. 

Here’s a hack: If you are posting on Twitter or LinkedIn, you can use Megaphone (no financial affiliation) to drastically amplify reach – it’s a service that lets you pay niche-specific influencers to like / engage with / comment on your content to give you big swings in the algo. 

Step #2: Full-scale comment promotion blitz

Spend: $0-$1,000 (depending on whether or not you hire freelance help)

Expected traffic: 500-10,000 eyeballs

Comments? Comments. 

Promoting content in comments is THE most underrated form of content promotion. Bar none. By a mile. 

Every time I bring up comments as a content marketing tactic, I get eye rolls. Dives me insane.

Because y’all… I’m SO not joking. 

I recently saw a call center business doing several millions of dollars in revenue and booking sales calendars solid – and the only way it was promoting itself was in comments of Facebook groups.

Hell, I know of an affiliate site doing 7 figures in revenue literally only by promoting its content in comments of massive Facebook groups. 

It is not easy to get to THAT level. It requires armies of people.

But it’s powerful.

And it IS very possible to use it to help generate a very solid chunk of our 10,000 eyeballs in a very short amount of time. 

We can comment anywhere there’s a community of people who might like our content:

• Subreddits

• Facebook groups

• LinkedIn groups

• Hacker News

• Niche forums

• On YouTube videos

• Etc.

Here’s the basic process:

• Find as many places to comment as possible – shooting for 20-50, but literally as many relevant places as possible

• Recruit the dedicated time of one of our team members (or hire a freelancer for 3 full days)

• Comment on trending stuff in those places

• Reply to trending comments in those places

• Do it continuously for 3 days (staggering a bit if people start to get annoyed, but the bigger a community is, the less likely people will be to even notice)

• Link to our content in the comments 

What kind of comments?

Comments with lots and lots of value first. They also need to be relevant. 

And then you should link to your own content – just be super sure to frame it as an additional resource. 

No salesy-ness. Unlike with the audiences we own, we do not want to be pushy here. The goal is to look like a regular user taking part in conversations and then offering an additional resource.

And we do that as much as we can possibly stomach for 72 hours. 

It’s a volume game. 

The people who do comment marketing at a high level have small, stealthy armies in really large, really active places. 

For us, we’ll just do as much as we can.

But we should shoot for something like 100-200 good comments (which also means whoever works on this should be a great writer and a denizen of social media). We’d hope to average 10-100 clicks per comment. 

It’s a volume game. 

But if done right (and with more than a little luck), we can generate 10,000 eyeballs from this strategy alone. 

Step #3: Long form posts in niche communities (but mostly Reddit)

Spend: $0-500 (depending on whether or not you hire a freelance writer)

Expected traffic: 2,000-10,000

Another one that can generate 10,000 visits by itself with a little luck.

Long-form content in the very same communities we’re commenting in. 

This is going to be, like, medium-volume, high-effort content. 

The content has to be very, very relevant. And it has to be clear that you put in tons of effort. The aim should be to deliver so much value that someone could get tons of value from whatever you post even if they never click on your link. 

It should be unusually good compared to what’s normally posted in a community. 

If it’s unusually high-value, it’ll be much more likely to get attention, get likes/upvotes, get comments, and generate link clicks. 

Also, if it’s super high value, it’s a lot easier to just honestly offer something you created as an additional resource without having to be tricky – in a “hope you guys liked this; if you want more of this kind of thing, I created this other thing” kind of way.

These long form Reddit posts are a big part of how I’ve personally generated tons of visibility and traction super quickly. 

I created a massive listicles of free astronomy courses for the r/Space subreddit & linked to an even more detailed list of content (I was working with an education company at the time). 

Another time, I detailed a huge problem I saw & outlined (in lots of detail) an idea for a product that could solve it, and then I asked for emails to generate a waiting list to help get investors. That’s how I got the 6,000 emails mentioned above, and I did, in fact, use that to get investors. 

It’s a powerful strategy, but the content absolutely MUST be:

• Relevant

• Uncommonly good

• Very high-value

• Native to the community

• Created specifically for the community it’s posted in

And you can post in any of the usual targets:

• Subreddits

• Facebook groups

• Niche forums

• LinkedIn groups

Another example: 

Alex Heiden, former founder of Closify, is currently doing a live case study on YouTube where he starts a software company from scratch.

In one of his videos, he mentions that he built a big waiting list somehow but doesn’t say how. 

Obviously, I contacted him to ask him how he did it. 

Turns out, he did it using this exact strategy – posting super valuable, long-form content in hyper-relevant groups & communities. Then, he’d mention he was building solutions to the problems being discussed and asked people to sign up.

This stuff works.

You can for sure just bring your own voice and strategy to this, and you’ll probably do best that way.

But if you want more detail on how to do this on Reddit specifically, I wrote a guide on how to promote on Reddit without getting banned.

Step #3: Paid influencer shenanigans

Spend: $100-$1,000

Expected traffic: 500-5,000 additional clicks (although this can also create indirect, algorithmic visibility) 

Why influencers?

Because of the leverage. 

Influencers can be hit or miss, but if you find a good one, you can spend a small amount of money and end up with a lot of great traffic. And with tight timelines and limited budget, it’s usually a gamble worth taking.

This is especially true in B2B spaces. 

In B2B spaces, influencer marketing hasn’t caught up to what it is in B2C/DTC spaces. Mostly because lots of B2B influencers live on LinkedIn/Twitter, and those spaces are either too stuffy or too immature to realize the value of influencer partnerships. 

It’s super, super undervalued. 

One of the best marketers I know grew an agency to seven figures almost entirely with influencer marketing, and he would routinely pay $500 and generate a couple thousand clicks and dozens of leads. 

It's a secret hiding in plain sight.

And it’s often even more effective if we’re promoting content because people are much more likely to click on something useful than they are to click on some sales page. 

So, if an influencer who people trust tells their audience to go look at a resource that they probably find useful anyway… the traffic generated can be absurd. 

You can find influencers on your own, and ideally you’d already have a little black book to work with.

But you can use any of the big influencer networks out there. Try Shoutcart for B2C stuff (not affiliated) and Passionfroot for B2B (also not affiliated).

It should go basically like this:

• Find a handful of hyper-relevant influencers with strong engagement

• Reach out / book them

• Ask them to promote the content purely as a resource & highlight its usefulness 

Step #4: Buy as much cheap paid traffic as you can afford with whatever’s left of your budget

Spend: $0-$2,000 (basically whatever’s left of your budget

Expected traffic: Depends heavily on the platform and how well you can figure it out fast

I’m not talking about any of the biggest platforms: Meta, Google, etc. – no. 

We want CHEAP traffic. 

This is not the time to optimize our campaigns. We’re going for maximum reach here. 10,000 eyeballs in 72 hours. We want people 👏 in 👏 the 👏 door. 

Quick and dirty.

So we’ll go for much cheaper traffic, and we’ll get it anywhere we can. 

Now, we can go one of two ways here.

We can go with really big platforms with immature advertising ecosystems – mostly TikTok and Reddit – where there are tons and tons of possible eyeballs and easier-to-use advertising back-ends but with slightly more expensive clicks.

Or we can go super off-the-beaten path. 

And by off-the-beaten-path, I mean platforms that you’ve probably never heard of, like Content.ad (not affiliated) or RevContent (also not affiliated).

I’m not going into a ton of detail here. I’ve only dabbled in buying this kind of traffic. 

But the few times I have experimented, I’ve used a guide I found by NetHustler (not affiliated), which you can check out here. It’s super detailed & very worth reading. 

His top recommendations for cheap traffic are: Bing, Content.ad, Reddit, lesser known uses of Google ads (like Gmail ads), and RevContent. 

And his tips for buying this type of traffic are (this is a quote): 

• “In general, stay away from websites that will promise to send you 100,000 visitors for $10.

• Don’t buy traffic from Fiverr gigs, 99% of the time they are fake bot traffic

• Don’t pay for an email blasting service (You pay $100 a month to be able to spam thousands of emails)

• Always read reviews about the company or service you want to buy your traffic from

• Stay away from PTC and traffic exchange websites.”

If you have the inclination (I.e., the ability to set it all up super fast), trying stuff on that list is a very good way to get some guaranteed eyeballs with an acceptable level of risk that some of it will be bot traffic. 

If you don’t have the inclination, just got with text-based Reddit ads.

Either way, promote the content as a free resource, and promote it in as relevant a way as possible (good keywords, good audiences, etc.). 

Bid as cheap as makes sense, but don’t be afraid to push it. We’re on a timeline here. 

Summary of how to get mad traffic to your content in 3 days:

• Lead with highly engaging content

• Post everywhere you own, use Megaphone (not an affiliate link) to amplify on Twitter/LinkedIn

• Comment on 100+ relevant conversations in any community you can find, adding tons of value with the comment itself and then linking to your content as a resource; hire freelancers if needed

• Write 5-10 long-form Reddit posts and post on hyper-relevant subreddits, linking to your content as an additional resource that gives them something extra

• Pay good influencers to promote content 

• Buy traffic from cheap sources with any budget you have left

That’s the issue. If you missed last week’s issue, you can read it here.

Go forth & conquer.

—Perrin