The other day I was out for a walk in my neighborhood and noticed a man busking on the street corner. He had his guitar out and his case open, ready to accept money from passers-by.

My first reaction was: why is he sitting there? Of all the street corners in the city, he chose the most off the beaten path that got barely any foot-traffic except for the people living on that particular street.

It was quite evident from the $3 in his case that maybe his strategy wasn’t working out for him so well.

This is all going somewhere.. 🙂

It got me thinking about the early-days of setting up your blog, online presence or launching a product.

Whether your website, blog or product launch is 6 weeks or 6 months out, apart from a product and content you also need traffic and an audience.

Sure you can spend time SEO’ing your site (and highly recommended) but you can’t just sit back and wait for the traffic and audience to come, especially in the early days.

You want to play your music and be heard, dammit!

I hear you!

Go Where The Conversations Are Already Happening

While it is great to produce massive amounts of content (just like I’m sure the busker was playing good music), without an audience and engagement it can feel a little lonely.

Agreed, you need awesome content for people to read when they visit your site but there is also significant value in spending time where people you can help already are.

Tons of conversations are happening all over the social web and here’s why you need to:

Hang Out On Popular Blogs

These sites attract comments like bees to honey. They are well-established and as soon as post goes up the audience is ready to engage and share their thoughts.

What you can gain from spending time on these blogs:

• Observe: See what types of problems other people in your niche are having and how they are talking about them
• Share your expertise by replying and offering value
• Connect: and build relationships with other bloggers and find new blogs
• Attract: Show up often enough with your quality comments and you will attract people to your site
• Ideas: Comments are an idea gold-mine..a lot of people ask questions about how to do something/advice and chances there are other people with the same problems and questions.

Bonus: Get on the radar of the actual blogger (although this probably would take longer on a highly visited site) but not impossible if you do it right.

Note, you don’t have to do this on hundreds of blogs and spread yourself too thin. Choose a few that are well-known in your niche and make it a point to visit and engage regularly.

I spent some time in the comment gold that is Marie Forleo’s site, just reading and replying to comments when I had something valuable to contribute.

I connected with new people, discovered new blogs and got ideas for future posts where I could address some of the questions that people were asking.

And by leaving insightful comments, I must’ve piqued some people’s curiosity because I got traffic and signups to my newsletter! #win

Don’t be that lonely busker who is open for business but still waiting for visitors..go where the action is!

Woud love to hear your thoughts! Leave me a comment!