10 Ways to Tap Into Other People’s Audiences

You’ve spent countless hours creating a website or online business, launched it, and it’s not getting the exposure or attention it deserves. This is a familiar situation for many bloggers, website owners, and entrepreneurs.

Taking a new website or online business from zero to profit is hard. You can have an incredible idea or product, but if no one sees it, it won’t make a difference. Getting that initial traction and momentum is often the most challenging part.

When you’re starting from scratch and bootstrapping your business (not spending thousands of dollars on advertising), the best way to gain positive momentum is to leverage or tap into other people’s or companies’ audiences. 

Regardless of what type of website or business you’ve created, there are other people and brands with established audiences that match or overlap with parts of your target audience. 

Tapping into these audiences is often the best way to quickly grow your own audience, and you may be surprised by how many realistic possibilities exist. Here are ten practical options. 

1. Get Interviewed

Every entrepreneur and startup has a unique story. Sharing your story through interviews is an ideal way to get exposure and start growing your business. Interviews are excellent for building loyal followers if your story resonates with readers/viewers/listeners.

Websites like Founder Reports publish interviews with entrepreneurs and startup founders. Of course, there are also countless podcasts and YouTube channels that provide exposure to guests through interviews. Podcast Guests is an excellent resource for finding opportunities.

💡 Nailing your pitch is the key to success with this approach. Take the time to figure out exactly what makes you and your business unique and how readers, viewers, or listeners will benefit from hearing your story. Craft a unique pitch to each site, podcast, or YouTube channel based on the topics they cover and their audience.

2. Publish Interviews 

Publishing interviews on your own website also allows you to leverage other people’s audience. The interviewee is likely to share a link to the published interview through their social media profiles and maybe their email list. If you interview someone with a large, engaged following, you might get valuable exposure to their audience for free when they share the interview.

You can also build links from other sites by publishing interviews. Many people have About pages or Press pages where they link out to the places where they’ve been featured. After you publish an interview on your site, ask the person you interviewed to consider linking to it.

Landing interviews with influential people is often easier than you might think. No, you won’t get an interview with Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos, but you might be surprised by some of the people willing to do interviews, even for small websites, podcasts, and YouTube channels. You won’t know the answer if you don’t ask.

To increase your odds of success, target people who have recently done interviews with other websites, podcasts, and YouTube channels. They’re probably interested in more publicity.

3. Tell Other People’s Stories

Another option similar to an interview is a storytelling article. You can gather details through an interview or by conducting your own independent research and then write an article that tells an interesting story.

I use this approach with one of my own sites, and it works very well for creating interesting content, getting those who are featured to share it with their audience, and building links (similar to interviews, many people link to stories written about them). You can see examples in the Success Stories section of Flip My Site, where I write about people who have grown and sold online businesses.

4. Collaborate

There are countless ways you can collaborate with other individuals and brands. Think about the people or brands you’d like to collaborate with, what you can offer them, and how you can work together for mutual benefit.

Here’s an example. If you’re an online course creator, you could collaborate with an influencer, blogger, or newsletter owner whose audience might be interested in your course. You could offer to do a free workshop for their audience and then promote your course at the end of the workshop. 

Use the workshop to provide helpful information that leads into the topic of your course. People who want to learn more can enroll in the course, maybe for a discounted price. You’ll benefit by getting new students enrolled, and the person you collaborate with could make money as an affiliate promoting your course.

Another option is to offer your course as a prize for a giveaway that an influencer, blogger, or newsletter owner will promote. 

Those are just a few ideas, but the possibilities are endless.

5. Write Guest Posts

Writing guest posts for other blogs has been a popular promotional and link-building method for years. Although it’s still popular, most people go about it the wrong way.

Bloggers get so many emails for guest posts and sponsored posts each day that they tend to either ignore them or charge for publishing these posts. The truth is, it’s very difficult to get quality guest post placements today with cold outreach.

The best way to get your guest posts published on quality blogs is to network first. It’s drastically easier to get a guest post published if you have a connection to the blogger. Work on building your network and getting to know bloggers in your niche. Later, ask them if you can submit a guest post. Your chances are much better with this approach than by sending unsolicited emails. 

6. Publish Expert Roundups

Expert roundups aren’t quite as popular as they were several years ago, but you can still use them effectively. An expert roundup is a blog post that shares quotes or contributions from several different experts. For example, the topic of your article could be common mistakes made by startup founders, and it would include quotes from a variety of founders or business leaders.

Most people featured in expert roundups will share the link to the published post through their social profiles. If you publish an expert roundup that features a few people with engaged followers, you may get decent exposure.

One of the easiest ways to create an expert roundup is to use Featured.com. You’ll create a free account and enter your questions. They’ll gather responses and send them to you. HARO is also an excellent resource, but you can’t use HARO if you want to publish the expert roundup on a new website because they have minimum traffic requirements. (Qwoted is an awesome HARO alternative.)

7. Quote People in Your Articles

Another similar option is to simply quote others from your industry in articles and blog posts and link to their sites. You can use Featured, HARO, or the Twitter/X hashtag #journorequest to solicit quotes. Of course, you can also reach out to people directly and ask for a quote.

After you’ve published the article, email the people quoted and ask if they’d share it on their social profiles. Most will. 

8. Mention People in Your Articles

You can accomplish something similar without even getting quotes from people. Simply mention others in your articles, link to them, and let them know about it after the content is published. Again, many of them will share the link through their social profiles.

There are endless possibilities for mentioning others in your content. An easy starting point is to create a list of the top blogs, podcasts, newsletters, or YouTube channels in your niche and then reach out to each person who’s featured to let them know about it.

9. Monitor Newsletters In Your Industry

Email newsletters have exploded in popularity over the past few years. There are newsletters in every niche and industry imaginable. 

Some newsletters include links to articles and resources that might interest subscribers. Subscribe to every newsletter you can find in your niche and check to see which ones link to external articles and resources. Create something noteworthy, and pitch the newsletter creator on including a link to your content in an upcoming edition. 

10. Contribute to Communities

Platforms like Slack, Discord, and Telegram are home to communities on almost every topic under the sun. Of course, Facebook Groups, subreddits, and forums offer additional possibilities, and there are other websites with their own communities.

Established communities with large audiences offer excellent opportunities for exposure, but you must follow the community’s rules regarding promotions. Even if you can’t directly promote your website or business, there are usually creative ways to subtly promote while also contributing something of substance to the community.

Final Thoughts

There’s no doubt that growing a new website or online business from scratch is challenging. Unfortunately, many people give up out of frustration because they never get any momentum. By using the strategies covered in this article, you can tap into established audiences and quickly get exposure to start building your own following.