1) Log into Google Analytics
2) Check Your Sites Referral Traffic For The Past Year
I would go back over the last year to see which sites consistently send you the most traffic overall. This can vary a lot from month to month.
3) What Sites Drove The Most Value?
Judge these referrals based on if they added value to your site. The value could be traffic, revenue, account sign ups etc.
4) Discover What Strategy Drove The Referral Traffic?
After you see what sources drove the most value, look to see what strategy led to getting traffic from those referrals so that you can replicate it. A few examples could be:
- Forum Participation
- Guest Post
- Sales/Promotions
- Press Coverage
5) Drop Referrer Sites Into SimilarSiteSearch.com
6) Reach Out To Similar Sites With Strategy That Worked Before
I use Buzzstream to really speed up this process! I love it because it does all of the following:
- Finds contact information
- Pulls site metrics (page rank, domain authority, site rss feed)
- Use templates to quickly email them.
How do you find and connect with communities?
I look forward to hearing your thoughts and ideas in the comments.