How many times have you put your new blog out and only receive a handful of comments and shares? When this happens a bit too often, it can be disheartening.
The fact is that getting your content to go viral actually takes much more than sharing your new post on your social channels and asking your friends to promote it for you.
Here are 7 techniques to help your content get as widespread as possible.
Outreach to Engagers and Influencers In Your Network
Influencers are the big names in your niche who belong to your network of followers, so they either follow you or you have a follower in common. Engagers are those people in your network who engage with you often and they have quite a good following themselves.
When you email engagers and influencers, make sure to stress the benefits for them: will this content piece help them improve what they already do? Could be of interest to their followers? Does the piece build upon something they have written and added interesting points? Be a helpful friend, not a bother or a spammer.
Turn Social Tools to Help Schedule Out Content
Doyan Wilfred of HowToGetMoreSalesOnline.com uses a combination of social tools to make sure her content gets in front of as many eyes as possible. She said: I use Jetpack’s publicize activated, so that as soon a post goes live its shared to all my connected social media channels, Buffer and Hootsuite for scheduling posts and I watch for any mentions and respond to them with a comment or reply instead of just a like.
Add a Freebie to Your Content
Be it a checklist, a niche guide or an infographics you made out of the most important points from your post, freebies and a clear CTA make it easy for content to get more love and shares. You can also offer content upgrades to attract list subscribers and create a community around your content.
Reach Out to Your Friends and Followers
You can always email or message your friends and followers and invite them to help you by sharing your content with their network, and offer to do the same for them. They will be more keen to help you without second thoughts. However, it’s important to reciprocate.
When you make that ask, request that your friends try to personalize their share message, for example by highlighting what they like about your content and why. Their network needs a reason to check out your content in addition to you being their favorite person’s friend.
Engage in Conversations and Syndicate Your Content
Join communities where you can share your content, put it up for discussion and get insight from other experts in your field.
Kingged.com, for example, is an Internet Marketing community devoted to sharing, syndicating and discussing of content written by its members. When you become a member, you share and discuss others’ content as well as syndicate yours and get it commented, followed and shared.
Inbound.org is a community of marketers who discuss marketing practices and trends. Create a new thread around something you discussed in your blog post or other content (guide, ebook, infographics, etc.) and get insight from other members. Inbound.org threads get shared quite often on social media, especially Twitter, so your content has better chances to get in front of thousands of eyes and (hopefully) meet the tastes of an influencer.
GrowthHackers.com is also marketing-focused and members are on the constant lookout for quality content to follow and discuss. Make sure you read the guidelines first, though.
Kingged, Inbound and Growth Hackers are marketing communities, but you can join any serious, spam-free communities in your niche that will give you the opportunity to share your content to a large, active membership.
Amplify Your Social Efforts
David Leonhardt, President of THGM Writing Services, suggests you use Triberr and ViralContentBuzz:
“I use amplifiers of all kinds. I have a lot of social media followers, but my followers alone will never take something viral. By using Triberr and ViralContentBuzz, and by tapping into private mastermind groups, I can give my content a lot more reach, and every now and then it takes off on StumbleUpon or LinkedIn or Twitter,” David said.
Christopher Jan Benitez, on the other hand, highlights the importance of making sure your content sparks interest on social media:
“For your content to go viral, I suggest looking up into Upworthy’s and Buzzfeed’s strategy on using compelling post title and description on social media to increase shares. It’s all about creating interest from your audience and delivering on that interest with actionable and useful content in order for your post to be shared online,” Christopher said.
Quality Content Matters
Irina Weber of SERanking say to make your content viral, “you should create a piece of quality masterpiece.”
For your 7th Way, here are her 7 rules (pun intended) to ensure your content spreads far and wide:
- People love lists, how-to posts.
- Create attractive headlines.
- Use more visual aspects like images, videos, infographics.
- Check your grammar.
- A touch of humor will be top notch.
- Get shared in social networks.
- Let people comment.
Read more about blogging strategies at TechCo
