5 Ways I’m Making My Blog Content Go Viral

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Since leaving my job and staying home to concentrate on my business and blog, I’ve learned a few things that have helped my blog almost double it’s pageviews. Today I’m sharing them all with you :)

It’s important to note that my definition of “viral” is when your post receives five times your average traffic within a week. The term “internet viral” refers to posts that receive tens of thousands of pageviews a day and are something left a little more to chance, but can definitely be helped along with these tips!

1. Give Every Post A Pinnable Image Now that Pinterest is so popular, it seems that everyone on the web is pinning everything. Pins are extra awesome because they have long-term rewards–someone could pin a post from your site today and down the road it could go viral. Making your post images pinnable with text and a great image help to catch pinner’s eyes and make them want to repin your content to their boards.

2. Pin Your Posts More Than Once The same social media rules that apply to facebook and twitter apply to Pinterest–share multiple times. To avoid having duplicate pins on one board, create several boards that each image can be pinned to. I have a board especially for My Crazy Good Life. I also have one for recipes, a board for healthy recipes and fitness tips, and boards for each of my kids. One recipe post can be pinned in all of those places, maximizing the pinners who see (and share) it. You can see some more Pinterest tips for bloggers here.

3. Share Your Old Posts Many bloggers share their previous content using a plugin. Here are a few reasons this isn’t the way to go:

• You have limited control over what is shared You can tell the plugin which categories to share but unless you have gone through those categories with a fine-tooth comb you’ll eventually be sharing closed giveaways or posts that aren’t relevant anymore.
• You’ll be sharing the same message with each post  From what I’ve experienced, each post that is shared using a plugin begins the same. I don’t know about you, but as soon as I see, “From the archives…” I focus my attention on something else.
• You can’t relate your posts to the season I want to share all of my fall and Halloween themed posts in the few months before Halloween–not in February. Unless you manually change the categories being shared you don’t have control over this.

Though a bit more time consuming, I’ve been using Buffer to manually share my previous posts. The one thing I don’t love about blogging is that if you’re not sharing previously written posts, they are lost under all of your new content. I sit down once a week and add my favorite posts to Buffer, write a personal message to accompany them and share away. I usually post twice a day to my facebook page and 3-4 times a day to twitter. This has easily doubled my numbers.

4. Use good Search Engine Optimization Posts that aren’t “SEOd” aren’t being seen. This is fine for the posts I write about my daily life, my InstaFriday posts or posts I write to remember things the boys do. Those posts are for me. The posts I want people to find are my recipes, party ideas and tips for tweens and teens. I use the SEO by Yoast plugin for my SEO.

5. Find new blogs Finding new blogs and leaving meaningful comments is a great way to grow your blog. You can do this by finding your favorite blogs and looking in the comment section for bloggers who have left comments – this way you’ll find like-minded bloggers that are good at interacting.

What tips do you have for creating content that goes viral?