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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?
I adore Yoast! Best plugin ever! It took some tweaking for me to get used to, but now I can’t create a post without making sure I’ve got my SEO ducks in a row. Thanks much for the reminders!
I agree about Yoast! What did we do before it?!
Thanks for this post, super helpful! One other thing I’ve been doing is contributing to as many BIG group boards on Pinterest as I can (100,000 followers or more) and pinning my best posts to those boards at key points in the day each day (1pm & 8pm EST seem to work well for me). This gets me HUNDREDS more views each day.
Yes! I LOVE group Pinterest boards!
Thanks for the tips! I just installed Tweet Old Post because I continually saw it recommended, and I can set a date range parameter (to avoid the issue of Halloween posts in February, for example), but using Buffer and manually scheduling some older posts might be more effective. Thanks!
I agree. You can include and exclude categories, but I find that there are always those straggler posts. It’s better to use Buffer, I think.
I never thought to use buffer! Thanks for a great idea. I’m guilty of just general sharing, but I think I’ll make a goal to use buffer and share more intentionally now.
Thanks for this post! I am doing a lot of these things already so that feels good but it’s always good to have a reminder!
Great tips, I am just getting into using Pinterest. These ideas are going to be of great help.
Thanks a 1000.
I am a newbie blogger and found this to be so helpful! Thank you so much for sharing!
http://skinnylattemommy.blogspot.com
Thank you so much for this! I’m so glad to hear that I shouldn’t use yet another plugin for old content! :)
These are some very helpful tips and such a great way to promote an older post.
Thanks!
Great information. This is hard work.
I enjoyed reading your post. These are really helpful tips. Thanks for sharing. Found you through SITS! Blessings. :)
Thanks for stopping by!
Hi, visiting you via The SITS Girls. Thank you for the tips, they are dead on! Wish you the best with your blogging efforts!
Thank you!
Thank you very much for the tips. All useful to increase my reach.
Thanks for more great tips for helping to make our blogs more successful!
Absolutely!
Excellent Tips.
I use all of these except the Pinning.
I must learn more about this.
Thank you!!
Oh, yes! Pinning can be HUGE! I have a few Pinterest tutorials you can find under “Blogging Tutorials” on the sidebar ;)
I especially love the tip about sharing older posts. I never even thought about doing this. Thanks so much! :)
Yes! I notice little bumps in my traffic when I share these older posts on Facebook and Twitter. Totally worth a few minutes a week!
Great info. I also think detailed tutorials can draw attention.
Thanks for sharing this! I actually do use a plugin to repost archived items, but maybe I should stop & focus more on using buffer. I think then I can actually be more personal about it. I can rehash old posts under a new circumstance vs. “from the archives..” I’m going to try it! THANKS!
Oh, and thanks for the Pinterest advice! I always wondered if it was bad to pin things more than once. Another thing I learned about Pinterest from a workshop is that you can always delete the pins (it doesn’t effect if someone has pinned them). If it didn’t take off when you first pinned it… delete it and repin again at a different time. I thought that might be an interesting thing to try!
Again, Thanks!
I think it’s worth the extra time to schedule in Buffer. And thanks for your tips about Pinterest!
Great information that I’m definitely going to use. Thanks for sharing!
Great tips! I already implement a few of these and your advice is spot-on. Thanks so much.