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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?
Awesome tips! I really need to work on sharing old posts. I have hootsuite so I really should start putting it to good use!
Yes! It’s worth the extra time!
Great tips! I definitely agree with promoting old content. I’ve been going back to my older posts lately, revamping the pinnable image, and then pushing them out again. It’s amazing how that can bring in some great traffic!
Isn’t it great how something you write so long ago can bring so much traffic with just a few tweaks?
This is really helpful, thanks for sharing!
Thanks for stopping by!
Just saw this through SITS! Thank you so much! Excellent tips…am definitely going to check out Buffer! :)
thank you for this! i never thought of pinning my post more than one! I’ll make sure to do it from now on!
thank you for the tips, i’ll be putting them on practice asap!
xoxo,
Orly
coffeebeansandhighheels.weebly.com
Oh yes! More is better, as long as you’re not pinning them all at the same time!
Great ideas. I’ve been using Pinterest for some time for most of my niche sites and I love when I just “happen” upon one of my images being Pinned by someone other than me. Lets me know it’s working!
SOOOO many great tips here (and you’re right re: Pinterest… I get a lot of traffic from that site and I always forget to pin my own blog posts. AHHH!)
I recently shared a post I wrote about adopting an older pup with a Facebook group that catered to this audience with 150K likes–they shared and it was liked more than 2000 times and shared almost 200! It was the first time I ever really had a blog post go somewhat viral and it was kind of exciting :)
Hope you’re having a great week and thanks so much for this–glad I found you through SITS!
How exciting!!! I’m happy for you!
Yes, pin your own every time!! :)
Thanks for these tips! I don’t know why, but I rarely think to pin my posts more than once or go back and re-share oldies but goodies. It’s going onto my (mile long) to do list!
Just a little each day and you notice a difference in no time!
thanks so much for sharing these tips!!!
So is Buffer like Hootsuite? Do you find it easy to use?
Yes, it is! I find that Buffer is easier than Hootsuite in the long run. You set a schedule and then add updates as you go, where with Hootsuite you have to individually schedule each update.
Great tips and advice! As a fairly “new on the scene blogger”, I look for positive ways to grow…Now, to figure out the SEO!
It takes a little time, but totally worth it! Here’s a post I wrote about SEO :) https://mycrazygoodlife.com/wordpress-seo-plugin-by-yoast-seo-for-bloggers/
Thank you for these 05 basic ways. Extremely effective, full of lights and sources of positivity.
Great post. Something I like to do to boost my seo is to name my photo in the properties with my keywords so that if someone finds one of my images then it can breadcrumb them back to my blog.
Awesome! Thanks so much, I will definitely start doing this!!!
I’m not good at sharing my old posts, but I love the last tip. It has made an impact on my blog.
I’m just beginning to realise the importance of SEO and sharing the same post multiple times – thanks for the reminders!
This is a great post! Thank you for sharing your information. I am always looking for different ways to try and get more and more readers to my blog. Thank You!!
These are excellent tips! Alot of them, I knew nothing about. Thank you so much for sharing!
Hi Becca! It’s so nice to meet you!!!
I love these tips… I always wondered about pinning my post to several different boards and wondering if that was okay…
I’m thrilled I found you through Pinterest. Consider me a new fan and follower!!
Thank you, Chris!
Great tips!! I’ve been using CoScheduler for posting content to social media but I’m going to check out this Buffer too :)