You already know that without creating really useful content, you can’t build a successful blog.
But you also know that writing great content isn’t enough to get you visitors.To attract readers, generate traffic and build an audience, you need to structure your content in a way that encourages readers to share it. At the same time, though, you need to aggressively promote it as well.
Early momentum really counts.
The chances of a fresh piece content going viral are significantly higher as compared to an older post. So it’s important that you spend more time promoting your content than you spend creating it.
Here are a few things you can do to make sure that every new post you publish on your blog gets lots of social media love.
1. Understand the Types of Content People Crave
Instead of spending hours writing a post that nobody wants to read, you should first understand the types of content that readers crave, and love to share. Understanding reader psychology and preferences can significantly reduce your workload when creating new content.If you write the type of content that is popular with your readers, promoting it will become much easier.
According to the Content Marketing Institute, readers love sharing content which,
- Reminds them that life is short.
- Reminds them that dreams can come true if we work for them
- Reminds them of the forgotten basics
- Makes them look intelligent
- Makes them look morally superior
- Shares unique industry knowledge
- Is highly actionable
- Cites several authentic studies
- Challenges their assumptions
- Is controversial and goes against conventional wisdom
For example, look how Jon Morrow makes his readers dream, and plays with their emotions, with this post on Problogger. This is by far the most popular post ever on Problogger
Another great example is this really creative and interactive piece of content on MahiFx, a forex trading website that shows you how your income matches with a leading forex trader. It obviously puts you to shame.
When you write a new blog post, quickly go through this list and see if your content has any of these characteristics.
This will make it easier for you to promote your content.
2. Include Embeddable Images and Infographics in Your Content
One of the best ways to get more backlinks, generate more referral traffic and get more social shares is by adding embeddable images or short infographics in your posts.Research shows that out of all the different content types, infographics tend to attract the highest number of shares. So making them a part of your content can increase your social shares.
I know it takes a lot of research to create an infographic. But if you can’t create a full length infographic, you can take out a few stats relevant to your topic, or even a few quotes, and create a small embeddable image for your post.
Here’s a good example
You can use free infographic tools to create custom infographics. Or if you already have an image you can make it embeddable by using this embed code generator.
3. Share Your Posts With Social Media Groups
Leading social networks like Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn have thousands of active groups on different topics. You need to identify the groups that are relevant to your niche and start socializing with their members.Don’t start sharing your content links straight away because that can get you kicked out pretty quickly. Instead, spend 5 minutes daily on every group and participate in the discussions.
Once you’ve spent a week or two on these groups, start sharing your content links where relevant. Don’t forget to add a small description of your post with the link.
I usually share my content links with 10-15 communities on Google+, 4-5 LinkedIn groups and around a dozen Facebook groups, which gives me hundreds of visitors every time.
4. Optimize Your Social Media Posts for Maximum Reach
When you share content on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ you need to make sure that it is optimized for maximum exposure.Research shows that certain elements make social media posts more share worthy.
For example, using relevant hashtags, adding high quality images, keeping your updates short and actionable, sharing quotes, asking questions and running contests.
If you look at these things closely you’d realize that all of them actually encourage social interaction. Which is why when you make them a part of your social media posts, your reach immediately increases, and helps you get more traffic from social media.
5. Get Easy Traffic from Scoop.it and JustRetweet
You can create early momentum for your content by submitting it to 20-25 relevant scoops on Scoop.it, a content curation platform.Scoop.it has thousands of members who actively curate relevant posts on their pages. Popular scoops have hundreds of thousands of followers.
You can submit your link to relevant scoops as a suggestion. If you’re accepted even on 10-15 scoops, you can generate a lot of traffic back to your website.
Similarly, you can use JustRetweet to get 100-200 natural and easy retweets on Twitter.
6. Use Prepopulated Tweets in Your Content
Blogging and social media is a match made in heaven. You can’t separate the two from each other.If you’ve just started blogging, or planning to start a blog, I suggest you make prepopulated Tweets a part of your content from the very first day.
A prepopulated Tweet is a short sentence from within your post that readers can Tweet directly from your blog.
It has become a really popular and successful way to generate more Tweets for your content, since the readers just have to click the Tweet button already given to them.
Here’s a good example of a prepopulated Tweet from the SEMRush blog.
You can create these Tweets by using the Click to Tweet plugin.
7. Share Your Posts Multiple Times for Maximum Exposure
There’s a lot of noise on social media. Your followers are exposed to hundreds and thousands of Tweets and Facebook updates every day.So to get their attention, and make sure that they see your updates, you need to share the same piece of content multiple times.
Here’s a great illustration of how you should go about sharing every piece of content you publish.
Some of the most popular blogs on the web share their archive content regularly, which keep them sending new traffic.
But even if you don’t Tweet your older content as much, you need to share your newly published posts at least for 2 to 3 months to get the most out of them.
You can use tools like Buffer and HootSuite to automate your social media posts.
Wrapping Up
To find readers for your content and generate traffic to your blog, you can’t just rely on high quality content. You need to structure your content in a way that encourages readers to share it. At the same time, you need to promote your content aggressively on different platforms to generate early momentum. By following the tips I’ve shared in this post, not only can you get a lot of traffic to your blog, but also ensure that your content is shared every time somebody reads it.Have you tried any of these tips on your blog? Or can you share any other ways to make content more share worthy?
I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
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