In This Post, We’ll Talk About Websites to Solve Your Content Marketing Problem
“A blog post should reach all the people it is aimed to help while writing. All of them.” – My principle. But let’s see the other side of the coin first.
You worked your ass off to create a blog post that you are proud of.
You published it.
27 of your regular friends and fellow bloggers shared it on their social platform and you got 200 page views the opening day.
The next day you got 156 and 87 page views the third day.
Your awesome blog post died a natural death. Period.
It might appear natural, but I say it was a murder by you. You murdered your blog post.
If I were you I would not have let the post die. A post I work “my ass off” on should reach at least its potential audience. If you also agree to my principle you would find this post on maximizing your content reach useful.
I will show you 11 ultimate places to share your blog posts after you hit publish.
Let’s continue.
#1 Twitter
With over 284 million active monthly users twitter promotion is a must for increasing your content reach. Let’s not forget twitter as now signed a deal with Google to allow the latter to crawl the former for real times tweet indexation. Here is how to promote your post on twitter most effectively.
a) Tweet your post as soon as it is published.
You should let the world know that you have a post ready for them to gorge. If you schedule a lot of posts or find it inconvenient to tweet a post as soon as it is published you would want to use tweetadder which allows you to share blog posts by RSS. So it auto publishes your post on Twitter.
b) Use the cover photo real estate:
I am a big fan of cover photo optimization. It is the first prominent place a new visitor sees on your twitter profile. Use an image that is catered to display your most recent or popular post.
c) Host a twitter chat:
For this, you have to announce your post or subject prior to publishing. And set a date and time for the chat. Then you can talk on the topic and probably create a follow-up post based on the reaction and suggestions on the chat. Here is how to get started with a twitter chat.
#2. Facebook
So you were worried about Facebook’s decreased organic reach? Let me say Facebook is still the number one traffic referrer to my site. The strategy is just as plain as it can be:
Be a human to promote your post. If you want to be advertiser you gotta pay to be one.
While I am not against the Facebook’s “pay to play” rule, I still love to get loads of facebook traffic for free. Here is how to do it:
a) Post a status update with a question:
Updates on Facebook that requires some sort of advice or action are most likely to get engagement. You can use this trick to ask a related question to first set a base of audience. Then you provide them the link to your post that has already the answers in it.
b) Post your update effectively:
Photos have recently sinking organic reach. You should think of using plain text or the raw link structure for getting maximum reach. Avoid using click-baiting, which essentially is using catchy headlines to force someone to open a link. If it is not worth the click and the reader bounces back to Facebook after clicking on your link Facebook might penalize your link.
c) Facebook groups:
Facebook groups are spammy dump yards of links. Agreed! But it is not always the same.
I know quite a number of groups which are valuable and effective. The engagement rates in those groups are quite high. All you need to do is to participate there actively not link drop.
Post a link only when it is worth the discussion. This is a very effective way of getting targeted traffic to your blog.
PRO TIP: Create a group yourself and add members related to your niche. Provide value to the group members and you can refer them to your blog too.
#3. Your million dollar newsletter
When a subscriber signs up your blog, he does it because he finds your content valuable and expects them to get delivered to his inbox.
Write a compelling email and broadcast your latest post to all your subscribers. If you have not yet started an email newsletter, don’t write your next post until you set it up.
Yes, it’s that important. Use MailGet and start an email newsletter with just $29/month.
Then after you write a post just give a shout out to all your loyal subscribers. If you have a dozen of posts published each week. Choose the few most remarkable ones and send them as a recap of the week.
#4. Reddit; The internet’s homepage.
Reddit started off just a decade back but has by now achieved a position that can give you loads of traffic if used wisely. Just choose your topic wisely and post it to a relevant subreddit. This is the only secret of Reddit success. People like Dhanish Semar have set up their entire business from reddit alone and generate somewhere between 1 million page views per month.
There are tons of rules also to perform the best on Reddit. Here are some of the absolute necessary tips:
- a) Have a decent profile with a karma score. Karma does not influence your share’s reach but is good for your reputation over there.
- b) Share other stuff, not just link dropping from your blog.
- c) There are thousands of subreddits so choose the most accurate ones for your link.
- d) Asking for upvotes is a big NO on Reddit.
#5. Link round-ups:
Link round ups are done by content curators or bloggers with the aim of sharing the most valuable and interesting articles within the week/month with their readers. If you get a link back from these round ups you are going to get tons of traffic plus backlinks for sure.
Moreover, you can steal their readers if you have a post worth it.
Pro tip: you have to be very careful while approaching for link round-ups, don’t exaggerate the email, keep it short and quick. Tell them why your link deserves to be in their list.
If you don’t find a way out to get their contact email, just contact them via twitter. Twitter is the fastest place to get a response online.
#6. Share and reward type automated promotion platforms:
ViralContentBuzz:
Have you heard of viralcontentbuzz? It is a platform that gives my posts a quick 100 shares and that too from influencers. By rule you join there and share stuff posted by others to your social profiles like Facebook, Pinterest, twitter etc.
You will be rewarded points for sharing based on your follower count in the profile you shared. Suppose you have 4000 twitter followers you will get 2 points for each share to twitter. And Pinterest shares give you 4 points irrespective of follower count.
You can then use this reward point to post your own stuff the project section which will be then shared by others and the cycle continues.
Triberr:
Triberr is a bit different in the sense it is much more than a just share and earn platform. You can build relationships with other influencer bloggers there. It has RSS feed syndication feature that allows you to auto post your latest post on the platform. If you have a good network, people auto share your posts as soon as it is published.
Triberr is the best platform to earn your first 100 or 200 shares as soon as the post is published.
#7. LinkedIn
The only reason I pushed LinkedIn far to the bottom is that they are very strict with their sharing policies and just link dropping can ban you from the group, even if a single member reports your post.
Having said that is perhaps the best place to look for original convertible readers for your blog. Appropriate shares on LinkedIn groups can give a huge boost to your rankings due to the high quality and professional traffic it shares.
You can also create your own group to share some tips and lessons to develop a following and evolve as a thought leader.
#8. Instagram
Instagram recently surpassed twitter in terms of users. When you have such a huge platform business is sure to bloom. Instagram is probably the most innovative place to share your blog posts.
Instagram doesn’t allow link posting but I will reveal what I do to drive traffic from Instagram:
- a) Share a picture with a caption and a shortened bitly link on it.
- b) Put a link in the BIO and upload a related post on your profile with the caption “click link in bio to read my post”.
- c) Change the location of your photograph to your blog URL. Just type your URL instead of typing the place name.
Do NOT take this lightly Instagram is one of the top places to share your blog post.
#9. Social bookmarking sites:
Social bookmarking sites are the ones where you can syndicate your content to target readers and then gain traffic. Here are the top sites for bookmarking your post as soon as it is published.
1) Digg: It is one of the oldest and still effective sites for bookmarking content to maximize reach.
2) Stumbleupon: It can give you an awesome amount of traffic but is very strict in terms of usage. Link dropping is a no no here too. You have to have a profile and share various stuff to get quality followers. These followers can then give you the required promotion of content.
PRO TIP: It is advisable not to share your own links on stumbleupon, this decreases the credibility of your shared links. However if you build a good rapport with fellow stumblers you can get your content shared by them.
3) Scoop.It: This is like a magazine. Just create an account and bookmark articles related to your niche. This can include your own articles too. After some time other scoopers will follow you based on their interests and you can get targeted traffic to your blog.
4) Flipboard: Flipboard is a huge success amongst readers and content curators. Similarly marketers use the platform to create an audience to their blog posts.
You too can create a magazine on flipboard and share your articles there. If your articles are worth it you can drive insane quality traffic to your latest bog post.
#10. Blog commenting
Blog commenting is one of the best ways to promote your latest blog posts. Additionally, they can help you in stealing your competitor’s traffic (I will explain how later), personal branding and boosting your rankings.
PRO TIP: Make a list of twenty blogs and try to be regular commenting there. This will give you a boost in your branding too.
- When you comment relevant and appropriate lengthy comments on other blogs, you will catch their attention and they will reciprocate. This can build a good friend network for you
- If you comment something that adds value to the topic or something that takes the topic deeper, other readers and commenters of that blog begin to notice you. They soon visit your blog. If you succeed at impressing them with your articles they will start becoming your loyal followers.
- Try commenting on commentluv enabled blogs. This will help you to throw some light on your latest post through the comment.
#11. Blogging communities
Blogging communities like dosplash, Aha!NOW community, bizsugar etc. allow you to share your latest post on them. If you build a community there by sharing other members’ posts and adding value to the community you are sure to drive huge traffic to your latest post.
BONUS:
Google Plus:
Google Plus is an often underrated place for sharing your content for maximum buzz. Marketing your content on Google plus is much more effective than Facebook and twitter because people on Google pus are business minded.
Most of the plussers are either online marketers or bloggers and your content would be loved by this audience.
Moreover using Google plus you can format your writing to the maximum. You can bold out your headlines, use Italics, cross outs and much more. This will not only make your content much catching but also will make it more shareable.
Over to you:
These were the best places to share links to your latest post on your blog.
You can share your blog posts to these places to gain maximum eyeballs for your articles. You can use any of these tactics to share your blog posts for more referral traffic.
What are your top places for content marketing?
Do share with us in the comments.