Taking The Mystery Out Of Viral Blog Sharing
Source: miratelinc.com via Larry on Pinterest
Have you ever heard the phrase “Content is King”? This statement could not be any truer in today’s age of sharing. Viral blog sharing is by far one of the most effective ways of gaining a readership, and building a community.
Blogging can also bring your website traffic that could potentially turn into new customers. Creating a blog post alone can be difficult, and making your post go viral is ten times harder than actually writing it.
If you follow these few simple tips, you will have taken your first step towards virility in the “blogosphere”! Just a bit of writer jargon, sorry…
Viral Blog Sharing | Presentation
So let’s get started, the first step to creating a viral blog post is its presentation. Internet users can be quite lazy, and like to scan through posts to
find the answer that they are looking for. This means that you must make a post that can be easily scanned over. Chop your post into short paragraphs instead of leaving a huge wall of text. A lot of people dislike reading as it is, so make your post a little less intimidating to the average Joe. Readers like short and concise posts that get down to the answer, since that is why they visited your blog post anyway.
Create headings for different sections of your blog post! I cannot stress this enough. I have personally seen tons of posts that have absolutely no headers and it drives me insane. When someone comes to read your post, they want to be able to scan through it and know what is being discussed. This makes it easier for the reader to view the section of the blog that they would like to read the most, instead of reading parts that may not interest them. Plus readers can get the gist of a post by simply reading a few headers, as opposed to a post with no headers.
Viral Blog Sharing | Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
If you have not heard the term “SEO” yet, it means Search Engine Optimization. SEO determines what words will lead to your website on search engine such as Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. You must choose what keywords you would like posted throughout your blog post so that it can gain as much online exposure as possible. Use a free tool such as Google Adwords, and run a few keywords through and see if the competition of each keyword phrase is high or low, and if it has a large amount of monthly global and local searches or not. This determines if the word, or phrase, is worth using within your post.
Say you are writing about the top 10 iPhone apps for 2012. You may want to consider using the keyword phrase “Top 10 iPhone apps”. Odds are that it has high competition, but if you are using Google Adwords, you will be provided with other suggestions that are related to the phrase.
Choose which keyword or phrase works best for your blog and incorporate it throughout the post. Be sure to put your main keywords at least once in the first paragraph, once at the end, and attempt to include it within your blog posts title. Then a little bit of back end work is needed to add the keywords to your posts Meta tag description as well.
BONUS TIP: Always ask a question at the end of your blog post. This is a great call to action, and can really get a great discussion started causing others to share your post!
It’s Your Turn!
What are some of your personal tips to making a blog post go viral!?
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Hi Larry, a blogger’s dream is to get every post to go viral but then there are some hits and misses but as you stated on your post we need to fulfill certain criteria in order to go viral. Answering questions, solving problems, top tips, how – to posts and infographics are good examples of posts going viral. In depth content will always add value to the content. thanks for a great post.
Hi Wajahath ali, thanks for commenting. There is always room for improvement. I am constantly striving to provide helpful and fun content here.
I afraid, i am one of the people who scan posts to see if it is something I want to read. If it is I read the whole thing.
I like to keep comments short too for the same reason. However sometimes I find headlines are not enough. It’s good idea to keep the paragraphs short. 3 relatively long paragraphs seem to take longer to read than 9 short ones. I learned that in the days of email marketing. It is also easier to scan.
Hi Gloria, thanks for stopping commenting. I am like that too, I tend to scan down until something catches my eyes.
Your also right it’s important to break up your content into smaller paragraphs. Often times I run into blogs where there post just goes on and on .
Thanks for sharing
Asking a question at the end of the post – like you do in this post – is a great tip! In general i think my best tips is to provide value or solutions to problems. This could be something as simple as pointing out where to get a free quality backlink, get some traffic for free or present a method for how a user can promote his/her blog or web page.
Hey Rick, thanks for stopping by and commenting.
A lot of bloggers just use their blogs to post about their respective businesses.. Often times those types of post never get shared.
Your right provide a good amount of value and you will get some nice folks sharing your stuff.
I agree with you that it is 10 times harder to go viral than to write a post. Your question idea at the end of the post is definitely on my to do list!!! That may help.
When I tell stories or insert humor into my post, I get the best response. Internal linking helps keep the visitor on site.
Hi David, thanks for commenting. I try and a bit of humor to my post.. I figure it never hurts to put a smile on someones face 🙂
Hi Larry,
Some of the biggest factors of having content going viral is the quality and viral-bility of the content itself and then the amount of exposure the content get in social sharing communities and search engines alike. After all – it’s the social sharing factor that allows for content to go viral.
Hi Anton, thanks for commenting and you bring up some good points 🙂
Most of the times when i browse, the blog posts that goes viral are the ones that start with “How To”. Why is that? Well most of the time people want to find tutorial articles to help solve their problems faster.
Hi Mika, I believe that is true also..
I also think if you can touch someone emotionally you stand a good chance of getting your stuff to go viral.
…Certainly there are scripts and software that can help.. But if the content isn’t share worthy it still won’t get shared often.
Glad You enjoyed the article!
Blogger’s post must fulfill certain criteria before they’re able to go viral. Some of the biggest factors of experiencing content going viral could be the quality of the content itself and then how much exposure the content be in social sharing communities and engines like Google+, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and so on… After all, it’s the social sharing factor that enables for content to go viral.
Hi Edward, thanks for commenting & sharing 🙂
Hi I´m a newbie but do agree with you that it is 10 times harder to go viral than to write a post. Your question at the end of the post will definately help a lot I think! In the world of business we tend to work from the head and forget we are emotional beings too, I think people can relate to you more if you are coming rom the heart too.I like the idea of asking questions too to prompt replies.
Hi Mary thanks for reading and commenting. I am glad you enjoyed the post 🙂
Hi Larry,
I just found your post and liked your tips very much. My husband, Graham, and I are just starting our first online business and are just beginning to jump into the blogging waters. We use SEOPressor and challenge ourselves to get a decent score while still making the content reader friendly. I’ve written technical stuff for a long time, so getting the hang of successful blog format is a bit of a stretch for me. But I’m enjoying it all the same and will keep on keeping on! Thanks for an enjoyable and helpful post!
Hi Pat welcome to the world of blogging 🙂
Blogging is certainly a different animal than technical writing. At the end of the day that is all we can do.. I love that saying
“will keep on keeping on! “
Hey Larry,
Thank you for making things clear about what SEO is about. I’m newbie to it and I have definitely learned great things from your article. Thank you once more.
Cheers,
Rudy Turner
Hi Rudy your welcome ” 🙂
Howdy Larry,
I appreciate for sharing this great article. To be able to make this a success, you must have a great content. That is one way of attracting more people and make the virus spread to the community.
-Bison
your welcome
Hi Larry,
Sanjib here. I feel there is no standard mantra to make your blog go viral on net. It all depends on what kind of articles are featured on your blog. The articles should reverberate current issues and should bear relevance to latest developments in all fields. All such things must be focused on to make your blog popular.
Thanks and Regards,
Sanjib
Hi Sanjib, thanks for stopping by and commenting… Again 🙂
The most important thing in anything viral is the unique idea, the “wow” factor. And it’s the most difficult thing to come by…
Your right Roman,
I started getting in the habit of making sure i have my smart phone with me at all times. You never know when an interesting story will unfold or if you catch a video of something unique
From what I’ve read some of the best ways to get your content to go viral is to write something controversial that challenges the status quo. Something that will polarize your reading audience. So people will share it out of ‘outrage’ or because they just ‘love it’ so much they have to share it.
Even i want my blogs to go viral. I will try your tips to make my blog go viral. Thanx for sharing them.