In a previous post I listed some methods you can use to get free traffic to your site or offer. In this post I want to expand on the Viral Blogging method.
What exactly is viral blogging?
In Viral blogging you purposely post content that is most likely to be shared and therefore, go viral. By that I mean that you choose your topics and the format of your posts in very specific ways, that have been shown to be most effective for viral content.
How To Get Started With This Method
These are tips that are the same for all of the content that you’re planning on posting.
Post on a regular basis
People are more likely to come back and read your content over and over again if you post regularly.
This means posting once a week, preferably on the same day, or whatever your schedule happens to be. You can post every five days, you could post once every two weeks or however you’d like. What you should keep in mind is that you need post regularly enough so that people don’t forget about your content, which generally means posting at least once per week, but not so often that people are overwhelmed by it and can’t read it all. You always want to leave them wanting more.
Keep in mind that you don’t have to write and post your content when you’re scheduled to publish it. If you’re using WordPress, you can schedule your content to be published on a specific date and time and you can write several weeks in advance if you prefer.
Be sure to you use your keywords in both the title and in the post
Do you know what your keywords are supposed to be? If not, you need to do some keyword research and find out what keyword phrases are being searched for when it comes to the content that you’re planning on publishing. Try to find a happy medium between keyword phrases the get a lot of searches and those phrases that have a ton of competition already on the first page of Google results.
Use high-quality images
Make sure that you include images with your content and that they are both high-quality and relevant to the text on the page.
Break up Your Content
Create subheadings so that people can skim the content, and break your text into several different paragraphs with a general rule of no more than 100 words per paragraph. You can have less, and you can even have a little bit more, but use it as a general rule of thumb and remember, varying paragraph lengths are more interesting than several paragraphs in a row all of the same length.
Viral Blogging Content Types
Now, were going to discuss some of the different types of content that are great for creating viral posts that are more likely to be shared than anything else. Each of these types of content is unique and has a different style than other types on this list. With some types of content you may want to include humor or lighthearted writing, and with others you want to avoid humor and take a more serious approach.
In case you’re wondering where this information comes from there have been several studies of different content types to determine what gets shared most often. The market research company BuzzSumo recently analyzed over 100 million articles to discover what gets shared and the results include the post types listed below.
Top Ten Lists
For some reason, top 10 lists seem to do particularly well on social media. In fact, it is specifically the number 10 in top 10 lists the does well.
No one knows exactly why this is; it might be because ten is a nice round number or could be because 8 items are too few to make up a decent list and 15 are too many; whatever the reason, research shows the top 10 lists should be part of your viral blogging strategy.
News and Current Events Articles
Not surprisingly, posting the latest news or current events will not only get you noticed, it will also get your content shared. When someone learns something that is considered news their first instinct is to share with others.
Of course, if you learn about things after they have already been posted to most of the major news organizations and websites, creating an article on that news story won’t do you much good. If you can “scoop” other news organizations and get your posts in front of people, the chances are very good that they will share it.
Controversial Topics and Titles
Another content type that is sure to get shared with others (and as a bonus get all kinds of comments posted underneath it) is the controversial topic – with a controversial title. This is especially potent if you can combine controversy with the current event,.
The disadvantage of this type of content is that interest does not lasting very long. With some thought, you can also create controversy with blog posts and titles that are evergreen which will keep getting traffic for years to come.
Entertainment and Celebrity News
One content type that is certainly popular is celebrity and entertainment news. The problem is, there is a lot of competition for these articles and topics. There are websites that dominate this market because they cover celebrity entertainment news exclusively. However, that doesn’t mean you should ignore this content type altogether.
You can cover a celebrity and tie it in with your industry. As a hypothetical example, if you were in the business industry, you could talk about how Drake invested in a new company.
Politics
Of course, politics is always one of the hot button topics on the Internet. This is a case where publishing a political and controversial article may get your content shared with millions of others. You can always mix two of these types and get better results but politics, combined with controversy in particular, seem to be a potent combination for sharing.
The great thing about this particular topic is that you can share an opinion if you like without any real factual basis – unless of course you are quoting facts to back up your opinions.
Keep in mind that with controversy and politics, you have to have a thick skin as you will get comments that can be downright nasty.
