I Can’t Tell You How to Go Viral, but…

I can teach you a system to get your content found and shared online. Let’s start with…

PUBLISHING PROBLEMS- You just published a new post. You know it’s quality stuff and now you’re anxiously watching the ticker for hits and shares. Maybe you go to grab a cup of coffee or catch up on Facebook to ease your mind. But when you come back- it’s a ghost town.

You start to wonder- what am I doing wrong? Hopefully you made something worth reading- I’ll assume you did, but if that’s not the case, try checking out some blogs on the same topic to see what’s working for them and adopt from their winning strategies . Many people have already walked the path, so there’s no need to reinvent the wheel.

A quick tip is to keep the blog titles short, leading and catchy. After all, you can’t have readers if they don’t open the page. Keep in mind that even when you get to the point that you’re running a well-oiled machine, sometimes a post will flop. That’s okay though, because you have all the chances in the world to try again and make it better. Though such a failure shouldn’t come as a surprise if your article is titled “13 Tips on How to Share Content Online and Work with SEO to Rank Higher on the Search Engines.” Keep it short.

Now ask yourself- How would anyone find your blog if they didn’t know it existed?

SOCIAL MEDIA is a great start. You have to be your number one advocate and publish links to your blog on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Reddit and any other social networks you can think of. You want people to see your offering and opt-into more by following you and subscribing to updates. It’s not going to happen overnight, but with consistency and quality people will start to visit your site on their own. A great analogy is that page views are like plants. If you put the seeds in the ground and water them daily, with sunlight and a little luck, they’ll grow just right. Creating an RSS feed is a good idea too, but an even better idea is to have that feed automatically ping search engines every time you add to it.

Because let’s face the truth, Google is the big kahuna and SEO is king.

You don’t have to be a nerd in your mom’s basement to understand what’s happening on Google search engine results pages (SERPs). Basically, Google’s ranking algorithm is a program that tries to find out what people would want to see based on their search terms. If it thinks your content is relevant, it will show up in the top 100 results. FYI- If you happen to get on the front page for a keyword, it’ll probably outdo a year’s worth of social media. Granted, it’s way more complicated than that, but you time is better spend building content than getting bogged down in the technical details. For the curious mind, here’s how Google works.

As an example, If you want to rank for something like “marketing services in Boston,” then it’s a good idea to have those keywords in your website and in your content. Use them liberally, but don’t spam them everywhere as that’s a big Google no-no. However, it’s not really that easy- Invest some time and learn about some of the best practices from smarty-pants like Search Engine Watch and you’ll get a good return on your time. If you want to get really nerdy, start researching how to create sitemaps, how to check your website for SEO problems and how to get your picture next to your articles on Google SERPs (remember that acronym). The more you do the more you’ll get.

As always, write for the reader and not Google. If you help them to solve their problems, they’ll help you solve your “going viral” problems.

“Blogging is using a new medium for what it is good for – connecting and interacting.” -George Siemens

(This article is a continuation of How to Make a Blog in 10 Days http://www.mrryanconnors.com/2012/10/23/how-to-make-a-blog-in-10-days/)