Make your blog go viral for free with 19 unknown tricks.

Reading time: 16 min

Whether you have a blog about cats, dogs, yoga, economics, parenting, music, fashion, real estate, beauty, travel, etc., you have 2 main responsibilities:

1.  Create content consistently
2.  Promote that content consistently

Yep, in the end, that’s all it takes to have a successful blog.
Now, if you write amazing content but let it collect virtual dust on your server, chances are you will go nowhere being the only person reading your content.

I’m not talking about you checking every day or your spouse, your mom (your biggest fan), your distant cousin and your upstairs neighbors’.

Unfortunately, if you don’t do anything, nobody else will be reading the masterpiece you wrote last week…

You know why? Nobody knows who you are!

But where there is life, there is hope. So, today, I will cover a critical topic for all bloggers: how to boost your articles or posts.

Why Promote your articles?

Long gone is the time when you would just post something, and suddenly 200 persons would read it… Nowadays, if you want to have followers, build a list, create an audience, sell your products or services or whatever your goals are with your blog, you will have to show your blog to as many eyeballs as possible, and don’t also forget to go the extra mile…

How do you promote your blog?

First of all, there are many ways to hype your website:

•  Some of them can be free and time-consuming.
•  Others are paid and quick.

Now, for the bad news: none of those 2 solutions will work if you don’t do it right.

Let’s start with the free methods. The problem with the free methods is that they are time-consuming. I’m talking about several hours every day.
Think about how much you are worth?
Lawyers are worth between $500 to thousands of dollars per hour.
On the other hand, copywriters are worth $30 to hundreds of dollars per hours and your salary is at the minimum worth that of a good copywriter.

Let’s say you spend 3 hours every day promoting your blog with the free method. 3×30, How much is that: $90.

So, either you spend $90 on Facebook or Google ad, or you lose $90 of your precious time. Of course, you can always “pay” someone to do it for you…

So, get real, nothing is free in this world.

On the other hand, paid traffic can be very profitable when you know what you are doing to avoid the closing of your account. (Have you done a successful Facebook ad ultimately?)

Now, don’t stress out… I will share here all the tips & methods I use. Those are a combination of both free (in terms of money, but time-consuming) and paid methods.

So let’s dive right in.

1 Establish your social media

Of course, this is just a reminder since you most probably already did it at the time you created your WP website. If you participated in my blog training, you know how to set up all your accounts professionally:

• Facebook
• Pinterest
• Twitter
• Instagram

If so, then, here’s what to do next!

If you haven’t, stop right here. You need to go NOW to secure as many platforms with your name as possible. That’s especially true for the most important social networks but also for any social media platform that you might use, eventually.

Even if you don’t have the will to post anything on those accounts right now, doing that will secure your future. It will avoid others to register your ideas under their names. That will eliminate a headache later.

There is nothing worse than having a blog with one name and realizing that name is already in use on social media by someone else!

If your web name has already been chosen or is not fit for social media, you should think about changing it. In any case, choose a related name and stay consistent across all social platforms.

If you work alone, you won’t be able to manage all your social accounts. Don’t even try, you will be overwhelmed, and you will not achieve any results.

So, if you are a one-person show, pick-up Facebook first and maybe a second social account of your choice and stick to that.

Take a look at the graph below:

This graph represents heavy hitters in the internet world. All those guys are driving thousands of views EVERY DAY. When you look at where their content is shared, you see that with shares up to 95%, Facebook is the #1 platform, and it will remain#1 for some time…

2 Write awesome content

Before you even start thinking about how to promote your blog, you need to make sure that your content is premium quality. Again, 20 years ago, any content would do, but today, if your content is just crap, visitors will come, but they won’t stick around long.

So it’s essential that whatever you write, it needs to be top-choice.
The best way to write excellent content is delivering value every time you publish something.
What is essential is providing value by having your readers’ interest at heart. Do that, and you will be surprised by the response you’ll get.

Consistency

The next big thing is consistency, and that is critical. That is something everybody needs to work on. I know that sometimes, life gets in the middle, but it is important to keep your blog up-to-date with fresh content. The minimum would be one post a week (I’m talking about your blog, not social media).

When people like your stuff, they will come back to read more. When they come back to find only old articles, they will stop coming.

3 Include share buttons to your blog pages & site

Hopefully, your readers should come back to your website over & over again because of your amazing content.

Eventually, you’ll find out that getting those people onto your email list is going to be the best way to keep them coming back for more!

But you should also use other social platforms to stay on your reader’s mind.

Make sure to include different social icons somewhere on every page of your site directing people to your different social networks. That way, wherever your readers are, they will always be able to stay up to date with your news and posts.

Even if you still not have contracted an autoresponder or a CRM and you haven’t even started to think about setting up your email list, you need to start promoting your articles.

And if you have your social networks set up, you can ask your readers to follow you. When you are ready to grow your email list, just send them an alert.

Make your content Easily shareable

This step is where most bloggers get it wrong. Those bloggers think they have to do ALL the heavy lifting by promoting themselves all their content on social media. But get real, most content goes viral only from other people sharing it!

But, how do you get other people share it for you?

By making it easy for them, and then tell them to do it! Like this:

Do you like this post? Help me share it on Facebook, click here

Or with just a simple Facebook button like this:
Facebook button

Make sure all your share buttons are visible to your visitors so that they can share your content easily.
My favorite sharing WordPress Plugin is MashShare. Good news it’s free. I have been using it on ALL my websites for the past 5 years, and it’s working like a charm. Of course, it has a paid upgrade, but since I have been using the free version for so long without any problem, I recommend you to have it. You can get it here.

When you’re installing the plugin, make sure that it is set to appear on every blog post. It should show at both the top of the page and as the reader scrolls. That way, no matter where the person is in your article, they have the opportunity to click and share your article on any social media of their choice with a single tap or click!

4 Manually embed your social media buttons into the body of your text

When you use the apps that I mentioned above, it’s easy to automatically embed social media button into your article. But those buttons appear on the top, on the bottom, and sometimes on the side of your post.
When you use a smartphone, the side app may be removed, and you are left with the buttons on the top or on the bottom of the article.

But can you embed those same buttons “inside” the body of your text?
Yes, you can, except that, because this process has to be done manually you will need to know a little bit about HTML…

For Facebook, go to Facebook-Button
After adding your URL to the Facebook configurator, you will find an HTML code like this that you can copy and paste wherever you go into your text

<div class=”fb-share-button” data-href=”https://myadgency.com/blog/do-questions-work-in-copywriting-or-are-there-overused/” data-layout=”button_count” data-size=”large”><a target=”_blank” href=”https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fmyadgency.com%2Fblog%2Fdo-questions-work-in-copywriting-or-are-there-overused%2F&amp;src=sdkpreparse” class=”fb-xfbml-parse-ignore”>Share</a></div>

Once the HTML code is properly inserted into your text, it will look like this:

For Linkedin, go to the Linkedin Share Pluggin , replace the dummy URL with your, copy and paste the following HTML code:

<script src=”https://platform.linkedin.com/in.js” type=”text/javascript”>lang: en_US</script>
<script type=”IN/Share” data-url=”https://myadgency.com/blog/make-your-blog-go-viral-for-free-with-19-unknown-tricks/”></script>

And that’s how the code will will look after you embed it:

5 Add Pin/Save to Pinterest buttons to your images

If you want your posts to grow viral on Pinterest, it’s essential to add a Pin or Save to Pinterest button to all your pictures or images!

The original save button from Pinterest helps your followers save your website’s content directly to Pinterest. Once you install the button, a clickable Pinterest logo will appear on your website’s images. Your readers can click the logo to save your content directly to their Pinterest boards.

Every time someone uses the Pinterest Save button, they add more of your content to their Pinterest wall. That means other Pinners will see it too, boosting your impressions, because they will click on it.

There are also plenty of free WordPress plugins that can do this for you, such as “Pinterest Pin It Button On Image Hover”. Just install, activate the plugin, and that’s it!

6 Add “Click To Tweet” Quotes to your posts

Do you have some valuable insights you think will really catch someone’s attention inside your posts? I hope you do. Then you need to add those words of wisdom to a pull quote that readers can retweet for you in a single click.

To do this, just use the free WordPress plugin “Tweet This”, or if you use the free version of MashShare, there is already a click-to-tweet feature! Within your blog post, locate the Twitter bird icon located within your visual post editor and insert it.

Click the icon and insert the quote where you want it to appear on your blog, and with the text you want to appear on Twitter. It will automatically pull the blog post URL as well as your Twitter handle. Just add that to the MashShare plugin settings when you initially set it up.

2-3 click-to-tweet quotes per post is enough. If you’re unsure what might make a good pull quote, stick to questions or statistics that back up what your post is about.

7 Share your content on Medium

Many Medium publications are open for anyone to contribute — most have sign-up forms for submitting content in their about pages. I’m a huge fan of what AMI Publications has done with Medium — they own Hacker Noon as well as several other publications that distribute great community-created content.

I have been sharing my videos on Medium.com for the past couple of months and, I although I didn’t really get into it the past couple of years, I have started getting new followers and new eyeballs on my videos.

It doesn’t hurt to get an extra backlink to your content!

8 Send your new blog post to your list

Your email list is your number one fan. Your followers have subscribed to your newsletter because they like what you write, they like you, and they trust you. When you send them an email about your newly published article, they will read it and thank you for it.

9 Create a quick Facebook ad

If you haven’t already, you should have your Facebook pixel installed on your WordPress blog.
The Facebook pixel is a HTML code that you place on your website.

It collects data that helps you:

•  track conversions from Facebook ads
•  build targeted audiences for future ads
•  optimize ads
•  remarket to people who have already taken some kind of action on your website

Your Facebook pixel allows you to create ad-hoc audiences from the same people who visit your website. You can then either re-market to that audience or create a lookalike audience to advertise to.

Even if you’re not thinking about using Facebook ads anytime soon, you should install the Facebook pixel now. The pixel will start collecting data immediately so that you don’t have to start from scratch when you’re ready to launch your first Facebook ad.

10 Include Alt-Text to your images

When you upload an image in WordPress, there will be an option to add Alt text.
The alt attribute is a required spec that specifies an alternate text for an image when the image can’t be displayed.

Reasons migh be:

•  slow connection
•  error in the src attribute
•  use of a screen reader

You will want to fill this in with your Pinterest Description. Why? Because if someone clicks to save your image to Pinterest, this will be the text that will be attached to the image. If there is no text or the text doesn’t make sense, your reader might change her mind about Pinning, so make it as simple for her as possible.

Be sure to use keyword-friendly descriptions in your Alt text that will make it very easy for others to find your post on Pinterest as well! Not sure what to add to your alt text? Think about what problem you’re solving for your avatar and then think about how that person would search for the answer to that problem on Google, Bing or Pinterest.

Alt Text Example: how to do facebook ad • Share Percentages by platform or Network • mashshare pluggin for wordpress • you can embed social media buttons directly into the body of your article learn how here • yoast social media pluggin • mashshare pinterest pluggin • how to wtite an ebook in a couple of days • 5 Tips for promoting your blog with quora • how to organize email marketing

11 Add pinnable images to your posts

Remember you’ve already added a “Pin This Image” feature and updated all your alt texts. But you will also increase the chance of getting Pinned if you include a Pinterest-friendly image to your article!

MashShare can do that job for you. But you need to resize your featured picture… Facebook share size is 1200x628px, but the typical size for a Pinterest image is vertical with a 2:3 ratio, or about 600 x 900 px, which is different.
So, you will need a graphic design app to redraw your original image…

12 Write social media copy for your articles

If you’re currently going through my blogger’s training, you definitively are using the free Yoast SEO plugin and are familiar with writing an SEO description.
Again, there is a paid version and a free version. I have been using the free Yoast plugin for several years now, and it’s the best thing ever. You don’t have to pay if you don’t need to.

Make sure you know how to use Yoast to write social media-friendly copy too. That will help ensure the right text is shared when someone shares your post to Facebook or Twitter!

The same copy, or a slightly altered copy will work for Facebook, Twitter, Google, Pinterest… So create only once and re-use ad-libitum…

Both MashShare and Yoast can help you with that. Just choose the one you are more comfortable with.

If you use Yoast, click on the “social” icon underneath the Yoast “traffic light” icon. You will be able to add both a Facebook and Twitter description, as well as a graphic that will fit those platforms’ preferred dimensions (1200 x 628 px for FB and 1024 x 512 px for Twitter).

I usually use MashShare instead of Yoast for that, but you don’t have to do the same…

When you are done with all social media descriptions, just click on the blue button “Validate Open Graph data.” That will bring you to the official Facebook Open Graph Object Debugger where you can see exactly how your post will appear on facebook.

13 Quuu Promote

This cool little app has quickly become one of my favorite viral marketing tools in the past couple of months. Quuu is a tools that sends content directly on autopilot to your Buffer, HubSpot, Socialbee or Hootsuite scheduling app. Just sign up, connect your account and choose any option that is right for you.

Quuu Promote is one of the best sources for curated content. It is also the only app where each and every post has been hand-reviewed in house. Content curation makes you differentiate from your competition on social media. By doing that, you are providing value and consistency to your followers.
On the other hand, doing it properly is a time consuming process.

By automating this using Quuu gives you back that precious time to work on your business.

You could summarize Quuu by saying that it removes the time consuming process and add consistency, which is exactly what I was talking about on the introduction…

There is a free plan that allows you to up to 6 new content suggestions per day per profile and send content to 3 social media profiles. That’s enough if you write no more than 4 articles per week. If you write several articles PER DAY (god almighty, your are a King of copywriting), then you will need the pro-pan which start at $8 per month…

Here is a video to help you understand how it works

Quuu Promote can really boost your social proof and send you a couple of hundred visitors to every blog post.

14 Quora

In case you haven’t heard about Quora, it’s a question-answer platform as the old Yahoo Answers used to be. Except that Quora has way more quality answers and can really boost your traffic if you are active on it and especially if you offer value in your answers.

According to Alexa, Quora recently soared amongst the 150 top sites in the world and its popularity has constantly been rising. Quora’s active users can boast about 30,000+ monthly views and up to 350,000 annual views. The most active writers get 90,000+ views monthly and more than 1 million yearly. (Source: Quora)

Quora has a better quality than Yahoo Answers because it has more effective mechanisms for sorting, promoting and showing quality content.

Quora has:

• Less spam & stupid questions. The answers are more intelligent, and you see fewer bloggers desperately filling the daily quota
• Less herd mentality
• Better abilities to add social media accounts like LinkedIn, Facebook & Twitter

Here is how you can use Quora to get traffic back to your website:

1. Answer related questions: If you have a content about a certain topic, look for questions about the same thing. Write a value-rich answer, and then you have the option to link out to your blog post.
2. Share a link to your latest blog post: so your followers can see it.

If you are a lot about using other people apps to promote your stuff, and you want to know more about how Quora is working, read this post from dreamgrow.com https://www.dreamgrow.com/quora-blog-promotion/

15 Linkedin Groups

As you may know, LinkedIn is a powerful social media platform for professionals. And just like Facebook, LinkedIn has small communities (sometimes large ones) around specific topics. To look for groups on LinkedIn, you simply need to do a quick search.
Then request to join the ones that you are interested in. Once you are approved, make sure you interact with other members before sharing your content. Like their posts, comment on their content, etc. Don’t just dump your content on them and leave!

16 Start Bing Ads

Things are changing all the time, so Bing Ads is now called Microsoft Ads. It has probably a lot to do with the failure of Bing to compete against Google, but still, Windows (from Microsoft) is the most popular operating system for desktop and laptop computers while Android is the 2nd biggest operating system and Linux comes right after. (and yes all of them are ahead of Mac, big time).

For that reason, Microsoft Ads are very effective & low-cost; when done right.
If you don’t have a budget for Google Ads or Facebook Ads, Microsoft Ads is a very cost-effective option for you. If you are not sure how to get started on Bing Ads, just do a quick search on Google on how to do it. You can find plenty of tutorials online.

17 Pinterest Group Boards

If you are not using Pinterest, you are seriously letting a lot of traffic go to waste. Pinterest is a huge source of traffic for almost every niche. It does take a little work because you need to create high quality, pretty looking images (called pins), but it’s totally worth the time and effort you put in. I used to use Pinterest only for my travel blog, but then I realized that it could also be used for online marketing related content. I had only created my account a couple of months ago, and I can already see some traffic coming in from this platform.

What are Pinterest group boards?

They are a bit like Facebook groups with the potential to grow your Pinterest followers and send you loads of traffic. However, unlike Facebook groups, you need to build up your account and have a few hundred followers before you request to join Pinterest boards. I don’t suggest you try to join any boards when you get started. Establish your Pinterest account first, add some pins, and follow some people, get some followers, then you can think about joining boards. If the board owner likes your pins (content on Pinterest), they will happily approve your request to join their board.
I have written a short Pinterest tutorial some time ago on my buddy Jay’s blog. You can check it out here.

I know it’s a bit old, but you can get the basics about Pinterest and how to grow your following there.

18 Convert your blog post into a video and rank it on YouTube

Video is super powerful, as you already know. If you are not using video to market your content, uhmmm; where have you been? No, seriously, where have you been? LOL

Every blogger should leverage the power of YouTube and add it to their marketing strategy. If you don’t feel comfortable putting yourself in front of the camera, you do not have to. You can use slides, or choose from the vast selection of video creation software in the market.

If you are already using video as part of your marketing strategy and are still struggling to rank your videos on YouTube, I suggest you check out this video SEO checklist

If you are serious about video marketing and video SEO and would like to take it to the next level, I highly recommend this course.

How To Promote Your Blog: Conclusion:

These are the steps I follow to promote every blog post I publish. Of course, that’s a lot and you don’t have to do all of them…
There are also many other ways to promote your content, of course, but I wanted to share with you the minumum.

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If you like this post, please leave me a comment and tell me how you promote your content.

Credit Picture:
ID 69454513 © Kiriill Ryzhov | Dreamstime.com