You spend hours researching, writing, finding graphics, and uploading your blog posts, but your work isn’t done yet.
To get the most out of each blog post you need to promote it as much as you can. In this post, I will reveal my ultimate guide to make your blog post go viral.
Is Your Content King
Before discussing the different ways to make your blog post go viral, you have to ask yourself is your content king?
Offering quality content to your website will help your site’s traffic and give a reason for people to think of you as the expert of your field. I am sure you have heard, “content is king.”
This is a popular phrase but its actually true.
My biggest concern when writing for my blog is to only write great content that my readership will want to share and come back for more.
Create the type of content your audience will value and this will be a win-win for your site and its audience.
Following this approach of always providing amazing content gives you the opportunity for your website to be the place to go and build credibility with your readers.
“If people are to be expected to put up with turning on a computer to read a screen, they must be rewarded with deep and extremely up to date information that they can explore at will. They need an opportunity for personal involvement that goes far beyond that offered through the letters to the editor pages of print magazines.” -Bill Gates
Let’s take an excerpt from his well-spoken speech.
“They must be rewarded with deep and extremely up to date information.”
Your content is the most crucial aspect of your business.
Quality content will engage readers to come back, share with friends, and buy your services. Make sure your content is worthy of sharing.
I came across an article named, “The nine ingredients that make great content”, written by Zach Bulygo from Kissmetrics, that has a great concept of what quality content should be. The article goes in depth explaining the various ingredients that make great content. I highly recommend taking a view at the full article at Kissmetrics.
He says, “Writing great content is a choice. You can choose to put in the time and work required to create great content and build a prosperous brand. Or you can choose to take the easy path and write poor content – a path that ultimately will get you nowhere.“
HowToMakeMyBlog has an awesome article, “15 To-do’s to publish awesome blog content that attracts visitors and share.” Read the entire checklist by clicking here! A terrific article that outlines how to create a post the correct way.
Bottom line, write quality content that people can’t ignore. Let’s go ahead and take a look at the various ways to help make your blog post go viral.
Write Catchy Headlines
The purpose of writing a catchy headline is because they are designed to grab attention.
Many top influences say the most important part of writing an article is the headline. Cathy headlines will compel your visitors to take the time to read your content and increase your click through ratio. 
Can you think of the most compelling blog title you’ve ever come across?
Basically, having a compelling title will help you turn a search into a reader.
The title should be compelling for the reader to take action and click on the link.
Get yourself a free copy of “101 headlines formulas! Capture attention and get your message read,” by Peter Sandeen.
He says, “ 80% of people don’t read more than your headline. Make it count. “
Bottom line, the headline is the most important part of any piece of writing – whether it is an article, newsletter, sales copy, blog entry, web page, or email.
Take your time when creating your post titles because weak headlines won’t get read.
Include Power Keywords
Creating a great blog post is only half the battle. A good title should include the power keyword that will create a clickable title that gets attention.
Here is a list of proven words that you can use in headlines and titles to gain more interest from your readers and promote sharing on social media channels.
Absolutely
Achieve
Benefit
Best
Clear Cut
Convenient
Dependable
Easy
Free
Guarantee
More
Powerful
Proven
Quality
Secret
Shocking
Including power keywords are one of the easiest strategies to master when creating your headlines. Make sure to include them in your headlines to grab attention.
I highly recommend going back to old posts that might not have a power keyword and add one. I am constantly optimizing old post and revamping them with any new ideas.
Create Evergreen Content
What is evergreen content?
It is content that represents the articles on your blog that will never go out of date.
By creating content that is constantly relevant, it will always pull in new readers.
When done correctly, evergreen content is the best investment you can make. Evergreen content helps drive more leads and drive tons of traffic to your site.
Consider the following when creating evergreen content:
The post are typically longer around 2,000 plus words
Make sure to elaborate on the subject
Do your content encourage readers to take action?
Are your thoughts organized?
Is your content easy to understand?
Do you make it easy for your audience to share your post?
Evergreen content is geared towards beginners
The topics are very precise
If you find yourself having a difficult time coming up with evergreen content consider the following formats when creating your post:
“How To” tutorials and guides
A list of resources
Frequently asked question
Industry definitions
Case studies
The history of something
Curate content
Best practices
Checklists
Refresh and update old content
Failure stories
Pros and cons of something
Unchanging stances on industry issues
Review of popular products and services
Post that help achieve a certain goal
Use 3-5 headings
Wrap your post up with a conclusion
Add an info-graphic
Share Your Post In Your Newsletter
Every business should have a newsletter as a channel to exchange information to their consumers. Email marketing is a powerful way to connect to people and increase sales.
Keep in mind the best time of day to send out your email campaign is at 6 am. Many people check their email first thing in the morning when they get to work.
By emailing them at 6 am it will ensure your email sits on top of their email list.
How long should your newsletter be?
The newsletter content should be short, easy to read, and in small chunks.
Make sure to include at the bottom of your newsletter with a link back to your website and any other social media channels where your readers can get in touch with you.
Use these tips to generate newsletter people actually read:
Have a plan of action on what kind of emails you want to send
The newsletter content should be 90% educational and 10% promotional
Tell your potential subscribers what to expect from your newsletter
Make sure images have alt text
Make it easy for people to unsubscribe
My top email marketing services:
Aweber
Mail Chimp
Constant Contact
Get response
Promote, Promote, Promote!
The next step is getting your blog post on as many channels as you can.
Promote your post on Twitter, Google +, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and any other social media platforms you’re currently using.
Things to consider when promoting your blog post on social media:
Make sure to include a link to your blog on all your social media profiles
Schedule Tweets to drive traffic to blog post
Schedule Facebook post
Share your blog post in Facebook Groups
Promote your blog post in Google + Communities
Host a Google hangout to promote your blog post
Use forums to share your blog post
Use Pinterest Group Boards to get more exposure for your blog post
Create An Info-graphic for Your Blog Post
What is an info-graphic?
Is a visual image such a chart or diagram used to represent information or data. An info-graphic can represent trends, timelines, and show patterns.
An info-graphic will help take your blog post and create a visual representation of information.
Benefits of using info-graphics:
Summarizes your blog post to a picture
People like understanding complex things quickly in fewer, less complicated steps
The brain process visual information 60K times faster than the time it takes for the brain to decode text
Instagram and Pinterest love info-graphics
Info-graphics are easy to share and increase your chances for your blog to go viral
Easy to share on websites/blogs
Things to keep in mind when creating info-graphics
Limit the word count
Keep it visual
Keep it simple
Focus on the flow
Cite your sources
Make it easy to view
Use simple colors
Organize your thoughts
Place your logo and URL at the bottom
Highlight the most important information
Tools for bloggers to create info-graphics:
Canva: is a free design tool aimed at beginners and professionals alike.
Create a snazzy design in seconds.
List of different designs you can create with Canva:
Social media post
Documents
Blogging & eBooks
Marketing materials
Social media & email headers
Events
Banner ads
Piktochart: is an easy design app that requires very little effort to produce beautiful, high quality graphics. Take your visual communication to the next level with out hiring a professional designer.
List of things you can create and do with Piktochart:
Incorporate themes
Templates
Allows you to edit anything
Create info-graphic, reports, banners, and presentations
You can embed videos from YouTube
Venngage: is an easy to use info-graphic maker and lets you make beautiful design and themes for free. Choose from hundreds for info-graphics, reports, posters, promotions, and social media posts.
Create info-graphics in 3 easy steps:
Choose a template
Add charts and visuals
Customize your design
Infogr.am: Create, publish and share data visualizations, info-graphics, and online charts.
Create and publish beautiful visualizations of your data. Interactive, responsive, and engaging.
Visual.ly: They create engaging, beautiful content that helps you stand out.
It’s fast, simple, and affordable.
Make It Viral
After you spend time creating the info-graphic, make sure it reaches a larger audience by making it go viral.
Reach out to influencers in your niche and ask them to share your content. Also, use your newsletter to ask your readership to share your info-graphic.
Make sure to get an embed code that allows other bloggers to easily share your info-graphics onto their blogs.
How To Create An Embed Code
Access Siege Media’s Embed Code Generator at http://www.siegemedia.com/embed-code-generator and fill out the entire form.
Make sure to copy the code since this will be needed for influencers and other bloggers to embed the info-graphic to their blogs.
Neil Patel wrote an article, the headline alone catches your attention, “60,000 Visitors and counting: How to double your traffic with info-graphics.”
Head to his website and download his step info-graphic creation guide that you can use today to create your own info-graphics.
BuzzSumo Outreach
BuzzSumo is a great tool for your content marketing efforts.
It helps you quickly identify what content is trending and most of all who’s sharing it. Find the key influencers to promote your content.
BuzzSumo has become the most important tool that I use for my content marketing. It’s a gold mine of data regarding what content is most shared across social media platforms.
BuzzSumo Tutorial
Head over to BuzzSumo and create an account.
BuzzSumo offers a FREE 14 day trial so you can start using immediately.
Click the “Content Research” tab, type in the search box a keyword related to your post.
For example, if your post is about, “How to gain muscle,” you could enter in keywords such as “gain muscle” or “lifting weights.”
BuzzSumo will generate a list of the top influencers for that specific topic.
The best thing about BuzzSumo is being able to view shares.
Select the post that best suites your search.
Click on view shares and it will show every individual that shared this post. The next step is engaging with these influencers to amplify your content marketing by sharing your blog post.
The next step is to reach out to every influencer who share the article and send out the following email.
Hey NAME,
I noticed that you tweeted one of my favorite trending post, “(name of article)” from (Author Name). I actually have a content marketing guide that I am sending out next week that is very comprehensive and provides actionable tips.
Want a heads up when it goes live?
Cheers, Nancy
P.S. Let me know if there is anything I can help you with?
Woorkup.com has a great article on how his blog post went viral with 2 minutes of work.
He used a very clever technique that is getting him tons of views, shares, comments, and likes. The blog reveals step by step how his blog post became viral by simply sending an email and giving a mention.
Basically, he wrote an article about recent health struggles with Ulcerative Colitis. At the bottom of the post, he gave a mention to CCFA which is a non-profit organization fighting for the cure.
After publishing the post, he went over to the CCFA webpage and sent them a quick email notifying them the mention in the article.
Within 24 hours, he went from 18 views to 2,081 in under 24 hours. Every single time you create a post make sure to give someone of authority a mention.
Afterwards, follow up with an email, letting them know you mentioned them in your post. It can make a big difference in the world and potentially make your blog post viral.
Read the complete article now. (Worth reading and using this strategy to help your blog post go viral)
Google + Communities
Promote your content using Google Plus Communities. These online groups are tailored with like-minded individuals to interact and share content.
For almost every niche imaginable, you will find thousands of communities.
Once you’ve completed your blog post, head over to Google Plus, and select communities from the menu bar.
The search box lets you find communities related to your industry and content. I highly recommend joining all relevant communities within your niche.
Make sure to join only large community groups and where engagement is active.
The final step would be to promote your blog in relevant communities. Make sure to include a catchy headline, description, and give a mention to anyone you reference in the post.
Google Plus will send these influencers notification and many of them will share your content. These top influencers will help drive a large stream of traffic to your site.
LinkedIn Groups
Working LinkedIn Groups effectively is a solid way to build your brand, generate traffic to your site, and help your post go viral.
LinkedIn Groups is similar to Google Plus Groups by letting you share content to like-minded individuals. Join private communities, enjoy meaningful conversations, and share your content that can potentially go viral due to the large exposure it will receive.
In the menu bar, hover over “Interest” from the drop down menu select “Groups.”
LinkedIn also has a “Discovery” tab where it will recommend groups to you based on your interest and profile information.
Using the search box is another way to find keywords related to your content or industry.
Things to consider when joining a group:
Join groups that are large
Check if members are active and engage
Target the most popular discussions in each group
Ask For Feedback
Before you publish your post, approach industry influencers, and ask for feedback.
Getting feedback on your blog post will help you strengthen the post and you’ll receive valuable feedback from experts.
Use the same method mention above using BuzzSumo to find industry influencers.
Use this email script when reaching out to influencers:
Subject: NAME, can you help me?
Hey NAME, I know you’re occupied, so I’ll keep this short.
I’m publishing a blog post about [whatever your post is about] next week.
More specifically, I’m covering [subtopic 1], [subtopic 2], and [subtopic 3].
Anyways, I know you’re all about [your topic], so I would love to get your quick feedback on it.
Mind if I send you the link? Thanks! YOUR NAME
Email Source: RobbieRichards.com
So, whenever you receive the feedback, make sure to thank the influencer. The next step is to make the changes or modifications recommended by the influencer.
When the changes have taken place let the influencer know your content is live.
They will be happy to share especially since they were part of the contribution. Using this technique of reaching out will help build relationships and land potential clients or ventures.
Google Authorship
Authorship and engagement on Google+ can lead to higher ranking and increase your traffic.
What is Google authorship? It’s a great tool that helps search engine to find content from individuals you want to connect with or follow online.
The nice feature of using Google Authorship is that Google will index your content and provides your search results with your picture.
Along with showing ownership, it also lowers the risk of content theft. You will have fewer worries and problems related to plagiarism, which will allow you to continue working and showing off your skills.
While you still need to invest your time in SEO, this can improve what you do quite a bit. Understanding your Google Author Rank is important.
Many case studies have proven that using Google authorship has increased their click through ratio up to 150%.
Slideshare
What is slideshare?
Slideshare is the world’s largest community for sharing presentations.
Make it a habit to convert your newly published blog into a slide presentation.
The best feature of slide presentation is being able to show lots of visual metaphors.
Press Release
Press Release is a great way to gain exposure for a website, company, or service. The press release provides information about your product or services on the Internet and reaches a broader audience.
A press release is an announcement of your company sent to thousands of publications to bring awareness of your company.
The press release will help get your business visibility in front of as many people as possible. Press release helps individuals find your services online. The company I use for press release is 24/7 Press Release Writing Services.
Writing press releases with embedded links and distributing them across newswire can give you a tremendous amount of traffic.
I have enlisted a list of my favorite press release site.
PR.com
OpenPress.com
Free-Press-Release.com
Free-Press-Related-Center.info
24-7PressRelease.com
1888PressRelease.com
PRBuzz.com
PR Compass.com
PR Urgent.com
Express-Press-Release.net
ClickPress.com
PR9.net
EcommWire.com
PRLog.org
I-Newswire.com
PRLeap.com
Hire Outsourcer
If you do not have time to dedicate the necessary time to promote your blog post, then hire an outsourcer.
The outsourcer can help you build traffic by doing certain jobs for you.
I have composed a list of sites where you can hire an outsource.
Fiverr: What you need done? Find it on Fiverr. Browse, Buy, and Done.
Freelancer: Find the right person for the job. With millions of talent experts from all around the world, you can get help with your business within minutes of posting your project.
Upwork: Find freelancers and freelance jobs on Upwork – the world’s largest online workplace where savvy businesses and professional freelancers go to work!
PeoplePerHour: Why People per hour? Work with top-notch talent: boost your project success by hiring handpicked professional Freelancers.
HireMyMom: Since 2007, HireMyMom.com has been providing legitimate work from home jobs posting for businesses seeking work-at-home mom professionals.
Content Divas: See, here at Content Divas your success means our success. That’s why we’re the go to place for all your marketing needs.
Guru: The hiring process on Guru is easy, and every freelancer we have worked with was extremely professional and made sure we were more than happy.
Scriptlance
123Employee
Onlinejobs.ph
oDesk
Activities that your outsource can perform are the following:
Traffic Generation
Writing
Content Creation
Web Design
Customer Service
Administrative Tools
Handle All Social Media
Find Joint Venture
And much more…..
Hire An Internet Marketing Firm To Help Drive Traffic To Your Site
Hiring an expert at times is the easiest ways to drive traffic to a site if you have the funds.
I have enlisted the top Internet Marketing Firms:
Increasevisibility.com
Webimax.com
Seop.com
Intrapromote.com
Arteworks.biz
Oneupweb.com
Seoimage.com
Customermagnatism.com
Thinkbigsites.com
Eliteseomarketing.com
First-page-seo.com
Elephant-traffic.com
Peakpositions.com
SEO.com
Webmetro.com
Join Question and Answer Sites
People come to these sites looking for answers. Be the expert and answer their questions.
The great thing about these sites is that they will drive tons of free traffic to your website.
When looking for questions to answer make sure it’s related to the blog post you’re currently promoting.
For instance, you can answer their questions and let them know you just wrote an article and give them your link.
I have composed a list of my favorite sites for answer or making questions:
Answers.com
Blurit.com
Anybodyoutthere.com
Funadvice.com
Askville.com
Askmehelpdesk.com
Answerbank.com
Answerly.com
Answerbag.com
Friendfeed.com
Answers.yahoo.com
Ask.com
Allexperts.com
Produce In Depth Long-Form Content
On average, long-term content actually gets shared more than short-form content.
Blog.visme.co wrote a related article on the same topic, “10 Ways to make your content go viral.”
In this post, they mentioned that BuzzSumo did a case study where they concluded that 3,000 to 10,000 word post are shared the most.
Content that has 1,000 or less words where shared the least. Click here to view the entire article.
Optimize Your Images
Image optimization is one of the simplest and most effective steps you can do.
If you want more traffic, you must learn how to optimize your images. Images do drive traffic through image search. I usually name my images prior to uploading them.
Make sure to use the keyword to filled out the Title and Alt Text. This will help you to optimize your images.
Pinterest
Are your images Pinterest friendly?
Are you encouraging blog visitors to pin images to their boards?
Making your website Pinterest friendly helps drive additional traffic and increase the chances of your post going viral.
Sarahvongbargen.com has a in depth article that explains, “3 ways to make your images Pinterest friendly.” I highly recommend taking the time to read it and making your images easy for people to share on Pinterest.
Click To Tweet
Click to tweet is the easiest and simplest way to promote and advertise your website, blog, quotes, and pretty much anything you want to share on Twitter.
A strategy that I use is to highlight quotes and include a “click to tweet” option. This encourages my audience to share the quote and therefore be more exposed to additional traffic.
Click to preview —> <—
The easiest way to promote, share, and track your content on Twitter. (And it’s FREE)
<a href="http://clicktotweet.com/?a=CLK-5760A536046