How To Get People To Actually Freakin’ Read Your Blog Post
Blogging can be an incredibly effective way to build your personal brand, to promote a product or startup, or to altruistically share knowledge and entertainment with others. A blogging platform is a liberating medium to have your voice heard around the world within minutes. It’s incredibly empowering and slightly intoxicating to have that much potential power in your grasp.
Content creation is perhaps the most effective distribution strategy right now. In Fact, at Whttl, we use blogging as our primary engine to drive growth. This very post is #4 of a 30 day blogging marathon. (See the others here.)
So let’s say you’ve spent many hours crafting your blog, obsessing over every last detail. You concisely lay out your content strategy and you provide a fair amount of links for further reading. You include vivid imagery, and you ensure your content is genuinely engaging and interesting. You push the publish button and anxiously wait by your phone for Anderson Cooper to call you to discuss how your post become such a viral sensation.
Back in reality, you hit refresh over and over, checking the viewership numbers again and again. Fueled by your brain’s need to release dopamine a la the sight of viewer numbers, you jump out of your seat when you see the first view. Oh wait, that was just your own view. Four hours later, you have two views. Finally, the next morning, you are up to three views. Wow, that sucks.
Blogging in a vacuum is the worst. It can be demoralizing, depressing, and incredibly frustrating. After all, you’re a smart cookie, and you understand that you can’t get very far in life if your output isn’t worth a multiple of your input. I’m not an economist, but four hours worth of work to have your Grandma and your second cousin Stan read your work is a crap ROI on your time. (Sorry Grandma.)
Accept this brutal reality: Some of the best blog posts, perhaps even award-worthy ones, will get read by less than a few hundred people. It’s like building the best 5-star hotel in the world in Hagerman, Idaho. If you don’t promote it, nobody is going to come. Don’t build your blog post on a rural dusty road. Build it in Times Square. But how do you do that?
It’s all about that promotion, baby! You’ve got to hustle and understand that your viewership is a function of the work you put into promoting it. It’s exponential too. So, 1n of work yields 1n of views, but 10n of work can yield 100n of views. This is thanks to the reproductive effect of virality and social sharing.
Let’s take a look at some ways to promote your sweet post.
Ahh, good ol’ Reddit, the front page of the internet. A friend of mine, Mr. Michael Dunworth, is a Reddit champion. Just for fun, he and his mates launched a laundry service that would pick up laundry at your door. Big deal, right? Oh, did I mention they would be dressed in superhuman costumes? Michael was Superman, and his roommates Chris and Yanni were Batman and Spiderman. Using Reddit exclusively, they were able to drive so much demand in the first few days but they were working around-the-clock to get all the orders in. Phone calls were pouring in at 3 AM. People read their posts, and acted. There was a receptive crowd waiting for their service, and there is a captive audience awaiting your post, too.
HackerNews
Think of HackerNews like Redditt for the tech community. Any member can post, and submissions are upvoted and downvoted. The audience directly affects the level of attention that your post will garner. On any given weekday, Hacker News gets upwards of 200,000 unique visits. Keep in mind, this is a predominantly hacker/tech/startup community. If your post is about how to best bathe turtles…it probably won’t resonate well here.
To submit a link, create an account here. The title is of utmost importance, so put some serious thought in how to title effectively. Simultaneously, try to avoid spammy or disingenuous sounding titles that could be referred to as “link bait”.
Guest Blogging
Guest blogging is a way to promote your blog post on another blog, specifically one with more traffic than yours. In this strategy, you get an insta-audience (think EasyMac for readers), and the blog gets quality, original content. It’s a win-win, where both of you can gain benefits.
Most meaningful guest blogging arrangements come out of genuine relationships. Sure, there are many sites that purport they can get your post published to other blogs, but if it’s that easy…that should alarm you. Reach out directly to blogs in your space that you admire. Email the authors and contributors. However, don’t just say say “I’d like to write a post, wouldn’t that be cool?” Show them the freakin’ post. In the interest of not scaring them away with a 1,000 word email, my suggestion is to provide a link to your blog, even as a shared Google Doc. Try this:
Hi Blogger Bob,
Tom here. I really enjoy reading your blog. I’m also active in the XYZ industry, and I just wrote a post called “This is the best blog post in the world if you are in our industry.” I haven’t published it yet, because I wanted to first offer the content as a guest post exclusively for your blog.
Take a look at the post here: www.docs.google.com/examplepost
Thanks,
Tom
Expect that not everyone is going to accept your proposal, or even respond for that matter. Work with percentages. Whenever you take action, you have expectations, such as “I’ll pitch 10 different writers, and I’ll expect 2 responses.” Sit down at night, send 20 requests to write for a guest blog, and in the morning, you may have 3 or 4 responses.
Drop your ego and do not be afraid to be reasonably aggressive. There are 5 levels of email engagement, and if done tactfully, it’s not unreasonable to exhaust all of them. You may have a 5% response rate at the first email, but by the time you get to the 5th email, that could get that up to 30%.
1. Cold Email — Short and sweet.
2. Five Days Later — Following up, did you get it?
4. Two Days Later — Sent from personal email, did my last messages go in your junk folder?
5. Four Days Later — Reaching out again with something fresh.
6. Seven Days Later — Last resort. (But keep your cool.)
Multiple Blogs
While one blog should be your home base, it doesn’t hurt to syndicate out to multiple different blogs of yours such as Tumblr, Medium, Bloggr, and your own branded blog. I always reference the the home base blog at the bottom of the post. For an example, see the bottom of this very post.
Some SEO strategists may (or used to) disagree with this approach, because Google may discount/punish for duplicate content. It really depends on your objective. If you are publishing blog posts for the SEO value, and hope to obtain readers for months or years to come via organic searches, you may want to consult with an SEO expert before posting on four different blogs. When I post, I use the blitz approach, and really don’t care about the SEO implications. I want many readers in a condensed time period, and I do that by casting a wide net. If it comes at the expense of SEO, that’s OK with me, given my current strategy.
Encourage Virality
I’ve elaborated on this in my post called “How I got 42,000 views in 24 hours.” Pepper your post with some links to make it easy to tweet. (I got this idea from Jason Calacanis.)
One or two of these throughout the whole post is probably a good number. I’ve found that it’s more engaging to not merely say “you should tweet this article.” Rather, ask your readers to share something with you via twitter. For example:
What tips do you have about promoting your posts? Share with us on Twitter.
There is one caveat to this. Respond to every freakin’ @ mention and tweet that you get. No exceptions. Engage with your audience and make @garyvee proud. (He’s the reigning king of social media engagement and has written Jab, Jab, Right Hook, The Thank You Economy, and Crush It.
Digg
Anyone can submit a link to Digg by scrolling to the bottom of the footer, and clicking “Submit a link”.
If your blog post gets featured, it could literally send tens of thousands of clicks your way. When I wrote “I lasted 37 hours on Android”, the post got over 23,000 views from Digg alone. I can’t confirm how Digg’s selection process works (it’s no doubt proprietary), but they definitely seem to favor links with a lot of traction elsewhere. Maybe save this one for last after your post has built up some momentum.
Avoid Blog Poison
All of these tactics are amplified in effectiveness if you start with a great piece. You’ve got to have the basics down to give your hard work a fighting chance. It’s probably a smart idea to have your writing proofread another person. A fresh set of eyes can fix up your obvious mistakes (we all make them), and give your writing that extra clarity. Be genuine with your voice. Blogs are powerful because they are transparent and real. They don’t have to be a facade of poorly disguised agendas. Don’t try to be someone you aren’t. Your readers can tell. Tell a good story. You know who are the most powerful people in the world, according to the late Steve Jobs? Storytellers. A decent piece can get good traction, but a great piece can get phenomenal results.
Revisit Your Posts
How often do you look at the publish date of the posts you read? Sometimes I notice that a piece that seems to be getting a fair amount of traction isn’t always brand new. Blog posts don’t always have a shelf life. Believe it or not, you are allowed to promote your posts after the first day you publish.
Promoting a blog post is a baby version of promoting a book. It takes repetition and consistent, diligent work. So there ya have it. Now, go get out there and get some readers!
If you found value in this, it would be tremendous if you scrolled down a little further and hit the “Recommend” button.
Greg Muender is the founder of Whttl, described as the “Kayak.com for the sharing economy.” Use it to compare dozens of different providers and marketplaces at once. Drop Greg a line via greg<at>whttl/dot/com. This post was originally published on the Official Whttl Blog.
