How my First Blog Post Got 200,000+ Visitors
6 months ago, our professor was giving us back our mid-term exams and I was excited to know my grade.
“Your french spelling is unacceptable”
But instead of commendations, I found a conspicuous comment scrawled at the top of the paper: “Your french spelling is unacceptable”.
So what? I needed to work on my f***ing spelling, but this was not motivating at all. However, writing for thousands of people interested in French is a lot more exciting. Thus, I decided to create a blog about French sharing tips to master all the French tricky rules.
→ I was new to blogging, and new in the French “niche” ←
Then, few times after publishing my first blog post ever, I was checking my Google Analytics and…
KABOUUUM!!
Virality was knocking on my new blog door… And I felt like I was dating someone for the first time → Exciting.
One month later, I managed to attract more than 200,000 unique visitors with this single article. How did I achieve this? Read more to find out.
1# How to identify the best topic to create a “grosse bertha”
A “grosse bertha” was an artillery piece used during WWI and French people created a myth around it. With the “grosse bertha” everything was possible, and that was exactly what I needed.
But how to write a “grosse bertha” piece of content to kickstart the growth of my blog? Here are few steps I followed to achieve that:
1# Find the other blogs in your niche and get their top articles
First, I wanted to have a clear view of what the other were doing within the “French niche”. For that, I recommend using a powerful tool: our friend Google.
Search in Google inurl:blog *popular_term_in_your_niche* and collect the results using a simple scraping browser extension.
For each, you can collect some insights about their traffic and from which website the visitors are coming using Similar Web. The similar website section can help you to discover other blogs in your niche.
Then, add them to a spreadsheet and don’t hesitate to complete it later:
2# Use Google to get badass article ideas
Now that you have a clear view of your competitors, it’s time to find out what is working in your niche.
Good articles often target some interesting keywords for Search Engine Optimization. A quick way to get interesting ideas for a new article is to search for topics getting a lot of traffic from Google.
To do so, I use SEMrush. If you don’t want to pay for the premium version, they give you one day free and it is sufficient to export all the data you need in the future. Just enter each competitor domain name and export their “best organic keywords”.
Besides, Moz wrote a great article about finding the spark of an idea using Google Autocomplete. Just try to enter long-tail keywords and select interesting ideas coming from the autocomplete feature of google. Maybe here is your “grosse bertha”, don’t let her get away!
3# Use Social Media to find out what is working
People don’t share content if it’s not f***ing great. If you can spot content with a lot of social sharing, then write a similar article to replicate the buzz. I personally use three tools to find out ideas with social media:
1First, Quicksprout will give you insights about the shares of your competitors. You can spot in the “Page Level Results” section which links are producing more shares. Analyzing carefully this information, you will be able to find out what kind of article people are more likely to share.
2Second, I use Buzzsumo to quickly find the best articles in the niche. Just enter a relevant keyword and you will get the best articles. You can dive into the backlinks to find other competitors and analyze their website.
Then, you can sort the results for each Social Media, getting insights about the amount of social shares. This is one of my favourite technique to easily get trending articles.
Finally, you can enter some keywords on Topsy, to find what is trending on Twitter. You should take the opportunity to find some relevant hashtags for your niche. Then, I usually do a quick research on Twitter to spot the best articles showing up in the “Top” section.
4# Create a backlog of headlines
So, now you have a lot of interesting articles right? Please don’t lose all these future “grosse berthas” and add them to a spreadsheet to be able to get back to them later!
Now, it’s time to start the game! Try to figure out what are the most interesting headlines structures and combine them to create new ones.
For example you have a title saying “10 rules you really need to know about marketing” and another one “How to master SEO like a king”. Just write “10 rules to master marketing like a king”. Et voilà !
“Yeah but that’s f**king hard to combine these headlines”
Okay, the sloths can use the Hubspot’s blog topic generator which gives you creative headlines in few seconds ( → Tweet this if you’re a sloth).
Try to write headlines with 10 words maximum and using emotional and powerful words. I really like writing articles beginning with “10 rules”, “22 facts”… Don’t hesitate to use an odd number, it’s even more difficult for curious people to not click on the link.
P.S.: If you want to focus on virality, you can take the example of Buzzfeed’s headlines.
When you think your headline is perfect, I advise you to check it with the headline analyzer of CoShedule, then it will be really perfect:
→Tips: I use Trello to have a backlog of headlines. Doing so, I never lack article ideas ;)
After these steps, I was able to understand that articles about French spelling rules were what my audience was looking for.
I worked a bit on the headline and finally decided to validate “Les 40 règles de base de l’orthographe française” (The 40 basic rules of French spelling).
→ It sounds like a Grosse Bertha, right? ;)
2# How I used the skyscraper tactic to write the best spelling article ever
After getting my headline, I just wondered:
“Hey cool, but I don’t know anything about basic French spelling rules…”
Great! I created my blog to learn more about French so it’s time to move my ass! After few searches on Google, I got 10 websites talking about basic spelling rules.
The skyscraper technique is about combining this content to create the BEST blog post ever on the subject (for more details, you can check this blog post from Backlinko).
I spent many hours working in combining the rules to finally get 40 basic rules explained like a charm.
It’s important to work on the design of your post too. In my case, the other websites were all so ugly you didn’t want to read them at all. Improve the design of your post, make it readable and shareable and you will beat them all ( → Tweet this).
3# Blogging is 20% writing and 80% promotion
We usually say that blogging is about 20% writing and the rest promoting the content. I don’t care if the figures are true or not but I do agree: PROMOTION IS EXCEEDINGLY IMPORTANT.
You remember when I said virality was like dating someone…? Well, if you write a great blog post and don’t work on promoting it, it’s like getting a date and don’t try to charm him/her at all → it sucks.
1# Prepare your blog for a rocket launch
You want to go to Mars and don’t even have a damn Cape Canaveral launching pad?? Let’s fix this right now.
1.
First, be sure you have a hosting being able to handle a huge amount of people in a very short time. It would be such a pity if your blog shuts down because of a viral effect…
If you use Wordpress, I strongly advise you to use Bluehost hosting for Wordpress which allowed me to get more than 300 unique visitors in the same time without crashing… And all this for $3.49/month!
If you blog on Medium, no worries about bandwidth, their servers scale brilliantly! ;)
2.
Optimize your blog post to load fast. Optimize your images using a website like www.compressor.io. For Wordpress users, you can use plugins such as BJ Lazy Load or EWWW Image Optimizer.
3.
People are lazy. They want the easiest way to share your content. For that, add social sharing buttons (you can use plugins such as Sumome) and don’t forget to add a call to action at the end of the article. It can be “Please share this article with your friends” or “Want more articles like this? Subscribe to our newsletter” etc.
If you use Medium, Ali Mese gives some great tips to optimize your blog post. The #8 helps you to add sharing buttons like this:
2# Launch the rocket
I was ready to launch my “grosse bertha”, I just needed to press the button
→ publish
And suddenly… nothing happened… Oh right, the promotion part! Here are 3 tips to promote efficiently your new article:
1.
I use Buffer to schedule all the social media post for a new article. I just buffer the main image of my blog post and enter in the “Power Scheduler” tab to schedule multiple times the post on Facebook and Twitter.
2.
Increase the reach of your post sharing it in relevant groups. You have to research relevant Facebook, Linkedin, Reddit… groups within your niche. For Linkedin you can find them easily with google: site:linkedin.com/groups OR site:linkedin.com/grp “keyword”.
Then share your post with a catchy headline. Mine was something like: “Want to discover the 40 French basic spelling rules? There are just here”.
Groups are very important to integrate a community and create links with their members. On Facebook, I’m able to speak to more than 100,000 people just publishing in 20 different groups… and I get 10 times more shares doing that!
3.
Last but not least, it’s important to reach people you mention in your blog post. Doing so, they will likely share it and spread the word. You can try as well to reach influencers of your niche.
One little “hack” I use is to tag these people in your image on Twitter. Doing so, they will receive a notification and maybe share your content.
Otherwise, you can “cold email” them, saying politely that you mentioned them in your post. Jakob Marovt gives great insights on how to do this with the following template:
For my first blog post on my blog, I regret not having used this technique more. I didn’t take the time to discover who were the influencers for French language and I could get even more visitors doing so.
4# How to sustain the virality and get long-term attraction
Finally, I now work on getting long-term attraction from my articles. Because if virality is great, long-term traction is even better!
After few weeks, I would advise you to reschedule social media post with Buffer. Here is a short video from Kevan Lee explaining how to do that:
Do not hesitate to share quotes, images, headlines etc. from your best article.
Besides, try to build backlinks reaching other blogs and influencers. The idea is to have a bunch of links to your article across the web. And if you manage to do that, you will be likely on the first page of Google for high-searched keywords.
Then, don’t forget the power of emails. So many people regret not having setting up a Newsletter subscription form before their article went viral. It’s very important to collect the emails of your readers. Doing so, you will be able to make them come back to your website and share your new content.
You can use as well the Sumome plugin to set up pop-ups and a top bar allowing your readers to opt-in for your newsletter. I personally use Mailchimp which gives you the opportunity to embed your form at the end of your article.
Last but not least, don’t forget to build a relation with your readers. I always try to answer all the comments on my blog and on Facebook. Also, reply to all their questions and don’t hesitate to thank people sharing the articles.
It’s not a conclusion
Finally, after doing all this I got more than 200,000 visitors and hundreds of comments. My mailing list quickly hit 5,000 subscribers and it’s still growing.
But the adventure is just beginning and I have already written many other articles since then, reaching 1,5 millions page views after 5 months. I keep going writing as a new passion and my French spelling doesn’t suck anymore!
Thanks for reading! You can get my articles by email here.
