David Leonhardt — July 29, 2019 — July 29, 2019
This is not an article about producing great content. I could write an encyclopedia on that topic, and still not cover it.
This article is about how to expand your reach with the great content you are already producing.
The techniques we’ll explore here don’t work with poor quality content. Frankly, they don’t work all that well with mediocre content.
But they work fantastically with great content.
I routinely get great reach for my content in three ways.
The first is, as you would expect, by having built up an audience who share links to my content in many ways. Every blogger should build an audience. If your content is good, it will happen “naturally”. I put that in quotation marks, because you still have to promote your posts.
That’s where my other two strategies, or tools, come in.
Viral Content Bee
The first is Viral Content Bee (VCB).
This is a content sharing platform.
The basic idea is that you join as a member, then submit your content for other members to share.
VCB is based on a credit system. You can earn credits by sharing other people’s great content. Or you can buy credits. The more credits you have, the more your content gets shared.
As of writing, the platforms members have access to include:
- Mix
- Tumblr
That is quite a range.
The number of credits you earn for sharing depends in some cases on the number of followers you have. In other cases, it’s a fixed number.
PRO TIP #1: Some people have their accounts set to auto share, which I believe is based on the categories. For instance, a certain person might choose to auto share all “ecommerce” related posts. To get maximum shares, choose the full three categories you are allowed.
PRO TIP #2: You’ll also get most of your shares when your content is on the front page where people see it. To get on the front page, all you have to do is add credits. It’s worth going in every couple days to bump up your most recent article.
PRO TIP #3: Twitter and Pinterest are best viewed with different shaped images. Twitter works best with horizontal images. Pinterest works best with vertical images…and VCB has begun enforcing that format. So best to prepare two versions of your images in advance, or forfeit the benefits of Pinterest shares.
PRO TIP #4: If you want lots of LinkedIn and Tumblr shares, don’t put hashtags in your title. They look stupid on LinkedIn and Tumblr. What I sometimes do, but not often enough, is include hashtags, wait for the auto share accounts to pick up my post (since those are primarily for Twitter), then remove the hashtags for future sharing across all platforms.
Not everybody uses the platform correctly. In fact, VCB owner Ann Smarty says that a lot of people fail to see results because they don’t engage with the content and with other members.
The biggest misconception about VCB platform (and why some users fail to see real results) is that people assume it’s a social media automation platform, or a magic button.
It’s neither of those. We don’t automate or “fake” social media presence.
VCB is a connecting platform that requires constant engagement. You need to always monitor your projects to diversify categories and wording to catch more eyes. But most importantly, you need to interact with the shares you receive from VCB: Like, comment, thank and follow.
I for one try and retweet most tweets promoting my articles for those shares to spread even further. This helps my promoters to receive more interactions and followers which will in turn increase my reach, too, whenever they tweet my link again. It’s that mutual collaboration aspect that really makes VCB powerful.
Social media is all about engagement: VCB’s task is to connect you to social media users, but it’s up to you how valuable you’ll manage to make that connection to be.
I should mention that there are dozens, perhaps even a 100 social sharing websites. VCB is one of the very, very few with quality content to share and quality users to share your content. Most of the other platforms are a waste of time.
Triberr
The second strategy or tool is Triberr. Yes, this is the other platform that is not a waste of time.
Like VCB, Triberr is a quality social sharing exchange website.
That’s where the similarities end.
There are no credits on Triberr. Sharing is strictly voluntary.
To get content shared, you need to join tribes. Tribemates share your content, as do anybody else who follows you. The more tribes you join, the more people will share your content.
Tribes are thematic. If, for instance, you run a travel blog, you might want to join travel tribes and lifestyle blogs. Therefore, tribemates share like-minded, on-topic content.
PRO TIP #1: There are no “rules”, and some tribes are notoriously unkept, but sooner or later every tribe owner checks to see who has and who has not been sharing tribemates’ content. So you’ll do best to make sure to share something each week from each tribe you belong to.
PRO TIP #2: The more tribes you join, the bigger your reach. But, the more tribes you join, the more content you will also have to share.
PRO TIP #3: At the top of everybody’s stream are the “promoted” posts. If you want to maximize your reach, you can pay $ 5 to promote your post. Note that your content will still appear only to people following you on Triberr, but it will appear at the top.
PRO TIP #4: After promoted posts, come the posts of “Affinity” members – peopel whose posts you have shared in the past week . So if you want to bump up your posts for more sharing, make sure you have recently shared posts from people likely to share yours, either because of topic or because of their sharing history.
PRO TIP #5: Triberr pulls your posts from your RSS feed. If you write on several blogs, don’t submit just one of those blog feeds to Triberr. Submit a compilation of them all. I use feed.informer to aggregate the feeds of blogs I write for frequently and occasionally. So, this post will show up in my Triberr feed through feed.informer, and lots of Triberr members will share it.
PRO TIP #6: Images are everything on social media. Yes, hour headline is what brings people to your pages, but without an image, nobody will notice your post.
An hour after publishing a post, go to Triberr and make sure an image is attached. If not, add one through “Edit Post”.
If your post hasn’t loaded yet, you can go into Settings >> My Content >> Check Feed to force an upload of your post.
A few minutes later, your post should be showing on your profile. Now make sure an image is attached.
Three strategies to expand your reach
Both VCB and Triberr can help you build your audience.
Of course, you can also join LinkedIn and FaceBook groups. You can corral allies and like-minded bloggers into mastermind groups on Skype. You can comment on blogs and on social media posts.
Building your audience and using VCB and Triberr will expand your content’s reach.
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