Over the years, different online services have offered us the opportunity to let our voice be heard through digital content and yet, many of us still struggle to get traffic to our page. In a world of instant gratification, it can be difficult to grasp that building a strong audience takes time and continuous effort.
Based on our experiences, we have compiled a list with the 10 best content marketing growth hacks so you can improve the traffic on your blog.
Quora
Quora is one of the best platforms where you, as an individual, can provide value, by answering questions and being helpful. What’s more, answering popular questions in a unique and refreshing way can be very rewarding:
Question: What are your exciting sites for building backlinks?
Answer:
Results:
Here are two tips to remember with Quora:
- No one likes long boring posts. Make your answer is short and on point, while adding something unique or provocative.
- Write your answers like you would write your articles. Use proper formatting, short paragraphs and whitespace. When broken into smaller sections, paragraphs are easier to read and understand.
Another goldmine for content promotion is Reddit.
Start by finding a Subreddit where your target group will likely engage in. Just like on Quora, make sure you answer popular questions with short and valuable content so that people actually find your post useful. Taking the time to write a good answer goes a long way.
For every 10 comments I make on people’s posts, I post one of my articles.
Make sure you keep the ratio 10:1 because Reddit will easily ban you from the Subreddit if they sense you abuse the platform.
GrowthHackers
Growth Hackers is one of the best platforms you can use to learn different ways to improve your content marketing skills.
Not only that but you can also post your own articles, studies, and videos. This, in turn, will lead many members to check out your website. That is, once again, if you post valuable content.
Follow the steps bellow and your posts will soon be noticed and lead traffic to your website:
- First post review: The team of GrowthHackers will review your first post before giving approval for further posting. It takes 1-2 working days to get approved.
- Follow other Experts: By following other experts and communicating on their posts, you will usually have them check your content as well.
- Contribute to popular posts: Not only will this lead to more people discovering your content but it will also grow your network.
Stumbleupon
Much like other Social media pages, StumbleUpon allows you to follow other and others to follow you. This page is all about the value you provide through your articles (1).
To share your own articles, share the link of your original post(2).
All you have to do is Add a Page (1), insert the URL (2) and select if it is Safe for Work (3).
Then you need to pick the niche of your article, which will come up once you start typing (4).
Finally, add three tags (5). This is similar to the Instagram Hashtags and serves the same purpose.
You are set!
If done correctly, you should see crazy amounts of traffic head over to your website. Here is our 3-day result:
Inbound
Inbound is a service that acts as a middleman between writers and readers. It brings your articles in front of the eyes of people who are interested in reading it.
Here is how it works. You signup, pick your topic of interest and, within minutes, your content will be seen by your target group. You will also be able to find useful articles on your topics of interest.
It is easy to grow your network on this platform as you are able to follow up to 150 marketers per day. Based on our experience, 1 of every 6 people you follow is likely to follow you back.
Not bad, right?
Not hard either. And especially if you have enough free time, this method can lead quite some traffic to your website in a short timeframe.
Facebook Groups
Closed Facebook groups are often created to discuss very specific topics. Communities tend to be very engaging and you are likely to have many people check out your content if you do your part.
What is your part?
As mentioned before, helping others, giving, without expecting in return.
The start is always going to be more time consuming and you are likely to find yourself many hours in front of your screen. However, once you slowly start to establish credibility within your community, you will have people check your website, hoping that the contents will be as useful as the answers you provided in their group.
Twitter is far from its decline and offers you an open platform to establish your credibility in just 140 characters. Not a lot for content marketing purposes but it does help you answer multiple questions in a short time.
Once you start to engage in conversations and maintain a unique post character, you will soon see that people will start to follow you on Twitter and, as a result, click through to check out your content.
Guest posts
This one is often overlooked because most people expect to get paid for their blog posts. However, think about this for a second:
- You find XYZ website that shares your interest on a specific topic and you have a great article to contribute.
- You offer the article for free as a guest post. After reviewing it, the owners upload it on their page.
- Not only will you be able to show that your work has been featured in XYZ website, you will also have many of the readers of XYZ website click through to your website by following the links you add.
Usually, the blogs will allow you to write a short one-liner about yourself and let you add one link. You this smartly and, depending on the website you post for, you will see your numbers grow.
Conduct keyword research
In order to show up in search engines like Google, is to target the keywords that your audience will be looking for. By doing some initial research using the Adwords Keyword Planner you can find these keywords in minutes.
When writing articles, keyword research will work best for the headline of your post. And optimizing your post to target these keywords is not that hard. Usually, it will be enough to add the keyword on the title and subsequently write a high-quality post.
You can make your keyword even stronger by adding it in the body of your post once or twice.
“Easy” Content
Finally, good content is easy to understand and memorable.
If you are writing an article, make sure each paragraph is no longer than 3 lines of text before adding some whitespace. These white “breaks” help people split the content in smaller pieces.
Also, when possible add photos and/or videos for which you have the rights reserved. Free stock photos also help.
Above all, make sure you add value and help people truly get something out of your post, whether that is an idea, a helping hand or a confirmation of their thoughts.
Now its your turn. No matter how interesting and useful information on the internet can be, it is in your hands to put it all into practice.
And it will not be a fast journey.
So buckle up, aim at your goals and start implementing these growth hacks to increase the exposure of your content!
