Have you noticed recently that one of your blog posts on your website has become super popular or possibly even viral? Congratulations! This is not always an easy thing to accomplish and popular/viral content can be a game changer for your website traffic! However, when this happens you need to have a game plan so that you can maximize on the opportunity and turn that into more than a short term spike in traffic!
Don’t have a post that has technically gone “viral” but is still driving high amounts of traffic to your website? You can still use these tips!
Where to start
First thing’s first – identify which posts are driving traffic to your site. You can do this easily by checking your analytics. Your website analytics will let you know which posts are the most popular. Make it a habit to check your analytics regularly (once a month, twice a month or once a week). Keep track of your most popular posts on a spreadsheet or document. You may notice you have one (or more) pages or posts that consistently drive a larger amount of traffic to your site compared to the rest. These are the pages and posts you should focus on and apply these tips to!
Edit and Optimize
You want to make sure that the posts that gather the most attention from visitors are checked for things like grammatical errors or spelling mistakes. Have a second set of eyes take a look at it too and let you know if there are any changes that should be made. Take a peek at a few other important pages as well – like your “about” page. Make sure it is up to date with a bio/background.
Also, if your post goes viral, it’s more than likely getting shared on social media. The better the images you have, the more share-worthy it will be on Pinterest or Facebook! If you have not installed a plugin to add share buttons on your post and to save/pin (for Pinterest) – now is the time to do so! Social share buttons will appear above and/or below your blog posts. They allow visitors to share your blog posts on their own social media account feeds. WordPress plugins such as “Pinterest Pin It Button On Image Hover” allows people to pin your beautiful images directly to Pinterest. This is great because all those on their feeds will see it as well and may pin and read your article. These plugins are free and easy to install!
Protect Your Work
Do you have anything on these pages or posts that you need to protect, like original photos? Consider adding watermarks to photos, videos etc. Believe it or not, some people will steal things like your product photography to drive traffic to their own site (even if their site does not sell your product). It’s actually a good idea to always use a logo or watermark in all your photos on your blog, social media platforms and Pinterest (minus photos like stock photography that you did not create). This way traffic thieves don’t use your popular posts for their gain and steal your visitors.
Make Contact Easy
Viral or highly popular posts can usually create an influx of people trying to contact you for media purposes, to ask you questions about your products, services or for more information on your awesome article. Make sure your contact information is prominently listed in as many places as possible including (but not limited to) your “contact” and “about” pages.
If you are receiving calls from media sources (TV, newspaper, magazine etc) you can set up a special email just for those requests! On your contact and about page you can say “For all media inquiries, please contact PR@YourBusiness.com”. Having a separate email for PR / Media inquiries will help you make sure those emails don’t get lost in the sea of random inquiries. You certainly wouldn’t want to miss out on a possible media feature for your business!
Retention & Monetization
Having hundreds or thousands of new visitors is awesome! Now you need to make sure you keep them coming back! Make sure you have created a clear call to action (CTA). Create and place a newsletter subscriber box and place it in prominent places – including the post(s) that has gone viral. This is the post which may benefit from having a clean cut subscriber box placed in 2-3 areas of that article (for example middle, bottom, and sidebar). If you have not yet created an incentive for signing up (a free offer) – now would be the time!
Linking readers to a subscription list allows you to pitch products and services (monetize), update your readers with news like new blog posts or exciting updates and it allows you to reach out on a personal level and gain their trust as they continue buying from you (retain).
Another way to retain their attention and monetize? Create a clickable sidebar graphic and/or an eye-catching banner or a great sale or promotion that you can place within the article. You can place these in the same locations as you would place the subscriber box (middle, bottom, and sidebar). However, if you are going to use both a banner and a subscriber option, make sure you alternate them (place one in the middle of the article and the other in a sidebar or at the bottom). You do not want to lump these together and clutter the page either.
If you have great content, similar to your viral post, make sure to link it as well. The longer a reader stays on your website the more likely they are to share your content with others, become a customer and come back! Internal links are always a plus on any post!
Promote
Posts that do well are great posts to consider spending some ad money on! Now that you have edited necessary pages and included more images, calls to action and internal links, promote this post on social media and Pinterest. You can even use free programs like Lumen5 to repurpose and create a video of your blog post. With Lumen5 you can enter a blog post or RSS feed and the Lumen5 artificial intelligence system will help you summarize the content and match each scene with relevant videos, photos, and music. It is easy to edit yourself as well! Share and syndicate the video on YouTube, Facebook, etc! Remember, video content is seen more and usually preferred!
You do not have to spend hundreds on promotion. Whether you choose to spend a small amount ($5 – $50) or use free promotional tactics, just make sure you promote it! A post that is already doing well and favorable will do amazing with a little promotion. However – Do not push a big promotion until you have completed the tips above like necessary editing, adding clear calls to action and working on your retention game-plan! Do that FIRST!
Examine & Duplicate
Did you have a great title, eye-catching image or awesome video? Was it a topic that is widely relatable to many people? Did someone famous share your post? Examine why it went viral, and think about how you might be able to duplicate that again in the future on other posts. Keep notes!
Interact
Make sure to take time to interact in your comments section of your post! Thank others for sharing and for their support. Welcome and engage with new readers on both your blog and Facebook. That helps build a relationship with new readers and followers. Also, Facebook rewards you for interacting with your followers (posts with lots of comments typically get a lot more views).
Of course – be prepared for trolls, don’t let negative comments get to you and learn to ignore (or delete) nasty comments. Just remember that along with the good – there is always some bad. With a viral post it is usually a few trolls or naysayers. It comes with the territory of going viral. It is unavoidable, so just do your best to ignore those.
Enjoy!
Most importantly – ENJOY the ride of any popular and/or viral post! It can get both exciting and hectic, but it’s a temporary thing usually. Therefore, just remember… if handled correctly, you can really capture and retain lots of new prospective customers and readers.
Have you had a post go Viral? Let us know how it turned out for your business and post the link in the comments below. We would love to hear all about it!