How to Maximize the Shareability of Your Blog Posts With Multiple Entry Points

multi network

multi networkYour blog is a living collection of online web documents all interconnected through numerous links. Getting your blog to reach the full potential of its audience involves having a careful balance of great content, impeccable timing, perfect onsite optimization, and a robust network. Writing a great new post can take some time and effort, so maximizing the shareability of your content is instrumental to the continued success and growth of your site!
 
Here are 8 ways to create multiple entry points to extend the reach of your blog:

#1 Do Something Original

originalThe best way to get people to share your content is to create something fresh and original. Whether that be an unbelievably well written article, amazing new photograph, artwork, viral video, funny comic, infographic design, presentation, must see list, you name it. The more visual the content the better chance of it ultimately getting shared. But even more important than getting likes or tweets on social media is the potential for reblogs on other websites creating backlinks to your content (and steady streams of traffic). Blogs love to link back to cool new infographics and other media types, and content marketers have taken notice given the potential SEO boost.

#2 Use Multiple Images

multiple imagesUsing a few images within an article can create multiple entry points back to your site yet this strategy gets overlooked frequently by bloggers. Typically we find a suitable thumb image from our favorite stock photo site and then publish. But most ‘featured images’ in blog posts tend to be small, which doesn’t translate well to getting reblogged or repinned. Finding great images can be time consuming and expensive, but going the extra mile could be the difference of your post going viral or not.

#3 Signup and Share Everywhere

share ideasAre you on all the major social networks? Going beyond Facebook and Twitter you want to establish your online presence on as many social networks, directories and bookmarking sites as possible. Each of these communities are new entry points into your content. Your blog can get a ton of referral traffic from smaller undercover niche sites that are related to your audience like BizSugar (small business), DZone (design), Visually (infographics), 500px (photos) and more.

#4 Optimize Social Media Sharing Buttons

social media sharingJust because you’re on every social network on earth, doesn’t mean you need to add the entire ShareThis catalog with every social network icon. Figure out what social channels work best for your audience. Make it easy for them to share, and they just might do so. Obviously you should have Facebook, Twitter and Google+ sharing buttons, but other social networks as mentioned may cater best to your specific niche like LinkedIn (for professionals) and Reddit (for the younger generation). Also make sure your social buttons are optimized including the tweet button (with a title, link and via @yourname). In the age of ‘we want it now’, never underestimate a lazy web browser who will only share content using the buttons you’ve made available to him.

#5 Create Multiple Channels via RSS

multiple channelsThe main channel of your blog is the RSS feed, which syndicates the content of your blog to search engines, the web and email newsletters. From this feed you typically look to share your content to the various social media outlets. But consider creating multiple RSS feeds for different topics on your site, seperate from the main feed (of all articles). For example we have our Main RSS feed, and other feeds for specific topics like humor, images and infographics. These RSS feeds can all have separate Twitter accounts (see @DBInfographics) and Facebook pages creating even more channels for you to distribute your content. The Feed Wrangler plugin gives you the ability to creat custom feeds for your WordPress blog.

#6 Add Tweet This Links for Snack-able Facts and Stats

tweet thisTweet This is an easy way to create a link to share and promote your content on Twitter. You can create tweets to embed within your article that allows your audience to instantly share snack-able stats or facts back to your site. See this example infographic article with tweetable stats. By sharing different information from your article, you’ve created multiple entry points from Twitter where each tweet can engage an entirely different audience interested in clicking on the specific text, but not the article title.

#7 Timing is Everything

TIMINGRecently we looked at two studies evaluating the best time to publish a blog post which suggested that posting between 9am to 11am EST on weekdays would generate the most page views or traffic to your blog. But each blog should be evaluated differently based on your target audience, time zone, niche and frequency of posts. If you post about once a day or even less frequently, maximizing your potential reach and shareability is crucial compared to larger media outlets posting every half hour or so regardless.

#8 Guest Blogging and Outreach

blogThe more content you distribute, the more entry points you’ve created into your blog. Now you don’t always have to publish content on your site to build your readership. in fact contributing articles to other blogs or websites is a great way to extend your reach to new audiences. Most guest bloggers are allowed to have a link back to their website/profile from the guest post, creating another important back link to your site.
 
Use these tips to generate multiple entry points back to your blog posts and maximize its shareability. And then your blog should be rocking within no time! So what other types of strategies are you employing to increase the traffic to your site?

Daniel Zeevi

By Daniel Zeevi

Daniel is a social network architect, web developer, infographic designer, writer, speaker and founder of DashBurst. Full-time futurist and part-time content curator, always on the hunt for disruptive new technology, creative art and web humor.

1 comment

  1. Thanks so much for this Info. I will try to lean to use this, I really enjoying opening peoples minds from propaganda brainwashing!!!…………………….joe

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