Blogging is a great way of driving traffic to your website, getting your brand out there and significantly increasing the number of phrases you rank for on Google. You know your business inside out and you’re reflecting that with advice and news in your blog posts, but what if your blogs just aren’t getting seen?

We’ve taken a look at eight ways to help your blog content go viral.

Target audience

Do you know who you’re aiming your posts at? Having the right content is hugely important. It needs to relate to your products and services but most importantly, be relevant to people reading your blog. Can it help them? Does it add value to them? These posts will always be the most popular and engaging.

Use imagery

Are you using images in your blogs? By adding at least one image per article you can increase the amount of clicks you get on your post by 96%. An image paints a thousand words, and in the fast paced world of the Internet, people enjoy a good image as much as reams and reams of text. Make sure you get the balance right.

How long are your articles?

Although there is no magic number, a study of 100 million articles found that blog posts of a certain length do receive more engagement. 300 – 500 words is a good length for a written blog post, but the overall success and length should ultimately be decided by how much value the content is to the visitor. It needs to be both interesting and engaging! But always remember, if you’re getting to 700 words in length, are you keeping things succinct?

Which day is the best to post?

Unlike Facebook, when the best time to post is during the evenings, the optimum time to update your blog is at the beginning of the week. Research by SearchEngineLand indicates that by publishing during the daytime hours, it can generate more visitors and comments. According to the data, the best time to post a blog is on a Monday morning at 11am.

Create lists

Using a list or bullet points makes information much easier to digest by your visitors. Time is a big concern with a lot of clients we discuss blogging with; the good news is you can cut down your writing time by using bullets, and it’ll also help you to focus your points.

Infographics

Spice up your blog articles by turning them into infographics. After lists, the second most popular type of shared post is an infographic. Not sure what an infographic is? It’s interesting facts and figures put into a visual format. Take a look through our own blog; you’ll find a few!

Increasing your audience

Writing a blog post on your website and waiting for people to visit and find it for themselves won’t get your article seen in large numbers.

You have two key channels to spread the word; social media and email marketing. If you have an email list, group three or four of your most interesting articles together in a newsletter and send it to customers. Remember about content; if it adds value to the recipient it will add value to the relationship you have with them, rather than being seen as spam.

Which brings us to social media; share on to Facebook in the evenings. We also find that Sunday evening is a particularly effective time for businesses looking to gain engagement. When you’re tweeting, don’t just send one tweet as it can get lost in the noise; tweet about the article consistently over a period of a week, and don’t be scared to come back to it in the future.

Social sharing buttons

By making things easier to repost, your customers are more likely to share with others. Ensure your blog post has sharing buttons for social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter and any others you want to include (Instagram or Pinterest if you’re sharing visual products).

If you don’t have social buttons, we suggest you get some on your blog asap!

For information on how we can help you build a content strategy that brings home the bacon please give us a call on 01566 232323 or email hello@mihidigital.co.uk