These days driving traffic to a website or blog isn’t easy. Building hundreds of low-quality links with the help of automated systems isn’t an effective strategy anymore. In fact such methods can do more harm than good. Luckily you can still get tons of exposure by harnessing the power of social networks. In the following paragraphs you will learn how to make your content go viral on the social media:

Create compelling content

You need to ensure that the blog posts you put on your site are interesting and compelling.

Your blog posts should consist of:

• Information that your blog readers can’t find anywhere else. Exclusive content is more likely to go viral than something that can be found all over the web.
• Advice or help that enables your readers to accomplish a particular task. For instance, this post is meant to help you drive more traffic to your blog.
• Relevant images and videos.

Once you have written and published a compelling post, it is now time to start promoting it.

Use a wide variety of platforms to promote your articles

These days, everybody uses Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ for promoting their content. It is very tempting to only focus on these social networks given their popularity. However, by sharing your posts on lesser-known or smaller networks, you will surely get a competitive edge. Such sites tend to have active and focused audiences and are less competitive than popular social networks. This means your content will stand out.

Here are some networks that a large majority of bloggers don’t use:

• Tumblr
• Quora.com
• Empire Avenue

Be creative when promoting blog posts

There are countless ways to advertise a blog. Most people just stick to the popular ones which isn’t a very good idea. You should not be afraid to try out the lesser-known marketing strategies. Sometimes these techniques can work wonders and help you get tons of high-quality traffic quickly. The fact that no other person is using a particular marketing strategy does not mean that it isn’t effective.

Tell your friends and family members about your blog post

Identify the social media platform where you have the most following and make an announcement to your followers informing them that you have written a new post covering a specific topic. You should also include a link to the post. The people who are likely to be your first readers are family members, friends and acquaintances. Ask them to give you feedback that could improve the blog.

Grab the interest of the viewer by using different types of media

Just sharing your article on a few social networks is not enough. You have to make sure that people will actually click on the shared link. The easiest way to do so is include an image or a video. These things are much more effective for grabbing the attention of readers than simple text.

Here are a few other creative and out-of-the box methods that you can use to promote your articles:

• You can use Vine to create 6-second preview to your post
• Use Pinterest Group Board to pin your posts
• Give a short video intro by using Dubbler

How do you promote your blog posts? Let us know in the comments section below.