With so many businesses embracing content marketing, it can be hard to stand out. In many cases, great articles and videos can fail to find an audience, often being viewed and shared less than inferior content. Creating insightful articles is one thing, but you cannot ignore the promotional side of blogging. Thankfully, the more exposure you get, the more readers are willing to take some of the burden by sharing your content on their own blogs and social media accounts. To get to this stage, though, some simple tactics are required to help your content go viral. For users of WordPress viral themes - the most popular blogging platform - the following plugins can assist you with your promotional efforts.
Easy Social Share Buttons
This plugin is a comprehensive social sharing tool, offering a large number of templates and networks. You can display the share bar at various locations on your site, including floating and popup options. The quality and variation of design should help increase shares, but you can test it for yourself by integrating Google Analytics to track clicks.
Link to: Easy Social Share Buttons
Flow-Flow Social Stream
Flow-Flow lets you create social streams from your Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, and many other networks. Asking visitors to subscribe to your social accounts is a good start, but the ability to showcase them in attractive streams is sure to increase interest. Ideally, you should be linking your social sites and the main blog, so people can follow you on the networks that most appeal to them. Flow-Flow makes the process easier, better organized, and accessible across all devices.
Link to: Flow-Flow Social Stream plugin
Ninja Popups
Ninja Popups is a tool that offers an entire library of themes so that you can create almost every popup imaginable. A popup can be used to promote an article, your social sites, or an email subscription service, with conversion rates typically very high due to the prominence on the page. Popups can lose their effectiveness for many readers, so the sheer number of options lets you rotate your popup style to maintain freshness.
Link to: Ninja Popups plugin
Social Locker for WordPress
Social Locker allows you to control access to content unless a visitor shares the page on social media. After the visitor likes the page, the content immediately becomes visible without any distractions. While this will become irritating for primary content, any premium items could be considered for locking. You should use Social Locker sparingly, but it can considerably increase social shares.
Link to: Social Locker for WordPress plugin
WordPress Viral Quiz
Readers enjoy quizzes, particularly if they are highly relevant to your blog topic. WordPress Viral Quiz lets you create quality posts, with options for personality and trivia quizzes. A quiz stands a good chance of going viral as people are often eager to share their results on Facebook and Twitter. Quizzes have proven popular for decades in magazines and newspapers, so it is natural that they translate well to blogs.
Link to: WordPress Viral Quiz
When you dedicate a significant portion of your time to promotion, your content can get the exposure it deserves. Many viral buzz bloggers focus exclusively on writing new content, but this leads to underappreciated articles. Instead, dedicate time to content creation and promotion, using these plugins to simplify the process. As content starts to be shared, you should notice your audience base grows, leading to more exposure for each new article you post. Blogging is largely about building a community, so ensure you focus your time on reaching the largest number of relevant people every time you create a new article.
