How to Increase Blog Traffic: 5 Tips for Creating Contagious Content

With over 153 million blogs on the internet and a blog post is being published every 0.5 seconds, how high are your chances to succeed?

But don’t give up on blogging just yet. It is still one of the best ways to build your much-needed follower base, the one you can count on to spread the news about your latest ventures in their own private networks, resulting in benefits such as more traffic, more conversions, and more qualified leads. With the right kind of exposure, you can even be recognized as a thought-leader and establish yourself as an authority in your niche.

To enjoy such benefits, you need to work hard, and publish content so great, that it can become contagious. Here are a few tips on how to best achieve it.

Be original

Although it may seem a bit obvious at first, this one is often ignored by many blog creators. For your business to be contagious, content needs to be genuine. And it’s really not about choosing a topic which is unique, as you can hardly think of a single topic nowadays which hasn’t been covered hundreds of times already.

 It’s more about the angle you’re going to approach this topic from, and the extra value you are going to add. This can be your professional opinion, coming from your thorough knowledge of the subject matter, or your personal experience with the issue as long as it is something that will differ your angle from all the others out there talking about a similar thing. 

Sometimes, just by changing the form you will put your content in, you can make it genuine and boost the engagement. For example, you can make a 2-minute video out of what others have put in a text, as a blog with video attracts 3x as many inbound links than a simple text – image blog. 

To make your blog and your content easily recognizable, you need to be original from the very start. When naming your blog, make sure to do a careful domain name registration lookup, as even such a seemingly small thing can influence the success of your content.

Evoke emotions

Burger King offered a really fresh approach to Net Neutrality last year, putting in a video an experience that couldn’t be easily transferred using words only. It’s not only that they’ve successfully created genuine content for their ad, but they’ve also stood up for their brand values аnd they’ve provoked emotions, making it easier for their consumers to identify with them, and to form a meaningful relationship with the brand.

A study by Jacobo Staiano of Sorbonne University and Marco Guerini of Trento Rise has found that the content which evokes high-arousal and high-dominance emotions, has the most potential of going viral. If you want to create contagious content, it needs to offer your audience a powerful emotional experience, which falls into the right place of the well-known PAD (Pleasure-Arousal-Dominance) scale.

Tell stories with your content

Storytelling is another great way for you to connect to your followers, as you’ll be able to create content which is not pushy or product sales. People are generally sick of those who hard sell, but they love good stories and are happy to share them. If told right, stories can be interesting and captivating and people are generally more perceptive towards them. Stories also form closer bonds between a storyteller and a listener, or a consumer.

A well-known digital entrepreneur, Jeff Bullas, has a few recommendations on how to best create an engaging story, in order to become viral. Some of his suggestions are:

• Personalize. Make your story-teller similar to your clients, and let them share their story. 
• Add emotions. Let your story bring out an emotional reaction in your consumers, make them laugh.
• Offer a problem-solving scenario. Begin with fears, insecurities, and doubts of your potential audience, and show them how to deal with these issues.
• Back up your story with data. For a successful story, you need thorough research. Look for any exciting or rare information which you can find.
• Organize an exciting journey for your consumers. Make your consumers feel like they were with you all along.
• Visualize. Use illustrations, photos, infographics, and videos so that your users could grasp the story easily.

Give practical value

The content which is most likely to become contagious is the one which has a practical value to the members of your audience, and which they also find valuable for their social circles too, so they are prompted to share it.

 The human need behind their behaviour is simple to understand – your followers want to reach out and help their close ones, just like your blog helped them solve the issue they are facing. Just take FirstMedia Blossom, creators of the top-performing branded video in 2018, as a perfect example of what practical DIY tips can do. 

Know where to find your audience

There are many social media channels where your content can be distributed, but they won’t all be efficient for its promotion. You won’t benefit much if you share your business idea on Pinterest, but on LinkedIn or Twitter, your chances will be much higher.

To raise the chances of your content becoming contagious, you have to know where you can most easily find your target audience, and where your content is most likely to spread. The best way to get this data is by comprehensive research on your consumers’ habits, as they tend to vary significantly depending on the industry you are in, and who your target audience is.  You can benefit from social media too, by finding great ideas for your content.

Try to include some of these tips when creating your next content pieces, and see the difference for yourself. You might not get your viral post just yet, but practice makes perfect.

By Victor T. Miller – Contributor  |  05/10/2019