Among many other factors, quality of your content plays the vital role in search engine ranking & getting epic social media shares.
But, is creating high-quality content enough to drive traffic?
Will it automatically get links and traction?
Sadly, no.
Content is only the beginning. It’s important for your content to reach out people who can derive value from it.
The distribution process involves reaching out to influencers, submitting content on platforms where your target audiences hang out and repurposing your text content intoinfographics, videos, videographics, audio, etc.
I’ve compiled a list of 30 content distribution platforms that are free (or have a free trial) to sign up. You can use them to promote both your old and new content.
Besides usage tips, I share case studies (where available) of how people have leveraged the platform to drive traffic. Many value-adding tutorials, guides, and videos are also included.
Bookmark this post:
When distributing your content, you can come back to read using these distribution channels effectively.
Make sure you read the whole post – there are bonuses waiting for you at the end!
Are you ready?
Here we go:
Content Distribution platforms To Amplify your content reach:
YouTube videos have the high probability of getting ranked on first page of Google search results.
Leverage the second biggest search engine on the internet to get found for your target keywords.
Here is how:
Repackage long-form content in the form of slides. Then, create a video tutorial using free screen grab software like Camtasia or CamStudio . Use a good quality microphone to ensure decent production quality.
Or you can use a web camera and record yourself speaking the summary of your post.
Make sure you end the video with a call to action directing viewers to visit your website. Also, add a link to your post in the video description and a link to your blog in the channel description.
Include keywords and write a 250-300 words video description with every video for better visibility in results.
Later on, you can embed this video with your post. You can also reach out to authority blogs in your niche and request them to share it on their blogs.
Here are 50 tips for getting traffic from YouTube by Hardik. If you are serious about your blog, spend about $15 & get awesome Youtube Intro & outro.
Check out: How to get Youtube Intro & outro for cheap
Reddit is a great social media bookmarking platform (with the upvoting system) to discover content. And it a community known for punishing spammers and promoters.
So:
You cannot simply drop a link in sub-reddits (targeted niche sections) and expect traffic.
First setup a nice looking profile by filling all details. Then, participate in relevant sub-reddits and add value to the discussions. Make sure you speak the language of the Sub-Reddit where you participate.
If your submission gets considerable upvotes, it gets pushed to the hot section and possibly the homepage (if it’s really loved).
Do not submit only your website links, else you can get banned. As per Spencer Haws (from Niche Pursuits) you should only submit one self-promotion submission per 10.
Read his detailed guide on getting 10,000 pageviews and a PA 48 backlink in two weeks from Reddit in 45 minutes of work.
You can also watch Lazy Ass Stoner’s case study on driving tons of traffic from Reddit –
Slideshare is the world’s biggest website for creating presentations. From the distribution perspective, summarize your blog post in the form of slides and upload it on the platform.
Keep the points in your presentation short and the structure of your presentation simple. Don’t forget to write a compelling title and description for your presentation (using long tail keywords will help).
You can include links to your website in your profile and within your presentation. The description and the last slide can also be used for directing viewers to your blog.
After you are done with the presentation, share it on social media and embed it with your blog post.
Read Gregory Ciotti’s guide on how he got 2000+ new website visitors from Slideshare by hitting its homepage.
Further, LinkedIn also allows embedding presentations in your profile. So, adding presentations of the most popular posts in your LinkedIn profile can give some more traction.
As per Shareaholic and Digital Insider studies, Facebook drives 23% of overall visits to websites.
The sad part is the organic reach of publishers on Facebook has been on a continuous decline (even less than 7% for some pages having million fans). Meaning without investing in the advertisements, you won’t be reaching your followers.
But the good news is:
If your content is on niche subjects (like Naruto) and you properly target your audience, then you can get tons of traffic.
Servando Silva from Stream-SEO grew his niche website to 900 visitors in 10 days by investing under 60$ in Facebook Ads. He managed to scale to over 8,500 fans and his posts reached 35% of fans.
Read the full study here. He wrote another post on how he leveraged Facebook to earn $200 per day with AdSense and viral websites.
You can also gain insights from these 21 businesses Facebook marketing case studies.
The micro-blogging network held the third position in driving traffic as per Shareholic’s 2014 data. It is a great platform for B2B businesses. Leverage it to follow latest industry updates and engage with your clients or followers in real-time.
Tweeting your article link with an enticing introduction, a couple of relevant hashtags at the appropriate time with a good quality picture is a sound Twitter strategy. You should schedule the same article (with different tweet copy) more than once for better visibility.
You can read Brain Honigman 10 actionable and an effective Twitter strategies for achieving significant results. For some more depth, read Loz James personalized Twitter marketing technique that tripled his website traffic.
You should also listen to Sean Malarkey’s podcast with Than Merrill. He discusses how he managed to get 150,000 followers and over 9,000 leads in 5 months from Twitter.
This is the favorite hanging out platform of professionals and a gold mine to network for B2B companies.
So:
How can you leverage it to drive traffic to your blog posts?
Start with syndicating your existing blog post content. You can make modifications to your posts or publish only parts of your post. At the end of the post, you can give a call to action as a link to the full article on your blog.
You can also repurpose your posts as status updates, search for relevant discussions in LinkedIn groups where posting your articles adds value and post comments on updates in your feed.
Another place to showcase your best blog content is your LinkedIn profile. You can add your links to your best posts, videos, documents and photos with every role description.
Getting a post picked for LinkedIn Pulse is pure gold – you can get hundreds of thousands of views.
Read this case study with tips on getting your post featured on LinkedIn Pulse.
This is a moderated and ramped up version of Yahoo Answers. There are many sub-topics and you can attract followers by giving valuable advice on topics that interest you.
You can follow sub-topics of your choice, so that relevant questions appear in your feed. And write different bios for different sub-topics on Quora. What a great opportunity to show your expertise in all the niches you are skilled!
While answering:
Genuinely aim to solve queries of your target audience.
If any of your articles can solve a query, give an introduction of how your post can help and put a link to visit the full article.
If your answer receives upvotes, you get more followers, more exposure and visitors on your website. And it is common for witty and value adding answers in self-improvement niche specially to receive many thousands of upvotes.
The Q&A social network also has a blog. This is a chance to syndicate your blog post content. Learn from self-improvement blogger James Clear who syndicates his blog posts.
Riding on the MOOC revolution, Udemy as of December 2014 had access to over 5 million students. Courses are on a very wide variety of subjects – from internet marketing, SEO, entrepreneurship, photography, programming to yoga, spirituality, cooking ,music, etc.
The best part is any individual can publish courses at Udemy.
Leverage Udemy by offering value-adding courses to knowledge hungry students:
You can repurpose your best performing posts into a series of 5-minute video tutorials.
Your course can have a mix of video tutorials and text documents. The bare minimum is a 40-minute course.
The courses can be offered free or you can charge anywhere from 10 to 1000$ for it. Participate in Udemy’s course promotions so that you can get more student enrollments.
You can make a limited number of announcements every month to your course students. Here lies the opportunity to drive traffic to your blog posts.
You can also direct students to your website in the lectures.
Many terrific instructors are leveraging Udemy for traffic and email signups.
A terrific example is Mike Omar.
He offers a free course on making 5000$/month by developing passive income websites.
The course contains 12 hours worth of video tutorials and as you can see it has over 42,000 students.
Mike gets leads to own website and newsletter subscribers that go on to buy affiliate products.
As per Shareholic, Pinterest was at the second position in driving social traffic in Q4, 2014. It is the best platform for visual digital marketing and pure gold for lifestyle brand content.
Unique and useful content performs well on Pinterest. You should understand that people hangout on the platform to get inspiration and express self. Do not expect from them to create anything original.
Create a board around subjects you like to browse on the internet (not just your brand related boards). Everything you pin can be placed on these boards.
You can share original photos, infographics and photos of products relevant to your industry. Or how-to videos, long form content previews and tutorials you create for YouTube.
When sharing original photos, make sure you add watermarks. Else, you will miss possible viral brand exposure.
Also, make use of hashtags strategically and label them with relevant names (not image 1 and image 2).
You can add URLs to your website or blog post in the brand page and pin description.
If you want help with creating visuals:
Use Pinstamatic for creating sticky notes, quotes and taking website snapshots.
View this tutorial on driving traffic to your blog post from Pinterest by using keywords and hashtags appropriately:
StumbleUpon is a great platform for discovering content and can be leveraged to get highly targeted traffic. As per Shareholic, StumbleUpon had 21%+ growth in referrals.
In this post at KISSmetrics, Shell Harris from TopTenz mentioned that he got most of his 1.6 million traffic from this platform and that this traffic converts really well with AdSense.
A screenshot of some of his top performing stumbles –
Picture Credits: quicksprout.com
Here are some tips for using the platform:
- Fill your profile fully and stumble some value adding content (not just self-promote). TheGoogle chrome StumbleUpon extension can conveniently stumble from any web page you visit.
- Be social and share useful content contributed by others. Vote on pages similar to your content and follow like-minded stumblers. It adds value to the community.
- Dig into analytics and find out the content that is most viewed. Then, share it more.
- You can create a StumbleUpon badge for increasing stumbles of your blog posts.
Read this short case study of how All Top9 is driving tons of targeted traffic from Stumble Upon.
You can syndicate your content with Tumblr and get more traffic, backlinks and shares (possibly, go viral).
For starters, use a clean and simple theme. Use only 7-12 tags, else you will be perceived as a spammer.
Your content should be short and punchy. Impressive visuals, videos and quotes generally perform well. But, don’t be afraid to experiment with posting different kinds of content.
Getting your followers to re-blog your content can earn you good traffic.
Build relationships with Tumblr administrators and try to get introduced through referrals from friends to them. If you end up on the explore page through these administrators, you will get a huge traffic spike.
In December 2014, Instagram hit 300 million users (surpassing Twitter). If you have a compelling image in your post, you can share it on this network with a call to action to visit the article.
Get your image Instagram ready by using Squaready app on iPhone or Be Funky’s photo editoron Android. I would recommend using Instagram’s editing tools and filters to enhance image quality.
Write good captions using 2 to 3 hashtags that fit your brand image for better exposure.
If you are announcing a new product in a blog post, you can offer its teaser on Instagram and use a call to action driving visitors to your post.
Add instagram badges to your blog for convenience of the platform lovers.
If you want to do it fast, read HobbytoHot’s 2-minute instagram posting advice.
Watch this study tutorial from TheFreedomFranchise.com on how they get 50-100 leads a day using Instagram:
Being Google’s property, this network undoubtedly plays a key role in Google’s search results. Get on it for SEO, if nothing else.
Your Google+ updates should not be a stream of self-promotional blog posts. Rather, interesting and meaningful updates from credible industry blogs and publications. Practical or funny content works well of Google+.
Updates with images and videos (not just links) will receive better engagement. You should use keywords in the alt field for SEO.
You should interact in the active communities relevant to your niche – Initiating discussions besides sharing posts with your circles can benefit you later.
Here is a case study by Erika from in2itivesearch on how they earned 500,000 Google+ Views & More in 4 Months by leveraging Google+ communities.
When sharing posts make use of relevant hashtags to categorize your updates and be found for relevant searches.
The best part of Google+ is:
By engaging regularly and having decent number of followers, you can send your updates as emails to people in your circle.
You can also read these 10 tips on using Google+ smartly to drive traffic.
They were the first to understand and fill the demand for graphic heavy content on the internet. After tremendous growth, they currently attract over 150 million visits every month.
BuzzFeed has crowdsourced content creation to its community (besides self-publishing). And they pick posts from the community to appear on the homepage and promote it themselves if they find it good enough.
You need to check the “Suggest for a community feature” when submitting your content for publishing.
If you check this option, BuzzFeed Moderators look at your submission. If they like your post, you will receive an email stating your post receiving extra promotion.
To increase your chances of getting your post picked for promotions by BuzzFeed moderators:
Create a piece of content on your website that will appeal to the BuzzFeed audience and adds value to them. Listicles work the best.
Promoting your product or services blatantly and using copyright infringing images work against you. Also, keep the linking anchor text simple.
Read the case study of how Matthew Barby got 10,000 pageviews and a few hundred new subscribers to his blog by getting on the first page of BuzzFeed.
Would getting published on the biggest blog of the world help?
You bet.
Huffington Post not only publishes original content, but syndicates and republishes quality content from across the web.
So:
If your blog post has gone viral and is relevant to a section at Huffington Post, you have good chances of getting it republished on Huffington Post.
There have been cases of articles getting rejected by Huffington Post. But, later getting picked up when they got viral on writer’s platform.
Read stories of how the Buffer Team and Catherine have got published on Huffington Post.
For increasing your chances for getting published on Huffington Post, do not use the contact form. Pitch the section editor (relevant to your article) on twitter or email directly. Listicles and articles under 1000 words generally work better at Huffington Post.
- Here is a list of all Huff Po editors.
Guess what? Even contacting Ariana Huffington directly can get you published. Read advice from 5 bloggers on how they got published at Huffington Post where they mention pitching to her.
The digital library draws more than 80 million monthly visitors and has over 40 million free eBooks.
You can complete your profile on the platform and start sharing content. The users can download your article as a pdf or text.
There is a strong enforcement of these rules:
Don’t blatantly advertise. And publish strictly your own content (even the images must be original). Make sure you use full URL when quoting a source (bit.ly links are not acceptable). Also, stray away from profanity.
How to distribute your blog post?
Treat Scribd like your blog and post only high-quality and value adding content. You can make some tweaks to your posts before publish them.
You can also hire a designer to repurpose your how-to blog posts into a white paper.
Besides posting, you can add comments and reviews on other documents.
Following the basic SEO guidelines for your content will help in getting found in search engine results. Particularly, use keywords in the title and the first paragraph.
Consumption of eBooks has been on a continuous rise. Amazon is the dominant player in eBooks sales with its Kindle platform and you can reach millions of readers through it.
Use the fourth page (last preview page of the eBook) to place a link to a landing page on your website. You can offer a free report or free giveaway to those who buy your eBook.
Read this brilliant guide on publishing a Kindle eBook by Paul.
If you intend to sale your eBook on Kindle, your content should be original and unpublished.
For best results, opt for making your eBook exclusive to kindle for 90 days. For gaining traction, you can offer free downloads of your paid eBook for 5 days.
Or offer your eBook free for exposure and new blog audience.
Medium is a platform with a community driven spin on content publishing. Wikipedia lists the platform as an example of social journalism given that you can collaborate with other writers when posting.
Occasionally, you can repost your blog content on the platform (but, don’t overdo it). Bufferrepublishes some of its content on Medium.
When reposting:
Make sure Google has indexed your original content before republishing. You can change the way you approach your article’s subject, modify the title of your post, etc.
The repost might not rank in search engines, but your aim is getting additional clicks to your website and building audience.
You can experiment with different CTA like “Sign up for our newsletter” or “Follow us on Twitter.”
In a medium article, you can place links to relevant posts on your blog in the body also.
You can use UTM parameters to gain insights on the amount of traffic you are getting from Medium.
Popular posts are pushed to the main page and get tremendous exposure. So, aim to get on the main page.
Join this 1 million strong active community of entrepreneurs to share stories around small businesses, self-improvement, finance, technology, marketing, etc.
This is a great platform to network with like-minded entrepreneurs, get targeted traffic to your website and build do follow backlinks.
Every submission needs an administrator approval. Once posted, the community votes on your submission.
High-quality content ends up on home page. Appearing in Biz Sugar Top 10 widget, Biz Sugar Top 10 newsletter and their Twitter feed would get immense visibility.
Becoming an active member by submitting high-quality content regularly and engaging with the stories posted by the community members can land you in the “Contributor of the Week Section.” This will mean tremendous exposure.
Like every other platform, share useful content on small businesses by other bloggers besides your own posts. Make sure you label your content in appropriate categories.
You can add a Biz Sugar widget on your website for attracting its audience.
his is a business blog with over 15,000 contributors and 3 million visitors. The blog has many sections including entertainment, sports, social media, marketing, businesses, technology, finance, etc.
When signing up as a contributor, you will have to specify if you will syndicate your blog post or going to post original content.
You can put links to your website in not only your bio, but the main article as well (if relevant). In the article body, upto 3 links can be sent to one domain. Read their guidelines for detailed information.
Aim for hitting the home page by writing high-quality content. Further, the blog syndicates its content with Yahoo and Google News. So, there are chances of even more exposure and backlinks.
You can experiment with different CTA:
Offer a resource on your website or a landing page as an email opt-in.
This is an innovative tool to attach a call-to-action to every article link you share on social media. You can use it to drive traffic to your own website using someone else’s content.
You can pick up top performing high-quality articles from influencers in your industry and customize their call-to-action. Direct article readers to a landing page on your website for email opt-ins or a related in depth article on your website.
Example of using the tool effectively – Share a news story in your industry from an authority third party website. Say, a story on Google’s latest mobile algorithmic update at Moz.
Then, use the call-to-action snippet for directing visitors to an ultimate guide around this news on your blog. It can be “The Ultimate guide to recovering your website from Google’s mobile algorithm update.”
You can install the Snip.ly chrome extension to streamline the process. It helps you to snip the page you are on with a single click. This extension gives you access to analytics and over 1000 clicks in a month.
A hub at Hub Pages is like a magazine style article. The platform publishes user-generated content and has over 74,000 published users. Besides publishing, it is a great place to build relationships.
It currently gets close to 32M page views every month and has over 1 million hubs. The website shares revenue with the publishers and is used by many writers as a revenue stream.
How does the publishing work?
You can create a hub about any topic. Your account gets approved by moderators and your article will be published.
Read this guide on getting published at HubPages.
Make sure the content you submit is of high quality. If you have a high hub score – above 75 or so, you can get one-way do follow backlinks.
Not all the content you publish in hubs need to be original. You can publish a summary of your long-form posts. But do not copy and publish all of your content, else you will get penalized by Google.
As the mobile domination continues, content distribution will take novel approaches. Yappie is one such example. It is a mobile application entitled as an audio social network.
You can create a short 60-second audio introduction of your post in the App. It should communicate your post’s value and intrigue the listeners to check it.
What a fresh and intriguing way to create a promo for your blog post, right!
Use hashtags appropriately for reaching your target audience. Good audio clips get picked up by editors.
You can embed this introduction sound bite with your original post.
When sharing the sound bite with yappie community:
You can add an image and post the article URL in the description.
You can also share the clip on Twitter and Facebook and see how your audience responds.
Audio content is on a tremendous rise. Global iTunes has an audience of 1 billion.
The reason is simple: Podcasts are easier to consumer than text. You can conveniently listen to them while heading to work or performing chores.
Blogging giant Copyblogger is building a podcasting network. Listen why they are betting big on podcasting.
How can you distribute your content through podcasting?
Create a weekly show where you discuss your best content from the week. A listener will connect better with your voice than writing, if you add a personal touch.
So, podcasting can gain you thousands of new followers.
If you are uncomfortable with recording your own voice, hire someone at Fiverr to do a professional voice over of your best blog posts.
Webinars can be especially helpful in B2B environment.
For conducting a webinar, you can repurpose your best content in form of slides and give a live presentation to your audience.
After sharing your wisdom, you can keep a Q & A to engage with your webinar audience.
Before conducting a webinar, drive signups by marketing it on social media and guest posting on industry authority websites.
Go to Webinar is the best platform to conduct webinars. It is hassle free, but a little pricey.
After the webinar, you can archive the presentation and your live recording. You can share the archive on YouTube or any other video platform for even more exposure.
Do you realize the immense value of webinars?
You repurposed your old content to interact with audience, address their pain points and won yourself great traffic and new subscribers. What a huge win!
Read Copyblogger’s guide on building relationships with customers through webinars.
Answer questions on Yahoo Answers and forums in your niche
There are many forums and Q & A websites where your target audience hangs out to resolve their problems.
Start with searching your niche keywords at Yahoo Answers. You can link to your article in the source section after answering user’s question. You should not put links in the main answer (or you might get banned).
A general way of searching for forums in your niche using Google is:
“niche keyword” + forum
Example: I found these “Internet marketing” forums at the top 3 spots using the query internet marketing forum – Warrior Forum, Web Masters Sun and Wicked Fire.
You should be authentic and helpful on such forums. If your post solves a particular query, then offer helpful advice as a teaser linking to the post on your blog.
But do not just self-promote, else you will get banned. For most forums, you can also link to your blog in your profile signature.
Create an auto responder course using Mail Chimp or Aweber
You can tweak your best content and repackage it into a course. Then, offer it as an email opt-in.
Schedule release of course content slowly, offering one lesson every 2-3 days. This way you build excitement for your upcoming lessons. Once you have built trust with your subscribers by adding value, there is less probability of them dropping off your list!
Here is a brilliant guide on creating an email course.
For pushing out content and managing email subscriptions, you can choose Aweber or Mail Chimp.
The internet is increasingly getting dominated by graphics.
Using visual.ly, you can repurpose your posts into impressive infographics. Infogr.am andPiktochart are also great tools for the same.
You can submit infographics to infographic directories and Visual.ly community, Slideshare, Scribd, etc.
Here is a comprehensive list of 100 platforms to submit infographics.
You can try pitching the infographic to authority blogs in your niche to get it republished.
Here is a guide by Brain Dean on earning backlinks through infographics.
You can also hire freelancers from Fiverr to distribute your infographic to 30 directories for merely 5$.
Scoop.it is a content curation platform to increase visibility of great content.
Here is how to get started with Scoop.it:
Pick a narrow niche you’ll curate content on and set up 5 pages. Share the best content relevant to your niche on these pages. Now, your profile has a nice appearance.
For getting the best results, you need to get your content published at pages with good number of followers and views.
Find the influencers in your niche at Scoop.it. Browsing topics based on popularity and current trends might help. Engage with the influencers on twitter and other social networks. Comment on their blog posts and get noticed by them.
After you have built a relationship, pitch your best posts to these high following Scoop.it page moderators. If your requests are accepted, you can get tons of traffic.
Only a summary of your article has to be posted: Just give a tempting teaser from the post and upload a compelling image.
For convenience, install the scoop.it bookmarklet or apps to scoop content on the fly.
