LondonKings

I have been working on my blogs for a while and every time I tweak something, I learn something new. Today, I am basically going to recap what I have posted so far. Previously I have posted on why blogs are important and I provided several traffic generation tips. Today, I will share some common working methods which you can implement right now to make your blog popular and stand out in the crowd. Some of the methods have been posted earlier. That’s why I said I am going to recap Keep in mind that these methods are simple to implement and they always work.
Making a blog popular is every bloggers dream. It cannot be done overnight and I know it is not easy if you are new in the business but if you are hard working and are willing to learn and adapt, I can guarantee success my friend.

There are many ways to take your blog to the next level but always make sure you know what you are dealing with. I have seen people spamming the shit out of social bookmarking and networking sites such as digg, reddit and requesting people to vote for their links. Please do not do that. This is considered spam and it really sucks. But then again, reddit is very popular. If you have something awesome to share and it goes viral on reddit, you will get ton of traffic.
So without further ado, I am listing out several killer ways you can get your blog popular in the right way.

Make your blog popular – 7 methods that work!

1. Customize Your Blog Design

I have posted this like what, hundred times before. Well without a doubt, design matters. This is very important my friends and that is why I have listed it first. Every blog should have a unique design. People are attracted to something that is unique and interesting. When a person visits your blog, the design gives them the first impression and this determines the amount of time they spend browsing your blog. Now to be honest, if your blog has a crappy design, I am not going to visit it. Even if I visit it accidentally, I might spend a few seconds before I leave and bam.

Look at this blog. How cool is it? I am sure you can setup something similar or decent. Practice makes perfection so keep tweaking and trying out new layout, design and navigation and focus on creating the best user experience for your readers.
There are plenty of decent templates you can find online. I am running a customized thesis theme which is one of my favorites and it powers almost 80% of my websites. I chose thesis over woothemes and others because it gives you ton of sweet options such as buttons to easily change fonts, color and seo capability. It is easily customizable and if you know a little code like I do, you can create awesome designs in no time.

2. Add Your Blog to Blog Communities

Blog communities are really popular for blogs. Other bloggers and web enthusiasts are constantly checking out these communities for networking and information. There are many communities you can submit your blog to but it’s better to stick with the ones which are popular and have a decent Google PR (pagerank).
I have posted a list of top article and blog directories so check them out and submit your blog right away.

Remember: When you follow a blog that you find interesting, and you contribute something nice through commenting on it, you are basically increasing your visibility in the community. A lot of people will check you out and also subscribe to your blog if you are good. Always try to participate in a network and engage in conversations. Whether you write a blog post or a comment, make sure it delivers some value to the community.

3. Write Tutorials and Pillar Articles

I have followed Yaro Starak who is one of the top bloggers. Yaro has always emphasized the importance of pillar articles. Now think about this, if you write an article about what happened on a certain day, the content is meant only for that day and with time it gets old. But, if you write a How-to Article or a tutorial that solves a problem, it stays there forever.
Let me explain. If you write something about “How to get rid of twitter spam or How to get loyal readers to your blog”, you know that you can use these tutorials whenever you want and they won’t get old because the same method would apply all the time. Lots of people will share it and bookmark it for future reference. Pillar articles are killers and you can easily write at least 5-6 a month.

4. Be a Guest Author on Popular Blogs

Most blogs you will come across these days accept guest posts. Popular blogs like problogger, shoemoney, johnchow just to name a few; they all give new bloggers a chance to get noticed through guest blogging. Now this is a great opportunity and shouldn’t be missed. You can’t just post anything you like but it should be related to the niche and you have to prove your worth. One blog post on some of these popular blogs can get you huge amount of traffic.

How to find blogs that accept guest posts? How about you Google terms such as “guest post by” or you can check out this blog post on kissmetrics that explains guest blogging in details.
Writing guest posts is a truly amazing way to get noticed and drive traffic to your blog. Don’t forget the link juice you get and waves of new subscribers.

5. Give Something to Download for Free

I love free stuff, don’t you? A good way to gain readership and make your blog popular is to give free stuff to the public. It can be almost anything; an eBook, a wordpress theme, some popular tools or even free online class. Based on the experience from my other blogs, people love free things especially when they are premium and valuable.
There are several PLR content that you could give away to your readers. Whatever you decide to give, make sure it is worth downloading. Ask yourself, would you download it yourself? If you wouldn’t download the free stuff yourself, you can’t expect others to download it either. Quality matters my friend and if your stuff is good, people will just keep coming.

6. Blog Frequently

Fresh content is the key to your blog’s success. Do not just blog once a week and expect people to check in every day. Your readers are hungry for information and they expect to see something valuable and new on your blog frequently. I know sometimes you can get busy and have days when you don’t feel like blogging, and it is completely ok. If blogging is your passion, you will manage time for a post; it comes naturally my friends.
The search engines can find out how often you blog and they love fresh content. The more often you post to your blog, the better it gets. Of course, unless you follow a different blogging style such as Glen at viperchill who makes 1 – 3 posts per month. Glen has a unique style of creating blog posts. Most of his posts go above 4000 word limit and if you carefully notice, he has a lot of lengthy pillar articles on his blog. And as a result, viperchill gets 10 times more traffic than most other blogs combined in the similar niche. Viperchill is the proof that quality content matters over quantity of posts.
Whatever style you adapt, make sure your content is unique because at the end of the day, that is what matters the most.

7. Link Love

One of the best ways to get your blog noticed is to trade links with other bloggers in the same niche. There are multiple ways you can approach a blogger or an author and request for a link love. You can email them (make sure you don’t spam), you can comment on their blog post and request and of course add them on your facebook and discuss about it. I personally do not do this right now because google doesn’t give much value to such links.

The best way to get link love is through guest blogging as mentioned earlier. Try creating some great blog posts in some popular blogs and you will get both traffic and quality backlinks.

As someone said, “A picture is worth more than 1000 words.” In the present scenario, a picture is a very good way to share and summarize your blog content. You can use chart, Information and text together to create an Infographic. Infographics are quite popular on Social-media sites & readers love it as it convey the message in an easy to understand format.

Most of the bloggers think that you need to be a highly skilled designer to create an infographic, which is not entirely true. These days there are many online Infographic maker sites are there to help users like you & me to create Infographics for our blog post. This is your handy guide to learn everything about designing Infographics for your blog even if you have not done it before.


First thing first: Let’s see what is Infographic?

Infographic is a visual representation of Information, data, and knowledge. They can be used to show patterns, timelines, and trends.

Earlier it was used in Newspaper and TV News channel, but Facebook, Twitter, and other social media made it a big hit for website and blogs to create a visual representation of information.For more details on Infographic, you can read Wikipedia.

Infographic can also be used to represent Public transit or local maps. Let’s see how creating infographic will help your blog:

• Helps you to summarize your blog content to a picture
• Easier for your readers to get the content quickly through Infographic
• Human brain process images much faster than text
• Get more traffic by sharing these pictures on social media
• Pinterest and Instagram love Infographic
• Helps you to make your content viral, Instead of sharing a plain picture

Notice the difference when using image vs. infographic to convey a message:


So now you have a basic idea about Infographic, let’s see how to create one for your blog post. There are various tools available online to create it quickly. You can always use software like Photoshop to create a customized Infographic for you.

Easy Tools for Bloggers to create Infographics:

Canva:

My personal favorite. It provides you free as well as paid template to create Infographic images. It has also inbuilt free pictures and illustrations to use in your Infographic.

Probably the best in the market.
Piktochart:


Piktochart is another popular Infographic maker tool that is free & offer paid solution too for advanced options. The only limitation of the free version is it let you create & download Infographic with the watermark. At the same time, a huge collection of free templates & pictures makes it a great tool for users like you & me.
Apart from above two, there are few more Infographic maker sites that I have listed below:

1. Venngage
2. Infogr.am
3. Create.visual.ly

You can always use software like Adobe Photoshop, Corel draw to create your customized Infographic.

Best Practices for Creating Infographics that Rock

Given a brief introduction of the topic or product. Explain why people should try or buy it. Present some humor, fact and comparison of the topic. You can take help of a map, geographic data or history.
You can use correct font and bold text to highlight the fact you want to highlight. Ensure it matches your brand font style too.

Surprise your readers with unique and new ideas. Introduce new design ideas and include pictures and contents from famous and inspirational blogs and websites. The best way to do it to note down the ideas the moment you get it. Use pocket notepad or sticky notes app in your phone.



Do not just create Infographic for building backlinks. Try to solve a problem for your audience. Think how can this picture can help them. If a picture cannot impress you, it definitely will not impress others.Consider your target audience and entertain them.



Use sufficient icons and symbols to explain topics to your readers. Do not clutters the infographic with a lot of texts. People love to see symbols and signs.
Don’t be over excited to make your Infographic too complex. If people find it difficult to understand, your hard will not pay off. The best way is to get it reviewed by your friends and ask them if they understand the topic. As a rule of thumb keep your Infographic limited to 8000px.
No one wants to see obvious things in the Infographic. Research on your topic and present some surprising facts.

After putting so much hard work, make sure your Infographic reach to a bigger audience and become viral. Connect and reach to influential blogger to make sure they share your content. Ask your subscribers to promote the Infographic and explain to them why it is useful for their blog. Other bloggers may use your Infographic on their blogs, and you will get traffic.



Make sure you promote your Infographic using embed tweet or Click to Tweet. Use Pinterest and Instagram to make sure Infographic looks good.

A good Infographic is incomplete without relevant maps and charts. If you think it make sense, use it to explain facts. It makes you Infographic real and supportive.
Conclusion –


It takes a little time to create it but it helps you to generate more traffic to your post by making it viral. It can be easily shared on social media and tools available online to create it.

I hope this post would have given you the basic idea about Infographic, how to create them and best practices to follow. Please use the comments section to share your view.

In order to have a constant flow of traffic to your blog, quality content is not enough. You need to promote your blog posts and make sure they are visible at every corner of the web where your potential reader hangs out.

Are you worried about how to share your content, the right way at the right places? Look no further because in today’s post, I will tell you where to promote your blog post after publishing them.

Must Read: How to Increase Your Website Search Traffic


Facebook, as obvious holds the top spot of social sharing channels. It alone sends 25% of all social referral traffic to sites. Most bloggers assume that sharing a post on Facebook just after publishing is enough, but here are certain strategies you can use to double or even 3x the referral traffic from Facebook.

1. Facebook groups:
Create a separate blog group for your audience. Use this group for interacting with them. Providing tips and asking help from them and engaging in other ways. Now whenever you share a post in this group you can actually see traffic flow to your blog.

There are also groups that have highly dedicated members. Just perform a search using “your niche keyword” + group on Facebook search bar.

2. Post Status updates that interest your audience:
On your profile, you can write a status announcing about your upcoming post and ask if your friends want to be tagged when the post is published.
This strategy alone drives a lot of anticipation amongst your audition and creates a scene where people wait for your posts.

It will naturally attract traffic when it gets published.
TIP: Use a URL shortener to measure the traffic Facebook sent you.
Twitter is a great source of traffic that can be utilized to promote your latest blog post. Here are some tips to make the most out of it.

• Use hashtags related to your niche
• Set up twitter cards for more conversions.
• Engage with influencers and your own followers.

Pinterest is the visual social bookmarking site that can be useful if you have good graphics. Try to promote your pins on Pinterest with proper hashtags. Pinterest group boards are a great way to drive referral traffic to your posts. Use this link to search the best group boards in your niche.

Must Read: How Social Media Can Turn Your Business Around
LinkedIn users are professionals who know what they want to see and read. Sharing your blog post on such a network can give you real targeted traffic. Use LinkedIn groups to share your posts to even more targeted audience.
One of the most underrated social networking sites, Google plus is a gem for online marketers. More than 90% of users who use Google plus are online marketers and bloggers. It is the second largest social networking site after Facebook. Google plus recently launched collections, which is said to be a competitor of Pinterest.
Here is how you can use Google plus to drive maximum traffic.
It would be foolish of us to not to mine this traffic source for our blog.
Your email newsletter is probably the most important place where your loyal readers reside. If someone has signed into your newsletter it means he is actually interested in what you blog and wants to read more of it.
Sending them your published blog posts increases the chances of conversion and shares. Use Auto-responders like MailChimp or GetResponse to send broadcasts to your email subscribers.

Recommended Post: 11 Tricks to Drive Traffic from Facebook
Quora, the question and answer network, is a great tool for showing your brand and authority. You can also use it to promote your blog posts. Quora has a meaningful influx of users (nearly 1.5 million per month) who know what they are looking for. Answering to questions asked by users in a valuable way and adding relevant links to your blog can get a more exposure.
As Quora users are quite dedicated, many marketers and bloggers also ask questions related to their upcoming posts to collect ideas. If you have a convincing answer to their question, you can also land chances of backlinks.
Here’s how to use Quora:

• Use the search bar to type find questions related to your keyword.
• Omit threads with large number of comments. (not compulsory but long threads have low chances of CTR)
• On relevant threads, write a compelling answer and link back to your blog.
• Include multimedia if necessary.

Every time you publish a blog post, make it a habit to answer questions related to your topic on Quora.
Reddit is a place that can make and break a site. Make in the sense it can give you tons of traffic. Break in the sense it can send you so much traffic that will crash your site. Reddit has over 174 million unique visits per month and here is how to tap on this never-ending traffic resource.

• Set up your profile, a professional looking one.
• Try to remain active in threads related to your industry.
• Also, find some sub-reddits (reddit has nearly 8000 of them) that are really large. You can use meta-reddit to keep a track of the best sub-reddits.
• Try to study how these reddits work. Are they allowing promotional content? Or how is the tone of the users there.
• Post your blog post with some fitting intro to it.

Slideshare is the visual content marketing platform that happens to enjoy almost 60 million visitors per month. You can use this traffic volcano to warm up your blog by simply posting your blog post as a slide or PowerPoint PPT on it. Here are some tips to make the most of SlideShare each time you publish your blog post.

Also Read: Top 100 High PR Article Directory Submission Sites

• Use images that stand out.
• Having less, but clear text on each slide binds up the user to your slide.
• Insert a link back (to the post you are promoting) in the last slide of your presentation.

YouTube is like the video galaxy of the universe. Ironically, it is the second largest search engine after Google with over 5 billion searches per month. This is enough to get you share your content on this video platform.
The secret here is you don’t have to be a video maker or any multimedia course graduate to drive visits to your latest posts using YouTube. All you need is to be creative and use good visuals to create a presentation using PowerPoint. You can also convert your existing SlideShare ppt into video using PowerPoint. This can be uploaded to YouTube with links to your blog post. This way you are using both SlideShare and YouTube on one go.
Other alternatives of YouTube are vine, vimeo and dailymotion.
The one reason I ignored LinkedIn publishing in the social media section is this is not social media but a separate platform similar to blogging.
In LinkedIn publishing platform, you can write a separate blog post related to your just-published post and link it. You can also republish your recent post on LinkedIn with minor changes. 

Link round ups are when bloggers collect the best posts in their field and publish a weekly or bi-monthly post featuring them. This is very useful since the publisher doesn’t have to take extra efforts to create a new post. Similarly, the audience also is benefitted by staying on the top news and best resources that week.
You can however, use this strategy to promote your newly published post by emailing the publishers of these round ups. If you have a content worthy of linking back, they will surely feature your post. Link roundups benefit you by giving backlinks to your newly published posts an also giving it huge exposure.
Here is a list of over 60 blogs conducting round-ups that you can use to promote your post and get traffic.
Outreach is probably the best method to get influencers and other bloggers share your blog content. Additionally this can bring you backlinks that are valuable. Whenever you write a post, try to include quotes by famous bloggers or link to relevant content of authority bloggers.
After the publishing of the post, give them a heads up that you have mentioned them in your post. This process is also called ego baiting. Most (if not all), will respond to your message and either share your content across their social channels or link to your blog posts too.
I have gotten a few backlinks from trafficgenerationcafe.com using this trick. The traffic and exposure is a definite bonus.
You can also contact other bloggers to link to your blog post.


Social bookmarking sites have never gone out of the scene. These are useful for getting more eyeballs on your recent posts. Some of the most popular social bookmarking sites are:

• Digg
• DoSplash
• Kingged
• Inbound
• Bizsugar
• BlogEngage

For a detailed guide on how to use social bookmarking for maximum conversions, read this post.

These were the best places you should be using to promote your blog post. I personally use them and they convert really well. If you have any doubt to make the most of any channel or if something is not working feel free to comment below and I will try my best to help you.

Instagram has almost 300 million users. That’s more daily mobile users than Twitter. Are you ready to tap into that audience? Instagram can be a powerful marketing tool because your community loves to get a sneak peek into your company’s “real” every day. Why not give them that with pictures? For example, you can

• Show your personal side. If you’re a blogger, you’re likely building your community based on sharing you. Only you can determine the level of sharing that’s appropriate, of course. Depending on your type of blog, Instagram is a great way to let your readers have a glimpse of what’s interesting or important to you. That can mean anything; it doesn’t have to be pictures of your family.
• Report your company news. Did you get a new shipment in? Do you have a daily special? Or maybe you have an event coming up or just had one? Bring your community into the fold with pictures.
• Share behind-the-scenes happenings. If an impromptu battle of the bands breaks out in the office (or living room), you definitely want to share that. But even mundane stuff like creating an end-of-month stats report can be interesting to see — even if it’s just to reinforce that even the fun offices have work to get done. You’re relating to your community and letting them become familiar with you and your employees.

How Do I Get Started With Instagram?

First you need to download the app for your smartphone (go to your smartphone’s application store). Once you’ve installed the app, follow the instructions for creating an account:
1. Click the Register button. A new screen appears.
2. Type the Instragram username and password you’d like. Or, you can click Use Your Facebook Info to sign up that way.
When you sign up with Facebook, you’ll be asked to allow the Instagram app to have access to your account. You need to allow this so Instagram can create your account and allow you to post photos to your Facebook Timeline.
Note this little menu next to Who Can See Posts From This App on Facebook.
You can click that and see a full menu. From here you can choose who can see things you update to Facebook from Instagram. You can set it to Public (everyone can see), Friends (only people you’re connected with), or Only Me (if you don’t want anyone else to see your photos on Facebook). It’s important to note that not every picture you take will be sent to Facebook. I’ll explain how that works in a little bit. Let’s get back to registering your account.
3. Click the Done button in the top right corner.
Ok! Let’s get started! Now that you have an account, let’s talk about how Instagram works. When you fire up Instagram, you’re taken to your main Instagram feed and you see five navigation icons at the bottom of the screen:

• Home: This is your where you’ll see the pictures from people you follow.
• Search: Use this page to search users or hashtags (#keyword).
• Camera: You can take a new photo or use an existing photo from your camera roll.
• Likes: A list of people that have liked your photos. This can be a good place to find new people to follow.
• Profile: Establish your settings, share settings, and see the photos you’ve uploaded.

When you’re ready to take a picture and post it, you’ll click the center camera button to take a picture. If you want to use a picture from your camera roll, click the double squares icon on the camera page.
Instagram Tip: Bright and sharp photos have the most engagement, so keep that in mind as you’re deciding what to share.
After you’ve taken a photo, Spice It Up! You can

• Add one of the 17 filters to your content.
• Use the bright icon to enhance the image.
• Use the frame tool (only available on some filters).
• Use the blur tool. You can choose either the round or horizontal blue, depending on what you want to do. You can even change the size of the focused or blurred part of the photo.

When you’re done editing your photo, click the green checkmark. A new screen comes up where you can write a caption about your photo, add it to your photo map, and share it to your other social networks. When everything’s in place, click the green Share button at the top of the screen and your photo shows up in the Instragram stream!

Instagram Tips For Business

• When you create a caption, you can tag people if you know their Instagram username. Just type @username and they’ll get a notification that you tagged them. Of course, you don’t want to tag people unless they’re actually in the photo or somehow related to it. You wouldn’t tag people just to get them to look at your stuff — that’s spammy and people don’t like it.
• If someone comments on your photo and you want to respond, you can touch and hold the username and a new screen appears with that username already tagged and ready for your new comment.
• Establish a basic hashtag that everyone can use when they post. A hashtag is a number sign (#) with a keyword or phrase attached to it (#Summit). Used consistently, people will start to associate that hashtag with your business and may start using it themselves for relevant photos.
• Be sure your Instagram profile shares your Facebook page, website, or online store address.
• If you’re set up on Foursquare, integrate that with Instagram and use the location tagging feature so people will know where the store is.
• Create a page on your website with Instagram so you can pull the photos in as you take them. That allows you to do all sorts of things with search, hashtags, contests/giveaways on your website.
• Check out statigr.am and set up an account. You’ll be able to see basic stats and analytics; find the best times to post; analyze which photos are most popular; add follow buttons to your website and blog; break down how your hashtags are being used & compare them to the most popular hashtags on Instagram; check out the engagement you’re getting on photos; and use the contest toolkit. That’s a lot of bang for your buck — especially since statigr.am is FREE!

Do you have a favorite Instagram tool or tip? Tell us in the comments!