Arrow 1 = dark haired me, arrow 2 = Guy Kawasaki
Yep, that's me meeting Guy Kawasaki way back in 2012. He's the founder of the news site Holy Kaw! We talked about blogging and I spoke about managing Birds on the Blog, my multi-author site. I also mentioned the post “10 things men should know about sex”. Great headline.
After we had lunch (Diet Coke and Tuna sandwiches) Guy looked up the blog post and shared it to Holy Kaw, and then onto Twitter, and brought down our server with all the traffic he sent. Many people talk about viral traffic but they don't actually tell you about the problems that come with it! Having your site collapse under the weight of the traffic is one of them. This is why good hosting is so important.
Now, not everyone can get an interview with the owner of a news aggregator and have the content go viral (but if you can, do it). But that doesn't stop you from submitting your site and seeing what happens.
Not every news aggregator will accept your site, so polish it up before applying to places like Google News. Other places you can sign up with Panda, Feedly, and Flipboard to name a few. I recommend you add your site to at least Feedly as a bare minimum. You will also find Feedly useful for keeping track of content from other creators in your field of expertise.
You will need to ensure your headlines are the best they can be. With the article that went viral through Holy Kaw it had a cracking headline.
- It evoked curiosity from men and women.
- It was written by a therapist so it was highly credible.
- It was perfectly formatted. I know because I formatted the 3,000 words myself!
If the post didn't have such a great headline, if it wasn't written by an expert and if it wasn't in-depth I doubt it would have seen the 100th page of Google let alone go viral. Going viral in many instances is luck, but you can increase your chances of success!
Pros & Cons of Using News Aggregators
Pros:
- Great source of interested readers
- Once it's set up, traffic is steady
- Potential to go viral
Cons:
- Must have a great headline
- Must be great content
- Timing must be perfect to go viral
Conclusion:
This is something well worth doing, and do it before you are “ready”. I wasn't ready the day the post went viral, but if I didn't have a post, then nothing would've happened…
Additional Resources:
- Feedly
- Alltop.com
- Google News
