How to Get More Views on Your Blog or Internet Article

Many writers of blogs or Internet articles find writing easy but are often puzzled by the more difficult task of getting views on their sites. Indeed with thousands of sites being created daily and millions of viewers, it is quite a task to promote ones own work in a sea of millions of links already in existence.

The first, and most important thing, is to simply write great links.

Do not write about things you are not knowledgeable on, just because you think it will get views. In the end it will make you look foolish or ignorant. Opinion pieces are different, but you should use interesting facts to back up your opinions. However, when writing purely factual information stick to topics you are familiar with, and comfortable speaking on. This way you can also reply to reader questions/comments.

Add pictures when appropriate. People enjoy looking at pictures. They add visual impact and can be used to show what you are talking about. Ideally use your own, unique, high quality pictures, that people have not seen a hundred times already. Videos are good also but there are some people who find videos slow to download and cannot watch them, so do not rely on videos.

Do not plagiarize, or otherwise steal other peoples content. Do not write in languages you are not fluent in. Spell check and use correct grammar. 

Tag a link correctly and give it a good title.  Being cute does not always get as many views as an accurate title would. 

All these things count towards making a great link. This is very important because great links get shared, even without your help. You should be honest enough to evaluate what links of yours are poor, what are good, and which are great. It is the great ones you want to promote, the others you want to improve, delete, or keep on the back burner for further work. Not everything you write will be brilliant.

Be aware that factual articles will get far more views than poetry.

Now for the actual promotion.

There are many sites which people can use for promoting/sharing their links. Some of the best known are Digg, Facebook, MySpace, Stumbleupon, Reddit, Redgage, Webtoid, and Twitter. Most people make one mistake: They join and right away they submit as many of their links as they can. With most of these networking systems this results in zero views.

In some of these sites a person who submits too much of anything from the same site is instantly labeled a “spammer”. Such is the case for Digg, Webtoid, and Reddit. In other instances newly added sites do not get views until a person has “followers”, “fans”, basically people who have joined with an interest of seeing your submissions.

The method of getting fans and followers varies from site to site, but on the whole, as with Digg, and Stumbleupon, the best thing is to spend a few days, weeks, or even months, on the site clicking things you enjoy. This sets up a profile that tells others what you like, what you are interested in, and what you do not like. People with similar tastes will then add you as a friend. You can sometimes get attention for yourself by adding them first. However it is never wise to add many friends until you have established what kind of sites you like viewing.

Only after a person has gained followers should they submit their own websites to the networking system in place, be it Stumbleupon, Facebook, or Twitter.  Do not ONLY stumble, digg, etc. your own things.  Your own sites should represent less than 10% of a networking account of things you have liked. 

The toughest part is for people not to get over eager. Spammers are dropped as friends very quickly and sometimes reported to the networking site itself for deletion of their account. Think of it this way, how many sites do you have time to view a day or a week? If all of your friends sent 2-3 links a day and you have 100 friends you would be swamped. Many of the long time users of these systems have several hundreds of friends so getting 1 link a week from any of them is plenty.

Other ways of generating views on your link is by e-mailing them to friends and family. Again be sensible, do not send links to people who are not interested in your topic, and do not send more than 1-3 links at a time, or you will overwhelm them and nothing will be viewed.

A new site that helps you share your links mostly by sharing pictures that link back to your original, is Pinterest.

If you have created some great links they will be shared. It might not happen over night, and it might not happen for every link, but it will happen.

Links

How to use Reddit and Webtoid to Promote your Blog, Factoid, and so on.