Let’s be honest here. We go to social media and blogging communities so we can promote (push) our content – to make our content visible to more and more eyeballs, right?
Well I am not generalising! But if you are having a blog or a website and if you are looking to create a new account in a blogging community, then you ultimately want to promote your own posts.
Now that is totally fine. There’s nothing wrong about it. Of course every one of us want to get our content in front of more eyeballs.
But do you really want your content to be appreciated by people? Or just get your content in front of their eyeballs?
The latter won’t work very effectively for you in this age of information overload. No matter how hard you work to create your awesome content, people can still find the same information or even better in some other place.
You have an overwhelming number of websites that cover the same topic as yours. So what should you do instead of trying to get your content in front of their eyeballs?
What should you do to make them notice your content and appreciate it? Here are two simple things that you need to be doing.
Create great content
I know, you are rolling your eyes right now. I know you have heard this “magical tip” a LOT of times. But have you put that to practice? If not, you cannot even survive!
Is that too harsh? May be. But that is the truth. You cannot survive in the sea of information if you are creating mediocre, me too content.
[click_to_tweet tweet=”Create epic content before you think about promoting it in communities” quote=”Create epic content before you think about promoting it in communities”]You have to create extraordinary content. Now, don’t mistake or misunderstand “epic” content to content that is 3000 or 7000 words. Of course people do create such long, yet epic content.
But merely publishing a blog post with 7000 words by filling it with “words” is not the way to go about.
You can write extraordinary, epic content even with 1000 words. The number of words really doesn’t matter here. It is the “meat of the content” that matters.
As long as your message is strong enough to create an impact, you can be proud that you are creating epic content.
If you can create a practical tutorial to teach people how to do something, with screenshots and stuff, you are already a hero among people who struggle to do that thing.
It is about usefulness. It is about creating an impact. It is about changing life. It is about helping people.
That’s the basis of creating epic content. Got it?
So before you think about sharing your content in social media or in blogging communities like DoSplash, you have to first make sure your content is practically useful to your readers.
If not, you cannot expect others to appreciate it (even if you religiously keep sharing your stuff all the time).
Engage, engage, engage
How can you expect others to “react” to your content or updates if you don’t react to any other’s updates or submissions?
If you are someone who prefers to sit in the corner of a couch and just observe others partying, you cannot expect all the others to know about you when the party is over.
You have to get up from the couch, join some people with their dancing, drink with some people, chat with some people and so on.
[click_to_tweet tweet=”If you don’t engage with others don’t expect others to engage with you” quote=”If you don’t engage with others don’t expect others to engage with you”]You have to socialize (remember, humans are social animals). Otherwise it would have been better if you had not attended the party in the first place.
The story is the same with social media and blogging communities. You have to interact with the others and engage with them. How can you do that?
Here at DoSplash you can do the following stuff:
1. Submit others’ content. Are you the one who prefers to submit only content from your own site? If so you should be considering submitting others stuff too. In fact I prefer to share 30% of my own content and 70% of others content. You would come across lots of interesting content in a week. Why not submit them to DoSplash, tweet those content out and share them on Facebook or Google+?
You don’t have to share those content in all social media/communities. Just share those content where you are most active!
2. Comment on others’ updates. You don’t want it to be a silent place right? There should be some kind of interaction! You want people to comment on your blog posts. You want people to talk about your content – be it good or bad stuff. But you want some sort of noise, rather than hearing crickets.
So you have to initiate interaction in the first place. Comment on other people’s submissions, truly appreciate them and don’t hesitate to share your honest opinion. This way you can encourage others to comment on your stuff too.
3. Mention others in social media: This is a tiny little tip that makes a lot of difference. When you share others’ content and/or comment on others’ stuff, make it a point to mention them or tag them – this is to notify the others that you have shared their stuff or have talked about them.
This way they will be able to reciprocate too.
These are just 3 simple ways in which you can engage. There are a lot of other ways to do it. The sky is the limit!
Do you want to effectively engage in blogging communities?
… Or do you just want to create accounts, just come by and submit your own content and leave? You can always do the latter, but you cannot expect people to notice your content.
So give before you expect to receive.
Engagement is the key to building genuine relationships and that is how you can build a loyal audience (and get your content out before many, many eyeballs).
Are you ready to engage? Start by submitting someone else’s useful content here at DoSplash.
