So you spent hours doing meticulous research on your topic and even more hours to write all your great ideas in a way that’s easy to understand. It’s fresh and it’s got a dash of humor to keep it light and make it viral-worthy. So why aren’t people reading it?
You Don’t Know What “Awesome” Means
First things first, you, your family and your close set of fans probably aren’t the best judges in determining what exactly makes for awesome content. Your own ego could be blinding you to the fact that your content isn’t “all that”.
Your family loves you too much to say anything bad about your work, and the same goes for your loyal followers.
What you need to do first is to get people knowledgeable in the industry to give you their unbiased opinion on your piece. You need to hear actual constructive criticism that points out the strengths and weaknesses of your content.
If you’ve already gotten impartial evaluation that does say your content is good, but it still isn’t making any rounds in the World Wide Web, then you probably have the following problems:
- Little to No Promotion – There’s this faulty line of thinking that just making great content will naturally attract attention throughout the Internet, no promotion necessary. How can you expect that to happen when no one knows about your content?
So tell people about your awesome article through every possible avenue. Email your contacts, chat up your friends, spread the word in the communities you’re part of, tweet about it, share it on Facebook, etc.
- Bad Timing – I know you must be excited to share your content if you really think it’s great, but posting it in your social network accounts right after you finished writing it at 2am on a Sunday is not a good idea.
Part of making sure your content gets attention is publishing it at the most optimal time when people will actually get to see it. They go through hundreds to thousands of stories, so don’t let yours get buried under their feeds by sharing it when everyone’s asleep or busy at work.
For Twitter, the best time to share links is at 1-3pm ET, while it’s 1-4pm ET for Facebook. You can read up more on this topic through this article on Mashable.com.
- No Social Share Buttons – Everybody wants things done quick and easy nowadays, and that includes sharing links?. So if the website your content is posted on doesn’t give readers a way to share it conveniently, you’re missing out on a lot of potential visits.
Social share buttons provide that convenience, and it’s also incredibly easy to integrate them into websites. The numbers that show up next to them also help because of the social proof phenomenon—the higher the numbers, the more people will think it’s worth reading and sharing.
Just don’t go overboard by plastering more than so many buttons all over the page for a number of reasons: this will only make it harder for visitors to choose which one to use, it slows down the website, and it just looks desperate. Search Engine Journal provided a good study on which social share buttons you should use for your website.
The feeling of creating awesome content only to see that no one is actually reading it sucks hard.
But don’t be discouraged. It usually comes down to the matter of knowing how to promote your content in the best way possible. So reach out to people and get your awesome content the views it deserves.
Image Credit: Elittle John
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