Blogging | Writing | Marketing
5 Things You Can Do When Your Article Goes Viral (And I Wish I Had Known These From The Beginning)
7 year hindsight is a wonderful thing to crystallize what really works
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I have been blogging for 7+ years. I have more than my share of viral moments. I have a truth to share — I have not figured out, a priori, what blogs work viral magic.
However, when it happens, things are in my hands. My motto for those moments — maximize the celebrations through interactions.
Here are my 5 things.
1. Add your blog to your own publication — not someone else.
This may be the most contrarian advice you hear. But it works for me. Every writer aspires for his work to be read. The geek in me is always discovering better hypothesis to test. Here is one that works.
Start your own publication and add the blogs you think will fit the theme and make sure to add your viral blog ( as it’s picking up pace) to your own publication.
Here’s why — you get the benefit of domino. When people read your blog, other blogs in your own publication show up as options to read next.
And when people read more than one blog of yours, I have found that they follow you and are interested in your less viral blog content.
Tidbit: Promoting blogs in your own publication gets around the timing on when you publish the blog. This is an added benefit and quite important.
2. Add your signature at the end with 3 features
My signature reads like this:
Karthik Rajan is the author of the “connect the dots” short story-letter, available at this link.
It has 3 features — a link back to my linkedin profile; a link for email signup and the theme. All in italics to show differentiation.
The key to the signature is conciseness. And key of timing of signature is virality — unfortunately.
Most people who know you for what you write — don’t need to rediscover you. Once you are…
