How To Create A Viral Blog

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These tactics have worked great for us over the years and continue to deliver results!

[Welcome to Neil Patel readers! This post is one of the earliest on the blog and westillreference it regularly when promoting posts. They continue to help us grow our traffic at a rate that is still surprising to us. Enjoy!]

It's tough to make a blog post go viral. There's no secret sauce to make every post a hit. However, there are plenty of things you can do to increase your chances.

A great blog can be a huge asset to you – it feels great to make and can bring attention to what you're doing. The problem is that if nobody sees your post it's not useful to anybody besides you. There are tons of suggestions around the internet to drive traffic to your blog and most of them work to some extent. Most aren't so effective. There's really only one way to create a popular blog: creating great content that can change people's lives for the better. It's about putting yourself out there and making a connection. Corbett Barr says it best, "Write Epic Shit." Content is indeed king but without a spark even the best content will lie dormant forever without anybody seeing it.

You live in an Epic Universe – make more Epic Stuff!

Before you post:

Keyword optimize your post. Put your main topics into Google Keyword Tool and title the post based on the most popular search terms.
Add pictures next to key items, it makes them carry more weight. Derek Halpbern of SocialTriggers has a GREAT post about using pictures in your posts.
Re-read your post to check for errors.

After you post use these to get in as many brains as possible:

Submit to Digg
Submit to Reddit
Submit to StumbleUpon
Post on Forums in niche
Submit to Yahoo Buzz
Submit to Delicious
Post to Twitter
Post to Facebook
Post to Myspace. Myspace is dead, long live Myspace.
Post to Google +
Post to YouTube (if applicable)
Submit to Technorati
Post to Pinterest (if applicable)
Post to LinkedIn
Provide SEO keywords for images
Directory submissions
RSS directory submits
Forum comments
Relevant blog comments
Social bookmarking
Refer to posts on Yahoo! Answers
Refer to posts on LinkedIn
Refer to posts on Quora
Press releases
Link to our own past AND future blog posts
Add to your email signature
Add to your signature in forums
Add to your next newsletter
Request other bloggers to mention your post

Put it everywhere! … and make it good enough for them to care.

You don't need to do all of these things every time but the more places your post goes the more eyes you'll find. You will quickly see what is really working

Play with these ideas and let us know what you think. Do you have any other ways you like to get your content out into the world? Post below and let us know what works for you!

Check out our Complete Formula to Get your First 10,000 Website Visitors

Additional resources you might be interested in:
How to Write Your First Blog Post
How to Blast Out of Obscurity
20 of The Most Effective Ways to Promote Your Products
Expert Blog Launch: Start Your Blog The Right Way
12 Lean Startup Tools to Launch and Run Your Business