Social Media

Flipboard for Bloggers: A Mindless Way to Increase Traffic

September 21, 2017 by Katie Clark Leave a Comment

I started blogging right around the tail end of when it was a huge driver of traffic for people without much effort having to be put in.

There were no algorithms. Having tons and tons of followers was the ultimate goal. And if you pinned something, it would almost certainly do well.

Well, that’s not the case anymore, and while Pinterest still is a huge driver of traffic, you do have to work a little harder for it.

I have also realized this year just how dependent my traffic is on Pinterest, and my goal has been to diversify my traffic even more.

You shouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket – especially when it comes to social networks.

One social network I’ve been using more lately is Flipboard. It’s basically a magazine app, and you can flip your content on it.

Unlike many social networks, Flipboard seems to really encourage you to add your content frequently….for now, at least.

I’m not sure what the real “secrets” of Flipboard are, but I have gotten steady traffic from it in recent months, so I thought I’d share a few tips. It’s definitely one of those social networks that I think a lot of people ignore, but hopefully this will be helpful! I do think it’s worth the two seconds it takes to flip something!

What is Flipboard?

First off – what is Flipboard? As I mentioned earlier, it’s basically an online magazine. Forrest has been using it for awhile – it’s just an easy way to get news, fun articles, etc.

You can create magazines to flip content to, or you can just browse through the home feed.

The point is to get people to flip your content – though how exactly you do that is a bit of a mystery. In my experience, it doesn’t really matter how many followers you have.

I personally think that consistency pays off on Flipboard. I flipped things for months there without getting as much as a pageview. However, I just looked at my stats from the last week, and it’s my #3 social referral. Pretty cool!

Getting Started with Flipboard

First off, you have to start an account! Just go to Flipboard.com or download the app on your phone. You can create an account, put your site’s information into it, and you are ready to go.

You will likely be asked what your interests are, and it will start to suggest that type of content into your feed. I recommend selecting topics that are related to your blog.

As soon as you are signed up, I would suggest creating a bunch of specific boards for your niche. I think the more niche-specific you can be, the better. This isn’t really a place to create a magazine called, “My Blog,” and just throw a bunch of content into it.

I have 43 magazines. Here are a few titles:

The Best Breastfeeding Advice
Surviving Pregnancy
Family Friendly Recipes
Home Decor and Renovations
Smart Money Saving Tips

And so on. Make your titles interesting, have some keywords in it, and just make sure you have them be pretty specific!

Okay, I’m set up. Now what?

Well, I’ve read a lot about Flipboard – strategy, if you should share your own posts, if joint magazines are effective, etc.

From what I understand, Flipboard wants you to put your content on. I don’t know that I would suggest “flipping” all of your content at once, but don’t feel like you have to 30% your content, 70% others.

As the title of this post suggests, it’s a pretty mindless social media. I feel like I’ve gotten better results when I’ve just flipped my new content, jumped on the app every now and then to look around, etc. as I have when I’ve tried to be a part of post flipping groups.

You can join collaborative magazines, which may or may not be super effective. I don’t think it hurts to join them.

More than anything, I think it’s consistency. Consistently flip posts – and make sure they are high quality. Make sure you flip everything.

I also believe a lot of it is luck of the draw. You never know when a post might take off!

How I “Flip”

As soon as I have a post go live, I immediately press my browser extension – which you can download here.

When I press the button, it pulls up my post and the image it thinks is associated with my blog. If it pulls the wrong one, you can select any image from your page.

At this point, I add it to any relevant relevant magazine, and I call it good!

Easy as pie! You can also download the app to your phone, copy a link from anywhere, and when you go to open the app, it will ask if you want to flip that post.

Group Magazines

You can also join group magazines – these are basically the equivalent of group boards on Pinterest. Basically, it’s just a way to expand your reach. Consider creating a few with your blogger friends!

Follow Others

While I don’t have a ton of followers, and I have gotten some good traffic from Flipboard, I do think it’s a good idea to try and gain a following. One of the easiest techniques is to just go follow other people who are following interests or magazines related to your blog!

Two Quick Ways to Get More Facebook Likes Organically

August 24, 2015 by Katie Clark Leave a Comment

Of all the social networks out there, Facebook is the one that frustrates me the most. With their ever-changing algorithms, the almost requirement to pay for ads, and only a fraction of my followers even seeing my posts, it’s almost enough to make me throw in the towel. It makes it difficult to get more Facebook likes organically when hardly anyone is seeing your posts!

Just almost. Right when I’m about to, I have a post that does well, and it makes me feel like all the stress of Facebook is worth it. More or less.

I’ve been working on a method for increasing engagement on Facebook, and it’s something I hope to share with you soon (let’s just say an awesome little tool called Post Planner is making that easier.) However, today I thought I’d share two quick, organic ways to get more Facebook likes.

Getting Facebook likes organically is important. Don’t ever pay some company to get you more likes – most of these will be fake followers that won’t engage with you. If you have followers, you want them to share, comment, and click on your content. There’s no point in having followers if they don’t do any of those things!

For me, figuring out how to get those Facebook likes can be tricky, but I recently found two methods that have helped me get more followers that actually want to see my content. They are pretty simple and should only take you a few minutes to implement.

Smart Bar

First of all, I installed the SumoMe Smart Bar. SumoMe is a free blogging tool that I mentioned last week, but it’s a very powerful free tool. One of my favorite features is the Smart Bar. Most people use it to get new email subscribers, but I’ve found it to be most effective for getting new Facebook followers.

It’s just a bar that shows up at the top of your site. You can add a custom message – for instance, on this site, it says, “Get Free Blogging Tips and First Access to New Posts”, and at the end of the message, there’s just a like button. Someone can just click like, it doesn’t take them away from your site, and you can get new followers. I get quite a few new followers on Clarks Condensed each day using this bar. All you need to do is sign up for SumoMe, install the required code, and then “buy” the Smart Bar. It’s really easy to set up, and it’s very effective in finding new followers.

Inviting Those Who Liked your Posts

This is a tip I learned a while back, but it’s one that I think is underused. You may think that people who are liking your posts are already following you, but this isn’t always the case. If they aren’t following your page, you can invite them to like it!

When I first learned this tip, I didn’t think it worked – but it was because I was logged into my Facebook page for Clarks Condensed, rather than my personal profile. You MUST be logged into your personal profile.

From your personal profile, go to the Facebook search bar and start typing in your Facebook page’s name. When you get to your page, go through all your posts and if there are more than three people who have liked the post, it will say “such and such, and three others liked this post.” Click on the “others liked this post”, and it will bring up a list of everyone who has liked the post.

At this point, it will either show that they like the post, a button that says something like “invite this person” or nothing. If there’s nothing, it’s because their privacy settings prevent certain people from sending them like invites. However, if there is the button to invite them, you should press this! I always have a handful of people who haven’t liked my page but somehow liked a post, so I find it worth it to do this about once a week. Once I started doing this, my likes started going up a lot!

I hope that this was helpful. If you have any great tips for gaining Facebook followers organically, I’d love to hear them!

How I Freed My Life from Pinterest Scheduling

July 2, 2015 by Katie Clark 11 Comments

Many Bloggers will attest to getting a majority of their traffic from Pinterest. Although it’s undergone some major changes in the past year or so, and it may not be as amazing in some ways as it used to be, it’s still a major driver of traffic that you can’t afford to overlook.

There’s hundreds of articles out there about Pinterest strategy and the best Pinterest scheduler. I’ve read many of them myself – and most of them tell you the same thing: verify your website, get rich pins, pin vertical images, pin other people’s content, etc. etc. This is all super helpful information – especially if you are just getting started. I’m at that point where I really don’t feel like these articles help me very much, just because it’s information I’ve already learned and implemented.

there are affiliate links in this post – however, I am not being paid or employed by any company mentioned!

For me, it’s more to a point of getting the best strategy down. For the past year, I’ve had a strategy that I’ve used that has worked very well. However, it’s been super time consuming. To get an idea, here is the Pinterest Pinning Document I created and maintained. I would pin around 50-60 of my own pins a day, and this document helped me make sure I didn’t pin to the same board (or at least, the same pin to the same board, very often.) I used ViralTag to schedule these pins each day. I would usually do this the night before, but it was something I always dreaded doing. In fact, I would often skip a day or two, just because I didn’t have the time (or motivation) to schedule the pins out.

After hearing about BoardBooster last year from my friend, Anita, from Live Like You Are Rich, I knew it was something that I wanted to use. It had the ability to automate my pins being scheduled, which was very appealing to me. I started communicating with Dennis at BoardBooster, asking lots of questions, raising concerns, and trying to figure out how it best would work for me.

Well, I’m happy to say about eight months later…I’m finally set up, and it’s been the best thing. I no longer feel like a slave to Pinterest. I have time to actually spend on Pinterest pinning other peoples things and discovering new content for myself. It’s great!

Here’s how I use BoardBooster, and all the different options it has. If you sign up here, you can get a free 30-day trial – no strings attached! It is constantly getting new features, and Dennis – the creator – is always open to suggestions! Otherwise, the cost just depends on how you use it. More or less, it’s about $10 a month for every 1,000 pins (and there are a few other services that are 1 cent per penny.)

How I use BoardBooster

I use the campaigns section in BoardBooster. First of all, I set up a bunch of secret boards for my account.

From here, I had all my pins pinned to the relevant secret board. I think there’s about 12 boards I have that are related to a number of different group boards I have in that category. My largest secret board houses all of my posts that I actively pin, and it’s titled CC All Posts. This board can be used to pin to group boards I’m a part of that are more-or-less a free for all, as far as post topic goes. Beyond that, I created a bunch of sub-category boards, since I have a lot of group boards I’m a part of that are topic-specific. This was obviously a time consuming thing to do – I hired a VA to do it for me, just because I didn’t have time. Best money I’ve spent in a long time!

So, after I had all my secret boards set up, I went into BoardBoster and clicked on “Campaigns.” I selected “new campaign” and then “random campaign.” It will pull up a screen like this:

At this point, I named the campaign, chose that I wanted it to pin from a certain board (List of Boards option – list of pins is where you can select certain pins you want to be part of a campaign.) Then, I added a source board. This is the secret board. For this post, I’ll be talking about my ALL FOODS Board. So, I added CC All Food as the source board.

Then I went down to target board section, and I added a bunch of relevant group boards I’m on. I didn’t add all the group boards relevant to the topic, but the group boards that I felt consistently had a lot of repins and click throughs. After selecting the boards, I put the frequency I wanted pins to go to that board. This is really helpful, since a lot of boards have a limit of how often you can pin. It took me awhile to get all my campaigns setup so I only had about 50-60 pins going out a day (at first it was like 110 – too much for me!) I’m hoping that they will implement some features to better gauge this in the future as well.

Then, I just set up the hours I wanted my pins to go out and on what days! I repeated this process with the rest of my secret boards. Since doing this, I haven’t really had to do anything beyond a little bit of tweaking, and let me tell you…it’s been freeing!

I still use ViralTag, TailWind, and Ahalogy for other purposes – mainly for scheduling others content, but I am so glad I discovered BoardBooster, and I have been able to have a lot of success so far. My stats are up, and I don’t dread Pinterest anymore. We are having Dennis from BoardBooster speak at the Online Blog Conference, so be sure to sign up for that so you can ask all your questions!

Other BoardBooster Options

There is SO much you can use with BoardBooster – I’m just barely tipping the scales with how I use it. Here’s a brief overview of different options you could consider:

Scheduler:

This is helpful, in my opinion, for pinning other people’s contact. You basically select certain boards or group boards to add to the scheduler, and BoardBooster will automatically create a secret board. Then, you just add pins to that secret board that you want to be pinned to the board you’ve selected, and it will repin them according to the schedule you’ve set up (you set it to send out a certain amount of pins a day and what times.) I mainly think it’s helpful for pins that you don’t want to continually pin.

Doctor:

I know when I first started with Pinterest, I didn’t really pay attention to the source of the pins, and I would often pin the same thing several times (Pinterest has a feature to help prevent this now, but it didn’t launch until semi-recently.) The Doctor feature will go through pins on your board and test it for 9 common problems pins have, such as broken links, missing source links, redirecting to the incorrect website, and links to malicious websites (among other things.) After doing this, it lets you know how to fix them. It costs a penny a pin, and you don’t have to do all your boards at once!

Mover:

Do you have a lot of boards that need reorganizing? I know I do! I used to create a new board for just about everything, and sometimes I feel like everything looks a little bit hectic. The Pin Mover finds all pins that meet a certain criteria from a certain board and then it moves them to a board that you want. While Pinterest does have a pin moving feature, I think this option takes it a step further, and it makes it even easier to move around pins. Your first order is free, and then any additional order is a penny per pin.

Groups:

If you manage a group board, this is an awesome feature. It basically allows you to monitor the pinners and activity on your group boards so you can determine what is working and what’s not. I have a couple of group boards, though I don’t monitor them as well as I should, and it’s always interesting when I go to this tab and see who pins the best content, and which group boards do the best (for instance, my Pregnancy and Child Birth board outperforms my other group boards by a landslide!)

Looping:

This is a feature I really need to start using more. Basically, it revives old pins you’ve pinned that may have a ton of repins, but your current followers have no idea they even exist. It works best when you have it repin the pin to the same board. You can set it up to delete the pin automatically with the least amount of repins after a certain amount of time (such as week).

Reports:

These are just helpful for seeing how your pins perform. It shows you your pinning history, along with stats on how many repins they have. I really like being able to see when pins have done the best and get the most repins. This really helps to determine when you should setup your scheduling.

My Thoughts on Pinterest API Schedulers

If you are in the Pinterest scene, you’ve probably heard that certain schedulers have the Pinterest API. There’s a lot of debate about what this actually means, and if you can even use schedulers that don’t have it. BoardBooster does not currently have the Pinterest API Scheduler, but for the time being, I don’t believe this is a problem. I’ve been using ViralTag for over two years, which does not have an API, and I’ve never had issues. I’ve also used the two companies that do have the API, and when I compare the stats to when I use BoardBooster or ViralTag, guess what? No difference. If anything, when I’ve used Ahalogy, I feel like I’ve gotten less repins lately! I honestly don’t know if it makes a difference, but as of right now, I’m not worried. I do hope that BoardBooster will get the API eventually (just because I know some people get really worried!) All of these companies are great though, and I definitely recommend checking out a variety of services to see what works best for your website. As for me, BoardBooster, with a little sprinkling of the other companies (Ahalogy, ViralTag, and TailWind – TailWind has awesome stats that can help you pin better. I recommend at least their free account. You can get a free month by signing up through that link), is best!

If you are looking to really kill it with Pinterest, be sure to check out my friend, Jill’s, amazing Pinterest strategy course. You won’t regret it! She knows more about Pinterest than most anyone I know!