Author: DFYStartups

With over 500 million monthly visitors, Reddit is the 6th largest website in the world (as of May 2018) according to Alexa.com. 54% of users come from the United States and there are subreddits covering just about any subject that you can think of.

This makes Reddit a tool with a huge untapped potential for marketers, however it is largely neglected because many people don’t know how to go about it properly.

Redditors don’t like marketing or self-promotion, so in order to be have success on the platform marketers need to take time to fully understand it.

The best thing about Reddit is that it lets you interact with your target audience directly. There is a subreddit for everything, and you will be able to target people who are interested in what you have to offer, whatever niche you are in.

All of our done-for-you startup websites can be promoted using this method including coupon sites, automated Adsense sites, travel deals sites and drop shipping stores.

>> Browse Our Full Selection Of Done-For-Your Startup Sites Here

Understanding How Reddit Works

Reddit is an anonymous social network where people discuss a very wide range of topics, and to fully understand how it works you need to become familiar with the following terms.

Karma

Karma is the system that Reddit uses to decide which posts go to the top of a page, and because posts at the top get the most views, it’s important to try and get as much karma as possible.

When someone likes a post, they can give it an upvote and increase it’s karma by one. Oppositely, if someone does not like a post they can downvote it and decrease it’s karma by one.

The karma of a post is the difference between the upvotes and downvotes.

Subreddits

The pages within Reddit which are dedicated to certain subjects are called subreddits. The number of people who subscribe to each subreddit varies dramatically, and anyone can create a new.

In order to get the most traffic to your sites, you need to choose subreddits that, have active discussions and have followers who are interested in what you are saying.

Moderators

Moderators are in charge of each individual subreddit. They set the rules and make sure that discussion in their subreddits adheres to those rules. They also have the power to remove your posts, ban you from their subreddits and report you to the admins.

Admins

The Reddit admins are the people who run the site as a whole, and they don’t often get involved with individual users. However, if a moderator reports you to them they have the power to completely ban you from the site. Common reasons why you might find yourself being reported typically include bad language or insulting behavior.

Self Posts & Links

On Reddit you can either make a text post which contains HTML or you can make a link post which links out to an external site.

You will find that some subreddits have additional rules for each of these kinds of posts, so make sure you pay attention to them.

Getting Started

Once you understand the basics about how Reddit works, you can begin building up your presence. If you apply the following steps, you will be able to start developing content and promote on Reddit to get targeted traffic to your websites.

Be an Active Redditor

Before you start posting links to your own content on Reddit, it is essential to interact with other Redditors and build up a reputation.

This is true for all social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, but especially so for Reddit. If you do not build up karma first, you posts will not be seen by anybody.

Reddit’s posting guidelines say that “It’s perfectly fine to be a redditor with a website, it’s not okay to be a website with a Reddit account.”

The guidelines also say that if more than 10% of the content that you post is self-promotional, it’s likely that you are a spammer, so try to keep this figure in mind and regularly post links to content that is not your own.

Out-and-out self-promotion will result in your posts being downvoted, ignored or reported to the moderators. So rather than posting a link directly to one of your sales pages, it is a better idea to create some valuable content around a subject connected to your niche, and link to any products you are promoting from there instead.

If you maintain an active presence and make appropriate comments on other people’s posts, it will help you to avoid being reported for self-promotion.

Choosing Your Subreddits

Choosing the right Subreddit is very important if you want to maximize traffic. You need to select ones that have active discussions and accept your style of content.

Spamming links or starting a discussion in a subreddit with a lot of heavy discussion is not a good idea, as your post will no doubt get lost in all of the noise.

Try searching for keywords connected with your particular niche and find the top 5 subreddits to post in. Make sure that you pick the ones with the highest number of followers. Then spend a few weeks building up your account by posting useful and interesting content and making valuable comments.

Reddit is different from many other sites and because it is an anonymous platform you will find a lot of strange styles of writing and in-jokes inside each individual subreddit.

It is worth taking the time to learn the way that each subreddit works so that you can tailor your posts to appeal directly to the people who hang out there.

Ask your self the following questions:

• What motivates the people in this subreddit?
• What are their goals?
• What type of language do they use?
• What do they need help with?
• What is the tone of the Subreddit? Is it serious or lighthearted?

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Posting Your Content

Before you start posting content you need to create it. If you already have a blog with interesting articles that relate to your niche then you are off to a good start, but if not you will need to produce something worth linking to.

Linking directly to a sales page or offer will not get you anywhere on Reddit, so you need to be a bit more creative.

Videos and images are always popular, especially if they are funny, shocking or highly informative. Make sure that your content is of a very high quality, as this is will help it to survive on Reddit.

Redditors are very well informed, and you will not be able to pass off low quality content and generate traffic from it.

Choosing a Subreddit

When it comes to posting, you need to start by choosing a subreddit and reading their specific rules.

On a whole, Reddit allows two different kinds of posts: links to content outside of Reddit, and text posts which are hosted on the site itself. Text posts can also contain links to external sites in most subreddits.

However, each individual subreddit has it’s own riles and some such as /r/fitness, do not allow links on the main page. If this is the case, you can work around it by making a text post and linking to your content from there. Make sure that you read the rules for each subreddit carefully to avoid being banned.

Text Posts

If you have to submit a text post, make sure that you give a thorough description of the content. Also, summarize the major points and include images or graphics wherever possible.

With text posts, Reddit want to discourage users from leaving the site to get content wherever it is possible. Try to include some valuable information and highlights of your articles to encourage people to seek out the rest of it.

Headlines

Headlines on Reddit are a bit different from other types of headlines because people don’t want them to be sensationalized or editorialized.

Redditors also don’t like listicles, which are just lists of things disguised as articles, so don’t include them in your in your titles.

Avoid using title such as:

“20 Ways To Improve Your SEO”, and

“5 Wedding Gifts That Are Hot This Season”,

and instead use a title such as:

“One of the best articles I’ve read on SEO lately”, and

“Wedding gifts you might not have considered”.

In general, try using a personal approach and avoid things that can be seen as click bait, as this is frowned upon.

Pick a Good Time To Post

The bigger subreddits get more traffic, but there are also more posts and more competition. Pick the time of your post carefully make sure that you stand out from all of the noise

Be More Specific

Although smaller subreddits might not have as many members, the more specific it is to your niche, the higher the quality of traffic will be.

Post In Multiple Subreddits

Reddit allow you to post the same thing across different subreddits and this is called a crosspost or x-post. If you do this make sure that you put “x post” in the title, and be careful not to submit the exact same link and headline.

It is worth customizing your title for each subreddit that you cross post to.

Promoting Your Content

Karma increases your post’s visibility but you can’t, just create a few different accounts and upvote your own posts, or you will get banned. Reddit have a way of knowing when you do this and fake upvotes are automatically balanced with a downvote.

Asking for upvotes is something that can also get you banned, so make sure that you don’t do this in a public forum.

However there is a sneaky trick that you can do if you want to create multiple accounts and not get banned, and I will cover this in the next chapter.

Here are some promotional methods which will naturally drive traffic to your posts and not get you into Reddit’s bad books.

Ask Your Friends

There is nothing to stop you asking your friends in private to create Reddit accounts and upvote your posts.

Ask Redditors For Feedback

Messaging fellow influential redditors asking if they are willing to look at a draft of your text post and provide feedback is a good way to get people interested in it before it’s even posted.

This also means that your content can be improved before it goes live.

Then when you do make the post you can message them again to thank them and tell them you have posted it, and there is a very good chance that they will upvote it and comment on it.

Reply To Comments

When you post does start to get attention, it’s important to make sure that you reply to any comments. By doing this you are continuing to add value for your readers and in a lot of subreddits this is actually something that the rules require you to do.

>> Browse Our Full Selection Of Done-For-Your Startup Sites Here

Setting up your first campaign on Google AdWords is fairly straightforward, and if you’ve already answered the questions that you need to answer to pinpoint your target audience for Facebook ads, then you have done a lot of the necessary work already. See our previous post about that here.

The main difference between Facebook and Google ads is that with Google, you can target exact keywords that people are searching for, so this makes it good for laser targeted traffic.

Google ads are a great way to promote all of our startup websites, especially dropship stores, travel deals sites and automated coupon sites.

>> Browse Our Full Collection Of Done-For-You Startup Sites Here

To start your first campaign, go to adwords.google.com, click the “Get started now” button, and sign up for an AdWords account.

Then you’ll be asked to create your first campaign.

• Firstly select your currency and daily budget. I recommend keeping this fairly low to start with.
• Your daily budget is the maximum amount that Google will charge you each day and it’s pretty likely that you’ll reach the maximum amount most days.
• Next, select the geographic location where you want the ads to show. • You can select countries, regions of countries, states or provinces and cities.
• Also, you can designate a custom area, like latitude and longitude coordinates or a distance from an address that you specify.
• For campaign type, I highly recommend the “Search Network only”.
• Now you need to enter your chosen keywords into the keyword field.
• Start with just one set of keywords and paste them in.
• You can add plus signs, brackets, and quotes to see exactly how many searches of each type you’ll get.
• Quotes denote exact search phrases which have to be typed exactly as you specify.
• If you’re starting out, it’s not wise to add hundreds of keywords.
• Just start with a small selection of important ones, because you can always add more later.
• Next enter your landing page.
• Now you need to create the ad itself. A Google ad will consist of a headline of up to 30 characters, a 2nd headline of up to 30 characters and a description of up to 80 characters.
• Then click save and you will be taken to the page to enter your payment details.

After you have entered those, your ad will be submitted for review, and start running after it has been accepted.

If your maximum budget is only around $50 per day, it’s a good idea to bid on keywords which have a low cost, so that your ad will get shown to as many people as possible.

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Please note that if you’re going after high-priced keywords, because of the limitations on your budget, you’ll get through your money pretty quickly and your ads will only be seen for part of the day.

Paying for ads will bring a steady stream of visitors to your sites in a short space of time, but you need to carefully monitor what you are spending to make sure it doesn’t spiral out of control. Here are just a few common terms that you should familiarize yourself with:

Cost-per-click or CPC: As you would expect, this is the amount that you pay every time a person actually clicks on your ad. You can usually set your maximum CPC when you are bidding in ad placements.

Click through rate or CTR: This measures how many people who have seen your ad click through to your site.

Pay per click or PPC: This is the name for the type of advertising where you pay each time you get a click.

Pay per action or acquisition, also known as PPA: This where you pay for someone to complete an action, such as making a purchase or subscribing to an email list.

PPM stands for Pay per thousand impressions: The M originates from the Roman numeral, M, which means a thousand.

Pay per click or PPC: This is the name for the type of advertising where you pay each time you get a click.

Pay per action or acquisition, also known as PPA: This where you pay for someone to complete an action, such as making a purchase or subscribing to an email list.

PPM stands for Pay per thousand impressions: The M originates from the Roman numeral, M, which means a thousand.

Although there are many different platforms that you pay for ads on, today am going to concentrate on Facebook as it is one of the most popular and you can advertise all of our startup website there.

>> Browse Our Latest Done-For-You Startup Sites Here

Facebook Ads

Firstly let’s talk about how to set up an effective ad on Facebook. Before you create your first campaign, you need to do some research about your target audience. Ask yourself, what does your audience like? Where do they spend their time?

There are three different ways to target people using Facebook ads:

Interest-based audiences, lookalike audiences, and custom audiences. For the purpose of setting up your first ad, I will concentrate interest-based audiences as they are the easiest to use.

This type of targeting displays ads to people based on the people, places , nd subjects that they like, and the first step is to fully understand your audience. Who are the authority figures and big brands in your niche? What books or magazines does your ideal customer read? What events do they attend? Which websites do they visit? What software do they use?

Take your time to come up with the best answers to all of these questions. You can search on Google or use Facebook insights to help you with your research, and also websites like Quora.com can be useful as you can easily get answers from people in any given niche. Unfortunately, Facebook doesn’t allow you to target people who like any page that you want, so you need to make a list of different ones to choose from.

Let’s take HIIT Training as an example for our niche. This is high-intensity interval training and it’s very popular right now. A search on Google for “famous HIIT trainers” returns a result that lists twelve celebrity fitness trainers, so I’ll add all of these to the list. Then I’ll search for HIIT magazine and find a list of magazines to add to the list. I’ll repeat this process to come up with items to add to the list which answer all of the questions which I and trying to answer. Also, try using Amazon to find the most popular books related to your niche that people may have liked. You can also try targeting people who have liked the authors of popular books.

The next thing you need to decide is which geographic location you want to target. Is your product something which can be used by people the world over, or will it only be useful to people in a certain country or even city?

Finally ask yourself, what is completely unique about this group? This may take a little more creativity and might take longer to answer but if you can pinpoint a unique interest that you can use to target people of Facebook, your ads will be more successful. Now it’s time to create your campaign. When setting up your ad, you have 3 options to choose from… Boost your post, ads manager and power editor. Boost your post is the easiest way to create an ad, but it has the fewest options in terms of targeting so you should probably avoid it. Power editor is the most advanced way to create an ad but it is often too complex for first-time advertisers, so for now, I will use ads manager.

Firstly you have to choose an objective for your campaign. Choose the most relevant objective from the list. If you want to get traffic to your sites for the cheapest cost, select traffic.

If you want to track sales or email sign-ups you need to choose conversions, although this will require that you add some code to your sites and thank-you pages. For this example, I will select conversions. So now I need to name my campaign and click continue. Now you need to select your conversion event and to begin with I suggest that you choose ‘view content’ as the event. You can always edit this later when you see how well your campaign is doing.

The next step is the most important step because this is where you get to define your audience, budget, and bidding. First, you need to choose which geographical area you want to advertise to. Also, you need to pick the age range and language. To start with its a good idea not to be too specific about age or gender unless your product is only aimed at a certain group.

Try to aim to get an audience size of roughly 250,000 because this should provide the best results as it is neither too small nor too large. You can also refine your ad targeting by clicking “narrow audience” and adding more interest there. One of the main mistakes that people make is leaving automatic placements selected by default. This allows Facebook to run ads on every single placement that it can, however it is best to exclude the Facebook Audience Network and possibly Instagram depending on your product. Messenger placement is a very specialized feature which is only suitable for engagement or retargeting users. For this reason, if you are new to Facebook advertising, I don’t recommend using it. The best settings to start with are to show your ads on desktop and mobile news feeds.

Next, you have to define how much you want to spend on your ad and decide whether you want it to run continuously or to a schedule. Facebook ads have become more expensive and gone are the days when a $10 budget could produce good results. These days you need to invest a bit more at the start of your ad campaigns so that you can experiment with different audiences and find out what is working. You can also use various bidding techniques, but I find that it works best to choose to optimize for conversions and automatic bidding. The final step is creating your ad.

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There are two ways that you can do this: from scratch; or duplicating a post that you have already created and used. When creating a new ad you can choose from 5 different formats. To start with I suggest that you use a single image ad and create a few variations using different images. This way you can get a good idea about what is working. A carousel ad allows you to use five different images in one ad and is useful if you want to show that you have a variety of different products on offer. Facebook recommends that your images are 1200 by 628 pixels and they also have a 20% text rule. This means that only 20% of your image should contain any text, and you can’t use an image that completely consists of words. You can select your own images or use one of the free stock photos that they provide.

One free tool that I recommend for creating images for your ad is Canva.com Also, if you want something extra special for your ad, you could ask a freelancer to create it for you on a site like Fiverr.com.

Now it is a case of creating your ad headline and text.

One of the best ways to do this is to look at what your competitors are doing and modify it for your own needs.

Your competitors will have already gone through the process of trying to find out what works and what doesn’t, so this can save you a lot of time and money.

As on your sites, try to include a call to action and encourage people to click on your ad. Facebook ads are a really powerful way to target your audience, but mastering how to use them will take time.

So take time to learn as much as you can and set daily limits on what you are spending if you want to make sure that you aren’t spending a fortune and not getting any return from it.

you can drive free traffic to your websites using more than just social media. Here are just 4 simple techniques that you can employ to bring a stream of targeted visitors to your startup sites.

1. Get Huge Amounts of Traffic Through Contests

If you run a contest and give away a prize relating to your niche you will find that you can get a huge amount of traffic to your website in a very short amount of time. This is a great way to find visitors who are interested in your sites and also have them opt-in to your email list. The prize that you offer does not have to be particularly expensive to get a lot of visitors and even if you give away a $20 gift card you will have people flocking to your site to try and win it. As an alternative prize, you could simply give away a free ebook or digital download. There are hundreds of websites the specialize in listing contests and most of these allow you to add yours for free.

This method works great for just about any kind of site including automated viral news sites, dropship stores and travel deals sites.

>> Browse our automated travel deals sites here

When you set up the contest page on your site, make sure that you add terms and conditions for the people who enter it.

Important things to include in your terms are:

• The starting date
• The closing date
• Any age restrictions
• Any restrictions by country
• And whether or not there is a limit of entries per household

Once the user has entered the contest, you should redirect them to a thank you page which is hosted on your site.

On this page, you can promote your offers or get more exposure for your contest by asking people to share it on Facebook or Twitter in order to earn another entry. This also has the added bonus of earning you new followers, page likes and social media fans.

If you do plan on running a contest, you should also make sure that you have a privacy policy in place, as many contest website which you submit to will want to make sure that you aren’t passing the data that you collect onto other people.

2. Forum Posting

Posting on forums to drive traffic to a website is nearly as old as the Internet itself, but it’s still a good way to get visits if you do it right. Forum posting is one of the most constructive ways to learn, share and contribute your knowledge and experiences among people who are interested in the same things as you. And one of the advantages of forum posting is that some forums allow signatures which can include a URL, and this is a great place to add a product link.

Try to post on forums related to your niche only. You can’t just go posting anything on any forum because this doesn’t make any sense and it will make you look like a spammer. Readers won’t pay any attention to what you write and in many cases, the forum moderator may ban you.

Instead of signing up to hundreds of unrelated forums, pick a handful of quality ones related to your niche, and most importantly, pick forums that get a lot of visitors. Make sure that you follow forum guidelines. Every forum has its own guidelines, which you need to adhere to. And by doing this you’ll also gain a good name and respect from the forum members which will get you more serious and focused readers increasing the visibility and popularity of your posts.

After you join, try to contribute to the community and post useful content. Post links to other sites of interest until you feel confident to post your own links. If you don’t build up the trust first, your links will probably get deleted so make sure that you take your time with this. It’s also a good idea to introduce yourself to the community. Many forums encourage new users to do this by making an introductory post. This is usually done in threads especially designated for welcoming new members. These threads are usually called some variation of “Say Hi Here”, “How Did You Find Us” or “New Members Check In Here.”

When you do make a post, be sure to choose a proper title. Titles are like your name-plate fixed on your door that helps your visitors to decide whether or not they should knock at the door. As a wrong name-plate takes your visitors away so does a wrong title. Write a relevant and eye-catchy title for your post and attract more readers.

Look for forums that have at least a thousand members and ten thousand posts. Keep a spreadsheet of all of the forums that you have signed up for and note the username and password for each one.

Use a link in your forum signature. Use an avatar or photo and make sure that your profiles are complete. Ignore forums that are overrun by spam because they probably don’t have any real visitors.

Also, avoid forums hosted by your direct competitors as they will no doubt delete your posts. Remember to contribute and engage before distributing your own content, and create discussions only once you are ready to do so.

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3. Blog Commenting

Like forum posting, blog commenting has been around forever, but it is still a valuable method for generating traffic today. However, in order to make sure that your comments don’t get deleted, you need to be very careful about how you go about it.

Doing a search on Google News is a good way to find relevant news stories and blog posts to comment on. Find blog posts and news stories that are getting a lot of visitors (you can tell this from the number of comments), and contribute to the discussion in some way. Also be sure to tell people what you are linking to, and make it relevant to the things that other people are talking about. A lot of the time websites won’t allow you to post a clickable link, but this doesn’t mean to say that a posting a comment won’t be useful to you. On pages that are getting a huge amount of visits, you can get traffic even if you post a URL without the “http” or “www” bit, just from people copying and pasting the URL into their browser. The key to getting them to do this is to not make it look at all like spam. Add value to the post by adding more useful information which is related to the topic. Pose as an average reader and make comments such as: “This reminds me of a video that I saw here”, or “This story is even more unbelievable than one that I read here”. Use a bit of creativity and you will see better results. Also, make sure that you use a real avatar image, and put a little bit of time into setting up your user profile.

Many websites allow you to post comments through Facebook these days, so if you’re not fully comfortable doing it under your real name, make sure that you have a number of separate Facebook profiles set up which you can use specifically for this purpose. Make sure that you actually read the post as well. This may sound obvious, but you’d be amazed at how many people don’t actually read the whole post. They assume they understand the concept or point of the post from the headline and write their response based on that assumption. Remember, blog commenting is about trying to build your brand and authority, so leaving a comment that completely misses the whole point of the post is actually going to hurt your authority, not help it. You want to make sure you come across as intelligent and well informed.

Also, don’t make your blog comments too short. Writing a blog comment that is at least three sentences long shows the blog owner that you took the time to read the post and actually have something to add to the conversation. Just putting “Good article” doesn’t give any value to the blogger. Bloggers want to engage their readers and have a dialogue within the comments section, so be sure to actually say something of value with your comment.

4. Guest Posting

Many people write guest posts on other people’s websites to try and get backlinks to their website, and normally people are only interested in getting dofollow links for SEO value. However, you can also write guest posts on sites to drive traffic to your website. If you can manage to secure a guest post on a site related to your niche that gets a fair amount of traffic, you can get hundreds of real visitors from it, and it doesn’t matter whether the link from your article is dofollow or not. Most webmasters won’t allow you to add a direct product link within a guest post, so the best thing to do is set up a page on your website and add some related content.

Try and find a reason to link to your site from the guest post that you are writing, and if possible put it in the body of the article rather than just in the bio at the bottom. When it comes to finding sites to post on, try approaching webmasters who have stated that they accept guest posts and reach out to them by email with ideas for an article that they might like. The best way to find sites to contact is to search on Google for terms such as “write for us” + your niche, or “guest post” + your niche. If at first you don’t get much response, don’t give up, because all that you need to do is secure one guest post from a website that gets a good amount of traffic and you and can get visitors for a long
time.

Here is an example of an outreach email which has been particularly successful for us.

Dear “”,

I have an idea for an article titled ““ about ““.

I think it would fit well on your website so would you be willing to take a look at it? I thought it’d be timely considering your recent piece, “insert a link to one of their recent posts“!

Thanks for your time and consideration,

(signature)

Notice that this email makes it clear that you have taken a look at their website and that you know exactly what type of things they write about.

When you’re contacting people to propose a guest post, always find the name of the person you’re emailing.
Webmasters who run popular sites get a huge number of emails every day, and if it looks like you have sent a generic message without doing any research, they will probably just delete your email without reading it. Blogger’s inboxes are full of junk mail, so you have a very short amount of time to catch their attention. You need to stand apart from the crowd by filling the message with as much personality in as few words as possible. Also, email gets better responses than web forms, so even if there’s a contact form, take an extra minute to look for an email address. Once you’ve determined the name of the person you want to email it’s a good idea to check all their social media profiles on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

If the blogger recognizes your name, they’re more likely to open your email, especially if it went to spam. So following them on social media or “liking”, “sharing” or commenting on one of their posts before you send your pitch can increase your odds of getting through to them. Try to include a call to action or a question in your message, because this increases the chance of a response.

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One final good tip when you are guest blogging is not to write any articles before you have found somewhere to publish them. The last thing that you want to be doing is wasting your time writing loads of content that you don’t end up using.

The key to generating a good income from any kind of site is driving as much targeted traffic to it as possible. Paying for ads will bring a steady stream of visitors in less time, but the cost can be an issue. However one of the best free sources of traffic is social media and it’s possible to use a wide range of different sources.

Everybody uses social media these days, and even if you only have a few followers on Facebook or Twitter, posting links to your sites for your followers to see can provide results. However, the real power of social media comes when you reach a large audience, well beyond your own followers.

Social traffic can be used for just about any kind of startup, but it is particularly suitable for viral news and viral video sites which are monetized with Adsense.

>> Browse our automated news sites here

Facebook

People love to share content on Facebook, and if you tap into the right audiences, you can get some great results.

Firstly, apply to join Facebook groups that are related to your niche, and then when you get accepted, contribute to the group, providing useful comments and content that doesn’t include any links to your own sites. The idea is to build up trust within the group so that when you do post your links, they won’t just get deleted by an admin straight away. It’s not hard to find viral content on Facebook that people love to share, so for every link to your own site that you post, try and post at least five pieces of content that are not yours. It’s a good idea to create separate Facebook accounts just for promotional purposes, but try and make the accounts look real by adding friends and posting non-promotional content.

Twitter

Twitter is an open platform, apart from the small number of people who have private profiles, so you can get away with posting more promotional links there. One of the best ways to be successful on Twitter is to hijack stories that are currently trending and getting lots of searches. Look out for trending hashtags each day and make posts that include URLs from your site along with the popular hashtags. Try to include a call to action as well, to entice people to click. Plus, in order to pick up a few extra clicks, you can also add a link to your site from your profile bio.

Instagram

Instagram is a very visual platform, but that doesn’t mean to say that you can’t use it to generate traffic for just about any kind of site. Firstly, follow people who are following popular accounts that are related to your niche. You should find that roughly a third of the people who you follow will follow you back. Then make sure that you regularly post interesting images and ‘like’ other peoples images which are relevant to your site. The way that you can get traffic is by adding a link in your bio, and occasionally posting an image containing some text describing something that you’ve linked to in your bio. If your content is interesting enough to the people that you have targeted, then you will find that they respond to it.

Pinterest

Like Instagram, Pinterest is also a very visual platform, although the main difference with it is that you can use Pinterest Groups to reach a whole new audience. Before you apply to join any groups, make sure that you have over five hundred followers. You do this by following other similar accounts, and you will find that many of them will follow you back. When you have enough followers, apply to join groups that relate to your niche, and once you’re accepted post interesting images. As with Facebook, make sure that you add value to the group, and only occasionally post an image with a link to your site so that you don’t get banned by the admins.

LinkedIn

Like Pinterest, the best method to use for LinkedIn is to join relevant groups and connect with as many people as possible. Again you want to be posting interesting content relating to your niche on a regular basis and also make sure that you add a link as one of your websites on your profile page. LinkedIn is more popular with professional people, so depending on your site, it may or may not be a suitable method of promotion for you.

If you have an automated viral news or video site, it’s also possible to set up your posts so that they automatically get posted to your social media accounts. This is not only a great time-saver but it means that youre profiles are constatly updated with fresh content driving traffic to your sites to generate revenue.

>> Browse our automated news sites here

Tips for Social Media Success

Whichever platform you use, the key to success is to post your traffic generating links in moderation. If you post fifty links in a Facebook group the moment that you are approved for it, you’ll probably find yourself banned in no time at all. Try to act like an average social media user would act and you will have far greater success.

• Post genuinely interesting content.
• Make sure your profiles are complete.
• Make useful comments and try to help people whenever you can.
• Wait before posting links to your site once you have been accepted into a group.
• And don’t post too many links to your sites at once.