We all want to know how to get inbound sharing and get our content upvoted.
Whether it’s on Inbound, Hacker News, Product Hunt, Reddit, or some other platform – we want to know what motivates someone to share our content.
So we went to the people who know better than anyone – Inbound Influencers.
We interviewed 37 of them and have collected those responses below.
Many of these experts have had their content go viral or have incredibly authority on the platforms they engage on.
In short – they know how to get influencers to share their content.
- Venchito Tampon – Co-Founder LinkCore Media
- Pushkar Gaikwad – Founder, AeroLeads and InBoundio
- Ryan Stewart – Digital Marketing Consultant
- Paul Boyce – CEO and CoFounder of PopcornMetrics
- Maria Parish – Social Marketing Manager at Silkstream
- Jason Delodovici – Serial Entrepreneur and Digital Marketer
- Casey Armstrong – Founder of FullStackMarketer
- Patrick Chukwura – Co-Founder at Autosend
- Eva Schafroth – SEO Specialist with a passion for content strategy
- Vasile Stoica – Digital Marketing Professional
- Jonid Bendo – Passionate Web Developer
- Alicia Doiron – Inbound Marketing Manager at Payfirma
- Joe Hall – SEO audits and consulting at HallAnalysis
- Casandra Campbell – Minimalist Marketer
- Gent Ukehajdaraj – Digital Marketing Expert
- David Ly Khim – Content & Growth Marketer
- Jordan Scheltgen – Founder of CaveSocial
- Scott Cowley – Marketing strategy instructor
- Allen Yesilevich – Marketing Manager at BDO
- Hannah Eisenberg – CEO at 3P Creative Group
- CCarter – Co-Founder at SERPWoo
- Evan Varsamis – Founder at Thegadgetflow
- John Locke – Empowering business owners
- Yael Kochman – Head of Marketing at Roojoom
- Cécile Rainon – community manager at DOZ
- Matt Parker – Online Marketing Associate
- Danielle Schwager – Online Marketing Specialist at Big Leap
- Tim Soulo – Content Marketer
- Sherry Holub – Creative Director at JVM Design
- Arjun S Kumar – Web Designer & Developer
- Abrar Mohi Shafee – Author and Founder of BloggingSpell
- Samantha Pena – Content Strategist
- Clayburn Griffin – Reputation Management and Content Marketing
- Jonathan Tavarez – Digital Media Consultant and Founder of Vantage
- Brittany Berger – Content Marketing & PR Manager
- Danny Halarewich – Founder & CEO of LemonStand
- Gavin Baker – Principal of Baker Labs
- Devesh Sharma – Founder of WPKube
Venchito Tampon
Filipino Motivational Speaker
Identify topics and content formats that have been getting traction in respective sub-reddits or categories.
Look for top community users and active influencers and understand what kind of content they’ve been upvoting for the past four weeks.
Using those two tactics above, you can brainstorm on what specific topic and format would best suit for your next content piece.
If those users and influencers have their own websites/blogs, you can reach out to them and start building relationships – with the intent of knowing what type of content they’re interested to upvote, share or even link to from their blogs.
Since competition is mostly tough in various niches, you definitely need to invest in your content (design, headline, call to actions, quality of information, sources, format, etc..) to increase your chances of ranking at the top spots for your preferred categories.
You can check out my comprehensive list of link building strategies to find new methodologies that you can use to develop your content asset(s).
Pushkar Gaikwad
Founder, AeroLeads and InBoundio
- Have a strong social network. For example, I have strong linkedIn network so when I share on linkedIn, it do gets upvote.
Similarly on facebook and twitter do depending on the the type of content. - Send the link to your newsletter subscribers.
- Nothing wrong in asking for people to upvote your content too (specially if you have followers on social media)
- Make sure you are active in the communities too in the site in which you want content to be upvoted.
For example, I am pretty active on Reddit so my content gets upvoted easily where as I am not that active on hackernews so my posts never makes to front page.
Ryan Stewart
Digital Marketing Consultant
I think we’re asking the wrong question. I think it goes without saying if you’re posting bad content (spamming links), you’re never going to get upvoted.
The key to success on these platforms is *authority*. On Inbound, Reddit, Black Hat World (and others) the more karma (or clout) that your account has, the heavier your actions are weighted.
For example, on Inbound, I just upvoted one of your posts.
My upvote counts for 2 because I have 500+ karma on my account.
That also means I also get a boost when I post a link, making it much easier to get my content to the front page and go viral.
The question we should be asking it “”how can I increase my authority?””.
There are really 2 ways:
- Post content that gets upvoted
- Post comments
How to get upvotes for my content?
It takes some work, planning and outreach.
Here’s a quick bullet list I use to build my accounts (I also have 3 Reddit accounts with 10,000+ link karma):
1. Don’t post your content. I know it’s hard, but focus on building your account, not traffic.
Wake up early and grab breaking news from authority sites like Search Engine Land or Forbes and post them.
If you can be the one that breaks the news, you can get a ton of upvotes on your link.
2. When someone upvotes a link of yours, shoot them a follow, upvote their content or comment on a link.
Then, when you post a link, you can send them a quick note: “”hey [insert name], just wanted to let you know I about this [insert link]. I thought you might be interested””.
9 / 10 they will upvote it again.
3. Take 20 minutes a day and comment on high visibility threads.
Provide insight, reply to other comments, be active and get involved.
It’s a lot of work, but over time, your account will grow.
If you can built an account with 1,000+ karma your posts will pretty much start on the front page.
From there, it will go viral on it’s own and your account karma will snowball.
Paul Boyce
CEO and CoFounder of PopcornMetrics
Share worthy content comes from adding value. People will only share and upvote what they feel is valuable.
We work hard to create content that provides value to our target audience (marketers and product owners, working on channel optimisation, funnel conversion and product development optimization).
Specifically we provide information to make these concepts around metrics, marketing analytics, retention, optimization and retention more consumable.
So, with that in mind, we product content that is
Accessible – breaking complex areas into more bite-sized chunks
Actionable -most people have real problems, so if you can show how to approach those problems there is more value
Visual – depending on the article, we try to create either useful screenshots or sharable images easily sharable (on the blog itself) – by using strong share buttons
Results to date:
This article has been (at time of writing) viewed by 4970 people and shared 877 times (that’s almost a 20% share rate):
This article has been (at time of writing) viewed by 2021 people and sharedn590 times (that’s a whopping 30% share rate)
Maria Parish
Social Marketing Manager at Silkstream
What makes content “share-worthy” is simple in principle, but challenging in practice. The most important factor in my opinion is the audience.
At this moment in time, according to redditmetrics.com, there are over 650,000 subreddits.
That’s a staggering figure, even when you eliminate the number of abandoned subreddits which have long been inactive.
You could have the most amazing content in the history of the internet, but if it’s not put in front of the right audience, it provides no value.
I believe that there is a perfect audience out there for any piece of content, the trouble is finding it and understanding it.
Why understanding it?
There is an old phrase that was used to publicly shame those who contributed to a group discussion without fully understanding the local etiquette.
That phrase is “lurk moar” (sic). The inhabitants of online communities are very good at recognising people who are not one of their own.
It’s not enough to be at the right place at the right time, offering amazing content.
You have to be genuinely involved with the community to earn their trust and respect, like adapting to the ways of a new tribe of people and their hivemind sensibilities.
People aren’t there to be sold a product and, even if your product could provide huge value to them, it’s not right to use and abuse the community in such a way.
Every online community is an ecosystem.
You could abuse their resources for a one-time payout, or you could build up your credibility and gain an audience for life.
My takeaway: Avoid drive-by submissions.
Stick around and learn to appreciate your audience, and you can gain more in the long run
Jason Delodovici
Serial Entrepreneur and Digital Marketer
This might not be what marketers want you to know but a lot of the time people will share and upvote things without even clicking in and reading the content.
The headline (or title) alone is good enough to get people to share.
Tony Haile, the CEO of Chartbeat, a company that measures real time traffic from site’s like Upworthy said, “We’ve found effectively no correlation between social shares and people actually reading.”
So what does this mean for sites like Reddit, Growthhackers and Inbound?
It means that the headline you create is the most important aspect that gets people to share and upvote.
Create an epic headline that gets the reader to formulate a positive opinion about the article and they will share and upvote it.
Go the extra mile and create valuable content that answers people’s questions behind that headline and it’s internet gold.
Casey Armstrong
Founder of FullStackMarketer
How to get upvotes and what makes content “”share-worthy”” on sites like Reddit, ProductHunt, HackerNews, and Inbound.org have two completely different answers.
How to get content upvoted – Honestly, what I’ve seen work best time and time again is finding the top influencers, or those who run the site, to submit your post/product and before that, line up influential people in the community to upvote and share.
You probably know that already, but no need to re-invent the wheel.
And obviously, you need high-quality content that people should want to share, or else people will just leave your site and call you out in the comments.
What makes content share-worthy: First, analyze each community.
ProductHunt is different than GrowthHackers, which is different than each sub-Reddit.
See what performs best.
To be very general (ProductHunt aside, as that’s product-based), I see a theme of controversial posts and unique, data-driven posts that are actionable consistently rising to the top.
I greatly prefer the latter. Remember, you are providing value to others.
Patrick Chukwura
Co-Founder at Autosend
Send the link to your newsletter subscribers. You can do this one of two ways.
1. Add your upvote links as a P.S. in your newsletters and ask for the vote (not my favorite – but it works).
2. When you add a link to your article in your newsletter, only add the upvote link and let people get to the article from this link.
That way they can still read your article, but they’re also more apt to upvote.
Eva Schafroth
SEO Specialist with a Passion for Content Strategy
I think you can apply a lot of SEO strategies here – the most obvious is probably to actually produce and share content that is from exceptional quality, therefore highly engaging for your target audience (how to do that is a whole story in itself ).
Another one is outreach – use your network and ask people you know to check out what you just shared and maybe even re-share it to their audience.
Then you also want to be on your toes and find or produce great content before anyone else does – if you are the first to share great stuff and regularly do so, you’ll gain more followers which in turn will lead to more upvotes.
If you can establish a reputation for yourself, regular upvotes naturally come with that. It’s like a cycle.
Vasile Stoica
Digital Marketing Professional
Contentis the king when it comes to promoting your business or site online.
But given the cut-throat competition forwarded by the virtual business world, one has to ensure “share-worthy” contents for a successful SEO.
Selection of appropriate keywords and their strategic placement play a huge role in gaining exposure for your content the initial step towards sharing.
You must research out low-competitive yet strong keywords, pertinent to the search terms of your online niche.
In regard to placement, the keyword should be placed minimum 3 times throughout the content body, in the title and in the meta.
Then, the content body and presentation should be actually informative and smartly layered out in easy language and brief paragraphs.
A touch of humor here and there triggers the “share” factor further. The list-based articles are the most shared.
The appeal would heighten if you can add infographic presentation rather than a lengthy piece of monotonous textual information.
Jonid Bendo
Passionate Web Developer
Nowadays there are many people publishing content throughout the web.
Chances are that your niche is probably covered up even before you think about publishing about it.
Amidst this mess there is a possibility to differentiate yourself, but how can you achieve that?
1. Your content should be your content, meaning you should always add your personality in your content thus making it unique because it will be a part of you.
2. Your content should be original, but originality is hard to find and reinvent in each instance, what you can do is always keep your ideas (even the dump ones) and rework them from time to time creating new and unique ideas that come up from you. Even if someone has worked with a similar idea, he has not done it the way you did it.
3. Combining ideas and content is a really good way to increase your contents value and create new content with a higher value, people always tend to share more these kind of contents.
Alicia Doiron
Inbound Marketing Manager at Payfirma
You’re following all the rules of share worthy content: timely, engaging, customer-focused, on social media etc. but you’re still not getting the shares you feel your content deserves.
Hundreds of great articles get published daily and lets be honest, most of the content on the homepage of something like Inbound.org is from the “popular guys”.
If you want to get shares, in addition to following “the rules”, you’ve got to make relationships with likeminded individuals in your industry.
Slack is a wonderful tool to meet people in your community, share your content with them and vice versa.
From there you can get your new connections to upvote your content and get your content in front of the eyes that could really benefit from reading it.
Joe Hall
SEO audits and consulting at HallAnalysis
Content needs to be categorized well.
Most active users will curate the content they want to read using categories or topics.
On reddit for example this might mean using subreddits.
It is very important that any content you submit be categorized correctly.
Users do not like finding content in places that it doesn’t belong and will not upvote something simply because its in the wrong area of the site.
On a site like reddit, there are potentially thousands of different subreddits to choose from.
Picking the right one can be hard, but will yield the best results.
Submission title needs to be engaging. Many times you see articles submitted that have the same title as the article itself.
This is fine, however titles that engage the user with commentary or an opinion tend to attract more attention.
For example a submission titled “”3 Great Link Building Tactics”” won’t do as well as “”In my opinion, the 2nd link building tactic mentioned here is pure genius!”” You can see creative titles in action at /r/pics where the submission title is typically a caption for a image.
Control the tone of the dialogue early on.* Typically the first several comments of a submission sets the tone for all comments after.
Therefore, it is smart to have a friend leave a positive comment immediately after you have submitted your content.
Doing so, will set a positive tone for the ensuing discussion.
The more positive the discussion, the more likely the submission gets upvotes.
Casandra Campbell
Minimalist Marketer
1. You need to understand the community where you’re sharing your content.
Each community is different and content will perform differently in different communities.
Making sure it’s a good fit is the first step to get upvotes.
2. Make friends on the platform where you want to share your content.
If people follow you or recognize you, there’ll more likely to upvote your stuff, especially if you’ve upvoted theirs in the past.
As well, getting those first few guaranteed upvotes help you gain visibility so more people will see your post and hopefully upvote it too!
Gent Ukehajdaraj
Digital Marketing Expert
I think the success of a content piece that gets submitted to sites like Reddit, Product Hunt, HackerNews, Inbound, Growth Hackers or any other site that uses a similar system to rank the most upvoted links to the top, mostly depends on the audiences those sites have and the kind of content they usually expect to see.
Keeping in mind that people use these sites to quickly discover and digest the best content on a specific topic from that community.
From my personal experience, not everything that gets submitted to one site is received the same way as another site’s audience, so I think it’s important to spend some time being active and understanding the community before submitting anything.
Some quick tips that come to mind:
– The first step should be building a reputation and getting noticed by being a valuable member of the community.
Comment and add your own thoughts to other people’s posts.
Once you start sharing links, people will be more willing to check out the links if they know and trust you.
– Make sure that the content you want to share is actually valuable: case studies, well-researched pieces, interviews, actionable advice…etc. People tend to open many links at a time and skim through the content to see if it’s worth their time or not. If it’s truly a valuable piece they’ll engage, comment, and upvote the article.
– Add a call to action at the end of article with a link back to the site you submitted the article to.
– Once you get a few upvotes things usually take care of themselves, but this doesn’t mean you should stop promoting the post.
– Send an email to the author (if it’s someone else’s content/site that you submitted) and the people mentioned in the post with the link to check it out (this works well if these people are active members in these communities).
Most would probably be more than happy to upvote the post if they like it. Ask them to share it on social media as well.
– Don’t hesitate to share the link with your own social circle a few times. If the piece is good, people will check it out and sometimes all you need is a little boost for the post to get more exposure.
– Personally thank people who upvoted the post or shared it on social media and invite them to add their thoughts in the comments as well. Be active!
David Ly Khim
Content & Growth Marketer
It’s not enough for content to be helpful now. Content needs to be both helpful and entertaining and (hopefully) 10 times better than content that’s already out there. That means having great copy that speaks to your readers, including visuals to make reading your content more enjoyable and easier to digest, having a great website design among other things.
Imagine you’re helping your best friend. You aren’t thinking about keywords or getting backlinks or self-promotion. The only thing you’re concerned about is helping your best friend as much as possible. That means thorough explanations, providing links to useful resources and providing a no bullshit solution to help.
There’s too much fluff and too much noise out there already. Make sure you’re adding something valuable that someone can use instead of adding to the noise.
Jordan Scheltgen
Founder of CaveSocial
When it comes to getting content upvoted, it really comes down to a combination of relevancy and usefulness.
Let’s say you’re writing a post on the best barber shops in Boston, you’ll need to find the right subreddits to submit too.
Most likely ones like /r/boston and /r/barber.
It’s also important to remember that anything too heavy on self promotion will receive a ton of downvotes – stay away from doing that.
All-in-all, be an active member of the community, this means commenting on other members’ posts and providing your own content when it’s useful/relevant to the audience.
Scott Cowley
Marketing Strategy Instructor
I don’t know that we have a complete understanding of why people actually upvote content.
But if I had to hypothesize, I would broadly categorize the reasons as:
- Great content – Upvoted by everyone (including those with discriminately good taste)
- Relevant content – Upvoted because it covers a hot topic (people may lower their quality standards for this type)
- Attractive headline – Upvoted by people who didn’t even read the content because the headline sends all the right signals
- Author network – Upvoted because they were asked to or because they know the author
- Community contribution – Upvoted as part of the individual’s desire to be active in the community
I want to focus on number 3. Try this experiment.
Go to a niche voting site like Hacker News and decide on a few of the 30 home page stories you would be most likely to upvote without even reading the content.
What’s going through your mind? What signals are you getting from the headline?
Headline: “One year with the Truly Ergonomic Keyboard.” Thoughts: This probably has some really good insight because it covers a whole years’ worth of experience.
Headline: “The Mystery of the Power Bank Phone Taking over Ghana.” Thoughts: I don’t know what the Power Bank Phone is, but this sounds like a good case study in growth strategy.
Headline: “My first job burnout.” Thoughts: A lot of people burn out at work, but personal stories are cool and they probably wouldn’t have written about it unless there was something unique to say.
So in addition to everything you’re already doing to get votes, give special attention to attract the people who will upvote without even reading.
Because when you do that, you’ll generate readers as well.
And when your content delivers adequately on the initial thoughts people are having about your headline, you also turn readers into voters.
Allen Yesilevich
Marketing & Business Development Manager at BDO
Making it to the top of user-voted sites has two factors.
First, you need a compelling teaser title that will entice someone to click on a post.
I like to use “This is How I” or “This is Why I” titles to inform the reader that have valuable advice to share.
Second and more importantly is the post content.
I essentially write a unique blog article with free tips and advice, along with examples of case studies.
I always include a subtle link back to my website allowing the reader to access more of my content.
Asking a question at the conclusion of your post is a great way to solicit responses and build up your post’s comment count, which also validates the content and encourages others to comment.
Hannah Eisenberg
CEO at 3P Creative Group
Before creating your content, put yourself into your readers shoes!
Why would they share this piece of content?
What is in it for them? Does what you have to say makes them look smart/ Is it funny or insightful enough that their audience to truly appreciate it?
Or do you solve an actual problem that your audience is craving a solution for?
Have a look what gets your audience excited in “”real life””.
And the answer will depend on your niche, your individual audience, and situation.
For example, if you are the CEO of a highly academically-accredited private school, sharing more details about the student’s achievements and the intricacies of your curriculum planning will get you shared among the parent body because it allows the parents to show off how smart their kids are and justify their decision to continuing for pay for private school – even though they might get some slack from their friends for it.
CCarter
Co-Founder at SERPWoo
I’m sitting here spaced out on energy drinks and half drunk wondering if I should press the send button or not…
I was asked for a quick write up about how to create content on Reddit that gets great upvotes.
The plain Jane consensus that the whitehats want to hear is to create quality content that get shared by researching the subreddit and figuring out what they like and what they don’t like.
Vanilla whitehats want to hear it’s about quality content cause that’s what they’ve been re-purposed to cogitate.
But that’s not the reality – Reddit is a daisy chain in a large media manipulation machine that people would rather not notice.
I could sit there and talk about how last week I was sitting in a digital room in a Skype chat as they were dropping some manipulation on a clearly ludicrous story that went on to hit front page of Reddit, then got picked up by several prominent publications in the story’s niche.
The story literally had redditors going back and forth even after quick Google image searches showed clear evidence of it being fake, but surprisingly the story went on to the offices of Vice.com.
It also then went on to the BBC. I could talk about how the main operator was offered a day ago a prominent position for ‘social media’ in a large organization that might be called the Gorg… but then you’d think I’m lying…
So how do you get into the top of Reddit? Really how do you get the attention of the internet generation – same way we get the attention of everyone else – lie, cheat, manipulate, and straight up steal.
That’s the truth that whitehats do not want to think about. Those reposts on Imgur or Rreddit aren’t reposts on accident…
They want that karma so it looks like they are legit sources of original content, and in the sea that is the internet what’s one tainted drop of water?
The problem is when you step back and realize that tainted water you are drinking from is 90% sewage.
The old mantra that 99% of the internet are lurkers and only 1% are the content creators (original content that is) is true.
Everything else is just a repost or rehash of something from the past.
At least some people attempt at being original by “remixing” the content, which I would encourage (skyscraper technique), but the reality is people aren’t that creative.
So – if you want to get upvoted in the top of any subreddit, besides the upvoting rings running around on slack and Skype that we are all innocently a part of, but real upvoting, you need to study that subreddit like a hawk.
You have to become one with the subreddit, learn who the players are, and who the people that are considered “spammers”.
Get friendly with the players and compliment them. You have to become a voice of the people that is ‘anti-spammer’, and then people will recognize you and consider you one of them.
Then you can hit them up left and right with reposts of half-clickbaited articles and they won’t mind so much, after all you’re one of them.
But for tools – check out BuzzSumo – simply input your keyword and see what topics were hot in that niche and ‘rewrite’ an ‘updated’ version of that old content.
9 out of 10 times, if you submit that updated article to the same subreddit it’ll get upvoted, cause it’s been shown that’s what people love in that subreddit.
Maybe I’m just a simple spoke in the machine but the end goal isn’t even about clicking on the ADs anymore, it’s placing a retargeting pixel on your computer the second you land on a site.
They know who you are and what niches you love clicking on – the less savvy marketer will simply retarget you by placing the same advertisement everywhere you go – Facebook, Google.com, Yahoo.com, a Google Adsense site, or whatever.
The more sophisticated ones will placed multiple different ads that still cater to you.
Yeah being drunk allows me to slip up and tell you the truth, we’re after the page-views not the clicks – more page-views more advertising dollars from the big corporations… and we’ll even retarget you to make a little pocket change.
Why tell it – cause the internet is a sea of information and this will get buried along with everything Ryan Holiday hit on – which was a simple inch tip of the iceberg that sits over 20 stories tall underneath the water which most consumers just don’t even want to know.
Maybe I shouldn’t hit send to David but whatever – even if I state it or not, the front page of Reddit tomorrow will still be littered with 60% upvote manipulated content that’s apart of a machine that’s larger then most consumers could phantom.
And I’ll know half of them are going to ex-communicate me from their rings – after which I’ll get added back within a week.
The internet quickly forgets the truth – at the end of the day anyone that creates content is looking to get your attention and at some level that attention will generate them dollars.
Most people are still working on that “attention to dollar” connection, but with sites like ViralNova and BuzzFeed running around a little digging will showcase you what business model works for that audience.
I’m a small spoke, but all you have to do is look at the major news outlets and see what people want to read about – what’s the hottest stories of the day?
People would rather waste time reading about Kylie Jenner’s lip challenge and what the rest of the Kardashians are up to then have serious discussions on projects that bring solar power and water to rural areas that can help millions of people.
Evan Varsamis
Founder at Thegadgetflow
Our goal has always been to discover great products and feature them on our platform to simplify online product exploration.
Since 2012 we’ve had over 60M visitors that are eager to discover great products on a daily basis, that’s exactly what we put in-front of them and that is why people keep coming back. – Find what your users want and stay focused on that.
John Locke
Empowering Business Owners
The content that gets shared the most, and has the most longevity answers questions that people are already typing into Google.
If you can find real pain points that people are having, and give solutions, your content has a much better chance of being spread.
I like to keep a spread sheet of real-world problems that people tell me about, whether that is from blog comments, social media comments, or just talking to them on the phone or in person.
I make a note of the person, what their demographics and profile is, and the problems they are facing.
Do this long enough, and patterns will emerge. This gives me ideas for new content.
It’s also good to teach others things you’ve learned.
If someone else already has a top-ranking article on the same subject, look at their article and *go deeper.* Explain things in as much detail as you need to.
Make your articles easy to read, and write for beginners, not experts.
Decide what communities or platforms your material is best suited for.
Become an active member of those communities. Remember to talk to people and *truly engage.* Don’t just blast people with your material.
Give people in those communities a reason to care about you as an individual.
If you publish good content on the same subjects long enough, and engage with people in that community long enough, your content will get read and shared.
Tell great stories. Humans remember stories better than they do raw data.
Data convinces, but stories captivate.
If you are looking to get the attention of influencers, it is easier to befriend people who are a few steps ahead of you, but not light years ahead of you.
Befriend people who you get along with who are growing their audience, but not household names yet.
Always be yourself. People respond to authenticity. They can also sense when you are being disingenuous.
Don’t be afraid to write or speak in your own voice. It takes time and practice, but it is well worth it.
Help people whenever possible.
No one succeeds unless others want to see them succeed.
Be kind to others.
Karma is real.
Yael Kochman
Head of Marketing at Roojoom
1) Forums are community based. You need to build relationships with people, and you do that by upvoting and commenting on their content. In return – they’ll do the same for you.
2) There is a lot of content submitted to those forums, all competing for the attention of very busy people. Make sure your title is compelling. Tweak it if you need and don’t use the same exact title in all of the forums you’re submitting this content to.
3) Invite people to join the discussion, either by using internal tools (with Inbound.org you are able to invite people to join) or by sharing the link to the discussion on Twitter and mentioning friends and influencers. This will get the ball rolling and then more people will join.
4) When possible, add a short paragraph to get people curious about your article. Include an interesting quote or a few numbers that are mentioned in the article that will show them why the article is worthwhile for them to read. Try to end with a question that will get readers to come back and comment.
Cécile Rainon
Community Manager at DOZ
The first thing to remember with sites such as Reddit or Inbound, is that without users actually sharing content, these sites wouldn’t exist.
Sharing is at the center of these sites. Now, what makes content share worthy?
Studies have found that clicks and shares are sparked by curiosity.
This is the reason why sites like Upworthy average 75,000 likes per posts for example.
To get your content shared and upvoted, my suggestion is to offer something new to a concept people already know (SEO, social media, etc.): spark their curiosity by sharing something people haven’t read before, go for actionable and promise results.
Matt Parker
Online Marketing Associate
I don’t always have a lot of time to digest content, so it needs to pack a punch and get to the point without coming across as obvious click-bait.
More than ever, visitors are looking for posts that are informative or otherwise useful in their daily lives.
This can mean anything from a really interesting fact to a specific tip that is relevant to their business or industry.
I applaud content that teaches me something new and enables me to apply that knowledge right away.
Danielle Schwager
Online Marketing Specialist at Big Leap
The easiest way to create shareable content is to consider your audience first.
Does your content answer a question, solve a problem, or fill a need? Answer this before you begin.
Once you’ve solidified your point of interest, pick a format that will best match your message and your audience—blog posts, infographics, quizzes, and videos all have great engagement opportunity.
When your content is ready to go, it’s time for promotion.
There are a few points of etiquette to keep in mind when sharing content on forums such as Inbound or Reddit.
First, you should have a solid history of posting and interacting on the platform before sharing your own content.
Nothing says self-promotional like a click-bait post shared from a brand new account.
Additionally, to gain the most traction, make sure your post is in the right subreddit or tagged with the right topics on Inbound.
Finally, let your content speak for itself.
If you’ve done your job during the content creation stage, the shares and upvotes will come naturally.
Tim Soulo
Content Marketer
First of all, sorry for re-hearsing the same stuff that everyone else does, but really content IS the king.
If you want to get tons of upvotes – you have to share something worthy of a vote.
And actually Inbound.org users are happy to tell you what makes them tick:
-http://inbound.org/discussion/view/the-slow-awkward-death-of-original-content
-http://inbound.org/post/view/stop-creating-content-start-creating-value
These two discussions have generated over 100 comments, where people are telling you exactly what kind of content they would like to see.
Our latest post from Ahrefs blog has generated 100+ upvotes and 30 comments. That resulted in 539 visits in 5 days:
And the only “tactic” we have used to get this kind of traction is asked a few friends to upvoted our post early on.
You only need 4 to 6 votes to get your submission to the front page of Inbound.org.
What happens next depends solely on your content.
Now do you want to know the secret formula of creating the kind of content that will get traction?
Invest more hours in it!
If you’ve only spent an hour or two writing your article – you can’t expect it to get traction.
Neither at Inbound.org nor anywhere else. *(Unless you’re Seth Godin of course,)
But once you invest 15 to 30 hours of your time doing things like:
– thorough research
– your own experiments
– custom visuals
– reaching out for opinions
– editing…
…you can pretty much expect it to dominate the front page of Inbound.org for a few days.
Sherry Holub
Creative Director at JVM Design, Online Marketer
For the best share-worthy content, you’ll want to study your audience inside and out.
What makes them tick? What do they like?
What are their particular pain points?
And you may have to tailor your content even more based on the platform or method of delivery.
Emailed content is going to be received (and potentially shared) differently than blog content.
On Twitter you only have 140 characters to make an impression on your audience so ever word counts.
You can rise to the top on Reddit, or you can just as easily crash and burn (or get lost in the shuffle) if you haven’t studied that platform and it’s users.
So in short, research and observation can go a long way!
Arjun S Kumar
Web Designer & Developer
1. Social approval:There is always a tendency to like a content which is liked by many other people, especially if those people belong to your friends circle.
Thus, having social buttons attached to your content is really important; it can bring in more shares.
2. Emotionally biased: Many of the content shared online will be emotionally biased.
Those contents which can arouse emotions like delight, astonishment, excitement, awe, anger, frustration, or anxiety happens to circle around more, compared to other contents with zero emotion attached to it.
The importance of Storytelling comes here.
When a story is attached to a particular content, that content gains an emotion – an emotion that the reader tries to relate with.
3. Informative: If the content is informative, if the content has something new to provide to the reader, then, you have achieved your goal.
Such a content is sure to hit the minds of the reader. To be practical with what you write, you got to know the minds of those who is reading your content.
Go to social sites like Quora, or Yahoo Answers, try to understand the vibes of your readers. And, while writing a content try to answer the possible questions that the reader might have in their mind.
Abrar Mohi Shafee
Digital Marketer
To get more upvotes on the content curation sites (such like Reddit, Inbound, Bizsugar etc.), I think “title is the key”.
If you need upvotes, you have to convince your viewers at the first impression.
A simple scientifically-proved hack that can help you is “Emotional Marketing Value (EMV)”.
EMV in your title can emotionally attract a viewer to click in, upvote your entry and if possible scan your read.
If the read was well enough to meet his thirst, he could potentially share it.
Implementing EMV in a title means making the perfect combination of emotional, power, common and uncommon words.
Samantha Pena
Content Strategist
Don’t be afraid to, fail, and fail again – as long as you keep trying.
I know that sounds like a fortune cookie, but it’s true. Many people have written about the “secret” to shareworthy content.
However, the simple truth to creating content worth upvoting is to be fearless, persistent, and inquisitive, because creating upvote-worthy content oftentimes requires a lot of trial, iteration, and oftentimes, failure.
Unless you’re Rand Fishkin or Neil Patel, your content probably won’t get upvoted the first time you post it.
Instead, you have to test, analyze, and tweak your content until it does get picked up.
Where do you start? Write 10-15 different headlines and test each one to see which one garners the most attention: maybe you could write a better hook or the language you’re using doesn’t quite hit with the users.
Test your posting times: maybe your post gets buried or users aren’t online at that time.
Test where you post it: maybe posting in a different category will get you more upvotes.
Creating great content is all about knowing what works, when, and for whom.
And you can’t completely know until you try, fail, and try again.
Clayburn Griffin
Reputation Management and Content Marketing
The most important part of making upvote-worthy content is to know your audience.
In most cases, you’re probably a part of that audience, so you should be hanging out in the local relevant communities, like Reddit or Inbound.org.
Active participation in these communities is a must because it keeps your finger on the pulse of the times.
Once you have a concept, you need to figure out who your audience is before you start to work creating the content.
Think about where you would hope to share the content where it might be well-received.
When you know that, you can begin to craft the content with that audience in mind, asking yourself “”What would they enjoy?
What will be useful and/or entertaining to them?”” If you’re an active member of that community, you’ll be in a better position to answer those questions.
That’s why I strongly believe digital marketers need to be active Redditors .
Relationships are also important, and by participating in communities you should naturally acquire several important ones.
These will be the people who help spread your content around the Web.
So make friends and keep a close network of social media savvy comrades.
I have several friends with various personal projects, and when I see they share something cool of theirs on Twitter, I push it out onto Reddit or relevant Facebook groups.
By having people like me in your rolodex (meaning Vitamin D deficient social media addicts), your content will spread like a zombie apocalypse.
And that’s all any content marketer really wants.
Jonathan Tavarez
Digital Media Consultant and Founder of Vantage
Factor 1: Timeliness – is this information breaking news?
There are many cases where news breaks on Reddit and makes global headlines, thereafter.
Not the best example, but the one that comes to mind is the recent celebrity nudes scandal.
Someone decides to post this
Factor 2: Rarity – is this information hard to find? This applies toproducts/services as well.
How unique is your product/service? How unique is the story behind it?
Think about Reddit AMA’s. You can’t duplicate this conversation anywhere else.
When Bill Gates did an AMA, even new registrations and subscriptions surely went through the roof.
Bill Gates has a large fan base and the fact that these individuals had the chance to ask him a question exclusively through Reddit is extremely powerful.
Factor 3: Benefits – does this benefit the reader immediately?
This could be either entertainment or education.
Many experts use Reddit to share their unique knowledge to exactly those who may benefit from this knowledge.
A good example that comes to mind is Rohan Gilkes from /r/entrepreneur who created a follow-along aka ‘ride along’ of his entrepreneurial journey.
His journey was a success and now he’s seen as an expert in his niche.
He created his own subreddit /r/entrepreneurridealong where other users share their journey just as he once did – all while getting his input.
When Rohan speaks about creating local businesses with a digital touch, his followers listen.
Factor 4: Controversy – is your content questionable or taboo?
Many marketers know that one of the easiest ways to get some traction on upvote communities is to post a questionable or taboo headline.
This is especially great for creating discussion around a very specific topic.
Factor 5: Posting Time – have you researched the peak activity hours for your specific subreddit?
It’s important to know the time your target market is most likely to see your post.
It may be that peak hours blind users in a similar to ‘banner blindness’ due to all the submissions that are going on at the time.
In this case, find a balance between peak hours and likelihood of engagement.
A good rule of thumb is to study the posts within your niche that have done well and implement what you’ve learned.
Brittany Berger
Content Marketing & PR Manager
The best way to get your content spread is by making it relatable.
Don’t just throw information out there and assume people will believe it. S*how* them its value – include statistics, real stories, analogies, etc.
These are all things that will pull the reader in. And once they’ve invested this time in the post and enjoyed themselves, they’ll want to recommend it to their peers.
Danny Halarewich
Founder & CEO of LemonStand
I think the most effective way to create content that gets upvotes is to make sure it’s ULTRA TARGETED.
It needs to be relevant to the community in which you’re posting it, and also relevant to the times.
For example, an article title Why Your Business Should Have A Twitter Profile isn’t timely.
That ship has sailed. Instant vote killer.
On the flip side, posting an article covering the news of SSL now being a ranking factor for Google won’t be relevant in a subreddit that discusses mobile app marketing.
Not only do you have to make sure your topic and timing is relevant, but you must ensure your posting style matches the community.
Does the community like controversial opinion pieces, click-baity how to’s, or factual industry reports?
Do they like when you post just a link, or do they also want a summary, or even the entire article content to be included?
Before posting, study the community, read the guidelines and look at which posts are doing the best and find the common traits between them.
Then, cherry pick the most targeted content (or create some) and watch those votes roll in!
Gavin Baker
Principal of Baker Labs
The premise is to find out more about what makes content “share-worthy”, from an upvoting point of view (relevant to sites like Reddit, ProductHunt, HackerNews, and Inbound).
To get your content upvoted follow a simple rule of thumb: Leave the community better than you found it.
If you are submitting an article, make sure it promotes a unique viewpoint to a common problem relevant to the audience.
Sharing your unique viewpoint on the topic or common problem is easy.
Doing it in a manner that is relevant to the audience is the hardest part.
On sites like HackerNews, Reddit and Inbound, the site’s users and members are there to learn, share and engage with other users; there is community of similar people that are valued.
First your submission title and topic must be interesting; below are two from HackerNews.
How a TV Guide from 1995 Predicted the Future of TV, Sort Of A Brief History of Password Storage, Transmission, and Cracking.
As you engage in comments, you need to provide relevant comments that help make the conversation better.
If someone has a question, you need to spend more time answering the question including suggestions or facts relevant to your expertise and knowledge – not talking about you or repeating what someone else shared.
If you are responding to a comment, you need to address your viewpoint within the context of the comments around you, showing that you care about the idea, not just adding your voice to the mix.
Leaving the community better than you found it with thoughtful, expertise driven comments and relevant and unique articles – upvotes are bound to come.
Devesh Sharma
Founder of WPKube
I think it really depends on two things content and authority of your profile.
If you are trying to get your content on Inbound, you’ll need to have a good profile, without which it’d be really hard to get upvted on the site.
So it all comes down to the quality of content you’re publishing and your profile.
It also depends what type of site you’re submitting on, for example, on sites like Reddit you cannot just go around submitting content (even if it’s quality content), they hate self-promotion.
You have to think of some unique / genius ways to submit your content, so it doesn’t look like self-promotion.
Ross Simmonds has written a great post on this topic (http://inbound.org/post/view/four-content-marketing-tips-to-use-when-marketing-on-reddit).
Another thing is to target niche communities / small groups like ManageWP.org & WordPress for WordPress, and Outbound.org for travel related content.
