On Monday morning I checked my daily blog stats, not expecting much because it was a holiday. To my pleasant surprise, I saw that my pageviews were about three times my daily norm, even at that time of the morning. I quickly clicked to see where the traffic was coming from, expecting possibly another viral post on StumbleUpon. Instead, I discovered that more than half of that traffic was coming from Flipboard.
Flipboard? What is this, a new social media app that I need to learn about?
Not exactly. Flipboard is a content curator, originally designed to be used on mobile devices to make reading online material easier, though there is also a web version now. With over 82 million active monthly users, you can see that there could be great potential to drive traffic to your blog.
Articles are put into magazines, sorted by topics to make it easier to find topics of interest to the reader. Readers can then add these posts to their own magazines, thus spreading the content love.
How Can Bloggers Use Flipboard to Drive Traffic to Their Blog?
So how can a blogger get the best results from Flipboard? Here are 8 tips to get you started.
Set up an Account
Step one, obviously, is to set up an account. Simply go to the Flipboard website or use the app on your mobile device. Take a little time to fill in your profile, making it brief, but interesting. You can also add an avatar or photo. All this makes your account stand out, so don’t skip this part.
Create Some Magazines
Create a few magazines with topics that interest you. Give them a strong title and description, making it clear what the magazine is about. Make sure to create magazines that will fit with your own content, in addition to other topics that you enjoy. You can create your magazines on your profile page.
Follow Magazines that Interest You
As you explore Flipboard, you will find thousands of topics and magazines, so to simplify it, follow a few magazines that interest you. You can also follow other readers and content creators. You can follow me, too!
Flip Articles That You Enjoy
Flipping an article is simply what Flipboard calls it when you like or hit the plus sign. After you do so, you will be asked which of your magazines you’d like to add it to. As with most other social media outlets, it’s important to flip other people’s content, not just your own, so spend some time adding content to your magazines.
Flip Your Own Content
Unlike StumbleUpon, where you don’t want to Stumble your own posts too frequently, Flipboard actually suggests that you do so to help you drive traffic to your blog (another reason to love it!). As they say, when you flip your own content, you create a beautiful, syndicatable package of stories, and also help your posts to be seen in the topic feeds.
Comment When You Flip
Add a short comment when you flip. According to Flipboard, this adds value to your flip by drawing attention to your post since comments are emphasized in the layouts of the mobile apps.
Find Flipboard Tribes
None of the groups I belong to shares flips yet, but I can see this happening soon as word spreads about how Flipboard can drive traffic to your blog. Entering reciprocal relationships with other content creators, where you share flips, comments, and likes, can help grow your own following.
Make it Easy for Other to Flip Your Content
Adding a Flipboard button for your blog posts will help make it easy for others to flip your posts (mines on the top, go ahead and try it!). There are also sidebar banners, bookmarklets, follow buttons, and widgets if you’d like.
Overall, Flipboard is relatively low maintenance way to share your content, which can potentially produce great results.
Have you ever tried Flipboard? Have you heard of it? Do you have any tips to add?
My weekly linkups! Please stop by and check out all of the great recipes, workouts, and information that all these awesome bloggers share every week!
Sunday Blog Hop with Jenn
Meatless Monday with Sarah and Deborah
Meatless Monday with Annmarie
Inspire Me Monday with Janice
Anything Goes with Marilyn
Bonnie, the Pin Junkie
Tip Tuesday with Debbie in Shape
Wild Workout Wednesday with Annmarie, Michelle, Sarah, and Angelena Marie
Wednesday Wisdom with Nanna’s Wisdom
The Blogger’s Pit Stop with Kathleen
Let’s Get Real with Karen.
Friday Fitness with Jill
Fitness Friday with Miranda
Cool! I will have to check this out! I discovered this app a long time ago when I first got my ipad but never knew the utility of it. Thanks for all of the tips!
For a long time I tried to delete it from my phone because I didn’t use it and I thought it used a lot of battery! Now I know better!
LOVE Flipboard as well but definitely dont use it to leverage traffic as I could.
I need to take ALL YER ADVICE here…
Flipboard is pretty cool all on its own. Easy to get lost in there. 🙂
Wait? What? I had tried Flipboard a few years ago and had no idea you can read blogs on there or really what you did with the whole app. Thanks for opening my eyes to more social media fun!
It’s a pretty cool app. I was pleasantly surprised to see the extra traffic. Now to keep it coming!
Just starting to use it and so far I really like it!
It’s nice that it doesn’t take tons of time. Unless of course you get caught up reading all the stuff.
thanks for sharing this – I will have to check it out !
I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. It’s an easy way to get more blog traffic.
This helps so much – I downloaded Flipboard a while ago and never dedicated time to learn to use it. I’ll get on it now!
I was glad that my little boost made me research. It’s pretty simple and who doesn’t love extra blog traffic?
I apparently have a flipboard account but don’t remember using it. Thanks for sharing these tips and I am going to have to play around with it a bit. Always love your advice!
Lol. Thanks, my account sat around for quite a while too.
I signed up for FlipBoard at one point, when it first came out… Never used it and totally forgot about it until JUST NOW… Hmmmm perhaps I should open that app on my phone again! LOL!
Yep, probably should. I know that since I did my research, I’ve been opening it a lot more!
ANother one I have not heard about – very interesting! Thx Debbie!!!!
Thanks Jody. Try it, it’s fun and easy!
I’ve never heard of flipboard but now I feel like I definitely need to look into it!
There’s always something new, isn’t there? It’s fun and easy!
How interesting! There are so many social media sites out there — I can’t keep up.
xoxo, Jenny
I have often wondered about this little app on my phone, I do use it from time to time and it was on my to do list to see about how to get on there. Thank you so much Debbie for this! I’ve been playing around with it some and yes I followed you! 🙂
Part of me is curious and the other part is like OMG another platform!!!
Thank you for this!! I’ve been using Flipboard for awhile now and was curious how I get my content noticed – this is a great guide to get me started! Thanks again!
Follow-up: It’s not clear to me how to add my content to a Flipboard magazine. How can I do it other than adding a Flipboard button to my articles? Thanks!
I actually had to research because I always use my button! In the app, click on your magazine tou want to add the post to. Then click the little pencil/edit button. You’ll see an “add article” option. This is only my android phone, so I’m not sure if it’s different on iPhone.
You can also get the Flipboard Chrome Extension and then you can add anything from the web when not on your mobile device.
Hope this helps! It’s so easy.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/+-flip-it/fbmppankahdodchhioklnbcmohehhjoa?hl=en
I like the idea that you can add your own blog content. I have been seeing nice traffic from Stumble upon, but have to do the blog stumble parties to get my own stuff on there. Thanks for the information.
I’ve heard of Clipboard, but had no idea what it was. There really is a ton of social media “stuff”, so it’s important to see and use what all of us might think WE need to do for our blogs. Thank you for sharing this information because now I’ve got to go create some magazines.
So glad I found your post in the SITSgirls Saturday link up. I recently deleted my Flipboard app thinking I just don’t have time for one more thing. I may need to rethink that. Your post is helpful for thinking in a new way about it. Thanks.
OMG! I’m feeling overwhelmed. I have added this to my long list of things to check out and figure out. lol
Hi, thanks for sharing! I think I downloaded it once but did not know too much about it, so I deleted it again. I am going to give it a try,!
Nice tips. I am unfamiliar with flipboard. I will have to check them out.
Okay, a use for flipboard! Awesome.
I finally got my head around SU and now there’s this “new” one – it never ends….but I’m open to anything that drives blog traffic without too much effort and fiddle faddle on my part! I’ve bookmarked the site and will definitely look into it in the near future. This post will definitely be one of my feature posts for next week’s OTM so everyone gets a chance to read it! Thanks Debbie 🙂 ~ Leanne
Interesting! I hadn’t heard of Flipboard before. While the thought of adding yet another place that I have to post/pin/follow/comment/like/and so on discourages me, it sounds like this is worth checking out.
I used to use Flipboard a ton (and my husband still uses it) but I deleted it a few months ago when I was purging apps. Cool to know it’s a useful tool for blogging!
Hi Debbie,
I’m on Flipboard. Look me up there. We can enter into a reciprocal relationship.
Janice, Pit Stop Crew
I just followed you. And, btw, I’m have another super day thanks to Flipboard!
This is perfect timing. I downloaded the app last week and haven’t fussed with it yet. Mostly because I just didn’t “get it.” Thank you for laying it all out! Love your blogging tips, they’re always so helpful.
I really haven’t thought about flipboard and thanks for sharing the concept.
I haven’t heard for Flipboard but I’m heading over there now. I’m still mad that TheseReads.com didn’t survive! :p
Flipboard is so great…generated much traffic to my website and keeps my readers always get my blog update…
#Tip : Follow others to get more followers.
Hi Debbie, Thanks for this information! I didn’t know Flipboard could be utilized in this way but will definitely be giving it a try! Blessings, Janet
This is first time I came on your blog through Google and glad I came to your website. After reading this excellent article about Flipboard, I must say that was more than useful. I am going to implement this strategy on my blog to drive more traffic.
Such helpful tips thanks. I’ve been using FlipBoard personally for a while and just started using it more for my blog. I haven’t seen too much of a difference in my traffic but I think I’m going to try the commenting trick. Maybe that will help! Found your post on the SaturdaySharefest PS – I followed you on FB.
Hey, just wanted to give a THANKS for writing this up. It’s good to see people using this having success!
I definitely don’t have results like you have but after noticing more traffic coming in from it, I’m trying to soak up all the info I can in case I’m missing some magic strategy, though ultimately I’m looking to build one that I can share with others.
Thanks again for the great read !
Hi,
Agree with you, Actually, Social Signals play an important role to get traffic and also the basic factor on Off-Page Seo, So I think this post is really for those who want to get social signals.
Thanx for ur kind info.
Love this post! I’m just starting out and this has some great tips and insight, thanks!
Very Useful Article, I’ll try Flipboard for traffic on my website. Thanks for your post.