Marketers leverage the power of popular social networks every day to drive traffic, spread brand awareness and engage with their audiences. The likes of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn alone attract billions of daily active users. And yet, the internet still has plenty of other dimensions, nooks and crannies that are all ready to send traffic to the website of the savvy marketer’s choice.
Based on CMSWire’s own traffic trends, supplemented with lists from Neil Patel and PropData, we have compiled a list of unusual and unexpected traffic sources that marketers should know about.
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1. Google Chrome Suggested Articles
Google Chrome users will know that when they open a new tab, Google Chrome recommends articles based on the type of content they have been searching for online.
Google’s algorithm is great at guessing what type content users will be interested in consuming. According to NiemanLab, web traffic from Chrome’s article recommendation algorithm increased by a whopping 2,100 percent last year.
What started as a magazine-style feed reader, Flipboard is now one of the top choices for reading feeds and content discovery. Thanks to its visually appealing UI, users are able to curate content in a form of a online magazine. Flipboard has become hugely popular in recent years and they reported to have over 100 million active users.
Several bloggers have also reported a boost in traffic after sharing their blog post on Flipboard. Harsh Agarwal shared his referral traffic from Flipboard where he received a mammoth 3,682 hits in one day.
Related Article: 4 Ways To Grow Your Content Marketing Reach Via Flipboard
If you want your content among articles that have been written and approved by content marketing experts, then look no further than Zest.is. Similar to Google Chrome Suggested Articles, Zest is a “new-tab” content suggestion feed that is catered for marketing professionals. It helps them to discover content that has been validated by marketing professionals, which improves its reliability.
Paper.li is a content curation service that enables you to create your own online newspaper. Users have used Paper.li to create newsletters using their own content or using content made by someone else. It even finds content automatically based on the topic that you and your readers are interested in.
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Similar to Paper.li, Scoop.it is also a content curation service that helps you to create your own online newspaper. Scoop.it allows users to gain influence, through sharing top quality content and by making connections with other content creators. The key to be successful on Scoop.it is to share other people’s content more than your own. Users of Scoop.it have reported to have received over 300,000 page views.
Reddit is online social media forum that allows users (known as Redditors) to discuss different topics and even share content as well. Reddit has thousands of communities arranged by subreddit which represent a particular topic. If your content is relevant to the subreddit, then you can share your content on that subreddit.
Medium is publishing hub that allows user to either syndicate or post original content. There was a time when syndicating content (aka republishing content on a different website) could penalize your SERP for duplication. Thankfully that is now not the case. Google has created a tool that allows you republish content without facing any consequence through a canonical URL — which basically tells Google the content has been syndicated. It is good practice to explicitly state where the syndicated content was originally published
By creating a Medium account, you can follow and find fellow Medium users with similar interests. Each time a user publishes content, it sends out a notification to their followers.
While most B2B marketers have admittedly embraced LinkedIn, some still assume that LinkedIn is primed mainly for job seekers, but that’s far from the truth. Business owners, CEOs and C-suite executives are now swarming the platform, so using LinkedIn Publisher can help you increase your brand awareness among professionals and drive traffic back to your website. Each time you publish content on LinkedIn Publisher, a notification is sent to all users on your network — plus, it allows for both original and syndicated content.
9. QR Codes
QR codes allow you to drive traffic from mobile devices. QR codes are incredibly popular and enable users to quickly gain access to your content without having to type anything into a browser. According to ComScore, 14 million users in the USA used a mobile device to scan QR code with a large majority scanning QR codes on a newspaper or printed magazine.
QR codes are especially effective when linked to a unique landing page containing an offer or entry to a competition.
StumbleUpon is a content discovery and sharing platform. Users are able to either give content they read a Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down, which naturally highlights quality content. While StumbleUpon may not be the best place to share articles, it’s great for visual content and the odd listicle.
Quora has become the go-to place for getting answers to any type of query. And if you are able to answer those queries by providing comprehensively written advice, then you stand a good chance of becoming a thought leader and gain traffic to your website. If readers like what you’ve written, you will receive an upvote which increases your chances of attracting prospective quora-answer seekers who are looking for similar responses.
Even when the hype around Snapchat was peaking in 2016, most brands were overlooking the potential of the platform to send traffic. Today, the buzz might have died, but Snapchat is still home to 187 million daily active users. Brands can take advantage of “swipe up” links in both organic posts and paid Snapchat ads.
Google, Bing and other major search engines enable users to search for images. If your brand produces its own imagery (think photography and infographics), then you’d be wise to optimize those images for search engines.
Image SEO is achieved when you add alt tags to your images. Your alt tags should succinctly describe what is inside the image, or what message the image is trying to convey.
14. Email Signatures
Last but not least is the humble email signature. If you and your team are constantly sending emails, the signature is a free, obvious yet commonly neglected opportunity to plug your website, vlog or latest white paper. Some brands opt for banners in their signature, but a simple hyperlink will suffice for the rest of us.
Got any overlooked traffic sources that your website is benefitting from? Share them with us in the comments below.