Using the Flipboard App for Your Content Marketing
Since we’ve been discussing the topics of mission statements and “finding your why” lately, starting this post with the mission statement of Flipboard seemed like the best place to begin. Read on to learn the benefits that the Flipboard app can have on your content marketing strategy.
“Discover stories that impact your life, career and creative path – hand-picked by people who share your passions.”
What is Flipboard?
Flipboard originally started as a magazine-style feed on your tablet and has transformed into one of the top resources for content discovery on multiple devices: smartphones, tablets and desktops.
Using Flipboard for personal reasons can be addicting. (Think Pinterest for long-form content and news stories.) But what’s amazing is its ability to drive traffic to your organization’s website or blog. With more than 100 million monthly users, the Flipboard app is taking content curation to the next level.
Getting Started With Flipboard
In order to start driving traffic to your website with Flipboard, you must first create an account. Either download the app or go to their new website and create a profile. We recommend building out your Flipboard profile just as you would any other social media profile, with detail and brand messaging. Next, follow topics that interest you and are relevant to your organization or industry. Here are some examples of a good Flipboard profiles:
How to Begin Curating Content
The real traffic-driving magic happens in the creation of magazines. By creating a magazine on Flipboard, you can start curating content on whatever subject you want—establishing yourself as an industry expert in that topic and ultimately driving more traffic to your website. Here’s how:
Step 1: Create Your Magazines
A magazine is a collection of articles carefully curated around one topic or theme. First, follow this step-by-step guide to create your first Flipboard magazine. Give your magazine a strong title and description. (The more specific information associated with your magazine the more likely it will be discovered by other Flipboard users and surfaced to the top of the search engine.) You can create more than one magazine, based on the categories from your blog or other niche subjects from your industry.
From our previous examples above, Lonely Planet features 36 magazines, the most popular ones being: Film and Television, Wildlife and Nature, Talking to Travelers, Art and Culture, Off the Beaten Track, and Round the World Travel.
Step 2: Curate Content
Think about who will you be sharing this magazine with and what would interest your audience. Then…
- Start by flipping your own content into your magazines. This not only creates a beautiful package of stories, but it will also add your content to other topic feeds.
- Fill your magazines with articles from other sources to add variety. Those interactions with other magazines only add more visibility to your content.
- Use these flipping “hacks.” Install extensions to your mobile device and desktop to make curating interesting articles from the web or social media even easier.
Step 3: Share Away
Once you’ve got a pretty little collection of magazines, build an audience to share them with.
- Promote your magazines on your social networks: Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.
- Invite co-contributors to your profile. This community of publishers will not only add variety to your magazines, but will also add their network and readership to your content.
- Engage with other “MagMakers.” Flip, comment, like and share interesting content you find on other profiles. This engagement will appear in other people’s notification systems, and they will hopefully follow you back.
How to Use the Flipboard App to Drive More Traffic to Your Website
1. Create stellar magazines
As a refresher, a magazine is a collection of content around a specific topic. Read Flipboard’s own resource on MagMaking 101 for an in-depth tutorial. Your magazine topics should focus on your brand or industry and contain a mix of curated and original content. The ultimate goal is to establish yourself as an expert in your niche.
2. Curate evergreen content
By curating evergreen content (and magazines), your posts stay relevant over time and useful to readers. You can then reuse your content from time to time instead of trashing it, and the work you put into writing posts and creating magazines will pay off for a much longer period of time. You can also curate the same posts in different magazines to give those articles more visibility.
3. Follow topics that interest you
When you first create your Flipboard account, make sure you follow all relevant topics (and well-known people) in your brand or industry. This will make it easier to discover content to flip into your magazines and allow you to engage with other Flipboard users.
4. Flip everyday
In order to see true value from Flipboard, the secret is to maintain it. Spend 10-15 minutes over your morning coffee, browsing topics that you follow and flipping relevant articles into your magazines.
5. Comment when you flip
According to Flipboard, this type of engagement draws attention to your post since comments are emphasized in the layouts of the mobile app, bringing more attention to your account.
6. Make it Easy for Others to Flip Your Content
Add a Flipboard button to your blog posts to make it easier for others to flip your posts.
7. Find Your Flipboard Tribe
Grow your following on the Flipboard app by finding accounts that you find interesting and interact with their magazines and articles. Over time, they will reciprocate and you will find a community that supports each other and helps your content become more visible. You can also join Flipboard’s Chat Group on Facebook or tweet your magazines with the hashtag #FlipboardFriday.
8. Share your Flipboard profile + magazines
The majority of your Flipboard following will come from within the app itself, but it doesn’t hurt to share it with your current networks. Once you’ve established a good collection of magazines, share them on your other social media platforms and email listserv. You can also embed a Flipboard magazine on your website or blog, or add a “follow” button on your blog to make it easier for people to follow your Flipboard magazines.
9. Check your stats often
As with any social profile, it’s important to regularly check on the stats and see how your magazines are performing. Use editors.flipboard.com and click on “stats” to see your numbers on articles by day, viewers by day, and page flips by day.
With over 34,000 topics and 20 million magazines circulating on Flipboard, now is the time to join this ever growing community. After putting in just a little bit of time and effort, there are countless opportunities for bloggers and brands to make their content more visible and establish their expertise in a specific niche… and then watch your website traffic grow!
Happy flipping, friends!
