How to Use Flipboard to Get Traffic to Your Blog (The Mega Guide)

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Update: After applying all the tips mentioned in this post, I managed to drive 3K+ traffic on a single given day. See below screenshot for proof & read on to do it for your blog:

Flipboard traffic effect
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Flipboard traffic effect

Flipboard, which was started as a magazine-style feed reader some time back, is now one of the top choices for feed reading and content discovery on various devices (smartphones, tablets and desktops).

I have previously featured Flipboard in my post on best blogging apps for iPad, and today I will be sharing how you can drive traffic from Flipboard.

Back in 2013, Flipboard was reported to have 90 million users, which is an astonishing number. Remember, these users are people who are using Flipboard for content discovery and for reading that content.

Flipboard was started as a simple app to enhance the reading experience of mobile users.  Flipboard has gone through various iterations in the past few years, and is now a full-fledged product for consumers or for webmasters like you and me. I can’t promise how much traffic you would be driving from Flipboard, but when I was going through the most recent version of their app, it appeared promising.

How to market your blog using Flipboard:

Flipboard is taking the route of the proven growth hacking technique (content curation) to take it to the next level. From being a simple content reading app, they have progressed to becoming a more personalized reading app. Flipboard now allows you to read content from your social-media timeline, subscribe to any feed, and follow any topic created by others. Most importantly, Flipboard let’s you create your own Flipboard magazine for content curation.

The power of Flipboard for business is in the simplicity of following any person on Flipboard or following a magazine created by them. The idea is not unique, but the way Flipboard has integrated these features within their app is appreciable.

Note:  Flipboard is no longer a mobile-specific app, as they have launched a web version as well. So even if you are not a Flipboard app user, you can take advantage of their recently launched website for desktop users, and use it for your marketing or reading pleasure.

Let me show you the exact steps you need to take when using Flipboard to get traffic or give exposure to your business:

Magazines are the powerhouse to get Flipboard to work for you:

If you are not new to content curation, getting started with Flipboard magazine will be as easy as pie. If, however, content curation is a foreign subject to you, allow me to briefly explain:

Content curation is a technique geared toward finding the best content from the web and consolidating it in one place. You can do it on your blog, or you can do it using any of the online content curation sites.

There are people who are making money from content curation.  Here is a post where you can find a list of content curation tools.

Back to Flipboard:

To begin using Flipboard, download the Flipboard app onto your smartphone (or desktop). The apps are available for iOS, Android and Windows phone. If you choose to work on your desktop, head over to Flipboard.com and create your profile there.

Perfect Flipboard Profile
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Once your profile is created on any platform, you can select the topics you would like to follow. (As of 2015, they have over 34000+ topics!)

I would suggest spending some time building your profile and setting up your Flipboard app.  Once you’ve completed all of this, the next step is to create magazines in your clipboard account.

Magazines are the topics you want to create, on which you will be curating content. I recommend that you curate the best content from your niche, and also blend your own content to drive traffic to your site. If you are a popular brand, you can create a magazine with your brand name, as it would make it easier for people to follow your brand updates on Flipboard.

How to create a magazine on Flipboard:

If you are using a mobile app, click on your profile to begin the process of creating a Flipboard magazine. If you are using the desktop version, go to editor.flipboard.com and you can create your magazine from there.

For this guide, I’m using their desktop version as an example, so that you can follow the steps and create your own magazine right now.

Click on “Create Magazine” and give it a niche name. It is best to use a clear topic-centered niche rather than a broad based niche. For example, “Affiliate Marketing for Bloggers” or “Google AdSense” as a magazine names would be far better than “Make Money Blogging”.

Create Flipboard magazine
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You can create any number of magazines on your Flipboard account. I usually create a few magazines based on categories I publish on my blog. This way, I stick to my niche for reading, and also for curating content in the same niche. After all, content curation is all about establishing yourself as an expert in a particular niche.

Subscribe on YouTube

If you are a brand or business, you can also have multiple Flipboard users contributing to the same magazine. This is useful for serious businesses to amplify the reach of their Flipboard magazine.

Curating content on Flipboard:

Once you are done creating your magazines, it’s time to start curating content.

The Flipboard smart phone app makes it easier for a user to add any content to a magazine he has created. If you are working on a desktop, you can use their handy bookmarklet to curate content from your web browser. You can also curate from your iOS device by adding a bookmarklet using this tutorial. Chrome users can take advantage of their Chrome extension.

How to make Flipboard work for your blog traffic and business:

Once you have completed all the steps mentioned above, you are halfway through the process of making Flipboard work optimally for you.

Next comes the most exciting and challenging part of using Flipboard which is to curate content on a regular basis. This is when you begin to work toward giving readers a reason to subscribe to your magazine, which is how Flipboard will start driving traffic to your blog or to your business website.

Here are five important tips for you as you learn to curate content effectively:

1. Curate evergreen content: 

I am a firm believer in the importance of producing evergreen content. When you produce evergreen content, your older posts remain relevant over time and thus remain useful to new readers. For this reason, you never have to trash your old content, because your content, and your magazine, are evergreen (useful and meaningful over time).

Once you have a grasp of the concept of creating evergreen content, you can avoid the time-intensive task of weeding out old, time-sensitive content, and the work you put into writing your posts (and creating your magazine) will pay off for a far longer period.

Note: You can curate the same post on different magazines created by you. This way you can have micro or macro magazines for your target topic.

2. Follow topics:

To utilize the content discovery feature of Flipboard (crowdsourcing), make sure you are following all relevant topics of interest to you. Also, check to see if any well-known people in your industry are on Flipboard, and follow them to discover quality content.

3. Comment on posts:

This is probably the most underused technique on Flipboard, but you can (and should) use it to get more eyeballs to your Flipboard profile. Flipboard lets you comment on any post that you are reading, and your comment is visible only to Flipboard users. You can use this technique to get more visitors to your Flipboard profile and to convert them into followers.

4. Check your progress:

Flipboard Magazine stats
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It is very important that you continually check to see how your Flipboard account is helping you to drive traffic, and how your Flipboard magazines are performing. You can go to editors.flipboard and click on “stats” to see how your magazines are performing.

Here is my Flipboard traffic for the last few days:

Flipboard traffic report Google Analytics
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Flipboard traffic report Google Analytics

5. Promote your Flipboard Magazine or profile:

Flipboard Follow buttons
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Most of the time you will be discovered by Flipboard users on the app itself (or on the desktop version), but you can also increase the number of your followers by using Flipboard buttons, or by sharing your created Flipboard magazines on your social networking sites. You can embed Flipboard Magazine on your blog, or you can display a Flipboard follow button to get more followers. You can also get a “follow” badge for your profile or for your magazine from here.

Note: You can check out an example of a Flipboard profile and magazine here.

Conclusion: Is Flipboard useful for bloggers and brands?

Flipboard is a growing platform for consumers and publishers like you and me. They have grown from being a mobile specific platform to including a desktop version, and in my opinion they will only continue to grow.

You would do well to start using Flipboard right away, and while it may take some time to arrange it for your optimal benefit, (depending on your visibility and quality of curation), it will ultimately help you to get traffic and exposure for your blog, business or brand.

Get started using Flipboard and make it work for you.

If you find the information in this post useful, please share it with your friends and colleagues on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

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Authored By
A Blogger, Author and a speaker! Harsh Agrawal is recognized as a leader in digital marketing and FinTech space. Fountainhead of ShoutMeLoud, and a Speaker at ASW, Hero Mindmine, Inorbit, IBM, India blockchain summit. Also, an award-winning blogger.

67 thoughts on “How to Use Flipboard to Get Traffic to Your Blog (The Mega Guide)”

  1. Mirko Peters

    Hello,

    thanks for your article. I’ve been waiting weeks for mine to be approved. How long does the process at flipboard take approximately?

  2. Gregor Sideris

    thanks Harsh! Very helpful indeed. I discovered Flipboard when the first ipad has been released and Apple promoted it heavily and I used it a lot. Since that time I lost a little bit of focus to Flipboard but think now as I do have my own Blog it is a very good oportunity generating traffic. I am so thankful for this inspiration and useful tips. Thanks, Greg

  3. Nisha Malik

    I recently came to know about Flipboard & was wondering how people are using it to drive more traffic to their blogs. Thank you for such an in depth article. You are always a great help Harsh.

  4. Scott

    Hey Harsh,

    Thanks for the very in-depth guide to Flipboard. I was not aware of this platform until a couple of weeks back, when I started receiving random (but a lot of) traffic from Flipboard. It inspired me to create my own magazines on Flipboard.

    Thanks again for the wonderful article. Keep those content coming! 🙂

    Regards,
    Scott

  5. Mike from TravelAndDestinations

    Super helpful. I have just signed up and started creating magazines for it now. Hopefully it works!

  6. Clifford Chi

    Harsh, great article!

    I’m in charge of HubSpot’s Flipboard account, and I was wondering how many times we should post on Flipboard everyday. We have 18 magazines, and I’ve been flipping one blog post into each magazine everyday. Does that seem like too much? Are we bombarding our followers with too much content?

  7. Fumiko

    Thank you for sharing great post. I didn’t know how to use Flipboard although I sighed up it and downloaded the app. I tried it again follow the instructions on your article.

  8. Emily Kydd

    Hi Harsh,
    Thanks for this great intro article, I’m a travel blogging and have been hearing rumblings about Flipboard and finally had to look into it. Do you recommend setting up magazines with a mix of your content and other sites content? How many articles do you recommend a magazine having at the start?

    Cheers,
    Emily

  9. Michelle

    Harsh, one of my posts just got flipped and I’ve gotten a lot of traffic in just a few hours. Is there a way to find out who flipped it? or what board might be the referral? Thanks, Michelle

  10. jenabkhan

    Really informative and interesting blog. I think Flipboard can certainly bring traffic towards your site, but you need to stick around make your ground and then traffic will start coming. Thank you very much for your useful information.

  11. Lorenza

    Hi Harsh! I created a flipboard account last week. Have not seen any activity on there. I think my mistake was to just add my own blog posts. I will try your tips. I just added a follow and flip it button to my blog. Will start curating articles now. Thank you this helpful flipboard advice.

  12. Saffron

    Hi Harsh,

    Do you only comment on other people’s flips and not your own flipped blog posts? When I flip content there is a section that says, “what is interesting about this”. I filled in a comment, flipped the post, went back and checked and there was no comment.

    How best to apply the comment strategy when flipping your own posts due to the issue that “what is interesting about this” does not leave a comment.

    Or just comment on existing content already flipped?

  13. Suraj

    Love the article. Thanks Harsh Sir for this valuable information hope I will get some traffic from it.
    Thanks and regards
    Suraj

  14. Estetik Ev

    Hello Harsh,

    Great article! Thank you for all of the helpful resources. I’ll definitely put them to good use!

    Cheers!

  15. Asiful Hoque

    I was looking for how to add my blog to flipboard and in this article I got everything.

    Thanks for the great work.

    Asif

  16. Vishal V

    Hello Harsh. This is first time I came on your website through Google Search and glad I came to your website. After reading this excellent article about FB, I have a question for you. If I wrote an article on my site and then flipped it, my knowledge says that the 1st published page (on my blog) will have higher SEO rating and republishing the same article (in this case flipping or publishing same article on FB) will decrease ratings for both. Is it correct? If it is correct, does that mean I should not flip my blog content on Flipboard?

  17. Cameron Cobb

    Harsh,

    Great article! Until recently, it had been a while since I used Flipboard. I noticed the changes, saw some traffic head to my blog and immediately became interested. Thank you for all of the helpful resources. I’ll definitely put them to good use!

    Cheers!
    Cameron Cobb

  18. Peter Mesu

    Hi Harsh,
    I must say that was very more than useful. I am going to implement this strategy and wait to see the results. I wish everything turns out to be perfect. You’re very generous in sharing info of this kind. Long live ShoutMeloud.

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      Thanks @Peter for your kind words. I love to share what I know & at the same time our readers improvise the idea to build something good at the top of it. Our real treasure is comment section & I would look forward to hear your experience with Flipboard.

  19. Chris

    If I understand correctly some articles are promoted by Flipboard itself after they are flipped. Is there any criteria for this? Can you increase your chance of being featured somehow?

  20. Scott Duncan

    I’ve used Flipboard for quite some time now, but never really considered using it to drive traffic to our own Blog. After reading your article it made me decide that instead of just using it for leisure reading (articles on SEO, Content Writing, Digital Marketing and more), we really should be using Flipboard to help showcase our extensive travel related articles on our Blog.

    Thanks for the push Harsh

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