I know it has been more than a week since my last post but I was busy trying to put together some ideas on how to write this new post in the best possible way. It was inspired by Hive account@acidyo who wrote this post about sharing content on Reddit. As an active Reddit user, I stop by on the Steemit subreddit often but I have to admit that it is lacking quality content. While we should have meaningful discussions there all I see is a pile of self-promotion posts looking to get some attention. This is not how things work with content marketing and that is why I am writing this post.

My daily job involves just this, content distribution and content marketing. To put it more simply, I help people get more traffic on their websites. I will share some of the basic techniques since I don't want to get into SEO and all that stuff that you don't need anyway.

The first you should look at is the quality of your content. Read it a couple of times before you hit that post button. Is the content good enough? Does it give some value to the reader? If you are stating some facts are you linking to sources of those facts? There are a lot of people out there that would probably enjoy what you are doing (if you are doing it right) but they are a tough crowd. This is why you have to be sure that you are sharing quality content that has value. Creating a post with a meme you stole from some other website won't get you far.

With all that out of the way let's move on to content distribution.

Useful Websites

• Reddit

The toughest of them all. People here are fed with content all day long and they can tell the difference between a quality article and a shitpost. Be sure of that. Even if you buy a thousand upvotes if your content is bad you will be met with even more downvotes. Be sure to link to your sources, give credit where credit is due, write informative content, stay on point, pick the right subreddit and DON'T SPAM!

Everyone here on Steemit has their own niche. While our platform is growing more and more every day you will still find a much bigger audience on Reddit. The easiest way to do that is to google your niche and add "reddit" to your search. Once you found your subreddit be sure to read the rules in the sidebar on the right. Follow them carefully if you don't want your content to be removed. Make your titles as clear as possible so the reader can know what to expect once they click on the link. No one likes clickbait, not even you so please don't even try to do that on Reddit.

• Voat

If you go to https://voat.co/ you will find it very similar to Reddit. This is because the website was created by people who didn't like the censorship on Reddit. They wanted a platform where they can share their opinions (as radical as they might be) freely and with close to no regulations. The principle of this website is completely the same as Reddit. Every niche has its own audience. Just be sure to spend some time making meaningful comments since you won't be able to make a post without 10 comment karma points.

• Quora

People familiar with Quora will probably say "how can you share your content on a Q and A website?" and they would have a fair point, to an extent. Quora is like an upgraded version of Yahoo answers. People ask something and then get meaningful answers from the rest of the community. You can also quote other sources and add links to your answers. This is where your quality content comes into play. If your content answers a question on Quora be sure to post an answer where you can mention something like "I already wrote about this on my blog, here are some quotes that should answer your question". Be sure to add a link to your post below in case people want to read the whole story.

• StumbleUpon

This is a very simple platform that is really easy to use. All you need is an account. After that, you can share your content, pick an appropriate category and let the website do the rest. People will stumble upon your content, if they like it they will give it a thumbs up which will result in more people discovering the same content. The more thumbs up the more exposure. Simple as that.

• Hacker News

Also known as Ycombinator, Hacker News is a news aggregator just like Reddit. The only difference is that there are no subreddits. There is only one main page where all the good stuff is aggregated. Here you can share articles related to tech news, entrepreneurship and anything related to hacking, obviously. Keep in mind that only relevant news and content will get upvoted. Sharing low-effort articles won't do the trick.

Other possible solutions: Tumblr, Facebook groups, Pinterest, Google Plus and TopTopic.

I don't want to get into detail with these because they don't generate a lot of traffic and are self-explanatory but if you have some free time on your hands check them out.

An important thing to keep in mind. When you share your content you aren't just doing it for you. The more backlinks Steemit gets from legit and highly raked websites like Reddit, the more the platform will grow as a whole. So far, we have done an incredible job. Steemit is close to the top 1000 websites in the world but we need to do even more.

We have been stuck at this rank for a while now. I would say that bad backlinks are pulling us down right now. This is why I urge everyone not to spam their blog posts. Getting a lot of upvotes on Reddit will send signals to Google that this content is good, Google will then suggest that content to people searching for similar keywords.

I personally tested this when Waltonchain released their mining software with this post. The title is "how to mine Waltonchain", just what a simple user will search for on Google. It's not a long post but it is detailed. I used words like "WTC" and "Waltonchain" often in the article. Lo and behold, that guide is now among the top results without a single backlink.

If I shared it on a couple of these platforms it would probably be ranked even higher.

Steemit has come a long way with the help of all of us. People like Hive account@jerrybanfield have done a lot of work to let the world know how big Steemit is and how big it can be in the future. It is our duty to compliment this hard work with more quality content, more quality backlinks and more hard work. It will benefit all of us so stop thinking as an individual. We are a community and together we can do so much more.