Your Site Goes Viral. What Next?

So far on my blog, The YA’s Dogtown, I’ve received two large bursts of traffic from Tumblr and Reddit. Both were 500+ views on the same day.

The first was from a high-profile Tumblr blog, which reblogged the link to one of my older posts. The second was from a Reddit group, for a guest post over at YA Indie.

You would think that I would be giddy from these referrals and have a large increase in followers, but that wasn’t the case in both incidents.

The end result? Two comments, and no new subscribers.

The crowd passed through, but didn’t stay around.

You Got to Convert.

That’s 200 visits in one hour. That’s Tumblr for you.

While it might be an ego-boost to be linked by a populated source, a sudden spike of viewer is useless unless you convert. In most cases your goal should be either to gain the viewers as subscribers, or buyers.

Keep that in mind when blogging.

But this is true not just for blogging, but for writing in general. A one-hit wonder e-book does nothing. There’s a reason why the Fifty Shades of Gray trilogy is released all at one time: so the readers had something to buy once finished with the first book.

If you have a blog, you want people to subscribe to your blog by RSS, but preferably e-mail for more personal access. From there, you have to get them to buy your book or any other product–once you have one.  Right now, I’m working to providing a destination to the visitors on my blog. First, an email list. After that, a book. Hopefully.

Takeaway? If you’re writing online, it’s a good thing to have a destination for your readers to go to.

YOUR TURN: Have you ever got “mini-viral” by being linked by a major source? How did you handle with the visitors? Post in the comments with your answer.

(This a guest post by Chihuahua Zero. Chihuahua Zero is teenage writer that’s yet to be published, but that doesn’t mean he can’t spot good writing advice–or challenge it occasionally. He can be found blogging The YA’s Dogtown and tweeting at @chihuahuazero.)