Heyo 👋 It is I, your friendly half-bot-half-human Hacker Noon Helper! You can find everything that I have to offer at help.hackernoon.com, but I will also be posting some of my most helpful tips here. Hope you enjoy this series, and please tune in every week for more 😊

Overview

This story describes clever hacks for HOW TO USE various social media platforms, forums, and HackerNoon communities to bring more readers to your awesome stories.

We have specifically fostered partnerships with some of these platforms, in order to get you premium exposure.

Learn about each of them below and don't hesitate to get started!

Note: this is mostly tips on what you can do to get more reads for your stories. Learn more about what Hacker Noon does (almost automatically) to help you with your story distribution here.

Digg

Digg is a social network and news aggregating site that allows users to post stories to be curated and shared on the Digg homepage and among the various Digg namespaces.

Why post on Digg?

We have a partnership with them and our stories get curated into other Digg spaces and on the homepage. Once you get an article on the Digg homepage, you’re guaranteed to get another 1000+ views to your HackerNoon story.

DEN

Den or den.social is a new social media platform built on the Dragonchain blockchain. Den incentivizes the creation, sharing, and evaluation of quality content, via their crypto token ecosystem composed of MTR, NRG, LOR, and LOT.

Why post on Den?

We have a partnership with them and thus have our own HackerNoon lair. When you submit don’t just post a link, you should post a of couple paragraphs about the stories and entice a discussion about it like we do on Reddit and on Slogging. This will give you the greatest chances for upvotes and more people seeing your work.

How to post on Den?

1. Navigate to den.social
2. Signup for an account if you don’t already have one
3. Open your article on HN Navigate to the HackerNoon Lair and join it
4. Upvote a few posts that catch your eye and help your fellow HN writer by dropping a comment on their posts. This is not just to be nice, but it is to make sure your account has normal activity. IF your account ONLY posts links and never upvotes or comments on other posts, this could a warning signal to moderator bots
5. Click “new post” on the right side of the page
6. Write a title for your post, then add a couple paragraphs about your HackerNoon story. You can even talk about why you wrote it and the most important points in the story. Be sure to include the link to your story near the top of the post. Feel free to get creative and add images, memes, Gifs, etc.
7. Make sure you end off with a CTA/closing line that encourages people to reply to your post with their own comments or questions about what you’ve discussed.

Reddit

This is a platform that hopefully needs no introduction. There is a subreddit to post anything and everything. However, many of these are strongly moderated and some places don’t even allow you to post articles you’ve written. Luckily, we have a HackerNoon subreddit which we moderate and your articles will always be accepted there.

Why post on Reddit?

So the reason for posting on Reddit is not just to get views. We can also use their platform and strong domain authority as a tool to rank for certain keywords. Posts on Reddit often hit the front page of Google and those posts generate backlinks for the stories linked within them. BUT the catch is that what ranks on Google and Reddit is normally the posts with the most comments and text in the post itself.

Therefore, when you post on HackerNoon’s subreddit, don’t just post a link. Create a post with a couple paragraphs or more of intro and then introduce your article. Create a post that will start a conversation and encourage comments. The more comments you get, the higher chance that the post will rank on Google.

How to post on Reddit

1. Navigate to reddit.com
2. Signup for an account if you don’t already have one
3. Navigate to the HackerNoon subreddit and join it
4. Upvote a few posts that catch your eye and help your fellow HN writer by dropping a comment on their posts. This is not just to be nice, but it is to make sure your account has normal activity. IF your account ONLY posts links and never upvotes or comments on other posts, this could a warning signal to Reddit moderator bots
5. Click “create post” on the right side of the page
6. Write a title for your post, then add a couple paragraphs about your HackerNoon story. You can even talk about why you wrote it and the most important points in the story. Be sure to include the link to your story near the top of the post. Feel free to get creative and add images, memes, Gifs, etc.
7. Make sure you end off with a CTA/closing line that encourages people to reply to your post with their own comments or questions about what you’ve discussed.

community.hackernoon.com

What many people don’t know is that we have our own community forums on HackerNoon.

Why post on HackerNoon Community Forums?

There are thousands of writers registered for this community and when new posts are made, writers with email notifications turned on will be notified. A single post in Community can get over a thousand views:

Don’t waste this chance to get more eyes on your work. It’s also useful to get the feedback from other HN writers if you want to improve your craft.

How to post on HackerNoon Community Forums

1. Navigate to Community.
2. Log in with your regular HN account email and password
3. If you published a guide, opinion article, or feature (anything but news), navigate to the Why I Published This forum. If you published a news article, navigate to the Tech News Roundup forum.
4. Help your fellow HN writers out by clicking on a couple threads, hitting that like button, and dropping a comment.
5. Click on +New Thread in the top right
6. Open your story on HN
7. Paste your story URL into the top and wait for the title to auto-fill
8. Remove | Hacker Noon from the title to clean it up
9. Below the URL in the body of the post, add 2-4 paragraphs introducing what the article is about (if you wrote a news piece) or why you wrote the article and who you wrote if for (if you wrote a guide or opinion piece). Make these paragraphs enticing so that it encourages comments or questions from the community.
10. Click +Start Thread in the bottom left and you’re done!

Facebook HackerNoon Contributor Network

Some of our writers are Facebook users and we’d like to be available to our writers wherever they like to hangout. Our FB contributor group is private but it is 1.5k members strong and growing.

Why post on HackerNoon Contributor Network?

A user’s FB feed is populated by posts from their friends but also by posts in the groups they’ve joined. If you joined 100 Nintendo groups, it’s likely that your feed is filled with Nintendo content.

Thus, posting your stories in our FB Contributor Network could help get more eyes on the stories you worked so hard to write. And...since this is moderated by HN, you know that we won’t reject your posts about your HN stories.

How to post on HackerNoon Contributor Network

1. Navigate to the HackerNoon Contributor Network.

2. Request to join the group.

3. Once you’ve joined, under “Discussion” click on “what’s on your mind?” and start your post

4. Copy-paste the URL of your HackerNoon story and hit enter.

5. Add a couple paragraphs about your story and use some #hashtags

6. Hit “post” and you’re done!

   
   

Twitter

I'm sure you already know what Twitter is, but what hacks can you try to get the most out of your Tweets, and bring valuable readers to your stories?

Below are some techniques we recommend:

1. Post on Twitter (Tag @hackernoon)

2. Track down every tweet that mentions your story, retweet and like it

3. Mention a related thought-leader in the article body and beg them to re-tweet it.

4. If you have to @ hackernoon to begin with, do the .@hackernoon convention so we see it not just as a reply.

   
   

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a powerful networking platform and a great place to post your content. Every article you share on LinkedIn is another piece you can add to your portfolio.

Every time people see your posts on Linked you open yourself up for job opportunities, guest speaking opportunities, and general clout.

Here are some LinkedIn strategies we recommend:

1. Post on Linkedin (Tag @hackernoon)
2. Track every share on LinkedIn, like it, and thank the sharer in the comments.
3. Mention a related thought-leader in the article body and beg them to share it.

PSA: Important Tips from Utsav:

You’ve finished penning down your latest article and submitted it to Hacker Noon for publication. Voila, it got accepted and published as well.

Now you’re checking out your story’s stats but they aren’t growing as fast as you’d hoped. You get that sinking feeling that your piece is not going to go viral. You tell yourself that the other guys who do go viral have a couple of aces up their sleeve that they never reveal in their videos.

So, how about using the power of the hive to get a few extra thousand reads on your article. Below are the techniques that I use.

In order to get more readers, I recommend you to share it with your friends!

1. Post on Twitter (Tag @hackernoon )
2. Post on Facebook (Tag @hackernoon)
3. Post on Linkedin (Tag @hackernoon)

Plus:

1. Track down every tweet that mentions my story and I retweet and like it.
2. Track every share on LinkedIn and Facebook, like it and thank the sharer in the comments.
3. Mention a related thought-leader in the article body and beg them to share/re-tweet it.
4. Draw own graphics (via Lucidchart) where possible instead of sharing a stock picture.
5. Try to get in an image for every 300 words.

Original answer by @hackerhodl here.

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