Can you really get traffic from Flipboard?
I had never heard of Flipboard until recently, even though it’s apparently been around for many years.
After reading about some bloggers using it to get traffic, I decided to give it a try.
Learning about Flipboard
I started by listening to Michael Dinich’s interview on the Niche Pursuits podcast.
I also read some articles by other people that kind of echoed what Michael had said.
Since I’d been on Pinterest for many years, I noticed many similarities between the 2.
| Pins | Flips |
| Boards | Magazines |
| Evergreen content | New content |
| Requires new graphics to pin | Doesn’t require any new graphics |
Setting things up
With that in mind, I decided to do these things:
- Set up my magazines with categories relevant to my travel site, but also a few off topic ones like tech tips, recipes, etc.
- Every day, I would go into the app and flip other people’s content into my magazines
- Every day, I would also go on my desktop and use the browser extension to flip my own content into the magazines
Can you submit your rss feed?
Although Flipboard used to allow publishers to submit their RSS feed so new content was added automatically, that’s not currently an option.
We also had a big obstacle to overcome: we definitely focus on evergreen content for my travel site, while Flipboard favors new stuff.
To get around that, I used a tool called Post Polish to create new versions of our content that seems more news-like and current. Here’s how that works.
The results
Well, we don’t know yet. According to people who have used Flipboard for awhile, it can take months to see any results.
In the meantime, I’ve turned the responsibilities over to a member of my team so I can keep seeking about other traffic sources while we wait.
