I came across Flipboard in December 2018. I was binge reading a lot of articles on how to grow my blog traffic because I wanted to expand on my website traffic reach. I read a few blog posts about how beneficial Flipboard was within driving them traffic. Keep in mind that most of these blog posts were either from 2016 or people who had been using Flipboard for a couple of years already. I decided to give it a shot to see if Flipboard would bring me traffic and here’s what happened.
Does Flipboard bring website traffic to my blog? 1 year of using Flipboard – Review
Flipboard is basically similar to Mix (the new Stumbleupon) and Pinterest. You create an account. Setup some Magazines (boards) around a different topic (keywords), engage with other users on the platform, and hope to increase your reach.
I did everything that many of the well-followed Flipboard users did. I created multiple Magazines around different keywords. I shared other website’s content as well as mixed in some of my own content right when I posted it. I took time out to follow other Flipboard users and I engaged on their content (liked, shared, or commented). I did this throughout the entire year.
One of the things that I realized after the first few months was that Flipboard wants you to become a Publisher first so that your content can be syndicated. I applied for that in March 2019 and I didn’t get approved until September 2019. I reached out to a person who worked on the team at the end of March and they told me that my application to become a Publisher would be assessed as it came in. It took about 7 months for me to be approved. So the wait was long for me personally.
After I became a publisher, even though my content was being automatically saved on the Flipboard magazines that correlated to the topic the best… I still took time out to spread my content across my other Magazines that related to the content I posted on my blog. If I made a self care post, I made sure to share it in my Self Care magazine as well as my Lifestyle magazine and my Mental Health magazine.
Did I see any results?
Firstly, let me mention that within my time of being on Flipboard I ended up growing my following to 38 followers on there which isn’t a lot.
Now based on Google Analytics from December 2018 up until now February 6th, 2020, I received ONLY 4 clicks from Flipboard. This is really baffling considered I’ve put in lots of hours into this platform over the course of a year. Don’t get me wrong, I did end up finding a lot of great articles to read so my time wasn’t completely wasted… However, I did not benefit website traffic wise barely at all.
Now to be fair, I could not have seen any traffic because I didn’t discuss specific topics.
For example, I didn’t talk about Travel, Tech, Health, Fitness, Beauty, Home Decor, or Recipes (often or at all). However I did discuss social media, dating, music, Netflix, and blog related topics consistently.
This year I am going to try to experiment with those topics to see if the results change.
Right now I just feel like Flipboard is a platform that doesn’t allow too much room for growth unless you were on the platform when it initially was great within boosting growth for smaller bloggers that don’t have big followings similar to Popsugar, Forbes, or Elle Magazine.
I’ll update you guys in a couple of months to share with you whether I have seen any changes or growth.
If you want to follow me on Flipboard, you can here.
Have you guys tried using Flipboard? Did it increase your website traffic?
Did you see any results?
Let me know by leaving a comment down below. I’d love to hear about your results.
Hi Jasmine, I just read this blog. It is indeed hard to get a following on Flipboard. But look at it from another perspective, you are building another presence on Flipboard. Traffic also happens with readership on the app. So it’s like you have a whole other publication. You can also create magazines for each of the topics you blog about. Since you are an avid Flipboard user, like me I would love you to join our user group on Facebook. You bring lots of honest knowledge to the table. I like the fact that you call it fair and square. All the best to you and I look forward to connecting with you further. ~ Janette (https://www.facebook.com/groups/flipboard4business)
That makes sense that it is a whole other publication which could be useful. Thank you for letting me know about the group. I’ll definitely be joining!
Well Said Jasmine,
I am also a regular user of FlipBoard. Like you said, even i didn’t receive any reasonable traffic there. Anyway i use that for viewing others websites. Thanks for share.
It’s definitely great for finding other articles and websites for sure!