The Dummies Guide to Content Promotion
Nothing is worse than spending a ton of time on a piece of content only for it to be seen by virtually no one. Once you’ve created your incredible, out-of-this-world content, you’ve got to do everything in your power to get the world to see it. Or at least, the people who want to see it most. This way, it will be as impactful as possible.
Here are the most effective ways to get your content out to as many of the right people as possible. These tactics should help you multiply the number of readers you currently have and increase awareness everywhere.
Post Your Content On Major Social Media Platforms
Share your content on social media for a bigger reach, but don’t overload your fans with your content. Post about four non-branded pieces of content for every branded one, as we talked about in in our social media article. Make sure your posts are visually appealing on more visual social networks, such as Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram. Promote your most compelling content on social media by boosting your posts on Facebook and promoting your Tweets.
Join in Google+ community, LinkedIn Groups and reddit discussions that are relevant to your industry. Share your content to these targeted groups when it will benefit them. You’ll need to be a bit more careful about doing this on reddit, as the users are not fans of marketers. Find specific topics being discussed on Twitter using Tweetdeck or Hootsuite and engage in conversation about your industry.
To encourage other people share your content without any extra work on your part, add social sharing and “like” buttons to your blog.
Other Places To Post Your Content On The Web
When it comes to posting your own content, don’t stop at social networks. Answer questions in general forums around the web. For example, you could help users on Quora by answering their questions on the question-and-answer site and referring them to content on your website for even more helpful information. Search for industry-specific forums on the web that you can be active and share content on, like RealSelf.
Promote Your Content On Your Website
You don’t have to leave your website to practice content promotion. Make sure to feature new content, such as recent blog posts, on your homepage and suggest additional posts in the sidebar of your blog based on the post the user is currently reading.
Practice internal linking by linking to your own content within your posts and throughout your website. Go through your analytics to find the highest-performing pages based on pageviews. Add links to new content within this popular content where applicable.
Building Relationships With Social Media Influencers
Social media influencers can typically promote your posts better than you can if you’re new to social media, since they have such a large following and are trusted by their community. Link to influential bloggers in your industry in your blog posts. They’ll be more likely to share your content if they are mentioned in it. You can find influencers by using Buzzsumo.
Along with simply shouting out to them, you should also work on building relationships with influencers in your industry. If these influencers have a good relationship with you, they will likely link to your content in their articles and share your content via social media – as long as you create high quality content. Create content targeting influencers in your industry and make sure to mention them when you share the content on social media. You should also promote their content. They’re likely to return the favor if you do it regularly enough.
Utilize Your Newsletters and Email Lists
If you have an email and/or newsletter list, you already know a group of people who are interested in what you have to offer. Blast out your new and compelling content to your email list every so often – not excessively. You should also feature new blog posts in your newsletter.
The key to creating content is to make sure it is consistently outstanding, unique and likely to be searched for. Then, it will promote itself.
