You’ve written the content, published it to your site, and now you sit back and wait for the readers to come. If this is your content marketing plan, you are missing out on an essential piece of the puzzle — content promotion.
Why Do I Need to Promote My Content?
We are far from the early days of the internet when a reader’s options for content were limited. With thousands of pieces of new content hitting the web every second, you need to distribute and promote your content in order to reach the right people, especially if you have a newer site.
When you started your content marketing your goal was to get in front of right-fit prospects. They have a problem or question, search online, and you pop up as a result highlighting your expertise. Organic traffic and ranking takes time, however.
Promoting your content will help you start the conversation with your prospects earlier while also giving signals to search engines that can in turn help accelerate your organic ranking. If you are writing relevant and engaging content that keeps visitors on your site, search engines will take that as a signal that you’re doing something right. They will assume your content has authority on the topic and that it matches the search intent of the reader.
Simply put, if people discover your site via promoted content and they signal to Google they like it, then Google will move it up the rankings. This improvement in ranking will then get your content in front of other users looking for the information and services your company provide.
3 Content Promotion Tactics That Get Results
If you think of your site as your home, then promotion of your content is like sending invitations out on the web for people to come visit. There are a lot of different ways to send out these invites, but there are three important ones that should be a part of any business’s content promotion strategy.
Social media
Social media is an ever-changing landscape, but an important part of today’s business world. It is a great way to highlight your company’s expertise and personality. When it comes to your content promotion strategy it is a powerful free tool if used correctly.
Social media can be a full-time job, but it doesn’t have to be. These are a few of the best practices for using it for content promotion which require minimal effort.
- Choose one or two platforms to focus on. Figure out the platforms that your target audience is most active on and consolidate your efforts towards those.
- Schedule each piece of content for promotion more than once. The algorithms on most social platforms make it to where only a small portion of your audience sees any given post. Sharing each article more than once increases the chance that someone new will see it. When you schedule the first share, go ahead and plan a second post of the content a few weeks out. Change the copy each time you share it to keep it fresh.
- Customize the social copy for each platform. Because people use LinkedIn differently than they use Twitter, you need to promote your content in the most relevant way to that audience and platform style.
- Don’t just post content without an intro. Setting the piece of content up for your audience and framing it to their problems or needs will increase the chance that they click through to your site. Social media platforms are designed to keep users on their site so you need to entice people to not just like a post, but actually click through.
If you have a list of already engaged customers or prospects, do not neglect it. These are people who have already said they are interested in hearing from you and their visits to your site are another way to signal to search engines that your content is engaging and relevant. There are a few basic content promotion practices to keep in mind when it comes to email:
- Don’t just share content when it is fresh. While getting eyes on your new content is important, it’s equally as important to ensure your older content isn’t ignored. Reshare older content as part of a themed email in case new people have joined your list or the recipients needs/interests have changed.
- Encourage sharing. Email recipients have already bought into your business so they are a great source of possible referral traffic. Use a CTA that encourages them to pass it on to other colleagues who might have the same problem.
Paid
While the first two tactics are mostly free, the power of paid promotion to reach an untapped audience is much greater. Having a strong paid marketing strategy can get you directly in front of prospects looking for your services, but it can also have important affects on your content marketing. By increasing brand awareness, you will most likely see increased organic traffic as well.
Social media, email, and paid marketing are content promotion tactics perfect for businesses in any phase of their content marketing lifecycle. As you mature with your marketing, other tactics open up greater possibilities for increasing organic ranking, reaching prospects, and increasing overall brand awareness. Regardless of the tactics you are using you need to create a workable promotion plan.
How to Create a Sustainable Promotion Strategy
Like any good strategy, a content promotion plan takes time and resources to successfully execute. Content promotion should not be an afterthought in your content marketing strategy. To tie all of these promotional approaches together, consider the tips below as you create your next campaign.
- Plan promotion when you plan your content. Which pieces will be promoted via paid and which organically? When will the second and third reposts of content take place?
- Budget for promotion in both time and money. How much time will be spent posting content, commenting to increase engagement, and reaching out to influencers? What is the paid budget?
- Set up a system for promotion and decide who will be responsible for keeping it on track. If you don’t have a designated marketing person, it is important to decide who will be in charge of promoting the content. Will someone different be in charge of each channel? Can you use a scheduling tool to preschedule paid, email and social?
Content promotion isn’t a nice to have. If you are putting in the resources to create content, you need to follow a promotion strategy to get the most out of your efforts. Don’t wait for Google to lead people to your home on the web. Get out there with invitations for people to come see you and find out how great your business is.