Content marketing is still one of the most valuable tools that any digital business owner has.
With the right content, you not only enhance your visibility online, but you also gain influence, develop crucial authority, and eventually win sales too.
Unfortunately, creating effective content is only half the battle.
Once you’ve painstakingly crafted the perfect piece of content, you need to make sure that it doesn’t drown in a sea of other competing publications.
The digital landscape is incredibly crowded, with more than a billion websites online, and additional sites appearing every second. On Facebook alone, we have users liking more than 4.2 million pieces of content per second. On top of that, business leaders are dealing with a customer base that has an attention span that barely competes with that of a goldfish.
The key to making sure that your incredible content actually makes an impact online is proper promotion.
Fortunately, we have a selection of fantastic promotion options to help get you started on the right track.
Social Media
Social media is probably one of the most popular options for content promotion that there is. If you know where your customers are spending their time online, you can engage with them in an environment that’s all about discovery and discussion.
- Share It
First things first, share a link to your new piece of content on the social media site of your choice. If you’re sharing on something like Instagram, you’ll need to use a picture that leads someone to your “link in bio”. Elsewhere, on Twitter or Facebook, you can simply use a link, as well as a quote from your content that captures your audience’s attention.
Remember, adding a picture to your social shares will instantly improve your chances of standing out from the collection of other posts published every day.
- Get Targeted
There are a number of great ways that you can make your content more appealing on social media, from adding questions to your posts to a specially branded #hashtag. One option is to @mention people that are going to love your article.
@Mentioning someone, like an influencer that you’ve referenced in your content, is a great way to get them to retweet or re-share whatever you’ve posted online. Provided that your content is valuable, you could easily grab the support of multiple influencers this way.
- Add Sharing Buttons to your Site
Why do all of your sharing yourself?
Adding things like social sharing buttons to the bottom of your blog posts or your latest video will allow the people in your community to share your content with their own followers. This is a great way to reach potential new readers.
At the same time, shares from actual members of your audience generally carry a lot more weight than content posted directly by your brand. Try Share This to create customized buttons for your website.
- Optimize Your Posts
Optimizing your social media posts improves your chances of them reaching as many people as possible. For instance, you can use solutions like Facebook audience targeting to ensure that you’re connecting with the people who are most likely to enjoy your posts.
Alternatively, you can examine things like Facebook and Instagram Insights to find out when the best times of day to post are for members of your audience. Posting content at the right time means it’s less likely to get drowned out by other information.
- Use Social Bookmarking Sites
Social bookmarking sites are more valuable than people think – if you know which ones to use.
Sharing content on environments like Reddit, where there are subreddits for virtually every topic gives you a chance to reach out to communities that are genuinely interested in what you have to say.
The key to success is making sure that you’re not just posting your content everywhere. You need to ensure that you’re only adding links to conversations that are relevant to your company, and whatever you’re sharing.
- Add Eye-Catching Images
According to this case study from SmartBlogger, adding imagery to your social media posts could make or break your chances of a successful share. The SmartBlogger team achieved around 266% more traffic just by adding more photos to their content.
Pictures are one of the quickest ways to capture the attention of your target audience, particularly in a fast-moving environment like social media. Just make sure that you’re providing the right kinds of high-quality content. Old-fashioned stock images or grainy photos won’t work nearly as well.
- Try Videos
Speaking of visual content, you don’t have to stick to experimenting with pictures alone. As it becomes increasingly easy and affordable to design animated videos online, more companies are bringing video into their social sharing campaigns.
You could even consider using something like Facebook or Instagram Live video to show the more authentic and raw side of your business. A lot of customers appreciate this technique and believe it helps to strengthen their relationship with brands.
- Explore Groups
Social media platforms are pretty big places. Sometimes, the easiest way to reach the right audience with your content is to narrow your reach. Facebook Groups and LinkedIn groups are some of the best ways to connect with people who you know are going to see value in whatever you have to say.
You can use keywords to search for specific groups online, Remember, some groups are closed, which means that you’ll need to prove that you deserve access.
- Make Instagram Stories
Instagram is one of the most popular places to share content online, with more than a billion active users. While there are plenty of ways that you can distribute your content on Instagram, one of the easiest options is to experiment with Stories.
Stories are excellent because they draw attention to your content with temporary advertisements. This means that you can share a new Story with your audience every day. This guidance from Shopify shows you how to use Instagram Stories to preview upcoming content on your website too.
- Let Customers Come Behind the Scenes
Most of your followers are keen to get to know you and your brand a little better. With that in mind, it makes sense to let them get behind the scenes at times. Live videos on Facebook or Instagram, as well as raw snaps on Snapchat, are an excellent way to make your business look more authentic.
One particularly good way to use behind-the-scenes content is to provide extra information about the latest content you posted. For instance, maybe you could showcase some of the work you did to gather information for a survey.
- Use Polls
Getting users engaged in social media is one of the best ways to ensure that they’ll interact with your content and your brand. Since everyone loves to feel as though their voice is heard, a poll can be a fantastic way to get feedback from your target market that inspires your next piece of content.
Ask your audience what they liked about your latest blog post or video. This will push them to actually read what you’ve shared and give you useful reviews.
- Try a Competition
A competition will get people excited about interacting with your business. After all, everyone wants an opportunity to get something for nothing. With competitions, you can generate engagement with your target audience, and convince them to do some promotion on your behalf.
For instance, you could ask someone to “like” your post, tag a friend, or even re-share or retweet something for a chance to win:
- Use Paid Advertising
Most social media channels today some with some kind of paid advertising option for when you need to ramp up your chances of earning attention online. On Facebook, you can pay for ads that directly target the perfect audience for your company. Hootsuite offers an excellent insight into how to target ads on Facebook.
Remember, if you’re using paid advertising to promote your content, you should make sure that you’re only promoting the blogs and videos that have the best impact on your online reputation. Focus on the content that really makes you shine.
- Join Forces with an Influencer
As well as paying for social media to promote your content for you, there’s also another way to capture audience attention by getting the people that your audience already listens to involved. Finding local influences or micro-influencers who can give your posts a shout-out is a great way to make them more engaging.
Remember to @mention the people that you want to promote your content when you’re sharing your posts online. You could also get influencers involved in the future by asking them to take part in interviews or collaborative posts.
SEO
Social media might be one of the most valuable ways to get your content trending online, but it’s not the only option. Search engine optimization can provide you with compounding returns for your content, by drawing focus for years to come.
- Write authoritative Content
Amazing content will always be at the heart of an excellent SEO strategy. Google focuses on writing and promoting your content in its guide here:
One of the main reasons why writing high-quality content will help you to get found today, is that it encourages other high-authority websites to link back to your pages. Backlinks from relevant companies will show Google that you’re an expert in your field, which helps you to rank higher. What’s more, your backlinks also give you extra chances to attract new customers.
- Optimize for Voice Search
Voice search is a concept that’s gaining a lot of ground these days. As smart speakers become increasingly popular, people are beginning to ask Siri and Alexa for what they need, rather than typing content into a search bar.
Optimizing for voice search means ensuring that you have plenty of long-tail keywords and questions in your content. Think about how you can add more conversational content to your website. You can also think about optimizing for local voice search with phrases like “near me”.
- Boost your SEO with Schema Markup
Want to convince your customers to click on your website, rather than visiting a competitor? Schema Markup can help with that. Neil Patel offers a fantastic overview of how to use the Google Structured Data Markup helper to add more content to your search engine listings.
If you’re successful in your methods, then you’ll be able to increase your chances of appearing in featured snippets, add videos and photos to your search engine listings, and even implement ratings into your listings too.
- Optimize Every Piece of Content
This might sound like one of the more obvious promotional methods that we’ve covered so far, but it still works. Optimizing your content for SEO improves your chances that you’ll capture the attention of the search engines, and therefore your customers.
Long-tail keyword research that allows you to create content that’s designed to suit customer intent is a good place to start. You’ll also need to think about things like optimizing your content images with alt-tags and posting internal links into your content. Here are some useful insights into the main SEO strategies you can use.
- Use Google Trends for Inspiration
Google Trends is a free website that helps you to learn more about what your customers are searching for. You’ll need a Gmail account to start using it, or a G Suite account – but that won’t be a problem for most website owners today.
With Google Trends, you can search for any topic and gauge it’s potential to attract customers over time. This is a great way to make sure that you’re always taking advantage of the most interesting discussions in your industry.
- Optimize for Local Search
When you’re trying to attract as many people to your content as possible, it’s easy to forget that you don’t always have to target a large, global audience. Sometimes, it’s much more effective to think small. Consider using local names for countries and cities in your content so you can attract a closer audience.
You could also try things like optimizing your Google My Business listing, so you can ensure that you show up on any maps when people are searching for your business.
- Use Native Advertising
Native advertising is a relatively old-fashioned method of digital marketing, but it’s also a great way to gain more attention online if you know how to use it properly.
Ultimately, the key to success is making sure that you can appear as natural as possible in your customer’s browsing experience.
- Invest in Earned Media
Earned media is a crucial component of building your SEO strategy. Basically, it’s a lot like word of mouth. However, instead of just getting input from random customers, you’re getting a shout out from people who have a bigger presence in your chosen industry.
Getting earned media can mean collaborating with other influential bloggers on an in-depth piece that you promote together. Alternatively, it could just mean that you reach out to journalists and forums in your space and ask them to report on your latest stories.
- Publish on Content Networks
You don’t have to publish your content on just your own website if you want to reap the benefits of SEO. You can also think about getting involved with content networks – like Medium.
Medium is a lifestyle and news publication that covers a huge number of topics. Getting your content published here means that you can reach a different kind of audience. At the same time, if you include a backlink to your website or original post, you’ll have a chance to improve your link portfolio too.
- Comment on Other Blog Posts
Did you know that Google is considering “Mentions” as well as backlinks to measure a company’s authority and expertise these days? That means that just having your website mentioned on another blog could be enough to improve your search engine presence.
Seeking out blog posts from influential people in your industry and commenting on them is an excellent way to talk about your business naturally. Just make sure that you don’t sound too overly promotional. Focus on adding value to the piece by giving your unique thoughts and opinions instead.
- Use Question/Answer Websites
Want to share your thought leadership with the world, gain more followers for your website, and improve your SEO ranking at the same time? Answer some crucial questions. You can aim for the “People Also Ask” part of Google by optimizing your content for questions.
Another option is to go onto websites like Quora and answer questions with the blog posts and articles you’ve already written. Remember, don’t just share a link to your latest post when you’re responding to someone. Give an in-depth answer, and then offer your link as a place to find extra information.
- Create Shareable Infographics
A lot of people assume that written copy is at the heart of SEO for digital promotion. While it’s true that text has a huge impact on the digital world, there are other ways that you can ramp up your presence online too.
For instance, creating an educational infographic packed full of useful and unique information is an excellent way to pull more people back to your website. Infographics made with tools like Canva and Visual.ly will give you something to share with authoritative websites when you want them to mention or link back to your company.
- Create a Referral Network
A referral network is another excellent way to take advantage of word of mouth marketing when developing your SEO strategy. According to Entrepreneur.com, a referral network is a group of like-minded people who refer information to each other.
Getting other people in your network to help promote your latest blogs, articles, and case studies could be a quick and easy way to extend your reach in today’s digital world.
- Get Your Content Listed on a Directory
Content listing is one of the oldest SEO and promotional strategies around today. It involves sending a valuable piece of content that you’ve written to a company or person who lists useful resources on a larger page.
You’ll need to make sure that you’re reaching out to the right people with this strategy. The last thing you want is for your website to be listed alongside a huge number of spammy or low-quality websites. However, on the other hand, if you can get a list on a site that references a lot of high-quality sites, then this could convince Google that you deserve to be counted as a high-quality site too.
Here’s a quick guide to some great directories.
Mix Up Your Content Strategy
It’s much easier to successfully promote your content online if you have the right content to share in the first place. Here are some quick and simple ways that you can use the content resources you already have to make your site more engaging.
- Consider Content Syndication
Just because you’ve already published your content on your website, doesn’t mean that you can’t get more attention for it elsewhere. Content syndication involves re-posting your content on a third-party website, like Medium, LinkedIn, or even another company’s blog.
The key to success is making sure that you mention where the blog originally came from, with a handy backlink. This prevents Google from treating the content as “copied”. Additionally, it means that you earn more backlinks for your site.
- Try Guest Posting
A common alternative to Content Syndication is guest posting. Usually, with a guest post, you’ll create a brand-new piece of content for the company that you want to collaborate with. You’ll have to make sure that you’re following the guest-posting guidelines that the business provides carefully so that your content is approved.
However, if you can produce a piece of excellent content that delights and informs the website’s target audience, then you’ll be able to attract some new followers in no time.
- Write a List Post
Although long-form content has a valuable place in your marketing strategy – it’s worth experimenting with other options from time to time too. According to PSD learning, list posts are brief and easy to digest – which makes them great for a wide selection of different customers.
Additionally, the easy to consume nature of lists means that they’re also highly sharable. If you’re looking to gain traffic through word-of-mouth marketing and backlinks, then a list post could help you to do that.
- Interview Experts
Interviews allow you to do a number of positive things for your ability to earn traffic. First of all, a conversation with a professional in your industry allows you to show your audience how authoritative you are, by connecting you with big names in your niche.
At the same time, interviewing an expert ensures that you can deliver unique content that customers simply can’t find anywhere else. From a promotional perspective, this makes your interviews inherently more shareable. It also means that you’re likely to get attention from the audience of the person that you interview too. Christina Walker offers some great tips on planning an interview here.
- Write your Own Product Review
Rather than just writing content that provides people with basic information about your brand and the things that you sell – why not create your very own product review.
This will go alongside other testimonials from people around the world to provide people with information when they’re in the earlier stages of their buying cycle. What’s more, it could give you an excellent opportunity to answer any pressing questions that your customers have about whatever you have to sell.
- Create Podcasts from your Posts
Expand on your popular blog posts and give them a new lease on life by transforming them into podcasts. Today, podcasting is growing increasingly popular around the world. After all, it gives customers an easy way to consume your content without having to pay too much attention to a screen.
Turning your blog posts into podcasts gives your customers another way to share your information. At the same time, it means you can appear in useful environments like Apple Music.
- Host a Webinar or Class
If you post a lot of educational content on your website, then why not repurpose it into something a lot more engaging. Creating a webinar or class can give you a fantastic chance to show how much knowledge you really have in a certain area.
For instance, Jon Schumacher earned around $14,000 just from getting 48% of his audience to check out his webinar. Publishing a webinar also means that you’re more likely to appear as a thought leader in the eyes of other businesses, who may want to interview you.
- Trade Quotes
Do you have some useful snippets of information to share with your audience? Go online and find other companies that have posted blogs and articles about the same topic. Reaching out to the writers with your quotes, as well as any other useful information that makes those quotes valuable – such as unique studies, can help to get you a mention on some new sites.
Remember, you’ll need something really special to convince someone to post your quote. One option could be to promise the writer that you’ll post their quotes on your website in exchange for them giving you a shout-out.
- Use Email Plugins
Social media isn’t the only way to get people to share your content with others online. WordPress plugins like WP-Email and Email this page are another fantastic solution. These tools ensure that your audience members can instantly send content to their friends, families, and coworkers.
Although most people will prefer to share through social buttons, an email could be a good option for B2B customers who spend more time checking email than dealing with Facebook.
- Use Magnets to Collect Email Addresses
Speaking of Email, it’s another fantastic way to promote your content, if you use it correctly. Adding a lead magnet to your page, like a free download for an eBook, or entry to an upcoming webinar, can convince someone to sign up to your newsletter, and be the first to hear about your upcoming content.
You can even add the content from some of your latest blogs to your email signature. This way, people who sign up to your newsletter just to hear about your latest product deals and offers can still check out whatever you’re trying to promote.
Other Options for Promotion
As the way that customers browse the internet and share information continues to evolve, the number of promotional options available for today’s brands is growing. These days, you can use everything from in-app notifications to Slack communities to reach new readers.
- Ask for Shares
One of the easiest ways to get your customers to help you with your content promotion is to simply ask them. Adding a note to the bottom of your blog post or video that requests shares on social media is a great way to encourage interaction from your readers.
If your content was valuable enough, then most clients will only need that tiny extra push to get involved and promote it for you. You can also add your social media buttons to the bottom of your page to make sharing even easier which is one of the best ways to get shares.
- Use in-App Notifications
Got your own smartphone app? A lot of companies are beginning to move in this direction. Whether you’re running a website that offers software for smartphones, or you’re just using your app to stay connected to your customers, a quick notification could be a great way to collect more readers.
Just make sure that your audience has a way to “opt-out” of those notifications if they don’t want to see them. Flooding people with pop-ups that they don’t want on their phone could convince them to uninstall your application.
- Get on Slideshare
Slideshare might be one of the OG options for B2B marketing, but that doesn’t make it any less effective. Going into Slideshare and uploading a presentation version of content that you’ve already developed is a great way to encourage more sharing online.
You can take the graphics that you create on this website and publish them on everything from LinkedIn to Facebook. This provides your customers with an excellent new way to consume whatever you write.
- Explore Slack Communities
Slack Communities are another excellent place for you to get distributing your content. While most people assume that Slack is just for building company culture and collaborating with team members- that isn’t the case.
There are also open communities that you can join too – similar to the groups on Facebook and LinkedIn. If you can find a Slack community that’s relevant to your industry, then you can also track down hundreds of people that are keen to learn about your product or service. Check out some of the best communities here.
- Invest in Remarketing
Finally, why not give yourself a second chance of reaching someone who has already shown interest in your website. Remarketing ads on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn allow you to present information about your website to people who have already visited your page.
This is an excellent way to promote your content for a second time and improve your chances of actually getting lucrative engagement from members of your audience. Here’s a guide for how to create some Facebook retargeting campaigns.
Ready to Promote?
Ultimately, there are dozens of different ways that you can promote your website online today.
Usually, the best outcomes will come from combining a number of the different solutions mentioned above into a strategy that covers a multitude of unique traffic streams for your brand.
Remember, as you’re promoting, make sure that you have methods in place to track the performance of each method you use. This will make it easier to determine which campaigns you should continue investing in, and which you might want to leave behind.
