I have an awesome content, obviously people will automatically read it, amazed by it, and refer it to their friends and colleagues, right? Great contents will take care of promotion by itself!
Wrong
And it’s not only about content, either. There are many great novels, movies, or songs out there that failed to gain recognition due to the lack of promotion. There are many businesses that are on paper, awesome, but collapsed because they don’t have enough customers. On an even bigger scale, there are many, many great people with amazing education and skills, but are failing in life because they don’t know how to market themselves.
So, promoting your content is as, if not even more important than the quality of your content. You will be surprised that some successful bloggers even adopted the 80/20 rule: 80% promoting,20% creating,popularized by Social Triggers a few years back.
So, for the rest of this guide, we will learn not only how to promote your contents, but how to do it effectively. Without further ado, let us begin.
1. Social Media
‘But I’ve posted all my contents on all my social media channels’, you said. Wouldn’t that count as social media promotion already?
Well, it’s a good start, but far from enough. To utilize social media properly for timeline. promotion, we should put two main assumptions to consider: first, is that not everyone will see your post, It might be buried in their timeline. Second, is that not everyone will click your content even when they do see the post.
So ,how can we tackle both situations at once without being spammy? The answer is to schedule your promotional posts periodically.
This is based on the principle of remarketing: people are more likely to convert when they are shown the same promotion over and over again.
A common misconception is that your followers will be annoyed if they see the same post too frequently in a week or so. Yet, with social media being so busy nowadays, you are lucky if they see it even once.
So, promote more frequently, and track how many clicks you get with each post as best as you can. Also, use hashtags that are relevant to your niche,but remember not to use too many at one time (as a rule of thumb, never exceed two hashtags in one post).
2. Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is more commonly associated with promoting your products or services. However, it is also a valid and effective content promotion tactic.
The key here is finding the right influencer that is influential in the topic you are publishing, and connect with them.
There are many tools available to help you find influencers, a lot of them are free. Still, you will need to do the homework, and probably some trial and error before you can find the right influencer for the job.
Now, finding the influencer is one thing, but connecting with them is yet another task. There are many different approaches you can take, but generally, here are the things that will be considered by the influencer before they will partner up with you:
- How relevant is your brand with the influencer’s audience
- What value can you add to the influencer’s personal brand by endorsing your content
- Can you provide any benefit to their goals, visions, or beliefs?
- Is there any opportunity by working together with your brand to earn extra amplification or outreach?
- Last but not least, personal connection does matter, so it will help if you do know the influencer personally, or can connect with those that know them personally
So, to increase the likelihood of gaining the influencer’s amplification, you should focus on fulfilling those criteria above. Remember that influencers, especially big ones, are busy people, so make the process as fun as possible.
3. Guest Posting
Many will say that guest posting is dead, but it is still an effective way to promote your contents and your site in general, as long as you do it right.
With guest posting, you create a unique content and publish it on another site, preferably with a bigger reach and better authority than your site.
So, here you won’t be promoting a certain piece of content directly, but rather build your site authority, and if possible, getting backlinks.Guest posting can be a lot of work, but if you can find the right sites to do guest post, it can be really rewarding.
First, you will need to find credible sites in your niche. You might already have a list in mind, but if not, a simple google search will do the job. Check for their Page and Domain Authority, and make sure they have a lot of activity and conversations in their comment section (or similar features).
Start commenting on their posts with interesting comments. You can ask interesting questions to ignite conversations, or add valuable arguments related to the posts. The idea here is to build relationships with those sites, so maintain both frequency and quality of your comments.
Once you have engaged in at least several conversations, pitch the editors with your blog posts idea. Remember that your focus is gaining authority here, so don’t chase for backlinks unless you see that there’s a high probability.
Once your guest post is published, promote it as much as possible utilizing all of your available channels.
4. Comment Marketing
We have touched a bit of comment marketing in the guest posting section above, so you probably got the idea.
There are many that dreaded comment marketing, simply because there are a lot of bad practices involving bots (or people) spamming irrelevant comments with unrelated links.
That is not the proper way to do comment marketing, and if you have read the guest posting section above, you will understand that comment marketing is, in its essence, building relationship.
So, the idea is similar, first you will need to build relationships with the sites, and don’t include any links at all.
After you feel you’ve built enough relationship, you can include links to your content (as well as contents from other site), but make sure it’s relevant to the conversation at hand.
5. Paid Options
Promoting your contents mainly involve relationship and authority building, which might not be the best choice for short-term results.
Paid content promotion is a very wide topic by itself, so we give the whole topic a justice in this guide. However, we’ll do an overview of the important aspects, so you can have a proper start to your paid promotion campaigns.
Before starting any paid promotion campaign, there are two things you should focus on:
- Define Your audience
Make sure you know who your audience is. That way, you can get the most of your money with the proper targeting.
- Define Your Budget
Knowing how much you can spend can help you in identifying your options both in channels and targeting options. Also, planning your budget ahead will prevent you from spending too much.
For paid promotions, there are several channels available:
1. Social Media
Most, if not all major social media platforms offer options to run ads.
2. Paid Search/Search Engine Marketing
Although it is rather uncommon to promote contents through Google AdWords or other PPC search ad platforms, it is definitely a possibility.
3. Display Ads
Sometimes called banner ads, which you should be familiar with. Display ads are often used for retargeting, ad you can check out our guide on retargeting here (link).
4. Content Distribution Network
You might have stumbled upon the results of content distribution network before. If you see reading recommendations below an article like “if you like this, then read…”, that is usually a paid placement through content distribution network companies like Outbrain or Taboola. With the right targeting, content distribution network has very large reach, and can be really effective.
End Words
Promoting your contents is not an easy task, and you will need to invest a lot of time (and/ or money) to make it work, At the very least, you should invest as much as the content development itself.
The channels and options we’ve shared above will help you get in the right track In promoting your contents. The road ahead sure isn’t easy, but it is definitely doable with patience, determination, and learning process.
