In digital marketing space, publishing web content is a must to keep your site updated and develop a consistent audience. The information you share affects your target audience’s decision-making process, and it can help you build partnerships, improve credibility, and most importantly, enhance the your website in the eyes of search engines.
But how do you make all these things possible? Obviously, you can’t just write an article, post it on your website, and expect your audience to discover it. You need to spend time promoting your content on all the channels where your audience hangs out.
Here are a few ideas on how you can get the most out of your content by sharing it on different platforms.
Email Campaigns
If you want your new content to reach your target audience in an instant, email campaigns are the most appropriate option. If you have at least 1000 subscribers to your blog or news section, you can drive these 1000 subscribers to your website by pointing them to your recently published article.
Email campaigns tend to be beneficial for small or enterprise businesses in terms of cost, scope of audience, and potential conversion from a single email campaign. Sharing your content through this channel will definitely give you enough data to measure your success in email campaigns.
Tips for Email Campaigns
Assuming you have a list of valid email addresses, the following tips can help you jump-start your email campaigns:
- Keep your subject line short, yet attractive. Similar to title tags, it should be descriptive as possible.
- Use a real email, not an info@email.com or noreply@email.com. Let your subscribers know they can talk to you via email!
- Choose the right day and time. Increase your open rate by testing the best time of day to send your emails.
- Don’t forget to do A/B testing. Test one element at a time to determine what is most effective so in the next campaign, you will know what works.
- Don’t forget to optimize your website for devices! Most people open their email through mobile or tablet devices.
- Don’t spam.
Content Creator Outreach
Another option is to get in touch with people in your industry who already write about your topic. By contacting content creators in your industry or closely related industries, you can enhance your contact list with influencers who might be able to help you promote your content. Since you are promoting a business online, building alliances definitely makes a lot of sense, and can be more effective than promoting your content all by yourself.
Keep in mind: your main goal in this outreach campaign is not to earn a links. You should just be happy if they share your content to their social connections so you can reach a larger, hopefully more targeted, audience.
How to Find Content Creators in Your Industry
Assuming you have the article ready to promote, looking for people who may be interested to share your content can be a good approach. Start by:
- Identify the top blogs in your industry with high user and social engagement using your target keywords in organic search.
- Use Twitter to find more content creators in your industry. Search for them in Twitter search box then look for people with websites or even blogs related to your industry.
Tips When Doing Content Creator Outreach
- Read recent posts and find common ground – this could help get their attention.
- Always use your a personalized email address when sending out emails (no info@ or donotreply@ addresses).
- Never ask for a link – just be happy with what they are willing to do.
- Connect with them through their social pages, Twitter, Facebook, Google+
Influencer Outreach
If you want your newly published content to be widely distributed to a large targeted audience in your industry, then this option is definitely for you. Influencer outreach is closely related to content creator outreach but the only difference is influencers have better reach and credibility, which can be beneficial for you.
Also, web pages shared by influencers tend to go viral and receive large amount of traffic. Through influencer outreach, your content can even be mentioned on other related websites in your industry with natural link credit.
How to Find Influencers in Your Industry
- Use Topsy to find people in your industry with popular posts.
- Attend events in your industry and collect contact information of the speakers.
- Use Buzzumo to find most shared content and key influencers.
But again, never ask for a link. Just be happy with what they are willing to do!
Niche Voting Sites
If your influencer or content creator outreach is not successful, you can use niche voting sites in your industry where content creators and influencers may gather. This can help your content be discovered by your target audience who may want to share your content to a larger targeted audience.
Niche voting sites tend give continuous referral traffic to a website if it gets the highest upvote by your target audience. So, the benefits you can get from voting sites in terms of traffic and content discovery is definitely high.
A good example of niche voting sites is Reddit.com, We are all aware that Reddit community based website where most of its content are submitted by community members such as text post or direct links divided through subreddit. Imagine you are in real estate industry, you could share your content on the following real estate subreddits:
- http://www.reddit.com/r/realestate
- https://www.reddit.com/r/RealEstatePhotography
- http://www.reddit.com/r/RealEstateTechnology
- http://www.reddit.com/r/CommercialRealEstate
That’s just one website but the opportunity to share your content is definitely high!
Social Communities
Similar to niche voting sites, social communities can also help your content increase its visibility to your target audience. The only difference is your audience can be a mixed of newbies, experts, and even influencers in your industry who may be interested to read and share your content in social channels.
The good thing about sharing content to social communities in your industry is your audience has the ability to interact with you and other community members.
Tips for Sharing Your Content on Social Communities
- Read the guidelines – You don’t want to be kicked out by being unaware of dos and don’ts.
- Respond to posts you have knowledge of – You want to get on the radar of influencers in your industry.
- Don’t just share your content – Provide snippets of your content so your audience can know what to expect if they click-through.
Social Media
Another method for content promotion is sharing it to your own social media. If you have a decent amount of targeted followers on your social pages, this can make it easier for your content to be seen by existing readers.
Similar to social communities, social pages also enable audience interaction on each posts so you can communicate directly with your audience. So if the methods listed above do not work, this option might help you in terms of promoting your content to your audience.
Tips in Sharing Your Content on Social Media
- Use images when sharing a post on your social pages. It’s more attractive than text.
- Post description matter. Use at least 150 characters in your description and make it descriptive as possible.
- Don’t use hashtags too much.
- Share your content at non-peak hours.
- Encourage clicks and interact with your audience who engaged in your post.
That’s it! You are now equipped with few ideas to increase the reach of your content. Just remember your content alone can’t work well if you don’t strategically share it, and content not found, is a content wasted. Your job doesn’t end when you hit the publish button.
Featured image: ShutterStock
Image 1: Flickr
