In the online marketing world, you hear a lot about the importance of creating high-quality content. However, creating and publishing content are only the first steps toward a successful campaign. Many content marketers neglect the importance of content marketing.
The term “content marketing” simply refers to the process of distributing your content across multiple channels to maximize its visibility. Obviously, if you fail to market your content sufficiently, you are unlikely to reach your target audience and will lose a huge portion of your ROI (return on investment).
If you want to have better content marketing, then you are in the right place. This short article will cover some of the more advanced tactics for promoting your content.
1. Get Your SEO Right
“SEO” simply refers to the marketing discipline that focuses primarily on having content that is highly visible in unpaid (organic) search engine results. Not only has SEO changed the digital marketing industry, It also works hand-in-hand with content marketing to fuel your online success.
If you want your content to attract organic traffic, you need to make your SEO right from the beginning. Integrating SEO optimization into your website will help search engines find your content, therefore increasing your presence in search result pages.
Additionally, SEO is constantly changing to provide the best experience for users, so you need to read about it regularly to stay up-to-date with any changes and keep your SEO optimized.
Here are a few things to keep in mind when optimizing your SEO:
- Research and use relevant keywords.
- Include your chosen keywords in your URLs, images, and content.
- Download the Yoast SEO Plugin.
- Optimize your page titles and meta-descriptions.
- Improve your page’s load speed.
- Utilize an XML sitemap.
- Add internal links to your content.
- Use headings and other formatting options to make your pages easier to read.
- Regularly check for broken links in your content and on your website.
- Update your website with fresh content.
2. Leverage the Authority of Influencers
If you are continually looking around the internet for ways to promote your content, then you have probably come across something called “influence marketing”. Influence marketing, sometimes known as influencer marketing, is the process of identifying, researching, engaging, and supporting people who create high-impact conversations with customers about your brand, products, or services.
Influence marketing is a fast-growing online marketing tactic and has been crushing other marketing channels like affiliate marketing, paid search, and social media.
To put it simply, you can think of influencer marketing as a tool to accelerate the results from your implemented content marketing strategy.
Leveraging the power of influencers is a great way to get your content in front of a larger audience and see fast results. Also, when you use an influencer to market your content, you will gain access to the influencer’s already established fanbase, resulting in higher visibility across social media channels.
Related: Influencer Marketing Strategies: Tips to Help you Find the Right Social Media Influencers
3. Forum Marketing
Forum marketing is an old promotion tool that was once considered one of the best ways to reach a specific audience. While forums aren’t the best places to promote your product, they can be very effective in maximizing the reach of your content.
It’s easy to find forums related to your niche, all it takes is a quick google search that uses terms, phrases, or words that are specific to the audience you are trying to reach. For example, let say you are trying to reach an online marketing niche. To find forums related to online marketing, do a Google search that includes the following:
- Forum “online marketing”
- Forum “digital marketing”
- Forum “marketing discussion”
The results page will show an expansive list of forums related to the digital marketing industry. With these results, you should then make a list of the most active forums and save it on a spreadsheet.
The forum marketing method of promotions is similar to a blog comment. You should focus your efforts on adding value and making a good impression, at least in the beginning.
People read forums to look for answers and solutions to their problems. So, your job is to promote your content while adding value to the forum’s conversations. When done correctly, this method can be very effective for broadening the reach of your content.
4. Submit the Post to Communities Like Reddit and Quora
Reddit and Quora have an excellent ranking in Google for various different industries because they have a satisfying user experience through answering questions. Quora alone has more than 300 million monthly visitors and it still growing. These websites not only are a great platform to promote your content but also boost your credibility and expand your reach to wider audiences.
To get the most benefit from websites like Reddit and Quora, you need to provide value for the users by appropriately answering questions and providing solutions.
Also, you’re allowed to include your content links in your comments as long as they are related to and add to the existing conversation. These communities are working hard to push out spammers who want to beat the system.
Related: 11 Content Editing Tools for Error-Free Writing
5. Email Marketing
While social media marketing is a powerful way to promote your content, traditional email marketing is still one of the best channels to share your content. It is not surprising that marketing emails have an average click-through rate of 3.57%. While a Facebook ad, on the other hand, can expect a click-through rate of 0.07% on average.
In fact, many marketers are continuing to use email marketing for promotional purposes only, simply because of its effectiveness to drive traffic to new content through starting conversations and increasing social media shares. Additionally, email marketing is known to improve customer engagement in general.
Since most visitors have shown interest in your content by subscribing to your list, they are also more likely to respond to an email you send to them.
Whenever you create a new piece of content, you should write a short message to your subscriber list announcing the new content or service. This short message should include a short teaser of the service near the beginning of the message to encourage them to click your link. Also, encourage your followers to leave a comment and share it with their friends and community on social media platforms so your content can reach a wide group of people.
If the first email did not get the result you were expecting, just send them another email a few days later with a different subject line. Check your analytics regularly to see the performance of your emails.
Related: How Email Subject Lines can Boost Your Email Open Rates
6. Guest Posting
You are spending your valuable time on researching, writing, and editing to create a quality blog post to gain massive exposure. Unfortunately, you will quickly come to realize that you are not reaching the volume of people you were expecting. Don’t worry. That’s completely normal, especially if you are just starting out.
According to Copyblogger, “content marketing results happen slowly and they happen over time.”
So, if you want to reach the maximum number of people, you need to publish the right content in the right place and at the right time.
One of the best strategies to gain massive exposure is to create guest posts. If you are not familiar with this term, a guest post is when another blogger, content creator, or writer creates content to be published on the original writer’s blog or website. Countless bloggers will gladly accept submissions from other people. However, not all blogs are created equally nor do they generate the same amount of traffic.
If you want to go for this method of promotion, you need to be strategic in your approach and select your targets carefully. Unsurprisingly, guest posts are a very effective promotional method for many reasons. First, you will get a steady amount of organic traffic, leads, and customers. Second, guest posting stimulates social shares and grow your network. Finally, this tactic is useful to build a name for yourself in the digital marketing industry and establish a higher credibility.
Additionally, not only will guest posts establish your authority in your respective niche, but they will also improve both your writing and marketing skills as well.
7. Share Your Content Multiple Times
Usually, posting the same content over and over seems controversial and unnecessary. Some people like it and find no issue with repeatedly promoting the same content, while others say it is wrong. To put it bluntly, there is a fine line between being seen as a proud content creator and being seen as an annoying spammer.
Many bloggers who do not have a problem with promoting the same product or service over and over again on social media or otherwise often argue that continuously sharing your content reaches a broader audience and can boost traffic through transcending time zones.
You can post it through a comment or responding to a question. Also, you should use it on your newsletter and encourage your subscribers to share it again.
8. Repurpose Your Content
Producing regularly high-quality content is a must to attract more traffic to your website and to build brand awareness. But most online marketers have neither the energy, time, nor resources to create high-quality content consistently. You can drive extra traffic to your blog by creating “new” pieces of content by repurposing the same content in different/older versions.
For example, you can combine the highest performing blog posts, turn them into a PDF, and send it to your subscribers. Write a short version of that content and post it on the LinkedIn Pulse.
Since visual content is easy to share, you can turn your content into visual slides and upload it on Slideshare.
Related: The Best Online Custom Writing Services
9. Connect with Others who have Shared Similar Content
Bloggers who have similar content to yours are not your competitors. Your content can reach a wider audience if you build a strong relationship with others.
If you read and post a comment on their content, they will be pleased if you gently ask them to share your content.
10. Facebook Ads
While many marketers are taking advantage of the cost-effectiveness of content marketing, it is important to realize that even the easiest marketing strategies require some investment. Sometimes, even if you create a top-notch piece of content, it does not reach the people it is supposed to. In such a case, content advertising can be an effective solution, such as Facebook ads.
This social network has some huge advantages when it comes at promoting your content using ads. First, Facebook ads are ridiculously cheaper than other platforms. Also, they are easy to set up, and produce some results pretty quickly. The main advantage of using Facebook ads is the number of targeting options that you can choose from. You can reach people based on their age, location, gender, interests, and more.
In order to reap the benefits of your content marketing strategy, you need to maximize your promotion efforts. Outbrain, Taboola, and StumbleUpon are great content distribution platforms that promote related articles on higher authority blogs and websites.
The most successful content marketers and bloggers use the same strategies I outlined above. If you start implementing what I’ve just shared with you, your content will generate greater exposure and a higher conversion rate.