When you believe you have great content, you want to go viral. You start to contemplate. Perhaps, a catchy promotional video? Sharing it on a social networking groups, a creative campaign? It doesn’t matter how much flashy it seems, if it is not distributed in the right areas. So how can you plant your new content in the right networks?

Traffic And Credibility Comes From Seeding

Content seeding is an online marketing strategy to scatter content across the Internet and thus making it visible on digital platforms, such as blogs and social communities. The more sites your content gets spread to, the more likely it is that someone will notice it, read it and share it.

Image courtesy: Camilla Lesjak

Digital marketing 101 states that seeding is a very important element in online marketing. By planting your content online, you can raise awareness of your company and increase overall SEO. The primary focus of content seeding should be to convince influencers in your industry to validate and distribute your content through their network. The range is far greater and adds to your credibility, than if you only even share your content by yourself in only your own network.

If Content   creators spread their content to various digital locations then content will be read, noticed and spread. 

Take The Right Approach By Asking Questions

Content Seeding is not as straightforward as one might think. You always have to ask the questions in order to find the right approach to your content strategy. Who is the target audience? What type of content creates value for them? And so forth. But relating to your digital marketing activities, you could consider these questions:

How Do You Manage Your Network?

Maintaining a healthy network is vital for all marketing activities - both online and offline. You’ll need it later for your seeding, if you remember to engage and involve yourself with your network to distribute your content.

In addition to this, it is a good idea to consider what your network and their audience are “listening to”. Here we are talking about the so-called influencers, who have a very large following compared to the average user. Contacting influencers, you think, will find your content most interesting will enable you to easily bridge a gap between you and the audience you are trying to reach. Just remember that it is important to ’sell’ your content in the right way. Why should they share your content? And how can it benefit their network.

Which Channels Do You Use?

You need to have a clear idea of who your target audience is, if you want to create a successful online campaign. More often than not, most of us believe that we have grasp of who they are. But do we know what they are doing? Or more importantly do we want to know? We should know that people on Instagram provide us with ample opportunity to share pictures or videos with them. Companies, such as Nike or restaurant owners like Jamie Oliver are able to create awareness, goodwill and sales, as pictures can tell a 1000 words. Or even share small videos of day to day activities.

Nike has more than 2o million followers on Instagram, who often share their latest clothing items, while asking their customers for reviews and opinions of their items Image: Nike Instagram page

Bloggers often have a huge fan following, and often their fans are savvy users of social media. Therefore, working with popular bloggers or vloggers can, for instance give a little bakery shops content a whole new dimension on Instagram or Tumblr. Just make sure that there is connection between your content the bloggers audience, as that is what amplifies your distribution. Sites like Digg, Reddit, or StumbleUpon are ideal for content seeding.

Image: Stumbleupon

How To Make It Work?

Once you have your plan and strategy in place, now it’s time to produce the actual content. Again think about how your target audience will react if you create content for them on Facebook or YouTube. Presenting your content in a creative and unique way is one thing but you need to focus particularly on your message and ensure your content is giving the audience a reason to share and that they have the opportunity to provide their opinion on the content, as a basis for a conversation with other online users.

Try And Judge

Watch every part of your seeding strategy and make necessary changes for the next time you are producing content and building relationships with your network, your audience and the influencers.

Here is an easy guide from Rebecca Hesilrige on Content Seeding guide

Original Article

Find out more on the future of Content Marketing at our DLUK - Trends briefing on the 24th September 2015