How to Promote Your Content - 8 Tips for Greater Reach
Inbound marketing is basically about creating helpful and relevant content. But before you get started, you should first determine who you want to target with your content and how you want to market it. If you don't think about how your content will reach the right people beforehand, you may not get the results you want.
So if your content is standing around on your website without generating a lot of downloads or leads, your promotion may be lacking! Here are eight methods you can use to promote your ebooks, white papers, guides, or other content offerings:
1) Create a PPC Campaign to Market your Content Offerings
PPC is a great way to market your business or services. PPC campaigns are just as suitable for individual content offers. On the one hand, a PPC campaign improves the visibility and number of downloads of your content offering, and on the other hand, it helps searchers to find useful information.
For example, let's say someone searches for the term “home renovation” and finds four ads from local businesses promoting their services. How can you find out which renovation company is the right one if you don't know any of the companies shown?
This is where content-based PPC ads come in! If you promote an ebook with a title like “How to Find the Best Home Improvement Company for Your Time Frame and Budget,” it will stand out from the rest of the search results because it helps solve a problem right away. In this case, users will most likely click your PPC ad and convert it to leads.
Display ads are another great way to market your content offering on relevant websites instead of using Google search. With display ads, you can choose exactly which websites you want your ads to appear on. That way, visitors who visit a popular website can find your relevant content offering.
2) Post Guest Posts on Popular Websites and Include a CTA on your Listing
Popular websites typically try to provide solutions to the most common problems their readers experience. Think about your services and your buyer personas! Where do your personas get information from?
Once you've researched what websites your buyer personas read to get information, you can find out if those websites accept guest posts from industry insiders. Some websites require you to apply or submit an article suggestion first. But once you start blogging on one website, it becomes easier and easier to contribute to other websites as well.
When writing articles, keep in mind that they should be informative and not sound like self-promotion. Don't forget that this is all about using your expertise and industry knowledge to help readers solve a problem. At the end of the article, you can then insert a call to action with a link to your content offering. When readers have finished reading the article and are interested in more information, they can click through to the offer!
3) Use Email Marketing to Market your Offer
If you have potential or existing customers who have already shown interest in similar content offers, or who need help with certain problems, then make them aware of your content offer!
For example, you could add topic options to your contact form to find out what areas visitors want help with. Digital marketing agencies could ask, for example, "What area of your company would you like to improve?" They could then offer the following options:
- Generate more leads
- Expand web presence
- Better ranking on Google
If you know that a visitor wants to improve their ranking on Google and you have written an e-book on the subject, that visitor is most likely interested! Unless you have a blog that is constantly updated and attracts tons of visitors to your website, potential customers are unlikely to check your website regularly for the latest offers.
For this reason, you should use emails to draw attention to your offers. For example, you can send a single email or even add a new content offering to an automated workflow.
Always make sure that your emails are informative and helpful to a specific segment of your contact list. If you know that 20 contacts selected the “Generate More Leads” option on the above form, then those contacts will likely be interested in an email about a lead generation ebook.
You shouldn't send a specific ebook to your entire contact database as it is unlikely to be relevant to your entire contact list. If you don't segment your emails, you'll get fewer interactions and a lower success rate.
4) Connect with Interested Readers on Social Media
Check out Twitter and LinkedIn for users who have shared content similar to that of your content offering. For example, if you search #inboundmarketing on Twitter, you can see who is sharing inbound marketing blogs, guides, and resources. You can also see who is getting the most likes and retweets.
Contact these people with a simple “Hey! I saw that you shared [this article] and I thought you might like [this similar offering of content]. ” You can assume that the person is likely interested in your content because they've already posted similar content.
5) Leverage the Influence and Reach of Thought Leaders in your Industry
Industry experts have two main goals: They want to find relevant articles to share with their fans and to increase their reach. You can use this for your purposes by providing them with great content to share with their followers and by expanding their reach through a quote or link in your content offering.
If you want to take advantage of the reach of industry experts, I suggest that you make them an attractive offer so that sharing your content is worthwhile for them too. For example, ask for a quote that you can include in your content offer, or link your offer to another article written by an expert.
Then send a free copy of your content offering to industry insiders that include a link or a quote from them. Let them know that you appreciate their expertise and that is why you mentioned them in your content offering. You can either ask directly if your contact shares the content, or you can just hope that they will decide for themselves - to reward yourself for helping expand their own reach!
You could also try a tactic similar to Tip 4. But keep in mind that these industry experts are likely to be inundated with messages asking them to share content. Stand out from the crowd and make an offer that will be mutually beneficial!
6) Post Content to a Content Community or Online Group
Think again of tip 2 and your buyer personas! If your personas access content in content communities (like inbound.org ) or online groups (like Facebook groups, we neighbours, Reddit, etc.), then you should post your content there.
Content communities are also extremely helpful for gathering feedback, starting a discussion, and sharing your passion for your services with others.
7) Find More Options for Linking
Tools like SEMRush allow you to see other websites that have links to content like yours. Contact these websites and ask if they can include a link to your content offering! In our experience, this works particularly well if you find a broken link that your link can replace. Most webmasters appreciate being made aware of website link problems, and if you have a link that can replace the broken link, it might get included!
Alternatively, you can also use tools like BuzzSumo and Mention.net to find online mentions of your company! So you can see who mentioned you or your content offering and who backlinked you or not. If your link was not included, contact the website and explain that their readers can benefit from your linked article.
If you are looking for further backlink possibilities, we recommend backlinks " 17 Powerful (Yet Untapped) Backlink Sources " (17 effective [so far unused] backlink sources). You could find it here!
8) Recycle Old Content in Different Formats
If you have a reasonably popular ebook, pull out the key arguments and create a SlideShare presentation, infographic, or quiz! Different content formats will help you reach a larger audience.
Because of their visual character, infographics are particularly easy to share on social networks - especially on Pinterest. You can also pull statistics or charts out of the infographic and share them again separately on social media!
Example, if someone is looking for a hidden gun storage mirror, they will prefer to see images, not only articles, if you have shared images on Pintrest and other relvant sites, that will add more diversification to your content marketing ideas.
The Next Steps
Content lost on your website cannot attract leads. But don't worry: with the help of these marketing tips, your content will soon get the attention it deserves and boost your company's success.