Every marketer knows the importance of excellent digital content. Top-quality digital content is great if your intended audience sees it. Blog posts that are informative and provide value for users can’t fulfill these objectives if they’re gathering dust in your blog section. The way to release your valuable content out into the big wide world is to promote it.
What is content promotion?
Content promotion is the practice of distributing digital content on multiple channels. A strong approach to content promotion is to utilize an array of organic and paid channels.
One benefit of content promotion is to regenerate older content pieces. By repurposing your content, you are generating traffic to new audiences and raising brand awareness. The wider the content reach, the more chances you have to convert a browser into a customer.
Distributing content on a wide variety of channels (such as your website, social media, and blog) facilitates easy sharing, and therefore, brand new audiences.
Pro tip:Make it as easy as possible for users to share your content on social media.
Start casting your net to catch new followers – read on to discover 12 content promotion ideas to supercharge your campaign.
1. Get Personal
To encourage your audience to stick around for longer to view your content, consider website personalization. Successful landing pages are personalized for maximum conversions, with predictive intelligence at the core.
A fine example of predictive intelligence used in digital marketing is lead scoring, powered by AI automation. This style of automation, one that is also present in contact center technology, empowers marketers with the data to assess user journeys, which can be used to predict where and when a purchase will be made.
Using these data-backed forecasts can produce tailor-made experiences, including targeted CTAs to drive conversions.
Key takeaway: First impressions stick, so make it a good one!
2. Be Social
Increasing your brand’s reach on social media platforms is a fairly simple one. If you have a large following on social channels, you can start your social sharing immediately. If your audience is somewhat lacking, building your following is the first step. Seek opportunities to grow your brand by connecting with current contacts. Strive to engage on email, social media, and your website to expand your base.
Sharing content on social media is much more than a one-time gig, especially as ads now take precedence over organic posts. Content on social media needs to be super shareable. Endeavor to include relevant, valuable, and interesting content on your social channels, and allow for easy shareability with the inclusion of social share buttons.
Social media promotion can be a full-time job. Businesses familiar with automation tools use a direct carousel post publishing software to save valuable time managing social media
campaigns. This type of software facilitates scheduled processes across several channels, with built-in reports and analytics.
It’s worth noting that for maximum shareability, all images need to be optimized for their appropriate channel. Optimization strategies include correctly sized images (such as the Instagram guideline of 640 x 640-pixel square images). Images that are too big, unclear, or too small do a poor job of properly representing your brand.
Pro tip: Don’t forget to engage with your followers by interacting with their comments.
3. Email Campaigns
It’s time to put your subscriber list to good use.
Content can (and should) be promoted in automated email campaigns. The key is to include natural content which offers real value to the recipients. The great thing about sending content emails to your subscribers is that they are already engaged with your brand, and are therefore much more likely to open emails.
Some ideas you can explore for email campaign content promotion:
- Email signature lines
- Order confirmation emails
- Newsletters
- Business and/or product updates
An interesting idea is a business newsletter swap. Reach out to other businesses that regularly distribute email newsletters, and enquire about swapping content elements. When both businesses add links to each other’s email newsletters, a mutually productive relationship is formed.
Pro tip: Use a bulk email scheduling tool to save time and track conversions.
4. Paid Ads
Organic content has its place, but it’s also worth exploring paid ads to promote your content.
As crucial as having your business 800 numbers advertised, it’s also critical to get your content out there to raise brand awareness. Google PPC ads are useful for engaging with your target market, along with social platforms. You may well need to go down the paid ad route on popular channels like Facebook and Twitter just to cut through the noise.
Elements of a paid ad campaign include the following:
- Selection of a successful piece of content
- Work the paid ad campaign around the content
- Research of industry keywords – both short and longtail
- Decide on a budget and target market
- Creation of inviting and clickable ad copy
- Direct users to an optimized landing page
Pro tip: Be cautious to research your target demographic carefully for ad campaigns to ensure the optimal audience reach.
5. Affiliate Programs
Based on a marketing model of product promotion, affiliate programs work on commission. This strategy requires developing trusted connections with your affiliates. There has been a huge increase in investment in affiliate programs in recent years which in turn has resulted in an upturn in revenue for many companies.
To reap the benefits of this you will first have to learn how to create an affiliate program. The most important step is to choose affiliate partners. Here are some tips to source affiliate partners:
- Include an affiliate link on your website’s landing page.
- Create email campaigns to recruit existing customers to your program.
- Seek influencers to review products or services.
- Check out social media groups within your industry.
It’s important to make sure the affiliate that you choose is relevant to your content. The best affiliate programs will feel like a natural fit for the platform and the affiliate’s audience. Make sure that you work together to create a strategy that works for both you and your affiliate.
Once you’ve partnered up, your next step is content promotion. Some of your existing successful content can be repurposed, but this will not always be the case. Affiliates can help generate new content to promote your business in a number of ways:
One of the most effective ways is through blogging. This can not only help to establish your brand as an expert in your field, but it can also foster a community of followers eager for more content.
Affiliates can use their blogs, websites, or social media platforms to set up a pay-per-click advertising campaign to promote your product/service and in turn generate commission for themselves.
Speaking of social media it is likely that your affiliate will already have a strong following on at least one platform, but remember it is more important to have an audience that is interested in what you have to offer, as opposed to finding any affiliate that has a large number of viewers.
Another great way to get an audience interested in your product/service is to have an affiliate create video content for you (see point 7). This could involve product demonstrations or a simple Q&A session, both of which could generate interaction and comments from potential customers.
Pro tip: Ensure your affiliate program policies and processes are watertight.
6. Brand Ambassadors
Connected to affiliate programs are ambassadors for your brand. These are not as strictly regulated affiliate partners; you can always think of them as similar to brand advocates.
Begin your brand ambassador search by looking at:
- Existing customers
The best kind of brand ambassador – happy customers willing to spread the word about how incredible your business is are worth their weight in gold. Customers’ opinions are deemed valuable by other consumers. An added bonus is that such opinions are completely free of charge, and by calculating CSAT you can also see where improvements can be made.
- Employees
Your employees are natural brand ambassadors, as they live and breathe your company culture. Encourage staff members to share content on social media, bringing credibility to both products and the company as a whole.
Done right, with the right people,ambassador programsare a fantastic way to promote your content online. Brand ambassador programs commonly have a long shelf-life, with ambassadors’ content to spread the word on social media and blog posts. This is usually in return for special offers, sneak product peeks, and exclusive launch campaigns. Your offering must be valuable for your brand ambassadors to continue promoting your business.
Pro tip: Select brand ambassadors that are synonymous with your business’s target audience.
7. Video
Consumers are well used to content in the form of videos. It’s a format that is easily consumed – for example, look at the success of social media stories. You can use this to your advantage and convert existing content into videos to promote it in different markets.
By sharing video content on YouTube, you can tap into a previously uncharted section of the market. Blog posts are possibly the simplest forms of content to turn into videos. Consider creating a video around a blog topic, alluding to key sections, ending with a call to action to lead viewers to your website for further information.
Another avenue to investigate is web stories. Web stories are similar to social media stories, with the exception that they are embedded into your website, and are available permanently. Web stories are a great way to condense a blog into bite-size sections of content, with a call to action as the finale again. You will need to contact your friendly web developer for this feature or delve into the world of plug-ins, depending on your website’s capabilities.
Pro tip: Don’t forget to optimize your business YouTube profile for maximum visibility.
8. LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a powerful platform to expand your business’s reach by delivering impactful content. There are a couple of ways this can be done on LinkedIn. You can either write an article directly on LinkedIn, which works just like a blog platform. Or you can repurpose an existing article as an abbreviated version for LinkedIn.
Either option has the sole purpose of sending the readers back to your website, where you can convert them with even more captivating content.
Pro tip: Be sure not to just copy and paste from your website; copy needs to be unique – duplicate content will rank poorly on SERPs.
9. Link It Up
A well-known SEO tip is to sprinkle links throughout your website. To use this tip in your content promotion strategy, add links in the copy to best-performing blogs. Google ranks internal linking, and your website will be rewarded accordingly.
The way sales call coaching gives sales reps all they need to perform, internal links do for your website. Internal links offer more value to your website browser and encourage them to stay on the site longer. Decreased bounce rates, valuable content, and increased browsing time are clear signals to search engines that your website is worth ranking.
Pro tip: Regularly comb your website for internal link opportunities to keep content fresh.
10. Be a Guest
Getting an audience with your target demographic can be achieved through guest blogging. The task of a guest blogger is to write community posts or industry-related blogs. To join in, firstly seek blogs you would like to associate your business with. It’s best to start small with minimal reader numbers. Then you can pitch ideas for your posts to the blog in the hope of a positive response.
Once approved, your guest blog will be shared not only on their platform but hopefully on social media and email campaigns. It’s an extremely shareable and effective way of expanding your content reach and building a loyal following for your brand.
You can also ask other blog sites to do guest post swaps, strengthening connections and promoting linkback possibilities.
Pro tip: Your guest blogs must be 100% unique, with perfect grammar and spelling.
11. Comment on it
Whilst researching potential guest blog opportunities, why not add comments to their existing posts? It’s an effective way to branch out to new people and demonstrate your industry knowledge.
Explore industry communities such as LinkedIn, too. Becoming a member of communities opens up a new section of the market in which to promote your content. As long as you are mindful not to add your website links randomly, and to only offer genuine comments, other community members will engage and value your contributions.
Good practice for comments is to interact with your own blog comments, too. Chances are, this will lead to more content promotion and sharing amongst other like-minded businesses.
Pro tip: Be respectful at all times and never spam!
12. Encourage interactions
It’s not enough to just share and promote content. Successful marketers understand the importance of interacting with their audience.
Some interaction ideas include:
- Social media surveys
- Feedback requests
- Engaging questions
- Topical content
- Fast comment response
- Live training videos
- Relevant hashtags
Establish your content promotion plan today
The key takeaway is, that your content could be the most ground-breaking ever to be written. But if your intended customers don’t know it exists, it’s worthless.
Hopefully, this article has provided plenty of ideas for where and when to promote your digital content. Explore different methods to see what routes generate the most impressions and conversions. Each business is different, and your strategies can be flexible. Monitor audience engagement and adjust as necessary, then rinse and repeat. Social media tracking tools can be beneficial to monitor the performance of multi-channel content promotion campaigns.
By promoting your valuable content, you establish your business as a market leader and industry authority.
Create your content promotion strategy today, and shoot for brand new audiences to grow your business.
