You can create excellent content, but if there’s no one there to read it, what’s the point? Organic searches will bring traffic to your website, article, or guest post naturally, but you can take it further. These are three ways to amplify your content by promoting it and reach a wider audience.
1. Meet Your Audience Where They’re At
When you ready to promote your content, think about where you can find an audience at the beginning of their buyer’s journey. Social media ads are a great place to start. Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram will all allow you to promote your posts. Facebook ads, in particular, are one of the most cost effective solutions for promoting content. The combination of a huge user base of over one billion people and a low average cost per click of $1.72, according to data from WordStream, you would be hard pressed to find a more effective use of your advertising dollars.
The sites also allow you to set guidelines for who your ad should target. Take the time to go through the options and narrow down your audience so that you’re reaching the people most likely to click over to your website and check out your content. With the options for narrowing your target audience, you can use factors including location, age, gender, interests, and specific behaviors to be sure your message is getting to the right people.
When designing the posts that you’ll be promoting, be sure that they’re a good representation of your company. For many, this will be the first impression they get of you and what you have to say. Keep company branding in mind, choose the wording of your captions carefully, and use bold images that will capture attention. Remember that not all posts are worthy of being a standout, so amplify only those posts that are the best of the best.
2. Reach Your Niche
While the first tip will help you spread your message to an incredibly large audience very quickly, there’s something to be said for sending that message out to a much smaller community as well. This is where a niche market comes into play.
There’s likely a small, but very dedicated group of people who are interested in what you’re selling. These are the people that are already in the second stage of the buyer’s journey, the consideration stage. They know what they’re looking for and they’re waiting to hear what you have to say.
There is absolutely money to be made in these small markets. For example, the gluten free niche has a market size of about $3.16 billion. That particular niche has grown exponentially on the last few years. Last year, the keyword “gluten free diet” had 165,000 monthly searches on average. There’s power in a niche market and if you haven’t already pinpointed yours, this is the time to do it.
How can you reach this group? Look for places that they’re already congregating online. Reddit is one good example. On Reddit, there are groups and message boards for nearly any interest you could imagine. In fact, there are over 1.2 million subreddits. An article from Ad Espresso by Hootsuite shows that millions of Facebook groups exist and most users are becoming members of groups that are focused on their personal and professional interests.
Find the groups that are talking about topics related to your product or service and get involved. Be a part of the community and offer relevant information. Let these groups know that you’re an expert, that they can trust you, and that they want to see what else you have to say.
When you start marketing your content within a group, use these tips to do it effectively.
– Only share messages with value. Don’t spam the group with irrelevant links.
– Be a part of the conversation. Ask questions. Respond to threads. Get to know the other people in the group.
– Know when to promote. Not every comment is an open invitation to post a link to your blog. Find the right time to promote your content, and know when not to.
3. Use PR
It’s time to get serious about amplifying your message, and there are professionals who are ready to help. After you put in the effort to craft excellent content, use PR to get that message to the right people.
For PR to work well for your content, it should be newsworthy. Be sure that your content is relevant, geared toward your target audience, and includes action steps that your readers can take after reading. Give the media outlet you’re reaching out to a reason to want to share your content with their audience.
One PR method for amplifying content is to create press releases. When you have an announcement to make, for example when you start offering a new service to customers or when your company has had a major professional win, a press release can share that information with everyone who needs to know. It can be distributed to news outlets, online media, and ranked in search engine results for anyone to find.
PR strategies go beyond press releases. It can also include guest blogging, an opportunity to share your message on another website and link back to your own content. It might also involve sharing your content with influencers, people with a large online following who can share your message with their unique audience.
Start Amplifying
One statistic shows that 55% of readers will spend fifteen seconds or less reading an article. Not only does that mean that your content needs to be strong enough to grab attention and keep it for more than that initial fifteen seconds, it also means you’ll need to reach out to a much wider audience if you want to deliver content to the people that want to read it.
It’s time to share your content with a larger audience, and your targeted. Use the tips above to breathe new life into your message and share it with the world.
