Once you’ve got a great piece of content to show the world, you need to let your online audience know that your masterpiece is now available for consumption on your website.
Unfortunately, it’s not simply a case of ‘if you write it, they will come’, it actually involves a lot of hard work so here are five ways to help you get the word out there:
Social media platforms
OK, this might seem an obvious one but it’s surprising how many companies publish great content on their website and don’t actually promote it through their social media platforms. If you have a Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn/Google+ account for no other reason, at least use it to drive readers to the content on your website. Of course, social media platforms are about much more than just broadcasting but at least it’s a step in the right direction. Also, make your content easy to share by adding sharing buttons to each piece of content that you produce.
Look for conversations
Every second of every day there are millions of conversations happening online so find them and join in. Whether it’s LinkedIn discussion groups or Twitter hash tags, seek out conversations where your content provides a solution and get involved.
Niche industry websites
Every industry has a few key ‘magazine’ type players, the ‘go-to’ websites for industry news, white papers, advice and so on. Start forming relationships on social media with the key people behind these websites by tweeting their content, commenting on their blog and referencing them in your articles. You’ll be surprised how open they can be when it comes to returning the favour, providing your content is right for their target audience of course!
Content syndication
Whilst I would never suggest posting your content in more than one place (Google penalises duplicated content) there are some syndication sites which are perfectly fine to use, such as www.business2community.com. They take the content from your website and advise the reader at the bottom where it was originally posted which means Google still credits you as the creator.
Paid advertising
Whilst earned media is obviously preferable, there is nothing wrong with doing a bit of paid content promotion, for example, advertising on LinkedIn. It’s not hugely expensive and it allows you to target specific groups of people by job type, discussion groups etc.
There is no denying that content promotion is as time-consuming and challenging as creating the content in the first place! It takes time to develop relationships with industry thought-leaders, discussion groups and even your existing followers so that they are readily sharing and promoting your content.
One piece of advice….
In the meantime, if there is one piece of advice that I can leave you with it would be this:
Publish regular, original, high quality, shareable content and eventually the promotion will take care of itself.