To achieve high website traffic and increased new business, creating engaging, high-impact and highly shareable content is essential. High rates of social content curation are critical to SEO. When your content is shared on social media, its reach is amplified-leading to more website traffic and lead generation and better SEO. Once you create top-notch, highly shareable content, you need to maximize its social exposure and make sure it gets widely read. P.T. Barnum said it best: "Without promotion something terrible happens...Nothing!"
How can you ensure that your content gets the attention it deserves? Publishing engaging, high-impact and information-rich blog content is a solid start. However, to ensure a wide captive audience and boost your content marketing ROI, you must promote and market your content. Producing excellent content without promotion will not secure your status as an industry thought leader or increase lead generation or conversion. Deliver quantifiable results with strategic content promotion. First things first though; let us examine the makeup of widely read content.
10 Characteristics of Widely Read Content
To create content that gets widely read and ranked highly by search engines, use these characteristics as inspiration.
1. It covers real-time, relevant issues or news.
2. It has captivating images.
3. Widely read content often includes relevant, compelling infographics.
4. It has breadth and depth.
5. It features fresh, original thought.
6. Effective titles are concise, actionable, clear, descriptive and intriguing.
7. It deals with topics blowing up in the news a la newsjacking.
8. Widely read content has a greater purpose beyond delivering a hard sell.
9. It is free of spelling errors, typos and any grammatical or editorial issues.
10. It is visually attractive and presented in an organized way.
Optimize Content Promotion
Make your content easy to find. You want prospects to find your content, when they are actively searching online, performing research and ready to make a purchasing decision. Here are eight key areas of focus and valuable resources to amplify the reach of your content.
1. SEO
Keyword research and the development of buyer personas can dramatically increase lead generation. Using the same language as prospects to frame problems and solutions will help attract them to your content.
2. Social Media Marketing
Advertising on the big four social networks-Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+-allows you to target ads based on information that is provided in social profiles. Ad targeting translates to increased relevance and lead generation and conversion.
3. Content Syndication
Syndicate your content on Social Media Today and Business 2 Community to reach a broad captive audience.
4. Pinterest
Create a significant number of boards on your Pinterest profile, and pin images from your blog content, which should be embedded with links back to your website. In addition, "Pin-it-to-Pinterest" CTAs encourage your readers to curate your content for their Pinterest boards.
5. Tribber
Join a tribe on Tribber, which is a rich resource for promoting your content and generating a great deal of social content curation.
6. Guest Posting
Guest posting is a highly effective content promotion tactic. Write some killer content and then contribute it to a leading blog or website in your industry niche.
7. RSS Directories
Submit your blog's RSS feed to the top RSS directories, so your content will be published elsewhere automatically.
8. Squidoo
Squidoo lenses are quite popular. Promote your content in a lens that links back to your most recent blog or premium content.
Become a prolific producer of excellent, high-impact content, and others will promote your content for you. In the meantime, help yourself and engage your social following. Boosting the exposure and influence of your content could garner you status as an industry influencer-dramatically increasing your reach and lead generation and conversion.