Before you put time, effort and money into creating amazing content, you should develop a content promotion plan.
For most businesses and brands, attaining a critical number of hits on their content is of utmost importance. Goals, objectives and KPIs tend to be built around audience engagement and conversion, and I hate to break the news to you, but your content isn't going to work toward converting people that don't see it.
Failing to properly promote your content means you're missing out on maximizing the ROI of your social media and content marketing efforts.
So, what to do?
The good news is that there are many channels through which you can promote your content to a highly relevant targeted audience.
Following are a few ideas for inclusion in your content promotion plan:
PAID MEDIA
I know it's obvious, but paid media is a great way to get a predictable number of hits on your perfectly crafted, and highly valuable content. There are many options at your disposal that allow for hyper-targeting your ads to guarantee that you're paying for only the most relevant eyes to fall upon your content. By choosing ad products with great targeting capabilities, you can greatly increase the efficiency of conversions.
One thing I want to address here is that many people that I speak with feel like paying for an audience to view your content is somehow 'cheating' at social media. The reality is that every large-scale marketing organization that kills it on social media is paying to get as many eyes on their content as possible in one way or another. Paid media, in many cases, should be a strong consideration for content promotion.
SOCIAL MEDIA
There are many people that will tell you that publishing your content on every imaginable social media network is the path to successfully promoting your content. The assumption that is made by these people is that you have a significant social media following or fan base to begin with, which isn't always the case.
Absolutely yes, you should cross promote your content on your business' various social media platforms, but unless you've got a huge community, don't expect this alone to be a highly effective method of content promotion.
ORGANIZATIONAL PROMOTION
How many people do you work with? How many personal connections do you have in your target demographic? How many personal connections do the people you work with have in your target demographic?
When you're thinking about an approach to promoting your content, sometimes the beginning of a groundswell is sitting all around you at your workplace. Encourage your coworkers, employees, managers, and partners to share your business' content with their social graphs, and you do the same. Sure you're not likely to garner thousands of hits this way, but it's easy, and even better, it's free.
INFLUENCER OUTREACH
If you are conducting even the most basic social listening, you should know who your biggest advocates are, which consumers have demonstrated extreme interest in your business or brand, and which online and social communities exist that have a focus on your business, brand, category, competition, or other relevant themes.
When you've got amazing new content to publish, consider sending it to these people and communities and asking them to share it amongst their audiences. Depending on whom you ask to distribute your content, particularly if they are of significant status, you may need to sweeten the deal with a little cash, some free product, a pre-baked social media contest that they can execute with their community, or some other incentive.
GUEST POSTING
There are times when the best place to maximize exposure of your content isn't within your own social media communities. The basic principle with guest posting is to go where your audience is, and provide value with your content through those channels. Guest posting blog content is a prime example of this, and many high-profile blogs will consider publishing guest contributions if they meet their audiences' expectations for quality and subject matter, is of value, and is topical.
Not only will this gain that particular piece of content tremendous viewership, but it will work toward establishing you, your business and brand, as being an authority within your category, and ultimately draw traffic back to your official social media networks.
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The recommendations I've made here are fairly general and should be applicable to most businesses and brands. However, feel free to get creative with where you promote your content, and be sure to choose channels based on where your specific target audience can be reached.
What tactics do you employ to promote your content? Which tactics do you find to be most effective? Is content promotion part of your ongoing social media and content strategy?