I write content all day every day, so I know all too well the bitter disappointment of finding out that an awesome article, or insightful infographic that I slaved over isn't getting the readership it deserves.
Over the years, I've picked up some great tips and tricks that have helped me maximize the reach of my content. So I thought it only fair that I spread the love and share them with you guys today.
So here they are...
1. Find the Right Place
There's no point spending time and money creating an amazing piece of content if no one's going to see it. In order to maximize the impact of your content, you need to put it in front of as many eyes as possible. Posting your content on your website and hoping for the best won't cut it - instead of asking people to come to you, you need to go to them.
You can probably guess which sites are the most popular by where you spend your time online - Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube. These are all great places to post your content. But just because they see a lot of traffic, it doesn't mean it's the right traffic for your content.
If your content is B2B, it would be better suited to LinkedIn than Facebook. If your content is visual, then maybe the right place to post it is Pinterest.
Finding the right place - or I guess I should say places (because you should never just leave your content in one place) - to post your content all depends on the demographics of your audience.
A good way to find out what your audience like and where they spend their time online is to conduct a survey and ask them. SurveyMonkey is a great, free tool that can help you do this.
2. Find the Right Time
Finding the right time to post your content is just as important as finding the right place. After all, the internet is a fast-paced world - for example, every single second 7,279 tweets are posted and 127,113 YouTube videos are watched. Every single second.
By posting at the wrong time, you risk getting lost in the crowd, especially on sites like Twitter which feature a live timeline.
QuickSprout have created a great infographic that shows the best days and times to post to different social media platforms - here, for example, are their suggested best days to post to LinkedIn:
Take a look at the full infographic, here.
3. Publish...and then Publi.sh
What happens when you create an amazing piece of content?
You watch the metrics and hope they climb, you probably share it out on social media. But...that's usually all.
Well, it doesn't have to be.
Google actually rewards republishing - at least in some instances. By "in some instances", I mean if you post the same article on your blog every hour of every day for one week, they aren't going to like that. That's black hat SEO. And that's bad.
Google likes to reward content that people are interested in. If someone clicks on a piece of your content and likes it enough to stay on your site instead of bouncing, then not only do you look cool, but Google does too. They suggested a result to a person, and that person liked the result. Win for person. Win for Google. Win for you.
But, as a content piece ages it loses it's timeliness and Google begins to worry that it'll no longer be relevant, so it falls off the first page and gets lost.
Think about it.
This amazing piece of content that you spent time creating, that generated you tons of leads: Gone.
Why waste it?
With Publi.sh, you can republish your content to rejuvenate its Google shelf-life. That's white hat SEO. And that's good.
And, republishing your content on a site like Publi.sh maximizes the impact of your content even further, because you'll get a quality backlink to your site from an authoritative source. Also white hat SEO. Also good.
Interested? Click here to register for Publi.sh and start uploading your content.
4. Make Sure it's Responsive
Smartphones are taking over the world - by 2020, it's estimated that there will be 6.1 billion smartphone users. That's over 80% of the current world population.
And smartphones aren't the only devices that people are using to view content. Users are now viewing content on all different kinds of devices, with a range of different screen sizes - from iPad minis to 75" Smart TVs. If your content isn't responsive across all devices, you're going to miss out on a huge chunk of potential customers.
Take a look at this Google Developers article for more information on making your content responsive.
But, it's not just how your content looks that makes it responsive, you also have to consider what kind of content people on portable devices will be responsive to.
Users on portable devices could potentially be on the move, therefore any content they click on needs to be snappy and engaging in order to grab their attention.
5. Put your Content in front of People
My final secret is as simple as it sounds - don't be shy about literally placing your content in front of people's eyeballs - your competitors certainly won't be.
There are two good ways to do this, one is free, one isn't.
Email Marketing (aka. The Free Way)
After you've created a piece of content, maximize the impact of it by sending it out to your mailing list. Some brands don't do this because they're always looking to obtain new customers with their content, but existing customers matter too.
A loyal customer with a lot of friends could do more for your brand than most other marketing strategies. They are valuable in a number of ways:
1. Repeat Revenue
2. Spreading the Word
3. Sharing your Content
Studies have found that loyal customers are worth up to 10x as much as their first purchase.
Ads (aka. The Paid Way)
Just as email marketing can help you retain existing customers, ads can help you obtain new ones. Although there are costs involved when creating ads, it's a surefire way to guarantee that the right people see your content.
Most ad platforms have analytics options built in, so you can monitor how well your content is performing.
Final Thoughts
The 5 tips in this article have definitely worked for us here at Publi.sh, and hopefully they'll work for you too. To really maximize the impact of your content, you should try to use all 5 at the same time.
Main image via Pixabay.