As marketers, we often face tight time frames and demanding deadlines when it comes to publishing our newest content offering. From hitting publish on your next blog post to promoting your next e-book or webinar, let’s all agree to make more time to focus on how to distribute our content wisely.
In 2017, we can buck the content marketing trend of focusing just on content creation and not enough on content promotion. Here are 17 ideas to maximize the ROI of our writing efforts:
- Landing Page – Maximize the web visibility of your content with a dedicated landing page. Landing page basics include: 1) Does your page look great on a mobile device (where many of your visitors may come from)? 2) Is there a clear call-to-action (CTA), as in, do visitors know exactly how to access your new content offer? 3) Is there persuasive text? and 4) Can visitors SEE what they’ll get for entering their email address? Show them a photo of your content offer—and bonus points if you explain it in a video with the author.
- Website – In addition to a dedicated landing page, make sure your latest content offer is easy to find on your website through simple navigation or, better yet, on your homepage with a CTA button. This may seem a bit self-evident, but, in our experience, can be easily overlooked in the rush to start content promotion.
- Blog – If you maintain a blog, craft a post (or two) that relates to your new content offer with a call-to-action button at the end inviting readers to your landing page. Expand on hot button issues, recap key statistics or trends, or continue the narrative with new facts or tips.
- Launch Email Campaign – You are six times more likely to receive a click-thru from an email campaign than you are from a tweet, according to Campaign Monitor. Email is vital to a content marketing campaign. So, on the day of launch, be ready with an email campaign that targets the potential customers for whom you have email addresses—encouraging them to check out your new content offer. As well, make sure you have marketing automation such as HubSpot, Marketo or Pardot set up to ensure your new leads receive prompt Thank You emails. One final tip: Be sure your emails are error-free by always proofing for typos and testing links.
- Marketing by the Author – If there’s a byline on your content, make sure the author serves as an advocate. Encourage them to share a link to the landing page on their social channels. Another common tactic is for the author to share an article about the content offering on his or her LinkedIn profile through LinkedIn Pulse.
- Customer Communication – While your new content may be targeted to potential customers, consider whether your new expertise could also add value to your current customers. If so, you could share the gated content with them or, to make it easier (since you already have their contact information), share the actual PDF or Word document of content in advance of it being distributed to outsiders.
- Sales/Internal Champions – Make sure your entire sales department and other internal champions of your content know when it launches. Send a dedicated email with encouragement for your employees to share it with relevant contacts, and on their social media channels. Insider Tip: If you have a large employee base interested in promoting your content, explore a social media service like GaggleAmp or PostBeyond that enables employees to share approved brand content with their personal social networks.
- Paid Social Media Ads – Don’t forget that boosting social media posts about your new content offering can help increase visibility with new audiences. We recommend that our clients advertise on at least one of their social channels to their target market. For business-to-business (B2B) campaigns, we almost always recommend LinkedIn and Twitter advertisements to reach business influencers and decision makers. For business-to-consumer (B2C) brands, Facebook and Instagram tend to be the most powerful channels.
- Facebook – Depending on your social media strategy, consider how the new piece of content might resonate with your Facebook audience, which for some companies is more about workplace culture and boosting employee morale. Here’s one way: Spotlight the in-house expert who authored your content piece.
- YouTube – Marketers know that 2016 was the year of the online video with, according to Venture Beat, Americans spending an aggregate of 8,061 years on YouTube each day. Create a short video to promote your next content offer with a clickable link in the YouTube description box that takes video viewers right to a download of the content described in the clip.
- Slideshare – If you’re not familiar with this document-hosting social site, read Maccabee Public Relations’ blog post (“6 Business Benefits of Slideshare“) and then create a company or author account to which you can post a distilled version of your content. For example, when our agency’s content marketing campaign targeted at marketing and PR decision makers was slow to generate new leads, we reinvigorated it by turning our downloadable content (a LinkedIn marketing infographic) into a PowerPoint and posted it on Slideshare. It has since received nearly 10,000 views and directed more traffic – and new leads – to Maccabee. Insider Tip: There is relatively new lead generation capability on Slideshare. It allows you to embed a contact form into a Slideshare file and, for a few dollars per contact form submission, you can gain email information of new leads.
- Twitter – A few pointers for using Twitter to promote your content: 1) Don’t be afraid to tweet about the content multiple times. 2) Make sure your tweets have enticing images featuring your content. 3) Leverage hashtags and tag the contributors who helped with your content to maximize visibility.
- LinkedIn – LinkedIn is a powerhouse for B2B marketing. Did you know 80 percent of leads sourced through social media for B2B marketers come from LinkedIn? Be sure to post about your new content piece as a company update on your LinkedIn page, and work with your internal experts to do the same on their personal LinkedIn pages and in relevant groups.
- Pinterest – Pinterest can be a great way to drive inbound links to your new content, especially for B2C brands, whether that be a recipe, blog post or content landing page. Per the Online Marketing Institute, 80 percent of Pinterest activity comes from repins, so be sure your content can be found on the medium. Pin all your landing page URLs and blog posts to encourage sharing of them!
- Instagram – Create an Instagram Story and full-color photo series about your content that encourages your followers to check it out and, better yet, share your content with their friends and followers.
- Media Relations – Is your e-book authored by an expert? Does your white paper offer provocative new viewpoints on an industry topic? Don’t overlook the potential of strategic media relations/publicity outreach. Your new content offer can be a good reason for you to “check in” with key business or trade media, showing what your company has been up to—with an offer to interview the executive responsible for your content insights.
- Guest Author on Blogs – Explore industry-leading blogs in your space to find out if they accept guest posts or blog submissions. Online blog posts can drive direct traffic to your landing page. Also, our agency has found success in syndicating our authored articles on industry sites, such as Business2Community.
In the new year, help your content stay competitive in a busy internet space and do as content marketing guru Joe Pulizzi predicts: “Five years ago, enterprises were spending 80 percent on content creation and 20 percent on content promotion. I believe this ratio has switched, with successful enterprises creating differentiated content and putting some advertising and promotion muscle behind it.”
See the full list of 33 content marketing promotion ideas on MaccaPR.com. Which of these content promotion ideas was new to you? Share your undiscovered tips in the comments section, below, for all to see!