What You Need to Know For Effective Content Promotion
What You Need to Know About Content Promotion
In our previous post about content strategy, we discussed identifying the ideal client or the “buyer persona” for your business so you can reach the people that need your services more effectively. At this point you’ve probably created content that is useful to them and are ready to post it. Unfortunately, the internet is a pretty busy place, so if you post this wonderful new content on your website and just wait for the sales to come in you will be disappointed. So how do you make sure that your buyer persona will see this content? Content marketing and promotion is the final step of content strategy. Content promotion is the process of circulating pieces, such as blog posts and resources, through paid and organic channels.
Content Promotion Is a Long Game
Marketing and content promotion requires steady, ongoing attention in order to see success. Just as you could post something then sit back, you could pay for an ad and see traffic increase immediately but it will drop as soon as the ad ends. We think most people would be frustrated by this, and for good reason. Relying only on pay per click (PPC) advertising cancels out all the effort that went into the content strategy and creation. Discussing your long term strategy with a marketing expert will help you set realistic goals and should result in a strong conversion rate(aka leads that turns into sales) if you make the right choices. How do you make the right choices? It begins with choosing the right content to promote.
Promoted content is going to be seen by many people who may know nothing about your brand, so picking the right piece is crucial. Be aware of where your buyer is in the buying cycle, as the awareness stage is quite different from the decision stage and you want to be sure you reach the right audience at the right time. Other questions to consider when looking through your content are:
- Does our ideal client/buyer persona benefit from this content?
- How often does this persona want to engage with content?
- Where is the persona most active?
The bottom line is that any content you publish should be useful to your customers, as anything else is just noise that could hurt your credibility.
Help Users Find More Helpful Posts with Topic Clusters
Topic clusters are a great strategy for getting new customers to explore your website and give them a great first impression of your business. You can create topic clusters by linking related posts for organic promotion within your website. As users finish a piece of content they will encounter related pages, such as blogs or case studies, that you have chosen. The more they explore your content the more likely they are to trust that you’re an expert in your field and are the company they should contact. On the other hand, if you don’t have good content they may get the opposite impression and quickly leave your website to find someone who has more useful information. If this is the case, we suggest a content audit to identify opportunities to improve your content. Check out this blog on planning great content for some audit tips and guidelines.
Promotion Should Be Different Across All Platforms
After you’ve chosen the right content to promote, the next step is to distribute it across the platforms your business uses. We recommend our clients use at least one social media platform such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or even LinkedIn. When preparing posts keep in mind that each platform will have different audiences so your captions should be individualized to reach each audience better. The way you discuss your content in an Instagram caption(typically in a casual tone) should look quite different from how you would caption a LinkedIn post(formal tone). If you are using multiple platforms, examine how your audience engages with posts then outline your strategy for communicating on each one. Avoid scheduling posts with one generic message or caption for all your platforms, this looks stale and impersonal. Utilizing polling features or asking questions that prompt users to engage with your content is great for your social media presence and increases the likelihood that people will see your posts. This is where your patience and ongoing attention comes in for content promotion. Creating a regular posting and promotion pattern for your content will grow your organic traffic, or the flow of people that see your content naturally without the help of paid advertisements. Paid advertising can be helpful for getting your content distributed to a wider pool of users once you have established some organic traffic.
Supplement organic efforts with paid promotion
If you begin posting your content on platforms like Facebook or Instagram and find that your engagement is growing but your posts aren’t reaching new users then paid promotion is a very useful tool to consider. The ultimate goal with creating and promoting content for your business is to grow your audience and get more business. There are several types of ads that you can try to broaden your reach and get more people to your website including Google ads, sponsored social media posts, or even collaborating with influencers. Our marketing specialist broke down the difference in ads to help you decide which direction to go. It will take some time to find the right combination but if you aren’t sure where to start we suggest setting up a discovery call to discuss your goals and the available options.
Summary
Great content was created to help users, so make sure it gets seen and doesn’t just sit on your website. Promoting your content through various advertising avenues like digital ads or social media platforms will heavily increase the opportunity for your content to be seen by the right people. Seeing results may take some time. You may or may not see improvements overnight. But getting your business out there in front of the right people is a step forward that you will eventually see the benefits of.
