Content Promotion should form a substantial part of content strategies to achieve best reach, traffic and engagement. Consider these points to make the most of promotion. 

Support Your Content Strategy With Great Content Promotion

Quality, buyer-relevant content remains a staple of successful marketing strategies. For most marketers, this is old news; the importance of content creation is a given.

Yet there’s more to content success than planning and production alone. To achieve great results and have content stand out against the noise, you need to have a promotion plan in place.

What is Content Promotion? Why is it Important?

In previous posts, we’ve discussed the best ways to generate content ideas that resonate, plus have explored the SEO value of creating content in ‘topic hubs’ or ‘clusters’. These are great starting points. But to amplify content to extend reach, grow traffic and engage more prospects - content must be promoted after publication.

Why is content promotion important?

Well-targeted promotion will not only drive quality traffic to your site but can nurture prospects, build awareness of brand authority, and help content stand out. Remember that 47% of buyers engage with your content 3-5 times before speaking to your sales people. - (HubSpot). So, regularly promoting content that resonates with your buyer’s pain points is essential.

47% of buyers engage with your content 3-5 times before speaking to your sales people. - HubSpot

What does promotion consist of? Which channels should I use?

A good content promotion strategy will distribute content through the right channels (paid and owned) for your buyer personas. This may consist of a number of things such as promotion through social platforms, posting guest content to relevant third party sites, or paid promotion (AdWords, ads on social media etc). Promotion will vary dependent on your goals, but must always be planned with your buyers - and the digital channels they use - in mind.

How much content promotion is enough?

How long does it take to create a piece of content? Typically you should spend at least the same amount of time (if not more) on promotion. After all, if you are creating relevant, evergreen content assets they should remain useful for a long time to come!

Promoting Content To Enhance Traffic and Engagement

There are two main methods of promoting content - Organic promotion and Paid promotion.

• Organic content promotion consists of promotion through owned and earned channels such as via social media, email marketing, or content placement on other sites. This type of promotion helps to increase content visibility without incurring any additional marketing costs and works best when you have a well-structured content promotion calendar that promotes to the channels your buyers use.
• Paid content promotion such as AdWords, Facebook Ads, Twitter Ads, LinkedIn Sponsored Updates etc allows you promote content to a specific, selected audience segment. With paid content promotion it’s wise to test a small campaign first to judge effectiveness, and adapt to make the most of your paid ads.

Note, both options can be used separately, but frequently they are used together in a structured inbound campaign.

5 Tips To See Results From Content Promotion

Of course, there’s more to content promotion than sending a few tweets or paying for the odd ad. To see a good return on promotion you should:

1. Start by developing a content promotion calendar

A content promotion calendar will help you keep track and space promotion across channels to suit your timeframe. It will ensure that no opportunities are missed (a full campaign’s worth of content can be complex), and importantly, will help you align content and promotion to suit prospects at all stages of the buyer’s journey.

2. Divide your database leads into segments so content promotion can be precisely targeted

When promoting a piece of content across a range of channels, it’s best practice to segment your wider audience into more specific sections. That way you can ensure promotion (and particularly paid promotion) reaches the exact right audience, in the right places - instead of blanket-targeting poor-fit opportunities. Keeping your unique buyer persona profiles front of mind is important here.

3. When promoting, customise messaging for each channel

Different channels have different requirements. For example, the angle of a message on Facebook may be different to a message promoting the same content on LinkedIn. Consider your channel, consider your audience, consider the message.  

4. Experiment - don’t be afraid to try new things

What works on one channel may not work for another. When promoting content, and especially when choosing paid promotion, it’s important to continually monitor, A/B test, change and adapt where you can for best results. Are you using the right channels? Can you improve your imagery or messaging? Are you targeting the right audience? Have you chosen to promote content that will resonate? 

5. Remember to track results so that you can repeat successful trials

Trying new approaches is great - but remember to analyse the results so you can implement improvements. Are the conversions you’re seeing in line with your expected persona? What changes can you make to increase engagement and conversion? What can you do to raise visitor quality?

Promotion Channels To Consider

Lastly, it’s important to keep in mind that there’s no ‘one size fits all’ approach to content promotion. The channels you use and the level of of promotion you adopt will depend on your buyers, their challenges, and the digital environments they are active on. There’s no point promoting to an empty room.

With that in mind, typical promotion channels you might consider include:

• Social media (Instagram, Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, Google+ etc)
• Email
• AdWords remarketing (paid)
• Influencer promotion/marketing
• Digital PR and guest placement
• And more - new channels such as chat are always evolving

Note that many of these channels offer both paid and non-paid options, so remember to test, analyse and adjust to find the ones that are right for your content promotion.

Quality content is the pillar on which a successful Inbound campaign is built. But it is equally as important to ensure that it reaches your prospects in a way that will nurture and engage them.