You’ve made this epic masterpiece of a blog post and were so excited to see all of the traffic it brought in.
You send a link to your friends and family so that they could get on the early train before the thousands of other viewers get there and crowd the party.
Come to your surprise, you only get three views over the next few days, two from you on different devices and one from your mom.
Anyone who has created more than one piece of content in their lives knows the feeling of making a masterpiece only for no one to come and enjoy it.
Don’t worry, however. It doesn’t have to be this way forever!
Today we will break down the best ways for you to get more eyeballs to your content and possibly even build up a loyal fan base that craves your content to drop out of the sky every week.
Why Do You Need To Promote Your Content?
People won’t like and share your work if they don’t even know that you exist.
To get on your potential audience’s radar, you need to make it easy for them to find you and convenient to see what you are doing.
You most likely aren’t creating content just for the sake of it.
One way or another, you are working towards gathering a large enough audience filled with fans and potential customers.
If your business is small and you find that people aren’t pouring into your website or other social channels, it isn’t that no one likes you.
Just that they have yet to find you through their online travels.
Promoting your business’s content will give those who might be interested in following your work a better chance at doing so.
If you have a blog and want more people to come to enjoy your written experience, then you should think about how you can get in front of the right people.
Maybe guest posting on a mentionable blog that already attracts the customer you want to work with.
Perhaps that would set you up for a waterfall effect of new opportunities to get in front of even more people or set you up to get another guest writing gig because one of the readers liked what you had to say and your unique perspective.
Who knows, maybe you could make a few new connections that would help down the road.
Either way, getting yourself and the brand you represent out in front of as many people as possible raises the chances of your business’s growth in the future.
Free Content Promotion Methods
There are quite a few ways to get in front of people for free, but if you want significant results and a higher chance of successfully building an audience filled with raving fans, you need to remember a few things through the process.
First, consistency always wins.
No matter what, if you are not consistently putting out content online, then your odds of successfully gaining traction with your content go down to nearly 0.
Second, quality triumphs over quantity any day of the week.
Yes, the amount you produce does influence results later down the road.
However, if you are putting out cheap replaceable garbage, no one will inevitably return for more.
How can you provide such a fantastic experience that you are almost guaranteed to have returning customers?
Think about how you can give your audience what they need and take it a step further at the same time.
Good, now with that out of the way, let’s touch on some of the cool ways you can start implementing today with your content promotion.
Forums
Forums are full of dedicated people who scour the internet looking for a special place where they can talk about the things they love to talk about.
Forums are similar to groups on Facebook or subreddits on Reddit, except the entire platform is usually about a specific topic that people are interested in.
An example of this is minoritymindset.com which is a website all about financial education and news.
They break down everything when it comes to financial literacy and understanding how money works.
Recently they have introduced their forum on the site where people who are just as passionate about money get to talk to each other about the subject.
If your business was in the world of finance, you could enter the discussion and answer any questions about what your company specializes in.
Start the relationship off by giving, then after you have gone around and sprinkled value into the equation, and if it makes sense to do so, you can link out to a page of your site that might be able to go into more detail if they wanted to learn more about the subject.
Doing simple things like this will make it more believable that you have the best intention of trying to help them or add value to the conversation.
If someone decides to click through to your website, they will feel a higher level of trust and be more likely to stick around.
Maybe they would even sign up for your newsletter because they liked what you had to offer and wanted to hear more from you.
Please don’t be the person that spams the conversation; it will make you look unprofessional and lower the level of trust people give you.
Plus, admins will most likely not allow you to continue posting in the group chat.
Guest posting
Significant media sites like medium, entrepreneur, along many others have some of their content created by guests.
Even smaller sites do this.
It’s usually a win-win type of situation, where the site hosting the content gets the organic traffic and reach, and the creator of that piece gets to link back to their work wherever it exists on the internet.
Everyone is usually happy with this dynamic due to the selling points being pretty straightforward.
Being put in front of a new audience receptive to your message will naturally grow your website traffic or bring in more attention to wherever you put your work online.
Do some digging and see what the prominent publications are that your audience is already looking at.
Reach out and see if they would be interested in guest posting on their site in return for you to put a link back to where they could find more information or other articles you have written.
Industry Directories
Directories are just another place out there on the internet where people can find your website.
Directories are simply a list of businesses in the same industry that help users find the right person to partner with or get information from.
You can find directories for just about anything out there from blogs, industry-specific service providers, podcasts, SaaS products, and pretty much anything else.
Many directories are free unless they have some massive traffic coming back to the site, in which case they will probably charge monthly to keep your listing posted.
Either way, registering your business can provide you with increased exposure.
It depends on the amount of traffic that directory is getting, but if the right people happen to stumble upon your listing, you just got a few more viewers and a chance to bring them in as customers.
SEO opportunities
SEO isn’t going to be something that takes off right away, not even within a few days or weeks.
Most likely, you will see it start to happen right around 6-8 months from the time you make the changes.
But it is still essential to consider long-term organic growth opportunities.
The things that you can influence within SEO are:
- Site speed
- Mobile-friendliness
- Has Sitemap
- Pages and blogs are clearly labeled and optimized to be found by google
- A meta description that includes keywords and intrigues customers
- Use keyword phrases in image alt descriptions
- Use schema markup to tell Google what kind of content you are producing
- Good user experience
- Optimized internal links
- No broken links
- Make sure you link your other sites
- Connect your social media accounts to your website.
- Present your businesses information on google my business, Facebook business profile
If you focus on getting most of these right, you will be in a great position and will most likely be getting more and more visitors trickling in overtime as long as you keep things current and produce good blogs regularly.
Paid content Promotion Methods
Free content promotion is great, but it takes patience to accumulate enough viewership to raise revenue substantially.
Paid content promotion is the best way to get eyeballs quickly and to help build your online presence while working on your free organic promotion channels listed above.
Influencer marketing
Influencer marketing is a fantastic way to get in front of a new audience.
A highly targeted audience at that.
Influencers are people who have grown their audience within their niche environments and topics.
Don’t just think that they only exist on social media, as most people have come to understand.
Being an influencer could also mean that you run a high-traffic blog or an extensive email list.
Think of it as anyone who has your potential client’s attention and owns the space where the conversation is happening around that topic.
The opportunity to get in front of an influencer’s audience can prove highly beneficial if you partner with the right one with the attention of your demographic.
You will need to do the proper amount of research around the influencers in your industry and see where your audience hangs out the most.
Look for the youtube channels your potential customers are watching.
Check out the video’s comment section and see how active the crowd is and what kind of environment they create.
You can do this same thing on any platform as well.
Browse through their social media profiles, the blogs they run, forums they host, see if they have an email list, and subscribe to see what kind of content they send out.
If you go deep enough on the research side of things, you will find some great people to work with and cut out the ones you know will not be the right fit.
When you reach out to these people, remember that they are people.
Don’t come into the conversation demanding anything. Try to make the deal a win-win and make it clear what’s in it for them.
Make a deal where everyone wins.
This way, they will put their whole heart into giving your brand the representation you want their audience to have.
Being a business owner is a full-time job as it is, right?
I understand, there isn’t enough time left in the day to do influencer research entirely on your own.
There are some other ways to go about connecting with the right influencer.
Here are some good resources for you to check out:
- Influencermarketinghub.com ( good for finding the right influencer marketplace to explore)
- Fourstarzz.com
- activate.social
- Matchmade.tv (good if you have a game or app you want to market)
Pick the service that works best for you.
Essentially, these platforms take most of the research process off of your plate.
All you have to do is sign up and give specific details about your business and the industry you serve.
Then they pair you up with the influencers that would be the best fit for you.
Going through a service like this doesn’t guarantee that every deal will go the way you want it to go, but it does help with many potential pitfalls you could run into by doing it all yourself.
Google ads
Google ads are good at getting your website in front of the right people.
They have a super-powerful platform set up around providing the most relevant content upon every single search.
We have already talked about SEO’s benefits, but the main drawback to it is that everything you do towards getting found organically takes time.
It will take roughly 6-8 months for small to medium-sized businesses to usually get any rankings within search results, which is a long time for the people who don’t have time to sit around and wait.
This is where google ads come in to save the day.
You can take the exact keywords that you were trying to show up for with your website pages and speed up the process of being found.
The goal is still to provide the end-user (people searching google) with the most relevant link for what they are looking for.
Except, the key difference now is that you are paying to be where they are looking.
Google ads give you the flexibility to show your ads to the people most interested in your products or service.
You can choose keywords that match the search intent of the person making the web search.
Google ads let you customize nearly everything about your ads with just a few clicks of a button, along with getting your ads in front of the right people at the right time.
If you would like a more in-depth tutorial on setting up your ads account, check out https://neilpatel.com/what-is-google-adwords/.
Email Marketing
Email marketing remains near the top of the list for best ROI marketing techniques out there.
On average, you can expect about a $38 return for every $1 spent on email marketing.
It’s something that everyone needs to get started with.
There are over 3.9 Billion active email users worldwide.
This number is still growing. In fact, the amount of people using email is projected to grow to 4.1 Billion by the end of 2021.
Email is an effective way to keep in touch with your customers and support them over time.
No matter what level of the buying funnel someone is in, email marketing is a great way to build a real relationship with your audience. In the end, if you are focused on providing value, you will have a greater chance of gaining a new paying customer.
Think back to your personal experiences with emails.
Maybe you are subscribed to a content creator that you admire who shares excellent tips that help you live a better life every week in the form of an email.
Or maybe you are signed up for an email newsletter for your favorite fitness brand where they give amazing deals and discounts directly to your inbox.
You can do whatever you want with your emails and send them out whenever you want.
Talk about what you want to talk about.
Allow people to get to know you better.
Give them a reason to stick around and tell their friends about you.
If you haven’t experienced this for yourself, then it’s time to branch out.
Head over to the brands you love or the people you follow online and check to see if they have an email newsletter.
Sign up and see what they send out to get a better idea of what you can do.
If you would like to set up an email newsletter today, here is a list of the platforms I suggest checking out:
- Mailchimp → Set-Up Guide
- Sendinblue → Set-Up Guide
- OmniSend → Set-Up Guide
- Sendfox (This is the easiest to use service I’ve come across yet and love using) → Set-Up Guide
All of these platforms let you get started for free up until you hit a substantial amount of email subscribers.
Check them all out to see what you enjoy using, and then make your decision from there.
Youtube video ads
There are 2 billion monthly active users on youtube.
If you couldn’t tell by that number, video is insanely popular, and most likely, you will not see those numbers go down any time soon.
Youtube is the second largest search engine available for you to use, right behind Google.
When people want to learn new things or be entertained, they prefer video, and the stats prove it.
72% of customers would prefer to learn about a product or service by video.
When it comes to content promotion, youtube does a great job of getting your message across quickly.
Just like google ads, you can customize your target audience and get your message in front of the most interested in what you have to offer.
You can play your video ads on specific channels that you know your audience watches and make sure that your ad spend is put to use in the best way possible.
Or you can let youtube decide for you where it’s best to place your ads with the information you gave it.
HubSpot has an excellent resource for you to check out about getting started with advertising on youtube, and I highly recommend checking it out here https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/youtube-video-advertising-guide.
Conclusion
There are many ways to promote your content, some paid and some free of cost but require time to get results.
If you have a large marketing budget to move around, then head for the paid advertising options to get people in the door faster.
However, it would be wise to implement some of the long-term free strategies alongside that, like maximizing your SEO opportunities.
This will allow you to spend less money in the future on advertising costs and enjoy the benefits of organic traffic that you can continue to scale up.
For people to find your work, you need to make it as easy as possible for people to see you.
Pick the content promotion avenues that work best with your business.
Thanks for sticking around with us today!
Up next, we will be talking about tracking your progress and content analytics.
Leave value-adding comments on other blogs in your industry.
No one likes to hang around with people that take take take all the time in real life.
The same rule applies online.
You will see people like this in the comment sections within business blogs and youtube videos in the form of spam directed towards their business.
Most likely, they won’t get very far with it because site admins and loyal viewers work together to take it down.
You don’t want to be seen as spam online because that reputation will linger and ultimately damage your business’s image in the viewer’s eyes.
Instead, there is a better way to go about this; make your comments helpful and informative.
Offer some good insights or a different perspective on what was presented.
Add value like this to the communities online and work towards building actual meaningful relationships.
After you are known to be a good source of information and have the reputation of being a frequent contributor, include links to resources on your site that can benefit the reader further whenever necessary.
You won’t come across as spammy or anything, and your link will be received well by the post owner and the admins.
Eventually, as you do this within enough communities online, you will accumulate the attention of the other frequent readers or even the writers.
Who knows, they may click over to your site and see what you have to offer.