In our earlier blog post we covered the importance of creating quality content on your website.
To create content that is worth someone stopping and reading takes time to do well:
- Writing content that that is interesting, informative and engaging.
- Boosting the content with good quality, relevant images, video, infographics etc.
- Boosting the content with micro-interactions that help the user experience – tabbed content, surveys, forms etc.
- Ensuring you have fact-checked and referenced your work so you’re not misleading people –post-truth, alternate facts are not welcome when you are giving people advice on business, life-style, nutrition issues etc.
Once you have written your content, it needs to be properly structured with the features liked by search engines and readers alike such as clear headings, short paragraphs, meta tagged images etc . Once it’s on your website visits will come from people already visiting your website who are interested in your latest content.
If you have setup the page properly it will be crawled and indexed by search engines who should make it available in the Search engine Results Pages (SERPS).
Where and what triggers it to appear in the SERPS depends on a number of factors. We have covered these in depth in past posts and information about SEO and rankings factors.
So your website now has a carefully worded and informative new piece of content that has taken you 1 to 2 hours of valuable time to produce. What happens now?
What happens next – promoting content
The passive approach is the ‘if you build it, he will come’ strategy (quote from – Ten Film quotes we all get wrong, Field of Dreams film). You can get lucky as good quality content sometimes gets noticed but that that is an over-optimistic strategy that won’t yield consistent results.
The proactive approach is to promote your content so it gets noticed by influencers, shared or talked about. There’s still no guarantee, but it does make it more likely that your content works for you to generate good quality traffic, enquiries and orders.
These are the main opportunities available for promoting your content.
Share on social media
Everybody’s doing it but try to be smart. Social media is all around us but ubiquity means that the impact of sharing is lessened unless you find ways getting interactions such as likes, retweets, shares etc.
Share content on Twitter but include commonly used and relevant hashtags e.g #seo, #webhosting that people regularly search for. Also, when relevant, copy in someone’s twitter name with a dot before the @ sign e.g. .@webgrowthcouk so both the person and your followers see the Tweet .
Linked In
When sharing on professional networks such as Linked In, you could also include relevant discussion groups when you share. You could also publish a modified version of the same content using Publish a Post.
Update your Facebook pages with links to your content. Also find, like and share content to relevant networks by changing from your personal profile to your Page profile.
You should also use the Like as your page feature so your Page rather than personal profile likes a Page (Click on the ‘…’ button next to the Share button on a Page and select the Page you want to use).
Link sharing sites
Setup profiles on link sharing sites such as Digg and StumbleUpon and make them part of the sites you routinely share content.
Google +
Yes it is still relevant and worth sharing content on, but struggling for impact and profile despite the backing of Google.
And the rest
There are more specialist networks such as Quora, Reddit, Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram etc that maybe more relevant to your business. The golden rule is always be interesting and relevant to the discussion without being too explicit about your business. Some forums are ‘intolerant’ of anyone being too commercial.
Client networks and contacts
Tell your clients and contact network about your latest content and news using the following:
- Regular email newsletters, be informative and interesting and link to any new content that is relevant.
- Include a link to blog / news section of the website on your email signature.
- Email relevant individuals with a personal email, particularly if they are mentioned.
Other blogs, discussion forums and Medium
There are many respected blogs and discussion forums that allow comments. You should research and investigate the most relevant and add a comment. Try to stay relevant to the topic of discussion but include a link to your website or specific content if possible.
For longer articles you could consider publishing a version on the online article sharing platform Medium – https://medium.com/ although be careful about duplicate content issues by publishing a modified version of the content.
Using PPC advertising
Pay Per Click advertising is available on search engines
Sometimes you do have to bite the bullet and speculate to accumulate with paid advertising using Google AdWords, Bing Ads, Facebook Ads, Sponsored Tweets and others.
Generally you only pay per click, but costs can mount for little reward if the advert is not properly targeted and managed.
Online PR
Paper based media may have reduced in influence but there are still opportunities for press releasing new developments that are newsworthy, which could include your content. Identify journalists or influential writers in your industry and contact them directly with your content or ideas. If you go about it the right way then they will be interested in hearing from you and willing to help as it helps them fill their empty spaces.
Online PR services include the following:
http://ukservice.prweb.com/ – premium service, e.g. Basic service is £59 per press release.
https://www.prlog.org/ – free press release service with high domain authority.
https://www.onlineprnews.com/ – another free press release with high domain authority.
http://www.pr.com/ – free press release service.
There is also a website – Help a reporter out HARO https://www.helpareporter.com/ – which enables any individual to register as a source and respond to information requests from journalists on particular topics.
Content communities
There are a number of sites that allow you to submit your content so their established audience has the opportunity to see it. The competition is strong but you should be able find a relevant niche.
Sites include:
We have tried to supply some general examples of where you can submit and promote content. There’s no substitute for researching your own niche and your own areas of interest.
Further reading
Best paid and free press release sites
17 advanced content marketing methods
