How To Promote Content For Aggressive Traffic Growth
If you don’t know how to promote content, your traffic and rankings will suffer for months as you wait for organic traffic to start coming in.
This is not a knock on search engine optimization (SEO). Content promotion actually compliments your SEO efforts and overall business growth.
Plus, why only rely on organic traffic from search engines when you can get traffic to your site via other means, as well as help your content rank higher?
Two strategies (SEO and promotion) are better than one (just SEO).
Let’s analyze what the top 1% content marketers know about promotion and distribution. Then you’ll know how to replicate their strategies to get crowds of new audiences to visit your website—even before your site starts to rank for SEO keywords.
Why Promote Content
Billionaire Peter Thiel advises companies to spend 50% of their time on the product and 50% on promotion. This is countercultural advice for a world who says “the best product sells itself” and “we’re not going to start marketing until our product (or service) is perfect”.
We 1,000% agree with Thiel. Promotion is what stirs the drink and brings out the best flavors in content.
When you think about it, the only reason you’re creating high-quality content is so your audience sees it, benefits, trusts you, and (hopefully) buys from you in the present or future.
So it’s safe to say: no promotion, no point in making content. Promotion ensures people see the content you worked hard to create.
And the right content promotion can build a list of people who want what you’re selling before it’s even for sale. That’s why you’re a fool if you put all your efforts in product and zero into advertising.
This activity is especially important as most social media platforms have algorithms that are working against your organic posts by hiding your posts from followers. This forces brands to pay for ads to reach their audiences.
One promotional effort isn’t always enough. Sometimes you also need to repost your content to ensure you’re gaining all the traffic possible to your website.
Take this infographic for example. By reposting the same content, this company was able to generate 24 more clicks to their website. In total, basic social media promotion added 43 clicks. That all adds up in the long game.
Because content promotion is a main driver in traffic and revenue, best to master it.
Don’t worry, we have created a comprehensive guide that shows you how to promote content.
Distribute Content For Maximum Traffic
1. Internally Link Across Posts
I’m going to assume that creating blog posts is now an important part of your content strategy. (If it’s not, it should be.)
You probably work hard to create quality content for these posts so you can generate more leads. It’d be a shame for them to fall into the back corner of your site, receiving no love.
Instead, internally link to your previous posts in your new content.
By linking to your own posts, you are increasing the traffic that the posts were already generating. You’re promoting your old content with your new content.
You’ll also want to go through your old content and see what is performing the best. These are the posts that you should internally link to your website to further reinforce their Google rankings.
When doing this, make sure that it fits in naturally with the topic. You don’t want to include your previous posts just for the purpose of generating new traffic. Be sure to only link if the page you’re linking to provides additional value.
2. Email Marketing
New leads who signed up for your email list are a prime audience for content promotion.
This list is great because it helps establish a relationship with people while also guaranteeing that your audience are actually interested in what you’re about. This is true or they would have never signed up.
So each time you publish a blog post, you should also send it out to your email list. The reader now doesn’t have to constantly check your website to see if you published something new.
Customers on your email list are much more likely to engage give you feedback and comment on your posts. Not only that, these people have money to spend. Email is 40 times more effective than Facebook and Twitter combined for acquiring new customers.
For all these reasons that go beyond just page views, start sharing your content with your email list.
3. Email Outreach
A great way to promote your content is to get others to do it for you. It’s even better if these people are industry influencers.
You may be thinking “easier said than done, right?”. It’s actually not!
A simple email can help you begin to establish a relationship and get industry celebs to share your links.
Here’s how you do it. Whenever you include a person in your post, whether it be a quote, fact about them, or their infographic, you should email them and let them know.
In your email you should include:
- Who you are and what you do
- A compliment about how much you love their content
- An explanation that you included them in a post (make sure to insert the link to the post they’re in)
- A nice request for feedback
- Conclusion
Since their content is used in the post, they’re likely to share it with their own followers.
If they really like what you write, they’ll continue to read your stuff and share it on their own sites.
Reaching out to influencers is a great way to widen your audience and get your content out in the world. When it works, you’ll instantly notice a difference.
4. Post To Social Media
This should be a given. You need to advertise your posts on your social media.
Why? It’s free and still effective.
But since each social media platform is different, you need different strategies for each.
Roughly 1.6 million people log in to to Facebook everyday.
Don’t be shocked when you realize failing to promote your content on Facebook can cost you hundreds of leads per month.
You should always post your content on your Facebook Page feed, and personal account—the more the merrier.
With the current Facebook algorithm limiting reach, your best option to get your content seen is through paid advertising.
Though not all of it needs to be sponsored. For best results, you should sponsor your top posts. This way you know you’re advertising what others have told you is your most interesting work.
Did you know 71% of businesses are now using Instagram to promote their content?
Instagram is slightly different in terms of your goals and how you advertise on it because you can’t post links in your Instagram captions.
Instead, Instagram should be used to get people to your posts and generate an interest in your brand.
On the Robben Media Instagram account, we post pictures of our customers and their success when they work with us. We will also post content that is related to our services and our marketing expertise.
Any post you create on Instagram that has the purpose of promotion needs a call-to-action (CTA) for people to follow. This CTA will take the user from Instagram directly to a landing page built to convert.
You should also include a link to your website in your bio so people can learn more about what you do. Also, if you have the swipe up feature, link to pages in your stories to drive real-time website visits.
That’s Instagram marketing done right.
Why pursue Twitter marketing? Twitter has more than 300 million active users. Of those 300 million, 54% of users took action after seeing a brand come up on their feed. Do the math, that’s over 150 million people being influenced by brands.
Twitter may not be the first platform you think of to advertise your content.
Here’s the deal, though. Most people have one or two social media platforms that they actively use. If that happens to be Twitter for them, you want to make sure that they will see your content as well.
When you promote your content on Twitter, include a small description of what the post is about as well as a link to the post. You should also include a few related hashtags to increase the probability that users will see your post.
Twitter is also a great place to establish relationships with people in your industry.
Joining in Twitter conversations and adding valuable commentary can help you establish yourself as a voice of reason.
LinkedIn is a big deal in B2B promotion!
In another article, we discussed how LinkedIn drove over half of B2B traffic driven by social media.
If you’re worried about users getting annoyed by constantly seeing your posts, LinkedIn is an excellent place to go to promote your content.
To gain any sort of traffic, LinkedIn requires that you’re constantly active on your page. This means constantly posting valuable content.
Again, if it’s in the budget, you should also determine what your best performing content is and pay to sponsor it.
Those who commit with their efforts and dollars will always see the most growth.
Pinterest is probably a platform you wouldn’t think to advertise on.
I get it, people don’t really go on Pinterest to get information about business.
However, 250 million people use Pinterest every month.
With stats like these, you need to consider using it. Pinterest is the social media platform that allows you to show your company’s personality.
You can follow pages that seem interesting to you and share a lot of different content to your page. When people view your Pinterest, they can have a better idea of who you are as a brand, what you value, and why.
Personality is really important when it comes to advertising. People that feel more connected to your company are more likely to buy your products and become customers.
As long as you include a link to your website and some posts with your own graphics, you can use Pinterest as an underrated marketing channel.
5. Tag External Sources On Social
Now that you know how to promote your content on each platform, you should know how to optimize each post.
Remember how we talked about emailing the people you include in your content? You should also give them credit when you share your posts on social media.
Tag the account that is linked to the person you mentioned in your posts to establish the relationship between you and the influencer.
Tagging their account in your post makes it easier for them to share your content on their personal accounts.
It can also entice the viewer to read your posts if you tag someone they have a connection to.
Relationships can go a long way when it comes to promoting content. Think about it. You just need to build a relationship with one influencer and that one relationship gets your content in front of their 10 million followers. And that exposure forever changes your business.
6. Run Paid Ads
You really need to use a combination of organic reach and paid reach to promote your posts.
When it comes to search engines, you can pay to get your content in the top spots when a certain keyword is searched.
For social media platforms that have algorithms that make organic reach extremely difficult, like Facebook and LinkedIn, you should consider paying to sponsor at least some of your well-performing posts.
Know how to go about paid advertising and understanding how much you should be paying can take a lot of extensive research.
That’s why people like us exist. We offer services to run your PPC ads or Facebook ads for you.
Hiring an agency that are experts on the topic can make a world of difference when you are first starting out with paid advertising.
7. Write Guest Posts
Guest blogging is writing content for another company and giving you free advertising for your brand. This effort can quickly increase brand awareness and trust with a new audience.
When you’re deciding who to blog for and what to blog about, you should first look to see where guest blog opportunities are offered.
Doing a quick Google search to see who is looking for guests can help you narrow down who you can write for.
Once you decide on some companies that interest you and are similar to your brand, you should do some research to determine what they write about, the style they write in and the audience they write to. It might be completely different than what you’re used to.
It’s ideal to build your own blog first before you can ask to blog for someone else. If they have nothing to reference your writing ability, they’re not going to ask you to blog for them.
If you can pull that off, then the benefits of guest blogging are similar to the benefits of blogging. Building relationships with other people in your industry and establishing yourself as a credible source only advances your mission.
Naturally, the people you turn into fans will sign up for your email list to get more from you.
8. Comment On Relevant Industry Blog Posts
While you’re doing your research for your own posts, keeping up to date with all the trends, or even finding where to guest blog, you should add comments to the posts you read.
You should especially comment on posts that get a lot of traffic.
When you comment, you should first praise or compliment what they wrote. A specific comment, like “I really found it interesting that 54% of people on Twitter took action when they interacted with a brand. I’ve scheduled a meeting to invest more into Twitter marketing. I’ll report back with the details after three months.” goes much farther than, “Great post”.
When you add relevant commentary, it shows you have extensive knowledge and a fresh perspective on the topic. This alone will get people to visit your page and increase traffic to your site.
9. Quora
You may not have heard of Quora. Quora is a site where anyone can ask a question about anything, and then people offer their best answers.
So how is this going to be valuable to you?
For starters, Quora gets about 100 million monthly views.
If you can offer a valuable answer to a question, your answer will get the most votes, climb to the top of the page as the best answer, and your Quora popularity can boost instantaneously.
If your answer becomes extremely popular, it can show up on Google results when people search for the topic.
Even if your answer doesn’t become extremely popular, someone may find it valuable and find your site by clicking over from Quora, clicking your bio, or searching your name on Google to learn more.
10. Reddit Threads
Believe it or not, Reddit is actually a great platform to use for promoting content.
It is also one of the hardest platforms to try and advertise on.
Reddit has a strict algorithm that stops scammers from posting on their site. Because of this, your posts have to be relevant and valuable or else you will get banned from the site.
Before you even think about posting, you need to do some research about your industry and their presence on Reddit. You can get a feel for how you should be posting your content so you don’t get flagged.
The best types of content to post on Reddit are:
- Guides
- Instructions on specific topics
- Interviews you have had with experts
Those types of posts are what Reddit users find most valuable.
Since Reddit is very different than any other platform you’ve likely worked with, it’s also worth it to do some research about when, how and what to post before getting your hands dirty.
11. Write In Industry Forums
Industry forums are where you’re going to generate your traffic from niche audiences.
Submitting to a forum is less for promoting your content to the general public. But, instead, promoting your content to other people in your industry to gain their attention.
The competition to get your posts seen on these types of sites is intense so you better post your top content and add some personality to it.
It may seem like a lot of work for a few leads, so know the leads you generate from a forum will be high quality and knowledgeable.
There are a variety of forums out there so you will want to do some research about where your industry has a high presence and where the influencers in your industry are browsing.
Some of the more popular forums that our team visits are Blackhat and Webmaster.
12. Make Infographics
Infographics are such an easy way to generate traffic to your site.
Why do infographics produce a lion’s share of content? They are:
- Easy to view
- Simple to share
- Convenient for others to include in their own posts
- Show that you’re an expert on the topic
We love to include infographics in our posts and on our website so they can be shared.
There are so many free resources that you can use to create infographics.
I really like to use Canva because they have different templates and features that create professional looking infographics.
Piktochart also has a variety of templates to assist you with your design process.
There are a variety of free design websites to use, it’s up to you to decide what is easiest for you.
13. Create A Video
For Facebook (and many other platforms), video content always outperforms the rest.
There are two ways you can create video content:
- Take a blog post you already wrote and turn it into a video
- Find a topic you want to cover and create a video
Starting with a video can actually be one of the easiest ways to repurpose content.
By starting with a video, you can take different sound bites and sections of audio and turn it into a podcast. From there, you can take what was said in the podcast and turn it into a blog post.
Video content is booming. Studies show people retain 95% of a message when they watch it in a video compared to 10% when reading it in text.
Many search engines are taking note of it. Search engines are starting to give YouTube videos top page spots when a keyword is searched.
You most often know that people are always looking for informational videos to learn about certain topics.
Posting content on YouTube and including links to the post that covers the same topic as well as your website can end up generating a decent amount of leads over time.
14. Record A Podcast
Podcasts are quickly becoming the next big thing in marketing. A report shows 26% of content marketers plan to increase their podcast content.
Podcasts are becoming so popular because people can multitask while listening. You can’t cook, drive to work, or work out as you’re reading a blog post. You can do both while listening to audio.
First time listeners will often become regular listeners if they get value and trust you.
Start with your best performing posts—include a link to the text version of the post—and turn them into episodes.
With this audio, you can offer a more personalized perspective on the topic you wrote the post about.
A podcast also allows you to add additional content that you didn’t include in your post.
There are free websites that help you create audio for your episodes which you can then publish to your preferred podcast site. Most people use Apple podcasts and Spotify.
15. Utilize Slideshare
Slideshare is a website sponsored by LinkedIn that allows people to share slide decks for information they researched.
It is a relatively underused platform and is something you should start to consider adding to your content strategy.
Why? Slideshare gets roughly 50 million views per month. Meaning it’s a brilliant way to repurpose your posts to promote your content.
Take the information you have in your posts and turn it into a slide deck.
Design is vital for these decks, as you’d expect. You can use free sites like Canva and Adobe Spark or you can use programs you already have access to like the entire Adobe Creative Suite.
It is up to you and what you prefer to use. All that matters is that your decks look professional and offer valuable information to the viewer.
SEO rules still apply for slide decks. You want to include specific keywords, alt-text, and other search factors.
Then you can promote your slide decks on your social media and on the post that the slide deck corresponds to.
Since slideshare is sponsored by LinkedIn, you can attach your slide decks to your LinkedIn profile for an added bonus.
16. Lead Gen PDF
A lead gen PDF is primarily used to help generate email leads and get people started down a drip campaign.
There are different PDF sites and communities where you can post your PDF templates for others to view.
You will likely need to hire a designer to create your PDF template that you will then use for your posts. You can find one on freelance sites like Upwork or Fiveer. Or you can ask for recommendations from others in your industry.
The goal is to get one that looks professional and will function for all of your posts.
As always, when you go to post your templates to websites and communities, make sure to include links to both your website and the corresponding blog post.
17. Direct Message Influencers
There’s one last promotional method and that’s to reach out to influencers.
As we shared, you should message influencers if you feature them in your posts. This encourages them to share your post with all of their followers.
You don’t have to wait to message influencers until you feature them in a post, however.
Search Instagram for hashtags related to your industry and find people with larger followings than you. Then reach out, provide value without seeking anything in return, and you never know what will come of it.
You can offer to interview them, knowing they’ll share it, and make content and promotion in one swoop.
Connections are vital in this industry and creating as many as possible will help you grow your traffic, brand, and business.
Content Promotion Tools
Now that you know how to promote content, let’s talk about some different tools that you can use to make your content promotion strategy a little bit easier.
Quuu Promote
This website shares the content you have on your social media accounts with Quuu Promote users.
According to their website, they have generated over 45 million shares with their users.
Using this tool will in theory replace the need for you to pay for advertising on specific platforms.
Instead, Quuu Promote will send your content to its users, ensuring that your intended audience sees it.
Bitly
This website provides you with a detailed analysis on your link performance.
When you share links, you don’t get a detailed analysis of how your links are performing.
Sharing Bitly links gives you an analysis that includes the number of clicks and likes your post is receiving.
You can also get demographic data, referral traffic and other categories you won’t see on a platform analysis.
Oh, and did I mention it’s free to use?
BuzzSumo
This website allows you to research the posts you’re competing against.
When you come up with a topic to write about, you can search the keyword on BuzzSumo and see what posts have the highest performance.
You can see what they’re doing and come up with a strategy to produce better results than the top posts.
You can also use this site to help you come up with ideas for new posts or a series of posts.
They have a section that shows trending topics in your industry, which is insightful at the least.
HootSuite
This website consolidates all of your social media platforms and helps you manage them all in one place.
HootSuite allows you to create schedules of when to post your content on each of your social media platforms. You can decide on a date and time on when you want the post to go live.
It’s a great tool to use to keep your content strategy organized.
IFTTT
This website automates your content promotion strategy.
Similarly to HootSuite, IFTTT consolidates all of your different social media platforms.
It offers some additional services as well, like repurposing content and automatically posting it to your different social sites.
Content strategy becomes much easier to manage since they put all of your platforms in one place.
Conclusion
Don’t stop after writing an awesome blog post. Promote the hell out of it!
Want to know why?
The more people find it, the more you can inspire and help. That’s a selfless reason to do it.
Also, the more people who view your content, the more leads and sales you bring in. That’s a selfish reason.
At Robben Media, we love to help people and make money doing so. If you have the same mentality as us, then follow this guide to a tee to experience extraordinary results.
What’s your best promotional tip for sharing blog content that increases your reach and traffic? Did we miss something? Please share in the comments.