This article was originally published on the Single Grain blog.
So you created what you thought was a masterful piece of content but there’s no traffic coming in.
The marketing experts talk about the importance of content marketing and how it has made a world of difference in their businesses. The traffic and leads just seem to gush in for them.
Backlinko gets 90,000 visitors a month and it’s a newer SEO blog, Derek Halpern has over 200,000+ e-mail subscribers—and the list goes on.
It’s the one element that people don’t talk about often: content promotion.
And when people DO talk about it, they say content promotion is perhaps even MORE important than the content itself, but no one really tells you how to do it effectively.
We all produce a ton of different content so it just makes sense for us to double down and expand/repurpose it in order to maximize mileage, right?
In this post, we’ll walk you through how to promote your content as well as repurpose it on other platforms (which in essence is also a form of promotion). Let’s call this ‘Content Expansion’.
Let’s jump right into it.
What Usually Happens
The typical content marketing strategy involves publishing a blog post, seeding it to your social profiles, and maybe sending a few e-mails out.
Doesn’t it feel like there should be A LOT more that?
First, the one thing I’ve heard from the Neil Patels and Derek Halperns of the world is to create truly epic content. It’s a lot easier to promote and repurpose content when it’s top-notch!
Assuming you have done that, it’s time to turn your attention to all the platforms that are available for you to repurpose to.
And remember: repurposing is a form of promotion because you are distributing your content further.
Step #1: Pushing Your Content
For example, each of my Growth Everywhere interviews pushes to a few areas:
Apple iTunes – it takes a little bit of work to set up a podcast (equipment, software, editing, etc.) but once you get in a flow, it’s a piece of cake. Pat Flynn has a fantastic guide on how to set up a podcast here.
Stitcher – same as above.
YouTube – I upload all my audio podcast episodes to YouTube to increase my reach. It’s another opportunity for me to get more subscribers to my podcast and also build brand awareness. Here’s what my ‘videos’ end up looking like on YouTube (notice the orange call-to-action button):
Facebook (organic) – People talk about Facebook organic reach being dead, but that’s not the case. If you have a presence on Facebook (or if your audience hangs out there), you should be posting directly to the app (that means not using social media tools for your page posts). You’ll get more reach that way.
Guests posts on other sites – After you’ve found the best places for you to guest blog and established a good relationship, ask if you can repurpose some of your content for their site. For example, I was able to publish an interview I did with Cal Newport on Entrepreneur because I rewrote the post based on their guidelines. If it’s valuable to your audience, why wouldn’t it be valuable to a similar audience? It’s a win/win for both sides.
Soundcloud – Soundcloud is an online audio distribution platform that is growing quickly. If you’re using a podcast hosting service like LibSyn, it’ll allow you to automatically publish to SoundCloud. If not, manually publishing isn’t so bad (especially if you’re getting added distribution). In case you didn’t think Soundcloud was viable, they have over 175m monthly users as of 2015. Here’s a snapshot of their growth:
Medium (duplicated posts are OK) – Medium is a growing publishing platform that has some neat tools to help amplify your posts’ reach. As of 3/19/14, Medium has 13 million unique monthly users. That’s nothing to turn your nose up at. Sometimes I’ll syndicate my content to Medium. Most SEOs will say that it’s probably not a good idea to syndicate content. For me, I say it depends. The most important thing when considering syndication is how you can do it safely without harming your website.
LinkedIn publishing platform (again…duplicated posts are OK) – Professional social network LinkedIn is starting to take publishing more seriously as it continues to expand. I’ll usually syndicate one or two posts per week to LinkedIn. As of 2015, LinkedIn has 364 million users:
Find more statistics at Statista
Twitter – You are still using Twitter, right?
LinkedIn Groups – I used to think LinkedIn groups didn’t provide much value, but time and time again, I’m proven wrong:
Guest posts on other sites – I’ll sometimes write on larger publications such as Entrepreneur.com. Because my content is relevant to their audience it tends to resonate. However, larger publications have strict requirements for original content. That means I’ll have to spend some time recrafting my content to fit their guidelines. It pays off in the long run though. Neil Patel does a good job of breaking down the lessons he learned from publishing over 300 guest posts.
Although I don’t spend much time on YouTube, I get 4,000+ views a month just by pushing to it. On LinkedIn, I can get an additional 400 visits just by republishing the same content:
Sure, these numbers aren’t eye-popping, but as you continue to add them across these other platforms, it adds up. Compound it over years and then you’ll see some serious numbers.
But that’s not all. Newer platforms like Pinterest, Instagram and Periscope are popping up all the time. Writing them off without at least exploring can be a huge mistake. For example, Foundr Magazine’s Nathan Chan grew his Instagram following to over 110,000 people in just 5 months. What’s more impressive is that he gets 20,000 of his IG followers to click on his bio link each month – 45% convert into e-mail subscribers.
Step #2: Getting On Bigger Publications
Have you ever wanted to contribute to sites like Forbes, Huffington Post, Inc. or Fast Company? Young Entrepreneur’s Council is a fast pass to getting on these sites. They even have services that will write articles for time-pressed entrepreneurs. You don’t need to worry about coming up with articles or submitting it to editors. They’ll take care of that for you.
The criteria for admission is a business that does >$1m in annual revenues and a $1,000 annual fee. You’ll also be able to connect with young up-and-coming (under 40 years old) entrepreneurs.
But if you don’t exactly fit the mold for YEC, that’s not a problem. Here’s how you can get on bigger publications:
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