Marketing content is a time-consuming process. Though, to be fair, most stages of content marketing are time-intensive. You’ve got to do a ton of research and strategy, and then write, create, and produce high-quality content on a regular basis. But once you have your content in the bag, the part where you get it out to people can be especially challenging.
There are various ways to lure your targeted audience to your content. Through standard social media shares, inbound marketing, and paid ads, there’s a nearly endless amount of strategies to choose from when it comes to launching your content and getting it in front of the right people.
In an ideal world, you’ll take an omni-channel approach to content distribution and amplification, combining inbound marketing, organic reach, and paid ads for a multipronged strategy that hits all the bases. This “jack of all trades” tactic is among the best ways to promote your business.
For now, however, we’ll focus on five tips for raising awareness and visibility for your content:
1. Op-Eds and Guest Articles
Yep, guest posting for other sites is still a great way to increase your content’s exposure to new audiences and new markets so long as your content is valuable and the publisher you partner with is trustworthy.
One of the best ways to do this well is to start with an in-depth piece of industry content that is hosted on your company site (if it’s gated content, even better). Create related guest articles and blog posts that can be published with relevant industry websites and publications, and that link back to the more in-depth content on your company site. You’ll not only expand the audience for your content, but you’ll increase brand awareness and gain valuable backlinks to your website that will help boost SERPs and organic traffic.
Starting out might seem daunting, but it’s not too difficult to find opportunties—more than half of business bloggers outsource posts from contributors. You can find information on industry sites and business publications by searching for terms like “submit guest blog” or “submit guest post.”
You can also submit your content to many prominent sites like Business Insider or Forbes. Either way, find the ones in your niche that command many social media followers, can bring you targeted traffic, and grant you an authoritative link profile.
If you’re working without a strong piece of in-depth content or research to link back to, figure out what content topics are trending with tools like BuzzSumo. Once you’ve got a hot, trending topic in mind, send your pitch.
2. Create a Unique Voice and Content Perspective
Competition’s higher than ever. Four years ago, people were seeing more than 5,000 ads per day. That’s a lot of media consumption. Eventually, folks got tired and, as of recently, installed adblockers on 615 million of their devices. One way to get around that is with unintrusive marketing from that has a unique voice and perspective.
Today, that means creativity, consistency, and transparency. You need a name people can remember, a logo people can instantly identify, and a personality that people can trust, enjoy, or laugh with (not at). These days, ads are still all over the place, but now audiences have been inundated with content as well. So it’s never been more important to have a unique perspective and brand voice – even if your industry is in a technical or dry industry like manufacturing.
3. Get More Visual
Every time you share your written content on social media, include an image. That’s because posts with visuals get more than twice as many engagements on Facebook and Twitter. And posts with informative infographics get shared three times as many.
4. Partner With Another Great Brand (in a Non-Competitive Industry)
Collaborate! Many times, organizations can take an isolated approach to marketing – being afraid to find collaboration opportunities with other brands in similar, but non-competiting industry spaces. And this is really a lost opportunity, as other brands can have an ideal target market that matches you own and makes it a viable channel for driving traffic, awareness, and even lead gen.
A simple place to start is with channel marketing partners. Oftentimes, this is low hanging fruit for many product brands and can turn into quite a few content creation and distribution opportunities. It’s also a great idea to reach out to any referral partners you have or even vendors you work with to see if there are any content creation collaborations that exist there.
By partnering up with other brands to raise awareness, you also tap into a new audience or market, create valuable backlinks, and expand your content distribution efforts (without much actual effort).
5. Don’t Stop Updating
Creating fresh, optimized content on a regular basis is the true key to increasing your brand awareness and traffic online. And naturally, the best way to do that is by having a consistent content production schedule. Keep in mind up to 77 percent of internet users read blogs, and you’ve got no reason to ever stop updating! According to Hubspot, companies that publish 16+ blog posts per month get nearly 3.5x more traffic and 4.5x more leads than those that publish 0-4 monthly.
And those are just a few ways you should be marketing your content. But the most important way you can raise your brand awareness? Content creation. At S&G we can help your streamline and scale your content creation efforts and then amplify it through all the right channels. Get in touch and we’ll get a plan started for you.