Content is just a part of content marketing. There’s also the whole marketing part. If you have rock solid content but no way to get it in front of people, perhaps you should have a marketing content plan alongside your content marketing strategy.
Here are a few ways you should be marketing content:
Email Campaigns
Email is not dead. Stop it with that doom saying. Quite the opposite: it’s a fairly easy and comprehensive method that you can implement once you have a list of recipients, complete with email addresses, names, and all that good stuff. There are a few ways you can handle email marketing; you can blast out weekly newsletters with all that fresh content from the past seven days or send an automated email notification the moment a new piece of content goes live. Choose the method that’s best for you and your content plan.
Social media
Like, share, subscribe. Those three little words carry so much weight and so much power. Probably because they work often. Thing is, that kind of call to action works best on social media, in channels like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Serious B2B marketers will want to share content on LinkedIn, where up to 94 percent of companies and businesses network and swap content. More casual or eccentric organizations can leverage Twitter’s 280 characters to get their message across. Since users can reply to you, it’s a great chance to manage customer service and respond directly to customers and clients.
Guest Blogging
This one’s kind of a twofer: market your content with content on other web sites. Sounds odd, but guest blogging can increase your reach with inbound links and expose your authority to a whole new audience you may not otherwise attract. Submitting entertaining and insightful guest posts to popular affiliate programs such as Forbes can plug you into an established network of likeminded businesses, boost your reputation, and help drive traffic and conversions.
Influencers
These are the LinkedIn and Instagram users with followers in the tens of thousands and higher. They’re creative content creators, industry leaders, or bloggers who have a huge reach and maybe (if you play your cards right!) they can help share your content. Follow them, get involved with discussions, and try to start up a private conversation about collaborating so they can help spread your work on their channel. Cultivating a strong influencer relationship takes time, but the results can be well worth it and you’ll have a valuable partner at your side.
Keep track
Now that you know about the options above it’s going to take a couple of months to begin seeing any real results. Keep track of conversions, page views, traffic, and other pertinent metrics to see which distribution methods are providing the best return. If you don’t notice any real changes, it may be a good idea to adjust your marketing content plan. Maybe focus more on email and less on social media, or vice versa! Every business is different, and there’s no one-size-fits-all solution, so experiment and test different distribution strategies to see what sticks.