It's getting harder and harder to get your content seen on social media or to get organic traffic from Google. Plus, consumers now have more choice than ever, which means we need to put more effort into promoting our content to get their attention.
However, if you are going to spend more time and resources promoting your content, you need to make sure it's really good!
Besides regular content such as 'How to' articles and lists, you also need to have your 'cornerstone' content that is more valuable to the reader and easier to promote. Here are some ideas on the type of content you should promote and how.
Types of content you need to promote
There are certain types of content that are easier to promote, either because they pack a lot more value or because they are more popular and more 'shareable.' Here are some examples:
1. Ultimate guides
When we talk about an ultimate guide, we think about a detailed, long-form article (3-5k words) or a collection of videos on a particular topic. When you create a content piece like this, you should aim at making it better than any other competitor's content out there. Here's an example from an SEO expert Brian Dean:
This content has 882 comments and over 10,000 shares. It's a guide that most likely took Brian a couple of weeks to produce, but it's super valuable.
Ranking for SEO content is one of the hardest niches possible because the SEO people are good at SEO! Brian ranks number four on Google for this article. He knew he had to do something special to rank for it. Your industry probably won't be as competitive, but you'll still need to deliver something really good.
2. Research Reports
Research reports are great for driving traffic and building authority in your niche. Creating a research report takes time, but it pays off because the data-backed content provides a lot of value.
When creating this type of content, make sure that your research provides unique insights into an interesting topic that is relevant to your industry and your audience. This will bring you more social shares and more eyeballs!
3. Infographics
Infographics make it easy for people to consume and digest the information and data you want to present. According to research, they are three times more shareable than any other content type and thus have a potential to go viral.
They are the perfect type of content to create to generate some buzz on social media, attract links, and drive traffic to your website.
4. Utilities
You can create a simple tool that focuses on solving a small problem specific to your niche and your audience. This can be something like a basic website SEO grader (think HubSpot’s Website Grader), and if you promote it heavily, it's still going to help you generate traffic, backlinks, and authority.
Who should you reach out to?
As part of your content promotion efforts, you need to reach out to people directly. First and foremost, you need to identify and reach out to influencers in your niche who have access to an audience you need to get access to. These are the people who can help create visibility for your content among relevant audiences.
One of the easiest ways to find these influencers is to follow the trail. Here's how it works. You find one key influencer in your industry and analyze their accounts to see who they are interacting with regularly. Influencers talk with other influencers and this is an easy way to produce a list you can use for outreach.
How to perform outreach
Now that you have your list, you can import it to OutreachPlus and the tool will help you with everything from preparing campaigns to performing the outreach and tracking the results.
Once you start your outreach campaign, you’ll have a history of conversation with each of your prospects so no email or contact gets lost in the shuffle.
What are the benefits
Promoting content through outreach is hard work, but if you do it right, you'll build meaningful relationships with the influencers and get a much higher ROI on your content promotion efforts in the long run.