Promoting Content with Paid Tactics- Necessary or No?
If a tree falls blog is written in the woods on the internet and no one’s there to hear read it, does it still make a sound generate traffic and leads?
“If I write this blog that is the awesomest blog ever and post it on my website, I’ll generate the 60% more leads I need to increase revenues by $1.2M in 2015, hands down.” Not necessarily. If you’re just getting started with inbound marketing– or are even just adding content marketing to your mix– you probably think that putting awesome, top secret ideas in your content is the only element to getting the traffic and leads from it.
The internet is a big place. The world in general is an even bigger place. Not to mention, there’s a lot of competition for your prospects’ attention.
With that being said, writing awesome content is not enough.
You can’t just publish your ideas and hope someone will find it like an oasis in the desert. You need to put it out there. Share it with people. Promote it. Capture interest.
If your content is good, people will click. They’ll stay, read, subscribe, and maybe even buy something from you.
As you generate interest and drive traffic to your content, your reader base will build and, yes, eventually you can turn your promotional tactics down (if you want). But I’ve got a feeling you’ll want to keep the traffic train rolling. After all, who’s ever so happy with current sales that they legitimately don’t want more? #notreal
Here are some of the ways our agency typically drives traffic to newly established blogs, offers, and promotional pieces for our clients to get the ball rolling and generate the leads our clients want:
- Buy paid ads on the best social networks for you and target them based on interest, job title, industry, company, or other demographics. Content marketing pieces perform well on the information-rich social networks of Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Social ads are also inexpensive, convert exceptionally well, and have a lower CPC than most PPC campaigns.
- Establish someone on your leadership, marketing or sales team as a publisher on LinkedIn and publish content as you create it. This puts a face to the company and content, builds a reader base that you can release content to, and positions your company as a trusted expert and thought leader in your category.
- When new content is created and ready to start generating leads, pre-craft social shares for your employees and ask them to share it on their own channels. Include images, hashtags, company mentions, and the hyperlink for the content that they can easily copy, paste and promote for you.
- Don’t just settle for posting your content on your own blog or social channels. Participate regularly in the forums, groups, and threads where your prospects live. Give back to online communities to build your company’s name and expertise to draw inadvertint attention to your own material and further expertise.
- Drive traffic to your content from other pages on your website by adding CTAs in high traffic areas like the homepage and in sidebars.
- Build a list of identified online influencers from blogs, social media, and online to pitch your content to. *Disclaimer: Only do this if you really feel as if your piece is unique and exceedingly valuable!! Once you lose their attention by sending something not worthwhile they’ll ignore everything else you send afterwards.*
- Journalists with online or print publications you would want to be printed in
- Research companies that your prospects look to or read from
- Bloggers or thought leaders with large readership numbers that write on topics your prospects consume regularly
- Community leaders that work or lead in that industry
- And more.
For more on content marketing and all that goes into it, click the button below to take a look at a free slideshare we put together that outlines the 8 big elements of content marketing.