One of the biggest woes that content marketers face is getting people to see their content.
Just because you’ve built it, doesn’t mean they will come.
That’s because before they can see it, the people will have to know that your content exists in the first place.
So how do you stand out from the digital landscape with the ever-increasing competition?
If you want your content to provide the maximum value for your business, being able to engage the right audiences is just as vital as creating the content itself.
If you find yourself still struggling with getting in front of the right crowd, here are five advanced strategies that should help get the exposure that your brand needs.
1. Get involved with influencers
Love em or hate em, influencers are becoming an integral part of marketing. More companies are jumping onto the influencer marketing bandwagon nowadays.
Today, influencers operate in almost any type of industry. Influencers don’t necessarily need to be on Instagram or Facebook. He or she can be anyone that people look up to for advice and opinions.
While the level of success is mostly dependent on the type of niche your business is, influencer outreach can be a useful tool in driving awareness.
Influencers can also be an excellent source for content ideas. For example, before you start writing your content, you can reach out to influencers to quickly decide whether you’re creating content on topics your audience will find interesting.
See if these influencers are interested in promoting the content once it’s finished, and ask for a comment or example to add to your article.
You can also invite them to review the content before publishing it. This can let the influencers feel valued, that their opinions matter.
Making your influencers feel valuable can go a long way in building a lasting working relationship with them. Hopefully, this will get them excited about the promotion you’re going to do next time
After your content is published, remember to thank the influencers for their inputs. Let them know you appreciated their help.
Encourage them to read, share, and link to your content they find your content beneficial. If you’ve enjoyed working with your influencer, don’t be afraid to ask them to partner up again. You’d be surprised at how effective this method can be.
2. Contribute to communities that share content
Publishing content on your own site usually just isn’t enough to get the level of engagement you want for your blog content.
This would mean you need to find ways to put your content in front of a broader audience.
Content sharing communities are excellent avenues to make your voice heard.
They give you a chance to amplify your message through a widespread network of like-minded followers who submit and share content pieces that are relevant to the community.
Depending on the nature of your business, the places where communities are will be different. But a great place to start looking will be on Facebook Groups.
Some of these sites are free; while others would require payment. Whichever you choose, learn the ropes before you start pushing your own content.
You don’t want to be seen as a business person who is just there for your own agenda. Take part, contribute and share advice with other members.
The relationship that you have with the community will take time to nurture, but it will be worth your time.
Not only are you building an audience for your content, but you are also potentially nurturing a community of followers for your brand as well.
After you have demonstrated your value to the community, then you can share your content. This way, your content will be seen as a genuinely valuable contribution, not a form of shameless self-promotion.
3. Create a variety of content snippets
When your content is too vast, it can be too overwhelming to your audience at first glance.
This is where content snippets come in handy. They help to present your work in an easily digestible format, making them easy to share and understand.
Think of like the synopsis to a movie or TV show. The job of the content snippet is to entice the reader to check out the main feature.
When your content snippet has successfully done its job, you should see an increase in your overall click-through rates).
Creating a variety of each tweet or social media post lets you test out the engagement level of each variation and see what kind of sharing strategies works best for your audience.
When you’re creating multiple content snippets, try out a few tactics such as creating multiple versions of your titles that are both varying in complexity and length.
You should always try to incorporate relevant questions in your snippet that are related to the subject matter.
Using numbers and facts in your snippet is also a sound strategy to employ since people are more likely to click on content with statistics.
Lastly, don’t forget to incorporate a CTA (call-to-action).
Start off by creating about 5 to 10 different varieties of snippets to test across a variety of platforms. Make sure to track the success of each one with a spreadsheet, keeping in mind the context of the life cycle on each platform.
4. Work on and expand your existing posts
Sometimes we don’t realise we already have the tools we need to succeed. A great example of this is your current content.
If your past content managed to work well in driving traffic, why not just repurpose the existing content instead of reinventing the wheel?
By repurposing your content, you can breathe new life into your previous work through new perspectives, fresh information, opinions, and updated statistics.
Updating posts give you another chance to promote the same content again and get the content in front of a new audience who may not have seen it before.
Another significant benefit of using updated old content is that you save a ton of work to plan and create new content from scratch.
To take this strategy even further, don’t just stop at updating your old content (although there’s SEO benefit to doing that). Spend some time (or money, if you can afford) to transform your past content into even more content.
Provide deep dive into the content topic using brand new infographics, videos, podcasts, or PDF reports using the past article as the jump-off point.
Using this strategy, you can create your own pillar content that ensures every aspect of the topic is well-covered, and nothing falls through the cracks.
You can even set up a scheduled monthly review to your work calendar, so you’ll remember to go through old posts again to update and expand on.
Keep an eye out on the latest buzz that’s happening in your industry. When something newsworthy takes place, quickly refresh your older content as new developments occur, to keep your old content fresh.
New changes bring about new perspectives so you should either invalidate your previous assertions or alter your recommendations.
Sometimes when you are producing content, you may come across an idea or two on how to take your piece further next time. Take note and remember to revisit them in the future.
5. Say yes to new opportunities
While the goal of your content marketing strategy is to ultimately drive more revenue for your business, at the same time you are providing highly relevant and valuable info for your audience.
And this can open up new marketing benefits and opportunities in other areas, too. In fact, by producing excellent quality content can lead to:
- Being invited to contribute to roundup articles on top-tier websites and blogs
- A chance to speak at local conferences in your industry
- Guest interviews on podcasts
- Guest speaking on webinars alongside other influencers and authority figures
- Book authorship or publishing opportunities
- And more…
While these things may or may not promote help promote your online content directly, still these are activities that demonstrate high social proof to your audience.
Just by participating in one or more of these activities can dramatically improve brand awareness and make all your future marketing efforts much more impactful.
But if you’re producing lacklustre content, you can’t expect big results. Things like these don’t usually happen by chance.
You need to start producing meaningful and high-value content to your followers so that even the influencers you want to collaborate with will sit up and take notice.
Start by having a clear purpose for creating content. Whether it’s to educate, entertain, dispel misconceptions, or something entirely different.
Use this opportunity to build relationships, whether it’s with your own target audience or the audiences you’ve been invited to address for the first time – that go beyond content promotion.
The real value of this method isn’t necessarily the value of the content itself, but the doors of opportunity it can lead to helping you achieve marketing success if you leverage them wisely.
Final words
Content promotion is all about being dynamic. You need to be flexible in adapting your strategies.
As time goes on, you’ll likely exhaust almost all of your traditional content marketing tactics. This is where these advanced methods will start to come in handy.
They go beyond your standard marketing methods and gives you a much higher chance to put your content in front of your target audience.
Remember, don’t just put the emphasis on content creation alone.
Work on how you can build future relationships with your audience and marketing partners, as well as strategise about how you can use your content to grow your business and unlock more opportunities.
Once more doors are opened, you’ll find that you can have unprecedented access to more advanced forms of promotion.