While social media is a relationship-building tool, it can be used to promote content. Using social media to promote your content is all about finding the right balance between self-promotion, sharing useful information, and entertainment. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat are all great mediums to both create and share relevant content. The key is changing that content to suit the platform.
Email Marketing
Email is one of the best ways to reach your audience for any reason, especially to promote content. Because anyone on your email list has opted in to hear from you; you can be sure that they’ll get your messages.
Paid Promotion
Pay-per-click (PPC) helps you get your content in front of new audiences through targeted, paid advertisements. These ads can run on social media, search engines, or other websites. Once you define your buyer persona, you’ll want to go the paid route so as not to waste money targeting uninterested parties. Once you have your audience down, paid promotion can yield a great ROI. To learn more about developing your buyer’s persona Ctrl+Click here.
Syndication
Getting your content promoted through authoritative, third-party channels is a great way to build your audience. Syndication gets your brand in front of fresh eyes (and wallets) that you wouldn’t otherwise reach with your own efforts.
Repurpose your content.
When you repurpose content, you’re reusing something you spent a lot of time creating and transforming it to suit various formats so that it can be more widely consumed.
Think of it as recycling. You want to spend less time creating and more time getting your content in front of your audience. For example, that blog post that you wrote on marketing stats can also serve as a great infographic or even a video.
If you created something in one format, try to think of all the other ways that you could reuse that information that might be just as effective.
Creating a Content Plan
Content exists everywhere, but its success relies on your ability to adapt it to the medium on which it lives. One size does not it all when it comes to posting on different mediums — or the platforms within those mediums, for that matter.
Social media content varies from blog content, which is different than website content. So, you need to know how to tailor your creation to reach your audience where they are.
Let’s dive into some guidelines for sharing content on various platforms.
Social Media Content
There is an art to creating content for social media. But it’s well worth your time since there are 3.96 billion users across social media platforms worldwide. Plus, someone who follows you on social media is like a warm lead
Here are a few quick tips for creating content on some popular social channels.
1. Facebook
Facebook can be used to build micro-communities via Facebook Groups or to share to a mass audience on Facebook Pages. When it comes to sharing content, questions and videos reap the most engagement.
2. Instagram
Instagram is best for sharing high-quality imagery and short videos with brief captions. Hashtags work well on this platform as long as they’re relevant to your account and business. Instagram Stories has introduced a new way to engage with your followers, from quick polls to questions to real-time videos.
3. YouTube
YouTube has 1.3 billion users and counting. Users frequent this platform to watch content ranging from DIY videos to parodies. Some of the most successful content on this platform are how-to guides, vlogs, product reviews, and educational videos.
4. TikTok
TikTok has become one of the most popular social media platforms of our time. It’s best known for fun, short-form videos. It can be used to engage with your Millennial or Gen Z audience.
5. Twitter
Twitter’s best practices include short messages, supporting images, relevant hashtags, and retweets. And, of course, replies go a long way to win over your audience.
Website Content
Website content should focus on three things: your persona, your target keywords, and your solution.
Like your blog content, the copy on your website needs to guide visitors to your solution in a cohesive and natural way.
Think of web content as a map to your product.
Be careful not to turn visitors away through social media feeds and other distracting elements. Once you’ve attracted a potential customer, you must do everything you can to keep them there, and that’s the key function of your website content.
Blog Content
Research shows that companies that blog more get more traffic and more leads than those that don’t.
We, solo entrepreneurs, are busy. We don’t have time to waste on inefficient systems. That’s why we create processes for everything we do. We devise a system, roll it out, tweak it until it works, and then repeat that system to generate the desired results.
Think about every marketing campaign you’ve ever done — webinars, autoresponders, surveys. Each of them had a process. Content creation is no different
2. Ideation
Now that you’ve determined which keywords to target, it’s time to brainstorm content ideas.
HubSpot research shows that the best way to organize content is through topic clusters, meaning you create a long-form, comprehensive pillar page based on a keyword that links to content you’ve created on related subtopics (think blog posts).
To illustrate the point, it looks something like this. The topic cluster model makes brainstorming because it gives you a structure to follow.
Source HubSpot Ultimate Guide to Content Creation.
You can use your main keyword to create a pillar piece that covers that topic in-depth, like, say, a guide to content creation. Then, you can create shorter pieces of content such as:
Infographics Blog posts Templates
These will help your audience dive deeper into the topic and target long-tail keywords.
If you’re stumped for ideas, you might consider looking for inspiration from books you’ve read, industry studies, your competitor’s sites, or related searches on SERPs.
Another source of ideas is answerthepublic.com. Their tagline is Discover what people are asking about… You can use the site for free – up to three enquiries per day.
Once you have your ideas down, you can develop your editorial calendar and start creating.
3. Writing
Your specific content creation strength might be videos or graphics, or podcasts, but writing is the foundation of all content creation. Think about your buyers using their voice, euphemisms, and humour to construct a piece that resonates.
Tell your audience why your content is important to them.
Use titles, meta descriptions, and other teasers to compel your audience to read your content. Put the benefit of your content right in the title to let them know why they should read it.
Create something unique.
Don’t just regurgitate the information that’s already out there. Infuse a unique style or cite new research to emphasize your points.
Stick to one idea.
Then, use your content to reinforce it. Don’t confuse your reader by going on tangents or trying to explain multiple semi-related topics in a single piece.
Stay true to your voice.
Don’t try to impress your audience with eloquent prose or an expansive vocabulary if they don’t speak that way.
Be clear and concise.
You want your audience to relate to you and derive value from your content. So, don’t ask them to sift through jargon or confusing metaphors.
4. Editing
The way you edit your (or others) work is a very subjective process. You may want to edit as you go, or you might wait a few days and review the work with fresh eyes. You might care a great deal about grammar or aim for a more colloquial piece.
Either way, there are a few things that you should look out for as you refine your content, like active voice, clear language, short sentences, and plenty of whitespace. Consider having a colleague or manager review your work, too.
Some tools that will help you cut down on your editing time are Grammarly and Hemingway Editor.
5. Uploading
Now that your content is ready, you’ll need to put it somewhere that people can access it. A content management system (CMS) is software that hosts digital content and allows you to display it on your website (or anywhere else on the web).
The benefit of a CMS is that it connects all of your content and stores it in one place. So, you can easily link to a landing page in your blog article or insert a content offer in an email.
You can also analyse the results of all the content you created for a specific campaign (which can help with content audits). A CMS saves you from having a disjointed content marketing system.
6. Publishing
Publishing content is as simple as clicking a button. So, why include a section on it? Well, because it’s not always that simple.
You can publish your content once after uploading, or you can maximize its impact by waiting for an optimal time. If you’re just starting, then clicking publish right away probably won’t impact your audience too much.
But if you have committed to a regular publishing schedule, like delivering a new post every Wednesday, your audience will expect to see posts published on Wednesdays.
Something else to keep in mind is to publish according to trends or time-sensitive events. For example, if you create content about national holidays or current events, you’ll want to publish those at specific times.
A CMS (Content Management System such as WordPress) will allow you to schedule posts for a future date and specific time so that you can click, schedule, and forget.
7. Promoting Content
Finally, it’s time to promote the content you’ve created. You can do this through various mediums, including social media, email marketing, and even pay-per-click advertising.
To promote your content, think about what channels your audience is on. Are they on Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube? Wherever it might be, it’s essential to meet them where they’re at and promote your content on that medium.
Additionally, collaborating with influencers or other brands will help you promote your content and reach more people.