There are over 4 million blog posts published every single day.
So if you're just publishing "high-quality" content and hoping to gain traction, it
probably won't be enough because no one will know your content even exists!
So today, I'm going to show you how to promote your content with a simple, yet
effective content promotion checklist.
Stay tuned.
[music]
What's up marketers, so the checklist we're about to go through is something you can
follow whenever you publish a new piece of content.
And I want you to know that you don't have to follow every step in this checklist.
But generally speaking, the more things you do, the more eyeballs you'll attract, and the more
traffic you'll get.
Let's get started.
The first thing you should do is send an email to your email list, and there are three reasons for this.
First, content is non-promotional and should be designed to help your readers.
Second, some of the people on your list might be bloggers or journalists who have the power
to amplify and link to your content.
And third, they actually want to get updates from you.
Otherwise, they wouldn't have signed up for your email list.
So, if you're not emailing them with your content, you're doing them a disservice.
Now, if you don't have an email list, then let me say it plain and simple: start building one.
I won't bother going into list building in this tutorial, but if you want to see a video
on that, let me know in the comments.
The next thing on our checklist is to share your content on social media.
If you already have a social following, it's simple: share your new content through
your social accounts.
But don't just call it a day after you've done that.
There are a couple of other things you can do to get the most mileage out of social media.
And the promotion methods will vary from platform to platform.
So first off, you should reshare your content.
Since social media is heavily biased towards timing, activities like Facebook shares or Tweets
generally have a very short shelf-life.
This means that not everyone is going to see your content the first time you share it.
So you can do something as simple as retweeting your own tweet.
In fact, Buffer conducted an experiment and found that retweeting your own tweets increases
reach, engagement and clicks.
Best of all you won't be annoying your followers by doing this.
And this something that we've tested at Ahrefs with decent success.
Now, rather than always sharing the same thing over and over again, you can play around with
the copy or featured images.
For example, if you're promoting a tweet, play around with the copy because it's
the most prominent part of a tweet.
But if you're sharing on Pinterest, you may want to play around with the actual image
since that's the most prominent part of a pin.
The second thing you can try is to create soundbites from your content.
If you have a blog or in-depth piece of content, you can pull out some of the key points and
share them on social media as soundbites.
For example, on Twitter, we often share standalone tips and stats which help drive engagement.
Gary Vee does this by turning his long videos into short clips and image quotes.
There are plenty of things you can do, so get creative and test things out with your audience.
Now, if you don't have a social following yet, focus on building your social presence on just
one platform where your target audience is rather than trying to dip your toes into
every social network.
You'll grow faster that way.
The next tip is to email other bloggers you've linked to.
If you've created an in-depth guide, chances are you've linked to useful resources or mentioned
other creators.
So in my opinion, it's worth reaching out to let them know.
You can say something as simple as:
"Hey Bobby,
I read your post on French press hacks and loved your tip on using drip coffee filters.
I included it in our post of why French press coffee is better than pour over.
Thanks for the tip and I hope the mention sends some well-deserved visitors your way.
Cheers, Sam."
The email isn't meant to be complicated.
It's simply a way of letting them know you appreciate their work, which can potentially
spark a relationship, a share, and sometimes even links back to your site.
The next tip is to submit your post to online communities.
These are places like niche forums, Reddit, and Facebook groups.
These communities are generally tightly knit groups who are interested in a specific topic.
So by getting your content in front of them, you have the opportunity to drive targeted
traffic to your site.
Now, this doesn't mean you can or should join them and start spamming links to your site.
You'll probably get kicked out of groups, banned, or worse, taint your reputation.
Instead, you'll want to integrate yourself into these communities and it all starts with
understanding the group's culture.
To do this, start by reading through the group rules and follow them.
Then, focus on becoming an active and helpful member in the group.
Leave thoughtful comments, participate in discussions, ask questions, and answer others'
when you can add value.
The aim is to become a recognizable name in the community.
That way, when you share your content, it'll be better received.
Alright, the next tip is to answer questions on Quora.
If you haven't heard of Quora, it's a popular Q&A site.
And in 2018, they reached 300 million monthly unique visitors to their site.
So in plain English, this means you can potentially get your content in front of a lot of people just by
answering questions.
Now, the problem is that Quora doesn't tell you how many people are visiting each page.
And answering every possible question would be way too time-consuming.
But what we do know is that Quora gets a ton of search traffic from Google.
In fact, Ahrefs' Site Explorer estimates that Quora gets over 80 million monthly search
visits, which is an underestimation.
So to tap into this traffic, you can find questions on Quora that are getting consistent traffic from
Google and answer them with a link back to your content.
To find these pages, go to Ahrefs' Site Explorer and search for quora.com.
Next, I'll go to the Top pages report.
Then, I'll set the country filter to All countries so I can see the total traffic estimations
to these pages.
So assuming I had a website on cooking, I can enter a keyword like "recipe" in the Include box
which will narrow our results down to relevant pages.
And now you can see some questions worth answering like, "what is a good substitute for applesauce."
Just make sure you answer the question and feel free to add relevant links back to your site.
If you're having doubts about this strategy, then check this out.
I created an experimental site that got over 60,000 page views in seven months.
And the only traffic source I had was one link from a single Quora answer.
The next tip is to use paid ads.
Now, paid marketing is awesome because once you start paying for traffic, you'll get it
almost immediately.
And given the variety of targeting options you have on platforms like Facebook and Google,
you can reach new and hyper-targeted audiences quite easily.
For example, at Ahrefs, we've had great success at getting cheap engaged views using YouTube Ads.
In fact, our average cost-per-view is only seven Singapore cents, which roughly translates
to about five cents in US dollars.
So to translate this…
We're paying around five cents for someone to watch about 6-8 minutes of our video, which is
just bananas in my books.
Now, if you don't create videos, Facebook Ads are still pretty cheap.
I believe on average we pay around 15-30 cents per click.
So even if you're just putting in $5 per day, it can go a long way in getting more visitors
to your site.
Last but not least, build backlinks.
A backlink is when another website links to one of your pages.
Google looks at this as a signal that the information being linked to is well trusted.
And the result?
Higher Google rankings and consistent, passive, and free traffic from search engines.
So how do you build them?
Well, we have an entire playlist with step-by-step tutorials on link building.
So I recommend watching those videos as well as our video on how to rank higher in Google.
I'll make sure to link those up in the description.
Now, I'm wondering if there are any content promotion tips or steps that I've missed in
this checklist.
Let me know in the comments and if you enjoyed this video, make sure to like, share and subscribe
for more actionable marketing tutorials.
I'll see you in the next one.