As a busy business owner, it is important to spend your time wisely, and make sure you get the most out of your efforts – especially your marketing. So, why do many people spend time creating really good content and don’t promote it?
60% of marketers say that they create at least one piece of content every day. (eMarketer)
Just adding your images, blogs and videos to your website and hoping people will find them is simply not enough. However, you can try a few easy ways to share your content to increase engagement with your business.
Up to 70% of B2B content goes unused (SiriusDecisions) but stats show that yearly unique site traffic growth is 7.8 times higher for content marketing leaders (19.7%) compared to followers (2.5%).
Here are just a few ideas for promoting your content.
1. Social media
Perhaps the quickest and easiest way of sharing content, there are a number of popular social media channels where you can engage with your customers and clients. Each one has a different purpose and audience, so you need to match the right content with the right channel and share in the right way.
Cisco predicts that video will account for 82% of all consumer internet traffic by 2021.
If you sell a lifestyle product to individual consumers, you might choose to prioritise Facebook and Instagram. Whereas, if you are in financial services, you will likely find your audience on LinkedIn. YouTube can be great for all types of businesses if you have good videos. Of course, Twitter and Pinterest, as well as other smaller social media channels also have their own value.
The best advice we can give is to be consistent. If you don’t have time to write weekly blogs, then consider bi-weekly or monthly. If you have extra time, you can always create content for the months ahead. Don’t start with daily content and then stop when you get busy!
It is also a good idea to plan your content for the next few months – build in time to create videos, write blog articles and create visual content. If you don’t have the skills or the time to do this, then an expert from Marketing Square can help take the strain.
2. Newsletters
Your most engaged audience is your existing client base, or those who have expressed an interest in your services. Take advantage of this by building up your email list and send a regular newsletter.
If regulations in your industry change or you have a new product or service, it is a great way to contact your audience directly to let them know. This can add real value to them.
Just remember, with GDPR legislation you need to be careful with your email list. Make sure you have permission to send information to the people you email, and provide an option to opt out of receiving future emails in every mass communication.
3. Guest posting
You will likely have contacts in your industry that sell a different service but to a similar target audience to you. Collaborating with key people and businesses is a really good way to expand your influence and reach.
Why not agree to writing a guest blog post on an industry colleague’s website and in return, they provide you with a guest post for your website?
If you choose to share the article on your own website as well as on another site, make sure that you reword it so that both content is unique – search engines generally do not like duplicate content.
4. Use your email signature
Such a simple idea, but it can be effective. Just add a link to your latest blog post to your email signature.
You can even use it as a talking point in sales emails and calls. If your latest post is informative and solving a problem for your customers, you are adding value to them by directing them to it, so don’t be shy to self-promote.
5. Turn content into a download
When you create content, you are sharing your expertise. It should have value to your audience. So, why not turn blog posts into PDFs that your clients and potential clients can download from your website? It is something tangible that people can take away and keep. Hopefully they will remember your name and maybe even share it with their own personal audience.
When monitoring your most popular content, looking at what articles have been downloaded most is a good way of seeing what people want to know more about. It can help you shape your future content plan.
New service: We now help clients turn their content into downloadable PDFs. Contact us to find out more.