To advance your business, you must publish captivating, high-quality content, which truly speaks to your target audience by answering important questions, offering key solutions and providing valuable, in-depth thought leadership. Content is your avenue for getting highly ranked by Google, gaining recognition as an industry thought leader, reaching a wider captive audience, and amplifying lead generation and new business. Publishing such content is a major hurdle to inbound marketing success. However, your content marketing efforts should not end with publication on your company blog.
Once you create great content, you need to distribute it widely and really promote it. P.T. Barnum had the right idea, stating: “Without promotion something terrible happens…nothing!” The success of your content marketing hinges on more than just the content itself. Winning content marketing is also a product of content syndication, social media sharing, SEO and email marketing, which all boost the reach and impact of the published content. Optimize your content marketing with a variety proven promotion tactics.
Content Syndication
Sharing your original content on respected niche websites, such as Social Media Today and Business 2 Community, can grant you access to a new and much larger captive audience. The goal is to illustrate thought leadership and build influence with your content, while drawing new prospects back to your website with inbound links to helpful, informative landing pages and strategic CTAs. It is critical to find the most relevant online community for your brand; syndicating content in the right online space could bring big benefits in terms of increased website traffic and lead generation and conversion.
Social Media
Add social icons and embed social sharing buttons on your blog to prompt content curation. SEO is now closely tied to the social capital of your content. Although keyword research is still relevant, your main content marketing concern should be the creation of highly shareable content. Each time your content is liked on Facebook, tweeted on Twitter, “+1ed” on Google+ or shared on LinkedIn, it gets a stamp of approval—boosting its reach, amplifying your website traffic and lead generation, and enhancing SEO. To get the ball rolling with social sharing, post your content on at least the big four social networks: Twitter, Google+, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Twitter is a highly effective channel for making your content reach far and wide. Work to build your Twitter following, and always tweet your latest content right after publication. Your tweets should include the title, a shrunken link and relevant hashtags, as doing so puts your content in front of a much wider audience, which goes beyond your own Twitter following. Hashtags.org offers a user-friendly interface to look up and discover hashtags as well as access their trending popularity. If you search #Mktg, Hashtags.org will list the times of day and days of the week, when the #Mktg hashtag is most popular, and show you the top tweets and industry influencers related to the hashtag.
Google+
With the immense influence of Google and the great importance the search giant has placed on the social capital of content, you cannot afford not to be active on Google+. Create a robust Google+ profile—featuring your primary content topics in your introduction, and work to amplify your influence and credibility on Google+. Build relationships with top industry influencers, and set up Google Authorship—properly linking all your relevant content from across the Internet to your Google+ profile. Establish author verification on your company blog and wherever else you publish original content. Hashtags are not just for Twitter anymore, so make sure to add the appropriate hashtags as well as the titles and links for your original content.
Email Marketing
Always send a message announcing new blog content to your email subscriber list. When sending out new content, do not include the complete published post. Instead, provide the introduction and a link—bringing them back to your blog to read the post in its entirety. Once prospects land on your blog, they may stay to explore your website further and peruse your product or service offerings.
A strategic inbound marketing plan can empower your content creation efforts to help you achieve greater business success. Although content is at the heart of inbound marketing, it leverages every marketing channel—including social media, email marketing, dedicated landing pages and strategic CTAs—to create an effective synergy. Each facet of your marketing influences the others. A complete inbound marketing strategy addresses all your marketing needs in a holistic and powerful way, which can make your content travel far and wide—helping you meet or exceed your content marketing goals.