Your ambitions are noble. Your content is out-of-this-world fantastic. Everything’s perfect, right? It might be. But, are people reading your content? Can they find it?
Your Content Strategy
Answer this question. Your purpose for putting out a bunch of content is so you can… what?
- Make it look like you’re working hard (you are, right?)
- Make your site more visible
- Be useful to your audience
- Establish your brand as a thought leader
I’m willing to bet that you answered at least B, C or D, if not all of them. If you answered just A, well, have fun.
The purpose of content is typically three-fold:
- Get Your Brand Found: The more content you put out, the more likely you are to be found by users in the consideration stage of a purchase cycle. When a consumer identifies a need, they often turn to online research: “81% of shoppers research online before buying”1. If you don’t have content that shows up in this research phase, you run a good chance of not being found. Read more in “Why Content Marketing is a Necessary Evil.”
- Be Useful: Content helps you build a relationship with your audience. If you are writing about topics that inform, interest and educate consumers, you are building goodwill and loyalty. When it comes time to a make a purchase, more often than not, people will turn to the brands that provide a positive, informative experience.
- Be a Thought Leader: When your brand puts out content that is knowledgeable and demonstrates expertise, your brand will be viewed as an industry thought leader. It will gain authority and become a go-to resource for consumers.
These content goals are common, but they are 100% ineffective unless your content is getting read.
Are People Finding Your Content?
Distribution is just as important as creating the right kind of content for your audience. It goes without saying, but… if people don’t know your content exists, they are not going to read it.
Along with a content strategy, you need a robust distribution strategy as well. Here are 5 of the simpler ways you can distribute your content:
- Social media channels – This probably goes without saying, but always post about your newly released content piece. While you may not have a large following, all you need is just one person to share it for it to spread and gain traction.
- Influencer radar – If you write content that cites or discusses information that an industry influencer or expert wrote, tell them about it. Craft a well thought-out email or Tweet that tells them about your piece. If it’s truly great content, they may just share it with their audience.
- Employee advocacy – Many times, employees will be your biggest advocates. If they are excited about the brand and their roles within it, chances are they will be happy to spread the word. Another angle here is to encourage employees to partake in your content strategy and write blog posts – who’s not excited to share what they’ve written?
- Ads – While this isn’t always an ideal route to go for content promotion, it’s something you can certainly test. Try running a few ads pointing to a new blog post. As targeted as ads can get nowadays, you can reach your target audience pretty easily and see if anyone bites.
- Search engine optimization (SEO) – SEO is an absolute must for all pieces of content you publish online – it’s how search engines find and rank your content. There are many tactics (keyword inclusion, inbound links building, meta tags & descriptions, content quality) within SEO that you should implement. We will explore these in our next post: “Don’t Let Your Content Be Useless. SEO the Hell Out of It.”
You spend a lot of time writing and editing to execute a good content strategy – do not give distribution the short end of the stick.
If you have questions or what to discuss any of these distribution methods in depth, I am happy to chat. Send me an email: amaloney@upcontent.com.
1http://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/81-shoppers-conduct-online-research-making-purchase-infographic/208527
