This is What Promoting Content Looks Like

Let’s say you’re doing everything with your blog that you’re supposed to do. You continuously produce new content—not just once a month or once a week, but nearly every day. You focus on creating posts that are truly valuable to your readers, that solve problems or offer resources. Now: how do you get people to read them?

Readership matters. Your blog is more than just an SEO gimmick, to boost your ranking by keeping your site looking fresh. It should be a go-to part of your site where clients and non-clients alike find the information they need, and get to know your brand in the process. That only happens if people actually discover and read what you publish there. And that only happens when you effectively promote your work.

Good blog promotion has several major benefits:

• More people interested in what you offer end up on your website
• Others in your industry engage with your work and treat you as an authority
• Your work gets more shares, which means more backlinks, which means even more SEO power
• Ultimately you get more clients/customers

So how do you go about promoting your blog posts? A good start would be to take some advice from Neil Patel, who recently penned a piece on how to get backlinks. Neil touches on a few tried and true methods, such as guest blogging (yes, it can still work) and infographics (ditto). But he also gives a great breakdown of the power of simply promoting your content on social media. As Neil says:

When I get active in social media, my articles are shared, distributed, tweeted, mentioned, retweeted, talked about… When I say “get active on social,” I don’t simply mean to dink around on Twitter for a few minutes each day.

So what does he mean? Neil includes a lot of avenues that most companies overlook. (In fact, even most professional bloggers overlook them). For example, Neil suggests posting a link to your newest articles on every relevant LinkedIn group you’re a member of. That entails:

• Actually being a member of LinkedIn groups. There are plenty that are relevant to your industry and they’re a great place to promote your work.
• Dedicating a small amount of time to checking your posts in those groups and responding to any discussion they generate.

These are steps many businesses don’t take, either because it seems like a time sink or because LinkedIn is outside the Big Two (Facebook and Twitter) that most social strategies focus on. But LinkedIn is also a highly ranked site and full of people in your industry who are likely to take an interest in—and further share—your work.

Neil also suggests submitting your content to Reddit, StumbleUpon and industry sites relevant to your business. A few notes on these:

• Reddit. Promoting links to Reddit can be a thorny undertaking, because it really is meant as a community and not just a loudspeaker for self-promotion. As the Reddit self promotion guidelines suggest, only about 10 percent of your posts should be about your own work, and you should actively follow all discussions you’re involved in. The payoff for putting time into this community, however, is that Reddit is a hotbed for making good content take off and go viral.
• StumbleUpon. This is one of the lesser known social sites on the web but it has a dedicated user base. And unlike Reddit, it’s specifically designed for promoting content. Literally all you have to do is submit a link with a short description and it will be recommended to users looking for your kind of content. You may only notice a small amount of additional traffic direct from StumbleUpon, but if even a few of those readers like what you wrote it will lead to further sharing.
• Industry sites. The example Neil gives is Growth Hackers, a site for marketers, because what he writes about most is internet marketing. Your industry will have its own discussion forums and news sites. Just like LinkedIn groups and Reddit, the key here is not just to drop a link and run, but to be an active community member and engage in discussions—plus promote your work. It will pay off.

Do you need to follow every one of these steps? Absolutely not. Like any aspect of building a web presence, promoting your work takes time and resources and it’s up to you to decide how high a priority it is. However, if you’re creating solid content and not getting a lot of traffic, or if traffic has stopped growing, it might be time to try one or all four of these tactics. Try it out consistently for sixty days and see if you get the traffic bump you’re looking for.

Alternately, leave the promotion to us. EverSpark Interactive offers comprehensive social media and internet marketing strategies that can help get you the links, traffic and sales you need. Get your free consultation today.