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How to Promote Content after It’s Written
Creating well-produced, well-written, and interesting content is only the first step in promoting a company’s brand and products. To get the most value out of that content, you need a plan for regularly sharing it with your audience and reminding them that it’s there. The “build it and they will come” approach doesn’t usually work for creative work – no matter how great that blog, video, customer story, or web page is.
The most successful businesses keep the conversation going and shine the light on their content by employing several techniques.
Know your audience
Your audience makes your content thrive. Therefore, it’s critical that you understand who you’re trying to reach. Who are they? What do/don’t they like? Where do they hang out? Why should they care? How do they like to interact with you? A lot of that information can be gleaned from monitoring what worked and didn’t work previously for both you and your competitors, but it also helps to do some reconnaissance. Fortunately, there are a number of ways to learn about your audience. Two of our favorites include:
- Ask. Never underestimate how much someone is willing to share what they think of you.
- Be a lurker. Listen to what people say in online groups and communities, social media, and blogs.
You can use this information, to tailor your launches, promotions, and content towards what will resonate with your audience. People are drawn to content that helps, educates, or informs them. They’re drawn to content that provokes thought. They’re drawn to content that makes them laugh. And if they’re drawn to it, they’ll promote it.
Stoke the fires
While creating content that grabs your audience is key, building a community that has your audience regularly consuming and sharing your content is a must.
Here are some ways to create engaging content
- Get social. Social media, whether it’s Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat, etc., allows you to build relationships with your various audiences and generate ongoing interest in the content that you share long after it’s first published.
- Be creative. Test drive new activities vs. doing the same old thing day in and day out. Try new practices before they’re part of the status quo. Whether it’s using BeLive to bring speakers from different locations to your Facebook page for a live chat or collaborating with a partner company on a first-ever event to showcase your combined products, open your mind to new ways of doing things. Two of our clients took the leap with these examples and increased awareness and engagement with their audiences.
- Offer incentives. You can keep that interest alive with ongoing incentives that appeal to your target audience while also arousing the interest of new users.
Track your success
You can’t manage what you don’t measure. So, setting goals and tracking metrics before, during, and after a content campaign allows you to see what’s working and what isn’t—and then adjust as necessary. But how do you determine your goals and what constitutes success? We could write an entire blog post (or two or three…) on that topic, but here are a few tips:
- Be specific. If it’s not specific, it’s not measurable. When assessing whether the criteria was met, you should be able to answer yes or no.
- Make it measurable. How will you measure success? What data will you collect? Which tools will you use?
- Tie it to a business goal.
- Keep an eye on your competitors’ successes and failures.
Content promotion differs from company to company based on culture, voice, and corporate guidelines, but what remains constant is a focus on the audience, a commitment to building community, and measurable goals that align with the project. With these elements in place, you’ll have no problem successfully promoting your products and content.
