May 26, 2015
Social media websites are great tools for promoting content offers that your company has created. Websites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn provide avenues to reach your targeted buyer's personas. However, a trap that you should not fall into is only promoting your content offers via social media.
There are several other ways to promote the content that you have created and generate the most buzz and traffic about it. This blog post will highlight four other ways you should be promoting your content offers beyond social media.
Persona-centric Email Marketing
One of the most prominent ways to promote your content offer outside of social media is through email. An email optimized for your personas should be sent out to an internal database of contacts promoting your new content offer. You may have to create more than one email. For example, if you have three personas and all of benefit from your offer differently, you should create emails with different text outlining the benefits for each.
As you create new content offers, be sure to test things like:
- The messaging
- The subject line
- Images in the body
The tests can be done for each personas. While sending out a promotional email when your content offer first launches is great, it is also great to offer it as an additional resource in a lead nurturing campaign, where appropriate.
Optimized News Releases
Sending out a news release on your new content offer is a great way to publicize your message and create some momentum for your new piece of content. Advantages of news releases are:
- They can be picked up by other publications. The whole idea behind a news release is to get your content in front of as many people as possible. When you put your news release out on the wire, it is sent to thousands of publications.
- They build links. While sending out your press release doesn't immediately build valuable links to your website, it does help when a publication picks up your press release and links back to your website.
- They refine your messaging. Your press release is the place journalists and bloggers go to get key points about your content offer. Everybody that highlights your content offer based upon your news release will be talking about your brand with a unified voice.
While sending out a news release for every blog post you create doesn't make sense, creating news releases for valuable content offers is a great way to promote beyond social media.
Blogs
It may intiially sound silly to create a blog post to promote another piece of content, but it can actually be quite beneficial. You should create one or two blog posts relating to your content offer. Usually you will create the blog post on your own blog with the goal being to drive traffic to your actual content offer. When it's possible, creating a blog post on a guest blog can also be a very beneficial way to promote your content offer outside of the social media realm.Calls to Action
Once your new piece of content has been created, you should design an aesthetically-pleasing call to action to promote your content offer. You can place the call to action:
- On blog posts. CTAs can be inserted in the middle of a blog post, or at the bottom, letting the reader know the next steps once they have completed reading your blog post.
- On your homepage. CTAs that are properly placed on your website can make or break your content offer having positive results. If you want your content offer to be the primary call to action, make sure it is above the fold on your website and clearly defined.
- In a resource center. Once you have created a few content offers, it's a great idea to have a resource center on your website, that acts as a "one-stop-shop" for all of the content you have created. Placing your call-to-action in your resource library is another step in promoting your offer outside of social.
Pay Per Click Advertising
Pay per click advertising, or PPC, is another avenue to explore for promoting your content offer. In short, pay per click advertising means that you pay a certain dollar amount for every click that comes from your ad on popular search engines. There is a definite strategy behind PPC that involves proper keyword research, proper ad copy, and a landing page that is effective at converting. If you can combine those three components, PPC can be a viable way to promote your content offer outside of social.
As it was mentioned above, social media is a great avenue to promote content offers, but it should not be the only way that you are promoting. By using the five methods listed above, your content will get ample promotion and have the most opportunity to generate positive traffic.
Refine your inbound marketing efforts with:
The Ultimate Guide to Inbound Marketing Personas
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