If you’ve decided to take advantage of the many, many benefits of content marketing, you undoubtedly fall into one of two categories:
- You’ve written an in-depth piece you know your customers can benefit from and have posted it;
OR
- Your marketing firm wrote an excellent piece based on your feedback and has posted it.
Now what?!
As great as it is that you’ve turned out an AWESOME content marketing piece that’s not going to give your customers a concussion from the constant beating of sell-sell-sell (more about great content here), your job is not done. You’ll get a whole lot more bang for your marketing buck from that content marketing piece if you let people know it’s there (here’s how to draft an awesome content promotion plan).
Content that isn’t pushed out, just…well…sits. You’re not getting everything out of that piece that you can. And after all the work you—or your content marketing firm—put into drafting and creating, you have several options of how you can maximize your investment by promoting your content.
Social Media Marketing
Hopefully, the same people you are writing your content for are the same followers on social media (if you’ve targeted your efforts correctly). Promote your content on the social media channels with the right followers; make sure you draft a different message for each social media site. PLEASE don’t draft the same message on Facebook and Twitter or on Pinterest and Twitter. When you do put your post up, research your hash tags (one of the key ways to build your social media following) and only use the appropriate number for the site (there is such thing as too much)—and only if it’s appropriate to use hashtags on the site (if you don’t know, put your social media efforts in the experts’ hands).
Email Marketing
Use your content in emails to your customers (after all, that’s why you drafted it, right?). Use an image and strong email headline to increase your open rate and a strong call-to-action to inspire your email recipients to act. That action doesn’t have to be sales (your approach depends on your industry); instead your call-to-action can be a request for more information or an offer for a free product or sample.
Send it to your sales team
An excellent piece of content can be a powerful tool for your sales team, whether to other business managers or in a retail setting. Ask them to integrate the piece into their marketing pieces (i.e. presentations, emails, etc.) and make sure to keep the conversation two-way. Ask them for their input for future content based on the questions and feedbacks they receive from customers and potential customers. If you are using a marketing firm, pass the feedback from your sales team on to them to guide future online marketing efforts and for a strong marketing plan.
Social Media Ads
If social media advertising is part of your content promotion plan, draft an ad around a very strong piece of content. Use two different set of criteria to ensure maximum effectiveness:
- Choose a social media site that has a demographic that fits with the ideal audience you created the piece for.
- Target your social media ad at the audience you drafted your content for (i.e. text, graphics, location, etc.)
“Shareability”
Since you’ve created such fantastic content, naturally people are going to want to share, right? That’s why you should make sharing your content easy and convenient for readers so they can pass it on to others—the ultimate goal of your content marketing efforts.
