DOING CONTENT PROPERLY
PROMOTING YOUR CONTENT
“Once your content is pulling in some healthy traffic, you’ll find that you receive comments and feedback.”
Now the fun can really begin. It’s time to start making a song and dance about your content to ensure it enjoys the traffic and interaction it deserves.
Once your content is pulling in some healthy traffic, you’ll find that you receive comments and feedback – understanding how to respond to this is essential. After the initial hubbub has died down you’ll also need to analyse your content’s successes and failures so you can apply any lessons learned to the next piece of content you produce. Here’s how to take care of everything!
BUILDING BUZZ
How you promote your content online will depend on the kind of content you’ve created and the kind of audience you’re targeting For example, if you’ve spent time building a substantial, thoroughly researched white paper, it’s well worth putting equal effort into developing a strong email marketing campaign, getting the word out to big influencers in your industry and/or setting up a PR campaign.
For less labour intensive content like daily blogs, social media exposure and perhaps an inclusion in an end-of-the-month email newsletter may be more appropriate.
USING EMAIL
If you’re not already up and running with an email marketing service, there are plenty of good options to choose from which are readily available, and for a reasonable price. Once you’re all set up, there are a few hard and fast email marketing rules to bear in mind...
• Do not drown your recipients in floods of email, it’s bad for your image, sure to annoy and a fast-track route to unsubscription
• Treat your recipients like royalty - offer them treats, make them feel special for receiving your email and treat them with the utmost respect
• Concentrate on your tone. In busy inboxes “ho hum” email marketing will get overlooked - so create a pitch-perfect, branded tone that piques readers’ interest
• Keep tabs on the content you want to feature in your next email to make sure you don’t leave anything out when it’s time to craft the next missive
• Don’t slap readers with whole articles in their email inbox, instead include temping little snippets of your past week or fortnight’s content best bits
• Value your recipients’ time. Be concise and to the point, don’t cram your email with text they don’t have time to read
• Use plenty of visual stuff to keep readers’ attention and draw them further down your email
• Remember to explain why your reader should click through to your website to read your content – will they learn a top tip? Will it cheer up their Monday? Make the incentive clear
USING OUTREACH METHODS
If you can make it work, getting the attention of big influencers in your industry can be hugely beneficial in terms of promoting your content.
A retweet from a powerful industry figure can expand your audience by tens of thousands, but this technique is no walk in the park. Influencers are bombarded daily by this sort of stuff so you need to know how to make the right approach and how to really shine. Cultivating a longer term relationship is recommended before you reach out in this way.
Approaching smaller influencers in your industry is a less time-consuming approach. Look for websites which have shared content similar to yours before. Then approach their editors with a polite email bringing your content and it’s suitability for their site and audience to their attention.
SOCIAL MEDIA
As mentioned above, smaller pieces of content are suitable for promotion via your brand’s own social channels. Find out when your followers are at their most active and make sure you post at these times to get the most exposure possible.
• Use Followerwonk to distil this information from your Twitter account
• Facebook Insights will help you get the most from this social channel
• Make sure you make good use of hashtags on Twitter to maximise your chances of getting found by interested readers
MEASURING SUCCESS
The audience engagement you record will give you some idea of how successful your content and content distribution have been, but there are lots of other factors to bear in mind too, many of which are listed and explained back in chapter 4.
If you’re too sleepy to go back to chapter 4 and want a few fast measurements to record your content’s successes and failings, here’s a quick and easy list...
TO MEASURE CONTENT CONSUMPTION:
• Visitors to your content
• Unique visitors to your content
• Individual page views
• Your bounce rate (the lower the better)
TO MEASURE AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT:
• How long visitors stay on your content page
• Comments it attracts
• Returning visitors
• Social shares
TO MEASURE HOW INFLUENTIAL YOUR CONTENT IS:
• Total shares, views and reach over time
• Shares and/or comments from industry influencers
• Questions, requests for interviews, webinars etc.
This data will give you insight into which pieces of content do (comparative) well and which are less successful. But, to inform your content strategy, you really need to measure these factors against your ultimate goals. Head back to chapter 4 to learn how to do this properly.
If a tree falls in the woods, does it make a sound? Focus on the quality of your distribution campaign as well as the quality of your content. Top drawer content on its own is almost useless if nobody sees it so scale back your content plan if you need to so you can make sure you’re giving distribution your all.
Think about which channel is the best channel for sharing individual pieces of content. If there’s a clear winner, concentrate on creating content which works best for a specific social network audience (i.e. Tumblr)
Email sign-ups, email open rates, overall traffic, social shares – appraise all elements of your content’s performance then apply anything you learn to your whole campaign going forward. Share all of the stats with your team too so that everyone can have input and learn from what went right and what went wrong this month.
Congratulations! You’ve made it through Flycast’s Complete Guide to Doing Content Properly. We hope you’ve picked up lots of helpful tips, tricks and smart ideas which will turn your content creation process into a slick and ever-improving content strategy.
Content marketing may be a relatively new term, but don’t be fooled: this is not a fad.
In the world of digital marketing, doing things “the right way” is always going to be important and beneficial. SEO techniques and tools will come and go, but creating content your audience can use, love and learn from will always have value. And the more you build, and the stronger your planning “foundations”, the more powerful your online presence becomes. Remember, for every piece of content you produce, take note of these steps:
1. Know your audience and tap into their wants and needs
2. Know your brand and make sure it shines in every piece of content
3. Be organised and avoid ad hoc content. Build calendars, set up smooth processes and keep a constant flow of fresh, well planned ideas coming
4. Be goal oriented and measure every piece of content against those goals for continual improvement
5. Write every piece of content impeccably for the right medium and the right audience
6. Distribute your content cleverly, monitor interactions and measure it’s success
