7 Foolproof Content Promotion Strategies That Really Work
Spoiler alert: helping your audience find your content is harder than ever.
Search engines like Google are increasingly using tactics to keep searchers on the results page and off your site, and social media has become so crowded that whether someone sees your post or not can often feel like a shot in the dark.
And while there are other ways to get your content in front of your target audience (of course) a lot of them tend to fall into one of two categories:
- Somewhat effective, like posting a blog to your social media profiles and encouraging your followers to click through and read it.
- Too complicated, like creating detailed reports or doing interviews that might net you some traffic, but are unrealistic to do every month unless you have a dedicated team to manage it for you.
I’ve been publishing content online for 23 years, so I’ve seen lots of trends come and go, but there are some tactics that get results time after time - and that’s what this post is about.
A note before we go on: these strategies only work if your content is entertaining, informational, and valuable. People only want to read, share, and backlink to content that’s genuinely worth sharing, so don’t dial it in!
Now let’s get into it:
1. Email your audience
I often say that “getting someone’s email is like getting the spare key to their house.”
Think about it: even if you’re promoting your content on Google or social media, you’re still just hoping that your content will be seen by the right people and that they won’t simply scroll on by.
But someone who subscribes to your email list has already shown that they’re interested in what you have to say, and you can send it to them in a place that only a few can access: their inbox.
For example, when we publish a new blog post I include it in Starling Social’s weekly digital marketing newsletter. Not only does our content get a traffic boost from our subscribers clicking through to read our articles, but anecdotally I’ve noticed that our blog posts often rank higher in search results because search engines recognize the boost in engagement from the traffic we’re sending, too.
The trick here is to publish regularly and cover topics that you know your audience are interested in. We send a digital marketing-focused newsletter, so it’s easy to assume that the people who sign up to read it are interested in the topics we cover here on the blog.
We also publish regularly (two times a month, on average, but sometimes more). This gives us lots of opportunities to drive traffic back to our content.
2. Repurpose your content
This is also known as a “bricks and feathers” approach to content promotion.
I’ve gone into this tactic in more detail in an earlier post on the blog, but the idea is to take a longer piece of content (like a blog post or a longer video) and break it up into smaller chunks, like social media posts.
So this blog would be a “brick” and the “feathers” are the posts and videos I’ll be creating after I’m finished writing this to promote it (and what’s inside) on our socials. Or, if I’ve been featured on a podcast (a “brick”) I’ll pull the audio and make Reels and TikToks with it (“feathers”).
An important note: one mistake I often see people making is just resharing the original piece of content on social media - but this is a mistake for a few reasons:
- Social media algorithms “throttle” posts that have links in them because they have an incentive to keep users on the platform, not send them away.
- People can’t interact with a link, so turning it into a video they can watch, an Instagram carousel they can swipe through, or even resharing it as a LinkedIn article they can access without leaving the site is a better way to encourage them to engage with the content you’re promoting.
3. Tap your team
92% of consumers trust word of mouth and UGC (user-generated content) more than other forms of traditional brand advertising, which makes sense: our brains are hard-wired to trust other humans (compared to a “faceless” brand).
So instead of just posting to your company page and socials, ask your team or employees to re-share your content on their own timelines, too.
An important note: just blind re-sharing won’t have the same impact as when someone takes a few minutes to write a thoughtful post about why the content has value.
This is especially important for company leaders and executives to do this since they tend to have large audiences on platforms like LinkedIn. At Starling Social, our favourite approach to helping clients do this is by creating Mad Lib-like templates their team can use to take the guesswork out of what we’d like them to say.
Once the post has been shared, encourage others in the company (other executives or employees) to like, comment, and re-share it to their own profiles to boost its visibility even higher.
4. Guest blog (but with grace)
You may have been the recipient of one of those spammy “hey I want to guest blog for you” emails before - and this isn’t the right approach.
Most people only offer to guest blog in order to earn backlinks, which means the content tends to be poorly-written and often doesn’t have any original ideas of value.
Instead of cold-emailing people, look for industry publications with a large audience and only submit a guest post when you have a unique or thoughtful perspective to share. Then (and only then!) should you link back to your content that’s relevant to what you’re saying.
Another approach is to publish your own post first, then reach out to other publications in your industry and explain in your pitch how you’d like to expand on that topic.
That way you’re not just repeating yourself; you can earn a reputation as an industry thought leader and earn those valuable backlinks to your content.
5. Partner with influencers or other brands
Working with influencers or other parallel brands in your industry is an easy way to help your content get discovered by more people. There are three main ways to do this:
- Hosting webinars
- Doing podcast/video interviews
- Doing blog post interviews
You can either work with someone in your niche and invite them to be interviewed by you, or to partner with you on a project, or you can develop relationships with others who will feature you.
I can personally attest to how effective this strategy is. I’m interviewed on a podcast every 1-2 months, on average, and I deliver a workshop or webinar at least every 2 months in partnership with several nonprofits and brands in parallel niches to my own.
This not only helps me promote Starling Social’s content to a wider audience, but also positions me as a subject matter expert which reinforces the value of the content I share.
6. Cross-promote with other newsletters
Remember how I said “getting someone’s email is like getting the spare key to their house”? Well getting featured in someone else’s newsletter is like that, but on steroids. Here’s why:
- People love when their content is promoted
- People tend to reciprocate when you do them a favour
If you promote someone else’s content to your audience, they’re likely to reshare yours, too.
A few years ago I started reaching out to industry associations and nonprofits asking them if they have events or content they’d like Starling Social to feature, which has landed our blog posts in over a dozen of their monthly newsletters to their members as a result.
The trick here is to lead with offering, not asking.
6. Run paid ads
You probably knew this would be in here somewhere.
Most people don’t share sales-driven content unless it’s really valuable, so often paying to show your content to the right people is an effective way to help the right people see it - this is because ad targeting allows you to specify exactly the type of audience you think will want to see it.
An important note: knowing where to run your ads is a key part of this tactic. LinkedIn is the best place to share B2B (business-to-business) content, and Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok are better for B2C (business-to-consumer content).
If you think about why people use these platforms, this makes sense: most of us don’t go on TikTok or Instagram when we’re thinking about work or business, whereas 4 out of 5 LinkedIn members drive business decisions.
So if you’re going to invest your marketing dollars in running ads to promote your content, make sure you’re promoting it to the platforms where your audience is spending time.
8. (Bonus!) Re-promote your old content
Do you have an older post that’s still relevant? This is known as “evergreen” content.
Evergreen content = content that focuses on a topic that’s already relevant, regardless of the season or news cycle. The term comes from the evergreen, a plant that stays “ever green” all year round (get it?)
If you have evergreen content lying around, link back to it in new content you publish or reshare it using the tactics outlined in the post above. Sometimes just the process of resharing it and sending more traffic to the page can improve your search engine rankings.
Start promoting your content today
Using these strategies can help you get more visibility for your content, but remember: your content needs to be engaging, entertaining, and valuable.
(Hint: don’t just churn out content using AI and hope for the best!)
If the thought of creating high-quality content sounds overwhelming, you’re in the right place because we can help! Starling Social is led by a seasoned content marketer (me) and made up of a team of creative and high-quality copywriters who have the experience to make your content shine. If we sound like your dream copywriting team, book a discovery call today!
