We all know that search engine optimization or SEO campaigns depend heavily on content. Creating and publishing new content regularly is a cornerstone of successful SEO strategies.
However, merely publishing new content does not help achieve major SEO goals.
It is because just publishing a blog post — no matter how fantastic it is — does not guarantee free organic traffic, new MQLs, or paying customers. It is equally important that your target audience and potential customers find that blog post.
And that’s where most content marketers often fail.
They spend hours researching, writing, and publishing new SEO-friendly content, but all that time, effort, and monetary resources go to waste when no one finds and reads their blog post.
That’s why content distribution and promotion and key aspects of content marketing and SEO campaigns.
In this blog post, we mention a few content distribution and content promotion ideas that will help you expand the reach of your content and increase blog traffic.
1. Share on social media channels
Content virality is your best bet to get your content in front of most people. Sharing your content on social media channels gives you the best chance to achieve that goal.
Ideally, you will need a strong social media presence and a large following of engaged readers to give your content the best possible chance.
2. Leverage internal teams and resources
If you have a large internal team of customer service representatives and, especially, sales representatives, you should definitely tap into that resource and expand your content reach.
Ideally, your internal teams should share company content on their social channels, tapping into multiple social media channels at once.
Furthermore, by informing other teams about the new piece of content, you will also help them get new ideas, USPs, and helpful advice to share with new customers.
3. Send an email blast to subscribers
It is perhaps the easiest way to put your newly published content in front of a large number of people. This technique has two benefits:
- It drives instant traffic to your page, and
- It also increases the possibility of them sharing on their social channels and increasing the potential reach of your new content.
However, if you notice that you do not get a high open-rate or click-through rate, we recommend reanalyzing your email lists. Divide your email subscribers into multiple, thematically relevant lists.
This will help increase the engagement rate (open-rate and click-through rate) and may also help you get more social shares.
4. Reach out to key industry influencers mentioned in the article
If you have mentioned any key industry influencers in the article, it would be a good idea to reach out to them and share your content.
The way you write your email and present your content to them would be the most important part.
Instead of seeking their help and asking them to share your content on their social channels, just mention how their findings, study, or quote helped you craft a meaningful article, thank them, and share the URL of your post if they want to check it out.
If your article is of high quality, chances are the most influencers will share it across their social channels on their own. After all, everyone likes to be featured, and sharing a third-party piece about themselves would also be good for their own promotion.
5. Reach out industry influencers
This is where you outreach to industry influencers and hope that they will share your content with their audience or social media followers.
It does not always work — unless you already have an established connection with the influencers. That’s because influencers get dozens and even hundreds of outreach emails every week. They do not even read most of these emails.
But if you do it right — sending a personalized email that also offers them value and establishing a connection beforehand — you should get relatively better results.
Even a single tweet from an established industry influencer can change the fate of your blog post.
6. Be active on industry forums
Almost all industries and niches have some industry forums that you can find your potential target audience hanging out. Once your post is live, it is time to be active on those industry forums and identify topics where you can contribute meaningfully along with the URL of your new blog post.
If you cannot find many active industry forums, you can also look into Quora and Reddit.
Just find relevant questions, subreddits, and posts, and engage. Remember that spamming the URL of your post won’t work. The primary focus should be on helping others, contributing with meaningful insights. Links or referral traffic should be secondary goals.
7. Explore backlinking opportunities
Another idea to expand the traffic reach of your new blog post is to explore backlinking opportunities.
You can use a tool like Ahrefs to identify websites in your industry that have linked to other, lower-quality posts on the same topic. You can then reach out and present your up-to-date article as a better resource of information on that topic.
If you play your cards right, you might get a backlink. Moreover, it also opens a new door for referral traffic. New traffic visitors may also share your content on their social channels, reigniting the possibility of your content getting viral.
You can also use the broken link strategy to acquire backlinks for new blog posts.
8. Add Google Alerts for long-term promotion
You can also add relevant keywords in Google Alerts and keep an eye out for any long-term content promotion opportunities.
Google Alerts will notify you whenever your shortlisted keywords appear on the web. Whenever that happens, you can reach out to the publisher and present your blog post as a linkable opportunity.
The effectiveness of this strategy largely depends on how you approach the publisher and message your email.
Having said that, a new blog post does require traction. So you are in a better position to negotiate a backlinking and social media sharing deal if you promise to share that new post with your social followers.
9. Explore paid channels
Lastly, you can always explore paid channels to distribute and promote your content and expand its potential reach.
You can promote your content on Google Ads (with search campaigns) or on Facebook (by boosting your post). It can be tempting to spend too much money on content promotion, so it is better to be tactical and do your homework before you get started.
Identify the number of MQLs you are expecting to generate and then use the budget for paid promotion accordingly. As long as you make your advertising decisions based on data, you are more likely to get a positive ROI.
Conclusion
While creating and publishing new SEO-friendly content is often considered the most important part of content marketing, the job does not end there.
Distributing and promoting your new piece of content are equally important steps. Without them, no one would find and read your content, and all efforts will go to waste.
Make sure to go through this content distribution and promotion checklist whenever you publish a new high-quality blog post.
How do you promote your content? Did we miss any important tip or trick? We’d love to know your thoughts. Please leave your comments below and let us know.
