Many companies are spending time and money on creating content for their blog, news page, social channels, external websites and newsletters, but not maximising the potential reach of each piece.
I’ve seen it so many times now (and have even been guilty of it myself). You come up with a great topic for a blog post. You spend time writing and researching it, or hiring someone else to write it. Then you source some amazing images, upload the post to your content management system, and hit publish.
You might also share it on your social channels, after which you move on to the next piece to rinse and repeat the process. But there is so much more you could be doing to get more eyes on your content.
1. Optimise it
It might not drive instant traffic to your content, but optimising it for search engines will help you get more organic traffic in the long term. When I say ‘optimise it’, that means to identify which keywords you want the page to rank for, then use those keywords in the elements bullet pointed below.
Note: on-page optimisation alone will not get your content to the top of Google for short tail search terms which have high competition (i.e many powerful websites are ranking for the search term you’re targeting). However, optimising for long tail search terms can bring you high quality traffic. Basic on-page optimisation using your target keywords includes the following elements.
- Optimise the title of the content piece
- Optimise the article body (aim for approx one keyword phrase for every 100 words of copy)
- Try to get your keywords early in the title and first paragraph
- Ensure the copy is easy to read, use short sentences, and 100% correct in terms of spelling and grammar
- Make sure your content is not too thin. Definitely no fewer than 300 words, but ideally 500+. Over 1000 words per piece would be ideal
- Optimise the images. Add alt image tags which describe the image and ideally include your keywords
- Optimise the URL. Ideally include your keyword phrase
- Make sure you use, and optimise your headings (H1’s, H2’s, H3’s etc.)
- Optimise the Metadata (Meta titles and descriptions) using your keywords
- Add tags to your content
- Be sure to link internally to relevant pages and externally to authoritative websites
- Ensure any new pieces of content are being added to your XML sitemap which helps search engines crawl your website more intelligently
If you use WordPress, I highly recommend the Yoast SEO plugin which can really help you with on-page optimisation.
All of the above should be done with your users in mind. This means don’t just do things for the sake of the search engines. Make sure you are giving good user experience as well as indicating to search engines what your content is about.
2. Socialise it
Sharing your content on your own social media pages isn’t the only place you can socialise it. Try some of the options below to get more eyes on your content.
- Use best practice hashtag strategies. Click here to see how to use hashtags
- Use copy which entices clicks. When introducing your content, don’t use the same copy across all your social channels. Tailor it for each one using enticing copy which makes your followers want to click and find out more
- Give something away. Enticing users to consume your content on social media is often very easy if there is something in it for them. Offer a voucher or credit as part of the content piece. This way you should experience better click throughs and also conversions as long as the offer is a good one
- Use social for outreach. Contact bloggers, authoritative entities and influencers to build partnerships and obtain placements, shares, and republishing of your content
- If you are writing about another brand/company or service, tag them and send them your content, asking them to kindly re-share
- Post your content in relevant groups and become known as an authority in your industry. Just be careful not to spam. No one likes a spammer!
Note: be sure not to use spammy/salsy copy in your social posts as this can hinder organic reach on platforms like Facebook.
3. Boost it
In the age of dying organic reach, it’s become almost essential to use social media advertising if you want your content to be seen by a wide audience.
Taking Facebook as an example, you can use the Facebook Adverts Manager or Power Editor to create Campaigns, Ad Groups and Ads for your content. The amazing thing about this is the power of Facebook’s targeting because of all the demographic and behavioural information they’ve obtained on all of us. Well, all of us who use Facebook, which is over 1.5 billion!
For example, if I wanted this content to be seen on Facebook by females aged between 25 and 35 who are interested in Content Marketing, have a title of ‘Marketing Manager’ and live in London, I could pin point that niche with the click of a few buttons. The targeting goes even deeper than that. Take a look for yourself on Facebook Adverts Manager.
Tip: be sure to set up multiple ad groups and ads using variations of targeting, bidding, images, ad copy and ad placement (newsfeed, right hand side or mobile). This way you can soon identify which options produce the best results at the lowest cost.
Also consider boosting your content on other social channels like Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn for example. All work slightly differently to one another but have the same end result of getting more eyes on your content.
Google Adwords is another way to boost your content. You can set up highly targeted ads in a matter of minutes using either the search network (text based ads relying on search engine users typing in relevant keywords to find your ads) or display network (image based ads appear on websites partnered with Google).
Outbrain is a content marketing platform which can be highly cost effective and produce good results. Watch the video below to see what Outbrain is all about.
What is Outbrain?
When boosting your content using paid advertising, be sure to get advice from professionals, as if done wrongly you can easily waste money.
4. Remarket it
Remarketing (or retargeting as it’s also known) is one of the most powerful tools in digital marketing today. Using this tool, you can serve ads to people who have already visited your website and are therefore already interested in your products and services.
Taking this article you’re reading now for example, I could create ads which would appear to users who have already visited any page of webvibes.com. The ads would appear on various platforms throughout the Internet, such as Facebook, Twitter or Google’s search and display networks.
I could even retarget people who have specifically visited this particular page in the past, or any other page I deem relevant. I can tailor the ads to entice users back to finish what they started. For example, I could identify visitors to pages in my booking funnel, but who have not yet checked out. This way, the chances of conversion are greater than marketing to someone for the first time.
Remarketing is also very powerful when you release a piece of content which performs well and you want to create a similar piece and target that same audience.
Setting remarketing up is relatively quick but does involve some technical skills. If you want to know more: ask me how.
5. Bookmark it
There are numerous social bookmarking websites which allow you to post links to your content. Although I’ve never seen mind blowing value from this exercise, it’s good for two reasons.
1. Some of these channels can help to drive traffic to your content
2. Bookmarking webpages is thought to get search engines to index your content quicker, therefore leading to quicker organic ranking and more organic traffic
Click below to access 50+ websites you can try posting links to your content on.
50+ Social Bookmarking Sites by Search Engine Journal
6. Email it
Assuming you have a mailing list, you could also send a newsletter introducing your new blog content for example.
Just make sure you don’t spam your list. You can drill down the list in to segments based on how active your subscribers are. For example, you can see from open and click rates who out of your newsletter receivers are the most engaged in your content. Therefore you can afford to send more emails to those people as they actually want to receive them and absorb the content.
7. Republish it
Once is not enough. Reschedule your content to go out on your social channels two or three times in the first few months of its existence, and again in the future if it remains relevant.
It’s also a good idea to keep an eye on what kind of content works best on each social channel. Remember, a ‘like’ isn’t a good metric when it comes to content consumption. You need to be looking at the number of post clicks and visits to specific pages of your website on Google Analytics from your various social sources to really understand what content performs well.
Try republishing your content at different times of day, test the intro copy you use, the hashtags and the images for each post. Soon you will see emerging patterns to show what works best.
If you have any other ideas to get more eyeballs on content, let us know in the comments below.
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