Your content is one of your most important assets. When you create content, it’s not enough to hit publish and hope that the world comes to your doorstep. Do you want to create content that no one sees?
Your most valuable content needs to be seen, right? Eventually, you’ll have an audience that is eager for your new content, but getting to this point is an uphill battle.
So, what can you do as a content creator? You need to find ways to expand your content’s reach while building your brand.
Let’s view 19 ways you can make sure that your content reaches your target audience.
1. Create Content That Matters
Far too often, people create content just to create content. The idea is that quantity is better than quality so that your brand can be seen. This is absolutely wrong. Instead, you want to create content that matters.
Content needs to add something to the community. It needs to answer questions, or provide solid advice to your audience.
Take a look at your content right now. Would you read your content? If not, you have some work to do.
2. Link to Other Blogs
Scared to link to other people’s blogs? It’s time to spread the link love and let others know that their blogs matter. Oftentimes, these bloggers will plug your site or even add you on social networking sites.
Start networking with others and don’t be afraid to share some link love.
3. Mention Others in Your Post
People love to be mentioned, positively, by others. As a blogger or business owner, you want others to notice you. You need to brand yourself and your business.
Mention others in your post, and let them know that you’ve included them via social media or email. This is a great way to get a retweet, network and maybe even attract a potential link to your article. Don’t be afraid to mention someone that is on top of your niche.
Network, network, network.
All marketing strategies must include networking. Period.
4. Respond to Your Comments
Not responding to comments on your posts is very bad for your brand’s strategy. You’ve probably noticed that larger sites close comments for older posts, but never do this for their newer posts.
Let others start commenting and always reply. Your readers need to know that they are valuable, and responding to comments keeps the conversation going.
If you’re commenting back, others will join in on the discussion and may even check your blog more often as a result. This doesn’t apply to content only on your site. If you guest post, you must take the time to comment back.
5. Master Hashtags
Hashtags are a great way to get the attention of others on Twitter. I personally use TweetDeck, but many other apps will allow you to add a tab to follow hashtags. Find the hashtags that matter most to your audience.
A few of the best Twitter tools for finding hashtags are:
I really like RiteTag for finding hashtags, but the other two mentions on my list are also great resources to use. If you use TweetDeck, you can also type in a hashtag and see further recommendations, which is a big help.
Not only will hashtags allow you to follow conversations, but you can use them to find people to connect with, content to read and of course, content to share.
Once you know which hashtags to use, you can leverage the right tags when promoting your content via Twitter.
6. Join in on Twitter Chats
Twitter Chats are an amazing way to join in on the conversation. You don’t want to just be a spectator, but someone who is really involved in the chat. After all, you want to get noticed and really build your brand up. In some cases, you may even be able to promote your content or gain followers that are interested in your content and what you have to offer.
Afraid to join in on the chat? Don’t worry, I was afraid too at first. Professionals, especially highly opinionated ones, are intimidating, but don’t let them stop you from chatting. Take a stance and hold your ground. It gets much easier once you gain some confidence.
Setting up Twitter Chats is really easy. You can use these tools to follow a chat:
You can also setup social media management tools, such as HootSuite or TweetDeck, to help you follow a chat.
There are dozens of free internet marketing tools you can use for engaging in Twitter chats. If I missed your favorite, let me know in the comments.
7. Reach Out to Others on Twitter
I ignored Twitter for so long that I want to cry, but I have just started really branding myself and getting the attention of others using Twitter. In fact, I have connected with so many great people that I have been following on various blogs for years, and reaching out to them was so simple.
What’s the secret? Just talk. When you read a person’s post they share, reply back to them. Ask people questions. Answer people’s questions.
Your audience will be on Twitter, and connecting with them is simple.
The worst that can happen is they don’t reply to your tweet.
Once you’re connected, these followers may even retweet your tweets and help you further promote your content. Remember, networking is everything.
8. Provide Answers to Others
People want answers. Your content can and should provide answers to readers. Naturally, these same people are looking for answers to their problems. A great way to share your content, not in a method that is considered spamming of course, is to use question and answer sites.
If you’re using these sites properly, you’ll be able to answer other people’s questions, and hopefully lead them and other readers back to your website.
Thorough, informative answers are best.
9. Use ViralContentBuzz
ViralContentBuzz is something we just started using here at DREMdesigns. Started by Gerald Weber and Ann Smarty, VCB is an amazing platform that really helps you get your content noticed.
So, how does it all work? It’s simple:
- Sign up (it’s free)
- Add your social media account(s)
- Start sharing
You can share content via Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and StumbleUpon.
Each time you share content, you will earn credits. Content is broken down into categories and you only share the content you want. You’re not forced to share anything. Credits are earned and used as currency to promote your campaigns and content. Pretty neat, right? The best part is that all of these shares will result in real, natural traffic to your site.
I was going to write a complete guide on how to leverage this platform, but I don’t believe in reinventing the wheel. The folks at VCB provide a free course that teaches you how to get the most out of their platform.
Enroll in the free VCB course on Udemy today.
10. Content Isn’t Just Blog-related
Content isn’t just words. Being in the business of writing, that is a hard pill to swallow, but it’s the truth. You can and should utilize your content in different ways.
- Videos: Turn your posts into videos and promote them on YouTube, Vimeo and Daily Motion, among many others.
- Slideshare: Turn your existing content into a presentation. Using lists, you can expand your content’s reach by easily using the same content you have in a new way.
These are just two of the many ways that you can create content that isn’t centered around your blog. Your social media profiles are content. Your video channels are content. Images, ebooks, training courses, PDFs and even excel files are content.
11. Promote Yourself Through Personal Branding
What’s your reputation? Do influencers in your industry know who you are? This is a question we recently asked ourselves at DREMdesigns. If no one knows who you are, it’s much harder to get noticed.
You need to engage in personal branding. If people know you, it’s much easier to get your content read and shared.
Start by networking on social media, guest posting, commenting on people’s blogs and joining in on the conversation on forums.
Get your name noticed. Try and be everywhere you can.
Ryan Biddulph is a prime example of this. Not only a nice guy, but Ryan seems to be everywhere. In fact, I often go to comment on random articles on the web and see Ryan already commented. It’s so bad that I am sure he thinks I’m stalking him by now. I’m not!
Ryan gets his content read and shared because people now recognize him.
12. Provide Interesting Infographics
Infographics are interesting. Aesthetically pleasing and informative in nature, infographics can greatly help your content get noticed. Jeff Bullas has a great post on this very topic. The following are 4 reasons to use infographics to expand your content’s reach:
- Infographics are compelling. They add to the appeal of your post.
- Infographics are portable. Allow others to embed them and share them with the world. Always include your logo and URL on the graphic.
- Infographics paint you as an expert.
- Infographics often go viral, leading to brand awareness, links and an increase in site visibility.
Don’t have a budget to hire professionals to create the perfect infographic? Sites, such as Piktochart, Easel.ly and Infogr.am can help.
13. Ask People to Contribute
How many times have you asked someone to contribute to your content? Oftentimes, people will churn out article after article and never ask for a contribution from others. Influencers want their names to be everywhere. It’s part of their promotional mix.
Experts in your field may be willing to contribute to your post.
A quick example of this comes from one of my clients in the dental industry. We consulted with dozens of dentists in the field about their opinion on a particular topic. Many did not respond, but 9 dentists did reply back.
By asking our chosen dentists to answer 3 questions – just two minutes of their time – we created an outstanding, profitable piece of content.
The result was:
- An amazing piece backed with real dentists’ opinions.
- Dentists linked to the article.
- Dentists shared the article on social media platforms.
Not only did a few dentists gain promotion from the article, but our client received backlinks, shares, promotion and most importantly, highly-targeted leads to their website.
14. Repurpose Content
I touched upon this earlier. You want to repurpose your content as much as possible. What does this mean?
- Convert your content to a PDF and share it.
- Turn your content into a video. Include a transcript as well.
- Turn your content into a presentation.
- Combine your best content into an ebook that you give away.
- Share snippets of your content on social media platforms.
- Share your content on relevant LinkedIn groups. Be careful not to spam. LinkedIn has a pretty tight community, so understand each group first before sharing your content to avoid backlash.
- Republish your content in a different language.
- Republish your content on other
My last point is very good to build up your reputation – not your traffic – but you need to be careful with your approach. Neil Patel has a great write-up that explains the right way to republish your content and what to expect.
15. Revisit Old Posts
Have you noticed that some of your posts do outstanding while others are lackluster? Every website and blog has posts that fail or exceed expectations. Looking at your old content will allow you to write another great piece that will knock the socks off your audience.
- View your analytics to find posts with high views and shares.
- Write a follow-up post to this idea
- Link the follow-up at the top and bottom of your original post.
You can also use past post ideas to determine what your audience likes. If certain content resonates with your audience, there is always room to expand with another piece that is similar in nature.
16. Write More Often
Write, write and write some more. While you don’t want to write just to write, you do want to write on a consistent basis. What does this mean exactly? Well, it means you want to create content that will keep visitors coming to your website. Depending on your industry, this may be once a day, once a week or heck, even once a month in some cases.
What a vague answer, right?
Articles and blog posts are your assets.
The more you write, the more assets people can read and share. But, you need to have good content that is meaningful.
Content needs two elements to be meaningful:
- The ability to tell a story.
- The ability to help your blog meet an objective.
If you have content that meets the two elements above, you’ll be able to create content as often as you like.
17. Write Longer Content
My own contradiction. I always tell clients that they need to have content written naturally. When a client asks me to write an article of 1,200 words, it may go to 2,200, or it may be such a stretch that I recommend a smaller word count. However, statistics show us that longer content is better.
SerpIQ did a great study on this in the past. The results were as follows:
- The first result on Google had just over 2,450 words on the page.
- The seventh result had 2,200 or so.
- The 10th result had just over 2,000 words.
On average, the 10th result had 400 words less than the first result on Google. If you want organic traffic, longer content is better.
OkDork took this a step further and showed that longer content is shared significantly more than shorter content.
<p><a href=’http://okdork.com/2014/04/21/why-content-goes-viral-what-analyzing-100-millions-articles-taught-us’><img src=’http://okdork.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Shares-by-Content-Length.png’ alt=’Average Shares by Content Length’ width=’500px’ border=’0′ /></a></p><br /><br /><br />
<p>
If the subject matter warrants a greater length, write until your heart’s content.
18. Join Triberr
You can reach more people by working together, right? Triberr is, essentially, a collective experience where you work within a community, or tribe as it’s called. You will have the chance to join tribes and start seeing what other tribe members have shared.
Over time and as you gain some credibility, you may be promoted so that others will see your shares. These are like-minded people that want to read and share your content.
The goal is to expand your content’s reach. Let’s look at an example:
- Member 1 has 1,000 Twitter followers
- Member 2 has 3,000 followers
- Member 3 (you) have 100 followers.
Now, you have a far reach of 4,100. As your tribe grows, you’ll see your reach grow exponentially.
I’m not going to lie, you’ll need to be very active to see results. Comment on other people’s posts, share to your heart’s content and be very active in the tribe. Eventually, you’ll see others are sharing your content and helping your website grow as a result. Triberr can be a major part of your overall brand strategy, but seeing results will take time.
19. Share Your Content in Relevant Communities
The final entry on our list is to actively share your content in relevant communities. I initially wrote social bookmarks, but I thought the term seemed rather dated with sites like Pinterest and Reddit making our list.
If you can, aim to share content with a niche-relevant audience first, but this isn’t a hard and fast rule.
A few great sources to consider are:
- Reddit: Be warned! Never, ever spam this community.
- Stumbleupon
- Delicious
- Digg
- com
- com
- it
- org
- Plurk
Some of these sites may not be relevant to your niche, but they are a good example in what to look for when submitting your content.
Have you ever joined a community only to post your own links? This is a bad idea. Instead, comment on other people’s shares, share content you read around the web and then sprinkle in your own content to share. You want to gain maximum exposure, and sharing just your content is not going to help any of these communities prosper.
What content marketing tools or marketing ideas do you use to promote your content?
Leave your answer below.
- 19 Sneaky Ways to Expand Your Content’s Reach - February 23, 2017
- Standard and Premium Content – What’s the Difference? - March 7, 2014
- Keyword Density – Why We Hate It! - November 2, 2013
