It has been a quarter-century since the concept of “content is king” was popularized, and yet it still reigns supreme today. After all, content is everywhere: It’s in the games we play, the articles, podcasts and videos we consume and the social media platforms we check now and then.
For businesses like yours, different forms of content present countless opportunities to build relationships with users, generate prospects and drive sales. But to maximize such opportunities, you need to create and promote your content wisely. And it starts with something as simple as learning how to market a blog the right way.
How To Promote Your Blog – An Overview
When it comes to creating blog content, the goal is to get the most mileage out of that article, whether it’s to expand readership, generate better engagement or convert readers into customers.
Businesses usually enlist blog promotion services to do this, but some opt to tackle this task on their own. If you have in-house resources to start marketing your articles, here are some popular tools you can use:
• Medium – an online publishing platform that lets you cross-publish your blogs. If your content gets recommended on the platform, you can easily gain exposure to its 60 million monthly readers.
• Pocket – a bookmarking app that lets users save blogs from any webpage to a convenient list. Adding a Pocket button to your blog posts makes it easier for readers to return to them or share them with others.
• Pinterest – an image-sharing app that lets you upload photos you can link to your blogs. Using this site proactively can help you lead users to your posts and drive more traffic to your site.
• YouTube – a free video-sharing website with around 1.9 billion users. Repurposing your blog posts into videos and uploading them on this platform can drive traffic to your site and boost brand awareness.
If you need a more in-depth promotion strategy on these sites or simply want better results, partnering with agencies offering blog promotion services is a smart solution. Established agencies are well-versed in various promotion tactics, so they can easily whip up a blog marketing strategy that caters to your needs and goals.
What Is Content Marketing?
The Content Marketing Institute defines content marketing as “…a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience – and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”
But we need to ask, what is content marketing in more practical terms? You can think of marketing content as the process of strategically offering your audience helpful content to draw their attention, gain their trust and finally turn them into customers.
When posed the questions, “What is content marketing and why does it matter?” Thrive’s Demand Generation Marketing Manager Tristan Harris also shared that it is a marketing approach that’s vital for opening opportunities for both SEO and sales, such as link building and engaging potential clients.
There are different forms of written and visual content that you can produce, but working on blog posts is a great place to start. They’re the most popular type of content among businesses because they help not only attract traffic but also drive lead generation efforts. Harris added that blogs enable businesses to interact with clients even before they are willing to start a conversation.
Having a strong blog marketing strategy instead of none at all can give your business the following:
• Fifty-five percent more website visitors (HubSpot)
• Sixty-seven percent more monthly leads (DemandMetric)
• Thirteen times more return on investment (ROI) (HubSpot)
But to enjoy all of these and more, you need excellent content writing. This will take your team a lot of time and effort, unless you decide to seek expert help and enlist content writing services. Moreover, you will then need to work on promoting your blog; otherwise, nobody will get to read your articles and all of your hard work will go to waste.
Content writing and blog promotion may seem overwhelming right now, but it doesn’t have to be. In the following section, we share simple and actionable tips on how to promote your content well and maximize its potential.
During the Writing Process
Marketing a blog is easy if you have a marketable blog. With this in mind, here are two pieces of advice worth following during the writing process.
1. Create Content That People Want To Read
Harris shared that the most important step in promoting your blog is “creating valuable content that people want to read.”
When you strive to craft helpful content, you are essentially laying the foundations of a successful content marketing strategy. However, if you are struggling to create the content your audience would be interested in, be sure to invest in SEO content writing services that will attract your target market.
With that in mind, here are some pointers to take note of when writing your blog posts:
• Spend time thinking about the topics you will cover; make sure they are relevant to your business.
• Do things that haven’t been done before; provide value that existing blogs do not.
• Work on your storytelling and copywriting to craft articles that will draw readers in.
• If you decide to hire content writing services, partner with agencies that have proven experience in your industry for a smoother collaboration.
2. Follow SEO Rules To Increase Your Blog’s Search Visibility
Aside from your blogs’ substance, you will also need to work on the technical aspects of content promotion, like search engine optimization (SEO). Doing this improves your content’s odds of showing up on search engine results pages (SERPs) for relevant queries.
As you write your article, you will need to follow various SEO content writing guidelines. Here are the basics that you must cover, as lifted from Brian Dean’s 2021 SEO checklist:
• Use keywords in your content as naturally as possible.
• Use your main keyword in your first paragraph (within the first 150 words).
• Mention your keyword in your title, H1, H2 or H3 tags.
• Avoid stuffing your article with keywords. Use synonyms and LSI keywords as alternatives.
• Include links to at least two other pages within your site.
• Include links to at least five trusted websites.
• Use short and customized URLs for your blogs, and include your main keywords in them.
For better results, content marketing experts also recommend the use of SEO tools when marketing a blog. These identify any gaps in your SEO content writing efforts and show you how your blogs are performing so that you know what to improve on as you move forward.
After the Writing Process
Once your content is out in the digital world, here are some practical blog promotion tactics you can employ:
3. Use Popular Blogs To Show New Ones to Your Readers
As you go along, you will find that some posts gain more engagement than others or that some generate leads better than the rest. This is normal when marketing content, and can be easily addressed.
One solution is to mention new or underperforming blogs in related popular content as a source of further information. Doing this simple task does amazing things for your content marketing strategy:
• Your less popular articles become more accessible to readers.
• You bolster your link building.
• You get to show your readers that you are a rich and reliable source in your niche.
You can also customize your blog pages’ layout to create spaces under each post for related articles. With this, you can easily lead readers who finished an entire article to visit other articles on your blog.
This is also a great way to apply the tip shared earlier about promoting both your blog page and its content. Modifying your blog’s design to give readers a smoother experience helps improve your blog’s overall performance.
4. Encourage Social Media Followers To Read Your Latest Article
Most of the time, blogs fail to gain traction not because they are low-quality, but because businesses do not know how to promote an article well enough.
Following the first three tips above does help improve a blog’s online visibility, but you should not simply wait for readers to stumble upon your new writeups. When it comes to blog marketing, it helps to be proactive – get on your social media pages and let your followers know about your latest posts.
But to get the results you want, you can’t simply post links to your content on all channels. This can look monotonous and even spammy. Do social media advertising the smart way with these tips:
• You do not have to be everywhere, so choose the social media platforms that will be most effective for your business.
• Use different types of media (images or videos) when sharing your blogs to create fun and variety for your posts.
• Create a social media content calendar to ensure consistency in your content promotion efforts.
• Include trending and relevant hashtags in your caption to make it easier for users to find your posts.
You also have the option to boost your posts or run pay-per-click ads on Facebook and Instagram. This is something a content marketing agency can help you with. With their skills and industry experience, they can create a blog marketing strategy that puts your blogs in front of new audiences and gets you your money’s worth.
5. Let Your Subscribers Know About Your Latest Amazing Content
Email may be old-school, but it is still highly effective for marketing and lead generation purposes. Almost 6 out of 10 consumers say emails influence their purchase decisions (SaleCycle).
There remains a lot of opportunities to be explored in promoting your blog posts through emails. However, you cannot simply send bulk emails and hope to get favorable responses from the recipients. You will also need to develop an email strategy and improve it along the way to get higher visibility and engagement on your blogs.
Here are some effective tips on how to promote your content through emails effectively:
• Avoid excessively long copy; keep your emails short and to-the-point to keep your subscribers’ attention.
• Use relevant and captivating yet high-quality images, illustrations or videos to pique their interest.
• Tell them clearly what they can get out of reading your blogs.
• Include striking and clickable call to action (CTA) buttons that will take them to your blog pages right away.
• Aside from promoting new posts, you can also share older content relevant to trending topics.
6. Grab Guest Posting Opportunities Available to You
Guest posting, sometimes called “guest blogging,” is a lot like content writing. However, the difference is that the blog you write won’t go to your page; it will be published on another blog site.
You can do this by reaching out to blog hosts in similar niches and pitching ideas to them. If the partnership goes smoothly, the blog host gets high-quality content they can publish on their site for free. In return, you get more exposure and at least one backlink to your site.
There are many reasons to guest post on other sites, but you will find this content promotion strategy helpful if you want:
• Opportunities to expand your network
• Wider audience reach
• Boosted follower and lead count
• Improved online authority
Since blog hosts also allow you to include one link back to your site, this effort can help you when it comes to link building as well.
However, guest blogging is not as easy as it sounds. There is a lot of time and effort involved throughout the whole process. First, you need to look for promising blog hosts and determine whether partnering with them will indeed benefit your business. Aside from that, you also need to craft excellent content pitches for them to close the deal. One wrong pitch and your reputation may be quickly damaged.
If you are not capable of handling this strategy with your current team, you can partner with agencies offering content writing services. It helps to find one that offers link building services as well. With their help, you can gain guest posting wins without stretching your team members and resources too thin. In the long run, you’ll also get to drive your blog’s overall visibility and engagement.
7. Reimagine Your Blogs in Other Creative Formats and for Other Platforms
Getting the most out of your blog marketing strategy does not end with maximizing the potential of your content in its written form. You have invested a lot of time and effort into creating it, so it only makes sense to find other smart ways to use them. You can do this by repurposing them.
Repurposing content is not a complicated process. You can start by taking the pieces of information you gathered for your blogs and reimagining them in a fun, new format. Afterward, you may need to customize it further depending on which platform you’ll publish it on.
Here are some ways you can recycle your blog posts:
• Turn figures and other data into infographics.
• Lift remarkable statements from blogs and turn them into quote graphics.
• Use ideas to create a script for Facebook and YouTube videos.
• Discuss blog takeaways in podcasts.
• Compile blogs that cover related topics into an eBook.
A content marketing agency offering extensive blog promotion services will handle both content creation and repurposing for you, and provide SEO content writing for different platforms. With their expertise, you get to maximize the potential of every piece of content you create, no matter where it’s published.
BONUS: Gain Exposure by Using HARO
HARO, which is an acronym for Help a Reporter Out, is an online service that provides journalists with an extensive database of sources they can tap to get the information and expert opinions they need for their articles. It also provides sources with opportunities to pitch their expertise and insights to journalists and gain valuable media coverage.
According to Harris, including HARO in your content marketing strategy helps you get your brand out there and boosts your online visibility. This effort can also aid link building efforts because a successful pitch means you get one backlink from credible news sites.
Here’s how you can start using HARO:
• Create an account on their website and sign up as a source.
• Provide all the information required.
• Read and understand their guidelines for sending pitches to journalists.
• Choose a subscription plan according to your needs.
After signing up, you will be receiving three emails containing journalists’ queries every day.
All that’s left for you to do is monitor these emails for topic requests relevant to your expertise. If you see a query that you qualify for, you can proceed with creating a pitch. You will be connected with the journalist working on the story if your pitch gets accepted. Finally, once the article is published, you will get a mention along with a link to your website.
Reap the Benefits of a Solid Content Promotion Strategy
Even content marketing experts agree that producing excellent content requires a lot of time and effort – there’s no such thing as overnight success (unless, of course, you have a post go viral).
But you cannot hit publish and expect readers to flock to your newest post. When you’re marketing a blog, your utmost priority is to craft content that is attractive, engaging and helpful to your readers. Design your content writing process with this goal in mind and you’ve already won half the battle. Fortunately, you can always work with an experienced content marketing agency to develop a solid content promotion strategy that helps you reach success.
Enlisting content marketing services is a smart and effective way for you to get the most out of your blogs. It lets you enjoy the advantages of blog marketing without requiring you to hire a whole content team, which can be time-consuming and costly. Most importantly, you will be working with an experienced content marketing company that employs proven strategies, so you won’t be wasting your time and resources.
Thrive Internet Marketing Agency is a content marketing company that has helped businesses achieve higher search rankings and new sales opportunities through quality content since 2005. Our content marketing services cover the entire process, from creating strategies to producing the content and promoting it through various channels. We also offer SEO content writing and link building services to earn wider coverage for our clients.
If you’re ready to discover how to promote your content and see amazing results, get in touch with us today. Our content marketing experts will walk you through a proposal that’s customized just for your business goals.
