Advanced Content Promotion

Now, this is exciting stuff because you've made your content, you've researched it, you've put it online and now it's time to start earning links and mentions and get that content in front of as many eyeballs as you possibly can.

The Golden Rule

A lot of people stumble here because it's really hard. They make the content, and they find that people just don't want to share it. They don't want to promote it, and they reach a lot of dead ends.

So there is this golden rule of promoting content, and that is the difficulty of promotion is inversely related to the quality of the content that you've created. Basically, the higher quality the content, the less hard it's going to be to share. So, if you find that you're having a hard time promoting your content - getting it in front of people - perhaps you didn't spend enough time on this step and you need to go back and create higher quality content. But if you've invested that time, then you need to get ready to get that content out there in front of people.

Now, here is where a lot of people make a mistake. The goal is links and mentions, but the smart content marketer doesn't start there. They start at the very top of the funnel, which is distribution. Then you want shares, which lead to influencer eyeballs, and then links and mentions.

As long as you work in these first three areas, it eventually leads to links and mentions, and that's what distinguishes advanced content marketers to amateurs. The amateurs will start at links and mentions and they'll usually fail. The smart people usually start with distribution, shares or influencer eyes, and they push as much effort as they can into those channels, which eventually leads to links and mentions, which is the ultimate goal for you.

The Tips

So we have a few quick tips. We won't have time to get into everything, but just we want to give you a brief overview of what advanced content marketers will try to accomplish.

First of all, how do you know that the content that you produced is going to get shared in the first place? Well, what a lot of successful agencies and smart SEOs do, is they actually pitch before they create the content.

Guaranteed Content Distribution

So let's say that you have an idea for an infographic and you want it to be shared as widely as possible. You can contact people, say at Wired or Mashable, and see if they will want to put it in their publication before you even produce it. That way, if you talk to a lot of journalists or a lot of website owners, you can find out if they're going to link to you and if they're going to publish the infographic.

Now, you may not have contacts at Wired or Mashable like a lot of successful agencies do, but you can find websites in your niche that are a little more appropriate for you, maybe a smaller audience. But get the guarantee before you even create the content. That is guaranteed content distribution, and that really helps a lot. That way you don't waste effort. You get a guaranteed return of investment on all your efforts.

Involve Collaborators Early

The second is to involve collaborators early. When you're creating your content, you want to be getting feedback from other people in your industry. Here you're not asking for shares or links. You're asking for feedback. Then when you do release your content, you let those same people know that the content is ready. Because they gave you feedback in the early stages, they're much more likely to share it with their social network and publish it on their website. You never ask for a link or mention. You just ask for feedback, and that worked really well in getting that distribution.

This is another sort of golden rule that you always follow. You never want to ask for the link. You always want to ask for the share. So, when you're reaching out to people in your network - influencers that you can find on tools like Followerwonk or other tools like that - you always want to ask for the share. You want to get as many eyeballs on your content as possible, which will eventually lead to the links. People are much more likely to share. It's highly unlikely that people will just link to you out of the blue. But to give you a tweet, give you a mention in their newsletter or something like that, they're usually a little more excited about. Asking for a link sometimes can come off as a little spammy, but asking for a share, everybody's usually willing to do that.

Paid Distribution

Finally, if you've explored all these other options, it's usually worth your while to explore paid distribution. Sometimes paid channels give you a little kick-start to your content marketing efforts. That's going to be things like social media, paid tweets and paid Facebook shares. Even Google+ has a platform now for doing that. But there are also some other platforms, such as Outbrain, StumbleUpon and Zemanta. Again, you're not looking for the links in this area, you're looking for the distribution. You want as many clicks and eyeballs on those things as you can that eventually lead to wide distribution for all that.