If You Struggle To Promote Your Content, This Is The Solution

When you publish content online, everyone also knows that you need to promote that content too.

There is a problem with this though. It’s easier said than done.

Most content creators enjoy working on new content and are horrible at promoting themselves. It feels unnatural. It feels forced. Nobody likes to be selling themselves.

The hope is that creating even more and even better content will do the marketing work and get the message in front of more eyeballs. This only leads to the never ending cycle of getting stressed about increasing the output. It’s not a healthy, long term solution. I’ve been there. I’ve made this mistake myself.

In the world oversaturated with content this is a sure-fire way to fail, become depressed by your invisibility and lose the motivation to work on your ideas. Are you making this same mistake?

Social media drops can help

Luckily for you there’s a way to make this work. The way I fixed it was by using what I call the content marketing routine. It is the system that ensures that I spend time on spreading the word about the great piece of content that I have published. I’ve already shared my own step-by-step process of actions I go through every time I publish a new piece of content.

This is not sleazy. You are not selling your soul. It is a smart tactic that will make a real difference to your visitor and engagement numbers. You actually help people by introducing them to something valuable that you have created. Something that will improve their lives. Something that will entertain them.

To activate your marketing routine you can use social media drops. A social media drop is a short, visual and attractive piece of content that you “drop” into one of the relevant social platforms in order to increase the engagement and the reach of your content. These are some of the most shareable pieces. People love them.

The most popular drop content marketers do is the “headline + link” drop. This is the most basic piece of content you can drop in social media. It is not exactly the most useful one as in most cases the audience won’t be getting too much information other than the headline itself. They might click on it if it makes them curious or if they have an established relationship with you, but it won’t mean much to the majority of your target audience.

Instead you should aim to create several valuable social media drops from each of your posts. These can be practical tips from the post. They can be inspirational quotes. They can be impressive stats or other facts. Could be provocative statements. Or stunning pictures and graphics. Whatever it is that your audience finds interesting, useful and share-worthy.

My favorite type of drops is including visual elements in my posts and then spreading these directly through social media so people can see them and get value from them without needing to visit my site. Some very recent examples are infographics, checklists and quotes. These social native pieces help get more engagement. I always make sure to include my link in there too which leads to my site being introduced to new people.

Drop these regularly over a longer period of time after publishing your article. Drop them in several different platforms that you decide to include into your marketing routine. Remember this is not you spamming. This is you reaching out with targeted messages that will help people. You will start seeing results, you will feel much better and will bang your head against the wall thinking why you didn’t do this from the day one. It will make you stop only focusing on creation of new content, but will make you spend time and effort on getting your existing content in front of more people.

You should apply this technique immediately

Enough talking, let’s get practical. This is what I want you to do. Take a look at your latest post or the post you are creating right now and identify a minimum of three social media drops that are worth sharing. Remember the drop you are looking for is not just “headline + link”. It is something valuable, something share worthy. Something that can live natively on a social media platform.

If you cannot it probably means that your post is not very sharable in the first place. Rework and update your post to include some interesting statements, facts, quotes, great tips or images.

Do you have the drops ready? Great! Now go through the different platforms in your marketing routine and share them:

1. Go to your own profiles on Facebook and Twitter.
2. Go to the relevant communities at Google+, LinkedIn and Reddit.
3. Submit to platforms like Stumbleupon and other relevant sites in your field.
4. Get in touch with a handful of influencers and other content publishers that you think will find these interesting.

After doing this you should monitor your engagement and analytics in order to see which messages and platforms resonate best with your target audience. This data will help you make more informed decisions to optimize your content, improve your social media drops and make your content marketing routine more effective.

Then it’s all about repeating this process with your next post. And doing it again and again and again.

If you find this advice helpful in driving more attention to your content, please do share it with your network.

The post If You Struggle To Promote Your Content, This Is The Solution appeared first on How To Make My Blog.

If You Struggle To Promote Your Content, This Is The Solution