Promoting Content

1.  Set up your website, blog posts and any content (articles, video, podcasts, webinars) so they're found by people on search engines. 

That's called SEO (search engine optimization).  Everything you create needs to be done based on keyword research so you are writing or creating something that people are searching for.  For example, 27,100 people very month are searching for the term "how to viral marketing."  Only 260 every month are searching for "promoting content" but there's far less competition for articles on that so it's easier to get an article listed higher on search.

You need to decide which keywords you have the most chance of appearing high enough up in search results to make it worthwhile. 

Head terms are the most popular keywords and they're the hardest to attract website traffic for because there's generally so many other articles and videos that are created for those keywords that you are competing against. 

You may want to choose what are called "long tail".  Those are keywords and phrases that fewer people use when searching and therefore generally less competition for articles and videos created for those long tail terms.  You can create content for both terms but it needs to be unique.  We're doing a little test to see if that's really true.  We wrote an article for both the head term and this long tail term on "promoting content" and changed it slightly.  We'll track which article gets us the most traffic and report that.

TIP:  Think beyond Google to other places where your prospects and customers are searching like:

• Amazon.com and eBay - create an eBook to promote there
• Product Listings –Target active shoppers seeking information
• Video –Tap into the over 16 billion monthly searches
• Mobile – Reach your audience in an always-on world. 79% of smartphone owners use the phone for shopping related activities and 1 in 5 use check-in services.
• Bing, Yahoo and the newcomer DuckDuckGo
  

 

2.  Create something that's novel, hilarious or controversial.  That's what spreads through viral marketing and is the easiest content to promote.

Know this:  It can be risky if you're a small business to be associated with something controversial or inappropriate to your brand.  That can hurt your brand reputation and since it's online, there will be a permanent record of that for people to find.  Be careful!

3.  What else can you do for promoting your content so it goes viral? 

• Research survey results that share some type of insightful and unexpected findings.  Bloggers and the press love to share credible research results.  You can sponsor a research study with a credible research firm and take credit for being the one to share the findings. 
  
• Lists.  Top 50 Lists of the Best.  People appreciate someone who finds and filters the best examples and websites or blogs. 
• A special offer or screamin' deal.   Just make sure whatever you offer will end up to be profitable for you and attract customers who will stick around for the long-term vs. buying with the deal only.  There are more than 400 deal-a-day services, including one that aggregates all the deals from the other lists.

4.  Create a video with the specific objective of it "going viral". 

TIP:  You may want to pay freelancers or an agency that specializes in creating video to create a video for you or your company that will help you with viral marketing.  Just control what is published so it properly represents your brand.  Humor works well if it's appropriate.  Look at what makes great advertising as an example.  This article on Effective Advertising will help.

5.  Create new content for your website and blog and promote it using social media.  That content can be a video, article, blog post, presentation or eBook.

TIP:  A great example of a small business doing this really is from an emergency veterinary hospital in California. They've created a content strategy and outline for what to post every day on social media.  You can leverage the idea of what they're doing for your business.  Learn more

6.  Publish new content frequently, every day or at least three times a week.

From our experience:  The people who Tweet and post the most get the most visibility and opportunity for something they post or create to go viral.

 

7.  Repurpose your content to get more visibility. 

For example, if you've created and given a presentation, tweet about it, post your slides on sites like Slideware, post the video of the presentation on YouTube and your website, blog, LinkedIn and Facebook.  You can even use key points you've made in the presentation as blog posts. Create an eBook of your slides and promote that. 

8.  Get the bloggers to write about you, your company and products/services. 

The bloggers are easy to find and contact and they're always looking for what's new and cool.  Reporters from the major media (TV, print, online) all follow bloggers and use them often as "early alerts" to identify what's new and newsworthy.  So, instead of pitching major publications and TV stations, go after the most influential bloggers.

9.  Identify, promote and nurture your Brand Fans

These are your most valuable customers.  They share positive word-of-mouth about your company, products and services for free.  You need to monitor social media to identify who these Brand Fans are and then be sure to thank them and reward them for this behavior so they do more of it. 

10.  Create and regularly send an interesting and helpful email newsletter

Think like a publisher and focus on "buzzworthy" feature content that people will want to share with others.  Make it easy for people to share and forward your email newsletter.

TIP:  You don't have to write all these articles that you feature in your email newsletter.  It's call "curating content."  You act as a filter to find the most relevant and interesting articles and videos online and include a brief summary and a link in your email newsletter.  By doing that, you're helping your customers/prospects and saving yourself a lot of time by not writing or creating all the content yourself.  You're doing viral marketing. 

11.  Ask people to share your content!  Here's an example...

If you've found this article helpful, please share it with others and tell people about it.

Thanks,

How to promote the content your create

 

1. Tweet the headline and link using the keywords.  Include some context to attract the most interest.  Use StumbleUpon link shortener su.pr which syndicates the content to StumbleUpon and Twitter
2. Publish the post to your Facebook Business Page
3. Publish the post to your Google+ Stream to the relevant circles who could be interested in this content
4. Publish the post to your personal LinkedIn profile and also share with several large groups you participate in on LinkedIn
5. Bookmark the post in appropriate tags to Delicious
6. If a post you've made has drawn a large number of retweets, you may want to post again to Twitter a second time during the day because so many people will not have seen it when you first posted.  Spread this out at least 6 hours.  You can schedule the Tweet for a specific time using TweetDeck’s scheduling function.
7. Promote the article in your email newsletter