What do you exactly expect once your content gets live?? Millions of likes, multiple retweets and obviously to enjoy large number of traffic!!
Well, there are few things you need to do in order to avoid nodding yes to the phrase “Expectation leads to disappointment”. To enjoy your expectations, there are some content promotions you need to do to gather required attention. What can be a better way than to promote them on social media?
So, let’s dig into some effective strategies to use social media for your content promotion:
1. Find The Right Social Media Channel
First thing you need to do is find what kind of audience fits on what social media channel.
Let’s face it, even though we are surrounded by a massive number of social media, each and every one of it caters the need of different types of audience. You are not using Twitter for the visual experience, we have Instagram for it, while for fashion, cooking and DIY guide we have Pinterest. I think you might get the picture now! Knowledge about your potential audience and how they would respond to your post is really important. So let’s jump right in, to know audiences associated with each social media platform and how you can exploit that knowledge for content promotion.
Facebook has a audience that is looking for entertainment and values. They are more into sharing posts if they find it interesting. So, when using Facebook for promotion, think about “Share” first. Create content that your audience will find engaging and will be forced to share it on their wall or their page. Create content with attractive headlines, capturing images and captions that trigger your readers to share them.
It is loaded with people looking for news, tips, trending topics and how-to. If you are thinking to capture its audience then you have to be Quick and witty. Share some witty, interesting and eye-catching tweets about your post.
This has a plethora of creative audience. So if you want to capture their attention, come up with beautiful pictures and focus upon how-tos.
LinkedIn is a social media platform linking the professionals from around the world. Try to express benefits in your content promotion that could help them professionally, if you are promoting on LinkedIn. This means that this is not your normal Facebook audience.
The massive photo-sharing social platform!! Try to engage your audience visually and graphically if you want to capture their attention.
2. What Kind of Audience Do You Have
When it comes to promotion on social media there is no theory as “Build it and they will come”. It is more like “even if you have built it, go to them and promote”. If they get impressed by your marketing and products, they will come to you. Sounds easy!! But it is not.
You are not only supposed to go to a large audience but the right audience as well. How can you identify your audience? Once you know kind of audiences associated with each social platform, it is time to know the type of audience you have.
Your audience can be categorized into three categories:
- Peers/Associates
“Peers” or “Associates” refers to that subsection of your audience whose aim is same as yours. They are targeting the same audience with the same type of product you have. One thing about having peers is you can expand your audience more effectively. This strategy will benefit both the parties.
Your peers can enjoy your audience as well as you can enjoy theirs. All you have to do it promote them to your audience in exchange for them doing the same for you.
- Loyal audience
The best section of you audience are the loyal ones, also called “advocates”. They are those people who are all into your services and products. They will share everything, retweet every tweet and like each one of your posts. They will keep on promoting your products among their known folks.
- Big influencer
This is all about catching big fishes, the big companies, popular personalities or anyone or anything enjoying a big audience.
Connecting with big fishes can help you content marketing boost multifold.
3. Timing is Everything!
What we usually do when we complete a blog?
Make it online, share it on every media possible once and then forget about it, right?? That is what most bloggers and content marketers do. But that is the biggest mistake we commit.
To avoid getting trapped into this vicious cycle of “post and tweet”, you will need to find the optimal posting time and frequency for each and every channel you use to market. Like I mentioned earlier, every channel caters a different kind of audience and thus, the time when they are most and least active widely varies.
Here is a simple guide to give you an estimate of what the best and worst timings to post on social media are.
Image Via FastCompany
Image Via FastCompany
You will need to come up with a social media posting and promotion plan. Having a promotion plan will work as a guide and give you an idea of how well are you using social media. Find out using insights and analytics, to see what timings are working best for your audience. What was the optimal time, when you content got the most reach and highest engagement. It may take some trial-and-error to find those optimal timings for your audience, but once
Your promotion plan must take into consideration the different nature of every platform and adjust the frequency of posts accordingly.
Once your schedule is completed and put into action, the performance of each post can be seen on Google Analytics. After evaluating the results of Analytics, you can make changes in your schedule accordingly.
4. Research your competition
Whatever you are trying to promote or sell, there are very high chances that you will meet a competitor.
When it comes to social media competitors, keeping an eye on them will help you keep their activity in check and respond accordingly. Do you really want to be in your own well and pretend there is no world out of it? NO!! So stop obsessing about your business only and start keeping your competition in check.
Start out with a list of your competitors and try to evaluate their content promotion strategies.
The most crucial thing to look is their engagements. Know about the type of their posts, number, and frequency of their posts and the number of followers.
I am talking about this because keeping their growth and activity in the eye will help you to steer your growth accordingly, may be from motivation or insecurity. It is simply that “Competitors will keep you on your toes.”
5. Post multiple times
Keep the frequency in check. A number of times you post your article is crucial as it will affect your engagement a lot. These days so many posts are being made online every minute, it is quite easy for your post to get lost in the plethora of other posts. Therefore, it will be a good idea to repost it. Posting multiple times will ensure your post is made visible to a large number of audience. Click To Tweet Powered by Tweetshare
Apart from scheduling your content and researching your competitors, there are few things you can do with your content because your promotion also depends on the content and its quality.
6. Come up with magnetic headlines
The first thing people notice in your blog is headlines, so try to make it irresistible. The first thing people notice in your blog, is headlines! So try to make it irresistible. Click To Tweet Powered by Tweetshare
There are few things that helped us to write attractive headlines: using attractive adjectives, adding a bit of mystery with headlines, keeping it short and adhering strictly to grammar rules.
7. Get help from visuals
None of your audience wants to read on bulks of texts!! Therefore jazz your contents up with interesting visuals like pictures, videos, infographics and GIFS. Jazz your contents up with interesting visuals like pictures, videos, infographics and GIFS for higher engagement #lnksoc… Click To Tweet Powered by TweetshareThis will keep them engaged and entertained.
8. Ask the right questions
Ask questions that keep your audience nodding along and reading sentences after sentences. The questions should make them crave for more of your blog. Try to keep the suspense, mystery, and excitement alive with your questions. Keep your audience engaged by asking exciting questions Click To Tweet Powered by Tweetshare
Questions like “Do you want to know…”, “Do you think this is right??” and much more.
9. Add tweetable quotes
Tweetable Quotes Attracts Attention and Increases Twitter Shares #socialmedia Click To Tweet Powered by Tweetshare
Adding tweetable quotes using “Click To Tweet” plugins is now becoming a common practice. Jump on to this trend to make the most of it.
Not only will Tweetboxes attract your reader’s attention but also increases your Twitter shares.
Conclusion
Every niche is different and the kind of audience who are willing to invest their time and energy into your content depends on your niche and the value of knowledge you add.
When it comes to content, people usually talk about the quality of contents, its keywords and obviously the SEO is done with it, but the success of content is not just in creation but its delivery as well. That is the reason why the fair share of time and effort in planning its marketing as well.
Think about it, there are millions of content already floating around on the internet, but how many of them you come across. How many of them do you know? The difference between the most-reached content and unpopular one is not its quality only but also their marketing strategy as well.
So, next time when you are ready with your content, follow these steps and let me know about the results in the comment section.
Which of these tricks helped you? Anything else you need to add to the list? Share your views in the comments below.
