Do you know the importance of content promotion? Are you a rare content marketer?
You know- the one who can create killer content, track how many people it killed with its awesomeness, while also preparing to carry out (many) more deaths through content promotion strategies?
If not, there is no shame. You are among the 42% of marketers for whom proving the ROI of their marketing strategy is the biggest challenge.
However, the challenge is worth taking up. Why?
You need to know that the content that you are so thoughtfully creating is serving its purpose and dialing up your business success. If not, then you need to know the areas where you need to pay attention and the area you need to ignore (at least for now).
In terms of the investment of your time, money, and energy, this clarity can change the trajectory of your business.
And once you’ve gained that clarity, you need to work your butt off promoting your content using effective content promotion strategies. Rule of thumb: if you spend x time producing and packaging content, then you need to spend 5x time promoting it.
Today’s post will help you do both- track the tangible and intangible ROI of your content like a boss. And then maximize it using 3 effective content promotion strategies while also examining their necessity.
ROI metrics
The thing is: every piece of content isn’t geared for making a direct sale.
Some pieces aim to build traffic; others aim to expand reach. Others are created to establish authority and become the go-to expert in a particular domain.
Hence, you should know the metric that is relevant for the content that you are putting out.
If you are running a social media campaign, engagement and web traffic will be relevant to you. If you are publishing a blog post, SEO success along with exposure and authority will matter most to you.
Hence, before measuring ROI for the content you are putting out, be clear: what is the goal of this piece? What are you trying to accomplish?
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Then choose one of the below metrics to track in Google Analytics for success or room for improvement:
- Web traffic
- Onsite engagement
- Leads
- Sales
- SEO
- Social media engagement
- Exposure and authority
Later, you can also come up with a number of content promotion strategies, targeted to improve the state of certain ROI metrics.
Measuring the ROI of content marketing
Here is a simple 3-step process to calculate the ROI you generate on your content marketing strategy. Remember, you have the numbers required for the calculations; you might have to hunt them down, though.
Step 1: Calculate the cost of producing and distributing content
This includes the salary you pay to the content creator and any videos, images, audio, or graphics you buy online to integrate with the content. If you outsourced any work, included the cost for that, too.
The distribution costs include paid promotions, paid campaigns, PPC advertising, social advertising, and promotion on other channels. Also factor in the costs of any tools or software that you used for content creation and distribution.
Step 2: Calculate the return
To calculate the return, you can divide your content into two parts: the one that directly led to a sale, and the one that generated sales over time.
The former is easy to recognize. You put out a piece of content with a CTA which the customer clicked on to make the purchase/ buy the ticket, etc.
The performance of the latter type of content can be measured through the metrics discussed above.
Step 3: Finally, calculate the return on investment
The formula presented by Convince and Convert is a simple one that quickly gives you the final ROI figure:
Return minus investment, divided by investment, expressed as a percentage.
An example: if your costs in step 1 came out to be $1000 and the returns gained are $3000, then
$3000-$1000 = $2000
$2000/ $1000 = 2
2 x 100% = 200%
How do you know you made a profit?
If your content expenditure is less than content earnings, then you reaped a profit. Congratulations!
Improving ROI by promoting your content
After calculating your ROI if you were disappointed with the numbers, or even if you were happy with them and would like to see them get better, this section on how to promote content is going to be very crucial for you.
Promotions get a bad rep, mainly because people think of it as a narcissistic activity where you go on and on about how awesome you and your product are. Very arrogant and not very attractive.
In reality, this is not promoting yourself. This is blowing out the horn yourself for disaster to strike you. Your wish will be granted.
A content promotion strategy involves: getting your content in front of as many relevant people as possible (often at the right time).
Anything over-salesy or arrogant or narcissistic? No.
Lee Odden staunchly articulates the need for promotion in content marketing this way:
“If you create great content and no one knows about it to link it, you’re spinning your wheels. A combination of content as well as social networking, link networking, public relations and gaining editorial visibility as well as viral and individual link solicitations will all work together synergistically. Building a community of consumers of your content as well as relationships with the media in your industry is the distribution network necessary to gain the most link value out of creating great content.”
That being said, here are 3 killers content promotion strategies to get the whole town talking about you:
Turn your content into a video
While producing video content in the first place would be the best way to proceed, you can also take your textual content- like a blog piece- and turn into a video. You can either put the content in the video directly or create a sort of teaser for it by enticing people to care about the topic and then telling them at the end of the video that they can read the full thing over at your blog.
Use Lumen5 to create a video and then distribute it on various channels- YouTube, Vimeo, Yahoo!
Not only will you have different types of content for the audience to consume, but you’ll also be employing strong content promotion strategies to make sure your content gets out in the right hands.
Guest blog on another website
Guest blogging is not only an easy-breezy way to promote yourself, but it also helps you to reach out to an already established audience while positioning yourself as the expert/ thought leader in your domain.
You do not have to create content from scratch for this. Research what the audience on the platform is like. Parse through the blog to get insight into their pain points and see how you can help them. Then, pick up a piece of content from your arsenal and repurpose it.
If you want to write for GQ, write about men’s fashion. If you want to write for Forbes Financial, write on your financial niche and strive to become the go-to person in that area. A content promotion strategy that takes care of many things at once.
Reach out to Influencers for a quote
Once upon a time, reaching out to celebrated people on the Internet might have seemed hard, but it is not so now.
With sites like BuzzStream, you can uplevel your digital PR efforts in a jiffy. Enter the keywords related to a particular niche or industry. You’ll get the contact information related to people in those niches. You’ll be able to reach out to them via social media and email and ask them for a quote that you can include in your blog post, video, or whatever your content form is.
You can craft the following email to them:
Hi [influencer’s name],
I am [your name], working with [your brand or company] whose mission is to [a crisp view of what you do].
This week, I am publishing [content type] entitled [title of your content]. My aim is for the audience [takeaway for the audience]. Your quote included in the same would provide a lot of value to people who work and care for this industry.
Hence, I would greatly appreciate it if you would share your thoughts on [the topic]. I will include it in the post with links to your website and social media channels, and even send it to you before publishing so you can have a look at it.
Awaiting your response on the same.
Best wishes,
[your name]
And that’s it! Email multiple influencers since a few of them will say no, a few will be pressed for time, and you’ll receive no response from a fraction of them.
Wherever you use their quote, include it with links to their website and social media handles, and ask them to share it with their followers. If possible, with their email list as well.
Most people don’t employ this strategy because they expect no. But, that’s what makes it one of the best content promotion strategies out there; when you ask for it, you just might receive it.
Implement the above 3 content promotion strategies consistently for 3 months at least and then calculate your ROI- both tangible and intangible- again. We bet you’ll see some positive difference in the numbers that you can keep compounding by implementing these content promotion strategies more aggressively or switching to others.
The long and short of it is this: if you are confident that you are producing great content, then you must be confident enough to promote it also. It is a sin to let the content- that you worked on so hard- go unnoticed. Don’t let this be the case anymore.
Crown your content with true kingship by promoting it and getting it the attention it deserves.
