I sometimes get the impression that clients think publishing a piece of content is like waving a magic wand. As soon as it appears on their website, their audience will flock to it. This may happen from time to time but typically, you’ll have to put a bit of effort into securing a decent return on investment. So I’m going to share a few tips for extending the reach of your content, because the more people who see it, the more likely you are to achieve your goals.
Email newsletter
If you don’t already send an email newsletter to your database, it’s something you should consider. A newsletter is a useful way to gently remind your prospects about your offering and keep them up to date with your latest news. As long as you provide valuable content then people generally don’t mind seeing your email address pop up in their inbox once in a while. The other benefit offered by a newsletter is it allows you to share any content you publish. Your audience won’t necessarily remember to visit your blog on a regular basis, so emailing a post to your database directly should increase the views.
Keyword research
Keyword research is a science, so I won’t discuss it in great depth here. Briefly, keywords are the terms that people type into a search engine like Google when they’re looking for a product or service. There are various ways of increasing your chances of appearing higher in the results- sharing valuable content is an important one, but by incorporating some of these terms into your content, your prospects are more likely to come across it. Don’t go too far though- in the past, writers used to ‘stuff’ their copy with keywords in the hope Google would pick it up, but this technique is frowned upon these days. Anyway, you don’t want to publish content that is barely readable. To learn more about keyword research and search engine optimisation (SEO), I highly recommend checking out Moz’s guide.
Social media
Again, I’ll start with a disclaimer- if you’re not already active on social media, simply posting a link to your content and hoping your followers/ connections/ friends engage with it won’t achieve much. So you need to try to spread the word in other ways. On Twitter, use hashtags to help prospects discover your content. But don’t just go for the obvious terms, use a tool like Hashtagify to find related phrases. If you use LinkedIn and Facebook, look for groups whose members might be interested in what you have to say. By creating and sharing valuable content, you increase the chances of starting a conversation which should amplify it further.
External platforms
Another option is to publish your content on an external platform as you expose it to a new audience. Obviously, knowing your existing audience helps, so you can target the types of places they hang out. General blogging platforms such as Medium are becoming increasingly popular though and as an added bonus, some of them are free. But it may be worth allocating part of your marketing budget to publishing on a niche portal, as they tend to offer access to a more targeted readership and greater reach due to the volume of website traffic and the size of their social media networks.