What are some genuine ways to promote a blog or an article I've written?
I've been a content writer for many years now. But I've realized that no matter how good of a content I write, it's going to be useless if I don't make it heard among the people I write for. It's like playing great music inside a closed room. :-)
So, my very simple, very humble question is how do I toot my own horn to the people who matter for my business?
For your reference, here's a recent article on improving customer support that I wrote very recently:
http://blog.freshchat.com/track+you+CSAT+but+improve+your+customer+support
Here's some notes I have on content in general (mostly inspired by @randfish) I think it's important to think of content and distribution as one product rather than write first then how to distribute later.
Who will support & amplify this content and why?
Invest in content and amplification:
Broadcast: Reddit, Slack channels, Facebook groups, forums, existing email subscribers, social followers, Linkedin
Find successful content in your niche: Buzzsumo, Ahrefs
Find where it’s shared: Buzzsumo, Ahrefs
Go beyond social networks: Google search and freshwebexplorer.moz.com
Find who’s doing the sharing: buzz sumo
Copy what’s working for them
Build relationships with those that can help (help them a lot, interact genuinely)
Treat amplification as experiments not fire and forget
Each channel is a muscle to stretch and build regularly
Determine your target audience (also called a buyer persona) for lead generation and the influencers of that target audience.
Spend lots of time on social networks, forums, and real-world events to get to know these influencers and consumers.
List issues, questions, missing pieces of information, and opportunities for product/content interaction, and then start experimenting.
These three actions lay the foundation for your overall SEO and marketing strategies.
Step 1: get known and trusted by your audience. Step 2: grow a presence across the channels they use to find solutions for what your product does. Step 3: be visible throughout their discovery, consideration, and decision processes.
This is a very good list! Thank you so much, Joe. I really loved the way you put everything out there.
"I think it's important to think of content and distribution as one product rather than write first then how to distribute later."
This is something I needed to hear today, because for most of my professional life I wrote and had someone else promote it. But I guess until I treat them both as one, it's bound to fail somewhere.
Thanks again!
I'm afraid the posted URL to your article is broken. I got 404.
It's missing a "t" at the end. But I guess 101 is to make the article available when you share it.
Good catch! Do you know how can I edit the link in my original posting?
Nevermind, I fixed it now.
Sorry to hear that. Here, can you try again?
http://blog.freshchat.com/track+you+CSAT+but+improve+your+customer+support
Also, do you know how can I fix the link in my original posting?
Nevermind, I fixed it now.
Great question @manishood !
I'd say it comes down to knowing where your potential users hangout and going there to genuinely tell them how your product can make their lives better.
Some places like reddit, social media, indiehackers, quora, hackernews, blogs, etc.
You're right. I'm trying to figure out where do our ideal audience lurk around so that we can make some noise there. Thanks for your tip.
Step 1. Post the article on Medium
Step 2. Share that medium link on your social profiles with the relevant #
Step 3. Share that medium link on Hacker News, Reddit, Forums etc.
Step 4. Engage with ANYONE who engages with the article and which will build relationships - so the next article that you post they will most likely engage with. Build the community and eventually you won't have to worry about promotion.
Great ideas! Somehow, reddit doesn't give a **** unless it has a funny, horrifying, viral, shocking, and click-baity value in general to a content.
I'm tempted to give #4 a serious try, it's a very genuine way to build a relationship with your audience beyond just promotion.
I always cross-post 700+ words to Medium by importing the blog. Be sure to let Google crawl, automated or manually, your original blogpost first though.
I've been thinking of this lately, but it confuses me. Won't I be losing traffic to my website if I cross-post an article in Medium which has the likelihood of doing better in terms of visibility? Of course, I'll have backlinks to my blog page. But what if my goal is to increase traffic/sessions on my website?
I have been asking myself exactly the same question. Let me know if you find an answer somewhere...
You can get to decent traffic as long as you find the right sub reddit. Really dig down, it doesn't matter if there are only 600-1000 subscribers. I'd rather that then posting on a reddit with a 1,000,000 subscribers and get lost in the sea of trash that's posted.
You're theoretically right. But even in my past experiences of posting in super-niche subreddits, I hardly got any views or engagement (let alone upvotes). I've found that either these subreddits are ghost-towns or you have to use a very click-baity approach to post things at those places.
I think the community will be more engaging on these subreddits once they know you're a regularly active member. They tend to be hesitant if they only see you sharing your own content.
Along the same lines, you can try using a more passive/non-chalant title for your article on reddit. Something that speaks of the benefits with out hyping it up.
Agreed. It's also a matter of experimenting with many ideas and seeing what clicks with them.
A lot of ways:
etc
I've been trying some of these, let's see how it pays back. Thanks for the tips!
The best way I think is to first write a post about a thing that u like and know about well.
Then go and look around to see if people are asking about the content you write about. normally this can be forum, indiehacker, Quora. any place where people are looking for help in your domain. Answer the question and then link your blog post as long as its related for more info.
At times this will give u topics to write about.
Looks for a user asking a question, write a post about it then answer the question and link your post for more info.
Never do this in case your blog post is off topic as in my case. https://goo.gl/hpSYVU (this is about trading):-)
overtime the ball will start rolling my friend. And about the music you need to play it on the street if no one lets u in the auditorium.
Thanks for sharing your mistakes. I'll keep these tips in mind.
I agree about Quora, this is the easiest way to promote your content and spread the word about it.
One more thing that you can do to promote articles, is to look for broken links in other articles and contact with the website admin saying that there are broken links in content and offer your content instead. It is actually very good method to get your content in high quality websites plus it is almost for free.
I'm definitely giving Quora a try. Will report back the finding. Thanks!