Tag Archives: content promotion

Promoting your content is as important as writing it

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Promote your content

This small blog post on Copyblogger rightly says that no matter how great content you write and publish, unless you have set up a mechanism to promote it, to make it possible for the right people to find it, it is of no use. This can be a great bummer if you have the talent, you have the intention, but you don’t have the ability to create that mechanism. What’s this mechanism?

Once you have published a blog post or an article, how do you make sure that maximum number of people read it and even respond to it? If you already have good traffic it is not a problem. But what if you hardly get 5-10 visitors every day and most of them don’t even stay for a few seconds, leave alone reading your greatest blog post? As I am repeatedly saying on my blog, depending on search engines, especially Google, doesn’t really help. You need to create your own ways to get targeted traffic to your website or blog.

Here are a few things you can do:

  • Network with people: Although, as suggested in the above Copyblogger link it might not be initially possible for you to network with highly influential people in your field, you can start interacting with people who are either slightly more influential than you are, or somewhere around where you are right now. How do you network? It doesn’t mean sucking up to them (it isn’t wrong actually unless it becomes a nuisance). Follow conversations of influential people on the Internet and pitch in whenever an interesting discussion is happening. If they ask something, and if you happen to have the answer, provide it promptly. Promote their content whenever you feel it deserves to be promoted. Recommend their links on your timelines. Write blog posts and articles in response to what they have written and notify them even if you slightly disagree.
  • Publish quality content non-stop: This involves long form and short form content. Be consistent. Whether you like it or not, the success on the Internet, as it also happens otherwise, depends on being there at the right time. What’s that right time? Either you depend on serendipity, or you be there so often that one of those times becomes the right time. Most people in the world depend on this strategy to increase their odds. Be regular with your content so that people always find something to promote, something to talk about, on your blog or website.
  • Interact on niche forums: This is something I also need to focus on. I know some people who get lots of targeted traffic from niche online forums. Despite Facebook and Twitter, these forums are thriving and lots of interesting discussion takes place in these forums. Be an active member if you have enough time.
  • Concentrate on building a mailing list: This point cannot be stressed upon enough times (this is also a self-note). Having your own mailing list can be invaluable. Actually I understand why it may seem like a vicious circle. You need traffic to build your mailing list. People advise you to build your mailing list to build targeted traffic. This ends up dissuading you. But you know what? Somewhere you have to start. At least have a signup form prominently displayed on your website or blog.
  • Work on building your authority: If you are interested in improving your organic search engine rankings you must already know that the author rank plays a big part in it. The higher is your authority over a particular topic, the higher are your links ranked for that particular topic. Your authority can be improved by encouraging more and more people to share your content under their social networking profiles, hyperlinking to articles and blog posts authored by you, sharing and promoting your social media content, and last but not the least, creating authoritative content for other blogs and websites.
  • Follow recommended SEO guidelines: Search engines, after all, rule the roost when it comes to sending targeted traffic. Don’t neglect search engine optimization guidelines while creating your content.

Wondering how you can have enough time for content writing as well as content promotion? Of course one way would be to hire a professional content writer who is not just adept at creating exceptional content but also knows how to promote it. The other option would be to schedule your content strategy in such a manner that you can devote equal amount of time to both the activities. Remember that, though creating content and publishing it regularly may seem to be an easier option and hence you may end up doing just that, it isn’t solving much purpose if it is not being accessed by your target audience. So even at the cost of producing less content, devote enough time to promoting it.

Your content helps you attract the right people to your website

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The greatest challenge people face while doing business online is getting the right people to their websites. But what do we mean by “right people”? They are the people who would like to do business with you. What sort of people would I like to get to my website? People who would like to hire me to avail my content writing services.

Once you get to it it isn’t as easy as it seems especially when billions of people are constantly going through millions of web pages processing millions of terabytes of information. For instance, how do I make sure that people who are looking for a content writer can easily find me when they need me? Since there might be thousands of content writers doing business on the Internet how do I make sure I get ample amount of exposure and consequently, attention.

And even if I get the sufficient amount of attention how do I make sure that the right people are getting attracted? I can do it by creating a noticeable presence on the Internet. My content helps me do that.

You can publish your content on your own website/blog, on other websites/blogs, online forums and social media and networking websites. It gives you the needed visibility. Of course your content has to be about the product or service you offer. It is no use writing about scooters if you’re selling cars. And even if you’re selling cars it is no use talking about Mercedes-Benz if you’re selling Ferraris.

What sort of content you want on your website/blog in order to attract your prospective customers and clients? It depends on what sort of traffic you are trying to attract. Search engines, for instance, are looking for lots of informative content and consequently they rank higher content that teaches rather than the one that sells, especially Google. But it doesn’t mean it indexes and ranks only content that teaches: it just prefers it.

In order to attract right people from search engines you have to focus on keywords and search terms that help people find you for the exact service or product they are looking for. I would like to be found for “content writing services”, “freelance writer”, “website content writer” and such terms. Since I am continuously writing content on how to write content better or how to improve your business through content marketing and content strategy it may seem like I’m trying to attract an audience that is more interested in “learning” and less interested in doing business with me. This happened when I was offering web design services back in 2002: instead of attracting clients looking for a web designer my website was majorly attracting people who wanted to learn web designing and web related programming. When I started my content writing business and again started generating content for this website I made sure that I didn’t repeat the mistake. Although even now a majority of my traffic constitutes of people trying to figure out things and exploring career options I get sufficient number of business queries due to the content I continuously publish here.

The basic idea behind generating content to attract the right people to your website is getting lots of people for the right keywords. I may be getting lots of traffic for “website content writer” and 60% of that traffic may be those people who are simply trying to explore the field (want to try out this “content writing thing”) or researching for their own articles, 40% still are looking for someone to write content for them. In my specific case I have concluded that it is difficult to change this ratio and the only thing for me to do is increase the numbers so that this 40% becomes a bigger number.

While generating content for your website/blog (on your own or by hiring content writer) try to cover as many keywords as possible. Generate your business pages using those keywords first of all. If you’re providing content writing services then generate sufficient number of pages explaining that you actually provide this service. Once you run out of such pages don’t keep repeating them. From then onwards you can start creating instructional content. You may attract people who are trying to “learn things” but the brighter side is you will be covering all your major keywords and their various short and long combinations. Keep your focus on the relevant keywords and keep publishing all sort of content around them. Just make sure that your primary/business pages are visible from every possible page on your website/blog.