Creating fresh content for your audience is an essential part of online marketing today, but how do you cut through all the online clutter to reach more people? With so many businesses publishing content online, it's a constant challenge to even get noticed at all.
Obviously, search engine optimization (SEO) plays a key role in content visibility, but it's difficult to achieve high search engine rankings with so much competition. If you think your content isn't reaching enough of your target audience, you need to try some new strategies to turn things around. To help, here are 10 techniques - aside from SEO - to boost the visibility of your content.
Constantly Link to New and Old Content
It's not enough to promote your new blog posts on social media. Not many people will see every one of your social media posts, and even fewer people will browse your social media feed for older links. Promoting content should be an ongoing process, where you constantly re-post links to new and old content. This way, people new to your brand will discover old content, and loyal followers will catch every link to fresh content.
Spark Debate
Every blog or social media post has the potential to provoke online chatter. The more often you spark debate, the more often people will talk about your posts, share them, and pull others into the conversation. To do this, you need to ask questions, be a little bit controversial, and ask people what they think about certain topics. Monitor social media for discussions on relevant topics and join in the conversation. When it's appropriate, you can then share a link to your related content.
Optimize Your Posting Schedule
There's no perfect time to publish a blog post or send out a tweet; it depends on your audience and industry sector. However, you can track the results of recent posts to discover when you get more engagement. With Google Analytics and other web tools, you can discover where your audience is most active and when they are more responsive to your content.
Preview Content on Social Media
Are you nearly ready to publish a new blog post? Let people know across your social media channels. Give them a taste of what's to come and link to your blog to drive more traffic to your site. By regularly informing social media users about upcoming content, you're slowly building your credibility within your industry.
Add Visuals
Most marketers know about the power of visuals to boost content engagement, but if you're busy creating and promoting content, this is easy to forget. In one study, articles with an image once every 75-100 words received twice as many social media shares than those without. In the same study, Facebook posts with images also saw double the engagement (1). Add photos, graphics, or GIFs to posts whenever you can.
Insert Hashtags
Adding a hashtag or two to social media posts instantly widens the reach of each post. Most social media platforms have inbuilt tools to help you search for hashtags related to your industry. However, only insert one or two hashtags per post. Studies have shown that tweets with one or two hashtags received 21 percent more engagement than those with three or more (2).
Answer Questions on Quora
Quora is a question and answer site, allowing anyone to ask and answer questions on a range of topics. Look for questions related to your specific industry and answer the most relevant questions clearly and concisely. You can include links, as long as your answers provide value and you're not too promotional. It's a simple way to build your credibility, drive more traffic to your website, and increase the visibility of your content.
Pin Underperforming Posts
Sometimes, you need to give older content a boost - especially if you think it's an important piece of content that is a good representation of your brand. Most social media channels allow you to "pin" content to the top of your feed. When you pin content, you're ensuring more people notice your most important content. Of course, you can also pin content that is already performing well; it's up to you which content pieces you want to promote.
Share Other Impressive Content
If you come across a valuable piece of content, share it with your followers. It shows your audience that you want to offer them valuable information and that you're keeping up to date with the latest trends. It also provides you with an opportunity to reach a wider audience, because it helps to get your name in front of others in your industry. Use a content aggregator site such as Feedly to find trending articles to share.
Update Older Content
Finally, don't make the mistake of ignoring your old content. You've worked hard to create all of your content, so it deserves ongoing care and attention. To help improve the visibility of older content, you should regularly review it and update it to make it more relevant. You can then promote it again across your social media accounts. If some of your past content is short or lacks depth, you could combine several articles into one new, higher-quality piece.
Over to You
If you're regularly creating quality content, it deserves to get seen by your target audience. Unfortunately, with so much competition online, it can be a struggle to get noticed. Use these 10 strategies to extend the reach of your content and boost its marketing power. Over time, you should be able to attract a wider audience, increase your brand's visibility online, and get more people talking about your business.
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