Content Promotion Strategy: 33 Ways to Drive Traffic

This is why web marketers work so hard at creating content hubs, driving traffic, and promoting content. And we do it by being active in three areas:

Search Optimization

Social Media

Email Marketing

Our content promotion strategy is built on these areas. This post is a big list of activities, organized into these three categories.

Promotion Cycles and Feedback Loops

It takes work! But the good news is that traffic often leads to more traffic. Once we get visitors, some of them may lend a hand and help us with content promotion.

When visitors write about us elsewhere and link back to our site, it helps our search engine rankings.

When visitors subscribe, our list grows and future email marketing is more effective.

When visitors follow us (or become a fan on Facebook or circle us on Google+) we gain social influence, making our social media efforts more effective.

A visitor from one channel may help us with another channel, creating a feedback loop. The idea is to create a self-perpetuating cycle of actions taken by you, then traffic, actions taken by visitors, then more traffic and eventually, leads and sales.

But to get the process started, we need to prime the pump. That’s what this post is all about.

So here’s the mother list! Try a few or use them all. As always, there isn’t just one thing that makes a piece of content (or a business) successful. It’s a hundred little things…

For the record, Orbit has either used every tactic on this list or we know someone who has. As part of our blog criteria, we never make recommendations until we have evidence of the effectiveness of a tactic.

Note: Although these tips are not in any particular order, we recommend posting the content, then promoting it for a day with social media before sending it out through email. The social visitors may leave comments, which makes the post look better when the all the email subscribers come to visit.

Social Media

Connect with relevant people and engage them in conversation.

Tweet it
Make sure that no more than 20% of your tweets are self-promotional. The rest should be conversations and promotion of other people’s content. Unless tracking is especially important, try tweeting the link without using a URL shortener. Just let Twitter shorten the link and let the viewer see the domain in the link. This is good information that can build trust.

After you tweet, follow a few people who are interested in the topic
Search Twitter for people with bios that include words that are relevant to the topic of the post, then follow them. These people will see your recent tweet at the top of your stream. They’re more likely to follow you since the content is especially relevant to them at that moment.

Targeted sharing: mention people outside your network
Use Twitter Advanced Search or Followerwonk.com to find relevant people with large followings who would be interested and likely to share. Mention one or two of them at the end of another tweet. If the content actually mentions, quotes or links to a social influencer, they’ll be more likely to share it.

Targeted sharing: mention people who already follow you
As above but use the “Bio Search” button in the bottom left corner of ManageFlitter.com. This will help you find people who would be especially interested and already follow you. Mention one or more of them in another tweet.

Tweet with a quote from the content
Take a juicy nugget out of the post and use it in the tweet. If the post contains data or statistics, these make good quotes that you can use in tweets. It will increase the clickthrough rate.

Mystery Tweet
Try a tweet that doesn’t provide a lot of information about the topic, such as “I’m surprised this trick worked!” or “This post is short but was hard to write…” If you don’t reveal too much, people may click just to see what you’re talking about. Don’t overuse this tactic.

Tweet with a hashtag
…but don’t overdo it. A hashtag can make your tweet more visible, but it also competes with the link to your content. Your current followers may click the hashtag instead of the link! Plus, it looks silly to have four hashtags in a single tweet.

Cross the streams
If people like it on Facebook (or +1 it in Google+), thank them on Twitter.
Pro Tip: If they share or comment on any network, thank or mention them on another network where they don’t yet follow you. They’re likely to start following on the second network, since they’re already familiar with you. This will increase the number of social connections between you and that person.

Meta-promotion / Feedback loop
If the post starts becoming successful, Tweet and post about how people seem to like it. “Wow, this one is getting a lot of comments this morning! [link]”

Near future tweets
Schedule at least four tweets for the future. Time them to the highest traffic times in Twitter: Monday – Thursday mornings (around 9am), late afternoon (around 5pm) and nighttime (around 10pm). Or use counter-competitive timing and do the opposite. Schedule a few for day two, a few more in a few days, and again in a week.

Distant future tweets
If the post is likely to stay relevant or evergreen and is not based on timely research, ephemeral pop-culture references or changing trends, schedule a tweet promoting the post for six months or a year in the future. These are sometimes referred to as “encore” or “from the archives” tweets.
Pro Tip: If you write an event recap email, schedule another tweet to go out when registration opens for the subsequent event, even if it’s 10 months away.

Post on Facebook
Make sure there’s an image. Mention anyone who is in the article. If appropriate, ask friends, family and co-workers to interact with the post (“like” or comment) to improve your EdgeRank and help it appear higher in the streams of your other fans.

Post on Google+
Similar to Facebook: post, make sure the image appears, mention anyone relevant, and stimulate initial engagement. If you have a business page and a personal page, I generally recommend posting it to the business page first, then share it from your personal page.

Update your LinkedIn Status
Link to the post in your status update.

Share it in LinkedIn Groups
If appropriate, share the link within a group with which you are actually engaged. If the group includes some high-value connection, plan ahead and get engaged with them before you publish and promote the content.

Post on Reddit
Post it and tag it.

Post on Digg
Not what it once was, but still around…

Pin it on Pinterest
This works best if you have highly visual content (like an infographic) or an article with a great picture.

Post on StumbleUpon
The link to submit is on your profile page in the bottom left.

Use Twitter to test possible email subject lines
If your following is big enough, if you track the clicks from Twitter, and if you schedule multiple tweets to remove time-of-day and day-of-week as variables, you can A/B test two possible email subject lines in Twitter. Whichever tweet gets the most clicks becomes the email subject line.

Bookmark it on social bookmarking sites
Use Delicious to bookmark the content and add a few tags. Connect with a few people while you’re there.

Q&A sites: LinkedIn Answers, Quora.com, Focus.com
See if anyone is asking questions that your post answers. If so, write a sincere, thoughtful comment and link to your post. Be tactful.

Post a summary on niche social sites
If you have accounts on any smaller membership sites, forums, association sites, networking groups, and anywhere else you can post content, use only a short summary or excerpt and then link to the article. Include an image to make it more visible. Don’t ever post the entire version on another site or readers won’t visit your site. You’ll also risk confusing Google and getting penalized for duplicate content.

Email Marketing

Email
Send a summary with a link to your email list. Use the URL Builder to add tracking code to the link. Use a compelling subject line (have a hook) and a human sender name (not just the brand), and send at a time that works for them. Research suggests early mornings, but test until you find the best time for your list. Consider sending on the weekends, avoid Tuesdays.

Send an “In case you missed it” follow-up email
Three days after sending, send it again to everyone who didn’t open it the first time. Use a different subject line.

Personal, manual, one-at-a-time emails
If you have a few very high-value connections, such as prospects in the pipeline, it is absolutely worth it to send each of them a personal email with the link. Few people do this. Many people should.

List growth: subscription box
Make sure the signup box on your site is prominent. Give people a reason to subscribe; indicate the value of the content and the frequency of the emails.

List growth: personal invitations
If you meet someone who may be interested in the topics you write about, tell them about what you publish and offer to subscribe them but without pressuring them in any way. You don’t want subscribers who don’t want your content.

Prevent list shrinkage: LinkedIn
Watch your bounces. If you get a hard bounce, the subscriber may have changed jobs. Find them on LinkedIn, restart the conversation, then offer to add them your list again.

Search Engine Optimization

Indicate your relevance so Google can help people find you.

Align the post with a keyphrase
Use the Google Keyword Tool to research possible phrases. Select a keyphrase that has good search volume (lots of people searching for it) and low competition (the sites that rank for the phrase aren’t famous sites with powerful domains) and is highly relevant to both the post and your business. Use the phrase at the beginning of the title, in the header, in the meta description, and up to four times in the body text. Read this quick guide on how to research keywords.

Link to the post from other posts
This could be a link under “related articles” at the bottom of some of your other popular, related posts. Or it could be a link within the body text. Either way, make sure the text within the link includes the keyphrase you’re targeting. This both helps visitors navigate to it and helps to indicate relevance to Google.

Make it a guest blog post on another site
If the site has more visitors than yours, the post will be seen by more people. If the site has a more powerful domain than yours (more high-quality inbound links), the post will rank higher. If the site has a more engaged audience than yours, the post will get more comments and shares. When you guest blog, your bio should include a link back to your site, which increases your domain’s authority and helps all of your future content rank higher.

Google Authorship
Linking and tagging between the post and your G+ profile will make your face appear in search results when the post ranks in Google. This will increase the clickthrough rate by up to 150%. Learn more about Google Authorship.

Trust Yourself

If you truly believe in the content you’ve produced and you truly believe it will be useful to your audience, there is nothing spammy or unethical about anything on this list, including the more aggressive tips. If you don’t have faith that your content is really worthwhile and will be valued by your audience, you have bigger problems than content promotion!

All of these content promotion tips are worthless if the content stinks. But great content is equally worthless if no one see it. Combine great content and great promotion, make sure it all works within your digital strategy, then sit back, pop some popcorn, and watch your Analytics jump.

What’d we miss? Help your fellow readers by leaving a tip in the comments below.

Comments

NorbWinslow 6/27/12 @ 9:17AM

I’ve used pinterest to optimize my site’s ranking and it works wonders.

My website improved from page 7 to #4 spot in 3 weeks time. I found that the seller named “pinterest”, which ranked first when you search “pinterest” at Fiverr, has produced the best results on my websites. The seller pins my site with 75 different people, not sure how he did this, but it has improve my SERP’s ranking. I’ve tried 5 other sellers who offer pinterest gigs on Fiverr but they can’t improve my site’s ranking. I don’t know why.

3 advantages of pinterest for seo:
1. Google loves social media signal.
2. Each pin is considered as 3 inbound links.
3. Links and images from pinterest are dofollow!

Since business can’t circle people on G+ until that person circles them first, your personal account is likely to have a bigger following than the business. So to increase the exposure of the business, post there first, then reshare it from your personal account. Now everyone who follows you (the bigger audience) will be exposed to the brand. This wouldn’t happen if you post to your own account then share it as the business. Make sense?

Andy, love the abundant ideas. I can see a lot of people having additional ideas to this post. Allowing other people to add to your list could make it one long powerful list! Let me know if you want to include something like this on list.ly. I could see this getting thousands of views and some great contributions

@JamesGustin Thanks for the encouraging words, James! I’m glad if this one is useful to you.

One thing I forgot to add to the post is a guideline for the time investment. Generally, I would say spend half as much time promoting as you do writing. If you write a post in two hours, you should probably budget an hour for promotion, including up-front keyphrase research and post-publishing social and email marketing.

Yes, I’ve found many measurable benefits to these tactics. The friends I’ve made through social media have led to personal benefits, but this post is all about driving actual marketing results. Hope you found it useful!

Re: #16. Post to Reddit at your own peril. If you’re going to post to /r/marketing or /r/SEO, etc, that post had better provide A LOT of value. Puff pieces will be voted to oblivion, and users posting them will be ignored in the future. That said, if you have something that provides proof (data), then it has the opportunity to get a little bit of traction. Digital marketers on Reddit are exactly the opposite of the ones on the Hubspot blog: touch-feely posts about how cuddly kittens improve conversions will not be tolerated.

Thanks for that insight, Mark. It’s all about knowing the community before dumping links there. I’m not active on Reddit, but the Redittors are famous for their ruthlessness. …funny comment about Hubspot and kittens.

Interested? We would be happy to share with you our experiences and help you understand the potential opportunities involved in achieving your goals. Get In Touch

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