Does this sound familiar?
You’re producing content regularly - 1, maybe even 2 pieces of content per week (maybe more you content dynamo). That means you’re creating blogs, research papers, reports, scripts for video or audio content and more. All of this requires ideation, research, drafting, editing, and finalizing the content. Phew.
It’s a full time job.
And that’s after you’ve spent all that time coming up with and fighting for the perfect content strategy in the first place (*sigh* stakeholders, amiright?).
Oh, but you’re also in charge of publishing business as usual (BAU) content on social media, and staying on top of any comments, too? LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok? Anything shiny and new that corporate wants “us to have a presence on”.
Maybe you’ve also got to write the monthly company newsletter, make sure your content is fully optimized for SEO, monitor your KPIs and analyze your metrics, and deal with internal and external stakeholders, as well as any relationships with design agencies, right?
According to our yearly Content Promotion report, this hectic scenario is more common than not. Many content marketers are slammed, so it’s no wonder that trying to fit an extra task in such as content promotion, ends up being almost impossible.
RELATED: Why Investing In a Content Promotion Platform Is A Smart Move
But that doesn’t stop it from being absolutely essential to a successful content marketing strategy, unfortunately.
So, this all begs the question, how can you do more content promotion without having to find more time that you simply don’t have?
Well, we do have some ideas for you. In this article we’ll explore them, but first let’s look at the common challenges of content promotion.
The Challenges of Content Promotion
Content promotion isn't just about sharing a link to your latest blog post on Twitter or LinkedIn and hoping for the best. It's a process that requires a strategic approach, consistent effort, and a really, really good understanding of your audience.
Strategy and planning
One of the most significant challenges content marketers face is the lack of a comprehensive content promotion strategy. Without a clear plan in place, your content promotion efforts can quickly become disjointed and ineffective. And a well-planned strategy isn't just about knowing which platforms to use; it's also about knowing when to share your content, what format to use, and how to tailor your message for your specific audience.
Finding The Time
As highlighted in the introduction, time is a precious commodity for content marketers (yes, I know, it’s precious for everyone, but I’m empathising with my CM community, here - leave me be).
With so many tasks on their plate, finding the time to actually promote content can often feel like an uphill, nigh-on impossible battle. The challenge here isn't just about finding the time to share content but also about dedicating enough time to do it properly, commit long term and engage with your audience, respond to comments, and build relationships.
Understanding Your Audience
Not all content will resonate with all members of your audience, and that's where the challenge of really understanding your audience comes in. Identifying different segments within your audience and tailoring your content promotion efforts to meet their preferences (format, style, channels) can be a daunting task. But without this, you risk delivering content that doesn't resonate, engage, or drive action.
Measuring success
One of the biggest challenges in content promotion is accurately gauging the success of your efforts.
Which metrics truly matter? Is it the volume of shares, comments, likes, website visits, leads generated, or sales closed?
In reality, it could be a combination of these factors and more. Identifying the right metrics to track and using them to guide future strategies is a complex task.
To tackle this, it's crucial to collaborate with your stakeholders. By establishing a shared understanding of what constitutes success, you ensure everyone is aligned and working towards the same goals, creating a unified approach to content promotion.
Be Aware (And Wary) Of Trends
The digital world is continuously evolving, with new platforms, algorithms, and trends emerging all the time. Staying current with these changes and adapting your content promotion strategy accordingly can feel like a full-time job in itself.
These are just some of the challenges that make content promotion a demanding aspect of content marketing. However, despite these difficulties, content promotion remains a crucial part of the process. Without it, even the most well-researched and well-written content can go unnoticed.
In the next section, we will explore some strategies and tools that can help you overcome these challenges and make your content promotion more effective and efficient.
The Importance of Efficiency in Content Promotion
For time-poor content marketers, efficiency is your best friend.
But let's clear something up right off the bat - being efficient doesn't mean cutting corners or sacrificing quality. Far from it. It's about making the most of your resources and getting the best possible results from your efforts.
And let's have a quick word on efficiency versus effectiveness, too.
Effectiveness is about doing the right things - reaching the right audience, sharing the right content, and driving the right actions - doing a thing that leads to a successful outcome.
Efficiency, on the other hand, is about doing things right - optimizing your processes, minimizing wasted time and effort, and getting more done in less time.
Time is of the Essence
As we've established (and as you're probably all too aware), time is a precious commodity for content marketers.
There are only so many hours in the day, and there's a helluva lot to get done.
So, being efficient in your content promotion is crucial. It’ll not only mean it gets done, but that it gets done consistently, becoming as integral a part of your content marketing strategy as creating the content you’re promoting (because it is).
Maximizing Your Impact
Efficiency is also about maximizing your impact. It's about making sure every piece of content you create, every post you share, and every conversation you engage in is reaching the right people, at the right time, in the right way.
This not only increases your reach and engagement but also improves your ROI, making your content promotion efforts more sustainable in the long run (and keeping those acronym-happy stakeholders chuffed to bits).
Adapting to Change (Wisely)
Content marketing is a dynamic field, with new platforms, algorithms, and trends emerging all the time. Being efficient means being agile and adaptable, able to pivot your strategy and tactics quickly in response to these changes. It means staying current, staying relevant, and always delivering value to your audience.
However, efficiency also means being discerning. It's not about jumping on every new trend or platform that comes along. Instead, it's about carefully evaluating each new development to determine if it's relevant and beneficial to your strategy. Remember, the goal is not to be everywhere, but to be where it matters most to your audience and your objectives.
Strategies and Tools for Efficient Content Promotion
Getting as efficient as possible with your content promotion requires a robust set of strategies and tools.
Here are some practical, actionable tips that you can start implementing today:
Craft a Comprehensive Content Promotion Strategy
Before you dive into promoting content, take a step back and put a plan together. We've touched on the importance of truly understanding your audience (it's the linchpin of this entire content promotion operation, really), but it bears repeating. Alongside this, you'll need to clearly define your goals and carve out a dedicated space in your already bustling content strategy for consistent promotion.
I promise you that if it's not an integral part of your plan, it's likely to fall by the wayside - so ensure it's firmly embedded from the get-go.
Consider using tools like HubSpot's Marketing Hub or CoSchedule to help you plan and schedule your content promotion efforts. These tools can help you visualize your strategy, keep track of your tasks, and measure your progress.
Maximize Your Social Media Presence
Social media can be a powerful tool, but it certainly shouldn’t be solely relied upon to fix your content promotion woes, nor is it a one-size-fits-all solution. Understand which platforms your audience uses most and tailor your content accordingly. And take a look at the concept of zero-click content, too - Amanda Natividad wrote a great article on this here.
Consider using social media management tools like Hootsuite or Buffer. These can help you manage multiple accounts, schedule posts for optimal times, and track your engagement metrics.
Don't Ignore SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is still crucial for content promotion. It always has been, and don’t let any “guru” tell you otherwise. Optimize your content with relevant keywords, meta descriptions, and quality links to improve its visibility on search engine results pages (SERPs).
Tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs and Moz Pro can help you find the right keywords, track your SEO performance, and uncover opportunities for improvement.
Leverage Email Marketing
Email marketing is an often overlooked but highly effective strategy for content promotion. Regular newsletters or updates can keep your audience engaged and drive traffic to your latest content.
And, (if you’ve done it right - no bought lists people) those people subscribed to your newsletter because they wanted to hear from you, so the likelihood of them wanting to see your content is reasonably high.
Email marketing platforms like MailChimp or Constant Contact can help you manage your email list, design professional-looking emails, and track your open and click-through rates so you can stay on top of what’s resonating with your subscribers and what isn’t.
Collaborate, Collaborate, Collaborate
We can’t stress this one enough - collaborating on content is one of the best and most effective tactics you can implement. It works for every business, and benefits your content strategy on so many levels.
Collaborating with people or other businesses in your industry can significantly extend the reach of your content. But how can you collaborate?
As Andy Crestodina said in our article on common content promotion problems and their solutions,
“Reaching out to people while writing, asking for quotes, and adding them to the article is the obvious fix. But it's even better to socialize the topic before the writing begins. It's easy.
Post a question relevant to the topic you plan to write about. See who interacts. Ask a few to contribute a quote, but also make a note of anyone who left a comment. These are the folks who found the topic interesting.
When the post is published and you're ready to share on social, then you have all kinds of people you can mention and tag, because the article is an extension of the conversation you started already.”
Measure, Learn, and Adapt
Finally, remember that content promotion is not a set-it-and-forget-it process. Track your results, learn from your successes and failures, and adjust your strategy as needed.
Google Analytics is a powerful tool for this (and the obvious one), providing detailed insights into how users are interacting with your content on your website. Look at engagement metrics (likes, shares, comments), traffic sources, and conversions to understand what's working and what's not. And make sure to check the analytics on your social media channels as well.
But remember that 100% accurate attribution is a myth - so don’t think you’ll be able to connect all the dots. It’s just not possible.
How Converge Can Help
As we’ve discussed, efficiency in content promotion is a game-changer. It's the difference between struggling to fit promotion into your packed schedule and smoothly integrating it into your routine. It's the key to consistent, effective promotion that doesn't eat up all your time.
But what if you could take it a step further? What if, when things get really hectic and you're stretched thin, you had a way to ensure your content still gets promoted like clockwork?
Enter Converge - the tool designed to shoulder the burden of content promotion for busy content marketers. With Converge, your content gets promoted every day, rain or shine, without you having to lift a finger… much.
Let's take a closer look at how it works.
Effortless Promotion
With Converge, publishing your content is simple and quick. In just a couple of minutes, you can have your content live on the platform. From there, it's hands-off. Converge takes over and shares your content with its promotion partners, including industry giants like NewsNow UK and USA, Google News, and Bing News.
These are platforms that typically only partner with publishing platforms like Converge, so it's a level of exposure that would be hard to achieve on your own.
Wide Distribution
But Converge doesn't stop at its promotion partners. It also shares your content across its owned and social channels, including the Converge website, email newsletter, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook (where they find relevant groups and hashtags to further boost your reach).
Targeted Promotion
Converge also finds and engages with handpicked sources of influence that are relevant to your business, sharing your content with these people and businesses in the hopes that they'll share it with their networks too.
While this can't be guaranteed, there's a high success rate, and it's a fantastic way to get your content in front of new, relevant audiences - not to mention it saves you the hours and hours of time it would take for you to find and build these relationships yourself.
Consistent, Long-Term Promotion
One of the standout benefits of Converge is its dedication to consistent, long-term promotion. Once your content is published, it's not a one-and-done deal. Instead, Converge promotes your content daily for as long as it remains relevant. This means that your content doesn't just get an immediate burst of views—it accumulates more and more visibility every month it's live on the site (imagine this effect multiplied across several of your articles).
It's like a snowball effect for your content's reach: with each passing month, the visibility of each piece of content grows, compounding the overall impact of your content marketing efforts.
Increased Reach and Engagement
What this all means is that when you publish your content on Converge, it gets out to significantly more of your target audience. It reaches places and gets into circles that would ordinarily be out of reach for most businesses, boosting your visibility, engagement, and ROI.
The result? A constantly growing, evergreen source of visibility for your content and your brand, all working in the background while you focus on creating your next masterpiece.
Efficiency: The Game-Changer for Content Promotion
As we’ve discussed, efficiency isn't just a nice-to-have—it's a necessity for time-strapped content marketers. The challenges of content promotion are many, but they're not insurmountable.
With the right strategies and tools, you can make your content promotion more efficient, more effective, and more impactful. Here are some of the key takeaways from this article.
- Efficiency in content promotion is crucial, allowing you to do more with less—less time, less effort, and less stress
- Crafting a comprehensive content promotion strategy and truly understand your audience are the first steps towards efficient content promotion
- Maximizing your social media presence (but not solely relying on it) and leveraging SEO can significantly boost your content's visibility
- Email marketing and collaboration with relevant sources of influence are powerful strategies for extending your content's reach
- Continuous measurement, learning, and adaptation are key to improving your content promotion efforts over time
FAQ
Here are some frequently asked questions that we typically get from those reading this article (along with the answers, of course).
1. What specific metrics or KPIs should B2B marketers focus on to measure the effectiveness of their content promotion efforts?
To measure the effectiveness of content promotion efforts, B2B marketers should focus on metrics that reflect engagement, reach, and conversion. This includes tracking website traffic, content impressions or views, engagement rates (such as likes, shares, comments), lead generation numbers, conversion rates from content to sales or inquiries, and return on investment (ROI). These metrics provide insights into how well content resonates with the target audience and its impact on business goals.
2. What are the long-term impacts of adopting these efficient content promotion strategies on a business's overall marketing success?
The long-term impact of adopting efficient content promotion strategies for B2B marketers involves strengthening brand awareness, increasing engagement with target audiences, and enhancing lead generation and conversion rates over time. By consistently applying these strategies, businesses can build a more robust online presence, foster trust with their audience, and achieve sustainable growth in their market. This approach contributes to the development of a loyal customer base and positions the company as a thought leader in its industry.
3. Are there content promotion strategies that are particularly effective for specific industries within the B2B sector?
Content promotion strategies can indeed vary significantly across different B2B industries due to unique audience needs, content consumption habits, and decision-making processes. Tailoring content promotion strategies to fit specific industry characteristics involves understanding the audience's preferred platforms, content formats (such as whitepapers for tech industries or case studies for consulting services), and messaging that resonates best. Engaging with industry-specific communities, leveraging influencer partnerships within the sector, using content promotion platforms, and utilizing data-driven insights to refine strategies are key for maximizing the impact of content promotion efforts in any given B2B industry.
And, hey, if you ever feel like you could use some ongoing support with your content promotion, (especially when those really busy periods kick in) then give Converge a try.
Start your 30-day free trial today and experience the difference that Converge can make in your content marketing efforts. Because your content needs to be promoted to have any chance of success, regardless of how hectic your schedule is.