Content creation takes a long time and it can be a real struggle (how many drafts did it take?), but when you finally hit publish, the endorphin hit and promise of a great return on investment can make it feel worthwhile. 

Now it’s time to wait and see what the reaction and performance is, which should be great, right? 

You did your research, you’ve answered the questions your audience is asking, you’ve been relatable and unique in your delivery, and you really feel like you’ve created something valuable that truly resonates. 

So, why wouldn’t it “10x your traffic” or “boost conversions”?

But, and let me know if I’m miles off the mark here, more often than not, your content doesn’t perform like you wish it did?

Well let me tell you up front, because I know you’re going to question this, it’s rarely because of the quality or quantity of your content.  

More than likely, it’s because your content isn’t being promoted enough. According to our research [LINK], over 80% of businesses admit to this, so you’re not alone. 

Far gone are the days of “publish and they will come”. Unless you already have your ideal audience fully established and ready to consume everything you create, you’re going to need to promote your content continuously and effectively to give it the best chance of being seen and engaged with. Regardless of how good it is. 

As Andy Crestodina puts it, “It's not the best content that wins. It’s the best-promoted content that wins.” 

Now, there are a fair number of ways you can promote your content, and we cover lots of them here. But this article is going to look at one tactic in particular - using content promotion platforms (and why it’s a smart move). 

We'll discuss how a content promotion platform can help you reach a more targeted audience, improve distribution across multiple channels, provide better ROI by tracking campaigns, and save time and money through automation. By the end of this article, you'll have a better understanding of the benefits of a content promotion platform and why it's worth considering for your business. 

Before we start

But wait - before we get into it and before you promote any content, you need to be sure that you’re creating content that’s worth promoting in the first place, and you know what you want from your content promotion efforts.

Understand Your Audience

One powerful way to better understand your audience is by creating personas. Personas are fictional representations of your ideal customer or audience member, based on real data and insights. By creating personas (aim for psychographics over demographics), you can better understand your audience's pain points, motivations, and behaviors, ultimately producing content that resonates with them on a more profound level.

If you do this, then any content you publish on a content promotion platform, has a much, much better chance of being successful. And, because good content promotion platforms provide data (such as view and click statistics for your content), you’ll be able to see what is and isn’t working with your audience and keep evolving your content and strategy to generate the best results you can. 

But this all starts with understanding your audience on the deepest possible level. 

Tools like Audiense and Sparktoro are amazing for this and save you hundreds of hours of manual work.

Create High-Quality, Engaging Content

High-quality, engaging content is the foundation of successful content promotion. Your content should be informative, valuable, and relevant to your target audience. Use a variety of formats, such as blog posts, infographics, videos, and whitepapers, to keep your content fresh and engaging. Make sure to optimize your content for search engines and include clear calls to action that encourage your audience to take the next step.

RELATED: 5 things B2B content marketers must do before they promote content

Understand Your Goals and Objectives

Before creating and promoting content, it's important to understand your goals and objectives. What are you hoping to achieve through your content promotion efforts? Do you want to increase brand awareness, generate leads, or drive sales? By identifying your goals and objectives, you can create content that aligns with your business objectives and develop a promotion strategy that drives the results you're looking for.

OK, so now you’ve got content that’s worth promoting, and you’re looking for a way to ensure it is seen by more of your target audience, with minimal effort and maximum ROI? Then keep reading. 

Content Promotion Platforms Can Help You Reach A More Targeted Audience

When it comes to promoting your content effectively, it’s not just about getting it in front of more people. Instead, we want to reach more of the right people. And to do that, we need to truly understand our audiences and the audiences that a content promotion platform can help you reach. 

These platforms are designed to help you get your message in front of the right people, at the right time, and in the right way. 

Good content promotion platforms will allow you to define your target audience in a number of ways. On Converge, for example, our customers tell us who they want their content to reach by carefully selecting the categories they want to publish their content under. Our platform then uses that information to find relevant audiences online to promote the content to. 

However they do it, content promotion platforms help you connect with the right audience in a more targeted, efficient, and effective way. You’re saving hours of time doing this yourself (although, if possible you should promote your content as often as you can as well), you know your content is being promoted every day, without fail, and that you’re immediately reaching relevant audiences above and beyond your own.

Content promotion platforms help you maximize Your Content's Reach…

… by distributing your content across a number of relevant platforms and channels for you, using a combination of methods including; established relationships with key sources of influence (people and businesses), owned channels (website and social media), and partnerships (with powerful content syndication platforms with huge audiences). 

With a content promotion platform by your side, you can seamlessly distribute your content across various channels, ensuring that you're reaching your audience wherever they're spending time online, without worrying about finding the time to build all those relationships and partnerships yourself, or manually promote your content across all those channels. 

You’ll be saving hundreds of hours per year.

A few of the key channels and how they contribute to a successful content promotion strategy are:

Social Media

Social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram, are fantastic places to engage with your audience and share your content. And they’re used by content promotion platforms to do just that. 

By finding relevant groups and by using relevant hashtags, any content shared on social media will land in front of more of the right people consistently. 

RELATED: The Ultimate Guide to Content Promotion

Sources of Influence

Finding relevant and powerful sources of influence to help you promote your content is a super powerful way to reach more of your target audience and get your content seen. However, finding the right people, then building relationships with them, then actually asking them to share your content can be a long and laborious process. 

And if you’re already struggling to find time to promote your content in the first place, this is going to be a pretty difficult task. But, content promotion platforms often already have very large networks of relevant sources of influence across a huge number of industries that they can go to with great content, and ask to share. 

While there’s no guarantee that anyone will share, the established relationship between the platform and the source of influence will lead to far more successes than failures, and that means more people seeing and engaging with your content. 

Content Syndication Platforms

Content syndication platforms like Google News, Bing and Yahoo News, NewsNow UK & USA and more have huge audiences (in the tens and hundreds of millions) that visit those platforms every day to find information on specific topics from a range of high quality publications. 

The best content promotion platforms have partnerships with these guys so that any content published on their platforms is picked up and shared with the audiences that the syndication platforms have as well. This puts your content in front of huge audiences that would ordinarily be almost impossible to get in front of. 

Content promotion platforms save you time and boost productivity

We run a content promotion survey every year. And every year we’ve run it, over 80% of our participants tell us that they’re not promoting their content enough. And what’s the main reason? Lack of time due to other tasks. 

Let’s face it, people in a marketing or content marketing job typically wear a lot of hats and have a pretty full schedule of things that need to be done. If content promotion isn’t already a part of that schedule (or even if it is), finding the time available to do it consistently enough to have an impact is hard. 

One of the most significant benefits of content promotion platforms is the fact that they take the task off your never-ending “to do list”, and make sure it gets done every day on your behalf. 

This allows you to focus on what really matters: creating exceptional content that nurtures deeper relationships with your audience and keeps them engaged and informed. All while helping you build and maintain a strong presence across relevant channels. 

Content promotion platforms provide feedback and analytics that help you identify what content is getting the best results. Armed with this knowledge, you can allocate your time, budget, and efforts more effectively, ensuring the content you’re creating is as impactful as possible.

Finally, promoting content often requires teamwork, and a content promotion platform can make working together easy. With one sign-in and a simple layout, anyone on your team can quickly add content and check performance via the dashboard (often showing daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly stats). This keeps everyone up to date without wasting time on too many meetings or emails (which is always a good thing). 

Content promotion platforms help you cultivate a strong brand presence

This is what it’s all about, right? Creating content that positions our businesses as industry authorities, and our people as experts. 

Building awareness of what we do among our target audiences so potential future customers trust us more, subscribe to our newsletters and social channels, and think about us in those key moments when they need the services we offer. 

RELATED: How to promote your blog content like a pro

A strong brand presence and meaningful audience relationships are at the heart of successful content marketing. And content promotion platforms can help you build them by ensuring your content is seen among, consistently. 

This builds trust and brand recognition, making your audience more likely to engage with your content and become loyal followers. Just make sure you take advantage of any engagement across social channels by replying to any shares and joining in any conversations happening around your content (this makes you more relatable and approachable). That way you can foster a vibrant community that’s passionate about your content and your brand. 

Choosing the Right Content Promotion Platform

By this point you may be thinking you’d like to give one of these content promotion platforms a go. But which one?

Well, it's crucial to find the one that best aligns with your goals and needs. This section will guide you through key factors to consider when selecting the right platform for your business, ensuring you make an informed decision that supports your content promotion strategy.

Key Features to Consider

When evaluating content promotion platforms, it's important to identify the features that are most relevant to your specific needs. Here are some common features to look for:

• Audience targeting and segmentation
• Multi-channel distribution
• Powerful content syndication partnerships
• Performance analytics and reporting
• Easy team collaboration

By prioritizing the features that are most important to your strategy, you'll be able to focus on platforms that offer the functionality you need to succeed.

Budget Considerations

Content promotion platforms come at different costs, so it's essential to find a solution that fits within your budget. Consider the platform's pricing structure, including subscription fees, usage-based costs, and potential add-ons. It's important to balance cost with functionality, ensuring you invest in a platform that offers the features you need without breaking the bank.

So, as you can see, investing in a content promotion platform can be a pretty smart idea if, like many of us, you often struggle to find the time to do it as much as you need to. They can ensure your content is promoted every day, reaching significantly more of your target audience. Because without promotion, content stands very little chance of ever being seen, and to actually get any kind of ROI from your content, that bit is pretty important. 

We hope you found this article useful, and if you’d like to try a content promotion platform, free, for 30 days, and get a couple of your articles promoted, then click the button below and try Converge. No credit card or commitment required (yay).