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Content Marketing Imperatives: Promotion & Distribution
58 Plays6 years ago
For years now, you've had it hammered into your head to create more quality content. Well, guess what. There's so much content -- quality and otherwise -- that a lot of it is simply ignored. Even your masterpiece will dwindle away in obscurity if you don't get serious about distribution and promotion.
In this episode, we'll cover 12 terrific ways to get more ears and eyeballs paying attention to what your writing, saying, and showing. Here are the areas we'll run down. Be sure to listen, because we'll be mentioning tools and tips for each that you've got to try.
- Social media
- Newsletters
- Email signatures
- RSS feeds
- Curated content solutions
- Content distribution networks
- Guest blogging
- Influencer marketing
- Employee advocacy
- Public relations
- Repurposing
- SEO
Sources:
Tools Mentioned in This Episode
- Missinglettr
- HootSuite
- Lately
- HubSpot
- MailChimp
- Campaign Monitor
- WiseStamp
- BlackPearl
- NEWOLDSTAMP
- Feedly.com
- Slack + RSS Feeds
- Scoop.it
- UpContent
- Curated.co
- Nuzzel
- Paper.li
- Quuu Promote
- Taboola
- Outbrain
- Triberr
- IZEA
- Ambassador
- GaggleAMP
- Smarp
- Social Chorus
- Everyone Social
- Cision
- BuzzStream
- HARO
- Lumen5
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to the Marketing Mix Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the Marketing Mix Podcast with Alaina and Stacey. Each week we'll bring you ideas that you can implement in your own marketing strategy. We'll share what we know as well as advice from industry experts, some of whom will join us from time to time here on the show. Are you ready to mix it up? Let's get started.
00:00:23
Speaker
Hey everybody, this is Stacey Jackson and I'm Elena Jackson and we are co-founders of Jackson Marketing. And we're also sisters in case you did not know that little bit of information. And we are bringing you episode eight of the marketing mix. So Stacey, what the heck are we talking about today?
00:00:43
Speaker
Today, we're talking about marketing your marketing.
The Challenge of Standing Out Online
00:00:47
Speaker
In other words, all the things you need to do to distribute and promote your content. If you want to get ears hearing it and eyeballs reading it, because it is just chaos out there these days. After all, there are close to $2 billion. That's $1 billion with a B. Live websites online.
00:01:08
Speaker
and people in Branson over 500 million tweets per day. And people are watching over a billion hours of video on YouTube every day. And I think Kira, our niece, makes up a big percentage of that. Yeah, I think she does too. That is a lot of stuff that's happening. A lot of things that are being put out there. Over 2 billion websites, that's kind of insane. And when you think about 2 billion websites and they're all putting out different content, well,
00:01:36
Speaker
let's not say all because some may not be doing anything on their sites, but a lot of them are putting out new content on a regular basis and that can be overwhelming. So before we get into a lot of the details on what we're going to talk about and how you can promote your own content, let's go ahead and take a break and hear from today's sponsor. And when we come back, we're going to get into how you can get the most ears and eyeballs on your different forms of content.
Utilizing Social Media and Newsletters
00:02:09
Speaker
Hey everybody, we are back. The first thing that we are going to talk about is social sharing. So when you have content, you need to make sure that you are sharing it on social because that is a great avenue for people to get eyes on your content.
00:02:25
Speaker
or ears if you have a podcast like this. It's just a great way to get noticed. You can use hashtags. You can mention other companies, other people. You can use emojis to kind of catch somebody's eye. You can use some cool images. There's a lot of different ways that you should incorporate social sharing into your promotion of your content. And you can use tools like Missing Letter or Hootsuite.
00:02:51
Speaker
Lately is an AI tool that will help you create some of your posts based on your content. So there's a lot of marketing automation out there too that you can use like HubSpot or Marketo. Just be aware of all the different tools that you have available to you that can help you make social a little bit easier in your day-to-day life.
00:03:08
Speaker
And Alayna, I think one important point to bring up is something you did a video about recently too. Don't just listen to what all the so-called gurus tell you when it comes to posting frequency. Test that for yourself to find out what's going to work the best and make sure you include images on those messages too.
00:03:25
Speaker
Yes, just because somebody says it so doesn't mean it so. One other thing to mention is don't sound like a robot. Don't have it just automated because nobody wants to interact with a robot. So put some personality into it. Definitely. So the next item up for discussion when it comes to content distribution and promotion is an oldie, but still a goodie no matter what you might think. Newsletters. So yeah, a lot of you are probably like, oh, newsletters.
00:03:52
Speaker
I know we all get over inundated with emails, but the Radacotti Group reported in its email statistics report 2018 to 2022 that the number of email users will reach $3.8 billion with a B in 2018 and surpass $4.2 billion by the end of 2022. Yeah.
00:04:15
Speaker
I said it weird, but 2002 too. So don't rule out newsletters, people. And you've likely already got a good email tool you could use. Look at your HubSpot or marketing automation platform. Look at MailChimp. If you don't have a tool that you like to use, I've got a free plan that you can try out if you just want to test the waters with newsletters or try to like campaign monitor.
Innovative Ways to Promote Content
00:04:40
Speaker
I know what's next. So next we're going to talk about email signatures.
00:04:43
Speaker
Using an email signature is a great way to incorporate some of your different content that you have available. Maybe your latest blog, maybe you have an ebook that you want to push or a white paper or an infographic. Within your signature, you can include a link to it. Maybe you include an image as well. You can set it up however you want and whatever
00:05:02
Speaker
maybe do some tests to see if you're getting any click-throughs on just a link or an image. You can use tools like YStamp, Black Pearl, or New Old Stamp. And your organization is most likely using Google Business, Exchange Server, or something like that. And your admin of your business can set it up to where everyone's email has the same signature content on it, or maybe it's a team. A team has a specific piece of content that they're going to promote, and that can be handled by your
00:05:32
Speaker
Okay, I'm like the old lady of this podcast. I'm giving you all the old school tips and tactics and strategies. I've got RSS feeds next, and I know a lot of you discount RSS feeds, but if you think about it, if you're using Feedly,
00:05:49
Speaker
you should love RSS feeds it helps you stay on top of a bunch of different outlets without having to go to every single website and a lot of people use feed readers so offer an RSS feed to your readers it makes it easy for them it makes it easy for you and if you also use with your company something like slack hey you can set up a
00:06:10
Speaker
shared channel where your RSS feeds pings all the employees in that channel. So they go read your blog. It's really cool to be old school and keep those RSS feeds on your site. All right. So the next thing we're going to talk about is curated content solutions. And you can leverage your curated content hubs to help you kind of own that content reach
00:06:32
Speaker
and reach new people so you want to set up those content hubs that are they can be an independent page or maybe it's a page on your site and you want to surround your own content with other expert content and that's what that hub is going to be so it not only validates your view but it also engages influencers who might in turn share your content so you can use items like scoop it up content and things like that for your hub or you can use
00:06:59
Speaker
a curated newsletter system like curated.co or nuzzle, or a curated magazine with Flipboard or Paperly. Yeah, curation isn't just for sharing other people's content. It's also for helping you get a better perspective of your industry and getting in with the big boys of your industry. Up next is kind
00:07:21
Speaker
similar and overlaps a little bit with those curated content ideas. It's content distribution networks. Flipboard is one of those that lives in both those spaces. You can use Flipboard to create your own curated magazine, and it's its own sort of platform and network. So if you curate your content into your Flipboard magazine, it's also going to reach other users in the Flipboard universe.
00:07:45
Speaker
Another tool for distributing your content is Q-Promote. You have to pay for the service, but they do help your content reach new people by connecting it with people who might be interested in tweeting or posting to Facebook the content that you've shared through Q-Promote. So it's a really nice service. You can choose what categories of people you want to reach, and then they'll retweet or repost, and then hopefully you'll get some clicks and visibility that way.
00:08:13
Speaker
Outbrain and Cibula are two other paid content distribution platforms that can help you get your content shown on really a high traffic website. But sometimes you end up in a mix with like weird stuff like where are these child celebrities now or you won't believe what this pickle can do. Maybe temper your expectations with some of those paid distribution
Guest Blogging and Influencer Marketing
00:08:37
Speaker
networks.
00:08:37
Speaker
So another way that you can get your content out there is to do some guest blogging. And there are three tips that you need to consider that will help you to improve your guest blogging gain. And that's you want to select sites that are actually in your niche or your industry.
00:08:53
Speaker
So you don't want to go really way out there. And if you're writing a guest blog, it has nothing to do with the site that you're writing on. So that's definitely something you want to consider. You want to make sure it's got some good traffic and just make sure that it's relevant to the audience of that site.
00:09:09
Speaker
The next thing is you want to find a way to work in just natural references of your content. You don't want it to be a, Hey, Delama ebook, Hey, Delama ebook all the way through your content. You want it to be natural. So use keywords to link to it, but don't make it to where you're constantly doing just really short and pretty obvious keywords. You want it to be natural and long tail keywords and link back to that content.
00:09:34
Speaker
Then you want to promote your guest post and tag the site or the company, the individuals at the company on your posts when you're sharing it on social to make sure that they are getting recognized as well and that they will most likely in turn do the same thing in retweet or share and just get you a little bit more reach based on that.
00:09:54
Speaker
But just be careful because if you do things the wrong way with these guest posts related to your linking, you can get penalized by Google. So just be very careful with that. Stacey probably has some good ideas around that because she is the SEO expert.
00:10:11
Speaker
really cover the biggest things. If you're writing about software, don't post on a plumbing blog or some crazy thing like that. Try to stay away from blogging networks because Google gets wise to those. And like Elena said, stay natural in your content. Don't try to force in trade promotion management software for food service as an anchor text, even though that's pretty big mouthful. I mean, it's obvious if you link on that that you're just trying to
00:10:36
Speaker
earn some seo juice and google doesn't like it when you're obvious like that yeah and some people really go a little crazy with that and it's just it it's not natural speak and that's where you're going to get deemed and with seo going toward natural speech and natural language processing you gotta be natural you gotta be authentic baby and
00:10:59
Speaker
And then on that, promote your guest posts and the people who hosted it for you. That's just good manners too. All right, onward and upward. Our next tip is use influencer marketing to your advantage. Now you don't need to have a Kylie Jenner or a Kardashian to
00:11:17
Speaker
have influence for marketing you need to think about who are those well respected people and authorities in your industry they may not have those kardashian following numbers but they have the numbers of followers of the people that matter most the people who are going to buy your software your technology whatever it is you're selling some tools that you can use to help you with your
00:11:39
Speaker
influencer marketing outreach include things like Tribr. There's different tribes or groups of influencers that you can distribute your content to who will in turn share for you and you become part of their tribe and share for them. So it's kind of cooperative. There is IZEA and plenty of other influencer marketing companies that help connect you to those influencers that will be best for your program.
00:12:02
Speaker
or you can create your own word of mouth, or I guess you could even call it affiliate, but we're thinking more like actual advocates or influencers, but you could use a tool like Ambaster to get people to help you spread the good word about your content and your company.
00:12:17
Speaker
So the next one that we're going to talk about is employee advocacy.
Empowering Employees and Leveraging PR Tools
00:12:21
Speaker
Some of our clients could probably tell you that this is one of the biggest things that I bug them about year over year. If we don't incorporate into their overall strategy, but you know who you are.
00:12:33
Speaker
It's huge. It makes a difference. So you need to get your people trained up to understand how to use social, how to use it effectively for not only themselves, but also for your company. It's a win-win for them and for your company. If you can get them incorporated and using social the right way, then they will go out and promote your content and share what's happening on your company pages.
00:12:59
Speaker
And with your executives and your sales team, whoever is active on social, you can make employee advocacy a tool that really magnifies your reach. So that's something that you really need to think about. And there are some tools that you can use like Gaglamp, Smart, Social Course, everybody's social. There's all different kinds of tools out there that you can use to really
00:13:22
Speaker
make it easy for your employees. And some of those, even if you have Slack in your corporation and your organization, incorporate with Slack and makes it even easier for them to be advocates for your company. And I know that we've mentioned before on one of our podcasts about the Edelman Trust Barometer, but it is key because people trust people and they don't always trust the brand. And the brand can only go so far with really making that personal connection. And that's where your employees
00:13:50
Speaker
have to step in and help create those relationships with your potential customers. Yeah. And you can make it fun too. I know, I think social course, or maybe it's everybody's social. One of those, probably all of them have leaderboard, so you can make a friendly competition. It could be a lot of fun. Maybe we should do a competition. Yeah. I wonder which of us would win. I hope we don't go on undercover boss.
00:14:14
Speaker
Okay, man, I got another old school one here to share with you guys public relations. Maybe you want to hire a public relations firm if you want to get really serious about it, but there's some things that you can do as a marketer with a small team or even if you're a solo marketer.
00:14:32
Speaker
your company. You can work with tools like Cision to help you get your press releases distributed online. You can use tools like BuzzStream to help you nurture relationships with other site owners or journalists or news outlets in your industry. And there's also a site called Helper Reporter Out. You might hear people refer to it as Harrow.
00:14:54
Speaker
or H-A-R-O, and you can get alerts from that tool that says, this reporter is looking for an expert on widget making. Then you can get in touch with that reporter and maybe end up in US News and World Report or Forbes or somewhere really prestigious that would really help read the word and you can refer back to your great piece of content that's the ultimate guide to widget making. So don't discount public relations. Yeah, you never know where some of those things might lead you like you were saying.
00:15:23
Speaker
Would that help a reporter out situation? There could be some really cool opportunities there. Talking about opportunities, you can take an opportunity to repurpose your content. There's a tool called Lumen 5 that you can create really quick video recaps and it is super easy to use. And that's something that you can just share out on social easily. It can take you just a few minutes to create a really quick video based on one of your blogs.
00:15:51
Speaker
Another thing is think about using infographics to summarize your key data points or maybe do a live video stream to recap one of your posts. Do a Facebook Live or Instagram or Snapchat, Periscope even. There are so many different ways that you can use video on all the different platforms and video is huge. So if you're not doing it, get out there and incorporate it into your overall strategy. And that's a great way to get your feet wet if you're not already doing video
00:16:19
Speaker
to just promote one of your blog posts, just 30 seconds to a minute video to promote your latest blog posts. That's a really easy and quick way to get some of your content out there and notice.
The Ever-Evolving SEO Landscape
00:16:31
Speaker
And finally, one of the most important things that you can do to help your content get found, SEO. I'm having fun on today's podcast, Alayna. Because you're going old school on so many things.
00:16:45
Speaker
I know. Well, SEO could even be considered old school by a lot of people. Yeah. And depending on how this copyright law thing and the EU pans out, who knows? Links may not have as much value in SEO anymore. And I don't know. We'll have to get next part done.
00:17:02
Speaker
All right, we'll have to get an expert on to talk us through that and hold our hands and make us feel better. But at least in the world of SEO, as it exists at this very moment in time, you got to still pay attention to it. Yes, some of the old school tactics are dead. Don't keyword stuff. Don't get over-optimized on your anchor text, on your links that you're building.
00:17:26
Speaker
still take care to look at your on-page SEO. Yeah, you don't want to keyword stuff, but did you actually mention the keyword at all in your blog post? It's amazing how many times people write something that they don't ever even mention the keyword or a related keyword on the page, and then they wonder why they didn't write for it. It's really crazy.
00:17:46
Speaker
Yeah, like sometimes it'll be in the title, but then nowhere else throughout the blog. And sometimes not even in the title. True, true. But anyway, I'm not making fun. I'm just saying, why? And one thing to mention too, is not just the main keyword that you're trying to go for, but semantically related keywords too. So mix it up a little bit and use the keyword, but just in a different way.
00:18:09
Speaker
When you're thinking about SEO2, remember that a lot of people are seeing more success when they go long on that long form content. And it may seem counterintuitive because people don't seem to be reading as much when it comes to the longer form content. But I think people do skim those longer posts to find the nuggets of information they want to see. So while somebody may not, if you had a heat map going on that long form blog post or white paper,
00:18:37
Speaker
Maybe they don't get to the end, but maybe they got to what they needed. Remember that Google seems to be rewarding that long form content. So write your best, do your best long form, and then use some of these other ideas, especially repurposing, to chunk that long form content into other pieces of content for social or video or whatever.
00:18:58
Speaker
Another thing that we mentioned earlier, natural language is going to be important even more so in the future as Alexa, Siri, and other tools begin to help people search for more things online. Natural language is where it's at. And that's what also can help you get one of those featured snippets. And featured snippets are often what are going to be read through Alexa or Siri. So really get serious about using natural language. Look at questions people actually ask. Think about how people verbalize a search query versus how they might type it into Google.
00:19:28
Speaker
and start thinking and writing in those terms. And finally, think about the other routes for search engine optimization, things that you might even not consider a search engine like YouTube.
Optimizing Beyond Google
00:19:41
Speaker
There's all kinds of things you need to do to optimize a video to get found in YouTube. Think if you sell anything on Amazon, you have to optimize for search on Amazon. Every place that you could sell or have your content likely other than your, well, even your own website if you have search,
00:19:57
Speaker
But you need to think about how is my content going to be found. Yeah. And that even goes along with social because tweets are indexed for search engines. So if you're, you need to make sure that your tweets that you're posting are even optimized. And your LinkedIn profile. Oh yeah. That can get found on Google.
00:20:14
Speaker
So we've run through quite a few things and we could do 12 more podcasts on each of these individually. But I hope that you got some good information out of what we discussed today and maybe look forward to some future podcasts where we dig in deeper on one of
Engagement and Future Content Suggestions
00:20:30
Speaker
these topics.
00:20:30
Speaker
Yeah, and if you would like to find us on social, you can find Stacey on Twitter at Stacey underscore Jax. That's S-T-A-C-Y underscore J-A-X. And you can find me on Twitter as well. And mine is Alaina underscore Jax. A-L-A-N-N-A underscore J-A-X. Or you can look us up on LinkedIn at Stacey Jackson and Alaina Jackson.
00:20:55
Speaker
And you can also leave us a voicemail on the Anchor app. So make sure that you are on the app because that is the only place that you can actually leave a voicemail for us. And we might use it on next week's show. Yes. And we look forward to hearing from you guys on social and hearing other questions or topics maybe that you want to learn more about. And until next time, we're out. Bye.
00:21:19
Speaker
The Marketing Mix is hosted by Stacey Jackson and Elena Jackson of, you guessed it, Jackson Marketing. If you need help with your inbound marketing efforts, visit us at JacksonMarketingServices.com.