So you just created a piece of content for lead generation — congrats!
While it’s tempting to go and celebrate, you’re not done just yet. You can’t just put a piece of content up on your website and hope that people will find it — you’ve got to actively promote it to your audience.
But that’s where lots of us get stuck. What else can we do to get people to notice — and hopefully convert on — that new piece of content you created?
At INBOUND 2014, I went over the following 43 ways to promote marketing content. This list is meant to be a jumping-off point. Don’t feel like you need to use all the list items every time you create something, or that you can’t do things that aren’t on this list.
Social Media
Posting on social media is probably something you’re already doing — but below are a few ways you can take your promotions up a notch.
1) Change your cover photo to be branded for the piece of content you just launched. This increases brand awareness of the piece of content, and its description gives you a place to put a link back to your piece of content.
2) Pin a post to the top of your page that has the same branding as the cover image, and include a link to the landing page.
3) Post several times a week to the piece of content, varying the images you use in each post. To learn more about the shelf life of your Facebook posts, check out our post here.
4) Change your cover photo to feature the piece of content you’re promoting.
5) Pin a tweet to the top of your page that has a link to the landing page and an image with the same branding as the cover photo.
6) Create a hashtag for the campaign. This allows you to monitor conversations around the content and answer any questions specific to the content. (To let people know what the hashtag is and encourage them to participate, post it on the landing page and link to the Twitter stream of the hashtag.) Pose questions on the hashtag that are related to the offer, and have the content’s author comment on the hashtag.
7) Host a Twitter chat or Q&A at a specific time about the offer using that hashtag. (To do this successfully, call out the time and link to the Twitter chat on the landing page, too.)
8) Tweet frequently including an image and link. (Did you know, tweets with images generate 55% more leads than Tweets without images?!)
9) Host a contest. For example, the first 200 people to tweet about your offer get a free gift or a discount on something you sell. This is valuable because you are now reaching an audience you wouldn’t have been able to on your own. Each person who tweets to their audience about your content gets it in front of additional people who are not in your network.
10) Post a link to the content on your Company Page. Include an optimized image if possible.
11) Join a group and start a discussion. This tactic can be spammy if done incorrectly. Groups on LinkedIn are meant for valuable discussions among professionals, so don’t go posting links to your content everywhere, in hopes to drive traffic to your website. In the long run, this will negatively impact your brand. Instead, pose a discussion question related to your content in a relevant group — don’t post your content. Get a lively discussion going. Check back after a few days, and if people interested, mention that you have a piece of content that is related, and share the link. Only post if you feel as if you will be adding value!
12) If you have a group of your own, send out the offer in your weekly announcement to all group members.
Google+
13) Post to your Google+ page during launch week. In this post, include an image and a link back to your landing page.
14) Host a live Google Hangout to answer questions related to the piece of content.
Other Social Channels
15) If you have something fun related to your content (something like a a picture, infogographic, or meme) post it on StumbleUpon. Volume might be low at first, but you can drive traffic to your landing page with little effort.
16) There are many communities out there for like-minded professionals to discuss business (think about how you use LinkedIn group). For example, if you are an inbound marketer or sales person, you might join inbound.org and start a discussion around your piece of content there.
Your Website
Lots of people overlook how they can optimize their website to promote new offers — but it’s most likely one of your biggest marketing assets. Here are a few things you can do.
17) Create a CTA on your homepage or log-in screen. Your homepage is likely the highest trafficked page on your site, so take advantage of this high volume of viewers. Not sure where to start creating a CTA? Learn how to make them easily in PowerPoint.
18) As you create more and more content, create a content library: a page on your site dedicated to the content you create.
19) As new offers are created, make them the featured offer at the top of your content library.
20) On related pages within your site (ex: product pages and thank-you pages of other content), include a link to the offer to download.
21) Include social sharing buttons on the thank-you page of the content. Create your own custom message to be included in the social share buttons so that you can include the hashtag you have created, and the exact message you want to get across.
Blogging
Blogging drives traffic to your landing pages and website better than any other tool. Why? Each time you blog, you give Google and other search engines one more opportunity to find you. Each blog posts gives you the opportuinity to rank for more and more keywords and grow your reach.
22) Blog about the piece of content as many times as possible (at least twice). Spread out posts over a few months to continue a steady stream of traffic to the landing page. Within the blog post, link to the landing page for people to download. If you’re stuck on what to write, you can always use HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generator
23) Create a CTA at the bottom of each blog post that links to the offer.
24) Create a slide-in CTA for the blog post that appears as the reader is halfway down the blog post. To get step-by-step instructions on creating one, click here.
25) Encourage social sharing of blog posts as well with built-in social share buttons and tweetable quotes.
26) Guest blog on related sites to increase awareness. Not only are you reaching a new audience, you are also increasing the number of inbound links to your content. Just be sure that your blog post is high quality!
Organic Search
Optimizing your content to be found on search engines can be very beneficial to your business. Here are few things to try.
27) Increase traffic from search engines by optimizing your page for the keywords you want to rank for. This doesn’t mean you should be keyword stuffing your landing pages — just make sure your page title, landing page copy, and URL follow these rules for search engine optimization.
28) Create a SlideShare presentation related to the offer. SlideShare has a high-ranking domain (which’ll help your efforts in Google), and people often use SlideShare itself to find educational content. Use this as an opportunity to be found by people searching for content related to your offer.
29) On SlideShare, link back to the offer in the description of the presentation as well as in the slide deck itself.
30) If you have a PRO account on SlideShare, collect name and email address using lead capture forms on SlideShare, of people who have requested the content. Download the CSV of people who’s names you have captured, upload them into your contacts database, and send them a copy of the content.
31) Create a short video related to the offer to post on YouTube. This could be the author talking for one minute about the offer, or a quick tip that can be found in the offer. Link back to the offer in the description of the video on YouTube and create one or two annotations within the video that link back to the offer. Include a short URL at the end of the video that people can enter themselves if they wish, too.
Emailing segments of your current database will not only increase their engagement with your company, it will also generate new leads through the sharing power of your database.
32) Email segments of your own database about the content. In your email, encourage people to share the offer with their friends and colleagues. To make it easy, use social sharing buttons, and simply ask them to forward it along to friends who might be interested. To make the sharing button visually appealing, make it large and an eye-catching color.
33) Include a lazy tweet in emails, so that all people need to do is click once to share the tweet with their networks.
34) Reach out directly to some friends and influencers in your industry, and ask them to share the content with their audience if they found it valuable. To make it easier for them, have lazy tweets or email copy ready for them to use.
Paid
You can also use paid marketing opportunities to amplify the message you already have on social media.
35) Boost the engagement of an organic Facebook post by putting some money behind it. Make your ads very targeted to ensure your money is spent in the most efficient way. You can also use Facebook’s Lookalike Audiences to promote content people similar to your fans.
36) Use Facebook retargeting features (found in the Power Editor of the Ads Manager) to target people who have already viewed your site or are within your database. This is a great way to reengage people who are already interested in your company.
37) Create Promoted Tweets on Twitter to appear in targeted users’ news feeds or search results.
38) Use LinkedIn’s Sponsored Updates feature to promote the Company Page update related to the content.
Live Events
If you’re hosting, speaking, or running a booth at an event, you should make sure to let some attendees know about your new content — they might high quality leads for your company.
39) Have a laptop or tablet open to the landing page at your booth. Encourage people to download the offer right there.
40) Create a short link for the content and include it in presentations of speakers at the event.
41) Put the short link on the back of business cards you will be handing out at the event.
Internal Promotion
The reach of the employees within your company may be larger than you think. Capitalize on this, and make it easy for your employees to share your new lead gen content, too.
42) Send an internal email after the content is live. Include a brief explanation, link to the landing page and thank-you page, supply them with lazy tweets to use, and ask them to share the content with their audience on any social media platform.
43) Ask executives to send a special, personalized message to their audience (if it is relevant).
These are just a few ways our team promotes our content — we would love to hear the unique ways you promote content as well in the comments below.
