Content promotion for starter blogger

 There are over 4 million blog posts publishedevery single day. So if you're just publishing "high-quality"content and hoping to gain traction, it probably won't be enough because noone will know your content even exists! So today, I'm going to show you how topromote your content with a simple, yet effective content promotion checklist. Stay tuned. [music] What's up marketers, so the checklist we'reabout to go through is something you can follow whenever you publish a new piece of content.

 And I want you to know that you don't haveto follow every step in this checklist. But generally speaking, the more things you do,the more eyeballs you'll attract, and the more traffic you'll get. Let's get started. The first thing you should do is send an email toyour email list, and there are three reasons for this. First, content is non-promotional and shouldbe designed to help your readers. Second, some of the people on your list mightbe bloggers or journalists who have the power to amplify and link to your content. And third, they actually want to get updatesfrom you. Otherwise, they wouldn't have signed up foryour email list. So, if you're not emailing them with yourcontent, you're doing them a disservice. Now, if you don't have an email list, then letme say it plain and simple: start building one.

 I won't bother going into list building inthis tutorial, but if you want to see a video on that, let me know in the comments. The next thing on our checklist is to shareyour content on social media. If you already have a social following, it'ssimple: share your new content through your social accounts. But don't just call it a day after you've done that. There are a couple of other things you cando to get the most mileage out of social media. And the promotion methods will varyfrom platform to platform. So first off, you should reshare your content. Since social media is heavily biased towardstiming, activities like Facebook shares or Tweets generally have a very short shelf-life. 

This means that not everyone is going to seeyour content the first time you share it. So you can do something as simple as retweetingyour own tweet. In fact, Buffer conducted an experiment andfound that retweeting your own tweets increases reach, engagement and clicks. Best of all you won't be annoying your followersby doing this. And this something that we've tested at Ahrefswith decent success. Now, rather than always sharing the same thingover and over again, you can play around with the copy or featured images. For example, if you're promoting a tweet,play around with the copy because it's the most prominent part of a tweet. But if you're sharing on Pinterest, you maywant to play around with the actual image since that's the most prominent part of a pin. The second thing you can try is to createsoundbites from your content.

 If you have a blog or in-depth piece of content,you can pull out some of the key points and share them on social media as soundbites. For example, on Twitter, we often share standalonetips and stats which help drive engagement. Gary Vee does this by turning his long videosinto short clips and image quotes. There are plenty of things you can do, so getcreative and test things out with your audience. Now, if you don't have a social following yet,focus on building your social presence on just one platform where your target audienceis rather than trying to dip your toes into every social network. You'll grow faster that way. The next tip is to email other bloggers you'velinked to.

 If you've created an in-depth guide, chances areyou've linked to useful resources  or mentioned other creators. So in my opinion, it's worth reaching outto let them know. You can say something as simple as: "Hey Bobby, I read your post on French press hacks andloved your tip on using drip coffee filters. I included it in our post of why French presscoffee is better than pour over. Thanks for the tip and I hope the mentionsends some well-deserved visitors your way. Cheers, Sam." The email isn't meant to be complicated. It's simply a way of letting them know youappreciate their work, which can potentially spark a relationship, a share, and sometimeseven links back to your site. The next tip is to submit your post toonline communities. These are places like niche forums, Reddit,and Facebook groups. 

These communities are generally tightly knitgroups who are interested in a specific topic. So by getting your content in front of them,you have the opportunity to drive targeted traffic to your site. Now, this doesn't mean you can or should jointhem and start spamming links to your site. You'll probably get kicked out of groups,banned, or worse, taint your reputation. Instead, you'll want to integrate yourselfinto these communities and it all starts with understanding the group's culture.

 To do this, start by reading through the grouprules and follow them. Then, focus on becoming an active and helpfulmember in the group. Leave thoughtful comments, participate indiscussions, ask questions, and answer others' when you can add value. The aim is to become a recognizable name inthe community. That way, when you share your content,it'll be better received. Alright, the next tip is to answer questionson Quora. If you haven't heard of Quora, it's a popularQ&A site. And in 2018, they reached 300 million monthlyunique visitors to their site. So in plain English, this means you can potentiallyget your content in front of a lot of people just by answering questions. Now, the problem is that Quora doesn't tellyou how many people are visiting each page. And answering every possible question wouldbe way too time-consuming. But what we do know is that Quora gets a tonof search traffic from Google.

 

In fact, Ahrefs' Site Explorer estimates thatQuora gets over 80 million monthly search visits, which is an underestimation. So to tap into this traffic, you can find questionson Quora that are getting consistent traffic from Google and answer them with a linkback to your content. To find these pages, go to Ahrefs' Site Explorerand search for quora.com. Next, I'll go to the Top pages report. Then, I'll set the country filter to All countriesso I can see the total traffic estimations to these pages. So assuming I had a website on cooking, I canenter a keyword like "recipe" in the Include box which will narrow our results down to relevant pages. And now you can see some questions worth answeringlike, "what is a good substitute for applesauce." 

Just make sure you answer the question andfeel free to add relevant links back to your site. If you're having doubts about this strategy,then check this out. I created an experimental site that got over60,000 page views in seven months. And the only traffic source I had wasone link from a single Quora answer.

 The next tip is to use paid ads. Now, paid marketing is awesome because onceyou start paying for traffic, you'll get it almost immediately. And given the variety of targeting optionsyou have on platforms like Facebook and Google, you can reach new and hyper-targeted audiencesquite easily. For example, at Ahrefs, we've had great success atgetting cheap engaged views using YouTube Ads. In fact, our average cost-per-view is onlyseven Singapore cents, which roughly translates to about five cents in US dollars. So to translate this… We're paying around five cents for someone towatch about 6-8 minutes of our video, which is just bananas in my books. Now, if you don't create videos, FacebookAds are still pretty cheap. I believe on average we pay around15-30 cents per click. So even if you're just putting in $5 per day,it can go a long way in getting more visitors to your site. Last but not least, build backlinks

. A backlink is when another website links toone of your pages. Google looks at this as a signal that theinformation being linked to is well trusted. And the result? Higher Google rankings and consistent, passive,and free traffic from search engines. So how do you build them? Well, we have an entire playlist withstep-by-step tutorials on link building. So I recommend watching those videos as wellas our video on how to rank higher in Google. I'll make sure to link those up in the description. 

Now, I'm wondering if there are any contentpromotion tips or steps that I've missed in this checklist. Let me know in the comments and if you enjoyedthis video, make sure to like, share and subscribe for more actionable marketing tutorials. I'll see you in the next one.