quick guide for content promotion

QUICK GUIDE FOR

CONTENT PROMOTION

5 STEPS TO A FLAWLESS PROMOTION STRATEGY

QUICK GUIDE FOR CONTENT PROMOTION

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FIVE STEPS TO A FLAWLESS PROMOTION STRATEGY

Every content marketer knows the difficulty of serving up the right content to the right audience at the right time. Unfortunately, it won’t be getting easier any time soon. The Content Marketing Institute’s 2015 reports show that 69% of B2C and 70% of B2B marketers are creating even more content this year than last year. Consumers are already inundated with content everywhere they go, and in an age of increasing adoption and production, brands are reeling in the wake of wasted content investments.

It’s no secret anymore that content and promotion go hand in hand. Most content marketers have learned (probably the hard way) that they can’t just create content and expect consumers to find it, engage with it, and share it. This quick guide doesn’t explain why promotion is necessary; instead, it explains how to execute a well-informed and integrated promotion strategy that will maximize returns across paid, earned, and owned channels. Best of all, it summarizes everything you need to know in five easy steps.

STEP 1: KNOW YOUR PROMOTION OPTIONS

The most effective promotion strategy is one that balances converged media—paid, earned, and owned tactics deployed in unification. Plenty of options are at your disposal; striking the right balance will be up to you.

Integrated Strategy

Earned Media

PaidMedia

OwnedMedia

Bylined articles

Media/blogger outreach

Influencer outreach

Email

Blog

Social media

High-impact content

Sponsored articles

Sponsored social media posts

Sponsored recommendations

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Paid: Paid media is any form of content promotion in which a brand pays to leverage or access a new audience. Paid promotion tactics, most of which fall into the bucket of native advertising, offer marketers a high level of targeting and control. They are especially useful for generating immediate returns, whether through impressions or traffic, and, generally speaking, the more you put in, the more you get out.

Earned: Earned media is any form of promotion that a brand earns, rather than pays for, in order to reach a new audience. “Earning” can be somewhat of a misnomer, though, as coverage can be accomplished through a variety of methods, ranging from targeted PR efforts to simply creating amazing content that influencers are inclined to share. Earned media offers marketers the opportunity for the greatest returns (potentially limitless), but also the least control and predictability.

Owned: Owned media is any form of promotion that leverages a brand’s owned channels (such as email, social communities, and RSS feeds) to reach an existing audience. Often referred to as broadcasting, this is as an opportunity to craft intentional and personalized messages to influence people that are already fans of your content. It’s likely you already have a solid understanding of your audience’s interests, needs, and preferences, so owned media promotion can offer marketers the highest level of targeting and control.






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STEP 2: RESEARCH

The goal of the research process is to understand the landscape of publishers and individuals that exert influence on your target audience in order to identify the optimal paid and earned promotion opportunities that will provide access to that audience. The insights gained will allow you to start building relationships with influencers and paid promotion vendors before your content goes live. This research should occur before the actual creation of content because significant media outlets and influencers in an industry can act as sounding boards or, better yet, contributors to your content.

Here are the essential tools for content promotion research:

BuzzSumo: Analyze the content that performs best for any topic or competitor by using social metrics and overall engagement.

Share Tally: Tally up total shares, tweets, likes, and more in order to measure the content’s reception. Analyze social platforms that perform best for your ideal content. Use this tool to quantify outreach and promotion efforts.

Followerwonk: Use Twitter analytics to identify industry influencers for outreach and promotion efforts. Use this data to better understand your target audience and who they follow on social media.

Social Crawlytics: Use social metrics to quantify overall content success and identify the industry influencers who can be the most actionable to include in both the creation and promotion of content.






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Cision: Simplify blogger (and influencer) relations and outreach by creating hyper-targeted outreach lists.

HARO (Help a Reporter Out): Crowd source and connect with expert sources to include in content creation and promotion.

Google Trends: Analyze Google search trends and related searches to understand how users are talking about trending topics.

Google Keyword Planner: Use keyword research to direct the language used in content creation as well as promotion and outreach efforts in order to best reach the target audience and ensure that content answers the right questions.

Google Analytics: Get the full picture of how your customers and target audience are behaving online -- use customized dimensions and metrics to measure, adjust, and report on your content’s success.

GroupHigh: Simplify blogger (and influencer) relations and outreach by creating hyper-targeted outreach lists, whether it’s through email or preferred social media platforms.






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STEP 3: PLANNING

Once paid and earned promotion opportunities have been identified, it’s time to start planning your campaign. Be sure to consider each of the following:

Goals: What are the goals of your campaign? Will success be measured by impressions, qualified traffic, social shares, onsite conversions, or some combination of the above? Knowing your KPIs from the outset will simplify the measurement process.

Budget: How much budget is available, specifically for promotion of your content? This will likely affect your integrated promotion mix across paid, earned, and owned channels. Less money in the budget, of course, means less ability to rely on paid tactics to gain traction quickly with new audiences.

Timing: Timing is critical in an integrated promotion strategy. Some content campaigns are time sensitive (think seasonality), but all campaigns have to be considered within the entire time frame of research, planning, production, and promotion. Timing for earned media efforts can be especially challenging as you will often find yourself at the mercy of someone else’s content calendar.

Synchronization with existing efforts: What other marketing campaigns are you running at the same time? Is there an opportunity to work together to maximize an outcome? Or perhaps certain channels and/or influencers should be avoided?






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STEP 4: EXECUTING YOUR PROMOTION

Armed with the knowledge from steps 1-3, you’re now ready to execute your promotion strategy. The following infographic, appropriately titled the Content Promotion Strategy Decision Tree, can be used as a guide to determine the best practices based on your time frame, budget, and goals.

*Media and influencer relations are not typically leveraged when faced with tight timelines. Generally, it takes several months or more to earn trust from and collaboration with journalists, editors and influencers. However, if these relationships are cultivated prior to the start of a campaign, leveraging outreach with a timeframe of less than a month is possible. Otherwise, it’s best to plan media outreach on campaigns lasting two or more months.

2-4 MONTHS 5+ MONTHS

1 2 3 4 5

IS THERE A PROMOTION

BUDGET?

WHAT IS THE CAMPAIGN

GOAL?WHAT IS THE

CAMPAIGN

GOAL?WHAT IS THE

CAMPAIGN

GOAL?WHAT IS THE

CAMPAIGN

GOAL?WHAT IS THE

CAMPAIGN

GOAL?

IS THERE A PROMOTION

BUDGET?IS THERE A PROMOTION

BUDGET?

SOCIALSHARES

WEBTRAFFIC

SOCIALSHARES

WEBTRAFFIC

MEDIA/INFLUENCER

OUTREACH?*

1 MONTHLESSTHAN

NO YES NO YES NOYES

EARNED + SHARED

[2-4 MONTHS]

SHARED + OWNED

EARNED + PAID

SHARED + PAID

CONVERGED[EARNED + SHARED

+ PAID + OWNED]

EARNED + SHARED +

OWNED

EARNED + SHARED[< 1 MONTH]

OWNEDNO

YES

SOCIALSHARES

SOCIALSHARES

WEBTRAFFIC

SOCIALSHARES

SOCIALSHARES

WEBTRAFFIC

SOCIALSHARES

SOCIALSHARES

WEBTRAFFIC

WHAT IS YOUR PROMOTION IMPLEMENTATION TIME FRAME?

READ MORE ABOUT YOUR CONTENT PROMOTION STRATEGY







EARNED MEDIAGaining online coverage through media outreach and relations.

OWNED MEDIABrand-controlled assets such as social media accounts, blogs, and advanced content.

SHARED MEDIASocial media interaction with consumers.

PAID MEDIAOnline advertising via sponsored recommendations, posts, and articles.

CONVERGED MEDIAEarned, owned, shared, and paid tactics combined to promote content on a variety of channels.

Fully utilize owned channels such as email marketing and social media to promote the content to your existing audiences. Also consider creating supporting owned content like a blog post, video or infographics that can increase the impact of the original content.

Develop a highly-targeted list of journalists, niche bloggers and social influencers and pitch them to earn media coverage and social shares of the content.

Focus your budget on sponsored updates on the social channels where your target audience is most engaged. Spend your time identifying and sharing the content with key thought leaders who can reach your target audiences through social media.

Focus your budget on paid content discovery by using a service like Outbrain, StumbleUpon or another content amplification platform. Spend your time identifying and pitching the most relevant media contacts who may write about your content.

Identify and pitch the most relevant journalists and niche bloggers who might share the content with their readers. Additionally, share the content with key thought leaders and influencers who can reach target audiences through social media.

Pitch relevant thought leaders and influencers to earn social media shares of the content. Also, create supporting owned content like a video, blog post or infographic to increase the impact of the original content.

With time and a budget, develop a converged media strategy that utilizes earned, social, paid and owned media. Pitch the content to relevant media contacts, social influencers and thought leaders. Focus your paid budget on content discovery with a service like StumbleUpon, Taboola or another content amplification platform. Create additional, supporting owned content like infographics, blog posts or videos to increase the impact of the original content.

Utilize the long timeline to pitch content to relevant journalists and niche bloggers to earn media coverage, share the content with thought leaders and influencers for increased social media impact and create other supporting owned content like infographics, videos or blog posts.

READ MORE ABOUT YOUR CONTENT PROMOTION STRATEGY

CONVERGED[EARNED + SHARED

+ PAID + OWNED]

EARNED + SHARED

[2-4 MONTHS]

EARNED + SHARED +

OWNED

SHARED + OWNED

EARNED + PAID

SHARED + PAID

OWNED

EARNED + SHARED[<1 MONTH]

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STEP 5: MEASUREMENT

In an age of data and analytics, there’s no excuse to not measure (and prove) the results from your content marketing campaigns. It’s no different when promotion is involved, and all marketers should be aware of some simple best practices:

Analytics software: Regardless of what you use (Google Analytics, SiteCatalyst, Moz, HubSpot, none of the above, any combination of the above), it’s crucial to set up campaigns and monitor them accordingly. Regularly pull reports to analyze your performance and then adjust accordingly.

Tagged/tracking URLs: These are an analyst’s best friend, and they’ll make it very simple to track multiple ongoing cross-channel campaigns within your analytics software.

Monitor social performance: Tools like BuzzSumo and Share Tally can be used to examine your content’s engagement levels via social networks.

Attribution: This goes along with tracking URLs and your analytics package, but make sure you are properly attributing macro conversions to the campaigns and channels that brought the prospects to you. This will allow you to optimize your content marketing efforts on the fly.






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CONTACT US(888) 603-7337

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CLICK BELOW TO TALK TO A CONTENT STRATEGIST TODAY.

2015 will be remembered as the year that marketers changed their mindset from content marketing to marketing content. Content marketing is no longer just about creating the right content; it’s about making sure that content is in the right place at the right time to build relationships with and influence your audience most effectively. An integrated promotion strategy bridges the gap between the two approaches, and it’s the key to getting the results you want—and deserve—from your content investments.

In the Content Promotion Manifesto, Chad Pollitt uses real world examples from

enterprise organizations to illustrate how brands can actually step down content production and step up promotion to achieve better results. Download the EBook and start getting the most out of your content marketing today.

If you want to learn more about how an integrated promotion strategy can take your content to the next level, the pioneers of the practice are here to help you.

FROM CONTENT MARKETING TO MARKETING CONTENT

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