Content promotion: maximum reach for your content

'Let’s do content marketing!' is something you often here in marketing de­part­ments. The thing with content marketing is that you can’t just 'do it', good content requires strategic planning and many articles that help build up the company’s repu­ta­tion over time and entice demanding readers. Just because a company has decided to run a blog or produce video tutorials, it does not ne­ces­sar­ily lead to effective content marketing. The magic word here is content promotion.

When it comes to content marketing, a lot of work needs to go into research, pro­duc­tion, and pub­lish­ing content, even more so than strategy planning. But strictly speaking, the main part of the work begins once you have published an article or video. If you click on 'Publish', then sit back and relax, you will quickly notice that not much is happening. This is because content promotion and content marketing seeding are essential for reaching potential customers and making sure they see your content. Almost every company is now based on content marketing, but only those that get ahead of their com­pet­i­tion and grab readers’ attention, will be suc­cess­ful. Even if your content is high-quality with added value, readers won’t just come by them­selves – effective and suc­cess­ful content marketing needs the right content marketing promotion. You need to define concrete goals before you start promoting content. How suc­cess­ful a content marketing campaign is, depends on the goals you set – whether you want to increase your reach, increase brand awareness, create qualified leads, gain in news­let­ter sub­scribers, or win over more followers on social media. Only those who define their goals can properly measure the success of their campaign.

Content promotion generally happens via paid and owned media. Paid media is when editorial content is dis­trib­uted in exchange for money. Owned media is when content is published via its own channels and platforms. These channels usually include blogs, news­let­ters, and various social media channels.

In addition to paid and owned media, there is a third media form: so-called earned media, also known as 'free media'. Using earned media is the task of content outreach. In outreach, the aim is to place editorial content on third-party sites for free: in the form of guest articles, in­ter­views, or other editorial reporting.

The forms can also be mixed – one of the best-known com­bin­a­tions is earned and paid media. Native ad­vert­ising and ad­vertori­als belong to this genre.

In the content marketing sector, marketers are speaking less about owned, earned, and paid media, and more about owned, earned, and paid content.

Using your own channels is a sensible start when it comes to content promotion. But it is difficult to increase your range through owned media alone. Via social media channels or the news­let­ter mailing list, you can only reach people who have already had contact with the company. If you want to reach potential new customers, you should consider content promotion via paid media. The problem with content promotion via earned media is that you have little influence on coverage. Of course, earned media con­tri­bu­tions have a great deal of ac­cept­ance and cred­ib­il­ity, but the company only profits when the con­tri­bu­tions are positive. The company doesn’t have much influence over what users write. Outreach efforts are char­ac­ter­ised by a certain un­pre­dict­ab­il­ity and often a lack of scalab­il­ity. Paid content, on the other hand, has the advantage that tools and platforms allow cal­cu­la­tion. Budget and audience targeting are adaptable and cus­tom­is­able. In addition to the above-mentioned ad­vertori­als, which can be at­trib­uted to native ad­vert­ising, there are several platforms and tools that are suitable for dis­trib­ut­ing paid content. Below, we introduce you to paid content promotion via Facebook, Google services, and via special platforms.

The Facebook fan page is an important com­mu­nic­a­tion tool for many companies and is part of the owned media sector. But aside from your own Facebook page, where blog articles and news can be shared with fans, Facebook also offers the pos­sib­il­ity of paid content promotion with Facebook ads. Con­sid­er­ing the enormous reach, the in­vest­ment is def­in­itely worth it. Users can find Facebook ads in the right-hand column, as well as directly in the news feed. For content marketing promotion, it’s re­com­men­ded to place sponsored ads in the news feed and promote the content there. Ads on the right side are usually less accepted by the user – they see them as normal ads and just ignore them. Via the ad­vert­ising manager, Facebook ad­vert­isers offer various options for group targeting: by location, demo­graph­ic data, interests, and con­nec­tions. In this article we explain how to create a Facebook ad.

Everyone has already seen the small ads at the end of news articles or on the right-hand side next to editorial content. These are suggested articles, which the user could find in­ter­est­ing based on the title. Behind these are special platforms that spe­cial­ise in paid content promotion and content marketing seeding.

The content promotion platforms usually cooperate with very well-known pub­lish­ers. These 'premium ads' give you a great advantage on the market. While display networks mainly offer ad­vert­ising inventory on smaller, lesser-known sites, promotion platforms work with popular websites. Popular platforms in the UK include plista, Outbrain, and Buzzsumo.

plista

plista offers a variety of ad­vert­ising formats. Re­com­mend­a­tion formats are relevant for content marketing promotion. These are text-image re­com­mend­a­tion ads and content re­com­mend­a­tions in the editorial sector, which can also be combined with video and audio ads. In addition, there are so-called indeed formats, in which plista in­teg­rates the text and video ads directly into the feeds of the publisher pages. In­ter­act­ive special formats and mobile formats can also be booked through the provider. More in­form­a­tion is available on the plista website. plista’s al­gorithms enable be­ha­vi­our­al targeting, semantic targeting, and geo targeting, among other things. Invoicing is dependent on CPC (cost per click).

Outbrain

When it comes to Outbrain, content promotion takes place via the dis­tri­bu­tion platform 'Outbrain Amplify'. There are, however, specific guidelines for published content, which take 'en­ter­tain­ment value and in­form­a­tion­al value' into account, according to their own state­ments. You can find more about this in the official guidelines. The most popular companies that Outbrain works with include The Daily Telegraph, Shelter, and The Guardian. Invoicing is dependent on the number of clicks.

BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo enables users to work out which content is having the desired effect. You can also find in­flu­en­cers in your topic area as well as comparing your content per­form­ance with that of your com­pet­i­tion. Pub­lish­ers and brands using BuzzSumo include Yahoo!, National Geo­graph­ic, Expedia, and The Telegraph. There is a 14-day free trial of all packages on offer. There’s a package to suit everyone; from bloggers and small teams, to big brands and large teams.

Several Google tools are also available for paid content promotion, such as Google AdWords and Google Display Network (GDN) ad­vert­ising. Ads in Google search would have to be posted for in­form­a­tion­al keywords regarding content promotion – according to studies, clicks on certain keywords are quite low. Google Display Network text ads are more promising. GDN enables targeting by topic, interest, contexts, and other criteria; the tool also shows many ways of op­tim­ising campaigns, which other providers do not offer.

If you want to be suc­cess­ful at content marketing, you need to create high-quality content. You also need to know how to make your content reach the reader, how to push the relevant channels, and how to reach the right groups. It’s worth taking advantage of paid content, except when it comes to owned and earned media. Marketing content basically works the same way as a product or service – you advertise it – and that is the main idea behind paid content promotion.