DOT Report, written by the IMA

We’ve already covered writing content for your website, how to be inspired for a dull topic, and what to write about. This time, we want to talk about how you can promote the content that you’ve worked on. While there’s no denying that the most important part of your website is the content that it contains, popularizing the content is equally important. Let’s look at some of the techniques you can use to get your content out on the web.

• Contact people who have already written something similar. While writing your content, you probably came across other websites that already had similar ideas. You can get in touch with them via their social media, email address or their website contact form. Let them know what you’ve written about and mention them as a source for your story in case they want a link back.
• Contact people who have linked to similar content. You can look at people who have linked to similar content and ask them for a link back. You can go to Ahrefs Or Open Site Explorer, enter the URL in the search box, and see the back links on the article. That will give you a ready reference of people to contact and ask for links. Prepare a generic email and customize it a little to ensure that the site owner feels that the email is specifically meant for them.
• Message people on LinkedIn. LinkedIn gives you a way to contact literally all the world you need. Find the people who are influencers in your vertical and ask them for opinions about your piece. But don’t get pushy about asking for plugs to your page. Just getting their feedback is a great start, and then you can ask if they would like to link to your article. LinkedIn does of course have the issue of only reaching first-degree connections, but you should be able to find references who can put you in touch with the right people.
• Get quotes for your story. Before you publish, you can always get in touch with industry leaders via sites like LinkedIn, mentioned above, and BuzzStream. Once you have quotes from industry leaders for your article, your story gains a lot more authority and perspective. You will also get to hear about what others in the industry are working on, and you can incorporate those strategies for your business.
• Create snippets for sharing on social media websites. You can create a lot of snippets from your story that can be used for sharing via social media websites such as Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook. You can use variations of the title, snippets from your article or the quotes you have received from peers in your field. Ideally you can even set up your WordPress blog to auto-tweet pieces of your article at intervals.
• Turn your content into a SlideShare. Convert your content into slides and share at SlideShare so that you reach different audiences. SlideShare is in the top 150 websites in terms of traffic and will carry your content to new readers. The fact that SlideShare content often ranks quite well is an added bonus for you; you’ll get back links from the SlideShare website which will add value to your site.
• Promote with StumbleUpon. StumbleUpon has an option for paid promotions, and this works very well for content. You will be allowed to buy traffic that is cheaper than most sources such as Google AdWords or other similar programs. From our studies, the traffic from StumbleUpon converts quite well into sales. The trick is to ensure that you have a clear title and description for your services.
• Create a PDF with Flipboard. Flipboard is primarily a magazine app for mobile devices. It allows you to read varied sources of content like a magazine, and now there is a bookmarklet for Google Chrome which can be used to convert your content into a magazine. Sign up at Flipboard through your Facebook or Google login and add your content along with other sources into a PDF magazine. You can then share this magazine on Flipboard. Users of Flipboard will find your magazine and land on your website via the search function. This will add authority to your website among users and generate a following for your magazines as well.
• Traffic from Sulia. Sulia is a website that allows you to share your content and get visitors via text snippets from your article. Sulia traffic is people who are going to be quick readers and deciders, so make sure that your copy is compelling and conveys the heart of your story succinctly.
• Turn content into a video. You can convert your text article into a video and appeal to a new demographic. Once you have spent some time to convert your content into a video, you will find a whole new set of visitors to reach. YouTube is among the largest sources of traffic on the planet today, not to mention that Google ranks video content quite high on its search results. Creating videos has many fringe benefits. You will have a ready answer to convert your content into a slide share, added perspective for generating a PDF and a new way of looking at your websites traffic. Even though this is difficult, it is time well spent as you will be able to reuse these ideas many times over.
• Contact your sources. Once you have your content ready, make sure you contact your sources and let them know that you’ve quoted them on your website and encourage them to share your content to their contacts and lists. In most situations, you will get some comments from your peers on what they think of your content, which will keep your content growing and alive in Google’s results. You will also get some links from your peer websites, which will in turn make your website a leader in the eyes of Google and help with ranking for many keywords.
• Use PDF’s for marketing. We regularly create PDF versions of our articles for sharing at PDF share websites. These articles will always have a few links to our website and will otherwise be identical in content. You can share these PDF’s at websites such as Scribd or DocStoc. These will get indexed in Google and result in quality back links to your website as well. If you are very sure about your content, you can get professionally made templates for your article and push in other related content from previous articles to create a PDF book.
• Use free PDF books to build contacts. Once you have generated a PDF book, you can use this as collateral on your website to encourage visitors to give you their email address to gain access to your PDF book. Email lists are the most effective form of traffic for your website. You will regularly have sales from your email lists if you out regular updates.
• Maximize your existing pages. If you look at your analytics, you will get statistics on the pages that are doing well on your website. You can add links from your own website to your new content and allow traffic to flow within your website. This will let visitors stay longer on your site and encourage them to see related products and services. Cross-pollination of your traffic is the best way to get more sales. Once you have a visitor engaged on one product, it’s easier to sell them more. In marketspeak, this is a product upsell, and it works the same way for content as it does for products.
• Share your content on blogs, forums and peer websites. The best way to get reviews of what people think of your content is it to get it out there, whether you are using small snippets or an entire article. The more links you generate for your content, the more popular it will get. This in turn will lead to better rankings for your website and more sales for your products.

While you won’t be using all these methods for your articles, you can use a few that are relevant for you and easy to achieve. One golden rule for your content is to ensure that it’s published on your website first. Also make sure that Google has a cached copy before you start promoting it. A lot of the websites that promote your content may outrank your website in terms of domain authority and, as a result, will land in search engine results before your site.