12 places to promote your content after you hit publish
You’ve just published a post – now what?
Sit back and relax?
Margherita?
Wrong!
It’s time to promote your content so others can find out about it.
But where?
Luckily we’re entering an age of content promotion, and new places are showing up everywhere accepting content and making it easier than ever to get the word out.
So instead of just a few ideas, we came up with 12+ places to promote your content after you hit publish.
1. Your Newsletter
Hopefully this is a no brainer.
Remember – people sign up to your newsletter specifically to hear from YOU.
So it’s OK to send them a message when you write something that could provide value.
If you’re looking for some tips on maintaining an engaged newsletter, check out Pauline’s awesome roundup post.
2. Your Follow Up Series
The mistake most bloggers make is not having a follow up series as part of their auto responder.
This is an automated mailing to your list, in which you can promote old articles to new list sign ups who weren’t around when the article was originally released.
For example, my follow up series looks like this:
And it goes on for 20 messages.
An email goes out once every one to two weeks in order to keep older articles from getting lost in my archives.
And despite this being recycled content, the open rates are still above 20%, which provides a constant stream of visitors back to my websites.
3. Submission Websites
The internet has given rise to aggregators, which collect the best posts from the internet and allow people to upvote (or downvote) them.
Naturally, the posts that get the most upvotes get the most exposure.
Here are a few aggregator sites in the blogging niche.
- Inbound
- Kingged
- Growth Hackers
- BizSugar
- Digg
- DoSplash
- The largest group is males 18 to 29 years old.
- Those without a high school diploma and those who have at least an undergraduate degree are most likely to use Reddit
- Find some BIG, general subreddits you can fit into. Sub Reddits show how many users they get, so look for something in the 10’s of thousands.
- Find a few small, relevant subreddits you can fit into. These can be very niche with only a few thousand members.
- Post in those subreddits (not all at once!) exactly how everyone else posts there, following all the rules and conventions of the subreddit. You can read the individual topic role in each sub Reddit.
- Do some light promotion to your friends and social network to get just a few initial upvotes. Basically we are just trying to get the ball rolling.
- If the post is good, those few upvotes will start a traffic snowball. Keep your fingers crossed and repeat!
- I commented on the post
- I shared it on Twitter
- I linked to it in another post I wrote
- I offered to write a guest post on his blog
- Niche Forums
- Quora
- Yahoo Answers
- The last time someone shoved a link in your face, how did you react?
- The last time someone demanded a favor, having never added value to you before, did you do it?
- Is there someone else’s content you can promote before asking them ?
- How often are you sharing other peoples’ content relative to your own?
- How can you get involved in a community before trying to leverage it for personal gain?
And here are a few in the food niche (to provide another example)
And don’t forget websites that are collections of particular article types, such as infographics (or podcasts, etc)
4. Reddit
Ah Reddit – it is the great mystery of many internet marketers. It started just under 10 years ago, and now receives 174 million monthly unique visits.
We have all heard the story of the article that hit the front page of Reddit, and brought down someone’s entire website.
Now if we could just do the same thing for our website (without the whole bringing down the website thing).
What we have to understand is that Reddit has a unique audience that doesn’t much care for self-promotion.
Here’s what the data tells us:
So what is it that males from 18 to 29 love?
Well, as far as we can tell, a little bit of everything.
Which is why Reddit has over 8000 sub-reddits.
And with the right promotional techniques, they are ripe for traffic.
In fact, a recent case study from Spencer over at NichePursuits revealed how he collected 10k page views from Reddit with just 45 minutes of work.
In summary, here are the steps:
5. Triberr and ViralContentBuzz
I’m a big fan of Triberr. I think its great not solely for content promotion but also networking.
It’s also fairly easy to make a big splash.
In fact with just a few hours a week for 4 weeks, I was able to build my profile up to be one of the largest on Triberr (and I only have a few hundred Twitter profiles).
Another Triberr like platform is ViralContentBuzz, which I don’t know an awful lot about, but luckily Pauline has a sweet tutorial here.
6. Guest Posting
Who knew that guest posting could be a form of promotion for other articles?
The fact of the matter is that if your article is relevant, you can and should link to it in an upcoming guest post.
Whenever I write a post, I’m always thinking about what other articles I’ve written that I can draw from.
For example, just above I linked to my Triberr case study, which is very relevant and gives it some extra love.
It’s not spam, it’s relevant, and it’s a great form of promotion because it is also natural link building.
7. Social Media (Automated)
Of course no content promotion article is complete without the mention of social media, which you’re probably aware of.
What you might be struggling with is how to keep up with it all.
Luckily, there are quite a few plugins (albeit some premium), that really help automate this process, so it’s worth mentioning them here.
Hook one of these up on your blog and let it do that pesky social media work for you!
8. Outreach To Those Bloggers You Linked To
You know what I love?
When someone links to me in a post!
And when they do so, I’m generally happy to be notified and share the post or at least comment on it.
Here’s an example of an emaiI received last week.
The result:
Yes, all of this just from being notified that I had been linked to.
Am I just a nice guy? Perhaps.
But I also know when something can benefit my readers.
It’s just about being aware.
9. Outreach To Bloggers Of Related Posts
From time to time I write a post that has been touched upon in a similar manner before.
For example, awhile back I wrote a post on dominating Triberr (see above). It was one of the few case studies on Triberr that I had seen written, and I thought other bloggers, who had mentioned Triberr to their audience, would be interested in checking it out.
I did a search for Triberr marketing in Google and found a handful of bloggers, who I could let know about what I wrote.
I found a dozen or so and emailed them my case study to see if they would be interested in weighting in.
The reaction?
Over 50 comments and 250 shares.
10. Outreach To Those Who Shared Similar Posts
If someone shared content that is similar to something I wrote, is it fair to say they might be interested in what I wrote?
Yes!
In the previous example you found the authors of related posts and emailed them, now we can find some people who shared that post and let them know about it.
Take Twitter for example.
There is still at least one solid way to retrace social shares: Twitter Search.
As you will see, if you are truly selecting the most popular posts of a worthy foe, there will be more than enough people to contact.
Twitter Search is quite easy to operate. Simply hit advanced search, then put the title in “This Exact Phrase”, then, when the results populate, hit “All” (instead of Top).
The beautiful thing here is that you can reply directly to these tweets if you are logged in, which makes it super easy to do.
Just remember not to spam.
11. Link Round Ups
Ever seen those posts where people collect the best posts they came across in a given week or month?
Those are called Link Round Ups, and depending on your niche, there might be quite a few.
Here’s a long list of over 50 Link Round Ups I was able to muster up.
Building relationships with these individuals can help getting your blog on their radar and eventually having it featured in a round up.
12. Q/A Websites
Does your content anwer a question?
If so, it might be OK to post a short summary answer followed by a link to your article.
This tactic is particularly useful in the following places
Here’s a great answer to the question:
Where can I submit my startup after launching?
12. Blog Comments
If you’re article adds value to another one, it can be OK to link to it in a comment as long as the comment is appropriate and adds real value to the discussion.
For example, in a post I wrote outlining 200+ SEO tools, I asked at the end for people to add any they knew of that I forgot.
Here’s a great example of it done right:
Given that I had requested this information, this link inclusion was 100% NOT spammy.
Conclusion + The BIG Caveat
As we can see, there are many outlets through which you can promote your content.
But, like in many things, there is a caveat
And before I say it, allow me to ask your two questions:
In all likelihood you weren’t overly enthusiastic to lend a helping hand.
Which leads us to our caveat.
Before thinking about how you can promote your content, consider how you can add value to someone else:
