8 Ways to Promote Your Content to Grow Subscribers and Sales
Let’s just get this out of the way.
Publishing content to your blog is not content marketing.
Your blog is the cozy, decorative foyer for your website visitors to stop in, wipe their feet, and get a feel for your brand.
But for your content to do work — like bringing new website visitors, attracting and keeping email subscribers, and converting shoppers to customers — you need to send it out into the world.
That’s where your blog content promotion strategy comes in.
With smart content promotion tactics, you’ll not only get more qualified traffic, leads, and customers, you’ll do it at a much lower cost.
Here’s the best part. It’s not difficult to do.
Actually, it only takes a small tweak to things you’re already doing.
For example, if you’re running promotional Facebook ads now, just swap some of those for content ads. Do you use email marketing? Include your blog content and watch your click-through rates soar.
We’ve listed eight of the smartest places to promote your blog content. You don’t have to do them all right away. In fact, we’ve listed the ones that will have the greatest impact first.
Start with the channels you already know. Oh, and let us know how it goes.
High-Impact Promotion Strategies
If you only use three promotion strategies for your blog content, make it these. We’ve watched hundreds of online businesses use them with great results.
1. Social media ads
Feature your content in targeted Facebook and Instagram ads to reach the right people at the right moment for a low cost.
Why it works:
Your product ads are great at attracting shoppers looking to purchase right now. Content ads attract the other 98% of your audience. And they do it at a really low cost. In fact, traffic from Facebook content ads costs about 90% less than traffic from average Facebook ads.
These are people you can nurture with retargeting ads and through email.
And the best part? They’ve self-segmented.
Meaning, by clicking on your ad featuring an article about the 10 toughest hikes in the U.S., you know this visitor is a good match for your heavy-duty hiking boots.
Benefits of social media ads:
- Target niche audiences
- Increase brand awareness/grow trust
- 90% lower CPC than average Facebook ads
- Drive traffic with CPC campaigns or grow your email list faster with CPL campaigns
2. Organic search
Optimize all your original blog content for SEO so it’s the first thing shoppers see when they search relevant terms.
Why it works:
Organic search isn’t technically a promotion channel. But publishing search-optimized content is one of the most powerful ways to land a top spot on search engine results pages (SERPs). This is an extremely valuable source of traffic with a high buying intent.
In addition, the lift in domain authority you can get from publishing relevant content will also bump your product pages up the SERP.
Benefits:
- Free marketing channel
- The value of search compounds over time
- Builds your domain authority, which helps boost your product pages on Google as well
3. Targeted email sequences
An email sequence is a series of emails built specifically to nurture your subscribers as they reach certain points in the sales funnel. Like abandoning a cart, for example.
Include content in sequences that target shoppers who haven’t engaged with your product pages yet, or who have just purchased and might not purchase again right away.
Why it works:
When someone abandons their cart or browses your product pages, you might send a sequence of product emails and discount emails to convince them to finalize the purchase.
But when a subscriber hasn’t actively engaged with your products yet, it’s not the time for a hard sell. A combination of product content and blog articles will result in better email open and click-through rates.
The benefits:
- Free marketing channel
- Automated — build it once and it runs on its own
- Email sequences drive 16x more orders than “batch and blast” emails
Other Effective Promotion Strategies
The first three strategies are your power moves. But they’re not the only ones that will pay a dividend. Here are five more ways to promote your content and grow your business.
4. Organic social media
Post content on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media sites to stay in touch with your followers and keep them engaged.
Why it works:
Organic reach on social media just isn’t what it used to be. But the ease and $0 cost of posting content on your social media pages makes it a no-brainer.
Organic posting keeps your fans engaged and your brand top-of-mind. But it also has another interesting effect.
Shoppers perceive businesses with active social media accounts as healthy and interesting. It’s like looking in the window of your favorite store and seeing lots of people shopping, chatting, and asking questions.
Plus, if you mix content in with your promotional posts, you’ll build trust with your audience.
Benefits:
- Free marketing channel
- Fill your social media calendar with interesting content
- Reach new people by encouraging followers to share your posts
5. Newsletter
Improve newsletter open and unsubscribe rates by including content your audience looks forward to reading.
How it works:
Your email subscribers opted in to your brand, making them one of your best audiences. But if your emails are one product promo after another, those shoppers will see your brand as spammy, and you’ll lose many of your most dedicated followers.
Instead, provide helpful and entertaining content to that audience. That way, you can nurture shoppers that aren’t ready to buy and keep past customers engaged until they buy again.
Benefits:
- Free marketing channel with high ROI
- Balance content and product promotions to maximize engagement and sales
6. Paid search ads
Promote content that educates people about your solutions at the exact moment they’re looking for answers.
Why it works :
Some people use Google when they’re ready to buy and just want to know the best way to do it. But many are still in a consideration phase, learning about the best solutions and features to solve their problem.
Your educational content can be the knowledgeable guide that leads them from confusion to conversion. Using Google to promote that content will get it in front of the right people at the right stage of consideration.
Paid search is usually best for companies with a high average order value (AOV) because Google Ads can get pricey.
Benefits:
- Reach people in the consideration stage of the sales process
- Promote bottom-of-funnel content like product buying guides and gift guides
7. Partnerships
Join forces with affiliates or other brands with the same target audience who will promote your content on your behalf.
Why it works:
You’ve worked hard to build an audience. So have other complementary companies in your field. You can leverage each other’s hard work to quickly reach new audiences that might take a long time to build on your own.
Additionally, you’ll be placing your content in front of a new audience that already trusts your new partner.
Benefits:
- Reach new audiences quickly
- Readers are more likely to engage with content recommended by a company they know and trust
8. Forums
Promote your content on free forums like Reddit, Slack, Quora, Facebook, and beyond.
Why it works:
It doesn’t get much more niche than subreddits and Facebook groups (we’re looking at you, Ominous Tracksuit Facebook Group. If you have content that can help these niche readers, you can build trust with the perfect audience fast.
Marketer beware. Join in the conversation with the goal of being authentic and helpful. If you join only to promote your brand, you’ll be downvoted, thumbs-downed, and downright kicked out of the group.
Benefits:
- Free marketing channel
- Build authentic relationships
Your content works like a marketing master key. It fits into almost every marketing channel and opens the door to website visitors, email subscribers, and customers.
But if you leave that key sitting in your blog, it won’t unlock anything.
Smart content promotion techniques will unleash the potential of your blog content.
Of course, as a small business, the first challenge is finding the time to publish professional-level content. And then understanding the effect it has on your business.
That’s where Matcha comes in. In minutes, you’ll be publishing the craveable content that gets your shoppers to click and convert. Plus, you’ll see exactly how it’s impacting traffic, email list growth, and revenue.
