Strategy and tactics to amplify and rank your content with better content promotion, syndication and
You are now producing great content. You have a content marketing plan. You are creating high value long form pieces of content that are rich and relevant to your target audience. You are investing heavily in this content, ploughing in time and resources to create content for your blog that your clients and potential customers will find incredibly useful and ultimately will direct them to buy from you or enquire about your services. Top job!
But what comes after pressing the publish button? Schedule a few posts on social? Leave the blog post to its own devices and let Google index it and eventually rank it? You can of course do this. But what if you want to speed up the process, get more readers for your blog, more quickly? How do you amplify that content and maximise its potential? What if it was possible to rank your content in search engines whilst simultaneously driving traffic?
If you want to get more eyes reading your posts in the short, medium and long term you will need to promote your blog posts and content. If you want to rank it in Google you will need to build links and show Google that it should rank that content. You will need a content marketing strategy that combines with your SEO to drive traffic and links, sometimes automatically. You need to amplify and market your content whilst building authority to your website - you will need a content promotion plan. A strategy. A strategy that you can roll out, blog post after blog post, that positions your content in front of the right people across as many platforms as possible.
Below we detail our content promotion strategy and plans for each format and a huge amount of channels. We use social media, bookmarking platforms, content syndication as well as some other great tips and tricks to maximise our blog contents exposure. Whilst we are promoting our content, we are also building a steady and consistent foundation level of high authority links that will help that post rank more quickly and in higher positions within search engines.
Detailed below is Improve Marketing’s content promotion, syndication and amplification strategies. If you want to promote your content like a pro, then read on. We hope that you enjoy our guide!
Want to generate more links for your content? Find out about our Content Amplification, Link Building and SEO Services here.
Content Promotion
What is content promotion?
Content promotion is exactly what you think it is. It is the process of promoting your content far and wide to as many of your potential customers as you can. There is a huge amount of strategies to do this, it may include sending your content to your email database. Outreach to influencers or simply making it more shareable. What we are going to focus on in this post is about maximising the impact of your content online whilst building links so that the post ranks in Google organically – the largest source of traffic that there is. We will wander into social media strategy a little here too, as social media, although it is only a small factor, also helps content to rank. Particularly if you have good numbers of followers on your social media accounts.
What's your current plan for marketing your content?
Marketing your content, promoting it, is sometimes not given enough thought. We have worked with clients who invest heavily in creating great content but content promotion is sometimes neglected. A standard content promotion plan might look like the following:
Write a blog post > publish that post > post to Facebook, Linkedin. Perhaps Twitter or Instagram.
This is a very common plan but it only delivers an opportunity to see or OTS of 4 (channels).
It is content promotion but it is the bare bones of a content marketing promotion strategy. There is little to no amplification at all. We need to rev this up a little and make sure that our social media followers are actually seeing our content and giving them the opportunity to read and share it. Remember that social media channels, organically, only allow a small percentage of your followers to see your content each time you post. We need to repeat this promotion schedule, re-frame the content and post it again and again until we have maximised views and click through's from all of our social media channels.
Pro tip: Hootsuite is a great time saving tool available free (for smaller advertisers) or at enterprise level for larger businesses. It allows you to create and schedule posts across all of your channels at speed and with efficiency.
Using Hootsuite to manage your content promotion via your social media channels we need to increase the frequency of those posts and maximise the value from each channel. Instead use the below posting strategy for every new blog post. Intermingle it with existing content and let new posts overlap to keep your social media feeds diverse and interesting.
New social media plan: Post to social media: Facebook, Twitter (x 3 over week 1) and Linkedin (business page), Instagram (bio link) if relevant.
Schedule this volley again for +1 week +1 month +6 months +12 months. Try to use different images, different calls to action, different ways of framing the post each time. If you follow this plan that same contents opportunity to see (OTS) is now 32.
Note: Also ask members of your team to like, share your posts or post them directly on their personal social media profiles. Likes and shares from your colleagues or from other profiles that you may control gives each post a jolt in the algorithm and unlocks and amplifies that posts organic reach within that social media channel. Post engagement is also a positive signal to Google that that content is good. Remember that Google is always watching.
Linkedin Advanced Strategy: We can also create 'articles' around our posts. That is a much shorter version of our content (the post) but without all the answers that the content provides. This should be a short and concise version of the article, unique content, a teaser that encourages the reader to click the link, visit your blog and read the whole post. Articles are different to standard posts, they generate back links and fall into a different part of the Linkedin algorithm. Within Linkedin you can get two bites of the cherry and generate links simultaneously.
Additional formats and re-purposing content: If applicable (say it was a guide or a how to type post); you can also recreate that post as an infographic, presentation or short video including a link to the original post in the video description or within the infographic. This content can then be published on the applicable channels e.g. Youtube, Vimeo and Daily Motion for videos (include a link to the original post in the description). You can also use the video natively in Facebook or Instagram as part of your social media campaign. Alternatively, if it is an infographic share it to the some of the following locations:
If you created a presentation this should be shared on SlideShare or any of these other 20 websites.
Each new format should have a link that references the original post included or embedded within it.
How to convert your blog content into different formats fast:
Here is some quick ways to convert and re-purpose your content into video, infographic and presentation formats:
If you want a more professional look and feel you can always use your own design software to build out your assets, alternatively you can hire a freelancer on Fiverr to create these files for you, sometimes very cost effectively.
Post the new video, infographic or presentation onto your blog in a new post with some accompanying text, tweak the keyword targeting and be sure to add the link to the original post as a reference. Then repeat the process of posting (this new content) to your social media channels that we did with the original post. This will improve and amplify that posts OTS by another 32 opportunities to see (per format).
Post to social media: Facebook, Twitter (x 3 over week 1) and Linkedin (business page). Schedule: The post again for +1 week +1 month +6 months +12 months
Do you need help with your content marketing? Find out about Improve Marketing's content creation and marketing services here.
More social media channels and websites that you can use to build links and promote your content: As part of our content promotion and amplification plan, we also need to promote the original post on a number of new channels. We want to build back links whilst expanding the potential audience that can see our content - we don't just want the short term boost in traffic that social media provides, we want traffic from multiple sources and platforms, platforms that generate back links and will help our post to rank organically.
There are a whole host of channels that we can use for this. They include Reddit, Pinterest, List.ly, Quora, Plurk.com, Diigo, Digg, Folkd, Tumblr and Stumbleupon (now called Mix.com). You will have to set up accounts for your business or blog on these platforms but that is good. You will get further opportunities to create back links to your website or blog in the profiles. Make sure that the profiles are completed. Make them rich and genuinely useful, in the case of List.ly, they will not allow search engines to index your lists unless you reach a completion score which proves your lists quality. Once they are set up you can use them again and again. Invest time in building out high quality profiles. Here is how to use these additional social media channels to promote your content and build links:
Reddit (DA 91): Find relevant stories and questions (that are relevant to the post) and add the link to the post combined with a solution to the persons query e.g. Search for 'Your post keywords' and then answer any questions with the link included within the solution. https://www.reddit.com/
Pinterest (DA 91): Within your Pinterest profile you should have a board set up for your own posts. Pin each blog post to your board. Make sure that every pin includes an image, description, call to action and a link to the original blog post. Add hashtags to the post to amplify the pin and increase the opportunity for it to be found within Pinterest. https://www.pinterest.co.uk/
List.ly (DA 68): Every time you publish a blog post you should add it to your List.ly account as further reading from the team at ‘your business or blog name’. https://list.ly/
Quora (DA 93): Similar to Reddit, you need to search for questions around the subject of the blog post and answer those questions including a link to the post. Again, make sure your response is relevant and you add value in your response. https://www.quora.com/
Plurk (DA 89): Very similar to Twitter, use as you would Twitter. You will soon see the links building up in your search console account. https://www.plurk.com/
Tumblr (DA 87): Post links to your blog posts within your Tumblr blog. https://www.tumblr.com/
Stumbleupon (now called mix.com) DA 81: This is a social bookmarking website. You simply add the link using the + button. Then save all blog posts to a page you have created (call it your blogs primary topic or a generic subject name that describes the content that you are sharing). https://mix.com/
Diigo (DA 89): Diigo is another social bookmarking website. Set up your profile and much like Mix.com add your content by clicking the + button and submit your link. https://www.diigo.com/
Folkd (DA 62): Much like Diigo and Mix.com, set up a profile and submit your link by clicking the star. http://www.folkd.com/
Digg (DA 93): Digg is another social media bookmarking site. There are less options to post here and the subjects of category pages limited. However, if you are in design or something similar it is worth posting to Digg too. They also have a category for long form writing which seems to be broad in terms of its subjects. However, unlike some of the other social bookmarking sites, posts must be cleared by a site administrator before they are published. https://digg.com/
Pinterest Advanced strategy: Claim your website by adding a meta tag to your website, you can find this within the settings of your profile. When the tag is added you get advanced analytical features for Pinterest and can see how the traffic behaves when on your website. Most importantly you can then set up auto post to Pinterest by adding your blogs RSS feed. This is a form of syndication and a time saving hack. Whenever you add a new post, that new post will automatically be pinned to your chosen board. Link building on automatic!
Pro Tip: You can use a number of automation tools to make a lot of this happen for you. For example, Zapier has a lot of plugins that again can be connected to your RSS feed. These plugins are connected to your RSS feed and can be instructed to post to social media channels e.g. RSS Feed to Company Linked in page, Facebook, Twitter etc.
Getting your post indexed: Every time that you publish a new post you need to immediately ask Google to crawl and index that post. Submit your post URL to Search Console to get the post indexed. After one week of that post being live, indexed and online we should then move onto content syndication - this gives the search engines a chance to index and rank the content before it gets syndicated onto more powerful sites (which otherwise might outrank us for our own content).
Content Syndication
What is Content syndication?
Content Syndication is the process of re-posting your content on another, usually high traffic, high authority blog or website. There are two great content curation websites that you should always syndicate your content on and are great for audience amplification too.
Note: Syndication is not duplication in this instance because these sites add ‘rel canonical’ tags that tell Google this is syndicated content and the original source of that content is ‘your blog post URL’. Google is ok with content syndication, it understands that syndication is part of the internet and as long as you use the 'rel canonical' tag correctly there will be minimum risk when it comes to sharing your content on other sites. The 'rel canonical' tag also allows you to benefit from any link juice that may be created by other websites linking to the syndicated post as well.
The two main sites to syndicate your content on are Scoop.it and Medium.com.
Medium.com:
Medium.com (DA 96) is an online publishing platform that curates content from amateur and professional journalists. It provides its users the ability to select content by subject and curates it into a single feed for them.
When you are adding content to Medium.com remember to use the content import tool as this tool automatically adds the rel canonical tag. Note also that the import tool does not always pull 100% of the content in, it’s not perfect, usually the majority of the content is pulled in, but it regularly misses chunks of content or imagery. As it is not a reliable import make sure that you proofread your content, check links, bolded copy, images etc. Make sure that the content looks good before publishing.
Scoop.it: Scoop.it (DA 93) is again a content curation platform that works along the same lines as medium.com. It is really easy to add your content to Scoop.it and again it automatically adds a 'rel canonical' tag. Once you have a profile set up (remember to add your website link to your bio alongside all of your social media channels), simply head for ‘My Curated Scoops’, paste the link to your content and press enter. Scoop all of your content into your Scoop profile and again watch the links to your content start to build in your Search Console account.
There are a whole host of websites that want to syndicate your content including the likes of the Huffington Post and Buzzfeed. Look for websites that use curated content in your sector or industry and apply to be a contributor to find yet more places to syndicate your content and assist with your amplification plan.
Become a Buzzfeed Contributor (DA 93)
Remember you can syndicate your content on any website or blog as long as it has a 'rel canonical' tag.
Pro tip: Successful high-quality content should answer a reader’s query or solve the issues that the title implies. Because of this, readers of your syndicated content may read the post and then move on without ever visiting your website. To prevent this make sure that your content has internal links that directs traffic to your site, to more information or onto service pages. This will also pass more link juice onto other pages on your website as well.
Does your website rank in Google as it should? Find out about how we can help your business to drive more sales via SEO. Find out about our SEO Services here.
Content Syndication and Link Building Automation via your RSS feed:
We have already discussed using automation tools such as Zapier to set up automation's and automatically publish your content to social media channels such as Linkedin or Facebook. You can also automate your syndication to medium.com and Scoop.it from there too. Remember that the import tool on Medium.com is not always 100% effective, so content may have to be checked should you choose to take this route.
Aside the third-party automation route there are some other great, high domain authority websites that you should be using as well. These sites will pull your content directly from your RSS feed. RSS stands for 'real simple syndication', it does exactly what it says on the tin. It allows you to syndicate your content simply and easily.
Once you have a profile set up and your RSS feed connected to your profile, new posts will be automatically sent to these channels and your link building and content promotion will become fully automated, every time that you press publish on a new post, links will be built and content shared on auto pilot. These sites include Alltop, Faceplate and Blogorama.
1. Alltop (DA 68): Alltop is a real time news aggregator platform. It allows its users to pull in RSS feeds from various sources and aggregate those feeds on your Alltop page. You can add your own RSS feeds to this page too. Your most recent 8 posts are then pulled onto your page automatically and updated as you publish more. Remember to tick the box that says ‘make my Alltop page public’ so that search engines can index it. https://alltop.com/
2. IMFaceplate (DA 54): IMFaceplate is a personal brand platform for marketers. Once you have set up your IMFaceplate profile, remember to add your website links, social profiles etc. You can add your RSS feed which is displayed directly in your own Faceplate page. The site can be indexed and you can also submit whole and unique articles here too. http://www.imfaceplate.com/
3. Blogorama (DA 61): Blogorama calls itself the oldest blog directory on the internet. It probably is, for years Blogorama has been a great place to find bloggers and great content. To access this platforms RSS capabilities, you’ll need to add a reciprocal link somewhere on your site. You can put this on a deep links page that is prevented from being indexed with a noindex tag. Once you have submitted your blog (and RSS feed) and added the link it will start to pull and index your content as it is published. https://www.blogarama.com/
Content Marketing, Promotion & Syndication Strategy
Marketing your content and using promotion and syndication as part of your strategy is the key to getting more traffic and building the authority of your website with consistent link building. It is all about adding layers. Amplification. Building traffic and links as you go so that it ranks in search engines organically as well.
Content promotion is sometimes not given the time that it should. When you invest time in creating great content you should expend an equal amount of energy or resource in promoting it. Make sure that you give your content its best chance of being read!
What we are not claiming in this post is that this should be your sole link building strategy, perhaps not even your primary means to get links. This is one strategy to build links. The sources that we have shown you provide a mix of follow and nofollow links. Having a mix of these links is natural and white hat. Having a natural back link profile is important. But what this strategy does is show you a way to either manually or via automation build a strong foundation of a back link profile whilst promoting, amplifying and using your content in as many ways as possible, simultaneously sharing it with as many people as possible.
If you action this plan for every piece of content that you create you will give it a much better opportunity to generate readers, traffic and leads - your blog content will work much harder!! If you follow the strategy in full, you will also be generating up to 62 back links per post, 62 links with an average domain authority of 82!
Content marketing is all about marketing your content. Promote it, syndicate it, amplify it, re-purpose it and promote it again. Build links with automation, build links with syndication and soon enough your content will be outranking your competitors and your website or blog traffic sky rocketing.
Improve Marketing is a full-service digital marketing and marketing agency. We provide content writing services, content promotion and SEO services for businesses in the UK and overseas. We help businesses to be better by improving their marketing. If you are interested in promoting your business with SEO or are interested in syndicating your content over hundreds more websites then get in contact with us and let’s talk about we can help your website to grow.
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