Content can be time-consuming to create yourself and expensive to hire out. As a result, you need to make sure every piece of content you publish does its job. It needs to reach as many eyes as possible and incite action from those who click on it.
This means that first and foremost, you need to create quality content. Content that’s well thought out, accurate, engaging and relates to what you’re trying to promote and/or sell.
But once you create that top-tier content? Then what?
Well, you need to ensure that you get as much traction out of your content as possible so you can reach new audiences, grow relationships with others and convert viewers to customers. You want people to click on and read, watch and listen to the content you’re creating. Otherwise, why create it!?
There are a lot of ways to do this–both for brand new content and content you’ve had around a while.
Content That’s New
Brand new content is fresh and ready for your audience’s eyes and ears. Depending on where you’re publishing your content, timing matters. On YouTube, for example, the first 24 to 48 hours can determine whether or not the platform recommends your video to others.
For other platforms, you need to encourage a response from your audience in order to be seen. On Facebook, the more interaction your post gets, the more people will see that post. And on iTunes, the more reviews you have, the more your podcast will be recommended to others.
So basically, if you want to get traction out of your content, you’ll need to play a bit of a game with the online powers that be. With a strategic plan in place and the ideas below, you’ll do just fine.
Have conversations with your audience
You don’t know what your audience doesn’t know. There’s no way to predict what your audience wants to hear from you unless you’re talking to them. If you work with 1:1 clients, keep track of challenges they’re running into. If you get emails from clients and prospects, make a note of what they need to know before they start working with you. And if you’re a product-based business, write down what people ask you in your shop or at trade shows. Having conversations with your audience is the only way to know exactly where they need support. When in doubt? Survey your audience!
Talk about what no one else is talking about
If you’re in what feels like is a saturated industry, you probably feel like every topic you want to talk about has already been done ad nauseum. I get it! But if you can take a topic and share something unique and new, or share it in a new way, you’ll be able to get more traction out of that post. It will reach more eyes and ears because it’s something new and different. At the same time, if your opinion about a topic is different from others you’ll definitely grab someone’s attention! For example, I recently sent an email about why you’re doing a disservice to yourself and your audience if you’re using a free email provider. And I got all up on my soapbox in a Facebook Live about the topic a few weeks ago too!
Create content that complements other content
Creating content that links to other content across multiple platforms is the best way to hold your audience’s engagement and encourage them to follow along. For example, in this post alone I’ve linked to a YouTube video, a Facebook Live and another blog post. The content I create complements other content across different platforms, keeping my audience engaged longer and diving deeper into topics. The key is to create different yet complementary content on the different platforms, rather than post the same thing or same message in multiple places. Read more about why that’s not the best idea.
Keep and eye on your analytics
You spend a lot of time and resources to create the content your audience wants and needs. But are they finding it? Keeping your eye on your analytics is key to having a sustainable content strategy that actually makes a difference in your business. Spend time each month looking at your Google Analytics–what blog posts and podcast episodes people are looking at and listening to. Pay attention to the social media posts that are getting interaction. And look at the types of Instagram stories people are watching the whole way through. Once you know all of this, you can better plan your future content for your audience.
Content That’s Already Created
You don’t need to be in perpetual content creation mode and you shouldn’t take the “publish and done” path mindset with what you’re creating. Your audience won’t automatically gravitate to your content, especially if you’re not ranking well on Google. Instead, you want to take proactive action to ensure your content gets noticed right when you post it and beyond. Here’s how to get the most traction out of content you’ve already created.
Interact with people who are commenting
The more people interact with your content, the more social clout you gain–and that includes your interaction too. Your readers, viewers and listeners want to know that you hear them. When someone comments, respond! You’ll score points from the platform you’re publishing on and with your audience. The more you (and others) interact, the more your content will get seen. And the more it’s seen? The more traction you get! It’s like the circle of (content) life.
Reshare popular blogs, videos and podcasts
Just because you’ve shared content once doesn’t mean that you’re done. If you published a blog post a year ago and it’s still relevant, go ahead and share it again. And again. There are a lot of resources out there to help with this–from the Revive Old Post plugin to the requeue option on CoSchedule (my social scheduler of choice) and other schedulers. But sharing isn’t limited to social media. Create a library of helpful blogs and videos for new clients like my bank here. Add links in your nurturing emails, inviting subscribers to click and binge.
Update old content and republish
Sometimes our old blog posts get outdated because a program changes or new research discovered. You don’t want stale information on your website, so take a few moments and refresh it. Simply go back to your old post, tweak it so it’s current, add a note at the top letting your readers know that you updated a post that was originally published on X date and then publish it with the current date. You can share this content again on social media and your audience will appreciate the more current information. Plus, it took you a fraction of the time to write a “new” blog posts.
Create a roundup of posts
If you have a lot of content around a specific topic, compile it into one blog post (or one podcast episode or one YouTube video) to publish. Summarize each piece of content you’re including in this new piece of content for the bonus SEO points and to encourage people to click and binge. This is a great time to open up the floor for questions when you reshare on social media, asking which of the roundup posts most spoke to your audience members.
Creating content for your audience is a necessity when you own a business, but it’s not always at the top of everyone’s list of favorite things to do. (Side note: It’s definitely on MY favorite list!) If you’re taking a hiatus from content creation or trying to find ways to get the biggest bang from your content buck, try some of these tips and report back on how they’ve worked for you.
Find out how to get more engagement on the content you have out there already.
Don’t forget to check out the Write Solutions Content Bank for all the latest information on developing and maintaining a content strategy for your business! Check it out here!
