There's nothing quite as euphoric as launching a new piece of content. You've put in days, weeks, or even months' worth of work into it, and nothing can express your excitement to get in front of the eyes of your customers, leads, and website visitors.
All that said, there's nothing quite as soul-crushing (on a professional level, at least) as having no one interact with your content.
Content is being created, published, and refreshed every second of every day. In 2019, more than four million blog posts were published on a daily basis — not to mention the abundance of ebooks, templates, podcast episodes, infographics, and videos that go live every minute, as well.
This brings up the imperative question that all great content marketers ask themselves: how do I get more people to see, engage with, and react to my content?
To help you make the most of your content marketing efforts, we've outlined the best content promotion ideas across various mediums. From podcasting to blogging, to everything in between, you can use these best practices to get a strong ROI from your content.
Follow Along With the Content Promotion Kit
HubSpot's Content Promotion Kit and Templates puts the tips from this blog into an actionable, step-by-step process for your content promotion efforts. You'll gain access to four templates to help you plan your promotion and reach out to leads, customers, and influencers so even more people will interact with your content. Download the Kit to follow along with the examples in this post.
Social Media Content Promotion Ideas
Social media is an ideal place to promote your content, as those following your accounts already know your brand and likely look forward to the content that you post. Here are nine ideas to help you promote content on social media.
One warning about social media, however, is that different sites prioritize different factors when determining which posts users see first. In other words, just because you were the latest to post something doesn't mean a follower will see your content when he or she logs on. Keep that in mind as you implement these ideas.
1. Update your cover photo to promote the content. If using Facebook, link to the offer in the photo's description.
2. Pin a post to the top of your page linking to the landing page of your content.
3. Add a link to the offer in your business page's bio.
4. Post several times a week to the piece of content, varying the images and copy you use in each post, for several weeks (or months).
5. Create a hashtag for the campaign or the offer and utilize it in your posts.
Join a group on Facebook or LinkedIn and start a discussion.
6. If you have a group of your own, send out the content to all group members.
Promote the offer in your social media stories.
7. Make the content offer appear on your Facebook Messenger when visitors come to your page.
Website Content Promotion Ideas
Lots of people overlook how they can optimize their website to promote new offers -- but it's most likely one of your biggest marketing assets.
When someone comes to your website, chances are that visitor wants to learn more about your business and its content. It's the perfect opportunity to point the visitor to a piece of content you think would enhance the buyer's journey.
Here are five things you can do to promote website content.
10. Create a CTA on your homepage or log-in screen.
11. As you create more content, create a content library: a page on your site dedicated to the content you create.
12. On related pages within your site (such as product pages and thank-you pages of other content), include a link to the offer to download.
13. Include social sharing buttons on the thank-you page of the content.
14. Set up a live chat bot to promote the content on relevant pages.
Blogging Promotion Ideas
Blogging can drive traffic to your landing pages and website better than any other medium.
Why? Each time you blog, you give Google and other search engines one more opportunity to find you. Each blog post gives you the opportunity to rank for more and more keywords and grow your reach.
Here are seven tips for promoting your blog posts.
15. Blog about the piece of content multiple times, targeting a new angle or keyword each time to avoid redundancy. Spread out posts over a few weeks or months to continue a steady stream of traffic to the landing page.
16. Create a CTA at the bottom of each relevant blog post that links to the offer.
17. Create anchor text CTA towards the top of the page, using hyperlinked words to point to the offer. HubSpot's blogging team has found this to be one of the most successful CTA placements.
18. Create a trigger-based CTA to appear or slide in at a certain point. For example, the CTA could appear when a reader has been on the page for 15 seconds, has scrolled through 20% of the page, or is about to exit the page.
19. Make existing CTAs smart so that users who have already downloaded content from your site see your new offer instead.
20. Encourage social sharing of blog posts with built-in social share buttons and tweetable quotes.
21. Guest blog on related sites to increase awareness of the content.
Video Marketing Promotion Ideas
Video promotion typically requires more planning and effort than other promotion types, since you'll have to script, shoot, and edit with the help of a dedicated videographer.
However, if you have video experts at your disposal, it's one of the most effective methods for promoting content.
Here are three tips to ensure you're correctly promoting your videos once you've made them.
22. Make a video for YouTube, capitalizing on a term with high search volume and promoting the content as a featured resource. Don't forget to link to the content landing page in the description of your video.
23. Make a video for your social media channels with appropriate dimensions, messaging, and length.
24. Make a video for your website and content landing page describing the value of the offer.
Email Marketing Promotion Ideas
Emailing segments of your contact database will not only increase their engagement with your company, it will also generate new leads through the sharing power of your database.
Most of the people who have engaged with your company may not be aware of every piece of content you put out, but may still want to know about them.
Emailing those people — who already have shown they'll fill out a form to see what you've created — should be a no-brainer.
Here are four strategies for promoting email.
25. Email your customer database to delight your existing users with additional content. Remember – content should not just be a tool for acquiring new customers, but also for reminding existing ones why they decided to do business with you!
26. Email your leads and subscribers and alert them of a new offer.
27. Add the offer to your nurture streams, or replace older offers with a new one, wherever appropriate.
28. Add a link to your content in your email signature.
Paid Promotion Ideas
Ideally, your content should be optimized for SEO and promoted within your existing channels. However, for content offers that aren't supported by ample search volume, or for smaller companies looking to build awareness, paid promotion can be a useful way to get your content in front of a larger audience.
Luckily, there are plenty of sites with billions of users that could be perfect for your content promotion.
Here are a few examples of the ways you can advertise on them:
29. Set up Google Ads campaign for search, with multiple ad groups targeting different keywords and angles.
30. Use display ads to show off the visuals of your offer with Google Display Network.
31. Set up promoted tweets for your Twitter account and collab with designers for visual assets.
32. Use LinkedIn's Sponsored Updates feature to promote the Company Page update related to the content and collab with designers for visual assets.
33. Create YouTube pre-roll ads with the help of your video team or a video agency.
34. Boost the engagement of an organic Facebook post by putting some money behind it.
35. Create a Facebook ad or a dedicated group of Facebook ads.
36. Get even more visual with Instagram ads. You can also try GIF and video ads here rather than just images.
Podcasting Promotion Ideas
Approximately 150 million Americans listen to podcasts, so even if your company doesn't have its own, there's still plenty of reason to utilize podcasting to promote your content.
Here are a few ways you can do that.
37. Plug the content on your own podcast, giving listeners a specific link so you can track its engagement and including it in the description of the podcast.
38. Secure a guest spot on a relevant industry podcast to promote the content.
39. Purchase ad space with a podcast network to promote your content. They'll likely provide you with audience demographics so you can advertise to the most qualified listeners.
Influencer Marketing Promotion Ideas
Influencers can be an effective way to reach new people who already follow someone in your industry. Building and maintaining strong relationships with these influencers can pay off in the long run, especially if their following is in the tens or hundreds of thousands.
Quick note: some influencers will require ongoing payment for a formal relationship, so just be aware of this in case you're looking for free promotion strategies.
Here are a few strategies for using influencers for content promotion.
40. Reach out directly to influencers in your industry whom you already are connected to and ask them to share the content with their audience. To make it easier for them, have pre-written tweets or email copy ready for them to use.
41. Ask new influencers in your industry to share the content with their audience. Consider looking to Instagram, Twitter, and other industry blogs to find good candidates.
Other Content Promotion Ideas
The rest of the ideas in this list sort of fall into their own bucket, so we decided to compile them together here.
That said, this shouldn't discount the effectiveness of these promotion tactics. Give them all a try if you're looking to promote content in out-of-the-box ways.
42. Repurpose your content into new formats. For example, turn your blog post into an infographic, or your latest blog series into a gated ebook, to make the most out of each offer.
43. Acquire backlinks to your content through partner marketing. Your partners may be willing to allow you to guest post or feature your content as a helpful resource on their website or social media accounts.
44. Leverage your internal teams to share the content on social media and with their colleagues. This is especially helpful when you get your sales team involved, as they can utilize their existing relationships with prospects to promote the content.
45. Push for word of mouth marketing. This one doesn't have as concrete a strategy, but simply talking about the content on phone calls, at trade shows and events, and with your coworkers and colleagues can create a groundswell of interest for your content offer.
Additional Content Promotion Strategy Ideas
All of the ideas we've mentioned on this list have great potential to generate leads and views for your content. However, it's crucial to know which content promotion ideas make the most sense for what you've created, when to launch each initiative, and how to measure each initiative's success.
To help you stay strategic in your content promotion efforts, here are five bonus content strategy ideas to consider before sending an email or posting a tweet.
46. Create a content promotion calendar.
Content promotion should never be a guess, and you'll want to be able to look back on your messaging to see what worked and what didn't so you can adjust for future content launches.
That's why you should use a social media calendar and/or an editorial calendar to schedule what's going out, what channel it's going out on, and when it's launching.
47. Use audience segmentation.
Part of the reason there are so many content promotion ideas is because each platform you can promote on has different users and appeals to different audiences. For example, if your piece of content is better fitted for the decision stage of the buyer's journey, it might make more sense to promote on LinkedIn instead of Instagram.
Audience segmentation is a two-pronged approach to your content promotion strategy. Part one, as listed above, is picking the right platforms for each piece of content -- and isolating the wrong ones.
Part two is actually segmenting your audience on that platform to get even more granular. For example, you could use Facebook's advertising platform or HubSpot's lists tool to segment your audience for ads and emails, respectively.
48. Customize messaging for each channel.
Building off the last point, what you write on email doesn't always make sense for a Facebook post. Alternatively, your character counts on Twitter are 280, which is far lower than the limit on Instagram.
You'll want to customize the design, value prop, and copy utilized in each of your promotions. Not only does this ensure you avoid the risk of coming across as redundant across all channels, it also ensures your messaging is appropriate for each platform.
49. Experiment and optimize often.
When it comes to content promotion, “better” should trump “best.”
In other words, you can always find a way to promote content smarter and in new ways. Whenever you release a new piece of content, challenge yourself or your team to find a new channel to promote it. You should also keep a keen eye on which promotion tactics are not producing projected results so that you can consider resetting goals or abandoning that tactic altogether.
50. Analyze your results often.
Use tracking links and analytics tools to keep your eye on what promotion ideas are generating views to your content, submissions, leads, and customers.
While not the primary task of all content marketers, it can't hurt to know the numerical and monetary impact your content has on the business.
This step also holds true when analyzing specific promotion channels. Social media and digital marketing are constantly changing, with new platforms and algorithms developing all the time.
Ultimately, it's critical you keep an eye out for which methods work best for you and your business. Hopefully this list will get you started, but this should be an iterative process in which you regularly analyze and pivot as you see which platforms and content best serves your audiences' needs.
