How to Get Your Content Seen by Paying for Content Promotion.
Creating good content is a key to getting traffic to your website. But even the best content won’t be seen by anyone unless you do some content promotion.
So what is content promotion and why is it so important?
Content promotion means paying to get your content seen. There are many different ways to do this.
So let’s assume that you have created great content which is relevant and meaningful to your target audience. You’ve optimized your content for the search engines, Now you need to look at your options for content promotion and getting your content seen.
So you start promoting your content through social media. You set up accounts at the various social media platforms — Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Instagram — and you start getting followers. But getting followers is difficult and takes time. How do you get more people to see your social media posts?
The simple answer is that each social media platform is different, but they all give you the opportunity to increase your reach by paying for additional promotion.
Each social media platform allows you to promote your post/s. And it works. If you published a post to Facebook and only 100 people saw it, Facebook gives you an opportunity to promote that post and get more views. For as little as $5, Facebook will show your post to an additional 1000 people – or more. There is no other way to get so many more people to see your published post than this. All the social media platforms will let you promote your posts for a few extra dollars.
When you pay a social media platform to promote a post, your post will be clearly marked as “Promoted”. But social media users accept these promoted posts.
There are certain rules that apply to paid content promotion. The first rule is “No Spamming”. people hate spam. And the social media platforms know that people hate spam. So when you promote your content in social media, be careful not to sound spammy. Don’t oversell yourself. Your content should be inspiring, informative, and engaging. And your content promotion should 
be engaging too.
Here’s how to do content promotion in social media:
Whenever you post any content, first publish it to your favorite social media platforms. Include a very short summary — a teaser — that will stimulate the users’ interest and make them click on the link to read the article/blog post. Your link should be shortened for several reasons, mainly to allow more room for your post — especially where you are limited by character length as in Twitter. Use www.bitly.com to shorten your URL link. Bitly is also great because it allows you to track your social media clicks so you know where they are coming from — and knowing this information is critical. Use the analytics from each social media platform to tell you what’s working and what might need some tweaking.
Use the analytics from your own site to see which of your content which is being seen. Some blogs get seen more than others. You definitely want to know which ones are working. A few months after you publish your content, look at the analytics. Start promoting the content that has been seen by the most people. “Promoting” can sometimes simply mean that you republish the same blog post — possibly with an update. But promoting can also mean you pay to reach more people. The social media platforms will each offer to promote any content you have already published to their platforms. You should seriously consider if you can afford their rates to further promote your post to hundreds and even thousands of additional pairs of eyes.
Here’s another way to avoid sounding “spammy” in your content publishing and your content promotion: don’t publish a link with every post. Create some posts which are stand-alone — they offer the reader something interesting without asking them to click on a link. In fact, each social media platform has different rules as to what constitutes spam. Follow those guidelines and avoid spamming. For instance, Twitter doesn’t like your content to contain a link in every post. For best results, Twitter says you should publish four consecutive social media posts which include a link, then post the fifth post without any link. This way, Twitter won’t look at you as a spammer. All the social media platforms have rules about spamming and what you can do to comply with their rules. Familiarize yourself with the anti-spam guidelines for each social media platform and follow them.
Content promotion in social media may be one of the most effective ways to get your content seen. But it is not the only way to achieve visibility for your great content. The other ways you can do content promotion are through pay per click advertising and through public relations.
Pay per click advertising lets you set up online ads at Google. You only pay if Google’s user clicks on your ad when they see it. Google insists that you write an ad that’s relevant to their user, and they will also check to see that your ad leads to a site that’s relevant to your user’s search query. The amount of clicks you get will also be determined by your bid: you can bid a higher or lower price than your competitors. Higher bids for any specific keyword or phrase will appear higher up in Google’s search engine results. Set your ppc bids carefully — you can waste a lot of money if you bid too high or too low or you use the wrong keywords. Use Google’s Adwords analytics to make sure you are doing things right.
The other major way to obtain content promotion is through public relations. Hire a public relations agency or hire someone in-house. Create press releases and circulate them through the wire services. Some of these wire services are free and some will charge you for distribution of press releases. Spend as much as you can afford on public relations. Nothing works like it. A good press release may be seen by lots of media outlets and journalists. A lousy press release will be seen by no-one and is a total waste of money and time.
So — create good content that will be of interest to your target demographic, optimize the content for search engines, then spend whatever you can afford on content promotion and get your content seen by more people than you ever thought possible.
