Content Marketing Product Specialist Kevin Luchansky contributed to this post.
Writing content is no easy task. From finding a topic idea to editing, it can take hours of time and resources. To make sure you get the best return on your content investment, we compiled a list of the best ways to share content. These options take you beyond your core circle of friends and followers, and will help your organization expand its reach.
1. Keyword Research: Keyword research is a fundamental building block of any online marketing campaign. It is the type of research that can uncover and generate new content ideas, while helping to ensure your content is “search engine friendly.” Since the idea behind content marketing is to make content that is compelling and useful for your audience, uncovering their interests through keyword research is an excellent place to start. There are tools available – such as Google Keyword Planner- that tell you how often a term or phrase is being searched for on the web. Searches that are high volume but low competition give a content creator or blogger a chance to rank higher in search results. Another great resource to find what type of answers users are searching for is to check the internal search box on your company’s website. For instance, if you find that several of your site visitors are searching for “benefits of XYZ,” you may have just found a great idea for your site’s next piece of content!
2. Hashtag Optimization: Did you know tweets with hashtags receive 2x more engagement than those without? If you pick your hashtags wisely, you can encourage engagement and drive your content to new readers. Research hashtags before using them to make sure they haven’t been overtaken by spam accounts and to ensure you’re using it in the right context. For instance, #pr on Instagram is used for Puerto Rico but #pr on Twitter is used for public relations. Additionally, try not to use more than two hashtags.
3. GaggleAMP: We are proud to admit we’re GaggleAMP fanatics. This tool gives you the ability to easily distribute social content. For example, we have a ‘gaggle,’ or group, for Cision staff. Participating staff link their social accounts in the Gaggle platform. Our social media team adds content for our staff to share and with one click, they can distribute it on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest and more!
4. Triberr: This free tool is a great way to make new connections. Once you join Triberr, you can add your blog’s RSS feed to the platform and connect social accounts. You can then request to join ‘tribes,’ or groups, that cover topics you’re interested in, or you can create your own tribe. Once you are a part of tribes with similar content to your own, Triberr makes it very easy for you to share other bloggers’ content, and have them share yours. We have had great success in the marketing and PR groups we have joined on Triberr. We use it as a way to find industry posts to share, drive new readers to our site, and engage with new, like-minded people in our industry.
5. Cision Content Marketing Suite: We partnered with Outbrain, which is the third largest traffic source following Google and Facebook. Our suite allows you to create, amplify and measure your results, and our partnership with Outbrain means your content has the opportunity to cross more than 90K sites as sponsored content, including NBC News, Rolling Stone and CNN. In fact, Allianz Global Assistance increased referral traffic to its website by 20 percent in three months using Cision’s Content Marketing Suite.