4 Ways To Promote Your New Content On a Budget
Guest Post by Michelle Laurey
All images from Pexels
Content is king when it comes to promoting your business or venture on a budget. By creating valuable, actionable content, you can drive traffic to your website, secure qualified business leads, and establish thought leadership in your niche.
Read on to find budget-friendly ways to improve the quality and ROI of your content.
1. Provide Real Value
The main purpose of content is to provide value to the reader. Always maintain focus on this while developing any content.
It can be easy to get distracted by keywords, traffic, engagement, leads, or other business goals for content. However, if the content fails to provide real value to the reader, none of the other actions will follow.
According to the Content Marketing Institute and Content Science, there are five benchmarks to identify value in the content. Ask yourself, does your content check off the following boxes?
- Findable
- Readable
- Understandable
- Actionable
- Shareable
2. Include URL in Email Signature
One of the easiest and most effective ways to ensure your content is findable is to add a direct link to your blog or website in your email signature. The fewer steps involved in finding your content, the more eyes will fall upon it.
Including a blog link is particularly helpful in marketing emails or newsletters. If the recipient's interest is sparked by the email, their curiosity could lead them to learn more.
Having a link to freshly updated content in your email signature is a wide-open door to providing value and building a solid relationship with the reader.
3. Choose a Focus Keyword
Learning SEO for a beginning small business can seem overwhelming, but most of it boils down to using a focus keyword. For this article, we're going to cover two kinds of SEO: on-page SEO and off-page SEO.
The focus keyword pertains to on-page SEO, which focuses on hitting that first page of search engine results.
The secret to finding an effective focus keyword is identifying something relevant to your business, that target customers would type in a searcher, but something that not everyone in your industry is using already.
While this can be a tricky balance to find, there are keyword tools and resources to aid you in your search.
Long-tail keywords, of 3 or more words, tend to yield higher page ranks and better conversion rates. The reason for this goes back to the first point in that the searcher is looking for the answer to a question or value.
Think about when you type something into a search bar. Usually, you are trying to find the answer to a question.
If you are looking for a place to make you a superhero decorate a cake for your child's birthday, you aren't likely to just type in a birthday cake to Google. Instead, you would type something like "specialty cake bakery for kids" or "Batman cake decoration ideas."
These are the kind of long-tail keywords you should identify for your niche.
SEO Don'ts
While it is important to include your long-tail keywords in your content, be mindful not to perform any unethical or questionable SEO tactics. Stay focused on creating quality content that allows the long-tail keyword to fit naturally within the text.
Methods like keyword spamming lower the quality of your content. Additionally, search engines have adjusted their algorithms to recognize tactics like keyword spamming, and it could hurt your SEO results rather than help it.
4. Network in Your Niche
Interconnecting your content with others in your niche is off-page SEO. Building connections with other pages and businesses online both supports your search engine results and helps spread your business' visibility organically.
Search engines recognize backlinks to your content as reassurance that your content is legitimate and valuable. It is like having an "up-vote" to your content.
To receive legitimate backlinks, it pays to start networking within your niche. Reach out to other businesses or bloggers in your space to see what kind of partnerships you can build.
Growing backlinks organically through relations is the most solid method. Embedding backlinks through sketchy methods (domain-squatting, etc.) will raise red flags to Google and other search engines. In the long run, it pays to build links ethically.
In Conclusion
The core of promoting content successfully starts with building quality first. From there, you can incorporate SEO tactics and relationship building methods to promote your new content on a budget.
How do you plan to use these four tips to promote your content?
Author Bio: Michelle Laurey works as a VA for small businesses. She loves talking business, and productivity, and share her experience with others. Outside her keyboard, she spends time with her Kindle library or binge-watching Billions. Her superpower? Vinyasa flow! Talk to her on Twitter.
