How to Create a Winning Content Promotion Plan - BuzzStream
Many content marketers view âpromotionâ as a phase that begins once content goes live. The truth is, promotion should begin much earlier than that, running parallel to production, and most of the promotion work should be completed before launch. Hereâs a plan framework you can use for your next content campaign.
A good promotion plan begins with audience research and the development of targeted messaging.
If you have the time and budget, doing research like survey analysis is really helpful. At BuzzStream, weâre a bit more informal. Our planning stage usually involves a discussion of who weâre creating the content for and what their needs are. We use analytics data from previous pieces, information about what weâve seen performing well on Twitter, and insight from conversations weâve had with customers.
We segment our audiences based on the value theyâll get from the content. For example, one group might be new to online marketing and would use the guide to level up their skills. Another group might be people in charge of outreach teams who could incorporate our guide into their training materials. A third group might be influencers who donât really need to learn anything new but who appreciate good outreach content to share with their followers. These segments become the foundation for influencer lists and outreach messaging.
Before beginning content creation, you should spend some time thinking about what you want to communicate to each of your audience segments. (Developing personas can be really helpful here.) Think about what benefit each segment will get from consuming your content. Ask yourself what will motivate people to share it, and then spend some time thinking about reasons why people might choose not to share.
If youâre a team of one, this process can be more of a mental exercise than a physical document. If you have a team, creating a shared doc that everyone can refer back to is extremely useful.
Hereâs an example of some of the questions youâll want to ask during this stage:
Once you nail your audience segments and messaging, you can be more confident about content creation. Youâll know exactly how and why youâre benefitting the groups of people who are most important to your business, and that knowledge can guide you as you make important decisions about the piece.
As youâre developing the actual content, you should also develop a list of people and websites that you want to share it. The earlier work you did on audience development can is your foundation here. For each segment, create a list of top-tier and mid-tier influencers.
As you go, make note of what medium you want to use to reach each of the influencers (email, social, etc.) You should also figure out whether a cold pitch will work or if youâll need a relationship first.
To figure out how big your influencer lists should be, think about what your coverage or sharing goals are. How many people do you expect to write about you? Take that number and divide it by your usual outreach response rate. Thatâs how many people youâll need to send outreach to.
Good content marketers often begin with long lists influencers and then narrow them down to only the most relevant, targeted prospects for outreach. Itâs a time-consuming but worthwhile process. If you want to work this way, your initial list length should be about 5X the length of your ideal outreach list.
Next, take your influencer lists and make a goal to engage with each person or website on that list at least once before you pitch your content.
For those influencers that you think would be okay with a cold pitch, you can do something simple like a tweet a post and @ mention them. This will at least get your name on their radar.
Influencers who you want more of a relationship with will require more involved engagement. Begin monitoring them via Twitter lists or Feed.ly and look for opportunities to provide commentary on something theyâve written or shared. A single @ mention on Twitter isnât enough. Try to reply to a tweet and spark a conversation or consider leaving a thoughtful comment on one of their blog posts. If you have the time and resources, look for opportunities to meet them in real life at conferences and events.
The week before your content goes live should be a very busy one. This is when youâll need to draft all of your social media posts, outreach emails, and customer messages. You may want to queue up social media ads and plan targeting, as well.
One of the best things you can do before your content goes live is pretest it with influencers. You get the benefit of their buy-in and their good advice about ways to improve your content or messaging before you share it with the world.
You can be really strategic and send your content to a subset of influencers who you want to target, but weâve honestly seen a lot of success just by asking for volunteers.
We’re finishing up our newest BuzzStream guide about Content Promotion. Would you like a review copy? Let me know. (It’s good, I promise ð
â Matt Gratt (@mattgratt) March 14, 2014
However you go about it, be sure to give the influencers enough time to actually look over your content and provide feedback.
You should plan to write at least two email templates for each of your audience segments. (If you have three segments, thatâs at least six templates total.) The template variations should test elements like subject line or CTA. They should also leave room for personalization.
Your most important influencers (the top 5 or 10 people and websites on your list) should get completely custom messages. To save yourself time on the day of launch, write them in advance. Hopefully by this point youâve chatted or engaged at least a few times, so that personalization can refer back to previous conversations youâve had.
Influencer campaign framework
The day your post goes live, your goal is to share it as much as you can. This means post it to social media, put your ads live, and begin outreach.
As you work through your outreach list and begin sending messages youâll start to see patterns in the results. Certain templates will perform better than others. When this happens, kill the bad ones, go with the good ones, and then maybe even create a new variation to try.
Youâll also often find that youâre connecting with some groups better than others. If this is the case, invest more deeply in the segment thatâs working. Expand your influencer lists and try more outreach to that group.
Make yourself available to moderate comments on what youâve shared, retweet the nice things other people have said, and reply to any questions that come up. This will help you build stronger relationships with the audiences you care about and give you opportunity to further amplify your content.
The initial buzz your content created will likely begin to fade out as the week continues. Use this time to do more of whatâs working and claim some of the easy victories.
Look to see which of your paid social media campaigns performed the best on day one. Invest more heavily in those channels and that messaging. If you find that everything has flopped, try again with a different headline or different targeting criteria.
Continue to share and retweet the nice things people have said about your content. Pay special attention to major influencers who say nice things during off-peak hours. A well-timed retweet could provide a nice traffic spike.
Make sure you take the time to submit your articles to email newsletters and weekly roundups. Be sure itâs been shared within relevant subreddits and social bookmarking sites. These are simple things to do that can bring nice, qualified traffic to your content.
If your content went even a little bit viral, thereâs a good chance people shared it without crediting you. Use reverse image search, tools like Fresh Web Explorer, and other link reclamation tactics to find all of those instances and secure the link.
As things wind down, donât close the door on your content. Keep a Tweetdeck search running in the background so youâll catch when people share it. Be sure to send a genuine thank you when they do.
Use the twitter and feedly lists you created to continue to engage with influencers. Odds are that if they were important to this campaign, theyâll be important in the future, too. The more you can do to build relationships, the better.
Monitor social media, email services like HARO, and the web in general for opportunities to repurpose or reshare your content. You may find opportunities to turn it into a case study or suggest it as a resource.
You could also use tools like BuzzStream to schedule regular site prospecting and get a batch of fresh contacts delivered to your inbox on a weekly basis. Scroll through these sites for opportunities to place your content.
After your promotion campaign draws to a close, spend some time reviewing metrics like shares, visits, and conversions. Call out things youâll want to remember for next time.
You should also refer back to your original influencer lists. Itâs likely that some people who you initially considered moderate tier 2 influencers proved to actually be tier 1 advocates. Reorganize the list based on the results of your campaign, so you can be better equipped to move into the next project.
Content Promotion Plan, from The Advanced Guide to Content Promotion
What do your content promotion campaigns look like? Let us know in the comments or tweet to us @BuzzStream.
Great article Stephanie! Could you elaborate more on what you mean by “reclaim the link” when speaking about backlinks?
Hi Cameron,
There are a lot of opportunities where journalists/bloggers talk about a brand or piece of content or study but don’t include a link back to it. This is an easy win. I’ll reach out and say something like “Thanks for mentioning our content/brand/study, would you mind linking over to the [content] so it’s easy for readers to find?”
Technically it’s claiming a link for the first time (and not re-claiming it), but that’s the standard term that people tend to use for those types of opportunities. Does that help?
Thanks!
Another point worth noting is that sometimes you might have to go through paid channels to promote your content. This is what a lot of the bigger organisations tend to do particularly on social-media sites such as Twitter and Facebook.
Hi Tim,
Reaching out to writers after you’ve read something they’ve posted is a great way to build relationships and rapport. Good idea!
Stephanie
Hey Stephanie,
Amazing article… I’ve been neglecting the promotion part of my content marketing for such a long time.
And I’ve been neglecting the part of the promotion that happens BEFORE the content is published even longer!
I’ve started researching this stuff just recently and I think your post is brilliant!!
One other thing I would like to add here:
It would be much more effective and much less time consuming if you do all these outreach tactics naturally, and not just prior to writing a piece.
Once you read a new article, you can comment on it and reach out to the author just for the sake of it. Then.. in case you’ll be writing your own piece about it, you will already have a small connection waiting to be expanded.
How does that sound? ð
Hi Stephanie. Really great post. Outreach is something I struggle with, as I am much better at the actual story and content creation than I am sharing it, so I truly appreciate your tips.
For ongoing opportunities, I think you will find Mention.com helpful. It catches a lot of mentions and opportunities that Twitter and Google Alerts together does not. Would love for you to give it a try and let us know what you think. Look forward to your feedback.
Thanks again!
Shannon
A brilliant post. It seems like it would radically change the way we promote our content.
Thanks Stephanie.
Hi Helen,
I don’t currently have anything planned, but that’s a great idea. I’ll see what I can do. Thanks!
Thanks!
Stephanie, this is really interesting and full of fresh ideas article, but I am more interested in the Measure Results section which is pretty short. Do you plan to write more about it in the near future? Thanks, Helen
I’m glad you found it useful! Thanks for the kind words ð
Great resource. Will be sharing this with some of my clients for sure!
This is a pretty awesome. Thanks guys!
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Website: https://www.stephaniebeadell.com
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