Content Marketing Strategies: Experts extend your reach

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Limited time and Resources:

Web content marketing is quickly becoming one of the most important marketing tools for small business. But many businesses involved in this practice often find themselves pulled in two directions: should they invest in better content production or better content promotion?

Limited Time and Resources

We all have limited time and resources. Every hour we spend on promotion is an hour we can’t spend on improving our content, right? What if there’s a way to get the best of both worlds? What if you could improve your content and your promotion with a single act? It turns out, you can.

Great Content Has Promotion Built In

Before you head out the door, this is not a post about how your amazing content will go viral and take care of itself. There’s some truth there, but you’ve heard it before, and I’m trying to add value.

This is about something else, something journalists have known for a very long time. Input from experts is the difference between good and great content. At the same time, experts will jump at the chance to promote themselves.

The more experts you cite, the more perspectives you bring in, the more people that collaborate on your content, the better it will be. At the same time, the more people you involve in the project, the more people you’ll have with a vested interest in promoting it.

How to Work With Experts

I want to stress that there’s no right way to go about doing this. The following strategy works. Augment it as you see fit.

1. Research – Find authoritative sources and cite them in your article.

Look for trustworthy sources from educational institutions.

Find experts with a large Twitter following, a blog, and an engaged audience.

Look for experts that are very willing to get involved in their community.

Find experts that align well with your perspective, or are good for a polarizing but constructive debate.

Cite all of them, and record their contact information.

2. Correspondence – After writing up your article, contact every expert you cited in your article with a personalized message through their preferred channel.

Let them know you’ll be mentioning them in an article and ask if they’d take a look to make sure they aren’t being misrepresented. Afterward, ask if there’s anything they’d like to add or any changes they’d recommend.

Incorporate any suggested changes as you see fit, and include some of your correspondence into the article.

3. Promotion – By the time you post the article, most of the promotion has already taken care of itself.

In addition to promoting it through your usual channels, simply let your experts know that the article has been posted, and that you’d appreciate it if they mentioned it on their site or networks. Most of them will already be thinking about it, and your little nudge will hopefully be enough to do just that.

Don’t force the issue, or you risk making them feel used.  Everyone wins in this new relationship or it won’t work.

This is just one of many ways to build promotion into your content production strategy. Can you think of others?

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  1. […] Content marketing helps extend your reach by creating content that your target audience wants to read — content including: blogs, white papers, case studies, ebooks, etc. This is what sets it apart from other forms of marketing. Instead of copy focused on the benefits of your company or product, content marketing seeks to solve issues and answer questions important to your customer base. […]



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