Guide: How to market your content and why great content is not enough

How do you maximise your content and have it read and shared over and over again? Is simply creating an amazing piece of content good enough?

The answer is no! We're all At it now, creating content, ebooks, blogs, videos, podcasts, info-graphics, images and so on. We do this for many reasons such as to build our reputation, show our experience and expertise, to educate others and to get more eyes on our brand.

Simply creating a great piece of content will never be enough because if no one seeing it, it's irrelevant. It's the way you distribute and reinvent that content in different forms that will get your message across and help build awareness of your expertise.

In previous blog posts i covered content creation ideas. As with all good marketing campaigns one element will never be enough. Social media alone is meaningless if you don't have content, ideas, a website, email list and so on.

So once you've created your content you'll need to put a mini strategy together for each piece you create. To do this needn't be hard work, simply decide where you'll share this content, where else you'll place it and what results you'd like to achieve, if it's your first campaign, you'll have no results to compare against, so treat the first as your learning curve.

For example if I was to create a video and place it on you tube i'd then embed it on my blog with a rundown on the content then share both via twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, google plus, in groups and forums, pin it on Pinterest, possibly create a LinkedIn post about it too. Then perhaps upload the same video directly to Facebook.

But once the content has been shared via social media you'll need to keep sharing it, remember at anyone time you'll probably have less than 10% of your audience seeing your post. So plan to schedule the content via hootsuite or another scheduling software (see also - When and How to schedule your social media posts). Each time change the title slightly and use questions to appeal to different people. You can analyse which titles and social networks, worked best after your campaign, using both google analytics and analytics built into each social network. this way you'll learn lessons for your next piece of content - what worked, what didn't? - what can I do better next time?

If you have many pieces of content that you have written and are not marketing still, you are certainly missing a trick. Look over old videos and blog posts, do they still hold relevance today? If so, create a new mini strategy for each piece of Content, schedule your posts and create new posts to promote the old. Always include links to old or relevant content you have created previously. (Such as how I've done above). It is also worth noting that old content can always be reinvented and new content created from it.

Here's what you need to know about marketing your content in a nutshell:

1: Create content 2: Create mini content strategy (where will I post this and how any times per day and how long will I do this for?) 3. Repurpose the content in other forms - for example: video to blog post to info-graphic 4. Share via social media, groups and forums many times 5. Generate conversation in groups or forums and include links to your content 5. Analyse your success, how may people clicked my link, how many people then went on to read other content, how many people have given you an email address or most importantly provided you with a lead?

Remember there is no right or wrong but simply opinion.

Think outside the box and make your own rules - Great thought leadership isn't enough in it's own right! In order for people to see your content and for it to be read and distributed you will have to do marketing around each piece! And once you get into the swing of this, the process will become second nature each time, as you see your content shared and commented on more and more you'll feel compelled to keep sharing your knowledge.

Remember keep your content educational, thoughtful, interesting and never make it a sales pitch.

Please feel free to comment below. Is there anything you would add to this post?

You may also like to read - How to create a simple social media strategy