A couple years ago, using SEO was enough to promote your content, but now marketers need more advanced methods to achieve their goals. Back then, everyone knew the drill: you put a bunch of keywords in your article, which helps the readers find your content, on the top of the search list.
However, with the rise of social media, it’s become difficult to only rely on keyword search when it comes to promoting your content.
Social media tools have become crucial in marketing and advertising.
However, content marketing is not only about convincing people to like and share your content, it’s also about the usefulness of that content and it quality. Reportedly, 71% of consumers who’ve had a positive social media experience, are likely to recommend the brand.
So how can you make so many people promote your content and actively engage them? Here are 6 top-notch tips.
1. It’s not about you
In a modern world, where the consumer-oriented strategy has taken over the marketing world, there’s no place for egocentricity. The biggest mistake any content creator can make today is to accentuate too much on how their services are better and cooler.
Instead, try to figure out how your content can be beneficial for your followers, based on their preferences. For many businesses, the main focus is selling products and services without paying enough attention to what people really want to get. But self-advertising and ignoring the needs of the consumers will only get you so far. Remember the rule: it’s all about your audience.
2. Define your audience’s preferences
Regardless of what your content is aimed at, evaluating your audience’s preferences is your full-time job as a creator. The contents of your content will depend on their needs and likes.
How can you figure out what your audience likes and what they want to see more? Here are some useful tips and tools:
- If you’re a blogger or you have a blog page on your website, it could be useful to ask your readers about the preferences. A simple question or phrase “If you want to see more content like this, please leave a like and share this post on your social media”. If your readers do like your content, they will let you know.
- Use surveying tools. Such tools like Survey Monkey or simple Google Forms can help you create an easy survey to help you find out and categorize the preferences of your audience.
- Track your traffic.Google Analytics can help you figure out how much traffic your website gets and what content gets more likes and shares.
Once you figure out which content is preferred by your content, you’ll be able to create more of it and stimulate more shares.
3. Engage your audience in conversations
As a busy blogger or entrepreneur, you probably don’t have time to talk to your audience directly. However, by doing this you’ll engage more followers, who will be more eager to promote your content.
“We started this practice a year ago and we’ve been getting only good responses since then”, says Meghan Green, a contact support manager at A-writer. “People like when you cherish what they think and take their suggestions into account.”
But how can you talk to your followers, if you have millions of them? Here a couple of useful tools.
- Periscope. This is a great tool for live streams to help you connect with your followers. It’s fast and very easy to use. Besides, you can use it on the go via your smartphone.
- Facebook live. No need to download one more app, if you already have an active Facebook page. This tool makes it even easier to share and promote your content.
- Livestream. This tool helps you broadcast high-quality videos and allows you to reach your audience from everywhere.
4. Use more visuals
There’s no doubt that visual content is a secret weapon of the modern media. It’s engaging, interesting and visually pleasing. People want to share things that are not only important but also look nice and capture attention.
So to make your content more shareable, make it more visual. How can you do it? Here are some highly recommended tools:
- Canva – a great tool to make visual content of any kind;
- Google fonts – wonderful way to get rid of boring fonts and make your content look more attractive;
- Pictaculous – an amazing tool to help you choose the perfect color that goes best with your content.
5. Make your audience excited about sharing
Give up boring phrases like “Click the ‘like’ button” or “Share if you liked this article”. This is not engaging. To many of your followers such slogans might sound plain and boring. Consider being more creative and use phrases like “Did you enjoy our article? Smash that Like button for more great content!” or “Like what you see? Share it with friends!” This way you’ll make your audience more excited to see more content from you.
6. Is a sharing option available?
Can your audience actually like and share your content? Using special add-ons, you can add a liking and sharing option to your website. The usual way to do it is by putting a share button at the end of an article/under any visual content you’ve posted. But make sure that this option works and your followers can share your content through the media of their choice.
Wrapping up
To get more likes and shares, you should work hard on improving the quality of your content.