Shopify SEO Course ↗️ > Unit 5 > Lesson 6 > How to Promote Your Content
Once your content is published – whether it is on your own website, another blog or publication, or on networks like YouTube, iTunes, etc. – your next task is to promote your content so that it receives traffic, engagement, and links to rank better in search. The idea is that if you get enough traffic, engagement, and links, your content, regardless of where it is published, you will ultimately get noticed by your target customer and get them back to your online store.
Various content promotion tactics can achieve one or more of the following goals.
The following # tactics can help you boost traffic, visibility, and social popularity for your content. Note that we’re going to save additional promotion methods that can work towards building links to your content and your website as a whole for the next module on link building.
Add social sharing buttons to your content.
If you are publishing your content on your own website, you should make sure you have social sharing buttons to make it easy for people who consume your content to share it. Shopify offers free social sharing button apps, like AddThis, that will place the main social sharing network buttons on your products and content. You can also add in social sharing buttons using the official developer code for Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and other networks.
Share your content on your social media networks.
Each time you publish new content, you should share it on your social media profiles. Depending on the social media network, you can update your social media audiences in a variety of ways.
As you can see, there are lots of ways to update your social media following as well as reach targeted audiences (such as your customers) through each platform’s advertising network. This means that you can share updates about your newly published content multiple times in multiple ways.
For example, you can let your Facebook Page fans know about your latest content by posting a text description with a link to your content, posting an image from the content along with a link to your content, posting a video from or about the content along with a link to your content, and broadcasting live with a link to your content in the comments. That’s four unique ways to share your content on just one network!
Tag social media profiles and pages that relate to your content.
If you referenced any people, businesses, brands, products, or services besides your own in your content, you can tag them in your social media posts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. The goal is to get the attention of others who may have a larger audience than you on social media. From there, the account you tagged will hopefully check out your content and share it with their audience too.
You can find the profiles and pages of anything you referenced in your content by going to the search box on the social network and typing in their name. Once you find that they have a profile or page, tag it by including it in your social media post using @username or @Profile Name or @Page Name.
Ideally, you would want your status update to look like the following.
Title or Description of Your Content http://domain.com/title-of-your-content Featuring @username, @username, and @username
Title or Description of Your Content http://domain.com/title-of-your-content
Featuring @username, @username, and @username
Depending on the network, you may or may not be able to add a space between your link and the list of profiles and pages you tag. Doing so can help make the link stand out and not get confused with links to the profiles and pages you have tagged.
Add social media hashtags.
Another way to get more reach for social media posts about your new piece of content is through the use of hashtags. On most of the top social media networks, people can click on hashtags in one social media post to find other posts on the same topic. If you use popular hashtags on your social media post, people will be able to discover it easily, along with the link to your content.
Ideally, you would want your status update to look like the following.
Title or Description of Your Content http://domain.com/title-of-your-content #hashtag #hashtag #hashtag
Title or Description of Your Content http://domain.com/title-of-your-content
#hashtag #hashtag #hashtag
The number of hashtags you can use depends on the social network. Twitter, for example, only allows you to have 280 characters for the body of your tweet. Instagram limits your number of hashtags to 30. So the goal is to find the top hashtags that relate to your content and use them according.
Share your content in relevant social media groups.
If you joined Facebook and LinkedIn groups to come up with topic ideas, as suggested earlier in the module, then you may be able to promote your content within those same groups.
There are a few things to note about this strategy. First off, if you are sharing your update in a public group, it will let all of your connections know you are posting within their newsfeed. You don’t want to be that person that has 50 updates fly through about you sharing a link in 50 different groups.
Second, if you go too overboard sharing the same link in multiple groups, Facebook or LinkedIn might lock your account for spamming.
Third, if you don’t pay attention to group rules and the owner doesn’t like link sharing, you might get banned from the group.
Fourth, the same people may be in multiple groups based on interests. You don’t want them to visit their groups and see the exact same post from you from one group to the next.
To avoid running into all of the above challenges, consider posting to only one or two groups a day. Start with the most engaged groups you belong to – the ones where you know people will click through to your post, like it, comment on it, and share it. Then work your way to other groups.
Utilize your social media analytics.
Most of the top social media networks offer business account owners analytics (such as Facebook Page Insights) to see how your posts perform. Be sure to regularly review your social media analytics to see which types of posts get the most engagement and at what time. This will allow you to better promote your content on social media using the types of updates that get the most reach, such as native video over text-only posts on Facebook. It will also give you a better idea how to schedule your updates to ensure they reach the most people possible.
Broadcast an email to your subscribers.
If you have built up an email list of subscribers and customers for your business, let them know when you publish a new piece of content by sending out a broadcast. If you’re already sending out marketing messages to your email list about new products, then you can attach your new content links to your newsletters as well.
This approach will give people a different reason to visit you. While they might not be interested in a product, they might be interested in a blog post, podcast, or video. Hence, you’ve given them a non-purchase reason to connect with you again, one which could actually lead them to a purchase that your standard newsletter marketing wouldn’t have.
Spread it to personal and business contacts in regular emails.
In addition to your email list subscribers, you likely send emails on a daily basis to personal and professional contacts. Whether they are friends, family, or potential customers, they should get a link to both your store and your latest piece of content. The best way to ensure they do is with your email signature.
Instead of just ending your emails with your name, end them with your business details plus your latest content like this.
Best regards,
Jane Smith
Your Website Link
Latest News: Link
You can replace latest news with blog post, video, podcast, etc., followed by the link to your content. The goal is to ensure that anyone you connect with via email also knows about your business and your latest content. It will also ensure that people you regularly email who may ignore your standard website link (because they’ve seen it a dozen times) will notice when there is a new link to content as it will stand out as different on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.
Want more ways to promote your content? Continue to the next module on link building where we’ll look at ways you can build links to your website and your content.
Giles Thomas
CEOOptimize your Shopify conversion rates. 5 lesson course, learn 51 ecommerce best practices to get more visitors to buy.
