7-Steps to More Content Exposure

Content Marketing is one of the most effective ways to promote a business, according to the Content Marketing Insitute (CMI). Their latest B2B Content Marketing benchmark study provides more depth. Eighty three percent (83%) of marketers attribute their content marketing success to the value the content provides. Yet, challenges with their B2B content marketing success came from:

• 51% - Strategy issues
• 33% - Content Distribution challenges

So, let's address these challenges. Discussions often focus on ways to improve the material itself, or hone-in on individual marketing tactics. But, after the hard work of content creation, and producing amazing quality work - you need to promote it effectively. Hence the 7-step approach to promoting your content after the core work is done.

Quality & Educational Focus

Of course, it all starts with you have created some outstanding material. Don't rush this stage. It is important to get it right. Regardless of your strategy, every piece of content you produce must be done with quality in mind. Bringing exposure to poor quality content will only shine a light on your company's deficiencies. Or worse, it may simply tarnish your brand reputation, as it leaves a bad sense of your company with the prospect.

A good example of this is in my article in Forbes Storytelling with a Core Requires Market Education. It tells of a company that convinced its prospects NOT to do business with them, by failing to provide relevant and useful information in their 'educational' white papers. This agency used their white papers as an advertising medium, rather than an educational channel. This was a big mistake. So, put in the time, effort, and passion; then teach them something and to make it good!

Content Exposure Model

Below is a model for content marketing tactics to drive exposure for your hard wrought material. This model is intended for your core content. Core content here meaning significant white papers, resource guides, benchmark studies, or research publications. Although it includes lighter pieces as tactics, this approach is not expressly meant for one page case studies, blog posts or standalone guest posts, briefs, brochures, or one page datasheets.

7-Steps to Content Exposure

Whatever type of content marketing approach you take, getting exposure for your material is a fundamental step. What the model points out are different digital marketing tactics (physical in some cases) used to provide greater market visibility by your target audience. Specifically, this spell out a strategy you can use immediately to help with the 33% challenge of content distribution noted earlier.

1 - Blog Posts

Part of your content calendar must include a blogging approach. After developing the core content, write three to four blog posts focused on different topics addressed in the material. This is a clever way of taking pieces of the core material, and putting it out there to generate organic traffic. In effect you are getting search engine exposure to your material, while still keeping the core content gated - thus drawing in leads. Remember that you are writing for both your prospective customer (humans), while also using SEO (search engine optimization) techniques to appease the search algorithms. A well written blog post using good SEO techniques, will be found by your buying audience.

Keep in mind that organically driven traffic is often your ideal prospects. These people were expressly looking for marketers like you, sharing content of interest to them.

Make sure your blog posts are written to focus on ONE topic in your core material. You don't need to cover the entire subject. That's the value and reason for people to download the full white paper! Also, remember to include direct excerpts from your white paper or research. These are important proof points that the longer form content is important to the prospect - who may have found your blog post in an online search.

Lastly, link each blog post to your content landing page. If the reader finds the post interesting, and would like to learn more - they can do so easily. At this point your open source blog post is now a lead generation tool.

If you are left wondering what is the perfect number of words for your post, read: What is the Ideal Blog Post Length? (click on the image to the right) It provides you with market stats, as well as an approach to optimize your own content. This post is meant as a tactical, hands on approach to answering a question many marketers face regularly.

2 - Social Sharing

Social media and social networks are excellent ways to draw more exposure for your content marketing efforts. For each of the three or four blog posts you have written, create three or four different social media assets. Naturally, you will need to make these assets brief, informative, tantalizing, and ALL linking back to the blog post.

Although it is best to create visual content for your social efforts - they don't all have to be graphical. Since most posts on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks are graphical or video oriented at the moment, the rare plain text version can draw substantial attention. Being different or unique counts in the social media space.

An easy way to create social media assets is to create quotes directly from the blog post to which it points. Memorable quotes are often shared quite widely ... so keep this in mind while writing the posts.

For your social efforts, space out the social media assets. You may wish to post two different assets on the week of bringing the post live. Then, to give your post longer life exposure, spread out the next few posts over two to four weeks. Consider repeating a few posts as well. Repetition helps draw attention.

Finally, milk this campaign by rerunning it in a few months. Content is difficult and costly to produce, so re-use is an effective way of giving your content marketing materials punch and longevity.

3 - Video Clips

Having created blog and social content to support your core content marketing material - consider video too. By now you have read about how video marketing is critical to any and all marketing strategies. Hubspot's research asks consumers what type of content best suits them, with the results shown in the associated graph. Although based on B2C consumers opinions, video has a similar impact on decision makers in the B2B space (see quote below).

Companies that use videos in their marketing say they’ve experienced a 27 percent increase in CTR, 34 percent higher web conversion rate, and have seen their revenue grow 49 percent faster year after year than those who don’t.

(Blue Corona Marketing)

As such, consider quick 15-20 second video clip recordings from the author of the post, or your company spokesperson - as social media video introductory clips. Then post these as you would other social posts.

Again, remember to always include a link back to the blog post or the core content (landing page) that you intend to highlight. Whether to point to a landing page, or directly to the core content PDF file is a question of whether to gate or not to gate your content. For a deeper dive on this, read Should you use Gate Content Marketing... or go Ungated?

4 - Paid Campaigns

Depending on the size of your marketing budget, you may or may not want to include paid campaigns in your plan. Although I have included Resource Pages in this mix (free SEO based download page), most of these campaigns are paid efforts.

Basic to any content produced, is your landing and/or resource pages. Landing pages are pages to which paid campaigns point (Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads, Bing Ads, ...). Whereas, resource pages are SEO oriented. These are the pages to which many 'Resource' header link points when you are browsing a company's website. In both cases these are meant to provide some information about the content, to tantalize the reader into downloading the material. If it is interesting enough they will exchange their contact information for the content detailed on the page. Hence, a lead is born.

Content Syndication is another paid format. In this case you provide your content to the syndicator. They will generally host it or provide a link back to your landing page. Payment to syndicators is typically based on costs per lead (when they provide the contact information for those who downloaded your material). Alternatively, they may charge on a pay per click (PPC) basis ... as they sent traffic back to your landing page.

Regardless of the resource used here, track this download data carefully. It will help you determine the best campaigns or channels for your lead generation.

5 - Nurturing Campaigns

Keeping in touch with your prospects and clients is always a smart choice. Use the quality content as part of your nurture track. Send your opt-in client list a well crafted email providing reasons they will want to read this latest white paper or research. Make it graphical, and remember to add a link to your resource page for the download.

6 - Events

Another good source of content exposure are your events. This article was written during the COVID pandemic but, after the crisis dissipates physical marketing will come back. Consider making a theme of your newly created material at your next in-person event (tradeshow, conference, etc). Have the digital versions available for distribution to those who attend one of your talks, panel sessions, or who show up at the booth. In addition, make sure you have printed copies you can distribute with your card, and the scan of the recipient's badge. Yes, this sounds very old-school. Despite that, it is one more element of exposure, and getting your brand name associated with convenience and quality work - in the prospect's mind.

On the digital front, use your latest material to run a webinar, panel session with clients and industry influencers, or as a key part of a virtual seminar. Here the purpose is to draw attention to your material and to associate your brand with subject matter expertise.

Webinars and panel sessions are particularly useful in the case of discussing new research. Industry statistics, benchmarks, and new insights are always a pull for influential professionals in any field.

7 - Bylines

Finally, don't forget about bylines in association journals, journal blogs, and press coverage. If the material is new research - then it warrants a press release. Either reach out to the press in your field directly - offering the content up-front, and the press release attached. Remember, you can always use tools like HARO (Help A Reporter Out by Cision), or Qwoted - to help you get your word out to publications. Alternatively, with some budget (generally $700 - $1400 US), you can post the press release on one of the news wires for general distribution (businesswire, PR wire, etc).

Beyond press releases, writing and submitting well written bylines to press publications may have a similar effect. This takes considerable effort. Not only to write the byline, but then to champion the article to various publications. However, this will not only expose your material to a broader target audience, but it will also give your site more credible backlinks (good for SEO).

Driving Content Exposure

In today's B2B marketing world, content marketing is a key element. Yet articles still scream out, "between 60 and 70 percent of content created by marketing departments at B2B companies sits unused" (Forbes, 2016). With this in mind, driving content exposure needs to be an imperative for every B2B marketer.

Use the 7-step proven, tactical outline of how to improve your own content exposure. Please also let me know if this helped in your efforts... or if there are additional ideas that I have not considered.