This is not a regular resource listicle. This is a battle command.
D-day is here. Your piece of content is ready to launch, after you’ve worked on it for so long.
Catchy headline? Check!
Proofread? Check!
Images and infographics? Check!
Operation “Content Distribution” is on. Your goal: to deliver one piece of content to as many readers as possible.
You’re now going on a mission, only instead of airplanes, helicopters, and battleships, here are your main weapons. These 50+ tools will make sure your content blitz does not miss a single spot in your content distribution operation.
Ready? Forward – MARCH!
Call your allies
Start with your readers! Learn 50+ tools for the ultimate #content distribution!
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Content recommendation: AddThis
Once you launch your content, the first people to be notified should be your most loyal allies: your readers! AddThis informs visitors of your website about more content they may like: when they finish reading one article, they get notified about another one. This way, while they’re at it, your readers never miss more interesting content.
E-mail: Mailchimp, GetResponse, BenchMark
Another great way to recommend new content to your readers is by serving them the content by e-mail. Creating a strong e-mail distribution list is the basic of every content distribution effort. Send your most loyal readers recommendations of your new content – make they feel special by sharing it with them before anyone else sees it :)
Retarget: Boost the News
But what if your readers are no longer on your website, and didn’t check their e-mails? How do you recommend them your new content? That’s exactly what content retargeting by Boost the News does.
Content retargeting recommends your content to readers of your website through online ads, even after they left your website! While they visit other websites, your readers see ads of your content, click on them, and come back to read it.
Out in the battlefield of social
Social Media bombarding is a must! Learn 50+ tools for the ultimate #content distribution!
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Facebook: pages, profiles, groups and ads
Social networks are the mother and the father of content distribution. Many of your loyal followers are there, and posting content on Facebook is one of the most basic steps you should take, to make sure they read your content.
Having a brand page on Facebook is something that most businesses and publishers already treat as a must, but be sure you make use of all the possibilities that the network offers you:
- Personal profiles – you, your colleagues and employees have a powerful social capital. Not only do you have (together) thousands of friends who make up potential readers, but these friends are also more likely to read the content you published, as they receive it from a friend, not from a brand page. Make sure you all share the content also on your personal profiles, to amplify potential readership.
- Groups – Facebook has a huge variety of groups, gathered around professional and personal interests. Find groups related to your topic, and share your texts with thousands of people who are, in fact, your target audience.
- Ads – if the organic reach of your posts is not satisfying and you have a budget that can be dedicated to it, don’t forget to boost your content through paid posts and ads. There are plenty of interesting targeting options, so make sure you advertise your post to the right audience!
Twitter: profiles, tags, hashtags and ads
Another popular network that you cannot miss. Like on Facebook, to increase the range of your content blitz, make use of all available tools: tweet your content from your company profile and from your personal profile, tag relevant people (for example, if they are mentioned in the content) and encourage them to retweet, use hashtags to increase the visibility of your posts, and, of course, if you can afford it – top it with sponsored tweets!
LinkedIn: profiles, groups, posts and ads
Especially for those writing B2B content, LinkedIn offers one of the highest ROI on your content distribution. That’s because its audience consists mostly of professionals with real decision-making power. LinkedIn provides some well-targeted potential audiences. Share links to your content on your company page and also through your personal profile. Apart from sharing links, you can also repurpose your content in the form of a LinkedIn post – these spread better and become highly viral on the network.
LinkedIn groups are particularly powerful – they are gatherings of the greatest brains in each industry. Make sure to find the best groups in your field, join, and share with them your thoughts.
Google Plus: profiles, pages, communities, collection
You can find profiles, pages, and communities in all the other social networks. But apart from these, Google Plus allows you to share your content in one more way: collections. Gather your pieces of content into thematic collections, and help your potential readers finding more interesting content on each topic.
Carpet-bombing content: Buffer, Hootsuite, SocialPilot
It’s not easy to coordinate a content blitz -how do you make sure you’re bombing your content everywhere possible? These three tools are here to help you. They allow you to automatize your social media sharing and plan in advance posts on almost all social networks.
From telegram to hologram: Pinterest, Flickr, Instagram, Slideshare, Youtube (+ tags & ads)
Once upon a time, text was the main method of transmitting messages. But these times are long gone, and now online content goes way beyond the written word. One piece of content can be the source of an infinity of visual elements, and with it, a whole new world of distribution options.
If you have original infographics or images embedded in the text, share them on Pinterest, Flickr or Instagram.
The main points, arguments, and conclusions of your content, together with the graphic elements, make also great material for a presentation. It takes a few moments to turn a piece of text into an interesting presentation and uploading it to SlideShare – a great way of getting more visibility for your content. And once you have created the presentation, it only takes a few additional moments to automatize it and turn it into a simple yet informative video, which can be uploaded to Youtube. Nice, isn’t it?
When uploading your graphic content, don’t forget one of the most important things: tagging. Giving the right tags and categories will help your content be “findable” on these platforms. Of course, all of them also have paid promotion options, so give it a try and see if it pays off for you.
Webinars (Google+ Hangouts, Skype, GoTo Webinar, Periscope) and Podcasts (Opinion)
Another way of transforming your written knowledge to a multimedia experience is by creating podcasts and webinars based on it.
Podcasts are popular because they enable people to enjoy your content even in untraditional places and situations (in the car, jogging, while taking a shower…). According to a research by Pew, about a third of Americans aged 12 or more listen to podcasts! By recording your content and adding to it some few more insights, you can create an interesting podcast, and give your followers one more way to enjoy your content. “Opinion” is one of the most popular podcast recording apps (and it’s free), but hey, if you can record and edit using any other program, you’re good to go.
A similar thing can be done with webinars – adapt your content to a discussion-friendly format, add some insights and prepare for some questions, and you have yourself an interesting webinar. There are many tools for creating webinars, the simplest and one of the most popular of them being Google+ Hangouts (webinars held on this Google+ are simultaneously transmitted on Youtube, and then continue available for watching – which is a great added value). You can also experiment webinars with Twitter’s popular app, Periscope.
Behind the lines of the enemy
Enter your competitors territory! Learn 50+ tools for the ultimate #content distribution!
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Show up on your competition’s website: Outbrain, Taboola
What if you could get your content published not only on your website, not only on social media but also…on a huge number of other websites, including your competition, and websites frequented by your potential readers? This is what Outbrain and Taboola help you doing. Promote your content through one of these platforms, and they will serve it around the web in the form of “recommended content” to millions of readers.
Content kidnapping: Sniply
And what if you could get a direct link to your content on an interesting, popular article that is closely related to the topic of your content? This is what Sniply does. Using Sniply, every time you share someone else’s content, you can attach to it a link to your own content – this way “riding” on its popularity and bringing more readers to your content.
Content curation: Flipboard, Paper.ly, Scoop.it, Storify, Feedly
One piece of content has good distribution potential. But several pieces of content, brought together, have an even bigger potential! How can you take advantage of the popularity of different articles, to promote your content?
Use content curation platforms like Flipboard, Paper.ly or Scoop.it to curate relevant content from the web. Gather the content you’ve curated in the form of a short magazine, add to this magazine your own piece of content, and spread it around. People are more likely to open, read and share a resource in which they have not only one interesting article, but several! Moreover, if you publish other people’s content on such magazine, they will be likely to share it themselves, to increase the visibility of their content. This way you can get tons of free shares!
Call for support
Reach out to influencers! Learn 50+ tools for the ultimate #content distribution!
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Getting your content published on external websites: PR Newswire
Getting your content published on a big number of external websites, blogs, and portals, is the jackpot of content distribution. Not only your content gets much more visibility and popularity, you also gain new high-quality links to your website and the prestige of having your name on a number of different websites. But how do you pitch your content to all these websites? This is where PR Newswire comes to your help. Send them your text, and they will send it to thousands of other websites, picked according to parameters which you determine (location, topic, etc). It’s costly, but worth a try!
Getting your content shared by influencers: Growbots, Buzzsumo
Getting your content shared by big influencers is another big prize for the content creator. It takes you days and nights of work to distribute your content through all social media, while one simple mention or share by a big influencer in your industry can have much more powerful effects. How do you reach and pitch these influencers? Growbots can help you. Growbots helps you create lists with dozens of e-mails of relevant influencers and professionals and automatize your pitches to them. You can have your content sent to dozens of influencers in basically no-time!
By the way, Buzzsumo also has an “influencers” function, which helps you finding influencers in your field who you can later pitch with your content. Although it only finds you their Twitter accounts, it’s still worth a shot!
Consult with other military experts
Dive deep into communities! Learn 50+ tools for the ultimate #content distribution!
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Disqus
Disqus is one of the most popular comment widgets for blogs and websites. Thousands of websites have it installed to enable readers to comment their content. What is great about Disqus is that it works as a network: instead of one-time comments, you get a profile, in which you can see your previous comments, get notifications on replies to your comments, follow other users, and see other discussions that are taking place! Here’s how you can hack Disqus to promote your content: (1) join channels relevant to your topics and follow profiles similar to yours; (2) check what discussions are taking place in your fields of interest; (3) enter the discussion and offer interesting insights from your content, with a link – if your insights are interesting and bring added value to the discussion, there is a high chance that participants will go read your content.
Quora, Yahoo Answers
Does your content answer particular questions and give interesting data and insights? If it does, there is probably someone online looking for it. Don’t let them search too much, help the answer reach them directly! Enter Q&A platforms such as Quora and Yahoo answers, and search for questions to which your content offers good answers. Post your answer with a link to your content, and we’re sure the asking user will appreciate it!
Slack Groups, Professional Communities, Reddit (+Reddit ads)
We know slack as a great chat platform, often used in workplaces to enhance group communication. But few know of the vast variety of active professional slack groups! Search for a slack group relevant to your industry, and find there numerous potential readers for your content. These are people who will not only read your content, but also engage in conversation with it, give feedback, and may be influenced by it and become new clients or followers.
The same works for professional communities and forums, where experts exchange knowledge and experiences to help each other out. That’s a great place to share your thoughts and insights, and get your content read by the big shots. For example, we at Boost the News often frequent “GrowthHackers” and “Inbound.org”, because we are in the world of online marketing. You should easily find a group that is relevant to your area!
Another good place to search for experts’ communities is Reddit. Search for relevant “subreddits”, and share your content with other Redditors. A plus about Reddit: you can also sponsor a Reddit post, to make sure it stays on the top of the discussion.
Wikipedia references
If your content contains original data and insights, add this information to a highly relevant Wikipedia article, and include references with links to your content. It will become a knowledge evergreen, available to millions of Wikipedia readers!
Launch an offensive – get your content out there!
Get your content out there! Learn 50+ tools for the ultimate #content distribution!
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Google, Bing, and Yahoo Search Ads
A great way to make your article visible for a long period of time is optimizing it to relevant popular search terms. This way, when users look for these terms on search engines, they find your article and read it. But, especially when there is a lot of competition around, what happens if your article can’t be found organically on the search engines? Well, all search engines offer you to promote your content in search results, through search ads. You choose the search terms for which you want your content to be promoted (let’s say, for example, “content distribution”, like in this post), and when someone searches “content distribution”, your content appears before the rest of the unpaid search results.
Blogging platforms: Medium, Tumblr
Medium and Tumblr are two of the most popular blogging platforms that have something in common: instead of just being platforms for blogging, they act rather like social networks of blogging. You have your own profile, and with it you can communicate with your readers, discuss with them, and comment other posts. You can also search for posts in particular topics, popular posts, posts of particular users, and more.
There are two main ways to use these blogging platforms to promote your own content:
First, you can syndicate some of your content to these platforms. Publish a similar version of your content on Medium or Tumblr, to make it more visible to users of these platforms (they will be able to see it in the search results of the platforms, on trending lists, etc).
Second, you can search the platforms for blogs and posts related to your topic, and comment, bringing in your useful insights and links to your content.
Content directories: Stumble Upon, Triberr, Alltop, BizSugar, Digg (+ads)
Content directories, as the name suggests, are websites that gather content from around the web and present it to readers, according to different lists and topics of interest. Submit your content to these websites to make it available to their users. Some of them, like Stumble Upon, also give you the possibility to promote your content, so it will get more visibility than other content on the website.
Skype status and e-mail auto-respond
Last but not least, don’t forget to use your own personal contacts and tools to promote your content. Do you have a Skype account? Why won’t your contacts know about your new piece of content? Someone just wrote you an e-mail? They should know you’ve just worked on some great piece! Explore these opportunities – they are quite unusual, and might positively surprise your contact people.
Private, if you’ve reached this point, it means you’ve successfully passed the pre-mission brief. You’re all set, equipped and ready to rock. Are you still here? You’ve got 30 seconds to go blitz that content. GO GO GO!
The post Content blitz: 50+ tools that will make your content bomb the internet appeared first on Boost The News - Media monitoring done right!.