Welcome to the fifth installment in our “Collective Wisdom” series of content marketing strategy articles. In this issue, we’ll dig into the multifaceted and sometimes daunting world of promoting content, featuring wisdom and examples from some of the world’s top digital marketers.
Previously we’ve covered pre-planning for content marketing success, the art of crafting powerful content, along with enduring and often-overlooked content creation best practices. Now it’s time to move on and tackle show-stopping content promotion.
Below we explore eight helpful tactics used by some of the best in the business when it comes to the art of promoting your content, with methods that will make your audience stop, look, and engage.
Showstopper 1: Unleash the Influencer Marketing Kraken
The most basic premise of influencer marketing is all about harnessing the power of people who hold real and relevant influence for your target audience. But when done smartly, influencer marketing can also be a strong content promotion tactic, which is why it’s become highly effective for both B2B and B2C brands of all sizes.
With global influencer marketing advertising spending forecast to double from $5 billion to $10 billion over the next five years (Mediakit, 2018), and 65% of global brands planning to increase their influencer marketing spending over the next year (World Federation of Advertisers), the time to release your influencer marketing Kraken could hardly be better.
Numerous studies from Nielsen and others over the years have continued to show that our trust in our fellow real human beings is roughly twice that we generally have for brands or organizations — or, most certainly, the Kraken — and influencer marketing has grabbed hold and run with this natural preference for people.
Noted marketing speaker and author Jay Baer, founder of Convince and Convert, encourages thinking long-term when it comes to influencer marketing.
How to nurture these relationships early and often is featured heavily in “Words of Wisdom: Lee Odden’s Top 9 Insights on How to Succeed at Influencer Marketing 2.0,” by TopRank Marketing senior content marketing manager Caitlin Burgess, a great resource for learning more about the specifics and nitty-gritty of developing your own smart and successful influencer marketing campaign.
One of our most popular annual collections of the very best content marketing influencers was recently released, and it offers a great way to find and easily follow many of the brightest professionals in the influencer marketing world: “50 B2B Marketing Influencers and Experts to Follow Into 2019.”
Influencer marketing’s use as a robust promotional tactic is explained further in the following six resources.
Six Kraken-Approved Influencer Marketing Resources For Your Toolkit
- Get your feet wet with our CEO Lee Odden’s “Just Getting Started with Influencer Marketing? 6 Things You Should Know,” which is a fine introduction to successfully working with influencers, including best practices and prime opportunities.
- Gaze into the far reaches of influencer marketing possibilities with our own content marketing manager Joshua Nite, as he goes “Beyond the Hype Cycle: It’s Time to Redefine Influencer Marketing,” with a selection of helpful methods to make the practice a trusted part of a newer and better integrated marketing strategy.
- It’s been a strong year for influencer marketing, and our content strategist Anne Leuman explores a fascinating array of trends for brands and beyond, in “7 Influencer Marketing Trends That Will Rule 2018.”
- Global enterprise B2B firms are reaping the benefits of influencer marketing as well, and our series of interviews by Lee with leading figures digs into the details, including expert marketers from IBM, Adobe, Cox Communications, SAS, Dun & Bradstreet, and others.
- A primer of some of the many specialty influencer marketing tools is laid out in infographic format by IZEA, which has also recently released a report showing influencer marketing near the top of the marketer effectiveness rating chart.
The B2B side of influencer marketing is the subject of Lee’s “What B2B CMOs Need to Know About Successful Influencer Marketing,” with special focus on how today’s chief marketing officers can benefit.
Showstopper 2: Invade Social Media with Hyper-Specific Promotion
Every social media platform offers its own unique twist and flavor — which is a big part of what makes the social landscape so rewarding, thrilling, and at times challenging — and you should use these differences to your advantage by tailoring your own bespoke promotional messaging for each platform’s unique audience.
Author and speaker Guy Kawasaki suggests that smart marketers strive for a greater dose of the human factor in social promotion.
Making your social promotion hyper-focused with a human touch starts with the basics of ensuring that your textural messaging elements fit a social platform’s limits, and recognizes the differing user demographics of each when writing promotional copy for social media.
Keep track of the latest image and video sizing recommendations and create pixel-perfect visuals tailored specifically for each social media platform you plan to use for promotion. SproutSocial’s “Always Up-to-Date Guide to Social Media Image Sizes” is one of many similar guides, and a good jumping off point when trying to track down the latest Pinterest pin dimensions or Twitter in-stream photo sizes.
In addition, also make a point to stay informed on new promotional elements that platforms roll out, and incorporate them in a well-thought-out manner in your promotions.
Stay up on these by finding out where each social platform announces its new features and beta tests, whether it’s the platform’s blog, website newsroom, fan newsletters, or specific social profiles made to inform marketers and…
