While you may have long had an outreach marketing plan in place for your company, and you’re obtaining solid links from reputable websites and publications, have you thought about what to do to make the most of these opportunities afterwards? The potential for your authoritative content to reach even further is a consideration that often goes overlooked. Read on to find out how to make the most of the outreach links you’ve gained.
Shout about it on social media
Once you have an outreach article published, it’s good practice to share it on all your social channels to expand the reach further. When your followers see your articles being published on other authoritative sites, this helps improve your reputation as a credible source of information and thereby increases trust in your brand.
Make use of hashtags
Hashtags are a helpful way of highlighting the subjects and theme of your content, to enable more viewers to follow it. On Twitter and Instagram in particular, it’s worth checking out the relevant hashtags to use when promoting your guest post in order to increase visibility. You can also ‘pin’ the tweet for your article to your Twitter wall, to help encourage more clicks and increase visibility. Learn more about how to use the latest tips and tricks on social media.
@Mention everyone involved in the content
You should @mention the media outlet that posted your content, and use this as an opportunity to deepen the connection with the journalist or influencer. Should the content make reference to other brands or research from other companies, it’s good practice to @mention them too. This will make them aware of the presence of the content, and of their being used as a source. They may then share the content for you on their own social channels. If they don’t, you could always prompt them to do so. Find out more about the best ways to use social media in your 2020 marketing strategy.
Keep an eye on comments
One of the great advantages of social media is its accessibility. For good or for bad, every viewer can voice their opinion on social media. After sharing your content, keep an eye on the post for engagement – and comments in particular. If you do see comments coming in, be sure to reply to them promptly to stimulate conversation. Even if the comments are unfavourable, by responding to viewers you can sustain an authoritative presence for your brand, in an open-minded and thoughtful way.
Use influencer marketing
Knowing how to use influencers in outreach can be hugely beneficial in marketing strategies. To make the most of this avenue, reach out to influential people in your niche to spread the word about your content.
Tweeting at an influencer to let them know about a new article or blog post might result in them clicking, reading, and sharing the article. This is particularly successful if there are influencers that you’ve established relationships with, and were already engaging with before. Discover more about how to use influencer marketing effectively.
Community outreach marketing
Another useful tool in the outreach repertoire is to use community outreach marketing. To do this, it’s good practice to set up a profile on niche online community sites and contribute relevant content to them on a regular basis. This will help to develop your brand awareness and maximise reach. Consider the following communities:
- Quora
- Medium
- YouTube
Sites such as Quora offer companies an additional opportunity to distribute and promote content. One specific advantage of using these kinds of websites is that the content will stay live for years to come, whereas social media offers only ephemeral opportunities.
As a question and answer based platform, an effective way to use Quora is to offer a short extract of your content, in response to a question, and include a link to the site page where it sits. It’s best to re-word your content, or cite it with quotation marks in order to avoid a duplicate content issue. If you simply copy and paste an extract, Quora’s algorithm is likely to identify this as plagiarised content and consequently remove it.
Content syndication
It’s possible to get your content syndicated by becoming a regular contributor for a website that syndicates its content. An example of this would be that it’s possible to republish your content on Medium and LinkedIn to help it reach a wider audience. It’s best to do this after waiting a significant length of time after the original content was published, in order to prevent the initial publication from being outranked.
This kind of content syndication might not always be possible, however, because some publications stipulate that if they publish your article, it must be exclusive to them. This means you cannot publish it elsewhere and you no longer have rights to it. It’s important to be mindful of this so as not to infringe on content usage rights, and damage outreach opportunity relationships that you have built.
Start reaching a greater audience
It can be no mean feat to achieve an outreach opportunity in the first place, so once you have gained a link, it should be circulated as much as possible. By using these various avenues in your marketing outreach strategies, your content will reach a greater audience. This will thereby establish more brand awareness, and your reputation as an authoritative source of information in your particular niche. Find out more about guest blogging, and all of its benefits.
