How to promote your content with social media

Mark Glenning

Content marketing is all about creating great material for your readers, but what if people never get the chance to read it?

People don’t just find great content by luck, so it’s important to help speed the process along by promoting it. Here are a few ways you can effectively do this through social media:

Share content through corporate social accounts

In addition to publishing content on your corporate news feed, you should promote articles through your usual range of social media accounts, such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. You can also encourage employees to share your posts through their personal accounts to reach a wider audience. By making eye-catching posts that will intrigue readers, you can persuade them to read the full article.

Create snippets

Create a number of snippets based on quotes, facts, statistics, and so on from each news feed article. You can then use these to promote the article by gradually sharing them over social media. This helps to catch people’s attention and encourages them to click through to the complete article.

Snippets also enable you to promote an article repeatedly without appearing repetitive. Most people will not be checking your posts on a daily basis, so this increases the chances of people noticing your new content. Each snippet should have a unique spin on it, so most readers will not even notice how they all link to the same article.

Use images where possible

People tend to engage more with social media posts that include imagery, so it’s helpful to have a range of images related to each article, especially the snippets. These can then be posted together with the snippets for maximum appeal, but don’t overuse any particular image.

Create catchy titles

Lengthy, complicated titles are less likely to catch people’s attention, so try to use eye-catching titles. You don’t even need to settle on a single title, and you can vary the title in snippets to appeal to different audiences. If you use a news writing service or freelancers to create your content, be sure to communicate these requirements clearly.

Optimise for each platform

Using different social media platforms can help you reach a larger audience, but it’s worth customising your posts for different platforms. Many different players are all vying for the attention of social media users, and something that looks good on Twitter may not look so attractive on Facebook.

With new social media platforms constantly appearing, you’ll want to focus on the platforms that will offer the best opportunity to engage with your target audience. Creating focused posts for fewer platforms is arguably more effective than “dumping” carbon-copied posts across every platform.

Create a human connection

Social media was designed with people rather than businesses in mind, so you should aim to start a dialogue with your readers. Asking questions in your article or requesting feedback encourages readers to respond. You may also find that using questions in your headlines encourages readers to contribute their answers.

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Mark Glenning

How to promote your content with social media