You can’t just publish an article and expect to get traffic to it forever. You can’t just perform a successful marketing campaign & expect the same technique to work every single time.
Publishing an article is only 50% of the entire work. In order to get your article the proper outreach it deserves and/or it needs, there’s a lot more work needed to be done.
Even though your article is good and very helpful to your audience. Still, it can go unnoticed. Search engines like Google can’t even bother to index it. Your own audience won’t even know your post exists if you don’t let them know.
You have to make sure that all the effort and the hard work that you did don’t go unnoticed. At least do your part of outreaching it to your proper audience.
Here are some few things that you need to do in order to get your piece the proper exposure.
Create a summary & post it in the mass answering sites:
If your post is large such as a tutorial or step by step guide then you should create a summary. And publish it in the mass answering sites (like Reddit & Quora). The reason I am separately mentioning these two sites and not just putting them in the list of all social bookmarking sites list is just because these two have immense potential of sending traffic to your site. Both short term and in long term basis.
In your summary put all the main points of your article with a short description with them so you can compel the audience to click on the link coming to your page.
Now many of you guys might say that in a site like Quora how am I supposed to put my article summary (or any part of it) without being flagged. The answer is simple make your posts as much as natural & relevant if you are answering somebody. The main objective should be offering help and in the process earn some exposure out of it (if you can).
Create Videos & Infographs, and put them in the proper channels:
Limiting your content only in the text form is foolishness these days. After the Google’s Core May 2020 algorithm update its pretty much clear as a sunny day that one should diversify his or her’s content.
Create a podcast of your article & put it on YouTube. Create a inforgraph of your step-by-step guide and put it on the image sharing sites. And don’t forget the proper #tags with them when you do.
Send Newsletters:
Its probably the most effective and high ROI yielding technique of all. But it only works if you have a good subscriber base in your blog.
Write a good teaser of your article and send it to your subscribers. Now this can be tricky your email has to be compelling enough to get a click back, but also it cannot be too persuasive, so that your subscribers may think that you are just click baiting them.
Try to make your newsletters as much as a personal human to human interaction like. Your subscribers must feel like that they are talking to you and not to an answering machine or getting an automated message.
Most obviously promote through social networking sites & social bookmarking sites:
These campaigns should be like never ending. Use automated tools to recycle your old posts and tweets. Whenever you can, you put a short link of your post in your tweets.
Again, use the summary of your article & put it in platforms like Linkedin Content Publishing platform. Make use of your infographs & videos. Put them in Pinterest, Vimeo etc. Promotion in social networking sites doesn’t have to be direct always. It can be done & should be done indirectly too. It’s not all about getting as much as traffic. It’s also about getting your brand name out there. Making your name stand up in the crowd.
And don’t do promotion all the time. It will only make you look greedy. Social media is all about fun, so try to have some and then occasionally put your word out.
Put your piece in social bookmarking sites as well. Although they are not much effective these days, but still when it comes to brand awareness and exposure then can perform really well.
Reach out personally to your fellow writers:
You guys may wanna ask me why? The reason is simple & pretty straight. They can help you by getting you the exposure you seek.
Many influencer’s do paid tweets. You can ask them to promote your article for a fee. Many also do for a favor or something else. I will suggest that you go talk to them directly & figure yourself out whatever that suits you.
Many bloggers can also help you earn links. If there are dead links in their site’s which can be replaced by your page’s link. Then you just have to make an offer that they can’t refuse.
In my case, I talk to my fellow marketers though social channels and forums, even though when I don’t want something from them in return. A good relationship makes easy to ask for a favor. And also it helps me to keep myself updated & keep my head in the game.
Act Accordingly:
You can’t just publish an article and expect to get traffic to it forever. You can’t just perform a successful marketing campaign & expect the same technique to work every single time.
You have to update your post, marketing technique, outreach methods, social media tactics, according to the need of time.
The most basic example of updating the post will be adding tags. If you are currently ranking and getting traffic for ‘best books on server maintenance’, and you saw an opportunity to get ranked for ‘best books on CentOS server’ or ‘best books on Ubuntu server’. Then I will say add those tags right away, if more tags mean more targeted traffic then why not?
Now, just adding only those tags might not work every time. You have to update your article according to it as well. Because if a user comes to your site by clicking on one of those tags and don’t get what he or she may be looking for then it will be just bad.
This goes same as well with social media and other marketing campaigns and/or techniques as well. Update & upgrade so you might have an evergreen piece.
