The Most Effective Way To Promote Your Content Content promotion isn’t just about that one piece of content you’re working on right now. It’s about all of your content and how you want people to perceive your brand now and in the future. That being said, the promotion aspect of content marketing is probably the hardest and most time consuming part of the entire content marketing process. Why you ask? Because you should be thinking about how you are going to promote content before you even brainstorm content ideas. Promotion is literally involved in every part of the content creation process. Ask questions like, “What influencers do I want to target and what companies do I want to build relationships with?” We need to think about one last thing before we start learning more about promoting content. When promoting content, don’t just think about that one piece. Think about future content that you can create and promote after building relationships with influencers and companies. I’ll go into more detail later.

Now I’m going to show you the exact tactics I use everyday to promote content. The most effective way to maximize reach to your content is by creating a blog post that lists out companies and influencers that have a large social presence. For example, the idea of the post could be: 20 Top Marketing Tools To Learn in 2015

Best Content Marketing Tips from 50 Content Marketers 10 Startups To Watch in 2015 The reason you want to write a list post like the ones above is so that you can reach out to the companies and influencers that you link to within the post. So before you start writing content you need to start planning the promotion strategy. You do that by building out a list of companies and influencers that you want to mention in your post. Once you have a list of everyone that you want to reach out to start gathering their email address. We’ll discuss this later :) Pro tip: Getting the email address is key because that is the most effective way to get in contact with the people you want to build relationships with. Now get writing! Once your content has been written, re-written, edited twice and published it’s time to start promotion. There are a lot of email templates that you can use to send to the companies and influencers mentioned in your content. Even though some of the templates out there do work well it is always good to tailor your emails to add personalization to your outreach.

Here are the exact emails I use to get an 86% response rate from cold email outreach. Subject: Mentioned you in my latest article

Body: “Hey John, I love everything that you guys are doing over there at [company name]. I just wanted to let you know that I mentioned you in my latest blog [insert blog title with link]. I’m working on an idea that I think would fit perfectly with your audience on the [company blog]. If I sent it your way would you mind publishing me as a guest author? Thanks :) Jason” Now let’s dissect this email and understand why it works. Subject: Mentioned you in my latest article This subject is intriguing to see. Everyone likes to know that they’ve been mentioned somewhere online. You can also use a different variation of this subject line such as: Mentioned you on Forbes (or other online publication you are associated with) Body: “Hey John, I love everything that you guys are doing over there at [company name]. This line strokes the ego of the influencer or company that you are reaching out to. It makes them feel good that what they are doing is reaching people and making a difference. I just wanted to let you know that I mentioned you in my latest blog [insert blog title with link]. This line lets them know where you mentioned them and allows them to read the content.

I’m working on an idea that I think would fit perfectly with your audience on the [company blog]. This is where you show the influencer that you’ve been following their blog and that you’re working on a blog post that would provide value to the blog and essentially the readers/target market of the company. If I sent it your way would you mind publishing me as a guest author? This is where you ask for something in return. In this example, I am asking for a guest post on the company blog but I could have asked them to share the content but a guest post is more valuable. Also, people are always more willing to do something for you if you’ve done something for them already. Thanks :) Jason”

Now I Will Show You The Various Techniques I Use To Gather Email Addresses The internet is a powerful thing and I use it everyday to reach powerful people that I would never be able to get in contact with on a regular day walking my dog down the street. Let’s go through the steps: 1. The most basic technique to use is to simply try different variations of their name and input it into the recipient bar in Gmail. If the person’s face shows up when you hover over their email address you know that it’s the right one. A. For example, a lot of people use their first and last name at gmail dot com.

1. [email protected] 2. [email protected] 3. [email protected] 4. [email protected] 5. [email protected] 6. [email protected] 2. If that doesn’t work you’ll have to do a little more research on the influencer. A. Find them on LinkedIn and see if they’ve added their email address to the contact section or somewhere within their description. B. Find them on Twitter and see what their Twitter handle is. 1. For example, if the Twitter handle is @johndoe87 there is a good chance that the number 87 is in their email. A. [email protected] B. [email protected] 2. Maybe the contact has the first letter of their middle name in their Twitter handle link @johnhdoe so that’s a good lead to use “h” in the email variation. C. Google their name and find their blog. If the contact has a blog they usually have contact information listed. 1. If the contact information isn’t listed they usually have an email address associated with their website. A. [email protected] B. [email protected]

95% of the time these techniques land me the email address of the influencer I want to contact. Further reading: 20 Content Marketing Promotion Tools You Can’t Live Without The Secret Ingredient to 10x Your Content Marketing Results Your New Go-to Guide to Content Promotion [Free Ebook] Download Required

Thanks for reading today and go out there and test these techniques for yourself. Let me know how they work out for you :) If you like this content please tell your friends and continue to follow my blog for more growth tips! Follow me on Twitter @justjasonjames