“Content is King” – I’m sure most of you have heard this being pushed around internet marketing circles and the various discussions. Well it happens to be a very accurate and very important axiom. Everything begins with content.
The content that you share on your website communicates your message, your information, and your intent with your web visitors, and it is how the search engines measure your relevance against other competing web pages.
Since there is no argument that this is the age of content marketing, the question then becomes how do we have our content noticed among the sea of competing voices out there?
It’s no easy task. It used to be simple, but not so anymore. Nowadays, unless you have a huge list or have established authority in your market, you’re going to have to work be heard.
Which leads us to the little-known yet highly effective technique known as paid social promotion. Let’s examine what it is and just what it can do for you.
What is paid social promotion?
Paid social promotion, or paid social ads, is the strategy of buying ads that promote your content. Ever since social networks have practically taken over the Web, and brought words and concepts like virality and social sharing into our consciousness, it was only a matter of time before marketers began to find a way to exploit this. What’s more, it’s a great deal better than before, because the potential to reach an audience much larger than your own, right now, for pennies is something no one with any sense should discount.
Where should I do this?
It seems you can find new ad platforms springing up every single day, but for our purposes we’ll stick to several you may already have head of.
Facebook – Facebook’s ad platform is by far the best choice at this time. The ability it gives you to precisely target an audience, together with the social and viral aspects of Facebook itself make this almost a no-brainer. It’s very easy to use, and very affordable.
Twitter – Using Promoted Tweets can also work extremely well for promoting your content, and Twitter even offers you the ability to target prospects by keyword and followers.
LinkedIn – LinkedIn is coming on fast, and their Sponsored Updates can work very well, particularly if you are a B2B.
Reddit – Using Reddit can be somewhat tricky, as they are a bit finicky, but the rewards are fantastic if you manage to get going here. Use the niche ad option on their ad platform, as the home page traffic can be problematic and somewhat untargeted.
While the concept of using content as a marketing tool isn’t new, the channels that we can use to promote our content have become more sophisticated. Using these various opportunities of paid promotion can sometimes be the “icing on the cake” when it comes to leveraging our content to the fullest.