Here’s a depressing fact: too many creators leave their content to languish on their website, alone and forgotten.
And once, it’s published, they never. look. at. it. again.
Noooo! Don’t abandon your brilliant creations, just because you finished them a week ago. Only the tiniest fraction of people have actually seen that piece of content. You must share it, repeatedly.
You owe it to us.
Here are four simple, but powerful ways to get more readers, viewers and fans for your message:
1. Put it where there are already lots of eyeballs.
Sounds obvious, right? But a surprising number of people with great content think that they can only publish on their own website, their own YouTube channel, or their own email newsletter.
They couldn’t be more wrong.
There are millions of site owners who’re scrambling for material and would be delighted to publish something from you.
So instead of hoarding your mind magic, polish it and publish it on a more popular website as a guest post.
Or, as an article in a colleague or association’s newsletter. Or in a trade magazine.
(Bonus: When you’ve been published somewhere else, you get the credibility boost of being ‘As seen in.’)
2. Get more eyeballs (traffic) to your website.
This one takes more work on your part, because you’re trying to expand an audience, rather than getting your message in front of one that’s already established. But you can do it!
There are the obvious tools. I’m talking about social media:
- Tweet about it, with a link.
- Post a link on Facebook.
- LinkedIn Status update – write an interest-piquing update and link to your post or article.
- Share it in LinkedIn groups.
- Post an image on Instagram and write the link in the caption.
- Share it on Google +.
- Pin it on Pinterest.
Don’t forget to ask people to share it! Twice as many people will, just because you made the ask.
3. Promote it more.
Re-promote your content after it’s been published. Some small and solo businesses believe that once a blog post, article or other content has been published, it’s old news and everyone has seen it.
Not true! Only a tiny section of your audience actually noticed your gem. And if you don’t promote it, most of the people who need to see it will miss out. *Sad face.*
We tire of our marketing loooong before anyone else does. Fact.
Derek Halpern, blogging expert and founder of SocialTriggers.com, talks about the 80/20 rule:
“Here’s the truth:
It’s smarter to find another 10,000 people to consume what you’ve already created as opposed to creating more.
Or, in other words, create content 20% of the time. Spend the other 80% of the time promoting what you created.” [http://socialtriggers.com/80-20-blog-building/]
If only a few people have seen it and there are hundreds/thousands/millions who would love it, let them know that it exists! Perhaps a mention and a link?
- If you regularly only post it on your website, send it via email to your friends and fans.
- Add it to your newsletter: include links to your 3 most recent posts, your most popular posts over the last year or of all time.
- Send it to strategic partners who’d be interested. (Let other people grab eyeballs for you.)
- Find interested affinity groups (groups of people who share a common interest or occupation) and email a link to their leaders, accompanied by a gracious, helpful message.
4. Re-purpose. Re-purpose. Re-purpose.
Reap the dividend of your intellectual and time investment, people. Get your content out there in different forms. It may seem like a lot of work, but it’s really much less than constantly creating new content from scratch.
Think about it: individuals have different preferences for how they absorb information. When you offer yours in different formats, you’re able to reach a broader audience.
Just what could you do with a single piece of content? Check this out:
Let’s say that you give a presentation. And you’ve put a pile of hours into preparing that, right? Don’t let it languish, with your brilliant ideas only heard once by the captive crowd.
Starting with your presentation slides, you can:
- Upload them to Slideshare.
- Embed the Slideshare viewer on your website so visitors can enjoy those babies.
- Add it to your LinkedIn profile (LinkedIn owns Slideshare, so those two platforms play together like BFFs.)
- Write a blog post around it. I like to use the Slideshare embed code, then add an opening and closing paragraph, as well as a few bullets. Bada bing, bada boom, done.
- If your presentations are big on visuals but light on text (ahem, which they totally should be!) you can make your message less cryptic by adding your talking points on new slides. Voila, you’ve got yourself an ebook!
Want to get really fancy? (It’s actually easy-peasy, but you don’t have to let your fans know that.)
- Record yourself giving your presentation using a free tool like Audacity or Apple’s Garage Band and you’ve got a podcast or Soundcloud file you can post on your website.
- Use Google’s free Hangouts tool to create a video recording of you, delivering your material. (You can even share your screen to show slides! Plus, it’s automatically on YouTube, the third largest search engine in da world.)
- Take snippets from your presentation and post them to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Google+ using a visual quote maker, like Recite, Quozio, Pinstamatic, Pinwords, or Share as Image. (Visuals more eyeballs than plain text, yo.)
Your Fame Boosting Assignment:
This week (and maybe next!), do not create one thing from scratch. Instead dig into your digital archives and get your content in front of more eyeballs. Pick one idea from the list and MAKE IT HAPPEN. You’ve totally got this.