You’ve just created your best content yet.
You publish it on your site. Share it on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Then, you wait.
Why aren’t people engaging? Why has it only got one like after 24 hours? Where are all the conversions?
Source: GIPHY
It’s well known that unless you already have a large following, organic reach is pretty non-existent these days.
So, how does the average Joe get their content seen by their target audience?
They need the help of a content promotion tool. And a great one!
Lucky for you, we’ve found 8 that can help:
- Quuu Promote – Guaranteed social media shares
- BuzzSumo – Identify influencers in your niche
- Hootsuite – Optimize your social media ad spend
- Outbrain – 3rd party native advertising
- Quora – Community content marketing
- Triberr – Closed-door content promotion
- BuzzStream – End-to-end outreach and link building
- Viral Content Bee – Share your best content with a social network
Why is promotion so important in content marketing?
Why is promotion so important?
If you’re searching for content promotion tools, you’ll already know the answer to this.
Content curation is a vital part of content marketing, but creation is even more so.
So important that 60% of marketers say inbound marketing (like SEO and blog content) is their highest quality lead source.
In terms of SEO, for content to do well, it needs to be:
- Valuable to the reader
- Worthy of backlinks
- Optimized for social sharing
The issue is, it can take a long time for content to be ranked on Google. If you’re aiming for 1st page SERP (search engine ranking page), you could be waiting a while.
In Ahrefs’ most recent study on the age of pages ranked in Google’s top 10, only 22% of them were created within a year.
Almost 95% of newly published pages don’t make it to the top 10 in under a year. Those are some scary metrics.
So, how can yours differ?
Well, firstly, your content has to be high-quality. There’s no point promoting something that isn’t worth sharing.
Once you’ve got that nailed, you need to get people clicking on it and sharing it. That’s where content promotion tools can help.
Why are these the best content promotion tools?
For a marketing tool to make this list, it needs to be effective.
There are lots of different routes to go down for content promotion. Each of these tools covers a different method. Some are free, some are SaaS sites – but they’re all templates for success.
That means you can choose one that suits your strategy best or pick a few and promote your content in different ways.
The latter will probably give you the best chance of success, but it might be harder to track what’s working and what isn’t.
Really, it’s up to you. So, let’s get started!
1. Quuu Promote – Guaranteed social media shares
Of course, we’re going to put our content promotion tool first. You’ve got to back yourself, right?
If you’re looking for increased social shares, Quuu Promote is a no-brainer.
Social media platforms were built for mass sharing. And the road to higher engagement and backlinks begins with visibility.
The more your content is shared, viewed, and discussed, the more Google favors it. Social signals are key, friends.
Source: Mike Khorev
So, how does Quuu Promote work?
Well, it guarantees social shares on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
It works best if your site has an RSS feed. That way, the system can stay updated and maintain full automation. Every time you publish something, it’ll be put straight into review.
Next, we review your content to check it matches our curation guidelines. We’ve worked out these criteria from years of hand-reviewed content.
Basically, it’ll give your content the best chance of performing well.
Everyone on Quuu that’s sharing your content has manually signed up to do so. They’re all real people, and they all have a genuine interest in what you’re creating.
Finally, all you’ve got to do is track your shares. Hundreds of them! You can also see direct @mentions via Tweets as they happen.
We recommend Twitter as the best platform to keep on top of shares as it’s so public. You can get in touch with all of the social media accounts that share your content.
Remember, the best way to increase engagement on social media is to engage yourself.
We’ll show you the number of shares and clicks you’re getting. But by using a tracking link like Bitly, you can track which content is performing best in real-time.
2. BuzzSumo – Identify influencers in your niche
Want a powerful way to amplify the reach of your new content? You need an influencer to share it.
Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean someone with a huge number of followers. Actually, micro-influencers have a much smaller but more dedicated following on the whole.
The hard part is finding the right person to share your content creation in the first place.
The 3 main qualities you’re looking for in an effective influencer are:
- Relevance
- Engagement rate
- Reach
But what if you don’t have time to endlessly scroll through social media to find these people?
Enter: BuzzSumo. This content promotion tool is here to do the hard work for you.
You want to find those bloggers and creators with genuine authority on social media. BuzzSumo will scan millions of profiles to look beyond vanity metrics. You can do the same with Facebook pages.
You can also check out the strategies your competitors are using. Sneaky!
Here’s how you find your perfect match:
- Find those with the most engagement
- Narrow down by niche
- Filter by language
- Analyze their domain
This is how you’ll identify those with dedicated fans and followers to spread your content further. It’s influencer marketing made easy.
They also have a popular Chrome plugin to reveal “the social shares, links and influence of content”.
A share from an influencer has the power to skyrocket your brand awareness. It’s definitely worth giving it a try.
3. Hootsuite – Optimize your social media ad spend
Social media is a big part of every content marketing strategy nowadays. Around 4 billion people use social media platforms. That’s almost half the planet!
If your business isn’t on there yet, it probably should be.
Hootsuite isn’t strictly a content promotion tool – it deals with social media management. Just like Buffer or Sprout Social.
From publishing content to monitoring messages and analyzing results – it’s a hugely helpful content marketing tool.
But how can it help with our promotion efforts?
Facebook ads and other PPC (pay-per-click) strategies can be great ways to drive traffic. A paid campaign is sometimes the only way of getting people to see your social media posts.
But we don’t want to just randomly pay for something that has no focus.
With Hootsuite’s Boost feature, you can promote great content directly from the platform.
By using the audience creation options, you can target users based on their location, age, and interests.
It lets you keep all of your social media marketing in one place. You can create and manage promoted post campaigns from the same dashboard.
There’s an ‘Auto Boosting’ option that’ll automatically promote content based on criteria you set. Or ‘Single Post Boosting’, where you’ll have to manually select posts.
If you want promotion as part of your social media scheduling, Hootsuite has got you covered.
4. Outbrain – 3rd party native advertising
Native advertising is different from social media ads, and it’s this kind of specialty platform that Outbrain offers.
It’s a 3rd party, independent native advertising app.
Rather than randomly stopping users in their feed, it lists your content within an article or newsletter in specific publications.
The idea is that you’re lining up relevant content to the right reader at the right time.
Source: Disruptive
The focus is on creating ads that are hyper-relevant to make the reader convert. They shouldn’t look out of place.
Outbrain offers the platform to both advertisers and publishers. Publishers can monetize their content by allowing ads to appear on it. While the advertisers pay to do so.
It’s commonly used, and there are tons of high-profile publishers who use it. For example, big media names like CNN, the Guardian, the BBC, etc.
Disruptive summarized it well:
“People might scroll past your ad on Facebook without thinking twice, but if they’re actively reading content on a major news site, they might be in a better mindsight to read the content that you’re promoting, too.”
Source: dapa
It’s a slightly more obvious form of content promotion, but it’s something worth trying.
Native advertising could be just what your next piece of content needs. Just don’t forget to track the results!
5. Quora – Community content marketing
If you want a free tool for your content promotion strategy, this one’s for you.
Technically, it’s not a content promotion tool. But it can be used as one.
Now, you can’t just directly promote your brand on Quora. It’s against their rules. And you may be wondering how a Q&A site can be used for digital marketing.
Anyone can ask and answer questions on the site. Then the community votes for which they think are the most helpful.
Content syndication means republishing your own content on multiple sites. That can be your WordPress, as a guest post, on social media, etc.
Now we all know that effective, high-quality content should be entertaining, educational, or inspiring. Maybe all three!
Quora is the perfect place to repost your best work that will really answer specific questions.
Now, this method takes a bit of work as you have to find relevant questions that your content can answer. It’s also mostly for evergreen content, as trending topics will come and go fairly quickly.
There is also no guarantee your answer will be upvoted to the most popular. But some top tips for success are:
- Keep it focused
- Make sure it’s high-quality
- Don’t ramble
- Link to an external source
Check out this example about SEO tool Moz. It’s quick and gets to the point:
For small businesses with an even smaller budget, Quora is always a great option.
Last tip, visual content isn’t that common on the site. If you can make your answer eye-catching, it could make yours stand out in a sea of text.
6. Triberr – Closed-door content promotion
Triberr said it itself, “There is nothing worse than writing a blog post that nobody reads.”
If you don’t know how this content promotion tool works, the name might give you a hint.
It’s a social media platform, but one that’s specifically focused on getting its members to share each other’s content.
A “Tribe” on the site is a group of content creators in the same niche. They connect in groups to discuss and promote each other’s content.
Source: Guestpost
This is a great way to build relationships. And we all know that genuine interaction with people increases engagement.
Outside the Tribes themselves, there is a specific promotion feature you can access to boost your content.
It works like so:
- Select the post you want to promote
- Triberr will show your post to members that are likely to share it with their audience
- The combined reach of all those sharing it should help “drive traffic and customers”
A Triberr user had some top tips for making the most of the platform:
- Join groups with a large reach
- Join every relevant group you’re invited to
- Look for groups with all members and no followers
- Avoid groups that are maxed out
- Join Tribes where the Chief is active
You’ll already be in groups with other users who are interested in your niche. These are the kind of people you want to share your content with their audience as they might actually convert.
In summary, join a ton of Tribes, stay active on the platform, and watch the shares roll in.
7. BuzzStream – End-to-end outreach and link building
BuzzStream markets itself as the world’s best outreach CRM.
The goal of content promotion tools is to make people see your work. And what’s a more simple way of promoting it than to simply ask people to check it out?
We get it. That would take forever. Especially if you have a huge contact list.
But not with BuzzStream. They’re all about making outreach easy. Plus, they’ll help you with the initial prospecting.
But let’s assume you have a decent-sized list to contact.
Their process starts with audience segmentation. This basically means dividing your contact list into groups and altering your outreach tactics for each.
Source: BuzzStream
They believe content promotion starts way before you actually hit ‘publish’. And they’re right!
Once you’ve planned appropriately, you can create templates for each of your audience segments. This means you’re not sending out the same generic email to everyone.
After that, they have a 4-step strategy for success:
- Send VIP emails first
- Promote to your audience (email mailing list, social media ads, etc.)
- Phased outreach to the majority of your list
- Reply and moderate those who reply
Users love the easy workflows and open and click-through-rate tracking to track their outreach efforts.
If you want to create an effective link-building campaign, BuzzStream should be top of your list.
8. Viral Content Bee – Share your best content with a social network
If you don’t want to spend a lot of time promoting your content, try Viral Content Bee. As a bonus, you don’t have to spend a lot of money either – cause it’s free!
The platform is based on creating and maintaining mutually beneficial relationships, not obvious advertising. Like a few of the tools on this list, they promise authentic social media shares.
Viral Content Bee requires high-quality content, managing a community, and interacting with social media influencers if you want to see results.
The site uses a simple points system. When you share other people’s content, you earn points. Then you spend those points to have your content shared.
Source: G2
You can link the social media accounts you want to share from. Plus, you can schedule posts in advance, too.
On Viral Content Bee, size matters! The number of points you get from sharing a post will totally differ depending on the size of that account’s audience. This also affects how many points you spend when they share yours.
We all know that sharing other people’s work makes them more likely to share yours. Building relationships through promoting content is one of the biggest benefits.
Viral Content Bee doesn’t have a huge user base yet. But extra social shares for minimal work can’t be a bad thing.
One last thing to remember, this isn’t an automated tool. You can’t just set it and forget it. If you want to see real results, you need to be there to engage.
Conclusion – Promotion doesn’t always equal blog traffic
Don’t get us wrong. You could definitely see an increase in traffic from these content promotion tools.
But web traffic is a fickle thing. Sometimes it’ll happen, and other times it won’t.
As we said at the start, though, visibility is key for brand awareness. Each of these tools can offer some level of visibility, mostly through social shares.
Social shares and signals could end up being a huge part of SEO ranking factors in the future. If that’s the case, it’ll pay to get involved early.
Of course, we still think Quuu Promote is the top choice. But that’s up for you to decide. You won’t know until you try!
Do you use any of the content promotion tools in this list? Are there any you think should have been included? We’d love to know more!
