Start a Dialogue
Start a Dialogue“If more than a few people are interested in [your niche], chances are, there’s an online community out there dedicated to it. When you find these online communities, be it a forum or Facebook group, don’t just spam your article and leave. Engage them, build a reputation as an authority within your space.” – Dan Scalco, Founder of Digitalux
Think about it – what do you respond to better, someone squawking in your face and then flapping away or a great conversation that allows you to give as good as you get? The seagull style of marketing will get you nowhere fast, but participating in existing discussions and starting your own – listening is every bit as important as talking, if not more so – can help you build an audience (as well as valuable relationships) in record time.
Don’t Be a Narrow-Minded Distributor
“Your content should be liquid in form. Turn [a] blog post into a press release. Turn a page of copy into an infographic and an infographic into a video. If you have a good idea or strong data, capitalize on it! You can use the same concepts or information to create a large amount of content.” – Alyssa Mattero, Senior Manager of Digital and Content Marketing at Perfect Search
Each piece of content you create (or have created) and distribute can have life far beyond its original form. If you’ve undertaken the creation step correctly, you have a piece that’s full of great information and useful tips and/or statistics, so why in the world would you not want to ensure that those words of wisdom reach as many people as possible? Everyone gleans information effectively through different means (visual, written, auditory), so tailoring your content to as many styles as possible can only be a good thing.
“You Need to Market Your Marketing”
“Content is fire, social media is gasoline.” – Jay Baer, Founder of http://www.convinceandconvert.com
It might seem like a never-ending house of mirrors sometimes, but the idea of marketing your marketing is intentionally cyclical because that’s the only way it works. The actual creation of content is not the end point, but merely the beginning of a long and winding process. If you get off the hamster wheel of self-promotion, even for a second, you lose momentum, and most businesses can’t afford the slump no matter how temporary it is. If you’re not distributing your content, someone else will snatch up that social media real estate and use it for their own purposes – and we can almost promise that they don’t have your best interests at heart. It’s the nature of the content marketing beast – run or get trampled.
Writer Bio: Alana M is a budding distribution diva. When she isn’t hard at work writing all kinds of witty and engaging content, she enjoys long walks on the beach, lion taming, nuclear physics and lying about her hobbies.
