There are two reasons you shouldn’t care what people think about you for promoting your work:
- You can’t pay your phone bill, cover payroll or pay your mortgage with their opinions
- You’re going to die someday and their opinion won’t matter
There it is. Harsh I know… But it’s real.
Marketers around the globe need to cut the negative self-talk about promotion. It’s just too much.
Instead of always saying…
- I don’t want to seem too spammy
- I don’t want to come off to promotional
- I don’t want to clog up everyone’s feed
Remember that the people who are online right now scrolling through Twitter are NOT the same people who will be scrolling through Twitter in six hours. Forty people who would have loved that video you shared on LinkedIn were on vacation the week you shared it…
Thirty people who you thought would have seen your post about that podcast interview you did a day ago… Yeah, they didn’t see it because they were too caught up with the drama that happened during the Oscars to even notice.
This is the reality. But it’s also the reality that most people ignore in favor of finding ways to avoid promoting their work.
It’s a shame. So what I want to do right now is challenge you. I want to challenge you to commit in the upcoming month to distributing your content more than you usually do. This might be very difficult. I have talked to hundreds of companies over the years that invest thousands of dollars every single month to produce multiple blog posts, ebooks, white papers, checklists, cheat sheets and other pieces of content that they believe are valuable for their audience. In fact, I’m confident that some of this content is valuable for their audience because I’ve read it…
The content is good.
But sadly… The only people who actually read the content are the people who work in-house on the content team and maybe a third-party editor or agency partner. That’s it. Okay… I’m exaggerating a bit. Most of these companies will share it internally in their company Slack and 24% of the people on their team will read it too… And maybe… Just maybe… The content will make its way over to their company newsletter where it will reach a few of their subscribers.
This happens every single week.
And this is why I want to throw a challenge at you. I want to challenge you to NOT create a bunch of new content but instead conduct an audit. Conduct an audit where you take a close look at the last 30-40 pieces of content that you published and look to uncover content-market fit.
What is content-market fit?
It’s the moment in which you see indicators from the market that the content that you published is something that your ideal audience wants. For example, if you press publish on a blog post on a topic and you share it on Twitter and no one clicks the links, retweets it, links to it or any sign of relevance / interaction… You probably don’t have content-market fit (note: another very possible problem is simply a lack of reach). But if you press publish on a blog post and the moment you share it on Twitter it stirs up dialog, conversations, links, likes and retweets…
You’re onto something.
Conduct an audit and see which pieces of content you have recently published that have signs of content market fit. There could be more links than other assets. it could be more social shares than other assets. It could be more referral traffic than other assets.
The variables are endless.
The key is that the content is demonstrating clear signs of content-market fit (aka signals from the market) that it’s something people want.
Once you have a spreadsheet that outlines all of the different ways in which you have content market fit… The next step is to start running those pieces of content through a distribution playbook. A playbook that is rooted in helping these pieces of content drive as much ROI as possible. A playbook that is built to give these pieces of content more reach than they would if you continued to operate like you have been for the last year… A playbook that looks exactly like this:
Day One: Amplification On Social
- Share on Twitter w. Headline
- Share on Twitter as a Thread
- Share on LinkedIn w. Long Form Post
- Share on Facebook page w. 3-4 sentences
Day Two: Amplify Through Native Channels
- Upload & Publish As A Medium Article
- Upload & Publish As A LinkedIn Article
- Retweet The Original Thread From Yesterday
Day Three: Community Driven Distribution
- Amplify In A Slack Community
- Amplify In A Facebook Group
- Amplify In A Discord Channel
- Submit To An Industry Forum (x2)
Day Four: Newsletters & Mixing Things Up
- Reshare Link On Twitter
- Share A Link On Your IG Story
- Reach Out To Friendlies For Engagement
- Promote Internally For Employee Advocacy
- Write Scripts For SDRs/BDRs to Use For Prospects/Leads
- Add To Your Email Signature For The Week
Day Five: Influencer Outreach Efforts
- Reach Out To Industry Newsletters
- DM Industry Influencers w. Link
- Pin Post To Article At The Top Of Your Channels
- Respond To Influencers Tweet (Add Value) then link to your asset
- Engage A TikToker To Create Content About The Asset
Day Six: Repurposing Time
- Turn The Blog Post Into A YouTube Video
- Turn The Blog Post Into A Instagram Carousel
- Turn The Blog Post Into A LinkedIn Document
- Turn The Blog Post Into A Slideshare Deck
- Turn The Blog Post Into A Vertical Video
And with that….
I bet that old piece of content that you created will start to thrive.
The truth is:
We all need to start promoting our work.
Of course… This is all under one condition:
The work. The content. The blog posts. The videos. The things that we are promoting…
These things have to be of serious value to our audience.
If they’re not valuable to your audience then of course you have no reason to promote them.
But if the content is valuable… Promote it. Distribute it. Amplify it…
And if you’re still not sure exactly HOW you can do that really well. Don’t worry. I have you covered with the distribution playbook. Check it out and let me know what you think.
In the meantime…
I hope the week treats you well and I’ll see you on the other side of the internet.
PS: You might look at that list and think… Geesh. That’s a lot of work.
You’re right. It is… That’s why Foundation exists. We help SaaS brands distribute their content more effectively every single day. If you’re interested in learning more about this, leave a comment. It’s actually me on the other end of this thing and I’d love to hear from you.
