How many times did you publish a very good piece of content which went unnoticed?

When was the last time one of your articles received a really good reaction from your readers (shares, likes, pins, recommendations)?

When you publish content in the online environment, do you what is called Content Marketing.

There are two players in the Content Marketing process: the content, and the marketing. And even if content creation might seem difficult at a first sight, it is the marketing part which scares most people off.

But don’t worry. There is hope.

When you have a great piece of content ready to be published, all it needs is a little… push. You just have to find out a way to put that content in front of your readers, and success will take off from there.

You should have 4 main goals when creating content:

1. To Convince
2. To Encourage
3. To Stay Young
4. To Syndicate

The entire marketing process begins the moment you start working on your content. The two elements – content and marketing – go hand in hand from beginning to end.

So how can you achieve these 4 goals? How can you juggle at the same time with both content creation and its online marketing?

I’ve put together a list of 10 things you can do for your content to be read, shared and successful:

The 10 rules of popular content:

Here we go:

To Convince

The first step is to convince people to read your content, or to consume it (watch, listen, etc.).

How do you do that?

1. Using teasers

Announce that you are going to publish a new article on your blog. Do it via your social media profiles.

A nice, short text like: “Hey guys, have you ever wanted to know how to make your content famous? I’ve just finished writing an article on this, you’ll love it… it’s going live soon!” will do wonders in getting people’s attention. If they are interested in the topic, they are already waiting for you to publish it.

I’ve done something similar with this article. Here’s how I announced it on Facebook earlier today:

Post by Fiona Soutter.

2. The unknown power of a good start

What keeps you reading an article until the end? It all starts with its title and its first sentence. They are the article’s “hooks”.

If I see an article with a poor title I don’t even bother to read it. If, after reading the article’s first sentence I am not convinced to keep reading, I will stop.

Right then and right there.

I will not waste my time on something that I do not think will bring me value.

Do you do the same?

Then you understand why the article’s title and first sentence (and first paragraph, for that matter) are of core importance to the success of your content. Make them interesting, intriguing, attention-grabbing.

3. Representative image

I’m sure you’ve already figured this out, but I am going to stop for a minute and re-tell you why images are so important:

• We are living in a visual era, when images, videos and presentations are your best chance at having your content read and shared
• Sharing your content is easy if you have an image (think about the basic rule of social platforms such as Pinterest, FlickR, Facebook or Instagram)
• You can brand your images with your logo – as they are spread around the internet, people will know where those images came from; so you create a sense of belonging
• You can develop a brand style through those images
• You can catch people’s attention if you have a very good, representative image for your content

…and the list goes on.

2. To Encourage

You want to make it easy for people to share your content and recommend it to their peers. At this point, what you’re doing is helping them to spread the news. Here are some ways you can do this:

4. Use social icons

Stop for a minute. Look on the left side of this article.

Do you see a box with 5 buttons (the 5 most popular social media platforms of the moment)?

If you like this article and want to let your friends know about it and learn from it, then all you have to do is choose the button you want to click.

Now click it.

See how easy it was?

5. Use tweetables

It wasn’t so long ago that I discovered the power of tweetables. But I liked them the moment I saw what they can do. Basically, the number of retweets I got from using a simple plugin as this one increased dramatically.

6. Create content around Qs

There’s nothing more pleasing than seeing someone who takes time to answer your questions. So whenever you have the chance of giving As to people’s Qs, don’t hesitate to do it.

Here’s one of the most successful online marketing campaigns so far, which goes to show just how important it is to communicate online:

3. To Stay Young

By this I mean you don’t want to let your content be forgotten. When you publish a new article on your blog, the number of visits you will get will be big. This number will decrease as days will go by. It’s natural.

But you can slow down this process. Here’s how:

7. Reshare

Make resharing of old articles a routine on your social media profiles. People forget what a good piece of content you have, so it’s worth reminding them that it’s there.

Plus, you get new followers each day – they don’t know about your old articles. By resharing your content you create awareness and you keep people coming to your website again and again.

8. Update your content if needed

Do you have a piece of content which is no longer up to date with what’s going on in your industry? There is nothing easier than writing an update on it.

You can create a new piece of content about the update, or you can simply edit your old content to reflect the reality of the present. Then, share and reshare.

9. Add content’s link in newer articles

Let’s say you write an article about the zoo you are a manager at. Your topic today is “Baby Panda Is Welcomed Into The World”, because one of the female-pandas at the zoo gave birth today and you want to share the joy with your community.

But you also have another article you wrote 5 months ago when you announced that the female-panda was gestant. You explained in that article things about pandas’ gestation, how big the baby panda will be at birth, and other relevant details.

You can include a link to that 5 month old article in your new article. Say something like, “5 months ago we told you that one of our pandas is gestant – the joy was immense and we decided to keep you updated with how the pregnancy goes.”

In this case, the words I would use as a link would be “5 months ago” or “keep you updated”. People who haven’t read the first article but are reading the new one now might want to find out the entire story of how the little panda cub was born.

4. To Syndicate your content online

Content syndication is one of the easiest ways to put your content “out there” and get it “rollin’”. I developed a full content syndication strategy that you can easily implement into your online business. If you want to find out more about it…

10. Join my upcoming Ultimate Web Blueprint Academy

Find out more about the Academy workshop:
– here
– here
– and here

What other ways can you think of to get your content liked, shared and appreciated at its true value?