How to promote Posts - Part One

Many people struggle to bring their content before the eyes of readers and potential customers. In marketing it is vital to be seen and recognized by the target audience. Here are the first ten tips to increase your reach:

• Write good content

It seems obvious, but many people just try to write SEO-optimized texts or think they can come up with something spontaneous every time... Spontaneous does work, at least sometimes, but you should not put all your money on it. Plan your content, think about what it is you want to communicate in general and specifically in the very article, regard SEO but do not make it your number one. Most important: Be precise and helpful, structure your texts, have some kind of guideline people can cling to. Don't worry about it being too lengthy, if your content is worth it, people will read and appreciate it.

• Don't care about trolls

If you are a public person, even if you are just a private blogger making his/her content available to the public, you will meet them sooner or later: trolls. People who have too much spare time, too many negative feelings or severe issues, people who envy your success or just downplay it, people who think that you are a fraud and have the need to tell everybody about their unsubstantiated conclusions or people who just love to get on your nerves. Just don't care about them, block them if necessary, never take it personal - because they don't know you in person and you surely do not want to know them.

• Use catchy headlines

Most people are lazy nowadays when it comes to reading. Social networks are a great tool to communicate, but you need to establish some kind of filter or you will spend endless time with cat videos or vids of people being pranked or hurting themselves badly. So if you don't have a catchy headline, many people will never read a single line of of your content. Your headline is like a movie teaser - and it is also important to fulfill the expectations you set or else the reader will soon realize you are just click-baiting with your titles. Emotions, numbers, absolutes and negativity work extremely well, if used correctly. We will deal with this aspect in another, future article, especially dedicated to writing good headlines, because this is more complex than most people think.

• Link to other people

Don't be a loner - a loner won't be successful in a social network. Other people write good content too and if the topic is relevant for your audience, share it! Don't be afraid that people will unfollow you. Even if you link to an influencer out of your league, your audience will still be loyal to you, since you introduced him/her. And if you are lucky, the bigger fish will repay you with a link to a future post of yours, bringing you loads of new readers. Think social!

• Encourage interaction

It does not matter, where you are: encourage interaction, be it liking, sharing or commenting. You can even bring your audience to contribute - e.g. make a competition and let them create a picture or meme or even an article. It heavily depends on the kind of audience you have, you cannot do everything with anybody! Be aware of your target audience, give them what they expect, sometimes even a little bit more and from time to time - blast them away with generousity!

• Use quotes and images

Those two almost always work, if they are appropriate. Just remember: Don't post trivial content to an intellectual audience and vice-versa. To know your target audience is key to marketing and thus to every kind of enterprise. Concerning images: check which pixel solution you should use, there are different solutions for every network.

• Know your audience

Yeah, I think I already mentioned this: know your audience – or fail! It is that important!

• Schedule your posts

You wrote the best article of your life and it needs to be published – right now, in the middle of the night. Don't do that! Especially if you have a really good article, pretty please with sugar on it, schedule it! We will talk about the best time spans to post on different social networks in another article soon, but rational thinking helps here a lot, already.

• Use Tags

Tags are getting more and more important, not just on twitter or here on SteemIt, they are also very useful on facebook. Tags help new people find your content, so don't be sloppy about them. The software "RightTag", for example, will help you find the best tags for your post: https://ritetag.com/

• Multiply your content

If you wrote a blog post or a post on social media with well researched or entertaining content you should multiply it. A blog post can be made into an audio file, a pdf or a video and can be shared on different platforms. If you really put a lot of effort into your articles you will really appreciate this last tip: you have to work once, post your article on your blog or on facebook and then put a link out on twitter, copy it to SteemIt, release a video on Youtube or Vimeo, have a pdf as an incentive on your landing page or freely available to read on another platform. We will soon release a detailed article about the possibilities of multiplying your content.

I hope you enjoyed our first ten tips on promoting your post, ten more will be available here soon, please like, share and follow to get more interesting information about marketing techniques. See ya!