Offer Simple Incentives to Increase the Visibility and Traffic of Your Content
Good content garners exposure, builds brand awareness and indirectly achieves conversion. When the State of Inbound 2014 Report put actual numbers behind this reality, it validated what us bloggers knew all along (and, ironically, converted big business on the values of blogging and social marketing).
“Marketers who have prioritized blogging are 13x more likely to enjoy positive ROI” — State of Inbound 2014 Report
The act of offering free and rich content not only builds trust in your brand and demonstrates proficiency, but ends up being a great conversion tool once the reader is ready. Nobody likes to be pushed around, bullied or assaulted with sales messages. We all prefer to make a move on our own terms.
But one factor we don’t mention often is that we also want to be part of the movement, part of the in-crowd. Notice whenever you start a new job or move to a new town or country how quickly you emulate those around you? That’s real and volitional conversion.
So, whatever your medium, having clear, on-topic content, a fluid, and to-the-point title, and launching it on the right platform favored by your niche audience, is an absolute must but only the beginning. Here are things you should be doing, at very little cost, to build a real following. This is about building a solid community, not a numbers game. Where conversions feel more like friends helping each other out and where nobody is being taken for a ride.
Now that you are providing value, make sure you’re providing the right incentives to go along with it.
Incentives — Before, During, and After the Release of a Post
It’s a mindset. It’s not something you do as a reaction to boost lagging traffic or marketing. If you’re reacting, it’s already too late. Yes, it needs to be done afterward, but it also needs to be done before and during a launch — these are the keys to building a strong family.
Before
Let the world know what you are going to tackle next. This can be a mention in your newsletter, it can also be a mention at the end of another blog post. So, before you release your next piece of work, think about what you’re going to do next and give your people a heads-up.
It can be a call for collaboration (plenty of benefits there) or an ask for advice or opinion. Now, if you do ask for advice, make sure it’s real and sincere not a cheap sales tactic. And if you do end up using crowd-sourced advice, don’t miss the chance of sharing what your final choice was and how thankful you are for the input.
Doing all this at the onset of a project shows that you’ll put yourself out there, that you’ll share ownership of your work, that you‘re a team player and that you value the opinion of your teammates.
During
While you are working on your post, solicit opinions, help, and even share the draft. This can easily be done on Medium with the share draft feature:
This is an interesting approach that I am currently trying out with a master class I am creating on ViralML.com. I stated that all those on my mailing list will get a free invite to the beta version of the class in exchange for feedback (please join if you’re not on it already). This is approach works for both “before” and “during” marketing.
After
Some of the obvious “after” methods are sharing links to the post on social media and interacting with others who produce similar content. But here are some additional ones that aren’t as common:
For every blog post I write, I will also make a walk-through video. This approach offers plenty of advantages. It will allow your material to reach a wider audience and enable those who prefer video over written material to benefit from your work.
Also, ask them if they liked the piece if they would like to see more on that topic, and if not, what topics would they want to be covered. Always ask for review ratings, likes, and claps. If you ask for nothing, you’ll get nothing.
Share comments, testimonials and interesting conversations you’ve had regarding previously posted material. People like continuity and this keeps the story going. It also shows that you read and interact with those posting about your material.
Whenever you notice larger than normal interest in your work, consider making follow-up material or even producing a class.
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Follow my latest projects at KeepTheTalk.com, ViralML.com, and amunategui.github.io.
Manuel Amunategui