Put Your Content on the Map with Paid Social Promotion

Ever write a brilliant piece of content…only to watch it fade into obscurity? Maybe you get a few clicks from your social media following, but it fizzles after that.

Don’t worry, you’re not alone.

With millions of posts going up on a daily basis, even the best content can have a hard time getting traction—either on social media or Google. It isn’t because people aren’t interested in reading your content. They simply never see it.

So is content dead? Not by a long shot. You can still get traffic to your posts and get that traffic to buy from you—you just have to approach things differently now.

Unfortunately, you can’t count on organic search or social media to drive traffic to your new posts. But, if you’re willing to invest a little in paid social promotion, you can get a ton of cheap traffic that will translate into organic rankings and new sales. Here’s how.

Paid Social Promotion

Contrary to what Facebook would have you believe, the best way to promote your content on social media is not hitting “boost” on your latest post. You’ll get some value from that, but content is primarily an upper funnel marketing channel, so you want to get in front of people who aren’t already familiar with your brand.

To do that, you’ll want to run your ads in front of audiences who aren’t familiar with you or your brand. Here are a few ideas:

1. Carousel Ads

Not quite sure what content your audience is interested in? Why not let them choose? Carousel ads are a great way to promote your content because they allow you to promote a variety of content in one ad.

This typically works best if you have a theme to the content in your carousel ad. Otherwise, it can be very difficult to identify what sort of audience you want to target.

So, if you’re a fashion clothing company, you might run a carousel ad with an article about how to choose the right accessories for your outfit, latest trends in fashion and what outfits to wear to what occasions. Then, you can run this ad to an audience that is interested in fashion clothing.

Not everyone will be interested in every article, but by running all of these articles in the same ad, people will be more likely to find something they are interested in and click.

2. Twitter Ads

When it comes to content, Twitter can be a pretty frustrating platform. Unless you happen to have a huge, engaged following (which is pretty difficult these days), getting a lot of traffic from organic Twitter posts can be next to impossible.

The problem is, Twitter is a lot like a football stadium. At any given moment, there are tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of people talking about what interests them most.

No matter how exciting what you have to say is, you’re still just one person in a huge crowd. The people right around you (ie, whoever just happens to look at their feed when you post your comment) might hear you, but most people never notice you.

After all, the average Twitter user follows 102 people. Even at one tweet per day, that’s still over one hundred tweets to filter through.

Sure, from time to time, something big happens on the field (or in the world) that gets the attention of everyone in the crowd, but in general, very few people will ever get the attention of everyone in the stadium.

On your own, trying to get someone to click on your tweets is a lot like a cotton candy vendor trying to land a sale. You can holler about how great your cotton candy, er, content is, but most people won’t notice you.

Paid social promotion, however, takes you from this…

To this…

Sure, you’ve still got a whole stadium’s worth of competition for your audience’s attention, but going back to our football stadium example, are you more likely to notice the cotton candy vendor with four bags or the one with 10 feet of sugary goodness?

With paid social promotion on Twitter, you can ensure that your content is showing up in people’s feeds. And, unlike Facebook, Twitter isn’t as clogged with advertising, so your ads are more likely to stand out and get clicked.

The best part of it all? Twitter’s advertising platform is actually just as powerful and well-developed as Facebook’s. Twitter’s audience just doesn’t respond as well Facebook’s to standard advertising, but it’s very receptive to promoted content. So, if you’re looking for a cheap place to get relevant traffic to your latest post, Twitter just might be your ace in the hole.

3. LinkedIn Ads

If you’re in the B2B space, LinkedIn is a great paid social promotion option to consider. While many people think LinkedIn Ads are just for recruiters, it’s also a great place to get people to engage with your content.

Because LinkedIn is a business-focused social media platform, everyone on the platform is looking for ways to further their career. Part of that is the networking aspect of LinkedIn, but because people are in a career mindset, they tend to respond really well to helpful business content.

Clicks on LinkedIn tend to cost more than clicks on Twitter or Facebook, but the traffic also tends to be higher quality, so LinkedIn can be a great way to build brand awareness with potential clients and customers.

The best part of promoting content on LinkedIn Ads? The targeting. Unlike other social media platforms, LinkedIn knows exactly what business people work for and what their interests are. This is priceless information for B2B businesses looking to build brand awareness.

Instead of targeting people based on their personal interests, you can target them based on the business interests. This ensures that you’re targeting people who are actually interested in your content…and your products or services.

Conclusion

There’s nothing more disheartening than creating an epic piece of content and watching it fall flat. The good news is, it’s not necessarily your fault. There’s simply so much content out there that it can be hard to get noticed.

These days, if you want to drive traffic to your content, the simplest, most effective strategy is to pay for it. Fortunately, with paid social promotion on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, you can get your content in front of a relevant, targeted audience and build the brand awareness your business needs to succeed.

Best of all, while these clicks aren’t free, promoting content is fairly cheap and all of those clicks will lead to the likes, shares, traffic and even backlinks that you need to get your content to the top of the SERPs. It’s an early up-front investment that yields long-term dividends.

By the way, if you’d like help figuring out a paid social promotion strategy, let me know here or in the comments. I’d love to help!

How do you drive traffic to your content? What paid promotion tactics have you tried? Any advice to share? Leave your thoughts below.