{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "description": "To promote a great article, product, or course: define your goal, identify relevant authorities, build a relationship, make a small specific ask, and nurture long-term.",
  "path": "/articles/promote-content/",
  "publishedAt": "2015-01-22T05:45:20.000Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:jznynyzgerlqmdbbj33o7wfs/site.standard.publication/3mnll3icujb2z",
  "tags": [
    "Marketing and Growth"
  ],
  "textContent": "My friend Philip asked this wonderful question about the best way to promote a great piece of content:\n\nWhat should people who have written some piece of content (like a blog post, article, or course) that they’re really excited about do to get other people excited about it?\n\n(If you have a question about Digital Outreach, SEO, or Link Building, you can ask me anything here: Your Questions, Answered)\n\nI love questions like this. There’s a whole lot that Digital Outreach can be used for beyond link building.\n\nFirst off, why would you want to promote a great article, product, or course? There’s a few reasons:\n\nYou want to promote an upcoming product launch that the article references\nYou want to earn links for the content, helping you generate more search engine traffic\nYou want to improve your brand and image by linking it to high-quality content\nYou want to generate one-time or ongoing referral traffic by working with an expert, tastemaker, or authority to promote the content\nYou want to generate more sales by promoting a new product\nYou want to build ongoing relationships with experts, tastemakers, or authorities in our industry\n\nEarning a high-quality link or getting more traffic are just a few of the reasons why you’d want to promote a piece of content. And for any outcome that you’re targeting from the above list, you’ll follow a similar process.\n\nDefine your outreach goal\nIntentionally identifying authorities\nBuild a relationship\nMake a specific ask\nReciprocate & Nurture the Relationship\n\nFive steps that are key to any promotional, public relations, or digital outreach campaign. Let’s walk through them.\n\nDefine Your Outreach Goal\n\nYour first step — as always — is to identify what success looks like.\n\nWhenever I work with a client, I ask them to answer a short series of questions about their business and goals. I want to understand what they’re looking to accomplish, the most challenging aspects of the campaign, and how they want to improve their situation.\n\nHere’s the four questions that I love asking. Before you start your next promotional or outreach campaign — or the next time you work with a client — I recommend working through these questions.\n\nIf you had to set priorities now, what three things must be accomplished?\nIdeally, how would conditions improve as a result of this project?\nWhat precise aspects are most troubling to you?\nWhat constitutes acceptable improvement? Ideal improvement?\n\nWhen you answer these questions, you narrow in on the strategic objective of the campaign. By answering these questions before you even start to think about the who or what of your campaign, you’ll be able to understand what success looks like and backwards plan from there.\n\nIntentionally Identifying Authorities\n\nFirst, a question: why target your outreach specifically toward authorities, experts, and tastemakers?\n\nBecause there’s always a smaller number of ‘best influencers’ that you want to reach than there are all people.\n\nThat means that marketing to just these people is cheaper than marketing to everyone... but the results you can get from connecting with even just one of them can be outsized for your business.\n\nLikewise, the specific people you want to reach depend on the goal for your campaign. The people you want to reach to earn a link for your website are often different from the people you want to reach to promote an upcoming product launch. The outcome you’re looking to achieve helps you identify the communities that you want to reach.\n\nWhenever I work on a Digital Outreach campaign for a client, I start the Authority Identification phase by ‘safariing’ the communities that you’re targeting:\n\nI study these communities from the inside, as if I was a member.\nI read the popular blogs, forums, and articles.\nI study where these communities congregate, the resources that people share, and the sites that people promote.\n\nYou want to approach the communities this way so you can understand who you’re trying to reach, the language that these communities use, and what these communities value.\n\nThen, you’ll want to draw up an initial list of people you want to build a relationship with. This doesn’t have to be an excessively large list. The impact you’ll get from building a relationship with 5 - 10 authorities, experts, or tastemakers is dramatically higher than if you attempted to ‘shotgun’ promote your content to 25, 50, or 100+ people at once.\n\nWe’ve all been on the bad-side of a promotional blast — or heard the horror stories.\n\nIn your outreach, you want to focus on building a relationship. Any other outcomes — a link, a quote, a tweet, or a promotional opportunity — are strictly secondary.\n\nIn the long-term, a positive relationship will reward you more than a single, short-term win.\n\nOne more note on this topic: when trying to promote an article, earn a link, or build a relationship, I’ve found the most success from contacting popular single-author blogs of websites related to the topic or industry.\n\nIn terms of metrics, I look for websites that are recently updated, well designed, and have between 100 and 1,000 referring domains linking to them. These are the perfect match between ‘enough of a readership to make an impact’ and ‘small enough to not have gatekeepers in place.’\n\nBuild a Relationship\n\nThe first step is to study the authorities on your list.\n\nWhat are their goals?\nWhat’s their unique story?\nWhat articles are they sharing?\nWhat projects or products are they talking about?\n\nAnswering these questions helps you understand the best way to engage with them and focus on building a relationship.\n\nThen, you’ll want to lightly engage with them. Follow them on Twitter. Leave a meaty (150 - 300 word) comment on a blog post. Tweet about one of their recent posts on Twitter.\n\nThis lets you lightly and slowly enter the conversation with them. You don’t want to suddenly show up asking them for something. With this slow, incremental approach, you’re cautiously building a relationship.\n\nEngage With Their Community\n\nBefore you ask them for a favor, you want to contribute to them and their community. Interact with them. Comment on a blog post. Join their forum. Attend a webinar.\n\nTake the time to engage with them. ‘Give’ three or four times before you reach out to them directly.\n\nDirect Outreach\n\nAfter you engage with their community, you want to transition to directly engaging with the authorities.\n\nI like starting off with contacting them through email. Two reasons:\n\nIt’s often easier to find their email address than a phone number\nUnless you’re contacting someone who’s positioning themselves as a business online or making their phone number easily available, it can be shocking to get an unexpected call from ‘The Internet’\n\nYou’ll want to have a specific reason to contact them. Ideally, you have something — not your article! — to share.\n\nNo long, rambling, open-ended, no-call-to-action emails. Be specific and direct. Don’t waste their time. Be respectful.\n\nPersistence\n\nYou might not hear back the first time. Or you might hear back, but they tell you that now isn’t a good time.\n\nThat’s okay.\n\nYou’re going to be persistent. Here’s why. It can take up to 9 rejections to get a meeting or an agreement. What makes the difference between people who face that rejection one time and quit or 40 times and never quit is purely determined by the systems that they have in place.\n\nVery few — only about 4% of people — keep trying after the first four rejections.\n\nYou must have the expectation that you will receive rejection. Do not take it personally. This is only part of the system, part of the process of building a relationship. To be successful, you must go through this rejection.\n\nTo achieve success in my outreach, I use a multi-week outreach strategy. This strategy guides me through politely and persistently reaching out to the authorities I want to build a relationship with.\n\nMy system builds in 8+ attempts to make contact with each authority. My goal is to reach out to the authority 8 times even if the authority declines or doesn’t respond 8 times1.\n\nWhen I start a Digital Outreach campaign to promote an article, a resource, or a client or help a client earn links for their website, I map out the first 3-5 ‘touches’ in the series:\n\nThe first, second, and third email that I send the authority\nWhat I say if they say ‘No’\nWhat I say if they say ‘I don’t think this is a good fit...’\n\nIf you continue to market to someone with great vigor, they will absolutely get to know who you are. If they tell you ‘No! No!’ and you keep connecting with them, they will go from not knowing you to knowing who you are to feeling obligated to work with you.\n\nYou must expect and plan for the people you’re contacting to say ‘No!’ several times — and anticipate that these rejections will not cause you to give up. In your mind, you must have a plan: what’s the first email you send them? What’s the second?\n\nAfter all, how important could your product, your business, or your request be if you gave up after a single rejection?\n\nMake a Specific Ask\n\nWhen it’s time to make a specific ask — sharing an article, coming onto a podcast, working together on a joint venture — you want to start with a small, specific ask.\n\nWhen Tim Feriss was first promoting the Four Hour Work Week, when he had connected with an authority or expert that he wanted to work with, he developed a relationship, focused on providing value to them, and then made a short, specific ask.\n\nIn Tim’s case, this is where it gets interesting. Instead of asking the expert to read his entire manuscript, he sent them a single chapter that best aligned with their interests. These factors all enhanced the strength of his ask:\n\nIt was a small, specific ask\nIt directly related to the expert’s area of interest\nIt came after developing a relationship with the expert\n\nYou want to be focused on building a relationship and then using that relationship as a basis to explore working together.\n\nReciprocate & Nurture the Relationship\n\nOnce you’ve made your ask and received an answer — yes or no — you want to reciprocate, continue providing value to the person you’re working with, and focus on nurturing the relationship.\n\nYou want to think about this as ‘playing the long game.’\n\nSuccess isn’t in getting a one-time review, post, or link. Success is building a long-term, ongoing relationship with someone who is established in your industry.\n\nBy focusing on providing value to them and their community and reciprocating any value they give to you, you show that you aren’t just looking for a short-term win.\n\nDuring an outreach campaign, I take the following steps to track and nurture the relationships I’m building:\n\nFirst, I add the influencer to my contact management system. I use a combination of StreakCRM2, Buzzstream3, and Highrise4.\nThen, I use either Streak’s ‘Snooze’ feature, Boomerang Gmail extension, or Right Inbox to set periodic reminders to check in and see how they’re doing. For my personal contacts, I add them to my Drip account and tag them as a ‘personal contact’ or ‘client’.\nAfter that, If I come across an article or resource that I think they would value — or if I or my client write something that I think they’d enjoy reading — I send them a short note with the article attached.\n\nIn essence, I treat them like a friend that I want to stay in touch with.\n\nBy focusing on staying in touch and providing value to them, you’re able to nurture a long-term, ongoing relationship, that can and will continue to provide to you, your business, or your client’s business.\n\nThat way, the next time you have a great article, product, or course that you’re working on promoting, it’s easy to look at the people you’ve worked with before and drop them a quick note saying: “Hey! Hope you’re doing well, loved your latest podcast episode. I just finished writing an article on that topic and I think you’d enjoy reading it. Check it out!”\n\nClosing Thoughts\n\nAt the most basic level, the best way to promote a great article, product, course, or piece of content is to focus on building a human relationship with a relevant authority, expert, or tastemaker.\n\nWhen you have that relationship in place, it becomes much easier to achieve the outcome you’re looking for: more traffic, more leads, more sales, better image.\n\nA relationship with an authority in your industry — like, say, Andrew Warner of Mixergy — can pay off for your business in a number of ways:\n\nA high-quality link for your website\nPromotion for your upcoming course or product\nMore traffic, leads, and sales for your business\nImprovement in your brand and image\n\nBut it’s the relationship — a connection with an influential person in your industry — that’s the real payoff for you and your business.\n\nWhen you focus on building that relationship, it’s easy to promote a great piece of content. And it’s easy to build a better business.\n\nDid you enjoy reading this article? You should read “How do I get more traffic?” next.\n\nThe exception? If I get a firm, direct, rational ‘no’. If someone defers or delays, I continue outreach to them. If someone politely explains why this isn’t a good match, I’ll thank them for their time. ↩\nFor managing ongoing relationships ↩\nFor identifying, qualifying, initiating, and tracking relationships ↩\nFor tracking my clients and personal contacts ↩",
  "title": "Ask Kai: What should I do to promote a great article, product, or course?"
}