Tutorial: Guide to the Basics of Content Promotion

Content promotion starts with the first strike of the computer key. Write content that facilitates promotion, and it will promote itself. The guide will show you how to make sure your content is doing its own self-promotion as well as introduce you to some helpful content promotion tools to give your article a boost.

Writing with Content Promotion in Mind- Content Self-Promotion Through Links

Content links by respected sources vastly increase the readership of linked content. Links lead the reader back to your content to read it where it was published, giving you valuable page views. A source does not need your permission to link to your content and is unlikely to tell you if it does so. You can find out who has linked to your content by using the Google alert system or by searching on Google for your content headline.

It is permissible for sources linking to your content to include a short blurb of their own describing the content or a short excerpt from the content. However, a source's reprinting of your entire content (with or without a link) without your permission is copyright infringement. While copyright infringement is outside the scope of this article, you should know for that reprints of entire content are not helpful as a content promotional tools, as readers have no incentive to click on the link and read the content at the source where it was originally printed (you get no page views).

Writing with content promotion in mind requires familiarity with linking- who does it and what typically attracts a linker to specific articles.

Who Might Link to Your Content?

Online news outlets: News organizations like the Wall St. Journal or USA Today link to highly visible articles that address daily news topics such as the stimulus plan or the Academy Awards. Writing content to maximize its linkage potential by recognized news outlets is one of the most effective ways of helping your content to promote itself.

Corporation/Government Web Pages: Corporate websites sometimes contain media sections linking to content about the company. Government web pages sometimes link to content about an agency or its programs. Using correct program names, product names and corporate and agency names throughout the content makes it more visible to the corporation or government agency and increases its chances of linkage. Writing that encourages links from a well-known company or from a government agency helps your content promote itself.

News aggregators such as Topix or Daylife create subject matter lists of content. The subject might be a person's or company's name or a news topic or a place. If you write an article about the Walt Disney Company's Little Mermaid going into the Disney vault, an aggregator might list the article under "Walt Disney Co.," and "the Little Mermaid" and possibly under "mermaids," and if you mentioned it in the story, "Burbank, California" where Disney headquarters is located. Aggregator lists update frequently so their content promotion potential is time-limited.

Blogs: Well known blogs that are advantageous for their linkage potential generally deal with a particular topic such as politics or parenting. Other blogs may contain a mishmash of whatever strikes the blog owner's whimsy.

A rule of thumb is that a link from a source with a Google Page Rank.of 6 or higher is useful for content promotion purposes. You can check a website's Google Page Rank by copying the URL into the Google Page Rank Checker.

How to Write with Content Promotion by Linkage in Mind

Carefully selected keywords and keyword density ensure that sources that might link to your content find it. Primers on SEO, keyword selection and keyword density can be found under "Tutorials" in the "Community" section. One useful article that covers the basics is here. Naming relevant persons, products, companies, agencies cities, states and countries and repeating the mentions throughout your content will improve your content's odds of being linked with sources interested in those entities; and finally, choosing a catchy headline containing keywords will attract more links than a dull headline or a headline that does not contain your keywords.

Content Promotion Tools

Content promotion tools allow you to distribute your own links to social networking sites.

Manual Posting to Social Networking Sites

To promote your content by posting it a social networking site, you must be a member. If you are not a member and want to join, go to the network's sign up page and join.

Towards the top of each Yahoo! Voices article, there are options to share the content on a social networking site. Click on the icon for the site you to which you want to post your content; you will be directed to an authorization page from the social network site containing your article title and link and a comment box. Add a comment describing the article and click on "post." Your article link and comment will appear on your profile page.

Social Bookmarking Sites

Social bookmarking sites are another popular method of promoting content. These sites- Digg, Stumbleupon, Newsvine and Propeller are examples- have differing rules for posting and all require you to sign up for an account. Usually, you should post articles only to bookmarking sites relevant to the article in question- for example, Digg is a site for tech-related content so it is not the place to bookmark a parenting article. You may be banned from social bookmarking sites if your only participation consists of promoting your own content, so when using these sites, know their rules and follow them.

To bookmark one of your articles, click on the "click to share this content" arrow at the bottom of your article; then choose the "Bookmark" notation in the blue box. Click on the icon for the bookmarking site you want to use. This will direct you to a login page, or if you are not a member of the site, a sign-up page. Once you are logged in, you will be directed to a page where your content link appears. The exact information you need to supply will vary from site to site, but generally you need to provide a blurb describing your content and sometimes a content category. Once you fill out the form and click to bookmark the information, the information will be bookmarked for others using the site to see.

Miscellaneous Content Promotion Techniques

These miscellaneous content promotion techniques are also effective in promoting content:

Content Promotion in Email Signature

If you send significant numbers of emails, including links to recent content as part of your signature promotes your content. The primary advantage of this approach is not tremendous page view increases for the content in question but development of a reader base.

Content Promotion Through Listserves

Strategic content promotion through listserves can be a very effective content promotion tool. No one likes spam, and spamming on listserves may get you banned. But while you can't promote every piece of content you write on listserves, you can effectively promote specific content of interest to the listserve members. For example, if you wrote an article about the recent peanut recall, neighbors and schoolmates' families might well appreciate your having done the legwork and identified specific products to be avoided. Appropriate content promotion on listserves can dramatically increase readership of the content promoted.

Targeted Content Promotion

When you write content that reviews a product or service (unless the review completely pans the product or service), send the link to the business owner by email. You may want to mention that the business owner should feel free to use the link with a short excerpt from the review for promotional purposes on the company's web page.

Using some or all of these content promotion tools can vastly increase your content's visibility on the internet.