23 Smart (and Free) Ways to Promote Your Startup’s Content

You know that content is a super effective tool to reach a target audience in your niche. You’ve hired a good content writer, and started producing tons of high-quality content.

Well, slow down, my friend! Creating great content alone doesn’t move the needle.

No matter how useful your content is, it will not make much difference if it doesn’t reach a large audience in your niche. And the only way to reach a large audience in your niche is to aggressively promote your content.

However, not all startups have incessant supply of marketing dollars to buy paid media run paid campaigns.

In today’s post, I’m going to share 23+ proven ways to promote your startup content and reach a large audience.

Without further ado, let’s dive in:

1. Seed your content on Quora.

With around 200 million monthly active users, Quora is a good platform to promote your content. How can you use this every popular Q&A community to promote content?

Follow these simple steps:

• Search questions relevant to your content
• Write brief answers and leave the links of your content in the end of answers
• Search for genuine opportunities to leave the links of your content in Quora comments

2. Syndicate your content on popular sites that already have a large audience.

Medium and LinkedIn are two, great platforms to share your content. To be more successful on content sharing platforms, you need to build community there. Comment and share others’ content regularly.

3. Send hundreds of emails, daily.

Include the links of new content in your email signature with catchy titles. Chances are the content will get noticed. Email is still the best way to reach people. Email useful content to your teams, industry peers, qualified leads, or anyone who will be benefit from reading your content.

4. Guest blog to build thought leadership authority.

You can also use it to promote your epic content. Search for opportunities if you can link to your content in your guest post. Also, if the guest posting site allows, you can include the link of your epic content in your author bio.

5. Create roundup posts; promote them aggressively.

This will help you promote more content with less effort. To maximize success, you should create thematic roundup posts every 2–3 weeks.

6. Repurpose your content.

Convert long guides into eBooks, blog posts into SlideShares, eBooks into videos. This will help you reach different audiences with the same content.

8. Publish supporting content snippets from your epic guides elsewhere.

Atomise articles from your biggest content assets and publish them on LinkedIn, Medium or any other blogging platforms — always linking back to the epic guide or white paper they came from. If your supporting content is strong, people will click those links to get more information.

9. Co-author useful guides and ask your fellow writer to promote the content.

This will help you expand your reach to new audiences.

10. Post summaries of your content on niche social sites, like Growth Hackers.

If the summary of your content is intriguing, chances are you’ll get referral traffic from those websites.

11. Don’t stop after sending content to your email subscribers.

Blast content again your email list under the title ‘In case you missed it…’ This will increase the chances of getting more clicks for the same content. Note: you should use this technique with caution, and make sure the content offers real value to your subscribers.

12. Use your homepage wisely.

More often than not, the homepage is the most visited page of any website. Put newly created content on home page to give it an initial boost.

13. Customize your 404 page to get some additional traffic.

Make your 404 page more interesting with links to content you want to promote. If you can make those links irresistible, you’ll certainly get more eyeballs on your content.

14. Mention relevant content in presentations, webinars, and podcasts.

This tactic is as simple as saying: “We’ve actually created an in-depth post on this topic,” or, “we’ve created a step-by-guide on how to do this.” If it’s possible, include the links of content in the show notes, or follow-up/thank you emails.

15. Include other writer’s articles in your content and email them to encouraging sharing.

This trick works best if you ask for a quote/input beforehand. You can also send those writers prewritten social media posts, to make it easier for them to share your content.

16. Maximise on social media.

You should be getting at least 20 social media posts for each of your content pieces. Facts, figures, and quotes work well here. As social media promotion is all about grabbing the attention of audience, make sure to share the most intriguing snippets of information.

17. To widen the reach of your content on Twitter, use relevant hashtags in your tweets.

Also, ask people to retweet your content.

18. Search for opportunities to include links to relevant content in your Twitter replies.

Also, make a list of people who regularly share content similar to your content, and make sure you mention them in your tweets.

19. A picture is worth a thousand words.

It’s been found that social media posts with images get more engagement than that of posts without images. Include relevant images when you share your content on social media platforms to boost engagement.

21. Share your content on Flipboard.

The content shared on this news aggregator site looks great, and feels like a high-quality digital magazine.

22. Share your content in relevant social media groups.

Facebook groups and LinkedIn groups are good place to share your content to attract more eyeballs. However, you need to be active in those groups. Only when you are a credible member, will your content get traction there.

23. Use help a reporter out (HARO) service.

It allows you to pitch useful, relevant content to reporters. If they like your content, they can include it in their next stories.

Final thoughts

Creating great content and not promoting it is an online marketing sin. Follow these free and easy tips to promote your startup’s most valuable content and start reaching a larger audience today.

Do you have any tips to add to this list? Please share it in the comment section. I’d love to learn more about distribution strategies that have worked for you!