10 FREE Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Content by Leveraging Social

Just because you write great content doesn’t mean your target audience will read it. Unless you do the work to drive traffic to your content, how will anyone even know it’s there?

The ability to publish original content on LinkedIn has leveled the playing field for everyone, not just content marketers. We all have an equal opportunity to author our ideas, strategies, tactics and insights, without having to rely on a company blog.

But there’s no pixie dust, no marketing magnet and certainly no guarantees that if you build it they will come.

Let’s start with what we know. The buyer’s journey has changed. Buyers are now researchers, explorers, self-educators and collaborative decision makers – and this significantly impacts the traditional sales process. The Know, Like and Trust mantra is now Attract, Teach and Engage. If you are not breaking through the noise, gaining access to stakeholders and positioning yourself as the thought leader and subject matter expert, your competition will.

But, the significant shift in the way people buy didn’t happen overnight.

Google has been around since 1998 and they shifted the knowledge power—everyone suddenly had access to answers and no longer relied on “the salesperson” to inform them.

Web 2.0 quickly followed in 1999, allowing users to interact and collaborate with each other (social media) and create content and share it with a virtual community, in stark contrast to websites where people were limited to passive viewing. During this time, the SEO frenzy was underway, with everyone vying for top billing through manual link building and backlinks. Initially, it was “He with the most marketing budget wins.”

If you invested in a great SEO firm and pay-per-click, you had a significant competitive advantage. Email marketing took off and soon came the inbound lead generation movement, which is still very relevant and has a significant role in Social Selling.

Inbound marketing is essentially the process of driving potential buyers to branded landing pages designed to exchange your content for the prospect’s contact information, ultimately gathering leads. It is a brilliant model and works well when prospecting your existing email list to determine who is interested in your “stuff.”

The challenge of attracting new people, fresh eyes and an expanded target audience—what are the best ways to drive traffic to your content?

Here are 10 steps to getting more engagement with content, likes, comments and shares:

1. 1. Create content for sales that is specifically designed for your business development team, and which engages your target market. Make sure you are offering relevant and valuable insights that move your buyers closer to your solution. Every time you accept a connection request or if someone accepts yours, send a welcome message with a link to valuable content and let them know what they will get out of it if they click through. Create curiosity and then offer relevant insights.
   2. Share your blog post in LinkedIn Groups that are aligned with your message. While Groups on LinkedIn don’t have the same influence as they once did, many still have reach, and sharing your content in targeted groups will drive traffic to it.
   3. Create a list of 10 or so professionals (strategic alliances) that work with a similar target audience as yours and commit to sharing each other’s content every time you post. No one likes to be the first one to “like” or “comment”, so if you get it started, their networks will see that they liked your post and your views will grow exponentially.
      HOW TO: Once the article is shared, click on the Share button on the bottom right and Send message, then begin typing a name and choose from the drop down (you must be 1st degree connections). You can send to up to 50 people at one time, but use caution—there is no blind copy so they will see each other. My recommendation is to send one at a time. Be sure to type in a personalized note: NAME, I just posted a blog on TITLE, please “like,” “comment” and “share” and I will do the same the next time you post on LinkedIn. Thank you in advance for your support. – Brynne—then send.
   4. Share it with 1st degree connections that would glean value from your new piece of content.  Search for the intended audience using a search string -leveraging LinkedIn boolean search– and the 1st degree filter. NAME, I wanted to share with you a blog, TITLE LINK that offers some industry insights to CEOs. I would love to hear your thoughts. -Brynne Tillman
      
      10 FREE Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Content by Leveraging Social – What All Sales and Marketing Leaders Need to Know #LinkedIn #SocialSelling #ContentforSales @LinkedInExpertClick To Tweet
   5. Post it to your LinkedIn Company Page and your newsfeed and consider @mentioning your co-workers and networking partners. Once they engage, LinkedIn will recognize that it’s valuable content and will keep it higher up on the newsfeed. Make sure that you continue to go back and engage every few hours and/or days with those that are commenting, to keep it alive.
   6. Share it with other platforms such as Twitter and Facebook with #hashtags that are read by your target audience.
   7. Leverage your email list to get your message in front of the people who already know, like and trust you. When you post your blog, email a teaser paragraph with a link back to your LinkedIn post. Be sure to have social share buttons that encourage your readers to share it with their network.
   8. Add a link to your latest blog post on your email signature.
   9. Recycle content on your newsfeed. Evergreen content can be shared for months or even years. Mix it up – think creatively and you can find lots of ways to put a new spin on it.
   10. Consistently build your LinkedIn network with your in-person relationships. Be sure to connect with your co-workers, clients, networking partners and friends, as well as the prospects you speak with every day.
       BONUS: Be sure to have a call-to-action at the bottom of every educational post. You’ve got them interested and engaged, now you need to leverage that moment to get them to the next step.

With consistent use, the 10 steps above will pay off tremendously to increase your visibility and drive traffic to your content. Be sure to check out vengreso.com for more great posts and information on Digital Sales Training and Personal Branding!