If you want to get any sort of ROI from your content marketing efforts, creating content is only half the game. To truly succeed, you have to make sure your content is being seen and shared by the right people. That means doing more than simply publishing words on a page. It means you need to invest in content promotion.
Here are 8 strategies you can use to effectively promote your content:

1. Influencer Marketing

I'm starting with this one because it's so important. People trust folks they already know, which is why having an influencer share your content can increase conversions 3 to 10 times. Here are two great ways to do it:
  • Mention influencers in your industry in every content piece you create. After you've published your work, email the influencers (Content Marketer can help you find their addresses – full disclosure, I built this tool) and tag them on social media to alert them to your content piece and suggest that they share it with their audience.
  • If you see authority figures in your field sharing content on social media that's similar to pieces you've created in the past, tag them and suggest that they check out your work (and maybe share it with their followers).

2. Snippets for Social Media

A single piece of content can easily yield over a dozen "snippets" – quotable tidbits, such as variations on the title, short quotes, statistics and more, that you can use to share the piece. By using these snippets you can share the same piece of content dozens of different ways, potentially capturing the attention of people who may have missed your first update. Click to Tweet is a great tool to embed these snippets in your content and enable easy sharing.

3. Turn Content into Video

Video appeals to a whole new audience, above and beyond written pieces. People watch hundreds of millions of hours of YouTube videos every day, but surveys show that only 9% of small businesses use YouTube for marketing. What?! Make sure your content is available on video to capture more traffic – it can be as easy as simply narrating your blog posts alongside a quick slide deck.

4. Turn Content Into a Slide Deck

Speaking of slide decks, these powerful presentations appeal to yet another audience that's distinct from those who enjoy videos and written content. SlideShare is the most well-known place to upload a slide deck, but don't miss out on Photosnack as well. If you're serious about pursuing this strategy, Kissmetrics created a great guide to maximizing the impact of your slide deck. For example, at When I Work, we repurposed a blog post about productivity hacks backed by science and received over 15,000 views on SlideShare and thousands of pageviews back to our blog.

5. Submit to Content Communities

Submit your content to content communities, where users share written content and other formats with each other. Competition for viewers is high, so your work must be the absolute best it can be (that's a given, right?). A few content communities to check out includeBlog Engage, Biz Sugar, and Triberr.

6. Create Content Distribution Campaigns on Outbrain

Have you ever finished up an article on a high-profile site and come across ads for additional articles listed at the bottom? Those ads come from services like Outbrain, which places ads for your content on targeted, high-profile articles on other sites. Cost per click is relatively low, and it's a good way to get noticed by folks interested in content similar to yours.
Before giving this strategy a try, however, get clear on your goals. A lot of marketers try to tie ROI directly to these ads, but that's a difficult process. How can you tell, for instance, that visitors from native ad platforms like Outbrain converted because of your paid promotion and not because of the other valuable information found on your website? Unless you're ready to invest in a multi-touch attribution tracking program, consider these ads great for driving brand awareness and traffic – and leave it at that.

7. Find a Weekly Roundup Related to Your Topic

Take a minute to Google terms like "link roundup" and your industry to find out if other bloggers are already posting link roundups related to your subject. If they do, contact the blogger and let them know about your recent content pieces and suggest that they take a look for their next roundup post.

8. Create "10X Content"

This should go without saying, but if you want to generate traffic through the content you promote, that content has to be pretty damn good. People are way too busy and way too overwhelmed these days to waste time sharing anything that isn't truly exceptional.
So how can you tell if your content meets the "10X" criteria, as described by Moz's Rand Fishkin? Well, if it isn't generating traffic for you, it probably hasn't reached the quality threshold yet. If you're still not sure, give it a gut check. Is this something you'd share with your friends? Why or why not? Or, take a look at the content people in your industry are sharing. How does yours really stack up?
Ultimately, sharing your content is just as important as creating great content in the first place. But if you take the time to put these 8 promotion strategies into place, you'll be well positioned for content success in your industry.
Have any other tips or tricks for content promotion? Share them by leaving a comment below: