Are your ebooks and white papers underperforming when it comes to capturing viewers and leads? Let’s face it, you put a lot of resources into these online marketing tools, and you need to get as much out of them as possible.
Your first impulse may be to blame the content. But, odds are, if you’re offering useful, authoritative content in your ebooks and papers—it’s not the content.
You may be short in the marketing department. Content promotion is an essential piece of any content marketing initiative, and the lack of it is a major reason for poor results.
So, here are 7 handy tips for effectively promoting your ebook or white paper:
1. Social media. Posting your white paper and linking to your ebook on your website is no longer enough. Your social media network offers a ready source of interested readers, so be sure to post links to all of your ebooks and white papers when you update your social media accounts.
2. Press releases. The good old press release is still an effective way to broadcast the publishing of an ebook or white paper across the Web. Online distribution services will publish your release to search engines and social networks, doing much of the work for you.
3. Syndication. Register with a content syndication site that will make your ebooks and white papers available to their readers. It’s like being a guest blogger or contributing writer for sites that have big followings.
4. Company blog. Your blog is another way to lead readers to your content. Create a post that announces your white paper or ebook, then link to the content in the body of the text. People who are reading your blog every week anyway now have a convenient way to access them.
5. Email signature. Your signature already has links to your social media accounts and website. So why not add a link to your latest ebook or white paper? Again, the idea with content promotion is to make the content as widely distributed and easy to access as possible.
6. Ad campaigns. Consider promoting your content through an online ad campaign such as AdWords and/or through ads placed on your site. Both will link readers to your ebook or white paper, either directly from the search engines or from different pages on your site.
7. Email newsletters. If you don’t already send out email newsletters, make this your excuse to get started. Newsletters are one of the most popular and effective methods of bringing your information to customers. Link to your content in these emails to give subscribers a way to read it that’s as easy as opening their inboxes.
There you have it—7 simple ways to promote your ebook or white paper. Remember, great content is at the heart of your content marketing success. But, be sure to follow through with effective marketing techniques to ensure that you always get the biggest bang out of the content you worked so hard to create.
