3 Tricks to Creating Content Experts Will Want to Promote

Content creation and content promotion are the two most important steps of your content marketing strategy. While many marketers treat these steps as two separate entities, there are in fact several ways to combine them.

Integrating both strategies into one saves time and streamlines the marketing process. By using a few simple tricks, you can create content that experts and influencers will promote without you even having to ask. Instead of spending time and money getting experts to promote your content, create content that experts will want to promote.

Learn these three simple tricks to optimize your strategy for quicker and more successful content promotion.

Interviews

Every industry has its leaders—experts in the field that command knowledge and respect. When you interview a leader, you can gain high esteem from others in the field, not to mention more traffic.

The purpose of this type of content is twofold:

1. Industry experts will bring more readers to your site as people seek out and trust the leader’s point of view.
2. The expert will likely promote the content on his website and/or social media channels, again bringing more users to your site.

After you’ve conducted the interview, there are a couple things to keep in mind when publishing your content. First, if your interview is audio or video, be sure to provide a written transcript or an overview of the interview. This is helpful for SEO purposes as the content of the video or audio stream is not crawlable, but the written portion is.

Another quick tip is to ask the interviewee which of their platforms (social media or website) they would like for you to promote within the interview. This is a way to show your appreciation as well as a way to further encourage them to promote the content.

Let’s take a look at an example from Mint, a division of Intuit focused on helping users organize their finances. Mint conducted an expert interview with Mary Hall, who runs a blog dedicated to being fashionable on a budget. They included a write-up of the entire interview as well as a link to Mary’s site.

In return, Mary promoted the interview on the Press page of her website.

Ego Baiting

Ego baiting has gotten a bad reputation due to its name. But despite its implications, ego baiting is a simple psychological tool that uses the concept of reciprocity. The basic principle is meant to win others over. Putting others in a positive light is most likely to make others return the favor.

This is a tool most of us use in our daily lives. What better way to make friends than by complimenting them? In marketing, ego baiting is an attempt to encourage influencers to amplify your work, build links, and increase your social presence.

There are a couple different ways to organize your ego bait content: 

Expert Roundups

An expert roundup is a way of including many influencers’ thoughts and opinions in one piece. Typically, a query is sent out requesting information about a topic from a specific subset of experts. If an expert is so inclined, he or she can choose to reply with his or her insight.

This information is then compiled into some type of content, usually a blog post, in which each respondent is referenced. Many times, a link to their primary social media profile or website is included. The purpose of this link is the same as a link within an interview – to show appreciation and encourage promotion.

Ideally, each influencer featured in a roundup post will share the content with his followers to showcase himself as an expert. The added benefit, then, is that your content is being promoted without you even having to ask.

Our roundup post example comes from right here at Pole Position Marketing. While this example is not in response to a query, it does feature experts from both the Pole Position team and the industry at large – namely Joe Pulizzi, Founder of Content Marketing Institute.

We can see the success of this tactic below. Here is Joe’s Media page on his website featuring the link to the roundup post.

Lists

Lists are another ego bait tool used to capture attention. A list is similar to a roundup in that you are referencing multiple experts. The difference is that you’re not including a quote directly from the expert, but instead simply listing them as an expert to follow.

This type of ego baiting does not require the expert to respond to a query, but rather praises him as an expert without him having to do anything. This is ego baiting in its truest sense.

Again, the idea here is that each expert will feel so honored to be listed that he or she will “brag” about it by sharing the content. As your content is promoted by respected leaders in the industry, traffic to your site will grow.

For example, SmartMove, a division of TransUnion focused on screening tenants for rental properties, published a list of experts that they feel their customers should follow. Again, this is different from a roundup because, as you can see, SmartMove is simply listing experts rather than asking them to share their insight.

We can see the content promotion in action below via a tweet from one of the featured industry experts, Mrs. Landlady.

Guest Blogging

Guest blogging is a tactic that is prevalent across the internet today. But before you allow others to guest post on your blog, consider a more strategic approach. Instead of opening up the opportunity to any Average Joe, hand select experts who’d you’d like to have contribute to your blog.

By limiting your contributors to only those who you deem industry leaders, you are making the position much more exclusive. This exclusivity has a similar effect as ego baiting – an expert wants to show off that he or she was asked to guest blog and thus will share the content. Even though you didn’t write the content, it is still on your site, so the promotion is just as valuable.

In order to begin this tactic, seek out experts that you know are respected within your industry and can offer new and compelling information to your readers. Make it worth their while by including a link to their site and/or social media as well as listing them as an expert contributor on your blog.

An added bonus of inviting experts to guest blog on your site is that it boosts the legitimacy of your site. Expert posts reinforce your site’s authority and establish you/your company as a leader in the industry, which should, in turn, increase traffic to your site.

Our last example comes from Inc. featuring a guest post from Andrew Filev, CEO of Wrike, a project management platform. While Inc. is already an authoritative site itself, it reaffirms its authority by featuring guest posts from notable CEOs across various industries.

To promote the content, Wrike featured the Inc. blog post on its own blog.

Conclusion

In order to save yourself time (and produce exceptional content in the process), create content that experts will want to promote for you. By using any of these three tactics, you are sure to receive promotion from industry leaders, which in turn will increase traffic to your site. Remember to think about content promotion during the creation phase, and you will be on your way to a successful content marketing strategy.