Speaking of cliches, (we weren’t, but let’s pretend) we’ve all heard the classic line from the movie, Field of Dreams: “If you build it, they will come.” Many marketers have used this line-turned-cliche thinking that it makes for a solid web marketing strategy.
Well, it doesn’t.
It might work to get a bunch of dead guys to play baseball in your cornfield — I haven’t tried, so I can’t say for sure — but it doesn’t really work to bring people to your content. (This is what happens when people take movies too literally.)
Great content doesn’t automatically generate visitors. And even if you added some awesome SEO sauce, that alone usually isn’t enough to bring people in either. The fact is, great content deserves needs great promotion.
Social social media provides just the thing.
There are a lot of social promotion opportunities for your content:
- Post a link to your streams
- Syndicate it on other blogs
- Run paid social ads
- Interact with others on that topic
- and so on.
But the most critical part of any social promotion isn’t actually promotion. It’s engagement.
Social engagement builds credibility. Credibility builds an audience. Having an audience gives you someone to promote your content to.
If you take away engagement, you’ve got nothing.
[inlinetweet prefix=”” tweeter=”” suffix=””]Getting traffic to your content starts and ends with with engagement.[/inlinetweet] Engagement provides you with the social promotion opportunities that will drive quality, interested traffic to your website.
Because if you build it they won’t come. If you promote it they won’t come. But if you engage, they will come to what you build and promote effectively.
