How to Strategically Place Your Content to Reach Your Target Audience

Locate the best channels to deploy your content for optimum prospect engagement.

You’re about to embark on your content creating – but do you know where you are going to deploy the content once it’s completed, or does your content marketing strategy still need work? If it’s the latter, then stop your content creation now.

Use these key pointers to get your messaging out there to the right person in the right place.

Your Jumping Off Point…

Your Personas, Your Audience

How do you know what to look for if you don’t know who your audience actually is? Drawing up and building out a comprehensive list of personas based on your database records, employee feedback and other avenues of research is essential for your content marketing strategy and for understanding who your audience is in the first place.

Think Outside the (Search) Box

Put that basic Google search query down and use link prospecting instead to reach out to related sites, people and pages who might want to share your link with their visitors. There are a host of tools and management systems that enable you to unearth and collate these vital channels such as BuzzStream, MozBar and Linkclump. While the process itself is laborious, the payoff can be huge.

Influence the Influencers

Every industry has its influencers and uncovering where they post content can offer valuable insights into where you should place yours. Use BuzzSumo and Social Crawlytics to track down where your influencers are most prolific – and leap in with your own messaging. Just make sure your content stands out from the crowd or you’ll run the risk looking ‘me-too’…

Competitor Surveillance

Where are your competitors placing their content? Use online tools such as Open Site Explorer and enter a competitor’s URL (plus compare with five others). OSE will come back with an in-depth breakdown of competitor links and stats from across a host of platforms. The net result? A comprehensive overview of what your competitor is up to in the online space. Handy.

Go Oh So Social

Find out what people are sharing on social; again Buzzsumo is an excellent tool for researching what topics have been trending within your sector – from the past 24 hours to past six months.

P.S.

And of course, flush your content through your own distribution channels to gain maximum exposure.

… To a Smooth Landing

Once you have compiled your findings, get organised with our checklist:

1. Check out the quality of the sites found; are they up-to-date, authoritative? Are they attracting enough interaction with their audience i.e., comments/shares/likes?
2. Breakdown which posts and articles have garnered the most comments/likes/shares.
3. Use this analysis to draw up plans for your own content, increasing your chances of creating popular, relevant copy that will appeal to both customer- and link prospects.
4. To successfully engage with link prospects, pitch your content briefly and succinctly, demonstrating to the prospect why it is in their interest to place your content.
5. Prioritise sites in order of potential gain/exposure; which ones are worth the investment, which ones are a potential washout.

Remember:

– Uncover who your personas are.

– Think bigger than a mere Google search box.

– Use link prospecting to link with like-minded sites, people and pages.

– Track the activities of influencers, competitors and prospects online.

The Author
	Alistair Norman | Marketing Director Alistair is responsible for the strategy, design and implementation of our Inbound and Content Marketing, with a focus on developing B2B and B2C markets.