How to get your content shared for maximum mileage

Getting mileage out of your content is all about finding as many ways to share it as possible.

It might sound obvious, but it’s a step that many businesses miss out, or don’t do thoroughly. Here’s how to get your content out there.

Sharing on socials

Posting on your social channels is often the one step that businesses will take to promote their content. A simple ‘here’s our latest blog about tax increases’ is all very well, but it will soon get lost in the social noise.

So, what can you do to your social posts to help them stand out? Here are some ideas:

• Pull out a quote from a case study and make it into a visual post using a tool like Canva

• Do a series of ‘top tips’ social posts pulled from an in-depth guide

• Do some #DidYouKnow facts to tease people to click through to the article to find out more

• If you recorded interviews, create some short audio or video clips 

• Make a fun Instagram/Facebook Story with a few facts or quotes

• Make it topical by piggybacking on a certain hashtag or awareness day, for example #MondayMotivation

The other trick on social is to hook in stakeholders wherever you can. Tag in any other people or businesses that you’ve mentioned in the content and thank them for their input, encouraging them to share.

Lead with something like, “thanks for this awesome thing, we really like it so we’ve given it a shout out in our latest article” rather than just saying “please share this post”.

On the subject of sharing, remember that this goes further than social media. Set yourself a target of emailing each piece of new or improved content to 10 customers or prospects. Names should come to mind when you’re coming up with content ideas – a great way to check whether it's valuable for your audience. 

It’s also a handy way to keep in touch with contacts, or to introduce your business to a new prospect who might have an interest in what you’ve written.

Employee advocacy

The other huge, often-untapped group that can help you share your content is your employees. 

You can do this informally, by emailing the latest content to your whole team each week and reminding them to share with their networks. You could also encourage salespeople to add content relevant to prospects to their email signatures and share it on social media.

Alternatively, some marketing managers formalise this process by starting an employee advocacy scheme. This is where you identify the people who are active on social media and likely to share more, then train them by talking them through the style guide, editorial policy and content calendar. 

Create a shared folder where you can regularly save content and assets for them to post. You could also set up a WhatsApp group, a Facebook group or an email list, to notify them when there’s some new content to promote.

For wider opportunities to promote your content, reach out to other organisations who have a shared interest in your subject matter. They may have a newsletter with space to promote external stories, but this normally involves an exchange, so be prepared to offer them something back.

You can also use content to create guest posts on other sites. Identify sites that are looking for advice on similar subjects and create a shorter guest post version out of something longer you’ve already created. 

This works best for longer content like downloadable guides, white papers and long-form content, and it means you can link back to it from the guest post, too.

Ready to overhaul your content? We can help. You can find out more about what we offer on our services page, or get in touch with the team to talk all things content and strategy.