Newsletter Creation

Run this checklist to promote a piece of content

Introduction

Preparation:

Ensure your content is epic

Open Template in MailChimp

Potential Headers

Content Promotion Checklist:

Email your subscribers

Share on social media

Perform outreach

Pay for promotion

Celebrate

Relevant Checklists:

Introduction

Content marketing is not easy, it takes a lot of elbow grease to create valuable content and even more to promote it!

The promotion part is something that many companies tend to miss when looking at a content marketing strategy. A general rule of thumb is you should spend 30% of your time creating content and 70% promoting it. That’s why I created this checklist you can use to promote the content you work so hard to create.

I’m writing this checklist for two purposes. Firstly, because I am interested in content promotion for my own company Process Street. Content marketing is something I’ve been experimenting with and seeing some great results with so far, writing this post is forcing me to research and learn more about content distribution. Secondly, because I want to make a template for this in Process Street so I can begin hand it off to my team. I am working towards a streamlined content marketing machine.

Eventually I want to have a ghostwriter, a blogger a designer and a team of promoters. I will still be creating the core content, but I won’t have to polish or distribute any of it. I’m confident this checklist will help my business, and I hope it’s useful for yours too.

Note, if you’re launching a website, check out our Website Launch Checklist. There is a little overlap but its targeted to a new website launch vs a piece of content on an existing site.

Preparation:

Ensure your content is epic

The huge caveat to this checklist is that your content must be EPIC. If you create crap content, most of these techniques will yield little to no results and will be a huge waste of time.

Take a long hard look at your content and make sure that (within reason) it is as good as you can possibly make it.

If you don’t know what epic content is, take a look at these guides:

Open Template in MailChimp

Potential Headers

Content Promotion Checklist:

Email your subscribers

Another pretty straightforward task now - you need to email your subscribers!. You should be collecting leads on your website and you should be promoting your content to those leads.

For example, you can use Mailchimp set up on an auto RSS feed to automatically email new blog posts out. Most email service providers such Aweber and Getresponse have this option too.

Here is one of the email templates we use for Mailchimp; you can use it and modify it if you are a Mailchimp user.

Click Here to Download the Template (you may need to right-click and “Save As”)

Perform outreach

Outreach means manually emailing, tweeting and even calling people to tell them about your content. Yes, yes, this sounds like hard work and truthfully it is, but sometimes you have to do things that don’t scale to get the ball rolling.

Use the form field below to record the list of bloggers which you will be targeting.

Target Bloggers

Outreach is arguably the most important thing for a new blogger. Check out how Alex Turnbull got over 1,000 subscribers to his blog from one post thanks to blogger outreach!

To start with outreach, you first need to create a list of bloggers you want to target. There are a few considerations here. First, they should be relevant to your niche. Don’t contact bloggers who blog in a completely different area to you. Secondly, as always, your content must be awesome!

Another tip here is to look for “up and comer” bloggers as they may be easier to contact and get less requests than really popular bloggers.

Tools to Find Influencers

Technorati
Search on Twitter
Facebook Graph Search for Fanpages
Google Search for Blogs
AllTop
Scoop.it
We Follow
Topsy
Twello

How to Contact Them

Email – Preferred Method
Contact Page
Whois
Twitter
Facebook Page
Google+

Tools to Manage Outreach

Buzz Stream – Specifically designed for blog outreach
Trello is a great free organizational tool to help you track activities
CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool will work if you already use one

Email Templates for Outreach

Outreach Letters for Link Building [Real Examples]
Blogger Outreach Email Template
How To Write A Blogger Outreach Email
How To Create a Killer Outreach Email With 4 Quick Steps and 3 Simple Tips
10 Hand Curated Blogger Outreach Examples to Inspire Your Next Campaign

More info on Outreach:

Blogger outreach is a big topic if you want more information on blogger outreach check out the below guides:
Advanced Guide to Content Promotion
How to Develop a Solid Blog Outreach Strategy
My Favorite Way to Get Links and Social Shares – Whiteboard Friday
5 Tips for Developing Better Blogger Outreach

Pay for promotion

If you are aggressively working to build a blog and audience, you should consider paying to promote your content. Remember to not blindly shove money at the most available source; do you research, spend slowly and record all relevant info with the form fields below.

Paid Promotion?

Paid Promotion Channel(s)

There are a number of channels you can tap to do this including:
Facebook Ads
Linkedin Ads
Seed with a StumbleUpon ad Twitter Ads
OutBrain
Zemanta
SimpleReach
Taboola
Nstr

Warning!

Before promoting on any of the above channels you should do significant research as to which ones are the best fit for your audience and how the mechanics of each network work.

The links above do not take you directly to the advertising pages; they take you to guides to learn how to advertise on these platforms. Start with one, start slow, track your results, watch your spend! But most importantly, learn (or pay someone who has already learned).