If you have ever wondered why your content is always being outperformed by other similar content, note that the ‘secret sauce' lies in two words – paid advertising.

You don't have to be an expert, you don't have to be a writer. (Heck, you don't even have to speak English well either!)  The key to promoting your masterpiece is to advertise it!  This rings especially true if you are in the beginning stages and have little, to possibly, no audience.

In today's fast paced digital world, it's said that you should aim to spend 20% of your time creating your content and 80% of the time promoting it!

That may be different then what you expected coming in here today but the intelligent and resourceful folks over at medium.com have the inside scoop on the exact recipe that yielded 12K in visitors & 800 leads from just 1 post!

Read on…

Research

OK, I thought, let’s find something that people could like that will be easily shareable. I searched the internet and found that there wasn’t any great content on how to spy on competitors. In Google’s SERP there were some blog posts but nothing really saying how to do it, step by step. I did a lot of research and put together a complete guide on how to spy on online competitors. I also checked other weak blog post backlinks and saved the websites that could give me a backlink to a spreadsheet, which I would later use in outreach.

Writing

Since I’m not a professional writer, this was a part that took me the most of the time. I wrote a long list of actionable content that you can replicate by reading the guide. That was the strong point, and something that every person that can read and perform without academic degrees. Basically all of these steps I presented in article are simple hacks, detailed usage of tools that my competitors were talking about, that nobody had ever actually bothered to explain how to use. I knew the only way to outperform our competitors was to write the longest and most detailed how-to post. This would be the only way I could ask for a backlink or share from influencers and get a positive answer. So I dug in and wrote a 1700+ words guide. The hardest part was now done.

Publishing & Reposting

When everything was proofread I simply published to our main blog. Our Marketing Director sent it out with our weekly newsletter. We also posted on our company’s Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Since it was related to marketing and there were some useful hacks, I posted it on GrowthHackers.com. Still today we’re getting leads from GH, and that post was published a year ago. I also determined the content to be useful for the Inbound.org community. Next, I found a list of relevant subreddits and submitted my post there. Some went well and others not so well. I don’t have a high karma and my posts are sometime removed or marked as not relevant. I submitted it also to 20 relevant LinkedIn groups and tried to create a discussion with other people from there. About LinkedIn Groups: be careful with these. Excessive posting to non-relevant groups could get you banned. That means that all your future submissions will have to be approved by group admin. And frankly nobody will approve your post. You can get banned easily. Some random user can mark your post as spam and you’re out.

Outreach

Outreach is probably the most important step in this process. Without outreach it would be hard for you to get it in front of all those interesting and converting people. This is the step that you should start thinking about even before you start writing the article.

Ask yourself these important questions: * Am I including someone in my article that has strong social presence? * Do I know someone who recently gave a backlink to some other similar resource that I did better? * Are there any bloggers who do a blog post roundup that are in my niche? * Do I know a high volume newsletters that sends out curated content?

Once you get answers to your questions start reaching out. Find people that you mentioned in your article and send them a tweet or email. Before publishing, give them heads up about that you write about them and ask if they are interested to see it when it’s out. Then send them an email with the link. Simple as that. Don’t push it. Nobody has any obligation to share your content, so respect that.

Next step: open your previously created spreadsheet with backlinks of your competitor’s content. This step works if your article is newer / better / more extended. Find relevant contacts and send them an email.

(Again, don’t push it.)

Next thing that worked well for me while I was promoting my blog post. I found bloggers that are doing expert roundup blog posts. They are basically blogging regularly (weekly or monthly) about what experts said this week or what appeared as important on the internet. Just get their emails and write them. Put your message in front of them. Of course it has to be relevant to their niche, But go for it.

Last step in my process was to read for myself several different kinds of newsletters. Then I narrowed down to the ones with the best content and/or most readers. Give these writers a simple heads up about your article.

Results

The results were good at that time since we (@WeAreAudienti) were a fresh new team and we were still figuring this thing out. However, reviewing all these results I can say this: We captured leads with an untargeted popup and it wasn’t converting well. We got 250 leads from this popup, which puts its conversion rate down close to 0.4%. Here is a screenshot

The other 530 leads are from another one of our projects called Scorecard.

There you have it – from start to finish.  The author of the article goes on to discuss the mistakes he worked to improve on and an overall conclusion on what he felt could have done better.  You can read the reddit post that is still live here —> redditt-12,000+ visitors & 800 Free Leads

Overall, fellow marketer, keep in mind to take things one day at a time.  Rome wasn't built in a day.  Build off your results from the prior day, week or month and learn to adjust your expectations so you are better equipped to handle the turmoil and issues that arise.

Till next time!