Promoting Your B2B Content with Purpose: Best Practices for Driving Traffic and Engagement

You just published new blog content. You had done your homework so your on-page SEO is on point, backlinks are in check and you have high confidence in this post.

You hit publish and instead of a flow of traffic, as you expected, you hear…crickets.

Your excitement begins to sink and over the next few days or weeks, the traffic and engagements are second to none.

So what do you do? Post the link on Twitter? Share on Linkedin? You’ve done all this but you’re still experiencing low traffic and no engagement.

The problem? You aren't paying enough attention to your content promotion strategy, or worse, you don't even have one!

A survey shows that 50% of B2B companies stand out from their competitors by actively promoting their content. In other words, the effort doesn't end in content creation. If you want your content to be seen, you have to promote it actively.

So if you’re ready to finally stand out and be seen, keep reading. In this article we’ll uncover how to maximize the knowledge, tools, and platform you already have, to drive traffic and engagement to your B2B SaaS content.

The Content Marketing Journey

As a content marketer, you undergo a series of steps to produce high-quality content that engages readers and converts them to leads. I refer to this as the two-fold outcome of content marketing: convince and convert.

Your content should educate and entertain your reader, but it should also guide them to make a purchase, click on a CTA, or become loyal subscribers.

Every step in the content marketing journey helps you fulfill this goal. And while it varies, the journey looks like this.

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The planning and production phase is where you understand the buyer persona, identify the buyer’s intent, determine the type of content that best suits them, and create it.

For example, a B2B Saas company offers project management tools for software development teams. They have identified the gaps in the current solution their ideal clients use and know that their ideal clients are looking for alternative tools (showing they’re in the consideration phase of the buyer’s journey).

With this, they decide that they would create a guide or host a webinar highlighting the key features of their project management tool, with a CTA to schedule a demo or start a free trial. This content is optimized and created specifically for their audience.

And while many people think the job is done after they hit publish, it's not. Ross Simmonds, CEO of Foundation marketing, summed it all up in the following tweet.

A content promotion strategy for your B2B saas content is just as important as other steps in the marketing journey. Look at it this way, if you create fantastic content, but don’t put it in front of the right people, you wouldn’t be able to help your customers and increase your revenue.

Content promotion links directly to content conversion, growth, and an increase in customers. So in order not to waste any more of your content marketing efforts, here are best practices to drive more traffic and engagement to your content!

Organic promotion

Before you create a separate budget for promoting your content, look at how you can optimize the organic channels you currently use.

Promoting your content organically means that you don't spend any money on driving traffic or engagement. All you have to do is strategically position yourself for people to find you.

Here are a few channels and tools you can utilize right away!

Email marketing

You may assume that everyone on your email list will see your content once you publish. Well, that's not always the case. So never underestimate promoting your content to your email list. (If you don't have an email list, here is how to build one right away! or follow Tessa’s advice)

This step may seem like a no-brainer but to take things up a notch, you can ask your current subscribers to share your mail or newsletter they receive with their friends, coworkers, or network. This could be by adding a Twitter quote in the body of the mail, or a visible shareable button.

This way, you are not only promoting your content to people who already know you, but you're leveraging these relationships to connect with prospective customers.

Another way of utilizing email marketing is through what we call a Newsletter swap.

This is another great way to leverage relationships. But, in this case, you're giving a shoutout or highlighting another SaaS content that is relevant to your audience in your newsletter, while they do the same for yours in their newsletter. The effect? You get in front of a whole new audience that will connect and engage with your content.

Social media

Raise your hand if you've done this before. You created and published a blog post on a very important and helpful topic, and once it went live, you copied the link and pasted it everywhere!

So even though I can't see your hands, I know that we've all fallen victim to the generic habit of sharing "links" across social media channels in the name of promotion.

The reason why this doesn't have so much effect is that people are on social media primarily to have fun, to get entertained, and maybe to learn a few things here and there. That said, it is very easy for someone to swipe left when they see a generic photo and a link.

This is where Content Repurposing comes in.

Every social media channel has its uniqueness. For example, video content works better on Facebook while photos do better on Pinterest. So turning your blog post into a video, podcast, or infographic is the first step to getting things right with social media.

Here are some ways to effectively promote your content on social media.

Twitter

One true strategy that has worked for many B2B companies when promoting on Twitter is rewriting their content headline to suit the audience and platform. Take a look at SemRush’s Twitter post;

Which links to this blog post;

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What you’d notice here is that they don’t just change the title of their post to suit the conversational style on Twitter, they also include attractive infographics in their tweets to draw their audience into wanting to know more or get in-depth knowledge on that topic.

Linkedin

Linkedin is a great place to attract an audience for your content. It has produced great results for many B2B brands that have mastered content repurposing and promotion on this platform.

But to achieve that, you have to understand the type of content that grabs your audience’s attention. A survey carried out showed that engineers look out for research data, event information, and even industry polls compared to memes which may work better on platforms like Twitter.

Understanding what your customers are looking for on this platform will guide you in repurposing your content for their needs and interest, and is a sure way to attract traffic to your site.

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Niche communities

A great way to promote your content is by sharing it in niche communities. You can find niche communities on Slack, Discord, or Hacker News. You could even answer questions and promote your content on platforms like Quora or Reddit. The people found in these communities are sometimes experts in their fields or working professionals who are likely to find your content useful.

However, these communities may have guidelines so ensure you follow them when promoting your content. The key here is not to be a content stuffer but to ensure you make genuine contributions and engagements too.

Leveraging SMEs

You may have interviewed, quoted, or referenced a Subject Matter Expert (SME) when creating your content to build authority and get relevant data. But your relationship doesn't have to end so soon.

After you create your content, you can promote your content with an SME by asking them to share it with their audience or network. Placing their quotes or insights in a shareable format (tweet or photo) on your content makes it easier for them to share across social media platforms.

You can reach out to an SME using this email format.

Subject: Sharing Your Expertise on XYZ Topic with Your Network

Dear [XYZ SME],

I hope this email finds you well. I wanted to thank you again for taking the time to speak with me about [XYZ topic] and share your insights. Your input was invaluable and helped me create a comprehensive blog post that I believe will be of great interest to your network.

You can find the post at [insert link here]

Please take a look and let me know what you think. I would also be grateful if you could help me share the post with your followers, colleagues, and industry contacts.

I have also created some pre-written social media posts that you could use to share the post with your network, which I have attached to this email for your convenience.

Please let me know if you have any feedback or questions about the post or the social media posts. I appreciate your time and support in helping me get this valuable information out to a broader audience.

Thank you in advance for your help.

Best regards,

[Your name]

Create topic clusters

Ever heard of topic clusters? Basically, a topic cluster is a group of web pages that all focus on the same main topic, with each page covering a different aspect or subtopic related to that main topic.

These pages are all interlinked so that you can easily jump from one page to another within the cluster, depending on what information you're looking for.

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So how can you use topic clusters to drive organic promotion?

Utilize internal linking. Whenever you create new content, link it to your pillar page and other content under that particular cluster. By doing this, people can find your new content when they read the old content.

The benefits of creating topic clusters go far beyond content promotion. Topic clusters are a significant SEO strategy that can improve your site’s authority and help you rank higher in search engine results.

Guest blogging/podcasting

Guest blogging/podcasting is a great way to get your B2B SaaS company and content in front of a fresh audience. This strategy establishes you as an authority, builds brand credibility, creates awareness, and drives traffic to your website and content.

Writing a guest post or appearing on a podcast is also very helpful to build backlinks.  Backlinks are links from other sites that point to your web content. They show Google that people trust your brand enough to reference it. Thus, it increases your site's authority and rank on Google.

However, this strategy is only beneficial if;

• The site has a high domain authority (above 50).

  
  

• The anchor text is relevant to the link.

  
  

• The other links on the site are of good quality.

  
  

• And the website is relevant to your niche or your audience.

  
  

Anything outside of this will hurt your content so ensure you're following Google’s guidelines when you're looking for guest blogging opportunities.

You can find sites that allow guest blogging and are relevant to your niche by googling;

Niche topic "guest blogger"

Niche topic “contributing author”

Niche topic “accepting guest posts”

Niche topic “guest post guidelines”

Simply replace "niche topic" with your keyword or content idea and you will be led to a blog's guest post guideline page, or a page to submit your content.

Go Live With Video

A survey of 166 B2B marketers showed that video accounted for 52% of their most effective content type in attracting prospects. This means that people are more likely to make a decision in favor of your company when they watch a well-crafted and produced video.

But going live has much more potential! Research shows that people watch live videos up to 30 more times than pre-recorded videos. Also, going live with video poses benefits like receiving real-time feedback from your audience, establishing a human connection, talking more in-depth about your content, and having the chance to repurpose the content later on.

So if you want to get your content in front of the right people, consider hosting a webinar, going live on social media, or contributing on a live stream.

Paid promotion

This article will only be balanced if we explore paid promotion strategies right?

Utilizing paid promotion for your B2B SaaS content has several benefits. Firstly, your audience reach is way more targeted and customized. This means that you have a higher chance of attracting relevant and quality traffic to your content.

Here are some strategies and best practices for utilizing paid promotion for your content.

Influencer marketing

Over 70% of B2B buyers are more likely to purchase a b2b product if it has been recommended by an industry influencer. What does this tell you? Your prospective customer is more likely to engage with your content when shared by an industry influencer.

In the B2B SaaS space, influencers are thought leaders and industry experts. They may not always have a huge following but their thoughts and opinions are trusted by their network.

To begin, identify the notable voices in your industry and search to see if they fit your brand. Reach out and discuss the budget and clear expectations and shake hands!

Also, make sure you and your chosen influencer are following FTC guidelines for endorsements, reviews, and testimonials.

Ads and Paid tools

Using tools and platforms like Facebook ads, Google ads, Reddit ads and more gives you a chance to see quicker results on your content growth.

But there’s a catch! You mostly want to promote content that is already doing well. So if you’ve tried your hands on organic promotion strategies and received a great response from your piece of content, then go ahead and promote it further with paid advertising.

Another approach will be to use content promotion platforms to reach a wider audience. For example, Quuu’s insight for SaaS content averages over 400,000 views.

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With over 98 Million users since launch!

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Promote Your B2b Saas Content With Purpose

Content promotion is the make or break of your content strategy. Getting it right saves you a lot of time and guesswork and puts you right where you're meant to be.

Try your hands on a few of these content promotion strategies per time and know which works for you best. Don’t be afraid to step out of your comfort zone and try new things to crush your content marketing goals!