Choose channels for content promotion

Business Benefits

Boost the effectiveness of your content strategy.


Create a list of all owned media channels you could potentially use for content promotion.

Owned media channels are ones that you create and control. They include:

  • Your main website.
  • Your blog.
  • Your social media platforms.
  • Your email list.
  • Your text message list.
  • Your printed company newsletter.

Note that not all owned channels will be relevant for each piece of content. While you will need to use each channel’s best practices to promote content on that channel, there is usually a way to repurpose the content for that channel. For example, you can promote a white paper on LinkedIn using its summary, on Twitter using a short quote, and on Instagram using a visual graphic within the white paper.

Create a list of all earned channels you have successfully used for content promotion in the past.

Earned media is when the public or your customers share your content, talk about your product, and discuss your brand. Examples of earned channels could include

  • Guest posts.
  • Unpaid influencers.
  • Question and answer websites like Quora.
  • Review websites.
  • Media publicity.
  • Public relations.

You may also be able to use hybrid channels that combine earned media with owned or paid channels, like influencers through affiliate marketing or boosted posts through your social media accounts.

Review your target audience’s demographic and psychographic profile to identify their preferred and common channels.

In addition to age, gender, location, and other common segmentation variables, consider:

  • What your audience does on weekends.
  • The apps or websites they typically frequent.
  • The kind of media they typically consume.
  • The keywords they tend to search for online.

For example, LinkedIn works well in B2B and for high-level organizational decision makers, while Instagram and Twitch are ideal for Gen Z audiences.

Evaluate each owned and earned channel according to which audience most commonly uses it.

Evaluating how other brands in your space use the same channels to promote their content can also help to estimate its worth to your audience in this context.

Determine your content promotion budget based on how important viewing and engaging with the content is for your sales funnel and conversions.

Content that is responsible for a significant portion of your lead and sales conversions may deserve more promotional budget. Higher budgets unlock possibilities for paid channels like SEM or social media ad campaigns. For example, if you find that one of your white papers is responsible for a third of new monthly leads, a targeted paid search campaign can increase traffic to it and improve your lead generation.

Review the content promotion efforts of your 3-5 closest competitors, including their underused channels where your promotions would receive a larger attention share, and their must have channels that every competitor uses to share content.

Keep in mind that sometimes, larger competitors are slow to move on the bigger trends. Rather than duplicating your competitors’ channels, your audience research may uncover underused channels where you can easily gain audience attention for an outsized promotional impact.

For example, LinkedIn is a must have channel for most B2B businesses. But if your research uncovers that buyers in your industry frequently spend time on Instagram, it might be an underused secondary channel opportunity for content promotion.

Set specific content promotion goals and KPIs by clarifying whether you are primarily looking for engagement on owned channels, clicks to your website, or conversions from the content being promoted, including specific goal numbers where possible.

For example, a new brand may look to primarily drive brand awareness through website clicks, while an established brand looking to promote a new lead magnet may primarily look for conversions.

Analyze past content promotion efforts on your owned channels based on your set goals to determine which have generated the most engagement, clicks, and conversions.

Especially if you have a tracking strategy using UTM parameters, Google Analytics can be the central hub for that analysis. Social media channels like Facebook and LinkedIn also offer internal analytics suites to evaluate metrics like reach, engagements, clicks, and conversions.

Experiment with promoting your content on the channels you believe will be most effective based on the steps above, tracking KPI performance in the process.

Review the same Google Analytics and platform-specific reports used in reviewing past efforts to analyze your content promotion on an ongoing basis.

Focus on the channels most successful in your experiments for future content promotions.

Keep in mind that optimization is a continuous process. Ongoing testing can help you account for changing audience preferences and emerging channel opportunities.

Last edited by @hesh_fekry 2023-11-14T10:55:32Z