Developing great content is a reward in itself. However, if that content doesn’t strike a chord with its core demographic, it isn’t performing its function. Businesses need to know where their content is most likely to reach their target audience and make the most impact.
With the sheer number of channels that a company can tap into, it might be overwhelming to find the right venue to host its content. Should the business look at social media, or is it better off doing a blog to encourage comments? Eleven leaders from Forbes Agency Council discuss below the most effective strategies to help businesses pinpoint the best venue for their content so as to achieve maximum audience engagement.
Members offer tips for choosing the right place to publish and promote your content.
Photos courtesy of the individual members.
1. Use A Three-Factor Test To Rate Publications
Create a list based on audience size, audience demographics and domain authority. We use a three-factor test to rate our publications. The first is overall publisher audience size and traffic. The larger the better. The second is the demographics: we try to match the article to the best publication. The final is the overall higher domain authority (for backlinks and SEO purposes) wins. – Peter Boyd, PaperStreet Web Design
2. Test Each Outlet For Best ROI
Testing is critical in the process of determining the best venue for publishing content. A business must allocate enough test budget to each outlet to determine the venue that provides the best ROI. Too small of a test budget will undermine the effectiveness of the campaign and the ability to gather enough relevant data points. – Jordan Edelson, Appetizer Mobile LLC
3. Go Where The End User Goes
Go where the end user goes, rather than where the industry goes. In other words, make sure your intended target audience visits the websites, conferences, professional organizations and other places where you advertise. Forget about websites and venues where your client or their competitors frequent. – Francine Carb, Markitects, Inc.
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4. Analyze Your Targeted Keywords
Your targeted keywords and keyword phrases help you compare the value of your content to the content of other websites, including sites where you may want to publish content. The many different types of websites include magazine sites that ask you to submit a byline article, or syndication sites or services that post your content across one or more sites that target your audience, similar to an ad. – Jim Caruso, M1PR, Inc. d/b/a MediaFirst PR – Atlanta
5. Follow Google’s E-A-T Guidelines
I recommend following Google’s E-A-T guidelines (Expertise, Authoritativeness, & Trustworthiness). Housing your content on a site or server that practices E-A-T guidelines and is known to be a credible, trusted source is a safer bet that can also lead to satisfactory visibility. – Larry Gurreri, Sosemo LLC
6. Ask Your Best Customers
Ask your best clients or customers what they watch, read and look at online. Are they on Instagram, TikTok or Facebook? Are they reading actual newspapers? Do they watch the local nightly news? Your best customers represent the avatar of your targeted audience so they will be able to give you a quick snapshot of the media consumption habits of your audience. – Nancy Marshall, Marshall Communications
7. Determine Your Ideal Audience First
Choosing the right venue or outlet to publish is directly related to choosing the right audience. Sometimes, brands will focus on publishing on outlets with the broadest reach but with no consideration of whether or not their audience is there. First determine the ideal audience, then use the venues where they are present. – Stefan Pollack, The Pollack Group
8. Check The Publisher’s Domain Authority
If you are submitting content to a media outlet, your first step should be to check the publisher’s domain authority, a measure by the SEO software company Moz. Just because a publication is willing to post an article you write doesn’t mean it’s automatically worth your time. The higher the domain authority, the greater the audience and SEO impact. – Scott Baradell, Idea Grove
9. Turn To Search Engine Results
The best way to understand which platforms/venues are right to publish content? Turn to the search engine results pages. What types of domains rank on the first two pages? Are they news sources, vertical aggregator sites, social media outlets? It’s likely that if these domains rank well for important keywords you’d like to rank for, they will be a valuable source to target in your content efforts. – Donna Robinson, Collective Measures
10. Look For Cross-Promotion Opportunities
Once you’ve determined your audience demographics and where they’re consuming content, look for cross-promotion opportunities within those spheres. As a white label SEO company, we’ve had great success doing webinars on SEO news sites. That’s where our audience is, and these brand partnerships helped build the trust needed to create warm leads in our industry. – Marc Hardgrove, The HOTH
11. Focus On Creating The Right Content
Contrarian view, but I strongly believe it’s less about choosing the right venue and more about making the right content for the platforms that make sense for your brand. The right venue is your owned channels (e.g. your website), and the channels are drivers to bringing customers to you. – Jackson Murphy, Pound & Grain
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Author: Expert Panel®, Forbes Councils Member
