Do you often feel irritated that nobody looks at your content even after you have put in hours – sometimes days – in developing that one piece of content?
The reality is that putting content in front of the right people is also as much your responsibility as creating content in the first place.
By the time you become savvy in the game, you realize that 50% of the game is creating content, and the remaining 50% of the game is putting your content in front of the right people.
There are two ways by which you can promote your content. Let’s call them:
1. The Free Way
2. The Paid Way
The Free Way
Let’s talk about the unpaid way first.
To give you a reference point, when I started my brand in 2017, I spent the first 6 months only using these strategies. Chances are if you are broke (like me when starting), you’d want to test the unpaid methods first as well.
I will share the 3 strategies that I have tested, refined, and basically made for you, so you just take them and run away, use them to promote your content, and put your content in front of the right people without putting any money.
Strategy 1: Facebook Groups
These are top-notch underutilized assets because no one uses them the right way.
No matter what kind of content you are making, if you type the relevant keywords on the Facebook search bar, you will see there are at least a dozen Facebook groups with thousands and sometimes tens of thousands of people, who are in these groups with a common interest in a particular topic.
And there are usually 30 to 300 posts being shared in those groups every month.
Imagine that there are 10,000 people in a group you post in. Whenever you post your content, Facebook will show that content to let us say 10-40 people or a maximum of 50 people. But if they respond to that content when it comes on their newsfeeds, the Facebook algorithm will keep showing it to more people.
I have had days where there was a group of about 50,000 people and out of those, around 6,000 people went on to my blog post in the first 24 hours. So that is a huge number that will promote your content to the next level!
You must identify and join about 10 to 12 Facebook groups with at least a thousand followers that fall under your Personal Brand category.
Tips for Joining the Right Groups
Focus on joining more closed groups because here the posts must be approved so the total number of posts in the group will be low, meaning greater engagement.
When you are posting something, let’s say, a video or a blog, write a long description to it with a write-up like, “Hey guys. I have been in the group for a while, I have been reading a lot of comments and posts. I think this is something a lot of you are struggling with because I had struggled there too. Here is the solution to it and this is the result I got.”
This will do wonders just because of the slight personal touch.
Another trick that goes a long way is befriending the moderator of that group because they are the ones in control of allowing or disallowing your post.
You will be surprised to know that most of the time they are in a conversational mood. Just drop them a personal message and kick off the conversation from there.
Having a good network with them and building trust will pay off.
For example, once I became a good friend with a moderator whose group had about 200,000 members. I ended up not only posting in that group but also giving a live talk there which gave me at least 1000 new followers.
It works because the moderators also want value-adding content for their groups. After all, they want good engagement. They do not want people spamming the group with non-essential content.
So, differentiating yourself will give you free eyeballs.
Strategy 2: Quora
Quora is like the YouTube of written content.
But the difference is that the organic reach in Quora is really high. The moment you post here you can get tens of thousands of people’s attention in the first 24-48 hours.
Search on Quora if any questions have been asked regarding the topic on which you have made the video.
Choose the questions with the highest number of people following them.
Translate your entire video content into a proper written format with bullet points and answer that question. Then attach the link to your YouTube channel or Instagram page saying that they can find similar content here.
Remember, the trick here is that you do not just put your video out there as the answer. If you do that, Quora will collapse your answer.
So, first, you must answer the entire question and then attach the link as a reference so that it does not seem like a direct promotion.
From my experience, the click-through rate is 1-2%. So out of every 10,000 people who will view your answer, 100-200 will end up coming to your profile wherever the content is.
1-2% is really a high conversion rate considering that Quora is going to show your answer to thousands of people if it is a good one.
I had gotten around 1.5 million views in the first 3 months of Quora. So do the math for yourself!
Strategy 3: Instagram Shout-Outs
The last way to promote your content for free is to ask for shout-outs on Instagram.
Influencers on Instagram DO give you a shout-out if you ask them the right way.
Now the trick is that all the Influencers get so many such requests asking them for a shoutout that they do not even want to look at your message if you are directly asking for a shout-out.
So, there are two ways to get influencers to give you a shout-out.
The first way is that you message the influencer asking if you could help them out with anything such as video-making, caption-writing, graphic designing, etc.
Do that for free and you will have developed a lifelong relationship.
In most cases, the influencer will be happy to give you a shout-out even without you asking for it. If not, then politely ask for it and they will.
We love seeing people exceed who add value to our lives as well.
The Paid Way
These days, I spend 90%+ of my effort on growing my brands through these strategies. I use the paid ways because now I have understood the mechanics of it.
If I put in X amount of money upfront, I will make 2-3X amount of money in the next few months. So the faster I grow this, the faster the returns are.
You realize that this game is in your favor if you put in the money because 99% of the people are trying to grow organically using techniques like hashtags, which absolutely don’t work anymore.
It is a crowded game on the free side while nobody is using promotions making it an empty lane. All the smart people are taking this road because they have understood the philosophy behind it.
There are two major strategies to put your money into to promote your content.
Strategy 1: YouTube Content
On YouTube, you cannot promote to get subscribers. But you can only promote to get views on the video.
If the video is good, a certain percentage of your viewers automatically subscribe.
They become followers and watch your videos on a killing spree!
To promote your videos, go to the dashboard where you can see all your videos. And select the video, click promote, and choose to show it as a recommended video.
I am not talking about the video advertisements which you get while you are watching a video that you usually skip.
I am talking about the recommended videos.
After having tested everything; this is the most frugal and effective method.
Choose your target audience by selecting the age, country, region, etc. Then, spend 1-2 bucks right up front and see what kind of engagement you are getting.
The math here is that every $100 spent will give roughly 10,000 views on your video.
Spend $100 over the next twenty days $5 a day, and get those 10,000 views.
What will happen is that out of those ten thousand people who watch it, a few hundred will end up subscribing to your content.
As more people are watching it, YouTube will slowly start to show more people who are similar to those who are subscribing to your channel.
This is how the ball starts rolling!
Strategy 2: Instagram Content
Instagram content is slightly different because you don’t promote your content to get more views. Instead, you do it to get more followers.
And I will tell you the math upfront.
Every $100 spent will get you an average of 2000 new subscribers. And that is amazing.
I have gotten a maximum of 3000 for $100 once I got the positioning right, but usually, it’s about 2000 new subscribers.
But what is the content that you should promote on Instagram to get the best results?
It cannot just be a generic piece of content.
It should one specifically made for promotion. And I call it: A 1-Minute trailer.
It should be in line with the following example-
“Hey guys, I have noticed that a lot of people struggle with [this problem].
I have been struggling with this as well, and now I have come up with this solution.
I’m sharing these solutions on my Instagram and people are loving it. [Here] are some of the comments/reviews I am getting.
I’d love for you to see it and try it for yourself.
The link to my profile is down here. Do hop on to my profile, follow me there, and I will make sure that you become your best version of yourself / I am going to teach you ______ in the next 3 months”
And that’s it.
With all the strategies in both the Free Way and the Paid Way, there will be a learning curve for you. You won’t just get it right the first way.
But starting from whatever I have mentioned in this article will give you a mega headstart on everyone else.
Now that you’ve covered all the aspects of how to build a good Personal Brand, you should start earning money from it. Learn about it in the next article.
Over on my blog, Digital Nomad Academy, you can find several other articles and masterclasses that will teach you different aspects of building your own laptop lifestyle.
Also, for behind-the-scenes mischief, you can follow me on Instagram and join 30K+ others like you who are in different phases of building their location independent lifestyles.
Hope to see you around globe-trotting one day 🙂
