Content Outreach Strategy for 2021

What is a content outreach strategy?

A content outreach strategy is a program through which you actually promote your content to powerful people with similar audiences. The goal here is for them to share your content with their audience which will increase your exposure to potential customers. Another goal is to gain backlinks from high-quality websites to boost your SEO profile. In return, you offer to help share their content so the relationship is mutually beneficial.

First, you need to prepare a workable design approach that will help you build your full brand image.

Best Practices for Content outreach

Content has become an important part of business today, with a strong increase in the number of businesses utilizing it. To do so, here is a bird’s-eye-view set of practical steps for building relationships to extend the reach of your content:

Perform Internal Audit

To create a content marketing plan, you need to start with an overview to see your current performance – what works and what doesn’t. This will help you to understand which new content to produce and which old content you want to discard. As you make these determinations, you can refresh your content so that when you do conduct outreach, your target is more likely to want to help you share it.

When conducting an audit of your content, the following should be considered:

• The overall user-experience
• How optimized it is for search
• Internal vs. external linking
• Keywords
• Relevance to your audience

The more you understand the current situation, the better it will be for you to develop a plan for delivering content in your outreach strategy that gets picked up.

Set Your Target Goals for 2021

No matter how effective your strategy is, you will not be able to get a return on investment (ROI) unless you have a set expectation. This is the only way you can know whether your efforts are actually working.

Decide on the type of content to be published and how that content would resonate with external audiences you want reach out to for help sharing the content or for link building. Without real goals, your marketing experience will lose focus and it will be difficult to measure success and failure. Make sure you remove any opportunities that may interfere with your internal preparation process for delivering future content effectively.

Some of the goals you should consider setting are as follows:

• Brand awareness (exposure to new audiences)
• Lead generation (how many leads are clicking and visiting your site as a result of these relationships)
• Link building (look at things like your domain authority and your link profile)
• Website traffic (increases in traffic from social media and referrals)
• Number of partnerships (how many content sharing partnerships can you create?)

With the SMART (fixed, measurable, achievable, consistent, and timed) approach, you will be able to set successful goals that are relevant to your mission. Your goals focus on the type of content design, ways to promote your content, and similar events as mentioned above.

Know Your Audience

It is very important that you know who you are preparing content for when it comes to your outreach. To make sure you are doing things the right way, ask these questions:

• To whom are you sending your content?
• Do they own a website where they can share your content?
• Is their social audience consisting of your target audience?
• What kind of articles do they like?
• What kind of content outreach do you want to create for them in return?
• What channels are best for outreach (social media, email, etc.)?

By understanding who you are targeting with your outreach, you can be a lot more effective. You can connect with the right influencers with content they actually want to see.

Select the Type of Document to Be Published in 2021

Content goes far beyond just blog articles. Think about shareable content beyond just written form:

• Videos
• Infographics
• Podcasts
• Message
• Webinars

If you are unsure about the effectiveness of different forms of content suitable for your audience, try and use each of them to determine which ones are the most consumed. See which ones get the biggest impact, and look at what the influencers you are targeting are sharing. Then align your outreach with the types of content that resonate most.

Depending on the needs of your audience and the different steps you are taking, experiment with different types of combinations and then you will be able to produce high-quality content that connects.

Create a Calendar for 2021

It is important to be consistent when creating content to attract your audience. To maintain an effective marketing strategy, make sure you have an SEO marketing approach to reach more. To gain more traction in reaching people that are open to sharing your content, you’ll need to be consistent with publishing. This is where a calendar comes into play.

For effective content outreach, you should schedule your publishing at a regular frequency. The calendar will also give you an overview of your content as you plan ahead, so you can look forward to future outreach campaigns. Team members are able to track progress on various components and more effectively plan for the future.

The following items should be part of your internal calendar:

• Topic and title
• Due dates for submissions
• Influencer targets for each piece
• Related promotions
• Keywords and meta-date

The easiest way to create an interior calendar is through Google Sheets. You can also use the WordPress Calendar for WordPress and save to your own dashboard.

Suggested Reading: Two Editorial Calendar Templates You Need to Stay Consistent and Make Your Blog a Success (With Free Downloads)

Plan the 2021 Promotion Plan

To help your content really reach the right audiences and to have a successful content outreach plan, you’ll need to have a plan for distribution and promotion.

Some of the top promotional platforms are:

• Social media outreach
• Influencer platforms
• Email
• Advertising
• Forums

Make sure you track your success on each platform to see which is working best. Then target the right platforms that are the most effective.

Wrapping it up

Content outreach is a powerful tool to help you expand the reach of your business and your marketing message. But it’s not to be taken lightly.

If you approach the right influencers and businesses with the right message, you can create and execute a content strategy that helps seriously boost your business.

Do your research to understand what content resonates most as well as what the best approach is to connect with your target. And make sure you understand their audience as well. They will be sharing your content with their own audience, so you need to make sure it’s a fit.

Content outreach is super effective, so follow the tips above, be flexible and ready to make changes, and track your progress. You’ll be happy you did, and you’ll start to generate serious ROI.

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