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Content seeding is a strategic marketing approach where you sprinkle content you create across the Internet. Marketers post content to various locations where the content will be seen and get shares. This technique aims to increase brand awareness by pushing content across the web to relevant target groups that will want to buy from the business.
For content seeding to work, marketers must post relevant, creative content to specific channels. So marketers should make content specific for Facebook, content for Instagram, content for email etc.
The main purpose of content seeding is to convince industry thought leaders to talk about your brand to their network through either their blog, social media channels, or email newsletter. This in turn can increase brand awareness and boost your overall SEO.
Content seeding is a lot like planting seeds. While your content seeding won’t grow plants, it will produce interest in your brand and potentially get you new customers.
Content seeding can take many forms. Your brand can share links to its own content on your own social media profiles, or you can also leave links on bookmarking websites like Reddit.
This article from Hubspot has some great content seeding examples.
The Two Types Of Content Seeding
There are two types of content seeding, simple seeding and advanced seeding. In simple seeding, content is spread on the brand’s own network, and a few well known influencers are asked to share the content. The effort and cost is low, but the content must be high quality and possess genuine value in order to be successful.
If you want your content to go viral, you will need to utilize advanced seeding. In advanced seeding, brands will create a number of videos, articles, and infographics and spread that content to a high volume of influencers, blogs, forums, groups, websites, and organizations. Advanced seeding gives your organizations more impressions, but the effort and cost is greater.
How To Set Up An Influencer Campaign
- Have A Network. You will need a network of people in your industry in order to set up a campaign. Define your target group. Ask yourself, what networks does my target group spend their time on (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.)?
- Define Your Goals. What is the purpose of this campaign? More website traffic, sales, an increase in brand awareness, etc.?
- Select Influencers And Contact Them. You will need influencers to talk about your brand to their audience. If you’re unsure who to utilize, do a Google search.
- Have A Convincing Call-To-Action. Make sure your proposal to the influencers offers value. Influencers receive countless pitches so why should they share your content? How will you benefit their community? When contacting influencers, make sure your email is always approachable.
- Monitor And Analyze. During and after the campaign, it’s important to ask yourself, did this help me achieve my goals? Did my content reach people whom I would have never reached otherwise? Did I get in front of the right audience?
At the end of a successful campaign, don’t forget to nurture the network you worked hard to acquire. If you established a relationship with influencers, make sure you keep those relationships going too.
Others Way You Can Content Seed
Social Media
The best first place to start with is social media- Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. Wherever you choose to spread your content, make sure it is relevant to the users on that platform.
An Expert’s Blog
Who’s a thought leader in your industry? If they have a blog, reach out to them and see if you can write a guest blog post.
Comment On Other Blogs
Another way to seed content is by commenting on other people’s blogs with a link to your own content. While commenting is effective, it’s also a popular technique amongst spammers. To avoid having your comment come across as spam, be sure to identify yourself in your comment and explain how your content is relevant to the post you’re responding to.
Seed Content Through Your Email Marketing Efforts
Email is not dead. In fact, it’s the best marketing channel. Unlike social media, email doesn’t have an algorithm that impacts whether or not the user sees an email. Studies have also shown that consumers prefer email. If you have a small email list, check out this blog post we wrote on how to grow your list.
Paid Promotions & Advertising
Stepping away from organic seeding methods is paid promotions and advertising. This is useful if you have a small social following and want to gain more exposure.
At Sperling Interactive, our content creation team can write optimized blog posts and captivating social media posts for your unique brand. Let us help you successfully seed your content today! Give us a call at (978) 304-1730.