Hi Everyone,
In this 2 part series, I want to discuss promotion of content. It is important to have a good quality product, service or in the case of Steem, content. Good quality content does not count for much if very few people see it. That is why promoting your content is essential.
In Part 1, I discussed many of the available options to promote content on Steem and its associated social networks such as Steem.chat and DiscordApp. The post concluded that relying on Steem promotion by itself is currently not sufficient to reach a broader audience. Therefore, it is necessary to promote content on other websites and social media.
In this second post, I will discuss promoting Steem and your Steem content on other social media websites. The internet is literally littered with social media websites. Some websites are considerably more popular than others. Steemit.com, busy.org, and steempeak.com enable sharing of content by providing direct links at the bottom of posts. These links are Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and LinkedIn.
I make use of Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit links and post directly to LinkedIn. If you have all four of these social media, I strongly recommend that you share your content on them. You might be a little more selective in regards to content shared on LinkedIn. As LinkedIn is a work related/based social media platform, the content should align with your work/profession to improve engagement. LinkedIn is also useful for sharing posts that could require engagement with professionals.
In addition to the easy to share to social media websites through links as stated above, I also share my content on minds.com, YouTube, Instagram, and very recently WeYouMe. You could share your content on many more social media websites. I suggest making the most of all the social media that you are using and have an established following on. I am always on the lookout for alternative websites that I could share my content on to utilise my following.
I would recommend doing more than just a single dump and run share to an alternative website. You could also engage with the audience on these alternative websites through comments, discussions and further sharing within the websites through groups or communities.
In this post, I will explain how I have promoted my content as well as the content of others on a number of different websites.
I am relatively new to social media. I have been on social media for less than two years. I have been on Facebook for about 18 months. However, I was banned for about 3 of those months and I believe I am occasionally shadow banned. I really dislike the censorship on many of these platforms.
I have two business pages. One page I share my own content and the other one I share other people’s content (I have not done much sharing on that site recently). I share almost all my Steem posts to my Facebook business page. After sharing to that page, I will then share the posts to as many Steemit/Steem groups as I can. After that, I will share my content to some of my other groups. For groups not related to Steem, I include a brief summary of the post to encourage engagement with my audience.
Facebook groups are a great way to reach a wider audience and there is no monetary cost. It is important to vary the description a little so that Facebook does not identify your sharing as spam.
LinkedIn was one of the first social media websites I joined. It was very good for keeping contact with work colleagues as well as clients and potential clients. I reached over 500 connections quickly. Since I have joined Steem, I regularly share my content on LinkedIn.
I normally share my content in groups that are relevant to the content of each post. This works well for me as most of my posts are related to economics, which has a good following on LinkedIn. I recommend only sharing posts that are likely to have a strong following by professionals.
For many people, sharing content to Reddit is a logic next step. Many Steem users established themselves on Reddit before the creation of Steem and therefore have a strong following. I joined Reddit just before Steem, therefore, I have a very small following. However, if the most appropriate subreddit is selected, you can still receive quite a few views. My Melbourne Cup post performed fairly well in the ‘vegan’ subreddit. I am still learning how to make the most of this website.
My Twitter account is very new; currently, I have only 12 followers. At the moment, sharing through Twitter is probably not going to get my content much attention but I still consider it worthwhile. As sharing to Twitter just takes a few seconds and there is still the possibility it could gain some significant traction if my share is retweeted by some popular users.
Many people have been using Twitter for years and have a great following. If you have a great following on Twitter, use it. You may not make any money directly but you give yourself and Steem greater exposure. If you are creating valuable content, this exposure will help you in the long-run.
YouTube
I have been using YouTube as a backup website for my content as I have been using DTube as my preferred website for sharing videos for the past year. I upload to YouTube and post the YouTube version of the video in my comments. I have not posted any videos recently as I am waiting for improvements in DTube, see my post ’BYE BYE DTUBE’ for an explanation of the areas of concern. YouTube has been great as a backup for videos as well as another source of attention for my content. YouTube can be great as the main source of your content as well. You can share YouTube videos in Steemit posts directly.
Minds
I joined minds.com about a year ago. It is another new social media platform, which also rewards content. I do not post on minds.com for rewards but instead to gain more attention for my Steem posts. I use the few coins I have earned on minds.com to promote my shared Steem posts.
I also share my Steem posts in the minds.com groups. I share in Steem related groups as well as content related groups. For sharing on social media platforms such as minds.com, it is also worth posting at least a brief summary of the content in the shared Steem posts. This tailors the content better to the platform and looks a lot less like spam.
I joined Instagram about a month before I joined Facebook. I quite enjoyed the convenience of sharing photographs. I do not use Instagram as much these days, as sharing links is a little difficult. I still like to share some of my Steem thumbnails. I recently shared my actifit thumbnail and the picture I created for Steem Park. Instagram might not be ideal for sharing Steem content but it can be used to aid in getting the message of your content across to a wider audience. Instagram has a very large audience that is worth tapping into.
General advice
If you have any other social media accounts that you use or have a decent following on, use them to promote your content. The more eyes on your content, the better off you will be in the long-run. If you are sharing content on other websites, it is still important to provide at least some description of the content to provide users with some idea of what they can expect if they click on your link. The brief description demonstrates that you have some respect for the platform and the users of the platform. Many people do not like it when empty links are just dropped and some even consider these links as spam. It is also important to engage with those on the platforms where you share your Steem content.
Sharing to other social media will most likely not result in your content receiving more upvotes but it will give it greater exposure, which should lead to more upvotes in the future. Sharing your content might also encourage other people to join or even invest in Steem. If your content is good, you are helping create good positive awareness of Steem.
Promoting content on other social media can be time consuming but if your content is very good, it is worth taking the time to get as much attention as possible. Receiving attention for content should be more valuable to you than monetary reward.
Conclusion
This brings me to the end of this short series regarding promotion of content. The first post in the series discussed promoting content on Steem as well as discussed its effectiveness. The second in this series has focused on promoting content on other websites and social media. Steem does not have a particularly good system for promoting content as demonstrating in Part 1. Therefore, users need to use other forms of social media to gain exposure.
Thank you for taking the time to read this post as well as the first post in the series. To access more of my posts you can click on the links below. These links will lead you to posts containing my collection of works. These posts will be updated frequently.
