You’ve written your blog post, article or lead magnet, and you’ve hit publish. But what do you do next? Unfortunately, “if you build it, they will come” doesn’t apply to content. You have to be proactive in getting it in front of people (preferably, your ideal readers).

Luckily, there are loads of ways you can promote your best content without spending a penny.

This is the obvious place to start. The quickest and easiest way to promote your content is to create a quick post summarising what it’s about and then add a link. Most websites are set up so that when you share the link, the featured image and title will pull through automatically:

But don’t stop at just sharing your post once. Pull quotes from your article and turn them into images to go alongside your social post. Or turn the key points from your post into a carousel or short video (Canva makes this really easy to do).

If you have a company page as well as a personal profile, remember to share from both. I spend an hour every couple of weeks pre-scheduling all the posts for my company pages on both Facebook and LinkedIn (I don’t pre-schedule for my personal pages).

If you don’t have an email list, I highly recommend starting one (there are loads of platforms you can do this with - happy to recommend one based on your goals).

The great thing about email lists is that the people on them have signed up because they want to hear from you. And if people want to hear from you, why on earth wouldn’t you share your best content with them?

You can share your blog posts as the email itself (which is what I do with these posts). Or you can create separate emails and add links to your blog posts (which is what I do with my Substack publications).

But even if you don’t have an email list, you can still share your best content via email by linking to your blog, lead magnet or book in your email signature or footer.

Medium is a free platform for writers (although there is a paid version), and it’s super easy to reshare your blog posts on there without messing up any SEO stuff. Simply go to stories, select “Import a Story”, and enter the link to your post.

Medium will pull the content through (you will need to give it a quick once-over to check it has pulled through correctly), then you can hit publish. Medium automatically adds a link letting readers know where it was originally published, and it adds the canonical links to let the search engines know too.

You can even put your content behind a paywall, which can earn you a few extra pennies. To do this, you have to be a Medium member (currently $5 per month or $50 per year) and then join their Partner Program.

I started using Reddit around the same time I started this newsletter experiment, and I think I’m starting to get the hang of it. I actually like it a lot more than any social media platforms because you can curate your feed so you don’t get quite as much shit on there. But how do you use it to promote your content?

Some communities don’t allow self-promotion or link sharing, but others do. However, I doubt that spamming Reddit with links to your post is actually beneficial in any way.

What is more effective (although a little more time-consuming) is to find threads that relate to what you do, join the conversations and then add links to content when and where it is relevant or useful.

Here’s an example of a thread I commented on last night. I didn’t add a link to my newsletter in the first reply, but I did in the second as I felt like it was relevant.

I wrote about using Substack share images on Pinterest a few weeks ago, but you can create your own images in Canva (or something similar) and use them as pins.

Creating a pin takes less than 60 seconds, so it’s a super-easy way to quickly share your blog post or article on another platform.

Someone recently said to me that they prefer Pinterest to any other social media because you don’t have to be social on Pinterest. I think that’s a great point. You don’t have to interact or engage with other people to make the platform work for you. You can just browse and pin at your own leisure.

Even if you don’t use Substack to publish content, you can still use it to promote your content.

Substack does have a social media element to it, so you could just embrace that side of it. All you need to do is set up an account, and then you can add posts or notes or even do live video.

You can share links to your blog posts or lead magnets as notes (like I have in the example below) just as you would on any other social media platform.

And, of course, you could always grow an email list on there and then email them links to your blog posts. Or you could start a publication and share previews or summarised versions of your posts with links to the full versions.

If you see people asking about something on social media, and you have content that will help, drop them a message letting them know. You can send a link, a PDF, or just copy and paste the most relevant sections into a message or email.

And if you know someone who will benefit from your content, send it to them directly.

In the past, I’ve written blog posts based on questions I’ve been asked by clients, and then I’ve sent them the link once it’s live. And I’ve also had clients ask me questions that I’ve already answered in a blog post or article, so I send them the link after the call.

I’ve also made PDF versions of some of my most popular or useful guides so I can send them out rather than just sending a link.

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve talked about reusing, resharing and recycling content, but I still know people who only share a blog post once and then move on to the next thing. If you’ve taken the time to create quality content, make time to promote it.

Create “evergreen” content (content that will be relevant for a long time) and look for opportunities to share it.

If you haven’t been back through your old blog posts recently, set aside time to do it. You might have content there that’s still good to go or that just needs a few tweaks. You can then reshare this content and promote it in all the places I’ve mentioned above.

And if you need help getting any of these things set up, book 90 minutes with me and we’ll do it together.

If you’d like to receive my weekly email updates and monthly results, hit subscribe, and I’ll be in your inbox every Friday.

P.S. I also have a free 14-day email course to help you improve your sales copy and marketing content. You can find out more and sign up here.