Have you ever created content, like a blog post or a video, but you did not get the results you expected from it? Well, we’ve all been there.
The thing is, content needs to be handled the right way for it to benefit your brand. Content seeding is a critical aspect of content management.
In this article, you’ll learn what content seeding is and its types. You’ll also learn six tips so you can successfully implement content seeding.
Let’s get started!
What is content seeding?
Content seeding is the distribution of created content across various online channels. These channels may include your website, Facebook page, blog, and third-party sites. Content seeding recognizes the existence of an omnichannel customer journey and takes full advantage of it to reach a broader audience.
What is an omnichannel customer journey? It’s the series of interactions between a prospect (or customer) and a brand throughout the customer lifecycle. Here’s an example of an omnichannel customer journey. A customer browses through Facebook, sees an ad of some cool sneakers that captures their attention.The customer clicks and gets to the seller’s Facebook page, where they read reviews from happy customers who bought from that store.
The customer then clicks on the store’s website and gets more information about the pair they saw on the ad. However, their size is sold out. So they speak to an agent on live chat to ask when they can get a pair. The agent assures them that in the next two days the new stock will come in. They sign up to receive an email notification when the shoes are back in stock. When that email finally arrives, they click a link inside the email to complete the purchase.
In this example, notice that there are multiple customer touchpoints: the Facebook ad, the seller’s Facebook’s page, website, live chatting with an agent, and email. To succeed in your content marketing strategy, then, you need to be present across those multiple touchpoints:
Image via LinkedIn
Through content seeding, your content can be dispersed throughout those points so you can reach your target audience wherever they are.
But your content should be organized, too. So, for instance, on your site, you shouldn’t just disperse your content across pages without any logical order. It should be arranged in topic clusters that are more easily understandable and are more likely to engage.
Content seeding also works best when you create content that is relevant to a specific audience category.
For instance, Buffer takes advantage of their 983,000 Twitter followers to spread the word about an upcoming webinar their Twitter followers–many of them already Buffer users—are likely interested in. In the example below, notice how they included a link to the registration page of their website.
Join us Wednesday at 8:30am PST/11:30am EST/3:30pm GMT for a demo + live Q&A made to help you get the most out of your Buffer account!
We’ll answer your questions, share some fun things to look for, along with some tips & tricks!
Register here: https://t.co/8Pn6Wf4mqr pic.twitter.com/oIG5CD4kr2
— Buffer (@buffer) January 16, 2023
You can follow Buffer’s strategy if your prospects/customers are on Twitter. In addition to adding links to your tweets, consider sharing a snippet of a relevant eBook on LinkedIn and adding a link to your landing page. Posting a relevant video of one of your latest speeches on online communities can be part of your content seeding strategy.
But those aren’t the only content seeding strategies you have at your disposal. There’s another one that deserves a separate discussion because of how effective it is: influencer seeding.
What is influencer seeding?
Influencer seeding is the process in which brands send freebies to influencers with no strings attached. Grin, for instance, views influencer seeding as a way to begin a potential partnership with the influencer without requiring any action from them. The main aim is to build goodwill and create a strong relationship between brands and influencers.
Influencer seeding is also called influencer gifting. This is because even though brands send free products or services to the influencer, they do not expect any content in return. However, once you set off a great relationship with them, you can consider creating a long-term influencer partnership that will benefit your brand, the influencer, and their communities.
Influencer seeding is a common marketing strategy because when influencers do create content, consumers trust it more than brands’. Around 61% of marketers acknowledge this.
Brands have been warming up to micro-influencers, in particular, for some time. These are people with 10,000-100,000 Facebook, Twitter or Instagram followers. Compared to huge celebrities with massive followings, micro-influencers have a level of refreshing authenticity that audiences love.
In fact, micro-influencers saw an increase in their market share in 2021—from 89% in 2020 to 91% in 2021. This shows they remain effective when it comes to influencer seeding.
Simple vs advanced content seeding
You can have two types of seeding depending on the distribution process involved. Let’s look at simple and advanced seeding, and discuss what each can offer your business.
Simple seeding
Simple seeding involves content seeding within the brand’s own channels. These can include their website and social media platforms.
This type of content seeding requires little spending to accomplish. However, the content shared must be high-quality for it to be effective. This means that you have to come up with a killer content strategy. Use writing tools, too, to ensure your content has no spelling mistakes or grammatical issues.
But it can be difficult to make brand content viral through simple seeding. If you want to get viral content, you must utilize advanced seeding.
Advanced seeding
Advanced seeding involves brands creating a lot of content and distributing it to multiple third-party platforms. The content created for advanced seeding can be the same as the one used for simple seeding. So, it may include blog posts, videos, infographics, and articles. In advanced seeding, though, you produce a lot more of this content. This content can be distributed to:
- Social media groups
- Forums
- Websites
- Organizations
- Influencers
Advanced seeding, therefore, requires much more effort and cost as compared to simple seeding. However, your business will reap the rewards as you get more impressions and engagement for the content you share.
3 Benefits of content seeding
Whether simple or advanced, content seeding brings a host of advantages to businesses. Here are the three main benefits:
Helps increase website traffic
When you use content seeding to create brand awareness among relevant audiences, you will receive more visitors to your website. This is because you have taken the time to promote your content on platforms that your target customers use.
For example, let’s say you run a wellness center and your content revolves around the benefits of exercise and healthy eating. If you post this content on wellness community groups on Facebook, you can send your web traffic through the roof.
Promotion on social media is just one great content seeding strategy for website traffic increase. Promotion on online business directories enhances website traffic as well. It can also lead to increased SEO.
Enhances brand reputation
Content seeding allows your content to be visible and shareable. People tend to share great content that they can trust with their followers.
So, if a brand consistently produces high-quality content, the target audience eventually learns to associate that brand with great and reliable content. This leads to them viewing the brand as an authority in the industry.
Leads to more conversions
Since content seeding lets you concentrate on a specific audience group, you can drive highly qualified leads to your site. Highly qualified leads are more likely to purchase from you. Let’s assume they don’t make a purchase now. You can still nurture them with your email marketing campaigns and convert them into paying customers in the future.
Either way, you can generate more conversions thanks to content seeding. In other words, content seeding helps your business grow and reach its bottom line more quickly.
What platforms are used for content seeding?
Content seeding was initially performed by blogging on editorial outlets. But today, social platforms have become the main avenue for it. On social media, your content seeding can be done on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram.
That’s not to say social media is the sole avenue for content seeding.
You can do your content seeding through email marketing campaigns and paid promotions or advertising as well. You can even promote your content on other expert blogs through the comments section. Just make sure you identify yourself and explain how your content is relevant to that particular blog post. You don’t want to be flagged as spam by the blog owner, after all.
How to do content seeding in 6 steps
Now that you are familiar with content seeding and the platforms you can use, let’s dive into the steps to follow for seeding success.
1. Define your target group
The first step to successful content seeding efforts is to define your target audience. Effective identification of your target group will help you create compelling content that will hook the reader.
Identify your target audience by asking yourself these questions:
- Which demographic group will find my products or services beneficial?
- What are their current pain points when it comes to such products or services?
- How can I solve these problems and address the pain points?
Once you have answered these three simple questions, you can create your audience persona.
Image via Mkt
Your audience persona is a fictional representation of your ideal target audience. It will serve as your guide when creating content. Now you can move on to the second step.
2. Determine your goals
Goal-setting must precede content creation. Your goals will help you determine what types of content to create in the first place. So what would you like to achieve through content seeding? Are you looking to boost sales, create brand awareness, increase website traffic, or broaden the reach of your content to wider audiences?
Choosing your goals will go a long way in helping you to pick the right platforms to use for your content seeding efforts.
Additionally, it helps you identify the right marketing metrics that you’re going to use to determine the progress and success of your content seeding efforts. You’ll be able to gauge the success rate of each campaign and develop better strategies to achieve your goals.
3. Identify influencers
Next, you’ll need to look into the kinds of influencers that your target group is likely to follow. These are the opinion leaders in your industry whom your audience is likely to trust. The persona profile you developed in step one above will be instrumental in helping you find your ideal influencers.
You can also identify them by looking for trending hashtags and topics that relate to your brand and the influencers that follow these tags and topics.
Additionally, some outreach tools like GRIN can help you find the best-suited influencers for your content seeding efforts.
You’ll have to do some influencer outreach by contacting them. This means sending an official email detailing who you are as a brand and what products or services you offer. But we’ll talk more about this later.
4. Create evergreen content
Evergreen content is content that is continually relevant to the audience. This content remains fresh over a long period of time and has an always-on level of interest.
Creating evergreen content for your content seeding campaigns will ensure that you get maximum value out of the campaign.
There are several content types that you can consider exploring:
- Blog posts
- Videos
- Articles
- Infographics
- Social media updates
As you create your content, make sure that it is relevant to the influencer’s brand and audience. For example, if you sell marketing online courses, send content that is relevant to marketers or those starting out in marketing who would be interested in your courses.
Make sure the content also aligns with the nature of the social media platform you chose. For instance, you’d need professional, work-related content on LinkedIn since this platform mainly has professionals and career persons as its audience.
5. Include CTAs in influencer pitch and content
Let’s say you already have your content. Go back to your chosen influencers and start sending your email pitches. Have a compelling message that shows them the value for them and their audience when they partner with your brand.
Keep in mind that influencers and industry thought leaders receive multiple offers and pitches every day. Make it clear as day why they should pick your brand and share your content first. Make your email concise and to the point but approachable and relatable.
It helps if you engage with their content first before you send your email pitch. This way, you’ll have something to talk about, too, in your email. The influencer may also have some idea about who you are once they receive your email.
Don’t forget to say how exactly they can reach you (reply to the email, for instance), should they be interested in your offer.
If they say yes to the collaboration, great! Send them your materials as soon as possible. Just make sure you also include a CTA for your target audience in the content. Give them an unbeatable offer that they cannot ignore. People only take action when they are asked to. So tell them what you expect from them in your message.
Effective call-to-action messages can be anything from “contact us” or “reach out now” to “get a free sample” or “talk to an expert for free.” This is a great way to ensure your content seeding efforts bear fruits.
6. Measure the results
Anytime you decide to seed content, it is vital to measure whether or not your efforts are helping you make any progress. Measuring results can be done in several ways. You can decide to look at traffic data. This refers to the number of site visitors you received as a result of seeded content.
You may also decide to use web analytics tools to help you decipher how long site visitors stayed on your site before leaving. These will also show you the bounce rate and other key metrics that your brand needs to know.
Engagement metrics are also a great way to measure results. Look into how many comments, shares, likes, and reactions your content acquired as a result of content seeding. This is a very important metric since it indicates how well your content resonated with your target audience.
Check to see whether you achieved your set goals. If you didn’t, determine why you didn’t achieve them and what you can do to be more successful moving forward. Additionally, find out whether your content got in front of the right audience.
The findings of this analysis will go a long way in helping your content seeding campaigns be more successful in the future.
In closing
Content seeding is a marketing strategy that sees you disseminating your content across the internet to reach your target audience. In addition to this, influencer seeding is making use of influencers who align with the goals and interests of your target customers to spread the word about your brand.
The two main types of content seeding are simple and advanced seeding. Simple seeding is sharing seed content within the brand’s own social media pages while advanced seeding is where a brand creates a lot of content and distributes it to multiple third-party platforms.
Content seeding will benefit your brand by helping you increase website traffic, enhance brand awareness, and boost conversion rates. Email campaigns, social media, expert blogs, blog commenting and paid promotions are a few channels you can add to your content seeding strategy.
Finally, to achieve successful content seeding for your brand, begin by defining your target group. Then determine your content seeding goals. Identify relevant influencers and contact them, create evergreen seed content, have a compelling CTA, and measure your results.
With this, you are now well-equipped to implement an effective content seeding campaign for your brand.
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