Can you imagine a great movie like ‘The Shawshank Redemption’ being sat on a dusty old shelf…not being watched and acknowledged for its greatness because not enough people knew it existed?
The truth is, even the best movie in the world would not receive a single viewing if nobody knew it existed, and your content is just the same.
Promote Your Content
You may well have created the finest video, blog or podcast in the world, but nobody would watch, read or listen if they don’t know it exists.
So, how do you make people not only aware of your content…but desperate to consume it?
A great way to get people invested and excited about your up and coming content, is to promote the release of your content like it’s a movie premiere.
In this blog post, I look at four different ways that movies are promoted, and how we can repurpose our content to follow similar promotional strategies.
Give Your Content the Red-Carpet Treatment
What I find too often, is that people don’t realise that just creating the content is not enough. In order to get the best return on the time you have invested in your content, you need a broad, captive audience that wants to engage with your content.
What if you treated the publishing of your content in the same way the release of a new movie is treated in the film industry, in order to gain as much interest as possible?
Let’s look at the top 4 ways movies are advertised and promoted, and how you can integrate these tactics as part of your content creation strategy.
Teasers and Trailers
We’ve all seen movie trailers. The best snippets of the movie are compiled as a synopsis of the movie, in order to garner interest and whet the appetite of the movies target demographic. I personally LOVE movie trailers. I always get to the cinema early just to see the trailers, and it’s funny thinking about it, I actually enjoy being advertised at when it comes to feature movies. I even enjoy having a good old laugh at the movies that, to me, look terrible!
You can create a movie trailer for your content, too, so to speak.
If your content is a video, and you want more people to watch, then create short teaser trailers of your video. Pick out fun, interesting and engaging clips and create your own trailer.
I provide lots of really useful tips on how to create this within episode 38 of the Content 10x Podcast, so please head over for more detail.
Creating trailers for video content will be straight forward as you already have the video content to work with, but you can also create a video trailer if your content happens to be a podcast. Repurposing content in this way is something we do for lots of our clients. To do this, you take the best pieces of your audio content, and you pair them with images and any standout phrases, to create a short trailer for your podcast episode. I share more on how to create epic podcast repurposing in episode 36 of the podcast.
This style of content marketing can also be applied to your blog posts. If you feel more comfortable not being seen or heard on your trailers, you can create stylised formatting for your text, coupled with relevant imagery and music to help create that buzz for your content release. You can refer to my episode with Jason Hsiao, founder of Animoto, episode 67, where he discusses his tool ‘ Animoto’, (alongside other available tools such as ‘ Biteable’ or ‘ Loom ‘), which allow you to turn blog posts in to videos.
This said, as discussed in episode 58 of the podcast, I strongly recommend creating fresh, new content for video trailers.
You can quickly jump on camera and in less than a minute, you can engage directly to your audience and inform them as to what your next piece of content is about. Why they should care, what value they will receive as a result of engaging and why your next output, be it a blog, video or podcast is essential, unmissable content.
If we think about how movie trailers are distributed, they are distributed very widely. You can go to the cinema and see the trailers played before the main feature you’ve gone to see. You can see them on TV, sometimes they are shown on Netflix, YouTube and often on websites via google adds or other advertisement add-ons. In the same way, there are lots of places for you to host and distribute your trailer, too.
You can easily promote your content on YouTube, not just via your personalised channel, but you could invest in a YouTube advert. The same can be said for your Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or anywhere else your audience may be.
You can post your video trailer for the audience that subscribes to your pages, but also run adverts on Facebook and Instagram to reach a much wider audience that are not currently aware of your content.
Posters and Visual Promotion
Movies are often advertised on big billboards, magazines, newspapers, tube station posters, websites and social media sites, all discussing what is ‘Coming Soon’, in order to build suspense about the next big release. You can create your own billboards, too. Create engaging visuals and share them where your audience are, to let them know your content is coming soon.
It’s not just about letting them know when it’s live. Why not take a leaf out of the movie industries book and let people know that it’s coming soon on a specific date, to create a little bit of a buzz about it. Give people a reason to care, make them excited, spread your visual content far and wide and consider placing add spend on your visuals the same way I discussed placing spend on advertising your video.
Think about locations where you are most likely to attract the right target audience for your content. What websites would your audience most likely interact with? How can you cast not just the widest net, but the most accurate net to capture your audience?
Special Guest Appearances
Another way we see movies promoted, is when the main stars do the rounds on all the main talk shows. In the UK, we always know when a new movie is out because the stars will be chatting to Graham Norton show on a Friday night and Jonathan Ross on a Saturday night. In the US the stars will be making the rounds on all the chat shows too like Ellen and Jimmy Fallon etc. When these movies come out, the main stars will be interviewed again, and again…and again.
So, how could you follow a similar, highly effective approach? You could be a guest on other people’s shows, podcasts, live streams and webinars. Think about where your audience are, and who else already has their attention. Then, try to reach out to the people that host the forums your audience resides in, and ask if they would be interested in speaking with you about your new content.
This may not be suitable for every piece on content you create, but discussing epic, cornerstone content pieces with well-respected audience leaders would draw a lot of eyes to your content, from an already attentive demographic. It may not be The Conan O’Brien show, but being interviewed in the same way that actors are interviewed about their forthcoming movies, will be just as effective in front of the right audience.
Create an Experience
Last but not least, when movies are released, they often have big movie premiers with red carpets and after parties. Lots of people get involved with the ‘event’ of a movie being released. So, what can you do in this respect?
You could film a live video on a social media platform where your audience hang out…Instagram, Facebook, YouTube…soon LinkedIn.
For example, on Facebook, you could host a live party and invite people to attend and share knowledge. You can take questions and engage with your audience, making them extremely interested in your topic, then encourage them to watch your great video, read your insightful blog post or listen to your informative podcast.
Going live and encouraging your audience to share in the experience is key to creating a buzz for your content. You can do this before your content is released to drum up some excitement, but it can also coincide with content that is already available for your audience to consume.
Conclusion
So, there you have it. 4 ways to treat the release of your content the way the movie industry promotes the release of their content…a movie!
All of these ideas are forms of repurposing, as you are creating the content first and then repurposing in a promotional way to add more value and gather more awareness of your content.
Which are you going to do first? Let me know in the comments below!
Thanks for reading!
Say Hello on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Apple Podcasts, YouTube and LinkedIn.
Originally published at https://www.content10x.com.
