No Patience? Then Social Media Should Be Part of Your Inbound Marketing Plan

Inbound marketing is not for the faint of heart. It requires strategizing, planning, execution, and then … waiting. Unlike many other marketing efforts, inbound marketing does not provide instantaneous results (although if you’re lucky, it might). Because a large part of inbound marketing is focused on SEO, many pieces won’t start to gain traction until the six month mark. If this sounds excruciating to you, but you know you need inbound, then social media should definitely be part of your inbound marketing plan.

Social Media Provides Instant Visibility

You spend hours, if not days, creating great content. It flows well, includes in-text links, has beautiful pictures, and is optimized for SEO. You’ve finally finished it and hit the publish button, and are excited to see the results it generates. Well, if you don’t utilize social media, it may take months before anyone even sees this great piece of content. 

Social media is one of the few pieces of inbound marketing that grants instant visibility to your content. Without permission to use somebody’s email address, likely the only way they will stumble upon your content the same day it is published is through social media.

Analytics from a blog that has been live for only 3 days.

How to Use Social Media to Get Exposure For Your Content

There are many different ways social media can provide instant visibility for your content. One of the obvious ways is to post a social message with a link to the content as soon as it is live. HubSpot provides a great tool inside of their blogging tool where a social message is automatically pushed out 15 minutes after the blog goes live. However, if you don’t have an outside blogging platform to utilize like HubSpot, it only takes a few minutes to post socially after you hit the publish button.

Social publishing section inside HubSpot's blog settings.

On top if this, if you have a few extra dollars to spare, go ahead and throw a little money towards your social posts. By spending just a few dollars on boosting the social message, you can get your content in front of those you specifically are looking to get it in front of the day it goes up. So instead of hoping they search for the keyword you optimized your content for and crossing your fingers that your post shows up towards the top of search results (which is very unlikely if your content is new), you are able to put this content in front of their eyes without them having to do any work. Don’t underestimate the value of social ads.

Another way you can utilize social media to expand the reach of your content is to reach out directly to people or organizations you think would be interested. You can send a direct tweet, a message via LinkedIn, or you can post a link on a social forum related to the topic. After spending at least a couple hours creating your content, the least you can do is spend a half hour to make sure people see your hard work.

The Time Is Worth It

As mentioned earlier, it could take six months or longer before your content starts generating any organic traffic. The few minutes it takes to post a social message linking to your content, boosting it for a few dollars, and then reaching out to a few people will be worth it when you start to see the views and downloads come in.