Online content, whether it’s a landing page, a blog, or social media post, is a powerful tool for businesses. Among other things, it's a lead generation tool, making you discoverable by potential customers, it spreads the word about what you do and who you are, it helps you develop brand loyalty and showcase your personality.
Content connects you with your audience, but only if people actually see it. So what can you do to increase the visibility of your online content. Read on! We've got you covered 😎
What Does Content Visibility Actually Mean?
Broadly speaking, content visibility refers to your brand's overall presence online — your digital footprint in the minds of consumers. Having good visibility helps increase conversions, web traffic, follower growth, subscribers, and brand equity.
10 Ways to Increase Content Visibility
How you approach content visibility depends somewhat on the goals you have for each piece of content, and your content marketing strategy overall.
For example, maybe you have a robust blog writing program in place, but now you want to diversify and repurpose your content by creating YouTube videos. So you'll need to create a YouTube strategy, and start nurturing subscribers on that platform. Or maybe your social media posts are not getting any traction, so you need to invest time in social engagement and make sure you're content there is serving its purpose.
Whatever your needs, we can help you get started.
Here are 10 ways you can increase the visibility of your online content:
1. Focus on quality over quantity in followers
2. Engage
3. Post at the right time
4. Optimize for search
5. Include visuals
6. Use hashtags
7. Pin your most important posts
8. Share other people’s content
9. Strengthen your brand voice
10. Create new content on a regular basis
1. Focus on quality over quantity in followers
It’s tempting to focus on big numbers for social media followers or blog subscribers. But if you pad your audience with periphery and random people just to boost your numbers, you're really shooting yourself in the foot. Followers that don’t actually care about your posts or your business aren't doing you any favors. That’s why you should focus on quality over quantity.
Start by defining your target audience. Use a media monitoring tool like Meltwater to search specific keywords across various social media platforms, for example like in the example below, “organic food” or “gluten-free” could be interesting topics for a health brand to search for.
Follow the people joining conversations relevant to your brand. You can also take a peek at followers of similar brands and competitors and give them a follow too. If they’re already interested in the topics you cover, they’ll be more likely to follow you back.
2. Engage
Engagement is one of the most fundamental strategies marketers can use to boost online visibility. The more people you get talking about and engaging with the things you post, the more likely it is that others will see it.
Encourage people to interact by asking poll questions, using video, posting edgy content that sparks conversation, or going a more lighthearted route using memes and GIFs:
How Social Media Managers feel after every algorithm update pic.twitter.com/O47GdWROj6
— Meltwater (@Meltwater) January 17, 2023
But you can't depend on your followers to do all the work. It's important to participate in the comment section and share posts when people tag you (which is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more followers see that you share when you're tagged, the more UGC you'll get!).
All of these engagement efforts will ultimately help improve your content marketing as well as the reach of your brand and online content.
See also: 10 Top Social Media Campaigns
3. Post at the right time
While there isn’t one magical perfect time to post on social media for the most visibility, you can increase the chance of people discovering your online content by optimizing for times and days when the majority of your followers are online.
That goes for blog posts, too! Google Analytics is great for showing blog traffic spikes.
Related resources: Best time to post on TikTok & Best time to post on Instagram in Australia
4. Optimize for search
Most people start their online browsing on a search engine. So it’s crucial that you optimize your site so you show up higher up in search results.
Here are some of the SEO metrics you want to optimize for, to send positive signals to search-engine algorithms:
- High time on page & time on site (this is why internal linking is essential!)
- Low bounce rate (if a search engine suspects your content didn't serve the intended purpose, it may be flagged as click bait!)
- Goal completions (such as filling out a form on your website)
- Domain rating (largely influenced by high quality backlinks to your website)
Make sure your content is unique and your meta descriptions and titles — what users see in search results — are descriptive but not click-bait to avoid being penalized.
Also, include relevant keywords and organize your online content in a logical, easy-to-scan manner.
Did you know you can also optimize your YouTube videos for SEO? Visit our blog to learn more!
5. Include visuals
Including visuals on your web pages, in blog posts, and in your social media feed is one of the best ways to boost engagement. Photos, infographics, GIFs and videos are all great ways to increase content visibility online. Not only do visual posts get more shares, likes and comments; people tend to retain the information in them better.
6. Use hashtags
Tagging your posts with hashtags helps more people see them. Include tags that are relevant to your industry that your customers may search or follow. You can also check what tags are trending and use them to boost your visibility even further.
Just make sure you stay on-brand with whatever you post, and avoid stuffing them into your content unnaturally. Twitter’s advice is to use no more than 3 hashtags per Tweet. On Instagram, however, 10-15 hashtags is common practice, so it's also important to know the "culture" of whichever social platform you're using to make maximum impact.
7. Pin your most important posts
Since social media sites typically keep your most recent content at the top of your feed, important posts can quickly get lost in the shuffle. Most sites include a feature that allows you to “pin” a post to the top of your page, so it’s always the first one visitors see.
You might choose to pin an important announcement, a post that really captures the essence of your brand or drives a lot of website traffic, a link to a project you’re proud of, or a piece of online content that received a high level of engagement.
8. Share other people’s content
When you share other people’s content, you’ll get your name in front of the person whose content you shared as well as their followers. This is a great tactic for forging relationships with influencers, expanding your follower-base, and finding opportunities for guest posts which help with your backlinks.
Leveraging connections with influential third parties is all part of the online content game. If you’re having trouble finding relevant online content, use media monitoring to see what editorial content is positively impacting your industry.
9. Strengthen your brand voice
Developing a clear, consistent brand voice is crucial for making your online content resonant as strongly as possible. Remember that being conversational on social is a great way to increase engagement and content visibility. Having a distinct voice will make it easier to cultivate a following of fans who enjoy the way you interact. Social is increasingly being used as a PR tool as well, so don’t underestimate these channels when building your brand.
Social media is a powerful tool, but make sure it's used strategically. Going too off-the-cuff may result in crises that are easily avoidable. Ensure that you don't commit these common social media mistakes.
10. Create new content on a regular basis
Lastly, to serve all of the above tactics for increasing your content visibility, you need to be creating new and fresh content on a regular basis. This provides you with more things to share, to link to internally, and provides search engines with stronger signals through the keywords you use.
While net new content is important, don't forget the power of repurposing! Regularly audit your articles for information that can be updated, and also try converting popular blogs into videos to provide more diverse and accessible ways people can consume your valuable content.
See also: Content Marketing Trends for 2023, Marketing Trends 2023, current Instagram Trends, TikTok trends
You work hard on crafting compelling content that’s relevant to your audience. Don’t let all that hard work go to waste! Follow these 10 tips to get your online content and your brand in front of more people who want to see it.
Curious how Meltwater can help you uncover relevant topics for your content pipeline? Request a demo to find out by filling out the form below!
About the author:
Nathan Sykes writes about business technology online. He is the editor of Finding an Outlet which he runs from Pittsburgh, PA.
