Do Publication Sites Really Matter
A whitepaper can surely become successful by conducting promotional activities but at the same time the places where you publish your whitepaper matters a lot. Imagine a situation where you have conducted a strong content marketing campaign for your whitepaper with the best display ads, interstitial ads, used social media, and other rich valuable content but there are no visitors on the page. Websites which seldom have any visitors on their page will hinder all your promotional activities no matter how good you perform. This is where content marketing comes into play. While there is no one marketing strategy that works in the digital marketing industry, but there are ways to go about with it and make your whitepaper look an engaging content piece.
Where Can You Publish Your Whitepaper?
Whitepaper publishing is not limited to particular online sites, you can publish it where you wish to, as much as you desire. However, there are some sites that you could include in your content audit that perform well depending on the whitepaper type that you are going to publish. Let's find out the platforms that you can use in your content marketing plan laid for promoting your whitepaper.
Company website
You can always consider your company website as the main distribution channel for publishing your whitepaper. A company website can include it in the resources repository so that it is available for your clients and audiences. Through this, your potential customer as well the brands that you are working with know that you produce good content and they can rely on it. These repositories sometimes prove as a blueprint for your clients to understand and learn about the services of your company.
Pubsites (Publication sites)
When it comes to whitepaper publishing, pubsites prove to be the best as they are more channeled for a particular type of whitepaper content. Including this platform in your content marketing strategy will show you more beneficial results than any other platform. Publishing the whitepaper on pubsite is more effective as pubsites follow the trend which can make your whitepaper more appealing if it is published on the appropriate pubsite with the trend aligned with your whitepaper content. As a content marketing agency your content creation effort in the medium of your whitepaper will be surely acknowledged by your target audience.
Facebook
Social media has gotten a wider reach in all the categories of online media. One of the most popular platforms used globally has to be Facebook. Digital content viewed through this platform is probably one of the highest. So, publishing a whitepaper on social media platforms like Facebook shouldn't be missed at all. Start with creating a separate company page on this social networking platform. Then publish your whitepaper on the page and initiate a conversation surrounding the topic. You can also create a landing page for your whitepaper on Facebook to encourage downloads. In addition, you can also run ads on Facebook. If there's one platform that can seamlessly identify your buyer persona and help you achieve great results, then it has to be Facebook. Right from promoting the right content asset to convert a piece of written content into stunning visual content, this platform can do it all.
LinkedIn
If you are not publishing your whitepaper on LinkedIn, it's the time you include it in your content strategy. LinkedIn offers a large pool of opportunities for publishing your written content especially useful for B2B marketers, clients/businesses as it has got a wide professional network. Your target audience and identified groups might be a part of LinkedIn which can provide better visibility. Posting your content be it a whitepaper, blog post, or even a corporate video, on LinkedIn Groups not only gets your quality content in front of your target audience, but it also provides a great way for others to share it with colleagues and other professionals in their network. LinkedIn ads can further add value to your whitepaper promotions. Making this a part of your content marketing plan surely has too many benefits that you might not be aware of as yet.
Twitter
You can always tweet about your whitepaper highlighting the pain points it is targeting. Sometimes, just tweet about your whitepaper can leave a big impact on your followers especially when it aligns with the trend and can be a stepping stone for your brand awareness activities. You can always develop a series of tweets that will explain more about your whitepaper and the problem it solves. This way, you set the ball rolling for your content and enter in the typical digital content marketing arena. Tweeting the content that readers might want to learn more about can be good content marketing examples while also using the hashtags to improve reach and visibility.
SlideShare
SlideShare can be a great place to promote whitepapers with because of its various presentation features. Including it in your content marketing strategy has many unknown benefits. You could start by creating a slide show version of your whitepaper that gives some top highlights as well as additional info on how people are going to be benefited from the downloaded version hence compelling them to download a whitepaper. While this content marketing activity is novel, it has a lot of potential on its own if promoted with great content.
While there are many channels and places where you can publish your whitepaper, pubsites have proven to be more effective as it provides the marketer with 360-degree support for all the whitepaper promotional activities. Let's discuss more on whitepaper promotion and some key points that should be considered while publishing your whitepaper on pubsites and to make them appear on the top of the search engine.
Publishing Your Whitepaper On Publication Sites
Promotional activities for whitepaper should be extensive along with the timely inclusion of different strategies. Publishing your whitepaper on pubsites provide a wide range of benefits like:
- Easy navigation: With pubsites, it is easy for the audience to navigate to the related whitepaper content which they are seeking as pubsites are generally industry-oriented and focused. The content marketing effort of publishing a whitepaper does have unique advantages like this.
- Related news: Pubsite is a more relevant platform to share your whitepaper content as its wall is constantly updated with the industry domain news. Hence, it has increased the chances of visitors falling on for their particular domain related needs.
- Aligned with the trend: Not only news but information about events and conferences are also published on pubsites and you never know when the visitor may get a glimpse of your whitepaper while browsing through these upcoming events and conferences.
- Resources: Pubsites are a one-stop solution even for other resources like blog content and articles, infographics, webinars, email marketing, etc. So, the seeker can receive more industry-oriented insights.
- Videos: Rich media resources like videos can enrich visitors with easy understanding of terms especially those related to technologies. For example, a manufacturing pubsite can be a host to various manufacturing processes related to videos for the people for easy learning and upskilling their manufacturing knowledge.
- Thought Leadership: Pubsites do include interviews of thought leaders speaking on the current trends in the industry, shedding light on the opportunities in the new geosystem, in addition to the future industry demands and scopes. With Q&A sessions it really becomes easy for the visitors to gain valuable insights which they are seeking for. It's always better to learn from the expert's bird's-eye view.
- Webinars: Pubsites are best when it comes to hosting a webinar. With webinars there are increased chances of visitors landing on your pubsite, eventually increasing the chances of your whitepaper downloads. So, promoting your whitepaper during a live webinar could be a winning call for your whitepaper promotional objectives.
What Really Makes The Difference
Promoting your whitepaper through pubsites is like directly hitting the bull's eye as it is a proven successful content marketing strategy. Here the visitors landing on pubsites are channeled ones as pubsites are already industry-specific and have a defined list of content type. So, it becomes easy for the visitors to be in their particular domain world adhering to their specific industry requirements and insights. And for all those who are looking to promote their whitepaper, they just need to navigate to the pubsite catering to the industry domain of the pubsite that their whitepaper may fall into. In other words, industry-specific pubsites work best when it comes to whitepaper promotional activities.
Conclusion
As a content marketer, whitepaper promotion does involve stepping out of the comfort zone of traditional marketing and leveraging on all the rich media contents like banner ads, interstitial ads, video ads, etc. but the platform where you publish these or promote your whitepaper also matters a lot. In the end native advertising like selecting the right platform, conducting suitable inbound marketing activities for your whitepaper publishing, and promotion should be the goal of the marketers to attain their marketing objectives and thrive in business outcomes.