This is an all-too-common situation: You pour your heart and soul into writing a grade-A piece of engaging content that follows every best practice in the business, but it fails to gain the traction you had hoped.

Despite your best efforts, the article fell short when it came down to how many people viewed and shared the link.

Over 90% of organizations incorporating content marketing into their business strategy.

It’s no surprise that standing out from the crowd and getting attention can be a difficult task.

60% of B2B content marketers admit that they’re top challenge is creating engaging content.

57% have difficulty measuring the effectiveness of their content.

The secret to content marketing success is actually less about the quality of the content (which, don’t get us wrong, still matters), and more about promoting it appropriately.

Take it from the folks over at Kraft Foods: Content marketing is valuable.

So valuable, in fact, that they earned 4X greater ROI on their content marketing than their targeted advertising.

Here are some content marketing tools and tips for getting your article out there to the people who matter, and getting those views (and that ROI) you deserve.

Use BuzzSumo to Find Influencers

Whatever the topic of your article, use a content marketing platform to find influential sites that have related content. They’d likely be willing to help you share what you wrote.

Once you scrape a list of these various blogs and publications, you can reach out to them via an email template and begin your link building.

BuzzSumo is the best content marketing tool out there for initially finding and contacting influencers.

By searching the title, topics, and/or related keywords, you can select the sites that have similar content with the most shares.

You’re looking for impactful places to promote your article, which is why you need to be selective with these results.

If any of the results are your own domain, don’t bother with those.

Instead, expand the “View Sharers” option next to a result and gather the contact information of those people who appear.

Though the only contact info you’ll have is their Twitter handle, investigate their website for an email address.

When it’s all said and done, you should compile a list of at least five email addresses.

Draft an email template to send to each person on your list in which you mention that you have an article similar to what they’ve published on their site.

Then ask them if they’re willing to link to your content by providing a value proposition.

This can be as generic as, “Considering you wrote about [topic of content], I thought you might be interested in [the content you wrote]. It can give your audience even more tips and suggestions that they would find valuable.”

Incorporate Quotes from Experts

Influencers are not only people to reach out for backlinks, they are also excellent sources of content for your article.

Even better, they will feel more compelled to share the finished piece with their audience.

Using a content marketing platform like Klout is great for this. Enter the topic of your article into the search bar and the results will yield a list of experts for you to contact.

Once you click on one of these experts, you can see all of their social media accounts. By digging through these and their website, you’ll likely be able to pull an email from which to contact them.

In your email, let them know what you’re writing about and ask them to provide a quote as the experts in this field/topic.

Be sure to mention that you’ll send them the finished piece of content, and that it would be great for them to then share it with their followers.

Leave a Response With a Link

On the various forums across the web, you can find a large audience of people interested in the topic of your content.

Simply by entering into these sites, searching for your topic, and choosing wisely from one of the questions listed to respond to can draw people to your article.

One of the most popular forums out there to begin your search is Quora.

Start by searching by topic for the subject that pertains to your article. Then look for results with a high follower and question count. 

Within these results, you’re looking for answers that have a high upvote count.

Once you’ve found it, you just need to add an answer with a link to your content.

Make this response in-depth and related to the question being asked.

Your goal from this content marketing strategy is to stand out from the rest of the crowd on Quora answering this question. This makes it more compelling to click your link.

Note: The above image is just a portion of the response. To see it in full, click here.

When it all comes down to it, promoting your content to the right people through backlinks and sharing is the key to achieving views.

Yeah, you want to make sure the content is good quality and puts forth the right view of your brand.

It’s also about reaching the right people and spreading the word.

The above tips will help improve your professional content marketing by more effectively getting your content where it counts: In front of potential customers.