Unless you’ve been living under a rock over the last few years, you know content is king and online content marketing is the new black. Particularly when it comes to science, good content is incredibly effective. It boosts awareness, drives citations, and if revenue is your thing, great content can lead consumers to purchase more of your product.
But with every content producer on the planet—from the individual researcher to The Lancet—producing scholarly content and getting your research, blog post, infogrpahic, etc. noticed is an ever more challenging task, and that amazing piece of content that you spent time and money on may find itself on the back shelves of that online journal or in the deepest corners of the web, waiting to be discovered…
So how do make sure your content gets to its target audience?
Unless you’re basing your dissemination plan on your scholarly content “going viral” (that’s about as likely as you answering - “What’s the meaning of life?”), you should start with a content distribution plan, which would typically combine a number of free and paid distribution methods. Here are some of the key ones for you to consider:
- Post Content On Your Blog
The most obvious place to start with is your own blog. If you don’t have one yet - get one. Make sure that your content is easy to find and use large thumbnails and clear headlines to drive clicks. Encourage website visitors to share your content through a social sharing toolbar, such as AddThis, ShareThis and Shareaholic. - Social Media
Always share your content on social media channels such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. If you’re a scientist, you should establish a presence on Academia.Edu, ResearchGate, and Mendeley. - Email
Good old fashioned email can be a powerful and free distribution channel to get your scholarly content out there. Just make sure it is actually of interest to the people you are planning to include on your list. - Promote On Content Discovery Platforms
Get your content recommended alongside other relevant articles on some the top scholarly publisher websites using a content discovery platform such as TrendMD. If you want a general audience, take a look at Outbrain and Taboola. All of these platforms use mathematical algorithms to recommend your content to those most likely to take interest in it. They typically use a CPM or CPC model and are used in addition to or as a replacement of traditional display or paid search ads. - Advertise on Display Networks and Paid Search
Although banner effectiveness is on the decline, experiment with advertising your content on different networks. Check out PubGrade for a targeted audience for your banner ads. - Make Your Content Easy To Understand
Science can be complicated. No matter how many people see your work, if they can’t understand it and see the clear message, it won’t have impact. If you have published content, check out Kudos. Kudos is a new and free service for researchers that allows you to explain, enrich, share, and measure your work. According to their data, authors using the Kudos sharing tools saw 19% higher downloads for their published work. - Get the Media and Bloggers to Promote Your Content
Issue press releases about key content items, such as interesting survey results. Pitch your content to reporters and share it with influential bloggers you have a relationship with.
If you want to learn more about the powers of scholarly content discovery, click here or contact paul@trendmd.com