What good is the best blog article in the world if no one reads it?
New content is regularly posted on websites to build user loyalty. However, this content is only truly successful if it is read by many users.
It is rarely possible to generate new users in this way through pure SEO alone. New content must be disseminated quickly, especially for time-sensitive topics such as news or changes to guidelines.
For this reason, you should also promote your posts through paid advertising!
This not only ensures that your content is distributed quickly, but also increases your own visibility and generates new returning users. Here are two channels that are particularly suitable for this purpose.
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Facebook offers several ways to promote blog posts. You can easily present posts here for free through Facebook posts. However, this usually only reaches users who already subscribe to your page.
If you don't have a large fan base yet, it can be very difficult to reach relevant readers this way.
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Place Facebook ads
To change this, you can also use Facebook Ads Manager to place ads to promote posts. This allows you to reach the target audience you want to address with your topics.
With Facebook ads, you can choose how a user interacts with your post:
- Interactions: Users should actively interact with the Facebook post by liking it, leaving comments, or sharing it.
- Website clicks: Encourage users to visit your website to read the entire article.
- Video views: Encourage users to watch your videos.
Depending on what you decide, the look of the advertising campaign will change slightly.
Next, you need to determine who should see the ads. To do this, you define a specific target group based on location, age, gender, and interests. It is also possible to target lookalike audiences. The more specific the group, the more likely you are to reach the right users.
Advertisements created in Facebook Ads Manager can be displayed not only on Facebook, but also on Facebook's Audience Network and Instagram. However, the selection can be adjusted at any time.
There are two options for ad design:
- Promote an existing Facebook post
- Create a custom ad
Regardless of which type of ad you choose, pay attention to the image you use as a preview. It must be meaningful and immediately appeal to the user. It should not only express what the post is about, but also encourage people to read it.
However, Facebook also has some limitations when it comes to ads. For example, an image used may contain a maximum of 20% text. In addition, only three lines are displayed in the preview text, but these can be expanded.
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Outbrain
Outbrain offers the possibility to place advertisements directly where users are already reading news articles or blog posts.
The ads are usually displayed below news articles or in blogs as suggestions and are targeted at the user's previous interests or the topic of the article. The ads from advertisers are mixed in with other articles on the website and, at first glance, suggest that they also originate from the website itself.
However, Outbrain ads are marked as "ads." This means you reach users at the point in their customer journey when they are most receptive to engaging with your content.
The advertising options on Outbrain and Facebook are very similar. Here, too, you can target specific interest groups. The selection options are also very extensive.
An estimate of the reach shows how many users can be reached with the settings. This allows you to assess whether the target group orientation is sufficiently large.
Clicking on an ad then takes the user directly to the article on their own website.
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Facebook, Outbrain, or Twitter? – My conclusion
In addition to Outbrain, there are other providers such as Taboola that offer very similar functions. However, they differ in terms of the partner websites on which the ads appear.
There are also alternatives to Facebook that you can try out. Platforms such as Twitter and others offer further possibilities here.
It is important to test different channels, as this is the only way to find out which one best reaches your target audience.
In the white paper Paid Advertising – Your Guide to High-Performance Campaigns you will find more tips on how to connect different channels and what you should keep in mind for your campaigns.
