Internet Marketing: Learn to Let Go: 8 Sharing Sites That Will Expand the Reach of Your Content

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Learn to Let Go: 8 Sharing Sites That Will Expand the Reach of Your Content

Share Inbound marketing may start with creating content, but it doesn't end there.

As a business marketer or content creator, your instinct may be to hold on to the content you've created and post it only to your website in the hopes of forcing people back to your website. But if you're doing that - holding your content hostage - you're losing out on free marketing that social media sharing sites will do for you.

By posting your content on social media sharing sites you can leverage those websites' networks as well as the easy-to-use built-in sharing features of those sites, like easy share links, tagging, and subscription.

Video:

Have some customer case studies? Interviews with your CEO? Recorded presentations from your last conference? Post them to video sharing sites:

1.) YouTube - If your video is under 10 minutes (and the shorter the better), YouTube is the best site for sharing your videos. Key sharing features: tagging, social media share links, video embedding, subscriptions

2.) Blip.tv - If your video is more than 10 minutes, use a site like blip.tv (or Vimeo or Viddler) to post your videos. Key sharing features: tagging, automatic iTunes (and other video) syndication, creative commons licensing, video embedding, subscriptions

Or, use a tool like Visible Measures to post and track your videos across many video sites.

Documents/Presentations:

Take all those slide presentations, ebooks, whitepapers, and post them to:

3.) SlideShare - Take your existing documents (PPT, PDF, etc.) and post them to a SlideShare (or Scribd or Docstoc). Key sharing features: tagging, social media share links, document embedding, subscriptions

Photos:

Whether it's photos of your team, screenshots of your product, or even funny cartoons, post them online:

4.) Flickr - For any of your images (or even some short videos), flickr is a fantastic sharing site. Key sharing features: tagging, creative commons licensing, slideshow embedding

5.) Facebook - Facebook is an incredibly powerful social network that allows people to share all sorts of content, and photos are among the most popular applications. Facebook now has over 200 million active users, and more than 850 million photos are uploaded every month. Key sharing features: news feed update (when you upload photos, tag people, or people comment on them), tagging (people)

Events:

Have an event coming up? List it on these sites:

6.) Upcoming -Upcoming is an event sharing site hosted by Yahoo. Key sharing points: share your events with your friends

7.) Facebook - Yes, I'm listing Facebook again. But Facebook events are another great (and frequently used) application for sharing events. Key sharing points: news feed update (when creating, attending, commenting on events)

8.) LinkedIn - Similar to Facebook, LinkedIn has an event posting/sharing feature. Key sharing features: posted in LinkedIn network updates (when creating or attending events)

Have you had success posting your content on these sharing sites? Do you have others that have worked well for you? Share your experiences in the comments.

Flickr photo credit: wlodi