Need help with marketing? Get your personalised Marketing Support Pack.

Friend of a friend – Your real social network

Twitter, Facebook and WordPress all help you connect directly with your clients or audience. But reaching for them indirectly could be even more successful.

Bigger networks often have high demands for quality content but can’t always feed the grinder themselves. Offering quality content to the owner of these networks helps them feed their audience and gives you the opportunity to connect with friends of friends.

Provide content to places that need it

Magazines built on advertising, for instance, always need interesting profiles or features to fill out their publications and prevent them turning into coupon books.

When trying to sell our house, I created a Twitter account in the character of our property: @jamjarhouse. This idea got the attention of a local property magazine and bagged me a free coverline and double page spread.

Cotswold Property Inside July 2016 Jam Jar Joy

Offer content to the subscribers of larger providers

Email newsletters challenge everyone, big or small, because they need to be regular and they can’t go out empty. If you can fill the gap it means they don’t have to.

If you’ve written a reference book and published it as an ebook don’t just send it to your own email list. Find providers that crossover with your topic and offer the ebook for free to their subscribers.

Contribute guest content to successful websites matching your interests

For example, this post!

If you have contacts with bigger networks than you, then great, but otherwise simply drum up a list of five or more decent sized content providers that fit with your business.

Fire off at least three outlined ideas for guest posts to each contact on your list, making sure your content hits both their niche and offers a peek into your own knowledge and skills. If your ideas are good enough, no one with content gaps to fill will turn them down.

Image credit: Clem Onojeghuo – Black Steel Grinder on Brown Wooden Table (Header) – Cotswold Property July 2016 (insert)