The most underrated content promotion strategy

Helloooo content connoisseurs.

It’s Perrin from Content Bites.

Today you’re going to laugh at me at first, but probably thank me later. We’re going to talk about a content promotion tactic that I think is criminally underrated (and, of course, how to use it).

• Appetizers: Links from Copyblogger, SparkToro, HubSpot, and more

• Main Course: The most underrated content promotion tactic

Let’s dig in.

Appetizers: Content marketing links

Featured Resource

A lot of you have asked me about where to get marketing help. I’m currently not offering anything, but I know someone who is.

Her name is Asha Indralingam. She’s a good friend of mine who’s worked as the VP of Marketing at Framer and as a fractional CMO for some heavy hitters: Plain, GitBook, Figures, and more (you can see her bonkers track record on LinkedIn).

She works as a fractional CMO, which means you can hire her.

She’s mostly booked, but she’s open to a few chats for Content Bites readers only and said you can hit her up on LinkedIn.

Content Marketing Links

• 10 Content Ideas To Create Killer Content When You’re Stuck (link)

• Growth Marketing vs. Demand Generation: In-Depth Breakdown (link)

• How to Create a Landing Page: The Ultimate Guide (link)

• How Obsession with Attribution Warps Marketing Investments (link)

• 7 Powerful Social Media Experiments That Grew Our Traffic by 241% in 8 Months (link)

Main Course: The most underrated content promotion strategy

Content promotion can be an absolute grind. 

I’m not going to make that any better today, lol. 

In fact, I’m going to suggest something that might make it even more of a grind. 

But, hopefully the thing I suggest makes the grind a little more worth it because it can have such a drastically strong impact on promoting a single piece of content. 

I’m talking about comment marketing. 

Comment marketing = literally marketing your content by leaving comments on people’s posts. 

This used to be something people talked about in the blogosphere, and if you Google it, you’ll mostly still just find weird, outdated information about commenting on other people’s blogs. 

This is NOT what we’re talking about. 

In the cutting-edge era of marketing, which is where we savvy content marketers operate, comment marketing does not happen on blogs.

Comment marketing happens in the most active social communities you can find. 

The basic idea is really simple: 

• Find relevant conversations where your potential customers are talking about your kinds of products/problems/topics

• Add value with a comment

• Link to your content as an additional resource

Dead simple.

But not easy. In fact, it’s hard. It’s a grind. 

So why even do it? 

Because when it works it can be MASSIVE. That is not something you normally hear about comment marketing, but it’s true. 

And even when it’s not massive, it’s still high-impact. Leaving a great comment can generate eyeballs, leads, sales calls, and ultimately, revenue from hyper-engaged people who are actively talking about the stuff your content can answer. 

How much impact can it realistically generate? 

A few case studies and examples here. 

First example: Dofollow.com. I’ve talked about Dofollow.com in this newsletter before: they’re the single best link building agency I know.

Aside from being a great agency, they run a really good business, and they’re great at marketing their business.

Commenting is NOT one of their primary strategies, but they do use it from time to time, and sometimes, it happens for them naturally. 

Here’s how it usually works:

• They monitor LinkedIn for people asking about link building agencies

• They, a friend, or a happy customer mentions them in a comment as a recommendation, usually linking to a case study (content)

• Because it’s a natural recommendation, the conversion is high

• People follow the link in the comment to view the case study

• Some % of those people book a call

• Some % of the people who book a call turn into customers

I asked Dofollow how well it works. 

They estimate that for a good comment in an active discussion on LinkedIn, they might generate a handful of sales calls (in the neighborhood of 5-6), and from those they might close 1-2 customers.

If those numbers seem unimpressive, let me give you some nutty math… 

Dofollow charges between $3,000-$10,000/mo for their services. Let’s call the conservative average $5,000.

Because they’re among the best link builders in the world, an average client stays on for a long time – let’s call it 8-10 months. 

So, if they’re signing 1-2 clients, that’s $40,000-$100,000 in revenue from ONE good, relevant comment that links to a high-impact case study. 

Does it always work out this way? No. Every comment is a dud.

But does it sometimes? Absolutely. 

And think about the investment here, which is what? Two minutes to leave a good comment. 

This is NOT their main strategy. Not even close. But they estimate they close a few clients per year from LinkedIn comments. 

K. Example #2. 

I’m in the newsletter business, so I try to rub elbows with newsletter experts when I can. 

One of those experts is Eric Lam, who runs the newsletter Exploding Ideas, and Eric is an expert in building audiences with Reddit comments. 

He originally wrote about his strategies in my friend’s publication, The Newsletter Operator, but I’ll give you the skinny here, too. 

Eric grew a newsletter to 5,500 subscribers in just a few months – for free – exclusively by commenting on posts on Reddit. 

Here’s the basic process:

• He finds threads that either have a little bit of traction but low comments and then tries to add a strong comment in order to appear at the top of the comment section, OR

• He finds a viral thread with tons of visibility and posts a response to the top comment

To see this in action, here’s a screenshot of one of his actual comments.

You can kind of see how this works: tons and tons of value, and the mention of his newsletter is almost incidental. 

Eric is doing this to build a newsletter.

But you can do this with any content. 

If Eric is converting 5,500 subscribers, it’s pretty safe to estimate there are many tens of thousands of people viewing his content.

As content marketers, that’s tens of thousands of people we could retarget, sell to, etc. 

All from about (if we were copying Eric’s cadence), about one comment a day. 

So that’s two ends of the spectrum:

• An agency generating a very easy six figures of revenue with just a few comments

• And a newer newsletter building an audience super, super fast for free

Let’s talk about how to actually do this in two of the best places. 

For my money, the best places to deploy content marketing are:

• LinkedIn

• Reddit

They’re not the only options, though. Runners up would be:

• Active, quality Facebook communities

• Active, quality Slack communities

• LinkedIn groups

• Discord groups

• Niche forums

• Twitter

Since we have limited space here, let’s just run through the first two.

How to make this work on LinkedIn – as step-by-step as possible. 

LinkedIn is THE place to promote content with comments if you’re selling to any kind of business or specific job title. 

It’s also great because LinkedIn makes it relatively easy to find conversations on specific topics (not the easiest, but easier than some other platforms). 

On LinkedIn, by “conversation,” I usually mean a post. I.e., someone makes a post about a topic, and there’s engagement via comments. 

You can definitely also find conversations happening in 

And as long as we can find conversations, we can comment. 

1. Type your topic into the search bar. 

Whatever you’re into, type that sh*t into the search bar.

Generally, you want to start as narrow as possible – meaning something as close to the topic of the content you’re promoting as possible – because if you DO happen to find a conversation happening in one of those topics, that’s the best case scenario.

If not, you can always go a little broader until you find a good conversation. 

For this example, I’m going to imagine we’re doing content marketing for a cybersecurity company. 

To get narrow, I typed “phishing attacks” into the search bar.

Screenshot.

2. Apply (smart) filters.

We want to find conversations that are happening right now. 

So, in the filters section, we want to search for:

• Posts

• Top match

• Past 24 hours

Here’s a screenshot of the search with filters applied. 

We CAN search for latest if we really want to get the jump on conversations, but I’ve noticed that if you search for the super, super new conversations, it’s much more difficult to tell what’s getting traction. 

So usually, by searching for “top match” in the last 24 hours, we can find good conversations.

3. Look for conversations with at least double-digit likes/reactions. 

It took me about 30 seconds of scrolling to find a post about phishing attacks that had 10 likes/reactions or more. 

Here’s a screenshot. 

It’s a post from a company called ProofPoint about how to protect against QR code scams. 

And, as of the time of writing, it’s got about 15 likes, and it was published 9 hours ago (not the most recent, but still good). 

4. Comment on the post, add value, and link to your content. 

Now, all we have to do is comment on the post with a nice, beefy comment. 

Something like: 

“I couldn't agree more with the importance of safeguarding your company against QR code scams. This reminds me of a valuable lesson a close friend of mine learned the hard way.

A few years ago, my friend received an enticing QR code in an email promising exclusive discounts at a popular online store. Excited to save some money, they quickly scanned it without a second thought. Little did they know, it was a cleverly disguised phishing attempt. The experience left them vulnerable and frustrated, having fallen victim to a scam that compromised their personal information.

Hard lesson to learn.

Based on that experience, I actually helped her put together a checklist to protect against phishing attacks. You can find it here: [Insert Link to Your Guide]. “

Anything works. 

Just add a bit of value, take part in the conversation, and link to some good content. 

How to make this work on Reddit – as step-by-step as possible. 

Reddit is a LITTLE different, but not by much. 

The main differences between Reddit and LinkedIn are:

• It’s not nearly as easy to search by topic, and

• You can’t be as transparently promotional

But here’s the process. 

1. Find a handful of subreddits to monitor. 

Because Reddit’s search is a pain in the booty, it’s almost always easier to just go directly to relevant communities and look at trending conversations. 

If, for example, we sold e-commerce software, we might be tracking:

• r/ecommerce

• r/woocommerce

• r/shopify

• r/amazonseller

• Etc. 

Then, if we wanted to comment, we’d head over to those subreddits directly. 

2. Look for trending conversations. 

For conversations, we either want to look for small-but-active conversations that don’t have very many comments.

OR…

Gigantic conversations where we can attach ourselves to a top comment. 

We do this by heading over to the subreddit and sorting by either “hot” or “new”. 

Both are good. “Hot” will give you more relevant stuff, but “new” will give you better opportunities to jump on a train early. 

Here’s an example I found in r/ecommerce. 

It’s results from someone’s survey. As of the time of writing, it’s got 5 upvotes and no comments. 

If we posted our content, and the post continues to gain traction, we might expect to generate a couple dozen eyeballs. 

On the flip side, we could comment on something like THIS.

This is someone asking about revenue targets.

This is RIPE for a great comment. Problem is: it’s got mad comments already (146 at the time of writing). 

So, in this example, instead of just commenting on the post, we’d instead reply to the top comment. 

3. Add value and link to your content.

And then just the same thing. 

Add some value and link to content. 

SUPER IMPORTANT: Be chill. Reddit hates market-y promotion, but they love transparency and/or good recommendations. 

So if you either appear as a random user recommending a resource OR as someone honestly recommending your own content (and disclosing it’s yours), you can usually survive. 

Here’s a link to Eric’s example comment again, which is a great sample. 

Also, psssst… you can hire someone to do this for you. 

This is a very, very good task for a lower-level marketing employee. 

We don’t have the time to get into the whats and hows of it, but the way this really starts to work is by putting more manpower behind it. 

Quick wrap: how to deploy comment marketing:

• Decide which platform you want to market on

• Find good, relevant, active conversations to join that are (1) in the sweet spot of traction and competition and (2) close to some content you want to promote

• Write comments with lots of value

• Link to your content transparently

Note: This can be a grind, and it’s probably best for high-ticket businesses, but it can be really, really powerful, and people absolutely sleep on it.

That’s the issue. If you missed last week’s issue, you can read it here: Zety's $15M copy-paste content template empire.

Go forth & conquer.

—Perrin