No Budget? No Problem! How to Get Eyes on Content Without Spending a Penny

They say you have to spend money to make money.

And in most cases, that's true.

If you're a solopreneur on a shoestring budget, you're facing an uphill battle when it comes to content marketing.

Not only are you probably creating the content yourself, but you also need to find ways to get it in front of the right audience — without spending an arm and a leg.

Without a budget, a lot of the useful but pricey tools that marketers like to use are probably out of your reach.

But that's okay.

With some smart strategy decisions, you can bootstrap your content marketing no matter how little money you have.

You'll have to focus on the strategies that are totally free.

This can involve actively reaching out to people who might share your content.

It also means you'll primarily be focused on marketing tactics you can use for free, at least to start.

Organic social media and SEO come to mind. (Not that you can't or shouldn't invest money in these, but you can get started without spending a dime.)

In a recent blog post, Neil Patel explains how to start getting your content out there without bankrupting your business.

Prepare for promotion

If you want to succeed at content marketing, you need to get your content in front of as many people’s eyes as possible.

What’s the point in producing content if no one is going to read it?

Normally, outreach takes time and money.

People invest in expensive programs like BuzzStream to keep track of who they’ve emailed about their content.

If you have no budget, these tools are out of your reach. However, there are still free strategies you can use to promote your content.

First of all, don’t be selfish. If your content is all about you, no one has any reason to share it.

But if you include other people in your content, they are more likely to share it.

Think about it.

People like when other people mention them, especially on the Internet.

So if you include a quote from someone, or mention a specific business that is doing a certain task well, reach out to them to let them know you featured them on your blog post.

You can reach them via Twitter or find their email and let them know:

[image source: Neil Patel]

You may have heard of the skyscraper method. It’s a system of content writing that encourages you to consistently create top content within your niche.

You analyze the top performing content for your chosen keyword and create even better content based on that keyword.

One easy way to find the top content in your niche is to use a tool like BuzzSumo:

[image source: Neil Patel]

It’s super easy.

First, enter your keyword into the search bar and hit the “Go!” button, and you’ll be taken to a page that shows the top shared content related to that keyword.

[image source: Neil Patel]

You will be able to see the top 10 blog posts on the free version, with more available on the paid plan.

BuzzSumo shows you how many times people shared that piece of content around, who wrote the content and which platform was most popular on.

The thing about this is the top content has usually been shared around a lot. So if you can write something even better, you can be sure you’re providing value.

Once you’ve done that, use a tool like Muck Rack to see who’s shared your content:

[image source: Neil Patel]

Reach out to those people to see if they’d be interested in sharing your content too.

Send an email like this:

Hi Name,

I noticed you shared a post recently about X.

I’ve recently written a post about X, but it includes 7 extra strategies that were missing in the original post you shared.

If you’d like to read it, let me know and I’ll send it through.

The reason this works is that you’re finding people who have already shared the content and you’re approaching them with a new piece of content that you know they’ll like.

This way you increase the chance of your content appearing on their sites.

Another promotion method is to syndicate your content through tools like Medium or Business 2 Community.

The reason this works well is that those sites have a higher readership than yours. It gives you a chance to get your content in front of more eyes. And what’s more, it’s free.

Keep in mind that if you do plan to syndicate your content to sites like these, then you need to ensure that Google knows which content was produced first.

The issue is, when you syndicate your content to another website with a higher domain authority, Google often sees it as more important, even if you posted yours first.

To combat this, when syndicating your content, make use of a rel=canonical tag.

<link rel=”canonical” href=”ENTER YOUR URL HERE/” />

What this does is tells Google to give all the credit to the original post, i.e. you and not the page you’re syndicating your content on.

This way, your own rankings don’t get penalized for having a website with a higher domain authority than yours take over.

Social media is free. And using a free tool like Buffer will enable you to post and share your content as well as analyze which content performed best.

[image source: Neil Patel]

Use social media to put out snippets of your content with links to the original pieces.

When you share your content, though, it’s not enough to just share it once.

[image source: Neil Patel]

Every time a social media user refreshes their page, they see a new collection of content. It’s also important to note that users are online at different times of the day.

If you want to get your content in front of enough people, repeatedly share it. Just don’t it too much, as you don’t want to appear to be spamming your audience.

Social media is a great way to share your content because it’s why these platforms were created.

When someone reads a great piece of content there’s a high chance they will recommend it to their followers.

And when their followers read it, they’ll recommend it to their followers, too, and so on.

Soon, your content will be shared around the Internet via a web of social network users.

Plus, sharing your content on social media is completely free.