Running a business, big or small, means weighing the ins and outs. Is the juice worth the squeeze? What’s the return on investment? Is the money I put in going to get me the results I want?

These are questions all business owners come up against, especially when it comes to marketing. As a pet store owner, how can you effectively promote your pet store and its content without breaking the bank? To us here at Pet Engine, getting the most bang for your buck is a critical part of a pet store’s marketing strategy and it’s something we work hard at delivering. If you want to see how we do what we do, a simple no-pressure call awaits! Make it happen.

Contact

Today, we’re going to dish out 7 powerful ways to promote content organically - that means with no money behind it. So using our Freesources or other free means available to us, we’re going to get our pet store’s photos, our videos, our blog posts, and everything else seen by our audience! Here’s how:

7 Powerful Ways to Promote Content Organically

Even when you create great content, it might never be seen if it's not promoted and shared. Content promotion is critical to the success of every piece of content as well as being crucial to the success of your content strategy in general. The more views your content has, the more likely you are to make a sale.

Share it on Email

Use a free service like MailChimp and send your content to your subscribers. Your subscribers are one of your most valuable digital assets - they are already engaged with your brand enough to invite you into their inbox! They are also the exact audience you are looking for.

Email subscribers are three times more likely to share content on social media than leads who have come in through other channels (Source: QuickSprout). Moreover, you are six times more likely to receive a clickthrough from an email subscriber than someone on Twitter, for example.

When you have a new piece of content, paste a snippet of it into your email and add a link to read more. Check out our Freesource post on MailChimp to get started promoting your pet store’s content organically.

Guest-Posting

If you’re the one writing content for your pet store, consider submitting articles for your local publications or online blogs. Make sure you get some data on readership and reach before deciding if it’s worth your time.

To find guest posting opportunities, reach out to these publications and blogs and see if they have any availability. For some, guest-posting might be an entirely new venture that you could help them start. Don’t forget that with your audience both digital and in-store you can also bring something to the table in your localized audience. Others might require some form of payment - again, use your discretion and data to help influence your decision on answering those questions above.

Hashtags

When promoting your content on social media, use relevant hashtags. Look up popular hashtags around specific topics on Hashtagify, then integrate them into your social media posts. Your content will now become discoverable to people searching for content via those hashtags on those topics. This is a great way to organically promote your content and get it seen by more people.

Tagging & Backlinking

When you create a piece of content, whether it’s a post on Facebook or Instagram or a longer blog post about, for example, which type of harness is best for your dog customers, make sure you are utilizing the tagging and linking features.

If you link other websites or services in your content, you can send it to them and ask them to share it with their audience. Similarly, when you take a picture of a dog wearing a harness and put it on Instagram or Facebook, tag the harness’s brand and manufacturer. This will prompt them to share it with their own followers.

Ask Your Team to Share

To maximize the content's reach, ask your employees to share it. Send out a link to the content via an internal messaging channel or in a company email, and encourage sharing.

Better yet, have a team meeting about how sharing content online promotes the business and helps create conversations about it. Make it a shared, required responsibility among team members. Facebook recognizes when people are sharing content as well and their algorithms work in your favor, tricking the system in a way - this makes this strategy one of the more powerful ways of promoting your content organically.

Infographics are Awesome

Infographics are extremely powerful pieces of content. They are shared and liked on social media three times more than any other type of content (Source: LucidPress).

Making an infographic sounds hard, but if you get familiar with tools like Canva, it can be done relatively quickly. Infographics don’t need to be massive either - they are just a visualization of data and can be only a handful of major points.

Check out our Freesource post on Canva and related content to get started.

Cross-Posting

When you create a piece of content, make sure you’re putting it out across all of your different platforms and channels. Make sure it’s going up on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, your website, and depending on what it is, making fliers and bag stuffers for announcements isn’t a bad idea either! Your pet store’s marketing should be omnichannel.

Conclusion

You don’t have to spend a fortune to get your content seen (although spending a few dollars here and there won’t break the bank and will definitely bring results). Lean marketing means knowing where you’ll get the most results with the least expenditure, and when it comes to pet store marketing, oftentimes that’s what we’re looking for. Organic content promotion is a big part of what we do here at Pet Engine Marketing, and when it comes off well it looks really good!

Want this stuff delivered to your inbox twice a month? We would totally do that for you. Give us a follow and join our free community for pet store owners, growing every day!

Join Community