Image from Flickr by Nerissa’s Ring

Back in Feb Ali published a fantastic blog about why cornerstone content matters – and how to create it. To summarise, cornerstone content is the foundation of your blog or website – it means creating strong content concepts on topics that will remain relevant to your readers for many years.

If you’ve followed the steps in this article, you’ll have created some excellent cornerstone content for your site – but now what do you do with it?

Highlight your cornerstone content on your website

The first thing you should do with your cornerstone content is ensure it has a special place on your website. Why do you need to do this? Wouldn’t publishing your cornerstone content on your blog be enough?

No – and here’s why. Your blog is constantly being updated (At least, it should be. tsk tsk). If you simply publish your cornerstone content on your blog, you’ll quickly bury it under your new content, and it won’t get the attention it deserves.

Instead, focus on building features on your site to highlight and draw the reader’s attention to your cornerstone content:

• Create static pages for your cornerstone content that link from your sidebar.
• Have you noticed blogs with a page in their navigation tab labelled “Start Here” or “Free Articles”? Under this tab you’ll find their cornerstone content. Create your own introduction page, and give your readers a list of your best articles.
• Use a “Related Posts” plugin on your blog to direct readers around your site to other articles or interest – your cornerstone content should be a prominent feature.
• If it’s appropriate, link to your article from your website’s homepage.

Make your audience aware

Now that you’ve placed your cornerstone content on your website, you’ve got to make your current audience aware it exists.

• Link to your new cornerstone content on Twitter and Facebook.
• Share your cornerstone content with your readers through your mailing list or newsletter. Invite them to comment and share their thoughts.
• Create a new blog post highlighting the content and your new static pages.
• Encourage your audience to share the article on their social media pages.

Expand the reach of your content

Now that your current readers have read – and are excited by – your cornerstone content, it’s time to get it in front of some fresh eyeballs:

• Have you noticed another blogger asking a question on a topic relating to your content? Send them a link to your article. If they find it useful, they might consider reposting it.
• Add a link to your content in your email signature.
• If you wrote about a resource or tool, send a link to the article to the tool’s creator.
• Build links to your content! Here are some link building tools, to get you started.
• Write guest posts on other blogs in your niche. Link to your cornerstone content in your content or bio.
• Go back through your old blog posts and place links to your cornerstone content, where appropriate to the topic. This ensures that visitors landing on your site through your older article will be able to find your cornerstone content.

Extra for experts: use your cornerstone content as inspiration

If you get imaginative, your cornerstone content can do more than sit on your website and attract that awesome Google juice – it can help you grow your business in other ways. Here are a few bonus ideas on how to leverage cornerstone content to improve your platform on- and off-line:

• Take a section of your cornerstone content, rewrite the content – expanding it with lots of additional detail – and add links to some other resources online (including your original cornerstone content). Voila – you now have a fresh blog post or guest post!
• Combine the info in your cornerstone content with additional information and case studies to create a free downloadable ebook.
• Use the info in your cornerstone content to create a pitch for a magazine or ezine article. Publishing articles in magazines will increase your platform and establish you as an expert in your field. As an added bonus, most magazines will even pay for your article!
• Create a short online course, webinar or seminar series based on your cornerstone content.

Creating powerful and engaging cornerstone content is only the first step – you have to make sure people notice it. Your premium content should be awarded a position of honour on your website, and you should ensure that as many people as possible read it, learn from it, and pass it on.

How are you promoting your cornerstone content? Tell us about it in the comments!