Let’s get meta for a minute and blog about blogs.

There are thousands of articles out there telling you where to put your content. Many are redundant, most are outdated. Some long-winded, and others inaccurate. In their defense, there’s no universal formula to rule them all. There are lots of paid services and niche communities online that might be perfect for your content.

That said, these 7 services below should be home to all of your content, no matter your chosen topic or style; it should become your foundation for free, organic content marketing.

Before we begin, we should address who this is for and what types of content we’re talking about? We’re talking to thought-leaders, bloggers, and personal marketers. If this is you, keep reading.

Our goal is to help promote your content – especially your written content. Unlike our frequent focus on content strategy for big brands and splashy campaigns, today we dig into how content can thrive for the thought leaders among us who are looking to leave their mark on the world.

Facebook

Duh . The only way you can go wrong here is by writing too much or using the wrong (or no) image. For the love of the internet gods, do not write more than two sentences, make sure that your description is engaging to your reader, try and stick (or stay close) to AP style headlines, do not name drop anyone that isn’t famous, and use custom photography/designs if you can (stock is a fine fallback). Utilize the Facebook Debugger if your preview isn’t generating correctly to identify the problem. (Note: the same service exists for Twitter. It’s call the Twitter Card Validator.) Try out the Google URL shortener for cleaner copy. This may go without saying, but it’s important: these posts will always be more effective with paid support for content promotion.

Quora

The name of the game here (as it should be everywhere) is provide value. Expand your luck surface area by avoiding solicitations and instead post to specific questions related to your blog post to increase the collective knowledge of the end readers. Yes, include a link to your post, but also include a comprehensive (yet brief) answer to the question at hand (which is why Quora exists). Don’t be afraid to further shoo bias by linking out to other sources that support your response.

Also, be sure to engage past your marketing efforts. Ask new questions, up and down vote responses, etc. This will tell Quora’s algorithm that you’re not, well, just a marketer.

LinkedIn

Share a status from both your individual account and your company’s (if you have one). Follow the same rules as Facebook: be brief, be engaging, and use a nice, high-res photo.

Also, pro tip: LinkedIn loves to give out free advertising credits to users that have company profiles. If you don’t already have a company profile, create one, run an inexpensive campaign, and let it run its course. After a week or two of inactivity (or maybe even less), expect LinkedIn to send you free credit. Feel free to repeat this process as many times as you like.

Reddit

This one is tricky as I’d bet many of you don’t have enough karma to post in a lot of spots. Fear not! You can do one of two things:

Go to a small-medium size (<75k subscribers) subreddit whose subject is something you’re knowledgeable about (I frequent marketing, gadgets). As much as you’d like to post in the most popular subreddits like r/vids or r/funny, you probably don’t have enough karma (and you’ll get drowned out). Filter by “new.” Start voting and commenting. Have a friend do it. It’s likely you have a friend that is an absolute fiend on Reddit and has a bunch of karma racked up. If so, ask them nicely to post for you.

Past karma, the guidelines are basically the same as Quora’s: provide value, engage often, and don’t act like a solicitor.

Medium

It may seem counter-intuitive to repost your blog to another blog, but Medium is an excellent way to get the attention of anyone you’re mentioning within the post. Most bloggers, companies, publications, and notable individuals have Medium accounts, so when reposting on medium, be sure to do two things:

Start your post with a italicized disclaimer with links to your best work and a separator. Hooray, inbounds! Be sure to @mention any individual or entity. They will be notified, and someone from that company will read your post.

StumbleUpon

Remember StumbleUpon? Believe it or not, it’s still immensely popular. Simply create an account, go to “My Profile” at the top right of your browser, select “Add a Page,” tag and categorize, and save. You’ll be surprised by the inbounds you’ll get.

Press!

If you are writing about something that is particularly timely, unique, or controversial, don’t hesitate to try and drum up some press. Pubs like HuffPo and Mashable have submission forms and others like Elite Daily allow for contributing writers that can simply repost their own content.

Pro-tip: try out the chrome extension Clearbit. It’s a Gmail/Inbox plugin that allows you to easily scrape URLs for publicly listed (or sometimes hidden) emails. This is great for specific publications where you don’t have a contact. For example, if you wrote the perfect article for Motherboard, you can search Clearbit for “Vice” and see if you can’t get in touch with an editor.

Conclusion

Save each of these platforms in a bookmark folder in your browser. Now, every time you publish a new post, you can easily and quickly spread your content to the right corners of the internet. If you have any additional comments or questions, feel free to email me directly (js@isl.co)!

Now get out there and provide some value to the world.