This is a guest post by Shannon Paul (find her on Twitter, too).  A prolific online personality, in her “day job” Shannon is the communications manager for PEAK6 Online.

On the PR/marketing side of the equation we know good products go unnoticed without proper promotion, but we’re often reluctant to make the same admission about content.

If it makes you feel better, I’m not going to blame this problem on the proliferation of new channels of communication brought on by social media, etc. But, please know that great content does not market itself.

Rather than going on about social media and my signal-to-noise ratio, I’m going to show you how many good things went unnoticed with a short list of some of my favorite long-ignored great works of content:

1. Freaks and Geeks:  Like most of the world’s population, I missed this brilliant television series when it first aired in 1999.  Despite brilliantly delivering on the tagline, “what high school was like for the rest of us,” the show was only broadcast for one season. However, the show was the launch pad for of a lot of talent you might recognize today, including Judd Apatow,  Seth Rogen, Jason Segel and James Franco. Not only was it set in a suburban high school in Detroit (my hometown), but it’s the only sitcom that ever relied on Star Wars, Dungeons and Dragons, and the Grateful Dead to inform much of the humor and plot.

2. Nick Drake: During his lifetime, not one of Drake’s albums sold more than 5,000 copies. By the time he finished his last album, Pink Moon, he decided to retire from music altogether.  He died at the age of 26 from an apparent drug overdose that was ruled a suicide.  His music is beautiful.  I wish the world had loved his music while he was alive to feel it.  Listen to Pink Moon.

3. The Shawshank Redemption: Yes, it’s true that this movie tops most best-ever lists, but when released in 1994 it was a box office dud. There are a lot of theories around why such a great film performed so poorly in theaters, but theories are just that. Rest assured, everyone’s favorite bro-mance between Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins went on to become one of the highest-grossing movie rentals of all time.

Chalk each of these examples to a case of wrong place/wrong time, but I happen to think solid PR and marketing could have made a big difference in each of these instances.

In social media circles, we talk a lot about how to inspire word-of-mouth and connect consumers with one other, but in each of these instances, word-of-mouth triumphed over a lack of good publicity — not because of it.

These days, there’s this notion that if you have a lot of great content on your site, you can sit back and let the content work for you.  Great content is a great start, but content marketing is still about relationships.

Four ways to foster relationships with your web-based content:

Outbound links: Yes, it’s true, linking to other content might send some people away from your site. However, most people pay attention to sources of inbound traffic and links since it helps them meet their goals of increased traffic and page rank. While it’s not a one-to-one formula, outbound linking tends to encourage inbound linking. What I mean here is when someone sees your incoming link and recognizes the synergy between your content and their content, they often return the favor by linking to your content.

Comments: Comment on other peoples’ and companies’ blogs with the intention of participating in a conversation they started. Don’ t comment in an effort to steal someone else’s traffic — that’s just rude. Done correctly, the relationship will provide a lot more value in the long-term than a few curious clicks.

Resource-rich Blog Content: While it’s still important to serve journalists content they think will be useful for their readership, now it’s equally as important to create direct-to-consumer content (or direct-to-customer content if your business is B2B). If you’re doing this, remember to talk about something other than your product and deliver something they can’t get anywhere else.

Guest Posting: I’m a guest post here on Todd’s blog, but writing content for others in your industry or customer space helps establish relationships with new readers and with the person managing the site.

If you think I left something out of this list, let’s discuss in the comments.

Much like great products, great content will only find the best people to love it if it’s leveraged well. If your content hasn’t found its sweet spot yet, don’t fret — you’re in good company.  Keep trying new angles and formulas for success.

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