In 2012, Mashable published an article titled, "Who Googled You? This Website Knows." The pieced trended on Mashable’s front page for two full days and famously brought the team at BrandYourself 60,000 signups in 60 hours.

As you might imagine, a trending article is worth its weight in gold. Once the story was “hot,” other major publications -- Huffington Post, Yahoo Finance and Tech Crunch, among them -- began picking up the story and linking back to the original piece.

New users began signing up to use our product, sharing their experiences on social media and their personal blogs. This compounded the effect even further. Thousands upon thousands of people recommended the service and bragged about their Search Score.

One of BrandYourself's key takeaways from all this exposure underscored the importance of getting traction in the first few days. The more engagement with an article or other piece of content early on, the better. And when it comes to maximizing press, time is of the essence. An article’s lifespan is short -- roughly 48 to 72 hours before it goes big or gets buried.

With that in mind, we're constantly looking for ways to get the most buzz for an article in the shortest period of time. We’ve learned since then that there are a few crucial steps to amplify reach through the press, get information in front of the right people and give a message its best chance of trending on social media and top-tier publications.

1. Share on social media.

As soon as press hits, it’s time to open the social media floodgates. Now is not the time for modesty.

Share your article across social media channels throughout the day and week. Try several variations on the copy, hashtag and image so you can capitalize on different audiences and keep the message fresh. After all, nobody likes to see the same update 10 times in a row. Pin that tweet to the top of your Twitter feed. Tag the author, the publication and other companies or individuals mentioned in the article so they can re-share with their audiences, too.

In short, do everything in your power to get that piece in front of as many people as possible in the initial two- to three-day span.

2. Implement digital ads.

Hitting new press with those early engagement levels can trigger an article to trend on social media or on the publication itself. Even individually, these outcomes exponentially increase your reach and the piece's chance to rank well in Google search results. Paid campaigns are one of the best ways accomplish all those objectives.

Digital ads allow you to reach a much larger audience than otherwise would be possible. More important, the demographic choices available on today's ad platforms enable you to reach the right audience.

Social networks are perfect for finding your ideal viewer. So are content suggestion platforms such as Outbrain, Stumbleupon and Taboola. No matter the platform, the key is making your audience want to click and share. Think about their wants and desires. What's in it for them?

Bad: Mashable just wrote a great article about our product's latest feature -- check it out.
Good: Ever wonder who's Googling you? Find out with our free product.

3. Tap your email network.

Email remains the No. 1 most effective platform to reach people online. That's right: It ranks ahead of Facebook. If you’re not using email tactics to broaden the reach of your press, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity.

Once your article goes live, send an email blast to everyone on your company’s contact list. I recommend using an email marketing platform such as Mailchimp so you can track your open rate. This also frees you from manually sending out batches of emails.

Here's a neat trick to capture email addresses from your LinkedIn connections:

Go to your LinkedIn homepage and click on the "My Network" tab. Then click "Connections"
Click the "Settings" gear symbol in the top right corner.
Click "Export LinkedIn Connections" in the right column.
Choose "Microsoft Outlook (.CSV file)" and then click "Export."

If you’re using Mailchimp, you easily can import your .CSV file before you send your email.

I suggest two important tips for your email blasts. First, send yourself a test before it goes out to the masses. There’s nothing worse than finding a typo after 1,500 people already have seen it. Second, include a call to action above the fold. All it takes is a simple ask: “Please share this with family and friends!”

4. Share with clients.

Don’t lump your clients in with the rest of your email network. Instead, send them a separate message that acknowledges their role in your success.

Such an email goes a long way toward strengthening your relationship and making them feel good about doing business with you. A little confirmation bias never hurt anyone.

If they're proud enough to be associated with your brand after a big release, they may take it upon themselves to share the good news among those in their personal networks -- without your needing to ask. Who knows? You could be nurturing your next big brand ambassador!

5. Circulate internally.

This step is an absolute must. Share the news release internally, get your company excited, and encourage employees to share the information with their own networks.

Brand messages shared by employees on social media report 561 percent more reach than the same messages shared by the brand’s social media channels. That’s because employees have 10 times more followers than their company’s social media accounts. What's more, their content typically receives eight times more engagement than content shared by brand channels.

The bottom line: We trust people more than we trust brands, and we engage with people more than we engage with brands. If you don’t get your employees involved on social, you’re absolutely losing out to companies that do.

When a positive piece of press gets published, your level of activity could be the difference between a complete flop and a remarkable sales funnel. Take promotion and circulation into your own hands. Even if your article would do well on its own, there's no reason not to give it that extra nudge.

Once you've followed these steps, don't forget to shoot the reporter a quick email, too. Let him or her know the work you're doing to drive traffic and engagement to the piece. They’ll be thrilled to have your support in boosting their readership and will be more likely to work with you again in the future.

Originally published on Entrepreneur.com.

What’s the best use of your money to alter your search results and improve your online brand? Google Adwords certainly comes to mind, but it’s typically not the best paid promotion option out there for us.

Google Adwords is best if you’re selling a specific product or service. People who are looking for a specific solution search their problem on search engines -- businesses can determine those keywords and target users with their ads.

Why is this no good for us?

We’re trying to change what shows up for our names, not a competitive keyword. When people search Ryan Erskine, they’re already going to find results for my name. I don’t need to advertise for my website on top of those results. Doing so might look weird and would definitely not be the best use of my cash.

Here are a few paid promotional options I’d recommend instead:

Facebook Ads

There are three primary kinds of Facebook ads and each is useful for different purposes. The big benefit with Facebook ads is that you can choose the audience you wish to target based on age, gender, location, education, and other demographic information.

Boost a Post: This option is great for earning more traffic and engagement on a particular post. If you got an important article placed on a third party publication, this might be a great time to give a big push here.

Promote Your Website: This one is self-explanatory. Use it to direct more people to your website. If you come up with a compelling ad and can deliver on value once people click through, you have a high chance of earning returning visitors in the future.

Promote Your Page: Promoting your page is useful for driving up your page’s likes. Moz has a terrific article that argues compellingly for spending at least $1 a day promoting your page. As they say, “They are the lowest cost per 1,000 impressions ad in history. They average around $0.25 per 1,000, which is only 1% of the cost of TV.” A no-brainer if you have the cash.

Twitter Ads

Here are the two types of Twitter campaigns I find most useful:

Engagement Campaigns:

These campaigns are useful for earning more engagement or activity for a particular tweet. If you want to spread the natural reach of your tweet -- perhaps to get more traffic to your latest article -- then this is the right campaign for you.

You can tailor these campaigns on a number of factors, such as language, location, and keywords. My favorite is ‘followers,’ which allows you to target specific @usernames. Your tweet will then reach users with interests similar to followers of any of those accounts. It’s a great way of ensuring your content reaches the right eyes.

Followers Campaigns:

Followers campaigns are great when you want to increase your Twitter profile’s audience. This is not just for cosmetic reasons; a larger audience means your tweets are naturally pushed to more twitter feeds.

You can tailor these campaigns in the same way, but the best practices differ. Although tweets often do better with hashtags or links, Twitter has found that followers campaigns without these distractions do better. Also remember to be direct and include “Follow” or “Follow us” in your tweets.

NOTE: For personal campaigns (as opposed to businesses), I find Twitter’s engagement campaigns to be much more useful than followers campaigns. Growing your audience is easy enough using tools like Crowdfire, so I’d rather save that money to promote important content.

Stumbleupon Ads

People still use Stumbleupon?

Yes, it’s true. Stumbleupon actually drives 3x more traffic than Reddit and it’s the 4th highest social channel driving traffic, right behind Twitter.

Stumbleupon’s campaigns are great for getting more eyes on your content. And the best part is that those folks are pretty engaged -- a recent campaign for a client kept people on site for 2:44.

Here are some fun facts about Stumbleupon.

The demographic information for Stumbleupon campaigns isn’t as impressive, but it’s enough to make your campaign reach the right users. And the analytics also leave something to be desired, but I still find myself using this platform for the consistent traffic again and again.

Outbrain Ads

Outbrain describes itself as a content discovery platform.

What does that mean? Outbrain basically places your content as an ad on another platform. You know when you’ve seen “suggested content” on BuzzFeed or CNN once you’ve finished reading an article? That’s probably thanks to Outbrain.

Outbrain is comparatively expensive -- you have to pay a minimum of $10 a day -- but I’ve seen some good impact.

Here’s a recent campaign for one of my clients that’s still in the works. I’ve spent $60 so far and earned 365 clicks out of 380,000+ impressions. Not the most impressive click through rate (just about 0.1%) but a few hundred clicks is nothing to sneeze at.

And Outbrain also tells you where your articles are getting picked up. Sure, Ghana web wouldn’t be my first choice, but I’m definitely impressed by the next few publishers on the list. Plus, now I can see what's working (and what publications I want to scrap) and make my next iteration that much stronger.

My favorite thing about Outbrain campaigns is that you can test multiple different titles and pictures for the same URL. Then you let Outbrain figure out which combination is earning the most engagement and continue serving that combination to users.

Closing Note

Remember, ad campaigns are not a quick fix to improving your search results. They are only as good as your content.

If you focus on creating quality content — useful content that adds real value — you’ll have a sustainable source of traffic for months and years to come. Got some disposable income for your campaign? Then try strategically using paid campaigns to increase your content’s reach.

If you have some other favorites, let me know in the comments below or hit me up on Twitter.