Hey everyone so I run a blog type website, and as I understand it, content promotion is an important part of success in content marketing. However, I had a few questions as I’m not sure content promotion actually has any long-term benefits. Furthermore, I am uncertain whether it’s short-term benefits are even worth the hours of work it demands.

Now I am aware that content promotion helps initially bring eyeballs to your content. Furthermore since google uses rankbrain to assess user behaviour, if there are no users in the first place, it won’t be able to determine the quality of your article. However given the other ranking factors out there, how much weight does this initial user behaviour carry and could I not just tell my friends to go on to my site and display good user behaviour? (black hat as that may sound)

Secondly, the initial surge of traffic I would get from content promotion is not sustainable, so what’s the whole point of that? Especially for blog posts where not all pages are optimised for affiliate purchases (which is our revenue model). Does it have any long term benefits?

Finally, currently my team and I spend 6-8 hours targeting influencers in our niche and reaching out to them. Even once they re-share, given the points I mentioned above, is it a profitable endeavour?

I don’t mean to pessimistic, I am just playing the devil’s advocate here and would genuinely like to know the answers to these questions.

Appreciate any guidance guys!