It is common for marketers to put a ton of effort into creating quality content but then leaving distribution as an afterthought, when in reality distribution is equally as important as the content itself.
It’s of critical importance to understand your choices for media distribution and have an understanding of your various platforms. This article shares tips and strategies from industry professionals.
- Build a relationship with people in your space
Brian Robben of Robben Media says “When you’ve built a relationship with people in your space, content marketing distribution is far easier. You can now leverage your social capital to get much more accomplished in a short amount of time. If you don’t have a strong network in your niche, there’s no better time to start. Make friends on Twitter, Facebook groups, and one-on-one emails by jumping in and having conversations. As long as you’re providing value and interesting content, you’ll have no trouble building connections. Remember, you’re setting the table for asks to help distribute your content.
Content distribution is about two key objectives: backlinks and social shares. To drive backlinks, we’ll send unique emails to website owners with a specific reason to link to the post. For social shares, we’ll email website owners offering social sharing swaps. By them sharing our content, we’ll share theirs and help each other. Both of these interactions often lead to future opportunities.”
Eduard Dziak of B2B Digital Marketers says “Our most effective tip for content distribution strategy/flow is to ensure we always reach out to the people who we have linked in the post and let them know, that we are using them as a resource and thank them for their hard work.
Our intention is not to get social shares or even backlinks even though it happens all the time, but to build a relationship that helps us to create more opportunities and collaboration.”
- Repurpose your content
A high engagement blog can be leveraged into quality social media posts which can be transfigured into infographics or newsletters for email marketing. This keeps a high-functioning circulation of content you can guarantee hits home with your readers. Advises Gr0 co-founder and CEO Kevin Miller
Mehvish Patel of Zen Media says “My go to strategy when it comes to effective content distribution is revisiting the data and doing AB testing. By knowing and experimenting with content distribution its great to find out what’s working and what’s not. Who is viewing your content and who is ignoring it.”
Oliver Andrews of OA Design Services says “It is very efficient to develop a strategy based on chunks of content that can be easily reused through different channels and for different purposes. So as you develop all your content, think about how it can be easily converted in the future. You can also build each piece of content with the intention of a mixed-use strategy.”
Amber of Giraffe Social Media shares an example “Let’s say you’ve made a comprehensive PDF guide and a blog post to promote it. Instead of one or two social media posts saying “read our guide [blog link]”, get creative with the content of the guide and the blog post by taking snippets of information and turning them into graphics, infographics, educational videos, Stories polls/quizzes, and more. Utilise the unique features of each platform here and use your analytics data to see which content formats to repurpose your content for on each platform. This will do wonders for engagement and squeeze as much use out of your PDF guide (just an example, this works for lots of content types!) as possible.”
Andrew Raso of Online Marketing Gurus recommends “Recycling your content can be the best move you can ever make because it saves you time and effort, plus it comes with the guarantee that you are working with something that has already gained traction before, so you’re somehow in a safe territory.”
- Don’t neglect your SEO
Milosz Krasinski of Chilli Fruit Web Consulting advises “Never neglect your SEO as this is how people find your content – if in doubt, always hire a professional. Choose the right channels for your content and for your audience. Focus on your social shares as these are all-important”
Patrick Carver of Constellation Marketing says “SEO is an amazing, passive way to distribute your content. By optimizing your article for a popular search term, you can show up on the first page of Google and increase the number of qualified people reading your content. The key to any content’s success is to think ahead and build a keyword plan before you take it live!”
- Examine the choices for media channel distribution
Joel Almazar of Upgrow expertly advises “Before you post your materials on any website or channel, it’s critical to weigh the relative benefits of each and choose the ones that best serve your objectives. The majority of digital content delivery options fall into one of three platform categories:
- Distribution of owned content: These content and distribution platforms, such as your website, blog, email newsletter, and social media accounts are owned and controlled by your brand.
- Distribution of shared material: When third parties spread your content or content about you through the news, guest article contributions, retweets or shares, or product reviews, this is known as content distribution.
- Distribution of material for a fee: When you pay for content delivery, such as paid ads, this is what you’re doing. Payments can take a variety of types, but the most common is a cost-per-click (CPC) model, in which the content owner pays a set amount each time someone clicks through to access”
Tori Bell of Clever Touch Marketing says “Your brand strategy and budget will determine which channels you use most. You can get your biggest return on investment from earned channels but content sharing can be risky due to you having no control over the spin that can be put on it.”
- Utilize paid content distribution
Martha Andrews of Technologies Pty Ltd has witnessed firsthand the positive results of paid content distribution and says “Paid channels refer to when anyone who pays to distribute content on certain channels. This primarily includes paid social advertisements, paid influencer content, and pay per click (PPC)”
Award winning SEO expert, Deepak Shukla advises “Running Facebook Ads is the quickest way to effectively distribute your content. It doesn’t need to cost a lot, just $5 a day if that’s your
budget. It’s a really effective way to spend your money that will generate returns. You can also track how well your ad is doing and use this information to improve your ads each time you update them.”
- Do your customer research
Ashley Regan-Scherf of RGC Advertising says “To ensure your content marketing efforts are found and absorbed by the right consumers – at the correct times and places – you should make the content readily accessible for them. This requires some research to find out which social media platform your target market is most active on. For example, Gen X is most popularly on TikTok. Using an account-based marketing (ABM) strategy, in which sales determines their most desirable prospects and prequalifies the leads that content marketing can pursue, will give the process much-needed emphasis and make it easy to distribute content that can help your company achieve its top goals.”
Elise Oras of Wheels Up Collective says “Start with identifying the target audience and the goals of the content, and then best distribution channels for amplification. Once that plan is mapped out, it’s easy to tailor content to meet your goals and helps get your content in front of more people.”
Nikola Roza of SEO for the Poor and Determined suggests “It is much better and effective to first check where exactly your audience hangs out, and then go and promote your content there. To uncover this, dig into your Google Analytics and see your site’s referral traffic sources. This will give you some insight. An even better way is to take an established competitor in your vertical and run them through SimilarWeb. This will show you all of their traffic sources. So, just pay attention to their referral traffic and you will see the best platforms where your brand needs to be present starting today.”
Gayle Rogers, CEO of Atomic Marketing advises “Thoroughly research and define the audience you hope to influence. And then research a little more. Most content misses the mark by being too broad or being pushed out to every place possible. This is neither efficient nor effective. You must be intentional with your audience, your content and where you hope to connect the two.”
- Align your PR and marketing efforts
Jaci Burns, CMO of Market Expertise advises “If your content could have news appeal, factor that into your distribution strategy. A media outlet is far less likely to run a story if it’s already been broadcast, even across the assets you own such as your website and social accounts. By aligning your PR and marketing efforts, you can generate earned media from your content which will significantly amplify its reach, grow your audience, and build brand awareness. Ask yourself: does this piece of content have any news appeal? Should we repurpose it into a press release or media pitch? Could we offer this piece of content (or a version of it) to a news outlet as a by-line article? If yes, clarify the timing of any media interest and respect any embargos.”
- Use the 80/20 rule
Hansvan Gent of User Growth Ltd says “We think that if you look at the total time spend on each piece of content you create. Content creation should only be 20% of your effort. 80% should go into promotion. And with recent numbers that zero-click Google searches rose to nearly 65% in 2020. You need to look further than just SEO to find eyeballs on your content.
One of the best ways to do this is by sharing your content on social media more than once.”
Simon Dwight Keller of SDK Marketing says “We know, Linkedin is one of the best social media platforms and has 740 million members, and you can find c-suite executives here. The idea behind content distribution is to get more leads or conversions, and generally, management & C-suite executives have the authority to approve or purchase your service or product.
What’s more, building relationships with more senior management involvement and getting their comments on your posts builds trust in your brand. It will help you start conversations with a target audience, and you can convert this conversion into a lead.”
- Establish authority
Linnea Zielinski of Hurrdat Marketing suggests “The most effective thing you can do for your content marketing distribution plan is to focus on ways to establish your authority over that of your competitor’s. Whether you’re an ecommerce company or a publisher giving their readers advice through articles, your consumers want to know they’re getting it from the best source that knows what they’re talking about and selling. But customers are also fined tuned into when a company is trying to make them believe something without backing it up. That’s why more companies should be answering questions on Reddit, Quora, or industry-specific chatrooms.”
Paige of Mavens & Moguls Marketing suggests “Instead of trying to start my own blog or newsletter, I have had success contributing regularly to existing well trafficked blogs in my industry or newsletters of likeminded organizations reaching the same target audience as me. I make sure to put my URL or contact info on it so they can find me and follow up if they are interested.”
“Informative posts will generate organic traffic and snowball into more traffic with less effort once the algorithm recognizes your website.” says Alex of Colibri Digital Marketing
- Understand your platforms
Brianna Bentov of Can I Rank advises “Not every piece of content belongs on every platform. Know which channels or platforms you want to promote the content on and create content for those channels or platforms. For example, white papers would tank on Instagram, and an interactive piece of content probably won’t do well in a marketing email (unless it’s a survey). Alternatively, infographics stand out as a good fit for nearly every platform.”
We hope this article helps you to effectively distribute your content by providing you with insight into strategies, tips and ideas from experts in the digital marketing industry.