The Essential Guide for Content Distribution

The essentials of content marketing evolve, but the fundamentals remain the same. No matter how much time you spend crafting the right piece of content, sharpen its SEO, and create an engaging post, your brand’s potential success lies in your distribution strategy.

Though a lot of work goes into creating content, the distribution phase tests your insights, assumptions, personas, and creative executions.

So be thorough when you design your content distribution strategy. With so many messages competing for your audience’s attention, distribution strategy ensures you fulfill your marketing promise.

Distribution strategy must be an essential part of your content-creating strategy. Before you start churning out branded content, you should create a plan on how to distribute it.

Setting up a content distribution strategy helps your creators hone and modify their craft based on the platform’s needs. Otherwise, you end up creating generalized content with no significant potential.

This essential guide will help you create a robust content distribution strategy and equip you with the right tools. By the end, you’ll be able to create a content distribution strategy that gets your content in front of your target audience.

What is Content Distribution?

Content distribution is a systematic process of sharing, publishing, and promoting your content. It’s the medium through which you provide content to your audience for consumption.

The channels used for content distribution can be categorized into three types: Owned content distribution, paid content distribution, and earned content distribution.

Owned Content Distribution

The content that you have 100% control over. The content on your website, social media profiles, email newsletters, youtube, podcasts, case studies, and eBooks.

The goal of owned media is to build authority and trust in the industry and move prospects down the sales funnel. The main advantage of owned media is that you can control how you present your company’s image.

Owned media helps nurture the cold audience and find out more about your business. Owned media should be the primary source of your brand-building efforts. Allowing you to repurpose your content according to platform needs.

Paid Content Distribution

Getting your brand content out in the world could be challenging. Especially if you are just starting out. Relying on organic traffic may take time to show results.

Paid media can help you accelerate these efforts by promoting your content on relevant platforms.

From Google Ads to Facebook ads to content syndication platforms like Outbrain and Taboola, many paid content distribution channels can help you get content in front of the audience.

What platforms you use depends on where your target audience resides. The best thing about paid content distribution is you get the ability to precisely target the audience.

Earned Content Distribution

Have you ever posted a guest article? Has your company ever been mentioned in an article? Do you have an active fan following on social media who creates and shares content on your behalf?

This is different from paid media because you are not spending a dime on promoting or creating the content.

Earned media is a result of your efforts in paid and owned media.

It includes press mentions, reviews, testimonials, columns in newspapers or magazines.

These days you can help journalists and content creators by giving quotes, thoughts, and insights to their articles.

Different Content Types for Distribution

There are many types of content that can be used to market your business. But not all content forms are equal and your distribution strategy should also vary accordingly.

Blogs

Blogs are a great way to attract traffic to your website. You can even send a weekly newsletter to your subscribers. Blogging is a great way to establish yourself as an authority in the industry. You can create blogs on your own websites or post on third-party websites with high traffic.

eBooks

eBooks are great to be offered as gated content. A well-designed eBook with compact information can help your audience learn about your business. An eBook with a dedicated landing page can become a good lead generation tool for your business. You can promote this page via social media or google ads.

Podcasts

Audio content is thriving. So you can distribute your audio content through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google Podcasts. There are tons of tools allowing you to distribute podcasts simultaneously on all platforms.

Videos

Distribute your content through Youtube. Video consumption has increased tremendously in the past few years. Whatever content you produce, can be repurposed in the form of a video and distributed across various platforms.

Infographics

Infographics are a great way to provide deeper information in a concise form. Distribute infographics through Pinterest as well as your blog, Instagram or Linkedin.

Case Studies

Distribute case studies and success stories through a dedicated page on your website. Your case studies should depict the process your client undergoes while using your services, along with the results.

Content Distribution Tools

As a brand, we always want our content to reach a maximum number of people who need it. Along with various strategies, there are a good number of tools that can be useful in doing the job.

Here are some of the tools used to distribute your content

1) Buffer

Buffer is the simplest way to share your content on social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and Linkedin. You can schedule weekly posts to publish at ideal times.

2) Hootsuite

A go-to platform for Social media managers. Hootsuite allows you to manage your accounts, follow relevant conversations and schedule social media posts without hassle. It also allows you to map out upcoming campaigns, fill content gaps, and collaborate in real-time.

3) Likable Hub

Likable hub is a tool to help you manage social media and streamline reputation management with social listening. The features allow you to create industry-specific content ideas along with website creation, buy ads, and schedule content.

4) Medium

Medium is a content platform you should use additionally with your blog. Preferred by businesses and individuals alike, Medium is used by thousands of readers to consume content. Repurposing your blogs for Medium increases the chances of your audience discovering the content.

5) BuzzSumo

Buzzsumo is a great tool to help you churn out fresh and trending content ideas. It identifies and trends about your content performance as well as your competitor’s. From social shares to content length, you can pull these metrics and design your content to give you the best possible chances of reaching the mass audience.

6) Mailchimp

When it comes to newsletters, Mailchimp is one of the best and free ways to send emails to your subscribers. You can set up automated campaigns and design your newsletter from scratch. The free model is available for a contact list smaller than 2000 subscribers.

7) Help a Reporter (HARO)

The HARO platform connects journalists seeking experts to include in their content with subject matter expertise. The top media outlets across the world use HARO as their media outlet. So It’s a great way to get your name in front of a larger audience.

8) PR Newswire

PR Newswire helps you distribute news, announcements, and updates with a variety of sources. It’s a great way to attract attention to your most important news. As soon as you sign up, a rep from the portal will contact you to authenticate the news and help with any promotion you need.

9) CoSchedule

Organize all your marketing content in one place using CoSchedule. It’s one of the best work management platforms for marketers. It includes features like scheduling content, manages marketing requests, automates team workflows, store assets and files, and track team progress. If your marketing team is widely spread across various divisions, CoSchedule is the platform that can help you manage the process.

10) Listly

Build a list of anything. You can use this feature to curate a list of all your best-performing content and list it on the platform for your audience to consume.

11) Outbrain

Outbrain is a content syndication platform that helps you get your content the attention it deserves. The platform allows you to publish content on their website along with other paid media. Outbrain is a platform to drive ROAS. It helps brands and agencies connect with one-third of consumers engaging in various content consumption activities.

12) Facebook Sponsored Posts

In a way similar to Facebook ads, you can pay the platform to promote your posts across their network targeting a specific audience. You can boost any post from your page and reach a particular demographic of age, location, gender, and interest.

Steps in Creating Content Distribution Strategy

Content distribution is the lifeblood of any content marketing strategy. So it’s necessary to have a set strategy to even distribute your content. These are the four steps you need to take to develop a good content distribution strategy

1) Define your Objectives

Content creation objectives can take various shapes depending on the business. Your content distribution strategy should also have an objective like driving customer acquisition, driving sales, or driving performance. Choose platforms based on these objectives.

2) Set Budget for Content Distribution

Along with content creation, you also need to set a budget for content distribution. Even your best content needs a distribution budget. paid platforms like Outbrain, Taboola, Facebook sponsored posts can help your content attract relevant attention. With owned media, you need to invest in tools like CRMs, email marketing tools, marketing automation tools to distribute your content.

3) Dive into Data

There are a lot of tools that help you understand your audience. Analyze your current distribution efforts and see what type of audience you are attracting, Which platform is bringing the highest revenue. Knowing these metrics will help you allocate accurate resources and budgets. The best content distribution strategy considers various actors like demographics, location, hobbies, professions, income, device usage, and marketing channel preference.

4) Creating Content With Distribution in Mind

If the content distribution is an afterthought, it won’t have the desired effect. Think about content distribution at every stage of content creation. The type of content you create depends on the distribution platforms you choose. Is it audio content for podcasts, video for Youtube, blogs for the website? So it’s advisable to set your distribution strategy even before you start creating content.