How to Get Fabulous at Content Distribution: A No Fluff Guide for Beginners

Awesome content☑️, SEO-optimized blog posts☑️. 

You're done, right?

Creating captivating and SEO-optimized content is just one part of conquering SEO and driving as much traffic as possible to your website. 

Once a blog post is live on your website, you want to ensure that as many people as possible learn of its existence. If not, you'll be allowing perfectly good content to wash down the drain to page 50-something on Google. 

That's why content distribution is a key piece of your content strategy.

Content distribution, as the name suggests, means spreading the word about a particular piece of content. It could be a blog post, white paper, landing page, or e-book. 

However, doing content distribution wrong is often worse than not doing any content distribution. In fact, the wrong content distribution strategies can ruin your reputation and make customers dislike your business more than they do Hitler. 

What's more, 33% of marketers face content distribution challenges, according to a recent study by Content Marketing Institute. 

To help make content distribution a breeze, we've prepared this comprehensive guide. We'll look at:

• The definition of content distribution
• Importance of content distribution
• Content distribution channels
• Content distribution tools

Let's dive in.

What is Content Distribution?

Content distribution is the process of promoting and sharing your content with your target audience. Content distribution aims to increase the number of eyeballs viewing your content. 

More eyeballs is the first goal. 

In simple terms, you want the right people(i.e., your target audience) to know that your content exists. 

Once they learn of your content, you want them to engage and, most importantly, take the desired action. 

Content distribution works best when you distribute to different channels and platforms. This ensures that you serve content to every crucial place where your audience can be found. 

That said, you shouldn't be a jack or jill of all platforms. Content distribution should be a streamlined process. After all, spreading yourself too thin never worked for anybody. 

What Gives? Why Care About Content Distribution?

When you produce content, you have to remember the other hundreds or thousands(depending on your niche), marketers, and bloggers creating related content. 

Competition is stiff, and your target audience has loads of data to source their information from.

To make it past the competition, you have to remain relevant and distribute content to where your audience is. 

Relying on traditional methods such as social media alone won't cut it. For example, your organic Facebook posts only reach 6% of your followers.

If You Don't Promote it, Content Benefits No One

According to data from Hubspot, marketers spend 1-2 hours producing a 500-word blog post. This translates to 6 hours if you consistently produce 1500+ words as we do here at Zoey. 

In short, creating content takes a significant amount of time and resources. 

So, to get the ROI you need, you have to promote the content to the relevant audience.

Remember, the goal of content is not to purely exist. It needs to be out there being devoured by the right people to make the impact you desire- i.e., make a sale. 

Prospects and Customers Want to See an Active and Consistent Brand

People relate most to people they know and consistently interact with. The same principle applies to your customers. In fact, 88% of customers cite authenticity as a key factor when deciding which brands to like and support. 

Another 46% of consumers would purchase more from a brand they trust. And the last and most significant, consistent brand presentation can increase your business's revenue by 33%. 

You'll hit two goals on the head with a good content distribution plan. First, you'll portray your brand as active and relevant in the current market. Secondly, consistent content distribution means getting more people to view and interact with your content. 

Channels of Content Distribution

Content distribution channels are the platforms you use to share and promote your published content. And you will be lost for choice, thanks to the numerous content distribution platforms available. 

Typically, we have 3 channels: Paid, owned and earned channels of content distribution.

Here's a quick breakdown of each.

Owned Content Distribution Channels

Owned content platforms give you all the control. You dictate when, how, and where content goes in owned content distribution channels. 

What falls under this category? 

There's obviously your website, mobile app, all your social media channels, and email newsletter. 

But there's a small caveat with the last two channels. The real owners, or should I call them regulators, might limit what you can post. 

For instance, if your business is promoting hate speech, Zuckerberg won't be having any of it. (Or at least that's what they state on their T&C). 

However, assuming your business is entirely legal and for the public's good, you have total control over what, when, and how many times you can share and promote content. 

Paid Content Distribution

You're using paid content distribution if you pay a single dime to have your content shared and promoted. Here are the most popular paid content distribution channels.

• Paid-per-click advertising
• Influencer collaborations
• Social media ads
• Display ads
• Press releases 
• Native ads
• Retargeting social ads
• Sponsored content
• Print newspaper and magazine ads

This type of content distribution is often expensive. But when done right, the ROI can be impressive and the results almost instantaneous. 

For example, a press release will have your content picked up by multiple news and blogging sites after a few hours or two days at most. (Of course, the content in question must be interesting and relevant to consumers. 

Earned Content Distribution

Earned content distribution happens when 3rd parties voluntarily promote your content. There's no money exchanging hands and no sweet-talking (okay, maybe a bit sweet-talking, but the fundamental principle is relevancy and resourcefulness). Your content is just helpful and super-awesome, so a 3rd party website, app, or even print media decided to mention it. 

Fun fact: Bad publicity can also earn you third-party content mentions, but this time, not in a good light. 

So what falls under the earned category?

We have forums such as Quora, Reddit, and dedicated online communities. Other bloggers and journalists mentioning your content in different pieces are also classified as earned media. In addition, if people share your content on social media platforms, we still refer to it as earned content distribution. 

Although not as applicable in search engine optimization(SEO), word of mouth is the ultimate example of earned content distribution. 

For instance, you should watch ProfitWell's Boxed Out Video series. The series has some fantastic content on subscription business models.

See what I did there? Profitwell just earned a word-of-mouth content promotion!

How to Do Content Distribution Right

The right content distribution strategy will be the most critical part of content promotion. An effective content distribution strategy helps you set things in motion and hit most if not all of your promotion goals in your designated time. 

Let's look at 5 things you can do today to hit the mark with content distribution. 

1. Set Your Content Distribution Smart Goals and KPIs

The end goal is always sales and happy customers. But, you'll need smaller goals that lead up to the big goal(sales). 

So, before you start content distribution, sit down with your team and bring to light the most important goals you plan to achieve with content distribution. These goals can range from more traffic to your website to better social media engagement to backlinks. 

An excellent way to work through setting these goals is to create KPIs and the related metrics.

For instance:

• Is getting more website traffic the main goal? If yes, then you'll look at the unique page views per channel or content
• If you want better engagement, you'll check the time on page and the bounce rate 
• Want to know what type of impact your content has? Study the type and number of backlinks, Impact, website and social media CTR, and conversion actions(e.g., number of whitepaper downloads)

2. Know Where Your Target Audience Gets Their Daily Info

If you're a financial service targeting people in their 60s and 70s, Tiktok might not be the best content distribution platform.

Of course, we have some Baby Boomers on the platform, but most of the content on Tiktok applies to Gen Z and Millenials. In fact, 60% of Tik Tok users are Gen Z.  

That's why fast-food restaurants and fashion apparel companies make it big on the platform. After all, that's a popular platform for most of their target audience.

So, before you even develop your content strategy, understand where your audience hangs out. Then, you can start curating content dedicated to these platforms specifically. 

This information will come from an audience demographic study. In most cases, you'll already have this information from when you were developing your products or creating your marketing plan. 

If not, you can get this information from your Google Analytics and Customer relationship management (CRM) tools. 

3. Create a Content Inventory

What content do you own as a company?

In most cases, companies will have a mix of blog posts, videos, and graphics, and a few have taken up podcasting. 

First group all your content into these basic categories, then break them down by topic or season. This way, you'll be better equipped to know when and on which platform to share content. In addition, this will help you understand what you want specific content to achieve. 

Some of your content will be best used as sales tools, while others are engineered to spread awareness and build trust. With a content log, you will have a better idea of where and how to use every piece of content. This will help you make a bigger impact and reach your content ROI goals.

Plus, having an inventory of all your content will help you jump quickly on trends by spotlighting a content piece that goes with a particular trend.

4. Plan Content Distribution With the Help of a Calendar

Most marketing teams have an editorial or content calendar, but few incorporate a detailed content distribution aspect. But, having a content distribution calendar helps your team keep up with content ROI goals. 

The calendar should include definite publish dates, channels of distribution, content repurposing ideas, and the people in charge of it all. In addition, the distribution calender should include which pages require content upgrades and after what time. 

5. Measure Results

More revenue is the end goal, right?

Then, like with any other strategy, you need to ensure that you're measuring the results of your content distribution efforts. The KPIs and goals you set earlier will come in handy at this stage. 

For instance, if one of your KPIs was content impact and the metric, conversions, you'll measure the conversions you've achieved after distributing your content. This way, you'll have a clearer idea of whether your efforts are paying off or if you need a reboot of strategy. 

Handy Content Distribution tools to Make Content Promotion a Breeze

You now know the different content distribution channels and an idea of how to formulate your promotion strategy. Now comes the best part— content distribution tools. 

There's no need to spend hours on content promotion. These tools will make your work easier and faster by automating repetitive content promotion tasks.  

1. Editorial calendar

Any project management tool like Asana, Trello, and ClickUp can work. But if you want a more streamlined editorial calendar, Coschedule will be a perfect solution. 

2. Social media promotion

Reposting your blog posts, videos, and infographics on social media can be repetitive. However, numerous tools can help you batch post and schedule content on most major social media networks. Hootsuite, Tailwind, Later, SproutSocial and Sendible are a few options to try out. 

Another out-of-the-box option is GaggleAMP. This tool helps you bundle your employees' social media platforms' and post company content on them. 

3. Content crawling

To have an in depth log of all your website content, you'll need a tool that can crawl your entire site and give back pertinent info like the titles, URLs, and content descriptions. Screaming Frog might be your best bet for this kind of job.

4. Email Newsletters

Email marketing has one of the best ROI— as much as $36 for every $1 spent. This return makes it a great platform to spread the word about your content. As for the tools, you'll have many options, from free email marketing platforms like Mailer Lite to more established ones like ConvertKit and MailChimp.

5. Press Release

This content distribution method might be pretty old, but it can be an effective approach for ground-breaking and trendsetting content. PR Newswire can be a good starting point to target and contact journalists at the local, regional, and state level. 

HARO is an alternative if you want to be cited as an expert in major news outlets and website publications. 

It's Time to Start Being Fabulous at Content Distribution

As you can tell, content distribution can be quite easy if you have the strategy, distribution platforms, and tools. However, content distribution will only be successful if the content you're promoting is worth the buyer persona's attention. 

It's easy to create captivating content if you have a writing partner by your side. Zoey Writers might be the perfect partner for this role. We create captivating and SEO-optimized content for various industries. 

Let's be the writing partner that commands your target customer's attention with high-quality content. Shoot us a quick message to get started. 

Photo by Alexander Shatov on Unsplash. Thank you, Alexander!