What Is Content Distribution? A Complete Guide for Marketers

Content distribution is the next step after creating a piece of content. It pertains to utilizing owned, paid and earned media to amplify the reach of your digital content. It is part of the marketing distribution strategy for content promotion and amplification across media formats and channels.

In this installment of #MarTech101, we will look at the basics of digital content distribution and the different types of digital distribution channels, the steps to create a robust digital content distribution framework and how to create winning digital content distribution strategies for 2019.

We are part of the attention economy where every content creator competes for their readers’ attention by creating optimal content experiencesOpens a new window through well-structured and engaging content. Merely creating content experiences won’t cut it in today’s environment. You need a sound distribution strategy and a thorough grounding in all that content distribution entails to get your content the attention it deserves.

Let’s find out more:

Table of Contents

• What Is Content Distribution?
• Owned Content Distribution
• Paid Content Distribution
• Earned Content Distribution
• Building Your Content Distribution Framework
• 5 Must-Do Content Distribution Tactics for 2019
   

What Is Content Distribution?

People don’t find content by mistake, or by accident. Every content plan needs a complementary promotion plan that combines paid, owned, and earned media.

~ Matthew Gratt, Director of Growth at Bestow Inc.Opens a new window  

What is Content Distribution and Its Types

**Content distribution is a crucial part of the content promotion strategy that focuses on promoting your content to your target audience through various media channels.** It primarily includes three content distribution networks:

1. Owned MediaOpens a new window : This consists of any web property that you own, such as your website, blog, mobile app, newsletter, social media accounts, etc.
2. Paid Media: Any channel that you pay to amplify the reach of your content. Paid content distribution includes all paid ads, social media ads, influencer marketing, remarketing, etc.
3. Earned Media: Getting your content amplified through third-party sources, such as press coverage, guest articles, organic social shares, ratings, reviews, etc.

Let’s look at each of these content distribution methods in detail.

Also Read: How Can Omnichannel Distribution Amplify Content Experience?Opens a new window

Owned Content Distribution

We need to create a business strategy for our content. That means saying no to many channels and content types, and focus on where we can build an asset, an audience, over time.

~ Joe PulizziOpens a new window , Founder of Orange Effect Foundation and Content Marketing Institute

Brands have complete control over owned mediaOpens a new window (except for their third-party platform accounts). **Owned media is the gateway to distributing your content across earned and paid distribution channels. **

Learn More: 

Top 20 Content Marketing Strategies For Your 2020 PlanOpens a new window

While owned media gives you control over the content, the biggest challenge is to direct users to your owned media channels such as your blog or website. Here is how you can use different owned media to your benefit:

1. Website
 

Before creating content for your website, you need to have a content strategy in placeOpens a new window . The content strategy will bring consistency to your content creation and distribution efforts, and will also let your visitors know about the kind of content to expect from you at regular intervals.

Do not focus exclusively on creating text-based content. Experiment with formats such as audio, video, and other rich media, to gauge which format is well received by your audience.

2. Email Marketing
 

Email marketing is a preferred marketing channel by marketers everywhere, so much so that 59 percentOpens a new window of B2B marketers opine that email is the most effective medium to generate revenue. Emails can also be effective when it comes to sharing your latest piece of content. Your subscribers are your biggest asset – a huge subscriber base can significantly amplify the reach of your content.

3. Forums and Social Sites
 

Although, these are not owned web properties per se, brands and marketers have control over the content they put out on their accounts. Brand controlled social media pages, discussion forums such as Quora and Reddit, etc. are good examples of third-party channels that marketers can use to distribute their content.

Paid Content Distribution

If your website was a city, there would be a highway of visitors flowing through it. But if you don’t know where that highway is, you don’t know how to guide traffic. You don’t know where to put the billboards.

~ Andy Crestodina, Co-founder and Strategic Director of Orbit Media StudiosOpens a new window

Think about this for a minute — have you evaluated where your metaphorical highway is and where it leads? How can you better guide your traffic and optimize every inch of your site?

**You can distribute your content to your audience using paid channels such as influencer marketing,Opens a new window search engine marketing, social media advertising and so on.** You can control the messaging, creatives and targeting aspects in paid distribution, with constant fine-tuning to optimize your ads over time and get excellent results at a comparatively lower cost.

Let’s look at different types of paid content distribution:

1. Influencer Marketing
 

Influencer marketing is all about reaching out to influential people with huge followings, to promote your brand on social media. However, due to influencer fraud, users have gotten wary of influencer marketing. To combat this, brands have shifted their focus to connecting with experts in a specific niche – with comparatively smaller number of followers – to increase the credibility of both, the influencer and the brand. These experts are commonly known as micro-influencers.

2. Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
 

You can showcase your content when users are looking for a similar topic on search engines such as Google and Bing, through paid ads.

SEM is a keyword-driven ad format where you optimize your budget and ads for the keywords your target audience would be most interested in.

Search engine marketing works in two ways:

1. Cost Per Click (CPC)Opens a new window : You pay when someone clicks on your ad
2. Cost Per Mille (CPM):Opens a new window You pay for every thousand impressions on your ad
    

3. Social Media Ads
 

Social mediaOpens a new window platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Instagram allow you to promote your brand to your target audience. The power of social media ads lies in precision targeting. You can target users based on their location, interests, age, gender, content consumption patterns and several other demographic characteristics.

4. Native Advertising
 

Native AdvertisingOpens a new window is a form of digital advertising that adapts to the look and feel of the platform it is displayed on.

Native ads have been gaining prominence because they adopt the form and function of the interface and don’t stand out like ads usually do. If you regularly visit the websites of major publications, you would have noticed a section named Content Recommendations or Promoted Listings. These sections look like a part of the site, but are typically ads that redirect to a third-party website when you click on them and are one example of native advertising.

5. Remarketing
 

Remarketing or Retargeting is an effective advertising technique that reconnects with users who have visited your website. This form of cookie-based advertising through ads placed on other websites or social media creates a strong brand recall and keeps your brand and content fresh in users’ minds.

Earned Content Distribution

Don’t be distracted by those people that are always demanding something new. The strategy of making most of your content evergreen is powerful. It allows you to build an asset bank of content that can be constantly shared.

~ Jeff Bullas, CEO of Jeffbullas.com Pty LtdOpens a new window

**The true test of how good your content is, is in how many organic, third-party shares your content gets across various earned media channels.**

Earned content distribution is particularly tricky as your content will be featured on other publications only if it is remarkable and meets their guidelines. The key to getting others to talk about you is to start cultivating relationships with influential people and publications within your industry. Over time, you can share each other’s content and attract a broader audience.

Here are a few examples of earned content distribution:

1. Guest Posts
 

When you build relationships with renowned thought leaders, publications and complementary brands in your industry, there is a possibility to get featured on their websites. Guest articles are an excellent way to share your thoughts with a different audience. Depending on the guidelines, you can also fire-up your SEO activities by including backlinks to your native content.

2. Organic Sharing

When you create content of any type, add a call to action asking your readers to share it within their network. Simultaneously, if you have cited any credible source or quotes from thought leaders, drop them an email making a subtle request to share your content with their audience.

3. PR Coverage

Being featured by top publications within your industry is the true pinnacle of earned media. PR coverage is usually a chance to get talked about, but mainly applies if you do something exceptional like win an award, release a new product, and so on. But don’t let it deter you from trying. Lay the foundation by connecting with journalists, editors, and writers of top publications.

Also Read: What Will Content Experiences Look Like in 2020 and Beyond?Opens a new window

Building Your Content Distribution Framework

More content is not better. What’s the worst case scenario if we slow ourselves down and do some analysis?

~ Kristina Halvorson, Founder and CEO of Brain TrafficOpens a new window

 

The Content Distribution Framework

It’s not enough to merely have a content creation process in place; it’s equally important to create a process that will allow you to share your content seamlessly with your audience. Having a content distribution framework in place will help you automate the content distribution process. Here is how to go about building a content distribution framework that will optimize the content experience you provide:

Step 1: Know Your Audience

If you have a content strategy in place, you have already identified your audience and created buyer personas to define the different types of audience who would be interested in your content. This is the first step.

When working on the content creationOpens a new window plan, identify typical audience traits such as content consumption preferences, goals, pain points, etc. Similarly, before you create a content distribution framework, you need to identify what Jeffrey Kranz (CEO and co-founder of Overthink Group)Opens a new window calls “heroes and watering holes.”

• Heroes: Heroes are the thought leaders in the industry that your audience looks up to. Your audience ardently follows their blogs and social feed to stay updated on the latest news and their opinions.
  For example, when I think of SEO, Rand FishkinOpens a new window , Neil PatelOpens a new window , and Brian DeanOpens a new window are a few names that instantly come to my mind
• Watering Holes: These are resources such as forums and communities which your audience regularly visits to consume content.
  For example, a startup founder may regularly visit specific subreddits (/r/startups) on Reddit and a web community such as Indie HackersOpens a new window or Growth.orgOpens a new window
   

Make a list of heroes and watering holes so that you know which people and websites to connect with to gain inspiration and increase the reach of your content.

Step 2: Assess Your Distribution Alternatives
 

Evaluate the owned, paid and earned media platforms and decide on those that best suit your needs and your audience’s needs.

Do you have a dedicated budget to promote your content apart from running ads to increase sales? If so, find out which platforms will bring you the maximum ROI. For example, for a B2C brand, influencer marketing will yield more results compared to SEM. Let data be your guide.

**If you don’t have a robust-enough budget to promote content through paid mediaOpens a new window , find ways to maximize your impact through owned and earned media.** You might have to spend a significant amount of time promoting your content on third-party websites such as social media, Quora, Reddit, and industry-specific forums.

Step 3: Document Your Distribution Plan
 

Once you have identified the various channels, document them and create a content distribution plan to follow every time you release a new content piece. The framework should be different for different types of content. For example, you would not spend the same amount of ad budget on promoting a 700-word article compared to a 10,000-word piece of gated content.

**Take your time and document the content distribution plan for each type of content. Remember the adage — The shortest pencil is longer than the longest memory.**

For example, here is how Buffer redistributes its blog articles on different social media platforms.

Image Credits: BufferOpens a new window
Depiction of Buffer’s social media marketing plan on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn

Step 4: Get Good at Repurposing

**Repurpose your existing content to increase the reach of your content. The reason for repurposing your content is to create more content in less time.** Have you created an ebook? Convert it into multiple blog posts and infographics. If you’ve created an infographic that has performed exceptionally well, perhaps convert it into a short video. The possibilities are many and manifold.

An added advantage of repurposing your content is that you’ll have content in different formats that will work well on different channels. For example, if you share a link to your blog on Facebook, the reach of that post will not be substantial. Instead, you can take a piece of actionable advice from the post, convert it into an image/video and share the link along with it. The reach will be much higher as Facebook’s algorithm favors visual content.

Step 5: Rinse and Repeat
 

**Your content distribution strategy shouldn’t be set in stone. Keep a close watch on your analytics and modify your strategy based on how each medium is performing.** You might write multiple guest posts on different publications, but if some of the websites are not getting you traffic, stop writing for them. The same goes for social media and paid media — if your ads on LinkedIn are bringing in better results compared to Facebook, spend more on LinkedIn.

5 Must-Do Content Distribution Strategies for 2019

“You must not only create content and build an audience but also employ strategies to overcome user passivity and systematically find individuals predisposed to love and share the content you’re creating. This is perhaps the most overlooked imperative in digital marketing today.”

~ Mark Schaefer, Executive Director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions LLCOpens a new window

Here are five content distribution strategies for 2019 that will help get your content in the spotlight:

1. Use Native Ads
 

Display ads are slowly losing their effectiveness due to their intrusive nature. **As native ads have proven to receive 8.8 times more CTROpens a new window than the average display ad, they are fast becoming the preferred method of advertising.**

Here is an example of a native ad on Wired magazine. Notice how well the sections Sponsored Content and We Recommend blends in with the website’s UI.

Screengrab of Wired magazine’s sponsored content section

2. Leverage Email Marketing
 

Even though new marketing channels keep sprouting up, do not ignore email marketing. If you have managed to build your subscriber list up to 100,000 users, even with a 1 percent Click-through rate (CTR), you can drive 1000 visitors to your website without spending a dime.

You can also juxtapose email and your content in the following ways — create an onboarding sequence of emails that deliver your best content to your new subscribers, or create a drip campaign that starts by sending gated content and ends with asking the user to sign-up for a free consultation session. The possibilities again are quite varied. You’re only restricted by your creativity in their application.

3. Consider Guest Contributions
 

**Although guest blogging no longer has the SEO benefits it used to have a few years back, it is still an effective way to showcase your content to a new audience.** If you really want to reap the benefits of guest blogging, reach out to blogs that are credible and are industry thought leaders.

As mentioned earlier, build relationships with the editors and writers of major publications before you send out writing pitches; that way, you’re more likely to get a response.

Most websites enable nofollow backlinks to avoid getting penalized by Google, so it’s the opportunity to reach out to an untapped audience that should motivate you to create and distribute content on multiple publications.

4. Republish Your Content
 

What we mean by republishing your content is that there are plenty of platforms beyond your blog and website that allow you to post content. These platforms are not the typical third-party publications either.

**Platforms like Quora, Medium and LinkedIn Pulse allow you to post content that can be readily delivered to a wide audience.** Instead of creating new content, you can tweak your existing content slightly for each of these platforms.

James Altucher is an entrepreneur and angel investor. He uses this technique quite effectively. Every time James publishes a new article on his blog, he looks for questions on Quora where the content from his article can help and posts the content in the answers section. He wrote an article titled 8 Things I Wish I Spent More Time AvoidingOpens a new window and republished it as an answer for questions such as what things I should never do and so on.

Screen grab of James Altucher’s response on Quora

5. Create More Visual Content
 

Maximum information can be absorbed when presented in a visual format (images or videos). In fact, infographics can increase website traffic by 12 percent. As people now consume more content through videos, marketers should prioritize videos in their content strategy.

If you want to amp up your content distribution efforts, you need to focus on repurposing your existing content into formats such as videos, infographics or simple images.

Since most social media platforms push visual content, your content is prone to get more organic engagement, if you post it as a video or an image as opposed to text and link posts.

Also Read: 3 Trends for Content ExperiencesOpens a new window

Closing Thoughts

Having a content distribution plan in place will tell you what’s to be done once a new piece of content is ready. Rather than sharing it everywhere but not get any results, sharing your content strategically will bring you substantial results.

Do you have any questions about creating a content distribution framework for your content? Ask us on TwitterOpens a new window or LinkedInOpens a new window or FacebookOpens a new window !