content distribution

What is Content Distribution?

Content Distribution is advertising content on multiple media platforms to the target audiences. Content distribution includes the method of sharing, publishing, and promoting your content.

What Are the Content Distribution Channels?

The content distribution comes after the content creation strategy. The channels for distributing your content vary regarding your audience and resources.

There are three types of distribution channels including paid, earned, and owned.

Paid Media Channels 

They include PPC, Social ads, and Influencers.

PPC

PPC paired with SEMand SEO. You need to pay each time an online user clicks on an ad or a link. One of the most practical tools for PPC is the Google Ads platform.

Influencer Marketing

Employing influencers to promote your brand. Influencers introduce your brand and share their personal experiences with it. They influence the behavior of the target audience to that specific brand. Celebrity influencers can distribute your content and brand more effectively.

Social Media Ads

include ads published on popular social media platforms and targeted at a specific audience. Social media platforms are chosen based on content types, needs, goals, and target audience. For example, Instagram is perfect for visual content, while LinkedIn is good for texts, in-depth research, stats.

Content distribution is the procedure of promoting your desired content to your audience in various formats across different channels and media platforms.

Why is Content Distribution Important?

Content distribution is an important component of your digital marketing strategy. Content distribution can increase brand awareness, solidify your brand as an authority, and help build a loyal community of followers.

Gaining access to a broader audience increases your chances of backlinks, earning media mentions and social media shares, such as improving your website traffic.

A comprehensive content distribution plan unlocks your brand’s more significant content marketing ROI by amplifying visibility.

Content Distribution Channels

There are three main content marketing distribution channels. Which ones you utilize depend on your audience, your content formats, and the available tools.

1- Owned Content Distribution Channels

Your company controls owned content distribution. In other words, you should publish everything you want across these channels. Examples include social media profiles, websites, blogs, email newsletters, videos on YouTube, etc.

It’s important to note that you don’t own the channel’s platform with some owned media.

For example, you control your website’s platform and publish your content whatever you want. You don’t own the LinkedIn platform, and you only own your company pages. You have to abide by the forum’s rules, and the LinkedIn algorithm determines the reach of your content.

2- Earned Content Distribution Channels

Earned content distribution is when someone else shares your content. This content promotion might result from marketing efforts such as direct media outreach or public relations and organic amplification.

For instance, if you publish an essay on LinkedIn that goes viral and is seen by hundreds of people, you earn the distribution. You didn’t pay for the additional exposure. Instead, you made it through the quality of the content you published.

 3- Paid Content Distribution Channels

Paid content distribution channels are where you pay to get your content before your target audience. Options for paid content distribution include:

  • Social media advertising
  • Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising
  • Sponsored content
  • Paid influencers
  • Native ads
  • Retargeting social ads
  • Display ads
  • Press releases via wire service

The money you pay and the distribution you receive depend heavily on your chosen channel.

For instance, if you promote your content through Facebook ads, you can set your budget and estimate how many viewers may see and click on your content. You can also follow the performance of the campaign in real-time.

It can be more challenging to estimate your results upfront with influencer marketing since they depend on how the influencer may promote the content, how the audience responds, etc.

Types and Formats for Content Marketing Distribution

People prefer to consume media in different ways and on other platforms. So, to reach the most audience possible, it’s essential to mix up your content formats.

Articles and Blog Posts

Articles you publish on your website may be essential to reach audiences. If you post high-quality content that’s optimized for relevant keywords and adds value to your audience, you’ll be rewarded with increased organic traffic.

Long-form articles give you a perfect opportunity to use long-tail keywords in your content. Consequently, you’ll rank on more queries in the Google SERPs.

One important caveat to note is if your goal is to drive traffic to your website, don’t syndicate it.

If your final goal is that just your site ranks for those queries, then syndicating is a bad idea. Pick your goals and select the work that helps you reach them.

Ebooks

Ebooks are a perfect way to distribute content on a subject to your audience. They’re also a growth marketing strategy to expand your email list.

Try to make a free ebook and use it as an opt-in offer to build your list. The opt-in form can be on different locations across your website, such as a landing page or at the end of blog posts.

Podcasts

Podcasts have been popular over the last few years. They can be an effective way to give your audience audio content that they can listen to on the go.

They’re beneficial for distributing longer-form interviews with experts, customers, employees, or influencers in your industry. In addition, if you already create videos, you can convert them into podcasts. As a result, you can distribute your content to those who wouldn’t usually watch something on YouTube.

White Papers

A white paper is a report used to highlight a particular problem and present a solution. White papers are more technical than articles or ebooks. They’re often geared toward a specific type of person, like a Director of Human Resources.

Like ebooks, white papers can be used to make your email list via an opt-in form.

Video Content Distribution

Videos are one of the most critical ways to distribute content on multiple channels. YouTube is the 2nd most visited website, with 2.3 billion active users worldwide.

Billions of people use billions of hours of video monthly on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and TikTok, as well. You can easily create a longer video on YouTube and post more minor videos on other platforms.

Infographics and Data Visualizations

Infographics and data visualizations are the best way to distill meaningful information into something easy to digest and visually appealing.

Visual content like these tends to get shared a lot on social media. This can drive traffic to your website. In addition, you may create a snippet of HTML code that lets the image be embedded on other websites with a backlink to your website, which boosts your SEO.

Case Studies

Case studies make in-depth details about unique customers you’ve worked with, their challenges, and how you were able to help them achieve more significant results. They can effectively display your ability to solve problems for your target audience. This instills trust in prospects considering whether to work with you.

Usually, case studies have their page on a website, with one or more highlighted on the home page or in contextually relevant locations.

Webinars

Webinars let you demonstrate your expertise on a particular topic and provide significant value to your audience at the same time. If the webinar is live, it lets you interact with viewers in real-time, answer questions, conduct polls, make clarifications, etc.

You can use a recording of the webinar in various ways again, from being posted to YouTube to as a webinar on your website. Making smaller clips from the webinar and using them on social media channels or within relevant blog posts can benefit.

Surveys

Surveys let you gather a massive amount of data from your audience and provide you with insight. Repurposing survey data in various ways helps you get more ROI from your digital content distribution program.

For example, suppose you offer an email marketing platform. In that case, you could survey 100 top email marketers about best practices, write the responses into a manageable format, and then distribute it as a blog post, infographic, SlideShare, and webinar.

Presentations

Presentations are exceptionally versatile content that can be created and distributed differently. They can be done live at a conference or pre-recorded using a screen-sharing tool like Loom. The slides and recording can be available across multiple channels, such as SlideShare and YouTube.

If you don’t decide to present live or record a presentation, just creating a SlideShare and sharing it with your audience can be valuable.

Email Newsletters

Email newsletters have seen a resurgence recently, with companies like The Hustle demonstrating that email is still a powerful distribution channel. Email is critical that HubSpot acquired The Hustle for approximately $30 million after growing its email subscriber list to more than millions of people.

Newsletters are perfect for curating content around a specific topic relevant to your brand and your audience. For example, suppose you sell cloud-based productivity tools. In that case, your email newsletter includes links to blog posts on your website, as well as other productivity-related content around the web.

Content Distribution Platforms, Software, and Tools

There are a couple of content distribution platforms, software, and tools to consider. I grouped the platforms into categories below. These lists aren’t complete, but they give you a sense of what’s available.

Social Media Platforms

Social networks boast impressive growth rates. Therefore it’s no surprise that these are among the top content marketing distribution platforms available to you.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Instagram
  • TikTok
  • Snapchat
  • Pinterest
  • Reddit
  • Quora

Video Platforms

Video lets you reach users with more immersive content. You can create bitesize ads, long informational webinars, and everything in between. The top platforms to share videos include YouTube, Vimeo, Wistia, Instagram, Facebook, and Watch.

Article Content Distribution Platforms

Your company blog is the best place to publish long-form articles. However, there are plenty of other options, such as bylines on industry websites, self-publishing platforms such as Medium, or leveraging the article feature on LinkedIn.

Ebook Platforms

Ebooks can be a fun way to improve your writing skills with more polish than a blog post. They also give you more street cred as an author. The best platforms to share ebooks are your company website, Scribd, Amazon, and Issuu.

Infographic Distribution Platforms

Infographics may not be as popular as five years ago, but they’re still a great way to earn visibility. They require more effort to produce an intelligent distribution strategy to gain traction. Some of the most important platforms to promote them include your website, social media, forums such as Reddit and Quora, and third-party blogs.

How to Create a Content Distribution Strategy

You require a repeatable process that works like a template to support scale. If you share content on different channels, your results will be lower than if you take the time to make an effective content distribution system.

Let’s look at the important elements you need to get started.

1. Conduct Audience Research

The first point for a good content distribution strategy is audience research. You should get your content in front of the related audience rather than every viewer on the internet.

Search your target audience to piece together the puzzle of who they are, such as which content types they like and where they spend their time online. Creating a buyer persona is one solution to determine your ideal customer and audience. Mapping the customer journey helps you identify the different types of content to produce for the other spots on the path to purchase.

You can also analyze who comes to your website, follows you, or subscribes to your email list. Google Analytics helps you get data on your website visitors. Every social media platform makes insights regarding your followers.

Next, analyze any content you published.

Is there any content or channels that have worked particularly well? For example, was there a particular blog post that got more shares or reactions than other posts you have shared?

This provides clarity regarding the topics your audience cares about.

It can also be useful to do some competitive research by looking at similar brands’ websites and social media accounts to see what formats they share. This can give you insights into what your audience wants in terms of content.

2. Establish Goals and KPIs

Before you create anything, determine your content distribution marketing goals and KPIs. For example, if your marketing goal is increasing website traffic, a KPI would be how many visits your website gets within a period.

You also might want to track which content generates organic traffic that leads to conversions.

If your marketing goal is lead generation, you would want to track the overall number of leads, which content generated information and the percentage of qualified leads.

The key to outlining your marketing goals is to make them as specific as possible. Some examples of effective KPIs include:

  • Brand Awareness: Grow new user visits to the website by 25% in six months

Leads: Increase sales qualified leads by 10% over three months

  • Marketing: Lower pay-per-click ad spend by 10% by better evaluating what content performs better with the audience

3. Create a Content Calendar

The content calendar is a vital part of your overall content marketing strategy. Content calendar ensures you have an up-to-date list of all the content you want to publish. When the list will be published, and what distribution channels will be used.

It can include who is responsible for each step in the content creation procedure and the due date. This ensures that everything continues running slowly and on time.

4. Measure and Optimize for Better Results

After you’ve published content, you’ll want to measure the results and then use that information to optimize existing content and shape plans.

Your marketing goals and KPIs should determine the metrics you measure.

If a specific piece of content or channel underperforms, you should determine whether it’s the content, the Medium, or a combination of both.

You can improve the content to make it more valuable to your audience or modify your strategy.

PurpleZ, as a Content Distribution Company in Irvine, develops content distribution ideas that help Southern California small to mid-sized businesses. We use Content distribution channels to share and promote the content you create.

Our specific distribution channels: owned, earned and paid. We use PPC to promote your blogs and website; we use SEO to drive PR and sharing and paid ads to increase organic promotion. We keep up with cutting-edge distribution trends to overtake your competitors in search engines and marketing platforms.

We use SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound) goals to bring your content in front of the eyes for your content. Implementing a content distribution strategy is crucial because it boosts your content creation, aligns your team and, therefore, the teams with which you collaborate in content creation, and sets goal benchmarks to trace publishing and promoting your work.

For a free consultation, Call Us Now.

Earned or Shared Media Channels 

They involve others sharing your content. Whether your content is shared by users or brands, it will help you improve your business. It requires a massive effort from you, provided that people trust you.

Press release

It’s a great way to share your company news and updates with broad audiences and get promoted. Two main release networks include PR Newswire (distributing your company’s news, announcements, events to various sources) and PRlog (publishing content by location or industry).

Social Media Networks

You can benefit from Facebook and Linkedin platforms by sharing your content and get more views, 

QA platforms

QA platforms such as Quora and Reddit can significantly boost content shares. You can answer questions people ask and refer to your content.

Owned Media Channels

Owned media channels are owned by your company. It is all about your website, company’s blog, social media accounts, email newsletters, E-books, portfolio and case studies, and other content your company owns. It can even be your mobile app for publishing. 

How Does PurpleZ Develop Your Distribution Channel?

Before starting anything, we provide a list of the most viable channel options. We consider elements while developing a suitable distribution plan. These elements include analyzing the most engaged and active personas on the given channel, goals and benefits the channel helps you achieve, featured topics, specifying the time and day of posting, formats, CTAs, and analyzing with Key Performance Indicators. We dedicate our professional content marketing team help you meet your business goals.

Want to distribute your content? Contact us online and call us at +1 (800) 213-7303 

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