What distribution strategies are you using to deliver your content? Does it make sense to create content without proper distribution? No, it doesn’t! The primary reason for producing content is to reach new readers with your posts and retain an existing audience.
So to reach your target market with your posts, you need to have a viable content distribution strategy. However, notice that content distribution is different from content promotion. We will discuss that in just a moment.
A distribution strategy is so vital that without it, your content marketing strategy will gradually fade away. So then;
What Is The Difference Between Content Distribution and Content Promotion
Some marketers would describe distribution and promotion as being the same. But I’ve learned a valuable truth about both, which I would share with you. Digital marketing offers marketers various marketing channels for content delivery, including social media.
For consumers, each person will choose a platform that fits his needs for content consumption. So it is essential to have a sustained distribution strategy that targets your buyer persona.
But since the majority of marketers are using content promotion and distribution equivalently, I want to make the distinction clear so you can establish profitable content distribution channels.
However, don’t get me wrong. Both content delivery procedures (content distribution & content promotion) are fantastic and useful for strengthening your content marketing strategy. Thus, what are the differences?
What Is Content Promotion
Content promotion is the method of promoting blogs and other content materials through paid and organic marketing channels. Put differently, and it is the process of publicizing your content to improve engagement, brand awareness, and increase sales.
Your content promotion campaign may be through the use of any of the following avenues:
- Influencer marketing
- Content syndication sites like Medium and LinkedIn
- Social media advertising
- Pay per click ads (PPC)
- Email marketing
- Etc.
These marketing processes allow you to share your content in communities where every person can see and engage with it, with the hope of driving traffic back to your site.
What Is Content Distribution
A content distribution strategy is a process that lets you deliver materials directly to your readership – where they are hanging out and consuming content. It is different from a promotion process because, in this tactic, you’re delivering content to a particular community of loyal readers.
For instance, since your readers are at different stages of their buyer journey, you may choose to distribute your blog posts to a segment of your email list. As a result, you’re targeting a particular reader or a specific group of people.
Content distribution has three primary channels:
- Owned distribution channels
- Earned distribution channels, and
- Paid distribution channels.
These three content distribution channels offer marketers essential modules on how to better distribute content correctly for optimal results. However, the avenues you’re using for content delivery may vary depending on your goals and target audience.
Now, let us have a peek into how these delivery avenues work.
Owned Distribution
Owned distribution channels represent the content assets you own and control. It means that you are in charge of how and when content is published and distributed on your marketing assets.
Owned media distribution channels include your:
- Blog or website
- Email newsletters
- Social media profiles, and
- Other valuable avenues that you own.
Earned Content Distribution
Earned distribution channels are the content marketing tactics when third parties share or distribute your content via different mediums. Third parties could be anybody or brand, including fellow bloggers and consumers.
Moreover, the distribution channels for earned media consist of:
- Social shares
- Guest blogs
- Roundups
- Groups
- Forums
- Etc.
Paid Distribution
Paid media distribution is when you pay to have your content distributed on specific mediums. The proceeding involves:
- Pay-per-click (PPC)
- Paid social advertising
- Paid influencer marketing and other paid media patterns.
Why Is Content Distribution Strategy So Important?
The essence of content distribution is to allow you to reach your audience with your content materials. It is even more crucial now since internet users consume more than 20 billion content pieces daily on WordPress alone, globally.
The numbers are in the millions and billions, with everyone gearing to get their posts to their buyer persona. In one content marketing example, marketers published more than 4.4 million blog content daily in March. That is, according to TechJury.
In light of this, without proper distribution, you won’t get your blogs in front of your ideal readers. It is more like spending valuable time and energy in crafting a remarkable post, only for it to get lost in the noise – nobody reads it.
Let your content thrive with a thriving content distribution strategy. Your delivery tactics will help to strengthen your content marketing strategy.
Five Content Distribution Strategies That Will Increase Your Traffic Fast
1: Distribute Your Blog Content with Email Subscribers
Your email subscribers are target markets who have already shown interest in your blog posts and take a step further to subscribe to your mailing list. So when you publish new content, distribute it to them according to each segment.
Use the same approach and send useful posts to your clients and eventual customers who are also interested in your offers. They have indicated by using your product or services that the materials you produce are valuable to them. Hence, they opted into your email list, as well.
Therefore, we continue to nurture that relationship by sharing helpful blog content with them regularly. Of course, distribute blogs with a link back to your site where they can find more useful materials.
However, be careful not to spam them with your blogs.
2: Share Your Posts With Niche-Focused Online Communities
There are many online communities where you can distribute your content. But you don’t share your posts randomly on all platforms hoping to get eyeballs on your site. Instead, look for niche-focused groups where you can find people who have collective ideas in your niche market and share your content with them.
For instance, if you’re a blogger, you can find groups for bloggers and content marketers on:
- Facebook groups
- Online Forums
- Blogster
- LinkedIn groups
- Etc.
Distributing your posts with these groups will help drive massive traffic to your site because they’re a segment of people who are interested in your niche. So to write an engaging essay is part of the puzzle. But without proper distribution strategies, you won’t get it into the hands of your target audience.
3: Use Micro-Influencers to Boost Your Distribute Strategies
Influencer marketing is one of the best marketing and content distribution strategies in recent times. But notice that there are three major categories of influencers:
- Micro
- Macro, and
- Mega influencers
However, due to the ever-changing nature of digital marketing, you can see more of those in sub-categories such as:
- Micro
- Small
- Big
- Macro
- Celebrity
- Mega influencers
Micro-influencers are those who have from 5,000 to 25,000 followers and generating an engagement rate of about 4%. But, the macro, celebrity, and mega influencers are those whose followers are between 250,000 to 7 million and above.
For example, Kylie Jenner is a mega influencer with over 147 million followers on Instagram alone.
Photo by Kylie via Instagram
She collects around $1 million for a single Instagram post. As a small or medium-sized business owner, you cannot possibly work with an influencer of that magnitude.
That is why I suggest you work with micro-influencers. This group of influencers has a significant impact on their followers. They influence the buying decision of their audience, which makes working with them a worthwhile investment.
By using influencers to distribute your content, you enjoy these benefits:
- Reach a new targeted community
- Increase brand awareness
- Helps build trust and credibility
- Grow a loyal audience
- Brings fresh content ideas onto the table
- Helps increase site engagement and improve content marketing ROI
- Cost-effective
- Improves search engine rankings
Consequently, use BuzzSumo to find influencers for your marketing efforts. The tool will show you the most shared content based on your keyword terms, and also reveal the influencers who shared the post.
Make a list of influencers who shared the material and start reaching out to them. You can reach them via emails, social media, or the website’s contact page.
4: Guest Posts on Niche Websites to Leve Up Your Distribution Strategies
Guest posting is one of the oldest and most effective ways to get your content out to your target audience and drive tons of web traffic. Why does it work so well? Because you’re taking advantage of your hosts’ readership to grow your traffic.
For instance, I blog about blogging and freelance writing, which is the same as Brian Clark of Copyblogger and Darren Rowse of Problogger. These men are expert authorities in the blogging industry with massive communities around their blogs.
If I pitch them for guest posting slots and get approved, I will get a link back to my site. Hence, my guest post will be distributed among their readers and email subscribers. In this way, I will become exposed to a massive new target audience who may follow my link to check out my blog.
Furthermore, I have been contributing content here on NealSchaffer’s blog. And as a result, I’m getting traffic from his site when users click my link. Put differently, guest blogging on authority sites serve you two outstanding benefits:
- You distribute and promote your posts to establish the target market
- You get quality backlinks to your blog and enjoy SEO juices
5: Distribute Your Content Via Webinars
A webinar is an online seminar where brands influence their audience with practical information that provides added value to the listeners and viewers. It is an exchange of views program where the audience is encouraged to ask questions and get responses.
Webinars are so useful because they offer businesses the chance to teach viewers and sell to them as well, and at the same time, build stable personal bonds. Moreover, webinars are perfect for your content distribution strategy since they revive existing content materials and attract a targeted audience.
The participants are people who are willing to interact with your content and ready to buy your offerings. Also, you can make a good connection with eventual customers. Please, learn how to use social media to promote your webinar.
Wrapping Up Content Distribution Strategies
Here we have highlighted five practical content distribution strategies that’d enable you to drive massive website traffic. The processes will also help you to improve your search engine rankings. But you may ask; how do I know that my content distribution strategy is successful?
There is one way to find out. You’ll need to measure the results of your content marketing campaign to figure out the success of your distribution strategy. Evaluating your campaign will also help you to see which distribution channels are best for your content strategy.
Therefore, establish key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure. By creating measurable KPIs, it becomes easier to reach your goals by gauging your performance and defining your targets. Apply these tips and continue testing and making adjustments where necessary to upgrade the return of investments (ROIs) of your content distribution strategy.
The insights and tips, as well as the key metrics you choose to monitor, will help you define the effectiveness of your content distribution strategy.