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Each year, thousands of marketers invest money and efforts in content marketing as a part of their digital marketing strategy.
However, your valuable content gets wasted if it doesn’t reach the right audience. That’s why you need to focus on content distribution as well.
A well-executed content distribution strategy can get you a plethora of opportunities.
As a leading digital marketing company in Ahmedabad, we are often asked “How to develop an effective content distribution strategy?” So, we have created this comprehensive guide to help you get hands on content distribution.
In content marketing, it’s not just about creating quality content; it’s also about getting that content to the right audience at the right time.
A solid content distribution strategy is a plan for publishing, sharing, and promoting your content across different channels. It means using various platforms like email, social media, and guest blogging websites to make sure your content gets seen by as many people as possible.
For example, if you write four articles, you can put them on your blog and share them on LinkedIn and other platforms like Medium. You can also break down the main points into social media posts or videos and even turn them into eBooks or presentations.
There are lots of ways to distribute your content, but having a clear plan is crucial. After all, even the best content won’t make an impact if nobody sees it. That’s why it is important to prioritize both content creation and distribution.
First things first. You need to understand what is included in a content distribution strategy and what are different types of channels you can leverage for content promotion. An in-depth understanding of content distribution channels will help you create an effective strategy.
There are mainly three types of content distribution channels:
These channels are platforms like your website, blog, and social media profiles that you control. They let you create and share content to promote your brand and connect with your audience. Content types can include blog posts, videos, infographics, newsletters, and webinars.
These are channels where your content gets shared or discussed without any payment, like PR outreach or organic social media sharing. This happens when you create valuable content that people like and share, helping to build relationships and boost your brand. Examples include guest posts, product reviews, and social media mentions.
Here, you need to spend money to reach your target audience. These include social media ads, display ads, and sponsored content. They give you immediate visibility but require a budget. Examples are PPC ads, influencer marketing, and more.
After understanding the basics of content distribution channels, you can easily choose your ideal content type and channels to target. But that’s not enough; you need to understand your audience, create a calendar, set performance indicators, and measure the results constantly.
According to Hubspot, over 82% of marketers actively invest in content marketing strategies.
So, you need to ensure your crafted content doesn’t disappear in this vast sea. And a right content distribution plan can only make the difference here.
Creating engaging content is only half the battle; the key is to reach the right audience. To do this effectively, you must develop a clear picture of your ideal customer, or you can say the buyer persona. Utilize Google Analytics and social media analytics tools to gather valuable information.
Study your audience’s customer journey, demographics, challenges, and interests. Understand your website visitors, email subscribers, and social media followers. Collect data on their income, age, gender, education, and location.
Try to find a balance in targeting your audience – don’t make it too broad or too narrow. Aim for specificity without excluding potential readers. This approach ensures your content resonates with the right people, maximizing its impact.
Before you decide on your ideal content type and distribution channel, you must set the desired goals. You should consider the needs and behaviors of your potential customers to define goals effectively.
Here are some common content marketing goals you can refer to:
Boosting Brand Awareness: Increasing brand awareness means making more people know about your brand. To do this, you can set goals like getting more website traffic or increasing the number of followers on social media. You can run paid ad campaigns or use your own social media channels to help.
Enhancing Engagement: Engagement means getting people interested and involved with your brand. If people already know about your brand but aren’t interacting much, you can set goals to encourage more interactions. This could include getting more shares, comments, and likes on social media or getting people to create content related to your brand.
Driving Lead Generation: Lead generation means finding potential customers. You can set targets to get more sign-ups for webinars and newsletters or to download things like e-books or whitepapers.
Improving Conversion Rates: The conversion rate is about turning potential customers into actual customers. You can set goals to improve conversions after customers interact with your content. This can include free trials or direct product promotions.
Fostering Customer Loyalty and Retention: Keeping your current customers happy and coming back is important. You can set goals to educate your customers about your product’s features, loyalty programs, or activities that build a sense of community around your brand.
Educating Your Audience: Sometimes, your product or service might be complicated, and people need to learn more about it. You can set goals to educate your audience through online courses, educational content, or webinars.
Upselling/Cross-Selling Products: This means getting your current customers to buy additional, complementary, or premium products from you. You can track conversions of product recommendations or increased AOV (average order value)
Fostering Community Growth: Building a community around your brand is important for creating a loyal customer base. You can set goals to increase the number of active members in your community forums, social media Marketing groups, or other platforms where your brand interacts with customers.
Improving SEO Performance: SEO, or search engine optimization, is about helping people with informative content when they search for related topics online. You can set goals to improve how well your content ranks in search engines by targeting specific keywords or getting more backlinks to your content.
Establishing Thought Leadership: To be recognized as an expert in your industry is valuable. You can set goals to get your content featured on other websites, speak at industry events, or have other experts reference your content.
As you move forward with your content distribution strategy, you must decide on specific key performance indicators that align with your desired goals. These metrics can help you evaluate your distribution plan and refine it over time.
For instance, if you are offering an eBook, then your KPI should be a specific number of downloads or shares.
Here are some common types of KPIs you must know:
Lead Generation: Monitor lead quantity, quality, and conversion rate from lead to customer to ensure your efforts are getting tangible results in acquiring potential customers.
Engagement Boost: Track shares, comments, likes, and average time spent on your content to measure the level of audience interaction and interest.
Traffic Measurement: Analyze unique page visits, bounce rate, click-through rate (CTR), and the percentage of organic search traffic to evaluate visibility and search engine optimization effectiveness.
Revenue Generation: Focus on revenue per lead, customer lifetime value (CLTV), and return on investment (ROI) from content marketing to understand the impact on sales and profitability.
Customer Retention: Evaluate repeat purchase rate, customer satisfaction scores (CSAT), net promoter score (NPS), and retention rate to assess loyalty and long-term customer relationships.
Community Growth: Measure active participation rates, new member growth, and engagement levels within community forums or social content distribution platforms to measure the effectiveness of community-building efforts.
Content Performance: Track downloads for gated content, user interaction with interactive elements, and heatmaps of user activity on your pages to understand how your content resonates with the audience.
SEO Effectiveness: Track keyword rankings, domain authority, organic traffic growth, and backlink acquisition rate to evaluate the success of your search engine optimization strategies.
To organize your content distribution strategy effectively, creating a calendar will help you a lot. It will help you consistently publish content on different channels.
You can use Google Sheets, Excel, Asana, Trello, Google Calendar, and many other tools to develop a detailed content calendar. Firstly, assign certain members to research and craft different kinds of content. Then, build the calendar to keep every team member on the same page and ensure consistency.
Here are some questions you must ask when creating the content calendar:
Once you start publishing the content, you need to track the performance of your efforts over time. Measure the results with your determined KPIs and see what’s working.
You can use analytics tools to gather and analyze measurable metrics like reach, engagement, traffic, conversions, and ROI. Assess these data to draw patterns and get insights so you can find opportunities for improvement.
So, you started posting content on different channels consistently. Now, you might be constantly researching new ideas, tracking the latest trends, and chasing the results. But what if it doesn’t meet your expectations? The traffic and engagement are negligible, and you can’t figure out what happened.
You know the content is precious, but can’t find the reason behind the fallout. The fault may be in your strategy because the content is not reaching the right audience.
In this scenario, you need to refine your content distribution strategy to get to the right people. Here’s how you can do it:
If your plan consistently falls back, it’s time to reassess your target demographic, preferences, and online habits. Remember that your audience is dynamic; they will evolve and change over time. So, ongoing analysis is important to tailor content to their changing needs and preferences.
Here are some tricks to understand your audience better:
The reassessment results will help you find out content types that catch the attention of your audience.
Imagine you are standing at a buffet. On one side, there is a mountain of plain, dry bread. In the opposite direction, there is a limited range of gourmet dishes, each prepared carefully. Which direction would you choose?
In content, the decision should be the same. The internet is full of content, with millions of articles getting added daily. However, not all content carries the same weight. You must focus on quality rather than quantity of your content.
Here’s why putting quality over quantity is important:
While it’s important to publish content regularly to stay visible, remember this: it’s always better to attract your audience with one solid content piece than to publish multiple pieces that don’t make any impact.
You must do experiments with different content formats, posting times, and messages to see what works best for your audience and how effective the results are. You can experiment with different audience segments and adjust your content distribution plan accordingly.
Follow these steps to run A/B tests effectively:
Start by deciding what you want to achieve with your content. Do you aim to boost brand awareness, drive website visits, or generate leads? Make your goals specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). For instance, you might aim to increase website traffic by 20% within three months.
Know your audience well. Understand their demographics, preferences, and where they spend time online. Choose channels where they’re most active, such as social media platforms, forums, email newsletters, or niche websites. Adapt your content to fit each platform’s style and tone to resonate better with your audience.
Regularly assess your content’s performance. Look at metrics like engagement rates, conversion rates, and audience demographics. Use this data to identify what works and what doesn’t. Experiment with different types of content, distribution channels, and messaging to refine your strategy over time.
You have several options, including social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. Content discovery platforms like Taboola and Outbrain can also amplify your reach. For email marketing, Mailchimp and Constant Contact work well. Additionally, publishing platforms like Medium and WordPress can help expand your audience.
Craft clear and compelling calls-to-action (CTAs) within your content. Encourage readers to take specific actions, such as subscribing to a newsletter, downloading a resource, or making a purchase. Position CTAs strategically throughout your content and make them visually appealing to prompt action effectively.
With companies continuously investing in content marketing tactics and the internet is loaded with a plethora of articles each day, the importance of content marketing is clear. And you have got multiple options to promote your content through blogs, social media, ads, newsletters, webinars, etc. However, the most common mistake marketers make is inefficient distribution.
While a great piece of content can give you a hundred impressions, a great content distribution plan can give you thousands of impressions. It can help you reach a wide audience effectively.
So, don’t waste your time; start researching and experimenting with different ideas on various channels.
If you need help with creating high-quality content or promoting it, Zib Digital India is here to help. Being a leading digital marketing agency in India, we can provide you with customized solutions for your target audience and business goals. Schedule a growth session with our team and see how we can make you a lead magnet!