What is the best distribution strategy for content?
In business as in life, there seems to be a recurring constant. Many things can be broken down into the 80/20 rule, as in “80% of your revenue comes from 20% of your clients”. With content marketing, the 80/20 rule also dominates, where 80% of your content marketing’s success is derived from your distribution strategy. That’s not to diminish the importance of creating great content by any means! If the foundation of a home represents approximately 20% of the total house, without a strong foundation the rest of the home simply crumbles.
The quality of your content is the foundation on which you’ll build your content marketing plan. The distribution strategy is what will make your strategy successful – or not.
A distribution strategy might not be as exciting as developing the content itself, but its importance shouldn’t be underestimated. It’s the distribution strategy that needs to be determined for each piece of content before the content is developed. Before creating an editorial calendar you should always create a column for distribution at the outset – however, be prepared to be agile. Understanding the distribution channels up front, allows you to develop a YouTube video concurrent with the matching article, or create a piece of content with a different voice depending on the final destination and the medium.
Example of a Great Content Distribution Strategy
- Develop: During the planning phase as outlined above, determine if the content is to be used on a blog, product page, external partner, earned media or a choice of many other distribution options. This will define the voice, tone, and the goals of the each piece of content.
- Earned Media: Supply all or part of your content calendar to the PR team as an opportunity to be distributed for “earned media” (earned media: when your content “earns” the right to be published by another outlet like the NY Times). If any piece of content get’s picked up by say CNN, develop an article that links to the CNN content. For any content that does not get picked up as earned media, use it on your own website.
- Paid Media: The next best option is reviewing which content to consider paying for distribution in 3rd party media like business journals, mainstream press or other blogs. Be sure to leverage back linking.
- Website Posting: This could be within a blog, part of a product page or something else. While this is straight forward, in a future article we’ll share examples of how to leverage content on your site and why the information architecture is so critical to success. Simply having content on your site without strategic planning to/from product pages is not worth much. Defining goals is a topic we’ll tackle soon.
- Social Media: In an optimal world, try to post near 100% of every piece of content on at least one social network. Monitor engagement and if a piece of content exceeds a normal patterned response, put promotional money behind it to give it more exposure. Go one step further by setting a calendar alarm to post the same piece of content again in 6 months. With the second post you’ll likely find increased engagement.
- Marketing: What different marketing tactics can you incorporate your content to get the most mileage out of every content dollar? Email, paid search, paid social and more…
- eBooks: Create eBooks which can be used for demand generation to drive more email acquisition. The eBook can also serve the purpose of driving people back to the site to learn more. KPIs for an eBook might focus on open rate, CTR (click through rate), reduced unsubscribes and of course an increase in sales.
- Newsletter(s): Take your content and start creating emails that are more content focused like newsletters as opposed to marketing materials all the time. You’ll increase your open rate, CTR and reduce unsubscribes over time.
- Share with Partners: – Without duplicating content – you can share with partners and drive traffic back to your site.
- Courseware: Is it possible your content has value as a course? Can it be sold or used as demand generation opportunities even beyond eBooks?
- Other:
Creating great content and finding a killer distribution strategy is only great if you can measure it. Analytics should be your playbook moving forward and content needs to be reviewed constantly to determine what worked and what didn’t. Make course corrections as necessary and rinse and repeat the above.