Every year, marketing reports show businesses making more effort and increasing their spending on content marketing strategies. And maybe not every strategy is a success, but many are and that’s where businesses see the influence that content marketing has.
But it’s not just about having great content, it’s about how it’s distributed, too. Content distribution is pretty much key to any content strategy.
This is how you can use distribution channels to promote and share your content to a wider reach.
Social Media Content Distribution
The process of sharing, publishing, and promoting your content through social media channels is known as social media content distribution. It can be social media-specific content or it can be content from your site that you have re-formatted to be shareable to your socials.
It’s often always a good idea to look at some up-to-date facts about social media regarding the number of posts marketers make on average, the quantity of searches on search engines, or the volume of users in certain hashtags. Statistics such as these can help you create your own plan for what kind of content you want to create, when and how often you’ll post it, along with the tags you’ll use.
You should also consider all the types of channels there are because it’s not just social media platforms. You have eBooks and Podcast platforms, channels specifically for case studies or webinars, alongside the typical blogging channels.
Content Distribution Channels
The content distribution channels you use will probably vary based on multiple factors: your audience, your resources, your competitors.
There are also other ways your content may be distributed depending on overarching channels – owned content distribution, earned content distribution, and paid content distribution.
Owned Distribution Channels
Owned channels are, of course, any content properties that your brand owns. When content is published, how it is published, the type of content it is, that’s all controlled by your business. Your own social channels, your website, your strategies to reach your audience (such as newsletters or notifications).
Paid Content Distribution Channels
Paid content distribution speaks for itself. This is when you pay for your content to be distributed. Think Google Ads. The most common method is pay-per-click (PPC). An advertiser pays for every time someone interacts with their advertisement through clicks. Though they’re mostly used for search engine results pages (SERPs), they can also be used on your social channels!
Earned Distribution Channels
Earned content distribution is different to the others. When a third party shares your content, this is an earned channel. It’s not shared by you; it’s not paid for. It is content of yours that has been shared for free by your audience, customers, by bloggers or journalists. Anyone.
It might be shared to online forums or just to their own social channels as a review or a mention.
Using Social Media to Reach A Wider Audience
At this point, not using social media is just a real disadvantage to your business. No longer is it optional for a business to not have a social media channel to promote content on. It’s essential.
Such a huge part of the world’s population not only have access to social media but use it regularly. Facebook alone has almost 3 billion users worldwide. That’s insane. To not use that platform to the advantage of your business is a mistake.
Build Your Brand
Many customers, especially loyal ones, want to get to know the business they’re supporting. They want to know what makes your business different from others in similar industries, what values you prioritise, what you stand for.
And that’s where your social platforms come in. You can use them to share the story of your brand, create individual posts to introduce the people behind it. Let everyone know what your business stands for by creating posts on social media.
Sharing Content
Using social media to share your content can be really beneficial. If you include share buttons on your website, on your blog pages or on products or services that you offer, it’s easier to share those links straight to your channels. Links that audiences can then interact with and follow straight through to your website.
Drive Traffic
Optimise your website for SEO; make sure the content is relevant, make sure it’s mobile-friendly, make sure it’s designed to improve a user’s experience. Then share links to your website through your social media channels. Honestly, there’s nothing better than a bit of self-promotion. You have to support yourself, too.
Encourage to people to visit your site (and if it’s optimised, maybe they’ll stay for longer!).
Valuable Content
Content creation is the most important part of this process. After all, it’s the content that’s being distributed. Creating content is very much dependent on your company itself, though, in terms of your resources, available team, your industry.
When you create content, it’s not really for you, it’s for your consumers. So you need to consider what your audience appreciates and values the most from. It could be content that educates them, content that influences or inspires them, maybe something that is entertaining.
You can often use statistics to assess this kind of data. Look at previous posts with the most interaction, ones with the most engagement. That should give you some idea of what performs the best and is, therefore, most preferred.
To keep it original, you can use different formats, too, such as videos, infographics, images, guides and how-to’s. Those kinds of things.
Customer Interaction
Having a social platform is great. Posting on said social platform, even better! But all your effort in using social media to distribute content means nothing if you don’t interact and engage with consumers.
Responding to comments people leave and answering questions within a reasonable time isn’t to prove that you’re monitoring your social channels. It’s so you can show your customers you care about them, putting in the effort to give them a good customer experience.
This is one of the best ways you can build relationships with your customers, to connect with them and build rapport. This type of behaviour leads to both positive customer experience and loyalty from customers who are then likely to repeat business with you.
Social media is one of the most powerful tools in a content marketers box. Promoting your own content and your brand whilst helping you to reach a wider audience, build stronger relations with customers and, potentially, business partners. Make the most of social media in your own content marketing strategy.
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