Creating consistently great content takes loads of wiping-the-sweat-from-your-brow, brewing-another-pot-of-coffee work. It’s no surprise that it can be monumentally frustrating when your publishing doesn’t generate the results you had hoped for. When content falls short of expectations with lack-luster results, marketers often point the finger of blame at the content itself, wondering whether it was funny, interesting, or fresh enough. Although content itself is sometimes responsible for disappointing results, the blame more often falls on poor channels and methods of distribution.
Don’t let your dolled-up content wallflower around the marketing dance. Get it moving with these tips and tricks for fancy-footed content distribution.
Swing, Tango, and Merengue: How to Move Your Content
1. Plan First, Create Later
Timely content is often essential to its effectiveness. When content is created without a distribution plan, however, it slows the publication process. Before creating a new in-depth exposé or flashy infographic, have potential publication channels ready to go.
2. Be Available
Make your content readily available wherever it’s easiest to access. Tease additional information to direct users to your website, but don’t force them to leave Facebook or Twitter before they can view a video or see any information. Your content is much more shareable when it can be viewed within a platform. Also, be sure to include social buttons on your webpages and newsletters to make it easy for readers to follow your content.
3. Optimize for Search Engines
It seems like there is a constant barrage of click-bait articles attempting to scare us all away from the power of SEO. Rest easy, search engine optimization is still a thing. Be sure your website and all of your content is optimized with keywords and outfitted for simple social sharing.
4. Choose Proper Channels
Where you publish your content is just as important as what you publish. Each social media platform serves a different purpose, hosts a different audience, and accommodates varied types of content. Put your best visual media out on Instagram and reserve your brilliant one-liners for Twitter. Optimize content for each channel, by keeping word count limitations, display, and demographics in mind.
5. Reach the Right People
Rather than throwing your content against the metaphoric wall to see what sticks, use a more strategic approach designed to reach the right people. Think about the type of person who will purchase or sign up for your product or service. Then create well-rounded, specific marketing personas to determine who populates your target market group. What issues do they care about? What problems do they need you to solve? How do they take in information? How will you best reach them?
6. Avoid Waste on Ineffective Campaigns
Don’t spend money on paid campaigns until you have tested the content. Publish small campaigns initially to see what works and what doesn’t, before you spend your marketing dollars on distributing a large campaign.
7. Measure the Right Metrics
To avoid wasting time and money on ineffective marketing, you must track metrics. You don’t, however, have to monitor every marketing metric that ever existed. Pin down what your goals are and how you plan to achieve them. Then determine the best ways to measure your results and track progress toward those specific benchmarks.
8. Recycle Content
Never use a good piece of content only once. Promote content repeatedly and translate it into different types of media. Turn an interview into an article, instructions into a video, or convert an infographic into a listicle.
9. Use Distribution Tools
Don’t waste your limited time and energy on managing countless content distribution platforms from countless different places with countless login IDs and passwords. There are several really amazing content distribution tools available (with different price points) to businesses of all sizes that allow you to schedule, publish, and manage all of these channels from a single place.
10. Test Your Distribution Tools
Content distribution tools are lifesavers. They can also be troublemakers. A single unchecked box or an incorrectly selected publication date can make or break an otherwise perfect campaign. Be sure to run tests on your content distribution tools (software, tracking links, and URL codes) before publishing.
Don’t Put the Dance Before the Tap, Get Started with Jazzy Content
If you’re following these tips and tricks, but still not getting dazzling results from your content distribution, then you might have a content problem at hand. Hire a crackerjack team of freelance writers to help you get to the heart of your brand’s personality, kick out killer content, and consistently publish high-quality. When you snuff out the content marketing blues with the right writer, the right voice, and the right personality, your content and sure-footed distribution plan will have you dancing to a new, up-beat rhythm.
Jennifer G is a full-time freelance writer and editor with a B.A. in creative writing from the University of Montana. She enjoys researching and writing creative content to engage readers and developing professional voices for clients across all industries. She specializes in medical, health, veterinary, and financial writing. Having worked nearly thirteen years in finance, Jennifer applies her experience in the banking industry (marketing, social media management, consumer and commercial lending, customer service, accounts, and bookkeeping) to her writing work within the industry.
