So you’ve spent your time and energy developing content that you know your customers will appreciate. You’ve even developed a content development system that helps you remain focused on producing quality content throughout the week! It is easy to think that all you need to do now is sit back and wait for the customers to start finding your site and rolling on into leads. Unfortunately, you have forgotten one key step in the process: distribution. Your content might be spectacular, but if no one knows its there, how can it work for you?
What is Content Distribution?
Those who work in content marketing services know that writing great content is only the first step in the process — you also must get it in front of interested readers. Distribution refers to the channels you will use to spread your content as far as you can go. Social media comes into play in a big way here. It can also include methods, such as email.
What Content Distribution Methods Should You Use?
The best content distribution methods will be highly individualized to where your customers are. You need to begin by looking at your buyer personas and researching what social media platforms they are most likely to use on a regular basis. Your goal is to make the content relevant to the people seeing it. If you want to reach a business professional crowd, you will want to post on LinkedIn. If you seek a more casual crowd, reaching business professionals after they have finished their work for the day, you might use Facebook more regularly.
Different personas might have different platforms, but your focus should always be on making the content and your distribution channel relevant to the potential customer. On every post and page, you should also have social share buttons that make it easy for your readers to share your content again with their own followers.
So does that mean you can just use your social media accounts as publishing outlets for your blog posts? Not quite. Your social media accounts give you an excellent means of connecting with your customers. When you try to connect with someone new in person, chances are you do not spend the whole time talking about yourself. The same lessons should apply to social media. Industry leader Hubspot recommends that companies spend about 80 percent of their time offering customers valuable information, even when it comes from other sources; only 20 percent of the time should be spent talking about themselves. This ratio will help you develop relationships with your potential customers, which, in turn, can help you cultivate that desired trust.
How Do You Know If It’s Working?
You should be tracking stats from all your content. Look at information such as:
- the number of visitors
- the number of leads
- how different subjects fare
- how different authors fare
- how different content formats fare
This will create a clear picture for you about what your potential customers respond to and how you should develop and distribute content for them in the future.
Distribution is the missing part of the puzzle that takes fabulous content and makes it relevant. Your distribution methods get your content in front of the people most likely to find it interesting on the platforms where they are most likely to be. Develop strong distribution methods and you will see the value of your content begin to really shine.
Jessica B spends her days writing content for her customers and laughing with her children. She loves learning about the latest in marketing and how it intersects with her background in psychology.
