What are the 3 types of content distribution strategies?

Content is king.

We know, you’ve heard it thousands of times, and will probably hear it a thousand more times.

But does it still hold true? Neil Patel himself thinks there’s more to it than just “content is king”.

He says that the means in which you distribute your content is more important than the content itself, but honestly, both are super important.

Sometimes, getting your content in front of people can be a struggle even when your content is really good.

Not every content distribution channel is created equally. You need to use specific channels for specific types of content.

Let’s go through each digital channel to figure out the best channels you need to use to distribute your content.

What is Content Distribution?

Content distribution is the process by which your content gets discovered, read, and re-shared through promoting to targeted individuals. Strategizing and developing a well thought-out content distribution plan can help improve your overall reach and impact.

There are three main types of content distribution channels: owned, earned, and paid media.

Each channel has its own benefits and you definitely need to be able to differentiate between them to develop a content distribution strategy.

So, let’s get into the specifics of each channel and how you can use them to dominate the market with your content!

Owned Channels

Owned channels are those that you created for your business and have complete control over.

These owned channels give you the unique opportunity to structure your content however you see fit.

Some examples of owned channels are a website, a blog, or a newsletter (email list).

Website

Your website is likely where you desire to send the traffic you receive from your content distribution efforts. However, there are some efforts you can take to optimize your website on its own.

Implementing search engine optimization (SEO) strategies is a must when pushing your website as a content distribution platform.

If you utilize SEO properly, you can organically drive more traffic to your website and have more people interact with your content.

SEO is split into two pieces, on-site SEO, and off-site SEO.

At a high level, on-site SEO includes adding target keywords throughout specific pages that are relevant to that keyword. This involves doing keyword research, knowing about how to place keywords within your website content, and being able to optimize your meta information with target keywords.

For content that is posted on your website, implementing an SEO based content strategy is the best way to promote your content organically through the SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages).

Off-site SEO is the other half of SEO in order to improve your Google search rankings, and subsequently get more traffic to your content because of it. This involves acquiring relevant, authoritative links back to your content through different types of backlink building strategies.

We’ll discuss this a bit more later on in this post.

Blog

A blog is one of the most amazing tools for content distribution. If your business doesn’t already have a blog on your website, you need to create one ASAP. By creating and publishing content that provides value to your customers, you can attract a large amount of prospects to your website over time.

When creating blog posts, take time to make sure the topics you are writing about are actually meaningful to your customers and target audience. You do not want to put out meaningless content for the sake of it, because then people will not be engaged by it and Google may even penalize your ranking results.

Another thing to keep in mind is consistency on your blog. Try to remain consistent with your tone of voice, structure, and publishing schedule.

Although it is a good idea to experiment with different content formats to see what works best for your business, once you find something that works, try to remain consistent!

Like the rest of the content on your website, blogs can be implemented with an SEO based content strategy. Utilizing SEO and good content together is a recipe for success when it comes to increasing your organic search traffic.

Email

Investing in building up your email list is essential to your overall content distribution strategy. Once you have generated an email list, you have one of the best content distribution platforms which is a direct line to push new content and promote your brand to subscribers.

If you have a newer website, you may not have a built out email list, but that’s ok. As long as your content is engaging and worth sharing, you’ll build out an email list in no time, especially if you are using lead magnets as mentioned before.

Content that is more engaging often reaches more people. Less people will unsubscribe from your newsletter/email list if you have relevant and engaging content to share.

Earned Media

Earned media distribution includes whenever a third-party distributes your content or content about you. This can be through shares on social media or more large-scale link building and guest posting efforts.

Oftentimes you have to work hard here to establish your brand as reputable. Typically these channels don’t cost money, but they do take a lot of time and effort which is well worth it over time.

Be ready to put in as much effort as possible, because getting more traffic to your content via earned media takes dedication and consistency.

Social Media

When it comes to your social media platforms, it is a good idea to have branded pages on multiple social media channels. At a minimum, you should be sharing content on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Google My Business.

The platforms you choose will still of course depend on your business and industry, however, most businesses will fall under those 5 main social media networks.

There are also other social media platforms worth posting on such as Pinterest. As I mentioned, the specific platforms you should use depend entirely on the industry you’re in, so make sure you conduct your own market research to figure out which social media platform is the most successful within your industry.

While posting on social media, try to remain consistent and post high quality content and images. The best way to distribute content on social media is by creating truly valuable content that increases user engagement, such as comments, shares, and re-postings of your content. People will be more likely to engage with your content if it’s of high quality.

If you’re trying to get content out at scale and tie it to your specific business goals, you’re definitely going to need a social media content strategy. Developing an in-depth strategy will help you cover all your bases when it comes to posting. This will give your content the best chance at gaining exposure through various social media platforms.

Link Building

Link building is a great SEO strategy to help grow your own webpages’ authority and distribute content to a new audience.

Reach out to influential people in your industry and try to establish relationships with them in order to find mutually beneficial opportunities to gain a backlink on their website.

A great example would be providing a free infographic for them to post on their site that provides their audience value, and links back to your website.

There are several different backlinking strategies to be implemented, and each one has their own benefits and drawbacks. Some of these strategies include competitor backlink acquisition, 404 broken link building, and more.

Link building is difficult if you don’t have the expertise or the tools. Hiring an SEO agency to help you reach your backlink building goals is going to be your best bet when trying to improve the organic traffic to your website.

Guest Posting

Guest posting is the content marketing strategy of writing a blog post for an external website, such as a blog or online publication.

By writing a guest blog post for a relevant 3rd party website, you are able to reach a completely new audience, and in addition, gain a backlink back to your website.

It’s mutually beneficial because the 3rd party website is having a blog post written for them for free, and you are acquiring a high quality backlink with optimized anchor text.

Paid Distribution (Paid Media)

Paid distribution includes any time that you explicitly pay for content distribution.

This can include paid channels such as social media ads and any other digital channel in which you pay for your content to attain a higher reach.

Social Media Advertising

Promoting your content on social media networks by running paid social media ads is almost essential in some ways to speed up the process of your content attaining higher reach.

Though high quality content typically can perform great in terms of engagement, social media networks have really been restricting everyone’s reach such as Facebook and Instagram.

In addition, by using paid social media ads, you can promote your content to your target audience, and become very narrow on who exactly you’re promoting your content to. Not only will your engagement be higher, but your target audience will thank you for it if it’s content of value!

Video Advertising

Running video ads on platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram, are powerful ways to attain a highly targeted reach of your video content quickly.

In several cases, you can receive real views of your videos anywhere between $0.02 - $0.10 per view.

You may be aware of this, but video content is one of the best media formats for communicating your message by far and all platforms are increasingly catering to video.

Whether your video is educational or an explanation of your offerings, promoting your videos through video advertising is a great way to give your videos a huge boost in targeted reach.

The Takeaway

Sometimes, having great, honest content isn’t enough to get you the content exposure you want quickly. Sure, content is king. It always will be, but not utilizing content distribution platforms is just as bad as creating poor content.

Now that you’ve learned about the three main content distribution channels, it’s time to start distributing your business’s content!

Content distribution is essential in expanding your reach and overall brand awareness.

Each channel used on its own can be effective, but when you combine these content distribution channels, you’ll have a powerful marketing force that will increase your content’s exposure.

As a business owner, it’s almost impossible to do all of this on your own. If you’re struggling with your digital marketing efforts, reach out to a digital marketing agency to partner up with.

Over time, strategizing and distributing your content effectively can expand your audience and lead to greater success for your business as a whole.