A fascinating discovery made by my new executive assistant, who is responsible for monthly content reports for Joyce Tsang Content Marketing and my bubble tea shop, 2324, in her second month of work, was that a single piece of content can perform drastically differently when placed on different platforms.
What she found was that a talking head video of me, generated with AI reading a media feature I had previously published, performed exceptionally well on IG Reels but received no attention on LinkedIn.
Of course, I am simplifying this incident and the resulting lesson, but it emphasizes the importance of a distribution strategy rather than solely focusing on the content itself. In our example, the success of the 40-second video was attributed to its subject matter - imposter syndrome - which resonated more personally and sparked conversations on Instagram compared to LinkedIn.
However, in many cases, the results are not as clear or easy to pinpoint, which is why this article exists.
While creating relevant content is crucial, businesses must understand that to truly make an impact, they need to ensure their content reaches the right audience and generates maximum engagement and visibility. In this blog, we will explore effective strategies for content distribution that can help businesses maximize their reach and achieve their marketing goals.
1. What is Content Distribution?
Content distribution refers to the process of disseminating content through various channels to reach a target audience.
While many mistake or approach this as a repurposing method, content distribution itself is as important as content creation. Merely investing heavily in creating content that only lives on a website is just as ineffective as cutting it into countless snippets and dispersing them across different platforms without a clear strategy. The purpose of content distribution is not just to have the most content out there but to ensure the right piece of content goes on the right channel.
Apart from considering owned channels such as websites, blogs, and email newsletters as distribution channels, what I find most intriguing is utilizing influencers, partners, and third-party networks. This highlights the complexity of content distribution, as it involves adding value based on the existing reach, engagement, user behavior, and subject preferences of each channel.
2. Why Should You Care About Content Distribution?
While you can find lists of the surface-level value of caring about content distribution through a Google search or by relying on AI-generated answers, what you can find here with me is the real reason - and that is it can significantly reduce your costs.
Let's say you create a batch of content specifically tailored to the dimensions of Instagram. You release this content, which earns you an initial round of reach. At best, you may repost or repurpose it on Instagram again, doubling your reach from the same investment of money and effort in one content set.
A typical marketer might suggest repurposing the content on another platform to gain an additional round of reach and engagement, and that is indeed true. However, you run the risk of exhausting that content batch and potentially even exhausting the attention of your audience.
Instead, with a strategic content distribution method, you can start by publishing the batch of content on different platforms simultaneously. However, each identical piece of content is scheduled to be published at different times. For example, your Instagram followers may receive a teaser while those on YouTube start seeing behind-the-scenes content, both of which aim to build anticipation for the core content itself. By strategically scheduling their release at different times, you can experiment and gather insights on the organic impact of each piece.
Once you have posted all the content in the batch, you already have two sets of organic data at your disposal. This allows you to go back and select the best-performing pieces for paid acceleration, while others can be published again on the other platform to further maximize their reach and engagement.
In simple terms, you're leveraging the same batch of content over a longer period, maintaining its freshness for different audiences on different platforms, and gathering more insights to make better decisions in the future. All of this helps you save money and enables you to invest in content with a clearer understanding of their potential, rather than posting blindly.
3. What Are Most People Doing Wrong with Content Distribution?
What I see as a common mistake is that most people simply don't give any thought to content distribution, essentially neglecting it altogether. They create content pieces for a campaign and have them run simultaneously on all platforms. Or they create channel-specific always-on content and post it whenever it's ready. The key point of content distribution is that you need to have a plan and know your pieces of content before taking action. This means having a content strategy that outlines the specific content pieces you'll have each month. It enables you to understand where to place each piece and utilize historical data to inform your next move.
This approach compels businesses to resort to content repurposing as a last resort because they have no other options for their posted content. However, if you start with a content distribution strategy, you can create a cycle where each piece of posted content finds its way to other platforms over a period of time, allowing you to extract more value from it and conduct experiments for new insights. The silliest thing anyone can do is release a single piece of content and let the insights it generates end there. This approach turns it into an advertisement (which is time-restricted) rather than content marketing (which grows exponentially over time).
4. Effective Strategies for Content Distribution
To me, content distribution is similar to learning probability and understanding how to apply that knowledge to increase your chances of winning across various games like checkers, chess, or even tic-tac-toe. It involves understanding the behavior of your target audience and strategically deploying your content like chess pieces on the different gameboards of distribution channels, with the hope of reaching the maximum number of people and generating the highest level of engagement.
i) Leveraging Owned Channels
This is the best starting point because, supposedly, you are in control and have the best understanding of these people. They are seeing your content on their feed because they are interested in your brand, product, industry, or someone in their network. This makes it easier for you to make educated assumptions. Owned channels can include company websites, blogs, and email newsletters.
However, this approach will only be effective if you have been consistently posting content on these platforms and evaluating their performance to understand the preferences of your owned channel followers. If you haven't done so, relying solely on owned channels won't give you an advantage at all. It's like skipping rocks in a nearby pond without any existing experiences or knowledge about it.
For example, I know for a fact that photos featuring me with other people at networking events always perform well on my LinkedIn. My audience likes to see me connecting with others and getting an insight into what I'm doing. However, the same doesn't apply to my YouTube channel. Therefore, it would be a waste of time for me to repurpose my networking content for YouTube. However, it's worth a try to share it on Instagram, where my account focuses on providing behind-the-scenes content, which my audience there enjoys the most.
ii) Harnessing the Power of Social Media
The structure of social media naturally allows it to reach more people than your owned channels because these platforms thrive on delivering content to larger audiences to keep users engaged. However, that doesn't mean it's wise to have the exact same piece of content across all social media platforms.
What I've learned is that people on social media actually do read. Your copy is just as important as your visuals, especially when you have an engaged audience. Therefore, your content distribution strategy should also consider how you distribute your written content.
For example, I repurpose essentially the same copy across different platforms, but I tailor it according to the user behavior and preferences on each platform. While I always ensure that my LinkedIn copy includes a hook to entice people to click "see more," I approach my Instagram captions differently. There, I often start with the key takeaway to quickly capture people's attention and provide them with the result without requiring them to read through all the context in between.
iii) Engaging with Influencers and Partners
You might think it's difficult for a service provider to engage with influencers, especially if you're a solopreneur like myself who doesn't have a large PR budget, or any budget at all. However, that's only because you're not thinking outside of the box.
Take Joyce Tsang Content Marketing as an example. I don't intentionally seek out people with more followers than me at networking events, but when I meet interesting individuals, I don't hesitate to build a connection that could lead to content generation. For instance, I met Annie at an educational event, and we immediately connected. While it was lucky that she resonated with my story, I made sure to follow up with her and engage with her content, sharing details about my latest projects and suggesting collaborations.
In return, Annie, with her kind soul, sent me a postcard from her travels, and I intentionally posted it as an Instagram story instead of a regular post. I don't want this to come across as a calculated move, but it's all about the nature of content distribution. By tagging her in an Instagram story, it automatically becomes a direct message to her inbox. Since Instagram allows tagged individuals to easily share the story on their profile (which she did), she helped me reach people within her community as well. That piece of content would never have reached as many people if I had only posted it on my Instagram or LinkedIn and tagged her, since the reposting function isn't available there.
iv) Exploring Third-Party Networks
If you've done research on obtaining free backlinks or increasing brand awareness, you're probably familiar with platforms like Terkel (now Featured) and HARO.
I am an active user on these platforms, regularly providing answers to questions. In return, I have been featured on various websites, sharing my insights. While not many people invest the time to do this, I believe it is a valuable content distribution strategy. Essentially, it is a targeted approach to reach higher-quality leads and potential customers.
The submissions on these platforms require sharing expertise specific to your industry. This means that readers are already aware of or searching for services that you likely provide. Submissions act as a tasting plate for audiences who frequent these trusted media websites. The quality of reach far surpasses reaching a stranger on social media. Understanding how to leverage these third-party networks as part of your content distribution strategy can have a significant impact on building brand awareness, trust, and industry thought leadership.
5. Strategizing Content Distribution
As you can see, there are numerous ways to distribute your content beyond simply deciding where to post it. Having a content strategy not only helps you identify the various tools and platforms your target audiences prefer, but also provides clarity and a framework for determining the right content for each platform. This, in turn, guides your approach to creating new content or repurposing existing material.
I firmly believe in justifying every effort, and one of my favorite approaches is to maximize the potential of each piece of content. It's not just a challenge; it's a powerful way to view content from a different perspective. By focusing on longevity rather than creating one-hit wonders, you can extract the most value from your content.
This outlook is also why I never worry about running out of content to post or struggling with writing copy. I'm never starting from scratch because I either create something based on what I know works for my audience or what I know works on the platform. I've come to realize that such expertise is quite rare, even among marketers.
Therefore, if you're interested in this subject but confused about how to develop a comprehensive content distribution plan, I suggest the following steps: identify your target audience, define your distribution goals, and select the most appropriate channels and strategies based on your objectives. This is the perfect opportunity to reach out to me and start maximizing the impact of your content today, ensuring continued success.
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