When only 9% of B2B marketers describe their organization’s content marketing strategy as “very effective,” chances are you are not doing it right. A handful of likes, few comments, or zero shares on articles and blogs are enough to let you know it isn’t working.
Delve deeper, access the analytics, and you will find these tell-tale signs of a failing content strategy:
Your traffic hasn’t increased in months
The followers count has stagnated
People spend less than two minutes on your page
You do not have a single high-performing post
The engagement levels are erratic
Undoubtedly, the prerequisite to ticking all these boxes is that your content needs to reach your desired audience. Most content spends fail to give the desired Return on Investment (ROI) because they just do not reach enough people. Posting content on your own website is only the first step. If you want it to weave some magic, and achieve its true potential, give it a boost.
It is foolhardy to create good content and then sit back and hope it gains traction. The Internet is home to orphaned content and great works that nobody reads.
Content Distribution or Content Discovery is all about making your content available to the largest set of audience possible. It involves a set of conscious activities to understand the content format, subject matter, and the type, and to segment the audience, target the right set, and deliver content to that audience through a specific publishing channel.
In addition to boosting traffic, and driving call-to-actions, an effective distribution strategy also builds brand awareness.
The distribution of content can be done through several means:
Influencer Marketing: One of the most popular ways of content distribution, influencer marketing involves a popular figure promoting your content to their audience with backlinks to your site. This method is an exercise in relationship-building as you need to offer these influencers value for sharing your content.
Another way to go about this is to mention these influencers in your articles and inform them before they get published. The likelihood of them sharing your content will dramatically increase. The social media traffic and the backlinks earned will also aid monetization.
Email Marketing: Email marketing is another popular content distribution strategy. With an email list, you can promote your content directly to targeted readers, i.e., your subscribers. They in turn, can amplify your reach by sharing the material on their social platforms.
Yet another application of email marketing can be to cross-sell or cross-promote your content with complementary audiences. Work together with other content marketers and create aggregated newsletters that would help both parties market themselves to newer demographics.
Social Media: Each social networking platform has a unique identity, serving a unique function. Given that the average person spends over two hours every day on social media, it makes sense for organizations to utilize this media to promote their content.
While companies need to be present across social media channels, it is important to mould your content keeping in mind the nuances of each medium. While LinkedIn is business-oriented, Facebook and Twitter are more personal. Meanwhile, Pinterest and Instagram are all about visual content.
Guest Blogging: Guest blogging refers to posting your content on another’s blog. It is a great way to show authority and command over the subject matter at hand. It also helps in building relationships with other bloggers and subject matter experts.
You can also invite guest bloggers to let your readers experience a new perspective. It has the potential to attract new readers while keeping the existing ones engaged. Therefore, it works well for both entities.
Paid Distribution: Sometimes you need that push, that something extra to make a good post, great. While your content can garner substantial traction organically if it’s relevant, with paid distribution you will be able to extend its reach and capture newer audiences with a positive first impression.
Alternately, if a crucial post is performing below expectations, a paid promotion could make it discoverable to your audience, and help it gain traction.
Internal Employees: The employees of any organization are its ambassadors. Each employee caters to a different audience online. Companies can leverage the network of employees and their associations, and distribute content to a category of audience with a not-too-distant connection with the company.
Employees can also post on other websites, forums (like Quora), and social platforms with backlinks to their company website. While increasing visibility of your brand, it also creates an authoritative impression, which could lead to more traffic.
Distribution Tools: Distribution tools such as Taboola, Outbrain, etc., (more on these in the section below), aid in promoting your content across multiple websites and popular platforms. They can get you a very high viewership, making it an attractive proposition for companies to extend their reach. However, the comparative cost is higher.
Different platforms are built differently, with some providing high viewership, while others promising more conversions. Other platforms too have their differentiators wherein you pay only for the content views, as opposed to impressions.
Perhaps the most popular content distribution platform, Outbrain has some premium publishing partners, therefore also controlling to a certain extent the quality of content that’s published. It operates on a cost-per-click (CPC) model where you pay a predetermined amount for every click.
Like Outbrain, but catering to a different audience, Taboola boasts of driving half a million unique visitors to its clients every month. Also, having been associated with paid video distribution for much longer, it holds an edge over its competitors.
It is a native advertising platform that pushes your content onto publishers’ sites as sponsored posts. Unlike others, it charges a Viewable Cost Per Thousand (vCPM) rate, and not the popular CPC. In addition, it also monitors the ads for bot activity so you are charged for legitimate traffic.
Ideal for identifying influencers interested in viewing and sharing your content, Buzzsumo is a widely used content discovery tool. Its predictive analytics help zero in on trending topics before they start trending.
Colombia reportedly processes billions of requests a day with extensive personalization, premium audience, premium publishers, and an intelligent mix of ad platforms. Working off a traditional CPC model, Colombia is amongst the most popular distribution platforms online.
These are just a handful of the distribution platforms available to content marketers. Each platform has its own set of pros and cons, and a niche audience. As a content creator, one must consider an omni-channel approach to fulfill content promotion needs.
It is also imperative to measure what works and what doesn’t. Analytics play a vital role in validating and fine-tuning content strategy for a healthier ROI.
With content creation at an all-time high, distribution platforms allow you to cut through the clutter and reach a large audience that might never reach you through direct searches. It enables publishers to monetize their assets by delivering the right content, to the right audience, at the right time.
LexiConn is a one-stop shop for content strategy, creation, distribution, and analytics. As a content-first company, we ensure seamless integration of all processes related to content.
Visit us www.lexiconn.in or drop us a line at content@lexiconn.in.
LexiConn also offers a free 30-minute content consultation session to help you with your content strategy.
Talk to us, and we’ll help you get the word out – your audience is waiting!
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