So let’s talk about content distribution in this piece. We’ll cover everything from what it is and its benefits to how to create a content distribution strategy. We’ve also collected seven effective tips from the pros and a few examples of distribution done right.

What is content distribution?

Content distribution is the process of delivering your content to the audience you created it for. It:

• Enhances content discovery
• Drives traffic and brand awareness
• Boosts engagement rates and helps you build relationships with the right audience and customers
• Maximizes content performance and ROI

Without a solid distribution plan, your content creation efforts won’t deliver the maximum return on investment (ROI).

What content types can you distribute?

There are numerous types of content you can create as part of your content marketing strategy:

• Video content. This could be anything from explainer videos to video testimonials.
• Case studies featuring customers or clients who love your product or service.
• Blog posts and how-to guides that aim to win your target audience’s trust by educating them on solutions to their problems.
• Ebooks and white papers, which offer more in-depth topic education than the above. (They’re often gated to generate leads.)
• Visual content such as infographics, which can be great attention-grabbers and explain complex topics simply.
• Podcasts and audio interviews. This could involve guests or be a solo or team conversation.
• Webinars, which are educational and could feature internal or external subject matter experts.

How experts think about content distribution

Content experts consider distribution just as important as content creation—if not more.

The reason? “The old saying, ‘If you build it they will come,’ is not necessarily true anymore,” points out Way.com’s Head of Content, Jeannie Assimos.

"People are viewing content through multiple platforms these days. So it’s important to share your content on every marketing channel you have."

Jeannie Assimos

Head of Content, Way.com

Twitter

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LinkedIn

Put another way:

"Content distribution helps you meet your customers and audience where they are, instead of expecting them to find your content on their own."

Berrak Sarikaya

Former Sr. Content Marketing Manager, Twilio

Twitter

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LinkedIn

Snizhana Kolomiets, Head of Link Building at inBeat Platform agrees. “Without distribution, you’re missing a key step in the lifecycle of your content.”

“When something is fresh, you really need to get it out to relevant people and journalists to mention, link to, and include in their own pieces,” Kolomiets advises. “The longer you wait to reach out to people and distribute your content, the higher the chances that someone else will copy your content or your approach to the topic.”

3 distribution channel options

At this point, you know what content marketing distribution is and its importance. Now, let’s look at the types of content distribution channels you can tap into. There are three:

• Owned media such as email newsletter and website. These are digital marketing channels you own.
• Paid media such as PPC and social media ads. These are channels you need to pay for content promotion.
• Shared media such as LinkedIn and other social networks, forums, paid product placements, and so on. This is media you own in the sense that you create content for it. You simply use third-party platforms (think Quora) or partners (read: niche industry influencers) to promote it.

What are the top distribution channels to consider?

Within the categories of owned, paid, and shared media, there are several channels to decide between. How can you pick? The most popular channels are often a good indicator of where to start. According to HubSpot’s State of Marketing Report for 2022, the top three channels are:

1. Social media
2. Websites and blogs
3. Email marketing

But don’t count out other channels such as virtual events and paid aids. Ultimately, the channels you should go with depend on:

• Where your audience congregates online
• What content formats you create
• Your budget (if you’re considering paid distribution)

The 3-step framework for developing a content distribution strategy

A content distribution plan is crucial to ensure each piece of content gets maximum visibility.

Having a pre-defined process also helps you commit, making sure you don’t push content promotion to the back burner. Additionally, a distribution strategy that targets specific metrics can help you evaluate your content promotion performance.

So, how and where do you get started? Use this 3-step framework to create a distribution strategy for all the great content you create.

Note: This framework assumes you already have a pool of high-quality content to share with your audience.

1. Identify content distribution channels most relevant to your audience

There’s a variety of promotion channels to try. The most effective ones, however, are the channels your audience uses.

For example, say you’re targeting a localized audience of Baby Boomers. Facebook will be a more effective distribution channel than TikTok, where the younger generation hangs out.

So, a good first step here is to revisit your buyer personas to determine the most relevant channels. You’ll also want to look at your available resources as you list out potential channels. Why? Say you have limited financial resources, for instance. That will dictate whether you can or should go all in on social ads as your primary distribution channel.

2. Create and document a distribution plan

Once you’ve shortlisted the top distribution channels you’ll use, you can move on to the next step.

Create a promotion plan that covers the exact steps you’ll take to promote content on each channel. This will ensure that nothing falls through the cracks. Plus, documenting the process will make it easy for you to educate other team members on content promotion.

Pro tip: Create channel-specific content distribution templates. With GatherContent, for instance, you can create a template for writing promotional tweets.

You can also add in-line instructions on how to optimize content for each channel. For example, this blog post template gives reminders for writers on how to optimize content for search.

The best part? You can also add a promotion checklist to each new content piece. This checklist can include anything from notes on adding metadata, social media captions, and so on. Using such a checklist streamlines content production and distribution. It ensures that all promotional content is ready on time, reducing back and forth.

That said, make sure you clearly address the following in your content distribution documents:

• Promotion steps, or how you will personalize, repurpose, and optimize your content
• The benefits of each channel, including the audience it’ll help you reach
• Promotion etiquette or channel-specific engagement and tone rules
• The content formats you’ll distribute
• Promotion frequency for each channel
• Key performance indicators (KPIs) to track

3. Block time for distribution in your editorial calendar

Successful content distribution takes time. It’s essential that you set time apart for content marketing distribution.

Start with creating a distribution step in your content workflow. For example, your workflow could include steps like: new post ideas > draft > in review > editing > ready to publish > promoting.

Having content distribution in your workflow helps you reserve time for it. Too, it’s a good reminder that work on each piece of content doesn’t stop with publishing. It goes on with effective promotion.

In GatherContent, you can add a date for each piece you’re promoting and it will show up in your content calendar. You can even assign the job to particular team members so content is pushed out to each channel you select in step one.

7 content distribution tips for maximizing the benefits of content

In this section, we’ve got a brief roundup of tools to use and seven proven tips for you from the pros.

1. Use the right content distribution tools

The right tools speed up content distribution, making it easy for you. Try the following:

• GatherContent

GatherContent helps you prepare content for distribution. You can document your entire distribution strategy here and create channel-specific promotion templates. Or add in-line content optimization notes and promotion checklists within each content piece.

Thanks to GatherContent’s multiple integrations, you can also prep content for publishing easily. For example, the WordPress integration lets you publish via your content management system without losing formatting.

• Social media scheduler

100% manual posting isn’t sustainable for many businesses and organizations. So, you’ll need a scheduler for consistent publishing and performance analysis. Pick one like Hootsuite or Sprout Social. (In addition to scheduling, these offer functions like social listening, reporting, and audience insights.)

• Outbrain

Outbrain is a content discovery tool that pushes your content on popular publications. In other words, it helps your target audience find you. Looking for an Outbrain alternate? Try Taboola.

• BuzzSumo

This tool is essential for finding trending data on your and your competitor's content performance. Using the data BuzzSumo provides, you can tell:

• Which content format performs best
• What topics generate the most social shares
• What content length is ideal

This information can inform the way you approach both distribution and content creation.

2. Encourage healthy dialogue using your content

Gareth A. Davies, Content Lead at Parabol, recommends finding, joining, and actively participating in the communities where your audience is. What does using this approach mean?

"You don’t only push content, but contribute to larger debates, help others, and only share your work when it’s a net positive contribution to the community."

Gareth A. Davies

Content Lead, Parabol

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LinkedIn

As a bonus, ask the same community for feedback on your content. “Ask for feedback on how to make your content better,” Davies says. “[This shows you’re coming] from a place of humbleness and reliability, rather than coming off as a faceless brand. Nobody wants to have content pushed in their face; it's about finding audience-content fit.”

3. Get your team to promote content

One way to do this effectively is to “make it easier for others on your team to share content,” Berrak suggests. “I craft suggested copy for our sales team to share with their networks.”

You can do the same, especially if you use GatherContent will help. For instance, you can ask writers and contributors to share three tweets per post. You can also use the same document to add a LinkedIn caption for your CEO to share the post from their personal account.

4. Cross-collaborate to increase your reach

“Start co-creating content with other relevant people and companies in your niche,” advises Kas Szatylowicz, the Head of Organic Growth at V7.

“Running co-branding campaigns to boost your brand awareness and attract traffic.” It also gets your content in front of the right audience. Of course, provided that you partner with brands that target the same audience as you.

5. Build backlinks for your content

Are you distributing content via search engine optimization (SEO) in hopes of ranking in search? If so, you’ll find this tip pretty helpful.

Snizhana explains: “Once your piece is finished (and it’s ideally better than the competition), reach out to sources who link to the competition. Tell them you have something better for their consideration. This works in so many cases and it’s an [effective] tip because most journalists love updating their content with fresh, new research.”

6. Set audience expectations and deliver

Another content distribution tip is to “post regularly at the same time,” according to Jeannie. “This way, you’re setting expectations for your audience, which is a great thing, but only if you can remain consistent.”

“Example: A recent podcast I listen to puts new episodes out every Saturday morning. This past Saturday, they were yet again delayed for hours and hours, infuriating the audience to the point where they were threatening to just unsubscribe,” Assimos explains further.

The takeaway? Be a reliable source of information. Anything less will frustrate and disappoint your audience. This won’t do you any favors as far as content marketing results.

7. Repurpose content before distributing it

Lastly, it’s essential you match the type of content with the distribution channel. Keep in mind that “if you make content for search, it probably won’t do as well on social. Your email campaign probably won’t either,” highlights Josh Spilker, Director of Content at Range.

The solution? Repurposing content to align it for each channel.

“If you want to re-use [content] in different channels, you’ll have to repurpose and re-think your content. This means it’s now a different type of content,” Spilker says. “Set the right expectations for the job of each piece of content.”

Here’s an example of how repurposing content works, another of which we’ll see later. Create a bite-sized explainer video from a how-to content piece. Repurpose the takeaways from the same content into a Facebook post, a couple of tweets, a Twitter thread, a Quora answer, and more. You can also record a podcast episode based on it or vice versa.

3 examples of content distribution done right

Ready to see some of the tips we’ve discussed in action? Here are three real-life examples of smart content distribution and what you can learn from them.

1. Simya Solutions uses owned and shared distribution channels

First up is a lesson in choosing the right distribution channels. In other words, the ones that will allow you to reach the largest portion of your audience. On using Simya Solutions’ Ling App to distribute content widely, Simon Bacher says:

"We publish 15 to 20 articles related to language learning on our company website monthly. We then repurpose and distribute the content across our social media accounts and mobile app. Our gamified language learning app has over 10 million downloads, making it an excellent distribution channel to promote our brand."

Simon Bacher

Co-Founder and CEO, Simya Solutions

Twitter

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LinkedIn

As you can see, Simya uses two top channels: social media and its website/blog. One is owned and one is shared, each having the power to effectively reach different portions of the audience. But the company also uses another owned channel with incredible reach—its mobile app.

This is a textbook example of how to “go where your customers are.” Choose the top places you can reach them, including places where they’re already engaging with you, and focus on those channels.

2. Social Media Examiner repurposes content

“One of the most powerful forms of content repurposing is turning spoken word into written text.” So says Marina Vaamonde of HouseCashin.

"The Social Media Examiner gets the best of both worlds by turning episodes of their podcast, Social Media Marketing with Michael Stelzner, into long-form blog posts. Listeners can easily reference back to points without searching through endless audio, and non-listeners can consume the information in a completely different format!"

Marina Vaamonde

Founder, HouseCashin

Twitter

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LinkedIn

This aspect of Social Media Examiner’s distribution strategy makes content more accessible. It gets the content in front of more of the right audience in their preferred formats. And it no doubt saves the content team time. Rather than producing separate pieces per channel, they modify content for distribution on other channels.

No matter which channels are right for your business or organization, repurposing can bring you the same benefits.

3. Cathay Pacific encourages employees to distribute content

Last is a masterclass in leveraging and building up the personal brands of employees.

For more than 7 years, Cathay Pacific Airways has successfully run an employee advocacy program. This program encourages its tens of thousands of employees to share their expertise. Josh Tyler of Tell Me Best explains, “They provide a centralized platform for Cathay Pacific pilots, flight attendants, and baggage handlers to engage with their audience.”

"Cathay highlights the value its employees bring by letting them become thought leaders in the industry. Their firsthand experience in their roles is a great resource for travel or flying-related content. People can look to a Cathay Pacific employee on various social media channels for any travel questions, tips, or inspiration."

Josh Tyler

CEO, Tell Me Best

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LinkedIn

Employees distribute company content to their audiences, giving it maximum reach. And many also create content and have influential personal brands of their own that draw attention back to Cathay. The lesson?

Don’t fear employees having or building personal brands. Instead, create the kind of culture and top-quality content that fosters a willingness to help with distribution.

Double down on promoting and amplifying your content

With that, you have a strategic blueprint and the knowledge you need to master content distribution. Yet, as you promote your content, be sure to review your results. The data can reveal which content formats and topics resonate best with your audience. This will tell you which content to prioritize.

And, while you’re at it, increase your content’s lifespan by updating it as needed. The longer you keep it fresh and packed with relevant, valuable info, the longer it can generate results for you. It's wise to schedule periodic audits to determine what content needs to be refreshed. Then, schedule necessary content updates on your calendar so that they’re not forgotten.