What is Content Distribution?

What is Content Distribution?

Content Distribution is the act of promoting content to online audiences in multiple media formats through various channels. These channels can be categorized into three groups: Owned, Earned, and Paid.

• Owned Content Distribution: This includes distributing content to web properties that belong to you, like your blog, email newsletter, social media, or microsite.
• Earned Content Distribution: This is when third-parties distribute your content or content about you through press coverage, guest article contributions, retweets or shares, or product reviews.
• Paid Content Distribution: This is when you explicitly pay for content distribution. Payment could take many forms, but often works on a cost-per-click (CPC) model where the owner of the content pays a certain amount every time someone clicks through to view the content.

Content Types for Distribution

There are many types of content that you can distribute. From blog posts to case studies, infographics to podcasts, and white papers to videos, your distribution strategy is only limited by your imagination.

1. Blog Posts/Articles

As one of the most dominant forms of content on the web, blog posts and articles have a great deal to offer your audience. Detailed written content can drive lots of organic traffic to your site, while also informing consumers about your products, brand, and expertise in the field.

2. White Papers, eBooks, and Reports

A Recent study on content shows that Long-form content has proven to be abundantly valuable to businesses across the board. Ultimately, the goal of this type of content is to promote an in-depth level of expertise and industry knowledge. If written properly, white papers and in-depth reports can be incredibly effective at garnering the attention of leads in the (crucial) research stage in any content marketing distribution strategy.

3. Podcasts

Podcasts weren’t a big deal a decade ago, but now, there are more than 29 million podcast episodes on the airwaves. This form of audio has grown rapidly over the past several years, and it’s a smart idea for businesses to jump on the bandwagon now – if they haven’t already. Fortunately, there are plenty of content marketing distribution software solutions and platforms available to promote your podcast.

4. Email Newsletter/Nurturing Campaigns

If your business consistently has new products, updates, or information to share with readers, a regular email newsletter is a “bread and butter” form of digital content delivery. Just make sure that you give your emails meaningful headlines so they don’t end up in the spam or trash folder!

5. Videos

Did you know that 75 million people in the United States watch an online video every day? The ease of use and accessibility of video over the past several years has made it a must-use form of content for businesses of all shapes and sizes.

6. Thought Leadership or POVs

People love hearing from experts. It gives them a source of information they can trust, no matter what subject or industry they’re researching. These interactions can be done in the form of a blog, podcast interview, video, or even a webinar, then shared through a variety of content distribution sites.

7. Infographics

Infographics are great because they’re easily shareable and easy to consume. Compile the data you want to include, arrange it in an artful yet readable manner, then slap it on your blog and/or social media profiles! Readers love infographics because they’re easy to digest and understand – and are packed with valuable information.

8. How-To Guides

As soon as you type the phrase “how to” into Google’s search box, the engine gives you countless suggestions. Whether people are attempting to learn how to boil eggs for the first time or download a YouTube video, a comprehensive guide can be extremely helpful. Think about what people need to learn in your field and what kind of informative directions you can provide.

9. Social Media Posts

Using your social media platforms as content distribution networks isn’t enough; you should also be creating content that’s specific to your various social media channels. For instance, on Instagram, you can create stories or share live chats with your viewers.

10. Case Studies and Client Profiles

Case studies and client profiles are more difficult to find on most business websites. These take a great deal of time and energy to create – you need to have proven success to write about. These forms of content hold a substantial amount of weight with readers – they’re essentially success stories that show the power of your company and its services.

Content Distribution Tools

There are many different tools beyond Outbrain that can be used to round out your content distribution strategy. Here are a few of our favorites.

1.Mailshake.com – Email outreach is still an effective way of getting your content in front of the right people. Manually sending new content to your contacts is very time consuming, but the personal touch is still a critical piece of this outreach puzzle. Mailshake allows you to automate certain pieces of the process that will save you tons of time.

2.Wisestamp.com – Think about all the emails your employees send everyday. They all have some kind of standard email signature that usually includes a link or two. Wisestamp allows you to make use of that space to include links to your most recent piece of content.

3.ClicktoTweet.com – Making it easier for the consumers of your content to share that content is an important part of any distribution strategy. Adding share buttons is part of it, but actively identifying portions of each piece that you think people would want to tweet is taking this strategy to the next level. Click to Tweet makes doing this dead simple.

4.GaggleAmp.com – Your employees are often the most active sharers of your content, but coordinating what, when, and where to share is a logistical nightmare and can keep your content’s reach from growing. GaggleAmp allows you to hook up all the social networks of your employees to a central hub, controlling everything about the employee sharing process in one place.

Conclusion

Content distribution encompasses many different channels and strategies. To ensure you’re promoting your content in all the necessary areas be sure to consider channels that fall into the Owned, Earned, and Paid buckets.