Content distribution strategy: The ultimate guide
Jeroen Gunter
Learn why a content distribution strategy should be at the heart of your digital marketing. Grow faster with our in-depth look on content distribution.
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Contentoo
Content distribution is a vital component of any content marketing strategy. It determines when and where your content will be displayed.

This ensures your content is aligned with your audiences’ media consumption preferences. As a result, you improve the visibility of your content and drive engagement, which helps you achieve a better ROI. For best results, use a mix of owned, earned and paid content.

Be sure to carefully align your content distribution with your audiences’ behaviour and your business goals. Selecting the right KPIs for your specific content marketing goals helps keep your distribution strategy on track and enables you to continually optimise your activities.

If you’re like most digital marketers, you devoted about 25% of your budget over the past year to creating content. And you plan on devoting the same amount of time and budget – or more – to content creation in the year ahead.

Content creation is clearly a major priority for most digital marketers. But it takes more than that to reach your target audiences – in addition to content creation, you also need content distribution. That’s why it’s vital to develop and optimise an effective content distribution strategy that matches your audiences’ preferences and your marketing goals.

Whether you’re new to content distribution or looking for the latest tips and tricks to fine tune your existing approach, you’ll find the answers to all your questions in this ultimate guide.

We’ll get you up to speed on the latest terminology and definitions, show you some of the most useful content distribution tools on the market and share some real-life insights from successful content distribution strategies. Read on to learn all this and more.

In short, content distribution is simply the act of publishing your content. But if you look at content distribution from a strategic point of view, you start to see why it is so important. There are two basic ingredients behind any content distribution strategy:

Timing: When do you publish your content?

Placement: Where do you publish your content?

By combining these two factors effectively, you ensure that your content will make it in front of the right eyes at the right time.

A strong content distribution strategy helps you get the maximum impact out of your content marketing activities. Since most marketing teams devote significant time and budget to creating content, it’s important to have a distribution plan in place, so your hard work pays off.

A content distribution strategy is crucial for ensuring your content reaches its intended audience. This, in turn, is the key to achieving your content marketing goals. After all, no matter how good your content is, it can only help your business grow if it’s distributed at the right times and in the right places, so the right people can see it.

When you implement a consistent content distribution strategy, you enjoy key benefits like these:

People are constantly flooded with information that competes for their attention. Although estimates vary widely, at least one scientific study has found that the average consumer sees around 100 ads each day.

That number is probably much higher if you count how many pieces of content (not just ads) an average person sees. After all, any time you perform a Google search, you are presented with thousands of results. Sure, 75% of people never scroll past the first page of Google search results. But the average person performs 3 or more Google searches a day, so even those page 1 results can quickly add up.

An effective distribution strategy brings focus and purpose to the way you publish your content. This makes it much more likely to stand out to your audience members. Instead of just putting your content out there and hoping for the best, you’re being selective about when and where you publish. That helps your content rise above the vast amount of information that your audience encounters on the internet every day.

We all want our audiences to engage with our content. But engagement can only take place under the right conditions. Your content needs to be available to your audiences in familiar formats and through channels that they’re already comfortable using. The average brand cannot realistically expect to drive its audience to a new channel, such as an unfamiliar social media platform. You have to go to the platforms where your audiences are already spending their time.

Placement is key to any successful content distribution strategy. So, with the right distribution plan in place, you’ll be selectively posting content in places that are much more likely to attract and encourage engagement.

The return on investment for your content marketing activities always depends on your actual goals. After all, you can only define success in terms of how close you are to reaching the goals you’ve set. But no matter what your content marketing goals are, it’s likely that effective content distribution will increase your chances of achieving them. And as a result, you’ll earn a better return on your investment of time and resources.

Let’s take brand-building for example. If you’re like 50% of the content marketing experts we recently surveyed, you probably consider brand-building to be one of your top content marketing priorities. The best way to build your brand is to enhance its online visibility and to be present in the places where you’re most likely to come into contact with valuable leads and customers.

And that’s what content distribution is all about. So, by implementing a content distribution strategy, you put yourself on the track to successful brand building – and getting a better ROI on your content marketing.

A common mistake is to devote too much attention to the distribution of one type of content while ignoring other content types.

For example, you might have a clear distribution plan in place for your social media posts: you post at regular intervals and via specific platforms and accounts. But have you considered a distribution plan for other important content types, like guest blog posts, long reads and email newsletters?

Most content marketers rely on a mix of content types. The most effective distribution strategy is one that accounts for all your different content assets. Having a distribution strategy in place brings clarity to your content calendar and helps you maintain a consistent output of new content.

What do you want to achieve through your content marketing activities? Set goals that reflect your business’s needs. For example, attracting new business (conversion), raising brand awareness in a new market or fostering long-term customer relationships.

For each goal, be sure to select a reliable set of KPIs to help you track your content’s performance. Here are some of the most common content marketing goals, along with the best KPIs for tracking them:

Brand awareness: page views, unique visitors, social shares, brand mentions.

Engagement: time on page, bounce rate, comments, likes, shares, scroll depth.

Lead generation: conversion, click-through rate, number of leads, form completions.

SEO and organic traffic: keyword rankings, backlinks, domain authority.

Sales and revenue: conversion, customer lifetime value (CLV), cart abandonment.

Customer loyalty: churn rate, customer feedback, repeat business.

Thought leadership: domain authority, guest publishing, brand mentions.

Cost efficiency: cost per lead, cost per acquisition, return on investment, traffic value.

Now create a timeline for how often you want to publish content on each channel. The more frequently you can publish new content, the better, as this will ensure a steady flow of new touchpoints that appear in your audiences’ social media feeds and online searches.

But let’s face it: you may not have the staff and resources to publish new content every day. In that case, focus on consistency over frequency. Set a realistic timeline for creating and publishing new content at regular intervals. Just be sure to focus your attention on the channels that have the greatest potential impact. Also remember to schedule time for regularly auditing and optimising your existing content.

With all the different factors to keep in mind, content distribution is a complex, time-consuming task. Fortunately, there is no shortage of helpful, automated marketing tech tools to help make it a little easier.

In addition to the most popular social media and video-sharing platforms (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube and TikTok), here are a few more interesting content distribution tools and platforms out there:

HubSpot: HubSpot offers a comprehensive suite of inbound marketing tools, including content distribution features.

Medium: Medium is a user-friendly social publishing platform where users can post content and instantly reach a large, engaged audience.

Cision PR Newswire: This platform, better known simply as PR Newswire, is ideal for press releases and broader content distribution to news outlets.

GaggleAMP: GaggleAMP is a social publisher that lets you share content with your company’s employees on multiple social media platforms. It’s used to promote employee advocacy.

WiseStamp: WiseStamp lets you distribute content via your email signatures. For example, you can automatically include links to your latest content in every email you send.

Lastly, let’s go over some tactics that have proven effective in our experience as a strategic content partner to some of the world’s fastest-growing brands. To ensure your content distribution strategy is a success, consider incorporating these best practices:

Prioritise high-impact activities: If you have to choose between multiple activities, always prioritise the one that is most aligned with your audiences’ preferences, whether it’s social media, blogging, events or something else.

Set up a manageable content pipeline: Remember that it takes time to create high-quality content. Avoid trying to plan too many activities all at once, and be sure to build in as much lead time as possible.

Use a mix of paid, owned and earned content: In any effective content distribution strategy, there should be room for all three types of content distribution – especially paid and owned.

Work with influencers: Selectively partnering with influencers can extend your brand’s reach and credibility.

Embrace a continual improvement strategy: Content distribution requires some trial and error, and it can take time and testing to discover what works best. The best approach is to remain flexible and continually optimise your content based on past performance.

Follow the data: Instead of relying on gut instinct, follow your data. Be sure to track multiple KPIs for each goal you’re pursuing and identify how your optimisation efforts affect performance.

Reuse and repurpose existing content: Instead of simply “distributing” content, remember that you can “redistribute” it. Make room in your content calendar to regularly audit and update your existing content. This helps improve the ROI on your original content creation even further by extending the life cycle of your content.

A solid content distribution strategy is crucial for making sure your brand’s content reaches the right audiences at the right times. It ensures that your valuable content doesn’t go unnoticed, and it maximises your return on investment.

By following the steps and best practices outlined in this ultimate guide and using the suggested tools and platforms, you’ll be well on your way to creating an effective content distribution strategy and achieving your content marketing goals.

Are you interested in making the most out of your content? Click here and discover why we at Contentoo are the go-to option for content marketing services.