If you’re not using a content distribution management tool to keep track of your content process it’s a challenge to maintain a consistent and complete content marketing strategy as a business.
Content marketing is such an important part of advertising nowadays:
It’s estimated that over 200 million online users now use ad-blocking software on their computers, which is one of the main reasons why the advertising industry has shifted towards using content.
This has saturated the internet with content—it’s safe to say that many businesses have a hard time standing out. Just publishing isn’t enough anymore, you have to distribute.
By spending the time to create a solid and comprehensive content distribution workflow, you can almost guarantee the accuracy of your campaign. A good content marketing workflow makes it easy to manage, monitor and track your campaign, and will allow you to achieve the results you want to achieve.
Step 1: Determine which channels you’ll use for distribution.
The absolute first thing that you’ll want to set out to do is to identify and highlight which content distribution channels you’re going to be using in your strategy.
Identifying these unique channels helps to spread your focus across the best performing channels, ensuring your process is a lot more refined and a lot more successful.
B fully aware of the channels that are available to you—paid and organic advertising, internal content such as employee newsletters, and other channels should sit alongside social media and email.
Discovery gets your content on leading publications.
With discovery platforms like Taboola, you can easily use your marketing budget to promote your content across the open web. Instead of trying to distribute your content on leading publications yourself, which takes a lot of time to organize and can be very expensive, you can do it easily, all in one place.
The best thing about using this leading platform service is that you have the choice to only post content on trusted, authoritative brands and publications. This helps foster trust and credibility in your brand.
Don’t forget about the other traditional channels.
Email marketing and various social media channels, such as Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest, will probably be on your list, but it’s vital to remember that these aren’t the only channels available to you.
These channels can be broken down further—for example, email marketing is an umbrella term for customer emails, newsletters, email drip campaigns and much more.
Additionally, there are many other channels at your disposal. You can take advantage of Publisher Partnerships, using sites like BuzzFeed, PPC Ad Networks, or SEM.
There are a wealth of channels that you can use to distribute your content. Using the right mix of channels, is the first step in optimizing your content distribution workflow while maximizing the opportunities that your budget allows.
Step 2: Allocate content distribution by channel.
You must remember that every single piece of content you release is different, and although you have a content distribution plan, not every piece of content turn out to hit the mark.
For example, a research article, with an eye-catching headline might cost over $10,000 to create and produce, with research and man-hours, is going to require a lot more distribution effort and resources for a good ROI than a 500-word blog post.
When creating your content distribution workflow, it’s sometimes best to divide up your channels in the type of content that are available and by content type.
My personal list includes categories such as blog posts, e-books, infographics, mentions of social media, images and dedicated video content. This will give you the big picture—which pieces of content are distributed where, allowing you to better track your performance.
When you’re creating your content, follow the 80/20 rule. 80 percent of your content is solves a problem for your customer. 20 percent is used to promote your business, brand, service or products.
Step 3: Outline your workflow.
The outline for your workflow can vary from channel to channel, and will evolve as you discover what methods works best for you.
For example, a simple Twitter workflow may look something like;
- Schedule Tweets on the day of publish (around two posts per day, using tools like Buffer).
- Post your highest performing Tweet again three-days later and again one month later.
- Add to social archive to use again if exceeding posting and sharing averages.
It doesn’t have to be complicated, but it’s important to have, so you can follow it and make sure that your content is working to the best of its ability.
First, define the purpose of the piece of content. This could be brand awareness, engagement, or of course, promotion of your latest product or service.
You’ll also need to consider the time of day that you post for maximum effectiveness. With this information fresh in your mind, you’ll be able to optimize your content distribution workflow, so it works best for you and your business.
If implemented and analysed correctly, you’ll be maximising your business’s opportunities, both in terms of sales and lead generation.