How To Streamline And Maximise Your Content Distribution
Jordan McFadyen
Marketing Strategy & Purposeful AI Leadership | 'Marketing Mindset' Podcast Host | Founder @DoneByNine
Listen to the podcast or read the written version below:
You’ve spent time, resources and budget creating new content, to only use that content once, not see results and move on to the next shiny object.
It’s a content recipe for disaster.
So today, I’ll share with you how we’ve built a clearer roadmap with our content distribution strategy so that it doesn’t feel disjointed and cluttered.
Plus, this strategy allows us to create evergreen content that remains relevant and empowers our team to reshare and redistribute that content forever.
Create Once, Distribute Forever
"Spray and walk away" may work for driveway cleaners - but not with your content strategy.
It’s commonplace to see a marketing team or business owners sink a lot of time, resources and budget into creating content, then only use that content once, not see results and move on to the next shiny object or tactic.
This strategy is backward and wasteful.
So let’s make an agreement that the? "spray and walk away" content strategy for your business ends today.?
And then, we’ll aim to build a clearer roadmap towards your content distribution strategy that won’t feel disjointed and cluttered and lead to poor results.
The fact is, the marketplace is getting more and more cluttered; AI is making Google Ads and META ads easier for marketing teams and businesses - which means that the importance of creating amazing content to cut through and then having the right strategy to distribute that content is more important than ever.
So let’s explore some ideas on how to build a content distribution strategy to maximise the potential of your content.
First step: start creating evergreen content
A lot of the issues that we see with businesses in their content marketing is that they spend a lot of resources on creating content that isn’t designed with ongoing distribution in mind.
This is where 'evergreen content' enters the room.
It’s a content strategy that all starts by pinpointing the right topics, that have long-term relevance to your audience.
In a lot of B2B industries, this is typically content that forms the foundation of your industry knowledge, builds trust and authority in your marketing or tackles problem-solving related to your field.?
How-to guides, industry reports, white papers and downloadable resources.
The key is focusing on problems your audience will likely encounter consistently. Not just now - but also in the future, as this increases the time that the content will remain relevant, which then extends it's distribution life.
Remember that you're aiming to build a resource that will be as useful in the future as it is right now.
Side note: good evergreen content can (and should) benefit from occasional updates.?Trends change, new information becomes available, and updating your content helps ensure it stays accurate and continues to provide value.
Second step: focus on repurposing your content
Repurposing evergreen content (or any of your content) is still one of the biggest problems we see with businesses we work with.
So let’s explore ways that I’ve been able to make this process much easier - and take up less head space.
For the purpose of this article, let’s use this article and the actual plan that we have for both its distribution and the content that we can generate from it.
Firstly, we’ve written this piece of content to ensure that it's relevant to our target audience and the people that we’re trying to reach with our marketing efforts, and we’ve also ensured that it’s packed full of valuable insights, strategies and information to help build our authority and share our knowledge of our core product - marketing strategies.
Now, we could take that content, add it to our blog and share it once as a link on LinkedIn and Facebook. But then it’s guaranteed to then only reach a fraction of our audience.
Here's where repurposing comes in.?
When I’m creating content, I’m trying to build valuable segments in that content, that could then be transformed into other, smaller or different pieces of valuable content. This helps extend the reach and ideas and strategies.
In this case, this article has also been recorded into a podcast format.
However, instead of just recording the podcast, I also set up a tripod with a camera and recorded the video version of this content as well.
Video allows you to convey the same information but in a more engaging and dynamic way. The video also opens up new distribution channels, such as YouTube or Facebook and Instagram Reels or LinkedIn video content.
So right now, we’re at 3 different formats, stemming from the same piece of content (and created together at the same time)
领英推荐
All of these examples are currently ‘long-form’, so how can we now take those long-form pieces of content and break these down into bite-sized chunks?
If we go back to the content creation planning above, I write and plan our content in ways that make it easy for us to cut up and distribute that content in smaller chunks - while then also allowing us to link back to and promote the long-form version.
With this piece of content, we’ll look at taking key ideas, strategies and excerpts and we're planning on using it in the following ways:
And that’s only a few ideas we’ll execute for this content alone.
You could take this much further, and I encourage you to think outside the box when it comes to repurposing and your distribution plan.
The key is to plan smarter and repurpose the content that you've already spent time creating, thinking about and planning.
Here are some further ideas on how you could take a piece of content like this and take it to the next level:
So, by creating evergreen content and then repurposing your content in different ways, you're not only maximising the return on the time and effort you put into creating your content, but you're also ensuring that your valuable insights and knowledge reach as wide and diverse an audience as possible.
So how can we distribute this content??
The above all sounds well and good - but now you're asking yourself:
"Yeah great Jordan, but how the hell are you going to keep track of all of this content and distribute it like you’ve planned above - especially if you don’t have a marketing team like you do?"
The main two tools I can’t stress enough - and the combination has changed the game for us - are having a truly in-depth, overall marketing strategy that clearly identifies your audience, their problems and their desires.
And then coupling marketing strategy with a marketing content plan - it’s what we call our ‘Marketing Blend’ here at Done By Nine.
I hear you. If you’ve taken the steps above, you’ve potentially now got too much content to think about.
It’s scattered across your Google Drive, taking far too long to find, let alone cut and then repurpose.
So our 'Marketing Blend' is built containing our full ‘Content Library’.
While this 'Content Library' sounds extra fancy, don't overthink it. Ours is built withing a Google Spreadsheet that displays the key information on any piece of content that we create.
However, it’s also built in a way that promotes and encourages the different methods that it can be distributed, alongside when that content was last distributed.
The key columns and items that we track are:
Having this ‘home’ to our content really has been a game changer. It takes the hard work out of planning your content distribution, keeps the entire team on the same page, collates a home of where your content lives and helps free up your headspace and time, especially when your sorting through your cluttered content.
Trust me, build this now while you are building your content, instead of having to go back and tidy up your old content.
On our website, we also detailed the actual tools we use for our current content strategy, alongside ways that you can measure your content distribution. Measuring is so important as it encourages us to try and find new ways to distribute content and find new ways to communicate with our audience in a way that meets them where they are.
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So let’s go back to making an agreement that the? ‘spray and walk away’ content strategy for your business ends today.?
Your content is becoming more and more important in marketing online and creating and implementing an effective content distribution strategy is now critical.
Challenge yourself to create evergreen content, designed for ongoing relevance to your audience coupled with a clear repurposing strategy to maximise the potential and reach of your content - without having to go back to the drawing board each time.
And then build an efficient content distribution plan, and streamline this process with a "Content Library," a hub for all your created content.
This will help you organise and distribute your content - not just once - but forever.
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1 年Looks like a more sophisticated version of the Google Doc method I use. Yours is better. That said, unless the content stimulates action (including comments on LinkedIn and other social platforms), it's a wasted exercise.