If you’re a marketing director for a small business or brand, you’ve likely made content a key part of your marketing strategy – and that’s great!
Content marketing continues to rule when it comes to creating a brand profile and promoting awareness of your service or product. Hopefully, you’re already putting into play all of the facets of a varied, dynamic content strategy: powerful, value-adding articles, videos, slideshows, infographics, and more. Maybe you’ve already seen the positive results of this strategy. While writing content is good, and creating great content is even better, content creation is still only half the battle.
The marketing challenge is this
Once you’ve invested the time and effort into creating this awesome content, how can you make sure that the most people get the chance to see it?
To help you think about how to get your content out into the world, we’ve collected some of the best content distribution channels below.
1. Email newsletters
Email newsletters are the dependable veteran of content distribution: they’ve been on the team for as long as anyone can remember, and they still have the muscle to get the job done well. Consider adding a regular, timely email newsletter to your content distribution strategy. Once a customer has subscribed to your newsletter (likely through your website), it’s one of the most direct, simple channels to broadcast news, features, and information about your brand or product, and to draw attention to your new content. Newsletters are also eminently shareable – all it takes is a simple forward for readers to share your content with friends. Simple analytics programs can also help you track the open and click-through rates of newsletters so you can better target your efforts. Just make sure the newsletters are in-line with your overall content strategy, and that they provide a value of their own.
2. Social network profiles
Just like email newsletters, social media benefits you by being super shareable. Consolidating your social media profiles lets you simply and efficiently distribute your content to anyone who has liked you, followed you, or added you to their circles. Most small businesses now have at least a Facebook or Twitter account, but why not expand to Instagram, Pinterest or Google+ to reach a new customer base and further show your creativity and vision? Social media also offers a much wider distribution of content and also the potential for your best content to go viral.
3. Paid channels
In order to generate traffic and attention to content, many businesses and websites rely on the pay-per-click (PPC) model, a form of internet advertising in which the advertiser pays for clicks on their ads, only paying for actual traffic driven to their website. Depending on your budget and industry, this might be a good option for you. If you do want to take your content to this level of visibility, paid content discovery platforms like Google Adwords, Facebook’s PPC platform, and Outbrain Amplify can radically extend the reach of your content. These content discovery platforms can help you find a whole new audience that otherwise might not have been looking for you.
4. Develop relationships with other content writers
What can other content writers do for you? With the proliferation of content now on the web, relationships with other quality content creators can help strengthen and diversify your own work and cement your place in the web’s content network. Offer to guest blog for trusted sources, and give other bloggers the chance to do the same on your site. Link-backs are a great way to market your content, especially when they come from truly reputable sources.
These are just some of the marketing distribution channels that can simply, efficiently, and inexpensively help you extend your reach. With a little creativity and elbow grease, you can attain the same results as a big marketing firm even without the big resources.
Looking for more tips on how to create great content? Check out this post on building a content strategy.