If you’ve been reading my content for a while, you know I’m always emphasizing the importance of creating exceptional content. You’ve got to go the extra mile, cover a topic in more detail, and create something that’s really worth your reader’s time.
But that’s only half the battle.
You could spend a week creating the greatest blog post in the world. But it won’t be worth much if you don’t have an equally good content distribution strategy in place. In fact, I’d go as far as saying content distribution is more important than content creation at
In this post, I’ll teach you the fundamentals of business content distribution, present a step-by-step plan you can follow to get your content out there, and share my secret tips and tools to effectively distribute content.
What Is Content Distribution?
Content distribution is a way to get as many eyeballs on your content as possible. Content distribution includes the processes of publishing, sharing, and promoting your content across various channels.
Effective content distribution is vital if you want people to read your content. The truth is there’s so much new content created every day that it’s hard to stand out. These statistics don’t make for good reading:
There are 70 million new WordPress posts created every month alone.
90.63 percent of content gets no Google traffic
The average engagement rate of an organic Facebook post is just 1.52 percent
Just 5.7 percent of pages will rank in Google’s top 10 within a year of publication
A content distribution strategy can tilt the odds in your favor. By disseminating it across multiple channels, you can get your content in front of the right readers at the right time. And more eyeballs should mean more sales.
The Content Distribution Channels You Need to Know
There are three major content distribution channels you can use to share your content: owned, paid, and earned.
Owned
These are the channels and properties your company owns. It includes your website, your social media channels, your newsletter, and anything else you have control over.
Here’s an example of me using my X (Twitter) account to promote a blog post. As you can see it’s generated over 10,000 views so far.
Paid
Paid channels are any which your company pays to distribute your content. Think PPC or social media ads, for instance. Influencers and other forms of sponsored content can also be paid content distribution channels.
Here’s an example of the sales software company Gong using Google Ads to promote their latest industry report.
Earned
Earned channels are any third-party platform that promotes or shares your content for free. They like your content and you’ve “earned” the right to have it spread—usually by mentioning it on social media or linking to it on their blog or newsletter. Customers, bloggers, and other social media users are some of the most common types of earned distribution.