How to develop an awesome content distribution strategy
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Content distribution remains one of the biggest headaches for content marketers, but it is the lifeblood of any content strategy. Stickyeyes’ Content Director Danny Blackburn explains how you can make your content move. With audiences increasingly finding ways to avoid branded content, and social networks limiting the reach of your brand message, Danny discusses how you can ensure that your content makes a mark on your audiences, using techniques that overcome the key barriers to content distribution.
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How to develop an awesome content distribution strategy
- 1. How to develop an awesome content distribution strategy. April 2016. Danny Blackburn, Content Director. @danny_blackburn
- 2. Failing todistribute your content properly is like shouting into an empty room. It’salot of effort for nothing.
- 3. The internet is a brilliant place to hide content.
- 4. Content doesn’t Credit: Lauren Licata move. work if it doesn’t
- 6. The answer issimple. Put the right content in front of the right people in the right places at the right times. It’spretty pointless. Of course, simple isn’t necessarily easy.
- 8. Owned Paid Shared Bloggers & vloggers PPC Social media Paid partnerships Display Email Homepage Communities YouTube channel Social media (organic) Store/POS Earned Brand advocacy Media outreach Placed content Influencer outreach Blog/Hub Apps Specialist websites Native ads Content networks Sponsored content Brand ambassadors Unpaid partnerships
- 10. Acontent distribution strategy which uses the right mix of channels in an integrated way will deliver more value than the sum of its parts.
- 11. So let’s take it step by step.
- 12. Step 1. Define your objectives at the outset.
- 13. “Content marketing is the marketing and business process for creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving a profitable consumer action.”
- 14. How to define your objectives. Content objectives depend on your business goals – but they generally fall into three core areas: Drive acquisition Content that delivers a sale or a lead – as one of many touchpoints or in its own right. Drive performance Content that enhances the performance of a customer engagement channel – eg SEO or conversion rate. Drive exposure Content that makes a splash in the marketplace – generating awareness and positive conversation.
- 15. Step 1. How is what you’re proposing going to capitalise on existing opportunities? How is what you’re proposing going to open up new and exciting opportunities?
- 16. Right objectives, right metrics. Direct Revenue Attributed Revenue SEO Revenue Search Rankings Traffic from content Brand Engage’t Reach / Awareness Acquisition-focussed Awareness-focuseed Having a clear understanding of your content objectives allows you to identify which metrics you’ll use to quantify how well your content is performing.
- 17. You can only develop an effective content distribution strategy if you’re crystal clear about what you’re trying to do with content.
- 19. In the old days, the rules were simple.
- 21. But things have changed. Evidently.
- 25. It depends.
- 26. But even the best content needs Even the best content needs a distribution budget. 85mYouTube views.
- 27. But even the best content needs But even the best content needs a distribution budget. It just doesn’t have to be traditional paid media. 83mYouTube views.
- 28. But even the best content needs Though a bit of paid can get the ball rolling nicely... £1kmediaspend 5.2m views
- 29. You have to invest in content distribution – somewhere between 20% and 70% of your total content budget is probably about right.
- 30. Step 3. Know your audience inside out.
- 31. “Our target demographic is female, 22-35, married with kids, with a household income of £25k to £35k.”
- 34. Start with your biggest fans - your customers.Butdon’tforgetthebigpicture.
- 35. Who are they? Where are they active? Why are they interested? When are they online? What do they want from you? Key digital audience questions:
- 36. Don’t rely on hunches. Dive into the data. There are loads of tools out there to help you understand your audience.
- 37. Introducing Pinpoint. Harnessing big data to generate insights into your online audience. Join the dots between multiple data sources to produce fully rounded audience insights. In-depth audience profiling – demographics, location, politics, professions, disposable income etc. How does your audience behave online? Device usage, social network preference, time spent online etc. Other insights - hobbies, activities, outlook on live, brand role preference, values etc. Sources include: Global Web Index / Proprietary Data Sets / Social Network Insights / YouGov / Experian / Hitwise
- 38. Insight considerations. Audience insights inform content distribution in many ways – from the channels they prefer and the things they search for, to the media they consume and the sites that influence them. The best strategies consider all these factors.
- 39. Data-led distribution. Data source: YouGov
- 40. Data-led distribution. Data source: YouGov
- 41. Data-led distribution. Data source: YouGov
- 42. Data-led distribution. When assessing channels to use for content distribution, consider both the proportion of the audience who use that platformAND how that compares against the baseline. Data source: Global Web Index 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% Facebook None of the above Twitter YouTube Google+ Instagram Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr PercentofPeople
- 43. Facebook insights. Facebook’s free insights tool is a great way to investigate how your audience behaves online. facebook.com/ads/audience-insights
- 44. Getting inside their heads. It’s important to put yourself in your audience’s shoes – what are they thinking?
- 45. Adeep understanding of your digital audience will lead you to the right content distribution strategy.
- 46. Step 4. Create your content with distribution front of mind.
- 47. Your goals determine the channels you should use. If distribution is an afterthought, it might not have the desired effect.
- 48. Motors.co.uk
- 49. Motors.co.uk
- 50. Links 19 pieces of coverage (13 with high authoritative links) Paid Media
- 51. 2nd highest trending post on Reddit The results. 75,339 views Over 42,000 entrants 3,748 social shares, comments and likes 3 mins 58 secs on-page engagement 22 linking domains 61 avg DA. 40.9m Hitwise traffic. Over 3k referrals
- 53. Think about distribution at every stage of the content ideation and creation process to give yourself the best chance of success.
- 54. Step 5. Build a strategy that’s just right for you.
- 55. Don’t be a sheep.
- 58. Finding a unique solution.
- 59. Owned Paid Shared Bloggers & vloggers PPC Social media Paid partnerships Display Email Homepage Communities YouTube channel Social media (organic) Store/POS Earned Brand advocacy Media outreach Placed content Influencer outreach Blog/Hub Apps Specialist websites Native ads Content networks Sponsored content Brand ambassadors
- 60. Staying true to your brand, your objectives and your audience will result in a unique and effective solution.
- 61. Step 6. Leverage a wide range of skills and experience.
- 63. Your goals determine the channels you should use. Content distribution skillsets. An integrated content distribution campaign needs to leverage the specialist skills and experience of a wide range of experts working closely together: Owned: • CRM, content management & search experts. Paid: • Digital biddable media experts. Earned: • PR, influencer marketing experts. Shared: • Social media, community management experts.
- 64. Example: Earned outreach. For example, having a tried-and-tested process that’s deployed by an experienced team allows us to deliver maximum impact from influencer-led SEO campaigns. Identify relevant websites Identify specific influencers Create outreach proposition Reach out to contact network Intensive personal dialogue End-to-end support & assistance Secure client credit Using our in- house WebCRM tool, we’ll identify the most relevant and suitable sites to deploy content on. We’ll then drill down further – identifying the individual influencers most likely to deliver what we need. The next step is to develop the assets we need to persuade our target influencers to get on board with the project. We then reach out to the influencers personally – leveraging our relationships and contact network. We’ll then communicate intensively with our influencer shortlist to ensure we get the right people. Once they’re on board, we’ll work closely with the influencers to give them what they want and need. When content is published, we’ll follow up secure that all-important client credit for SEO – a mention or a link.
- 65. Example: Paid media targeting. And our biddable media team can provide expert guidance on whether a broad-to-narrow paid approach is appropriate for a particular content campaign…
- 66. Example: Paid media targeting. Or whether an insight-led, narrow-to-broad approach offers and better and more cost-effective solution.
- 67. But we all know how hard it is to stop people working in silos. It’s impossible for one person to master them all.
- 68. But it can be hard getting teams to work together.
- 69. Unless you live in Stockphotoland.
- 70. Harnessing the different skills of channel experts is the most effective way to distribute content.
- 71. So that’s it. In a nutshell.
- 72. Time for some top takeaways.
- 73. 1. Start with the end in mind – define your goals from the outset.
- 74. 2. If you’re creating content, you need a distribution budget too.
- 75. 3. Understand your audience – get to know them inside out.
- 76. 4. Put distribution at the heart of the content ideation process.
- 77. 5. Develop a content strategy that’s right for you – don’t just follow the crowd.
- 78. 6. Use the skills and experience of channel experts to drive the biggest impact.
- 79. Thank you.
Hinweis der Redaktion
- Hi everyone and welcome to today’s webinar on content distribution. In this session I’m going explain the importance of developing an effective content distribution strategy for your brand, and give you some practical suggestions for how you can do that for your brand. Let’s start with a little context. We’re at a point where the benefits of content marketing are well known – brands understand that content is a powerful way to drive profitable revenue. And many are getting pretty good at creating content, with thousands of former journalists like me working in marketing agencies and client side. But that means there’s an absolute avalanche of content out there – the average person is exposed to hundreds if not thousands of pieces of content every single day. The real challenge is cutting through. Now the first step is to create content that’s truly valuable. The second – and most often overlooked element – is getting that content in front of the right people. That’s where a content distribution strategy comes in.
- If you’re failing to distribute your content effectively you’re basically shouting into an empty room. No one hears you. In my role I regularly audit the websites of prospective customers and it’s usually the same story – a blog hidden in a dusty corner of the site full of content that virtually no-one has ever seen. It’s tragic. So much time, effort and money is being invested in content – some of it really great stuff – that no-one ever reads. That’s bad marketing and bad business. It all comes from the mistaken assumption that content just gets found – if you build it they will come. Unless you have an incredibly powerful brand, a brilliant website and a fantastic SEO content strategy, that’s just not the case.
- The internet is a brilliant place to hide content.
- In a nutshell, content doesn’t work if it doesn’t move. You need to invest as much time, effort, thought, energy and money – yes, money – in reaching people as you invest in creating the content itself.
- But making content move isn’t as easy as just posting your latest blog on Facebook. Here’s the reason. When brands first started out on Facebook on a serious basis, it was essentially all about building a community of fans who you could talk to for free on a regular basis. Some brands spent literally tens of millions acquiring tens of millions of fans on the understanding they would be able to put marketing content in front of them for free forever more. Then Facebook changed the game. So the brands which spent millions buying those fans, now have to spend more to put each post in front of them. And judging by Facebook’s latest earnings, the strategy’s working out pretty well for them! We’re now at a point where the average large brand Facebook page is less than 2%. So maybe 20,000 of your million fans. So while that’s not quite shouting into an empty room, the vast majority of people in the room are looking the other way. Probably at cat videos.
- Thankfully, content distribution is pretty simple. You don’t need a degree in computation from Oxford. Which is lucky for me. All you have to do is put the right content in front of the right people in the right places at the right times. Now that might be simple, but it certainly isn’t easy. So how do you do it? That’s what I’m going to explain today.
- When you’re thinking about developing a content distribution strategy it helps to break down the challenge.
- There are four key marketing communications channels – owned, shared, paid and earned. Owned channels are essentially the channels you have 100% control over. Your website, your email database, your apps. But remember, it’s only a content distribution channel if there is an audience – so your homepage or your blog homepage is only a distribution channel if a significant number of users are visiting it every month. Owned channels can be very cost effective though things like in store and POS obviously have a cost attached. They can also be extremely powerful because they represent an opportunity to put content in front of an already engaged and receptive audience which already knows your brands and your products or services. As such, distributing content via your owned channels can be an incredibly effective way of ‘getting the ball rolling’. However, you need to be extremely respectful of your owned channels – this is valuable real estate which is often much in demand and more often than not used for highly commercial purposes – we regularly hear challenges like ‘why would I put your content here instead of my 10% discount offer?’ It’s a challenge you need to be ready for. Shared channels are basically those channels which you control, but which are ultimately not yours to control. Social media platforms all fall into this category – your Facebook page, YouTube channel, Instagram profile – they’re all really owned by the social networks. And they could change the rules at any moment – you may have seen a lot of posts on Instagram lately from brands encouraging you to ‘turn on post notifications’ ahead of the network’s move to an algorithmic newsfeed. The key difference between an owned channel and a shared channel is that you need to be constantly aware of the possibility that the rules could change. It’s entirely conceivable that Facebook could decide to do away with organic reach for brands altogether – we’’re practically there already. Paid channels are those which you have to pay to buy space on – so paid social, PPC, display, native ads, content networks like Taboola and Outbrain. As you can see by the length of the list here, these are plentiful. They can also be incredibly powerful – giving you easy access to huge audiences relatively inexpensively. These channels offer a brilliant opportunity to put the right content in front of the right people in the right places at the right tim. But the flipside is that unless you’re very careful you can quite easily waste large sums of money putting the wrong content in front of the wrong people in the wrong places at the wrong time. Of course, paid channels are inherently different to organic channels – people are regularly spammed with low-quality, unwanted, irrelevant ads and all the evidence shows that paid content is less trusted. You’ll also notice I’ve included bloggers and vloggers in here – that’s the reality of the situation now. Most bloggers and vloggers who command genuine influence are very aware of their market value to brands and they charge for it. And due to ASA regulations you and they need to be very clear about labelling paid for content as paid for content. Finally, earned channels are the holy grail - authoritative, powerful channels that provide money-can’t-buy levels of reach and influence. This ranges from big media sites – mail online, the guardian, the BBC etc – but also second tier and niches sites. There’s also influencer outreach – using the power of influencers and their channels to put your brand and content in front of specific groups. And I speak from experience – I have personally had branded social media bantz with Alan Sugar, Olympic athlete Mathew Pinsent and even 80s pop legend Sinitta (Google her in you’re under 35)! Crucially, using the right blend of these channels for your specific brand and your specific audience can add up to more than the sum of its parts. By using them together in a strategic and intelligent way you hit the content distribution sweetspot and drive significant added value.
- It’s important to stress the difference between content distribution and content discovery. Content distribution is basically pushing your content to people where they are. So, taking Facebook as an example, it’s content that needs to hold its own among your friend’s holiday photos, hilarious memes and viral cat videos. Content discovery is all about creating content in a specific way to ensure people are being ‘pulled’ into your content. This is where a solid SEO strategy is essential. Both are very powerful and both should be part of your wider content strategy. And crucially, you probably need different content for each – what you want to discover in your Facebook feed (in and amongst all those cat videos and people falling over) might be different from the stuff you actually go looking for online. Think about your own behaviour – what kind of content to you enjoy on Facebook? And what kind of content do you typically look for and consume via Google search?
- So in summary, the most effective way to distribute content is by using the right strategic mix of owned, paid, shared and paid channels.
- So how do we do that? Let’ take it step by step.
- The first crucial step is to define your objectives. You have to know what you’re tyring to do.
- It’s worth going right back to basics here. Content marketing is about creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience with the objective of driving a profitable consumer action. Unless what you’re doing is generating profitable revenue, you’re not doing it right.
- Defining content objectives is, in my experience, something that a lot of businesses struggle with. Yes, they know they want content to help them make money, but they’re not sure how exactly content can do that. There are three main ways. Content to drive acquisition. This is content which directly helps take people down the conversion funnel. By consuming this content, the user becomes significantly more likely to convert. It can be turning awareness into consideration, or consideration into purchase. But it’s all about moving them down the path to purchase. Content to drive performance. This is slightly less direct, but no less commercially valuable. For example, content that boosts your site’s SEO performance can have a transformational impact on your bottom line. Doing that these days is a complex thing, using a wide range of content tactics – from perfectly crafted on-site copy to powerful outreach campaigns which generate coverage and links on authoritative sites to highly engaging on-site experiences which boost engagement metrics. Content to drive exposure. Again, this is another step away from direct revenue driving, but it’s a well-established marketing fact that increasing brand awareness, recall and understanding increases sales – it’s the basis of the whole TV advertising industry really. The critical piece is understanding which of these things you’re trying to do – could be one of the, could be all of them – and then measuring performance accordingly. Which you choose is down to you and your knowledge of your business and your customers. Do you have a conversion rate problem? Is your SEO performance under par? Is your brand awareness holding you back? There’s no silver bullet.
- Of course, what YOU want to do is one thing – but if you want to secure additional budget to do this, it’s important you get key stakeholders on board. In my experience there are two effective ways to do this: Solve their problems – by showing them a solution which capitalises on the opportunities or challenges they already know and care about. Or show them how you’re going to open up a whole new series of exciting opportunities they don’t already know about. Ultimately, you need to show them the money. Build a clear and incontrovertible business case for why you need content, why you need to distribute it, and what that will add to the bottom line. This is one of the key things we spend our time doing at Stickyeyes – helping our clients prove to the money men that content is about driving profitable revenue.
- And of course, once you’ve got your objectives nailed you need to be crystal clear about how you’re going to measure performance. If your objective is driving revenue, you need to be looking at the direct revenue your content drives (and ideally how much attributed revenue that content drives). There is not point measuring Facebook likes. Conversely, if your stated objective is driving brand awareness you need to avoid getting tangled up in revenue attribution conversations. With digital you can measure an awful lot – the challenge is measuring the right things.
- So in summary, you can only develop an effective and appropriate content distribution strategy is you’re crystal clear about what you’re trying to do with you content. Set your objectives, agree your metrics and don’t deviate unless you determine you need to reset your strategy.
- OK – so you’ve got your goals and metrics set. Now what? Budget. You need some. This is so often where content marketing falls down. If you have £10,000 of content marketing budget, how much of that should go on distribution and how much should go on the content itself? Don’t forget, this budget includes resource cost as well as media cost.
- In the old days, things were simple. Marketing men wore sharp suits and smoked a lot of cigarettes.
- And they spent 20% of their budgets on creative vs 80% on paid media. It was basically written in stone.
- Digital changed all that. These days its all about beards and man buns.
- And now no-one is sure where the budget should go. Instead of paid media and creative we now have distribution and content. Some academics and thought leaders are of the view that things haven’t changed much, arguing the case for a 70/30 split.
- Others think that the balance needs to be skewed further towards content creation – arguing there’s no point spending masses behind weak content in a world where it’s content strength and resonance which really matters.
- Whereas others are now arguing the case for a total change – with some brands reportedly suggesting that as much as 80% of the budget should go on content production vs 20% on distribution. So who’s right? The answer, as is so often the case, is…
- It depends. Sorry, but it’s just true.
- Even the best content – such as Always’ multi-award winning #LikeAGirl film – needs a distribution budget. This one had digital media spend, PR and now even a Superbowl TV spot. And 85 million people have now watched it on YouTube.
- Of course, it’s really important to remember that the budget doesn’t have to be on paid media. The team behind Van Damme’s epic split invested the bulk of their distribution budget on PR and influencer outreach. Which worked out pretty well for them.
- Of course, it’s not all about global brands and multi-million pound budgets. This six-second Vine video which I worked on with Asda – in which the lady here chucks a box of decorations on to a Christmas tree to ‘magically’ decorate it – had just £1k of media spend behind it and went on to generate 5.2 million views.
- So the takeaway here is clear – you do need a distribution budget across all distribution channels. Somewhere between 20% and 70% of your total content budget is probably about right, but its up to you to find the sweet spot for your specific strategy.
- Step 3 – To distribute content right, you need to know your audience inside out.
- This is typically what brands have in terms of a target audience, often expressed in the form of brand personas.
- That’s great, but we need to go deeper than that to really understand what makes all these different people tick.
- The starting point is your customers. Your CRM database can provide valuable insights into who they are. Armed with that information you can start to dig deeper.
- But it’s important not to get tunnel vision. Your digital audience and prospective customers could be different from your customers in general.
- To develop an in-depth understanding, these are the kinds of questions to ask.
- And it’s crucial to base your decisions on data rather than hunches. Slight mistakes based on incorrect assumptions have torpedoed many a content strategy.
- We’ve developed a tool to help us do this – we call it Pinpoint. Basically, it leverages the power of lots of publically available datasets to generate fully rounded insights into a brands’ digital audience.
- The insights it generates informs a wide range of content distribution factors – from the type of content your audience wants to the channels they use to the specific influencers they associate with. So lets have a look at a few examples.
- YouGov data provides some top level indications of who your audience is.
- We get an idea of the things that matter – which helps us select the channel mix we use.
- And we can uncover specific insights about the media and channels they prefer.
- We an also use Global Web Index data to get a sense of the channels they prefer. Here we compare the target audience (in blue) to the UK population (purple). Two factors are important here – what proportion of your audience is active on which channels, and how does that compare to the baseline. Here we see that nearly 60% of this target audience is active on Facebook – slightly more than the baseline. That’s a good reason for YOU to use Facebook too. By contrast, despite a significant over index against the baseline, only12% of this audience is active on Pinterest. So on the face of it (there are other factors at play, such as the type of business you are) both Facebook and Pinterest would be a good place for you to play on social media, but if budget is stretched, it’d make more sense to invest it in Facebook.
- The social networks’ own insights tools are very useful too. Here I’ve used Facebook’s free audience insights tool to get a sense of how 35-40 year old men who like triathlon behave online (incidentally, that’s me). So we can see they’re very active on Facebook – doing lots of commenting, liking and clicking – and that they’re big mobile users. That’s all super valuable info when you come to creating your content distribution strategy – I now know that mobile ads on Facebook – maybe even targeting iOS users specifically, would be an efficient way of reaching this audience.
- It’s also really important to use the data to put yourself in the shoes of your target audience – what are they thinking? What are their needs? What buying process do they go down?
- In summary, having a deep understanding of your digital audience will lead you to the right content distribution strategy.
- Step 4. Create content with distribution front of mind.
- This campaign we did for Motors.co.uk is a great example of that. The primary goal, at the end of the day, was generating authoritative links, with secondary goals of engagement. So we very carefully and very deliberately designed this content specifically to do that as effectively as possible.
- It’s a familiar format – multiple choice, Buzzfeed style questions. And when you complete it, it tells you how you’ve done and lets you share the result with your friends to challenge them.
- This is where the paid media comes in – by using a small amount of tactical media spend – pushing the content to exactly the right people who will engage with it – you start to build momentum behind the content. It’s totally a snowball effect. But this was about authority as well as engagement, so the whole thing was designed to generate coverage on influential sites as well. The data the quiz captured proved that 91% of people would fail their theory test if the had to take it again – just the kind of stat journalists like.
- And it really did – here are the results. Massive engagement, widespread social sharing, 22 linking domains with an average DA of 61, and nearly 4 mins average on-page engagement. And it was the 2nd highest trending post on Reddit for a time. All exactly the kind of signals Google is looking for when it’s working out how a site should rank.
- Incidentally, with this campaign the budget split was 60% on content (largely because of the design and build of the quiz) and 40% on distribution.
- So to recap, make sure you’re thinking about distribution at every sage of the ideation process.
- Step 5 – Build a strategy that’s right for you
- It’s very easy to follow the crowd, but it might not be the right thing to do.
- If you follow this process truly and honestly you WILL end up at a strategy that is unique and relevant.
- So think about each of the channels in the context of everything that we’ve just covered – what are your objectives? If it is links, earned might be very important but using paid and earned could support that. Much like our Motors example. Awareness? Maybe a blend of earned, paid and shared. Acquisition? Perhaps a blend of owned content – to facilitate the user journey – plus some highly focus paid.
- So staying true to your brand, your objectives and your audience will result in a unique and effective solution.
- This is the hardest part, because getting multiple teams and multiple departments to work together is not easy.
- Different aspects of content distribution need different skillsets. You need the content and search specialists to take on the owned distribution. PPC, biddable and remarketing experts take on the paid. You might need the help of the PR team to earn coverage, and the social media team is likely to help you with the shared distribution. You need all of these to work together.
- This is just one possible process that we follow, and it requires a lot of individual and specialist skills to make it work.
- When it comes to paid, there are two main approaches. You can focus on very broad reach, which you then look to refine over time, but that can potentially lead to high distribution costs.
- Our you can go for a smaller, but much more defined audience at first, and then build out from there. This is great for minimising spend, but it takes time for you to reach the a large volume of viewers.
- But the key point is that it is almost impossible for one person in your content marketing team to master all of these skills.
- So you need to break down the silos between departments, with is tough…
- So that’s it. Here are my top takeaways.
- So that’s it. Here are my top takeaways.