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How To Choose the Best Distribution Channels for Your Content

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Updated May 19, 2022

If you don’t distribute your content smartly, you’ll never achieve your brand’s content marketing goals.

But how do you know what the best channels are? This succinct guide outlines which distribution options work best, based on your goals and audience.

First, though, you must know two things: who the content is for and what it’s intended to help them achieve. Knowing your audience members’ intent allows you to craft content that will resonate most strongly with them.

Knowing your goals for the content helps you identify the purpose it serves (aka, the call-to-action) for your company and your audience. Both are essential to selecting an appropriate distribution method.

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If you need some help determining your audience and setting goals, check out these resources:

Then, go through the list below to see which popular distribution options match up with what you want your brand’s content to achieve.

Influencer distribution

The Influencer industry has grown rapidly. According to an Influencer MarketingHub study, Influencer Marketing will be a $16.4 billion industry by the end of 2022.The reason? People are influenced by personal recommendations more than by any other sales or marketing strategy.

#InfluencerMarketing will be a $16.4 billion industry in 2022 according to @influencerMH #research via @IamAaronAgius via @CMIContent. Click To Tweet

Consider when pursuing these goals:

The audience connection

If you’re partnering with influencers who are already well-known and well-liked by your target audience, their content efforts can help shine a positive light on your business by strengthening brand perception and helping you build more trusted consumer relationships. It can also extend your brand’s reach by introducing you to consumers you aren’t already connected with.

Tip: Don’t forget to share the influencer’s content and brand promotions on other channels you use to distribute content. Even if your audience members aren’t already following those influencers, they may be impressed and influenced by seeing others endorse your business.

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Relevant content

Yes, you can ask influencers to post about your blog articles in which they are mentioned or may be of interest to their audience, but you can also get more creative. Live stories on Instagram, Facebook, and even Snapchat are becoming go-to content for influencers.

Support your influencers with content that works well in a livestream. Offer to discuss a topic related to your industry or discuss your business. Or draw attention to other content you created, like a blog post, an image, a video, or a podcast.

Support influencers with #content that works well in a livestream, advises @IamAaronAgius via @CMIContent. Click To Tweet

Tip: Influencers are more likely to share and talk about content when they’re directly associated with it. Incorporate their names and social profiles into your content, whether it’s a quote in a blog post, a demo video, or something else.

Additional resources to explore:

Email distribution

Email is the most widespread distribution method. According to data from Statista, an estimated 4.6 billion people – half the world’s population – will be using email by 2025. And HubSpot reports that $1 spent on email marketing returns an average of $42.

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Consider when pursuing these goals:

  • Website traffic
  • Brand loyalty
  • Marketing ROI
  • Generating revenue (through up-sells and cross-sells)

Audiences reached

Two broad categories of audiences fit under the email umbrella:

  • Current subscribers (i.e., people who have opted to receive your content)
  • Cold/warm contacts (i.e., email addresses you’ve purchased or rented, or that came in through third-party distribution).

Focus on your subscriber list. They know your brand and will likely be more receptive to your content than a list of strangers.

Of course, that doesn’t mean you should send the same email content to everybody in your marketing database. You’re more likely to achieve your goals by segmenting your lists and delivering more-targeted content to each segment.

Don’t send the same #email content to everybody in your list. Segment your lists. @IAmAaronAgius via @CMIContent. Click To Tweet

Relevant content

Sending weekly or monthly email newsletters is a classic tactic for sharing your content – text, images, and video – and content links to drive traffic to your website.

Since you have some known details about your subscribers, consider personalizing the emails you send them. Go beyond “Dear {FIRST NAME}” and distribute content that’s hyper-relevant based on the individual and their reason (and timing) for subscribing. Research indicates (and logic dictates) that people want to receive content that’s accurate and relevant to their stated preferences, location, engagement history, etc.

You can also use your email newsletters as a cross-promotional content exchange (a different form of influencer marketing): Share relevant content from other brands and ask those companies to include your content in their newsletters.

Use your e-newsletters to cross-promote another brand’s #content, says @IamAaronAgius via @CMIContent. Click To Tweet

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Tip: Create an automated email campaign with evergreen content. For example, when someone subscribes, send them a welcome email that features content about your company’s values.

Additional resources to explore:

Organic social media distribution

The social landscape is continually evolving. With the rise in live storytelling and streaming media, it’s increasingly becoming a content channel that can deliver immediacy, intimacy, and interactivity.

Consider when pursuing these goals:

  • Brand awareness
  • Building/nurturing consumer relationships
  • Lead generation
  • Increasing website traffic

Audiences reached

Sharing your content on your social media channels will primarily reach the audience you have grown on those platforms. Each audience typically reflects the people naturally drawn to use those channels. Let’s look at this recent breakdown of user demographics (from Sprout Social):

  • Facebook (most used social platform)
    • 91 billion monthly active users (MAU)
    • Most-represented age group: 25-34 (31.5%)
    • 57% male, 43% female
  • Instagram (a highly visual-oriented platform)
    • 2 billion MAU
    • Most-represented age group: 25-34 (31.2%)
    • 8% male, 48.4% female
  • LinkedIn (primarily B2B-focused)
    • 810 million MAU
    • Most-represented age group: 25-34 (58.4%)
    • 52% male, 48% female
  • Twitter (chronologically focused)
    • 211 million MAU
    • Most-represented age group: 18-29 (42%)
    • 6% male, 38.4% female
  • Snapchat (a time-dependent chat app)
    • 319 million MAU
    • Most-represented age group 15-25 (48%)
    • A higher concentration of women: 54.4% female, 44.6% male
  • TikTok (short form video app)
    • 1 billion MAU
    • Most-represented age group: 10-19 (25%)
    • 9% female, 39% male

Relevant content

Because of the nature of consumer engagement on social media, visual content works best, particularly still or moving images (e.g., GIFs, memes, infographics, short videos), as they can be digested and shared quickly.

Because of the way consumers engage on #social media, visual content works best, says @IamAaronAgius via @CMIContent. Click To Tweet

Live streaming content is another popular tactic – one that your audience expects to see on these channels. That said, as you move toward B2B social channels like LinkedIn and (to an extent) Facebook, longer-form, text-focused content may also work well.

Tip: Social media platforms are rented land when it comes to content distribution – your brand doesn’t truly own the relationships you build there. Consider ways to convert your social followers to other content channels where you’ll have more control, such as email.

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Additional resources to explore:

Paid distribution

Paid content distribution covers myriad channels. It can be split into three broad categories:

  • Native advertising: Content that matches the look and feel of the originating publishing platform
  • Social media and search ads: Content strategically published by platforms (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, Google) in their users’ feeds or in search results.
  • Content syndication: Display ads and content distributed by a third party to relevant sites and digital programs

Consider when pursuing these goals:

  • Website traffic
  • Brand awareness
  • Lead generation
  • Audience growth

Audiences reached

You can attract new audiences or people who are tangentially connected to your brand online. Since you’re footing the bill, you can customize who will see it – from their demographics to geographic location, to specific interests, etc.

When you pay for distribution, you can pick the audience that sees your #content, says @IamAaronAgius via @CMIContent. Click To Tweet

Relevant content

Paid distribution relies heavily on capturing attention immediately and making a good impression. Therefore, the content you distribute there should be hyper-useful, entertaining, or meaningful at a glance. Engaging imagery or video content with a brief intro (or text atop an image) is more likely to draw your audience in.

Tip: Before you pay to distribute your content on social media, test it organically on those same platforms. Pay to promote the best performers.

Additional resources to explore:

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Give it time and pivot when necessary

After going through the distribution channel opportunities, pick the one that best matches your audience and goals. Focus on making that method work by reviewing your performance metrics regularly and tweaking accordingly (just don’t expect to see overnight results – delivering relevant content consistently is the name of the content marketing game). Once you’ve mastered that channel (or realized it isn’t an effective channel), move on to the next.

Want more content marketing tips, insights, and examples? Subscribe to workday or weekly emails from CMI.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

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A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

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Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

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Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

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“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

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Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

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Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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