Why Distribution is a Must-Have Strategy for Content Marketers in 2016

Raise your hand if you’ve produced any eBooks, case studies, surveys, reports, webinars, user guides, whitepaper, videos, infographics, in-depth research studies or articles in the past 3 months. Now raise your hand again if your eyes hurt when you saw the ROI, and thought to yourself that you’ve wasted all that time despite your flawlessly-executed hard work.

What did you miss? What should you have done?

The brutal fact is that the majority of the content published on the internet is simply ignored and receives very few shares and links these days, according to a joint study done by BuzzSumo and Moz on the correlation of shares, links and content. Their data also suggests that people are not very good at amplifying content. Also, in the latest 2016 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends report, only 30% of the B2B marketers say their organizations are effective at content marketing (an 8% decrease from last year). Mmh.. I am not going to ask anyone to raise their hands for this one …

Moving forward, content distribution has finally earned its spot on the list of top six content marketing trends to watch for in 2016. In his recent piece, marketing content specialist Ted Karczewski talked about how most marketers have only just started to understand the value of distribution as part of their content marketing strategy,

“In 2016, content amplification and distribution will be the latest in the line of skills you’ll need to master if you want your content to be found, read and internalized by a loyal audience. Yes, many brands have invested in amplification already, but their efforts have often missed the mark. No one is doing this well yet.”

Karczewski has indeed struck the right chord. Let’s all face the reality for a second here: As content marketers, “content creation” should no longer be your primary job focus. Without a carefully defined distribution and measurement strategy on our agenda, we are just old-school typing machines waiting to be replaced. You need to add distribution to your content marketing matrix, and be able to justify the ROI of your communication efforts to your boss. Too much to put on your already full plate? I get it. Let’s just start with a few things that you need to think about:

Leverage paid distribution channels for greater reach.
Another effective, and very often overlooked, paid distribution channel to add to the mix is newswires. As technology continues to evolve at a ridiculously fast pace, news releases are no longer the “old-school” and “outdated” corporate announcement tools you’re still thinking about. Compelling content combined with eye-catching and relevant multimedia elements have introduced a new form of high quality visual storytelling that can help you expand the reach and amplify your message. Press releases are not only restricted to merely announcing a piece of company news, they are also a key distribution channel for reaching a variety of content goals. More importantly, they can also help you drive leads. You heard me: LEADS.

Here’s a great example: IBM published a multimedia news release this year to share its new findings on millennials and today’s workplace. Inspiring conversations around the hot “millennials” topic with the content directly appealing to its audiences (CIOs and human resources professionals), this creative piece incorporated a tweetable headline, viral-ready memes and an obvious call-to-action – a link for people to download the full whitepaper.

So what’s the key takeaway from this brilliant tactic? Instead of sharing a boring announcement on the launch of your 90-page case study that no one reads about, identify the most interesting elements of your ebook, study, infographic, video, (and the list goes on, of course), then develop a thought-provoking story around your center message with some sneak peaks of those key elements, and hammer it home by giving your readers access to read the full piece of content via a link. Ta-da! Now you have a winning story and LEADS to show your boss.

Content syndication.

Another strategy to increase the exposure of your content is to have it syndicated across a network of websites and promote it to their audiences every time you publish a new post. Smart marketers these days will review all their options and take advantage of a variety of distribution channels to achieve their goals.

Connect with the Influencers.

Keep an eye on the trending/emerging topics within your industry and always be ready to insert yourself into conversations with the experts and influencers around you. If you have the right buy-in in your press release that’s of interest to the influencers (and try to get a quote from them too!), that would encourage them to share your content with their audiences as well. Also, check out this one-stop tool Agility – it allows you to monitor news topics across the web, research and target quality individual journalists, and report on your ROI.

Make it shareable.

“Today’s great storytelling requires you not only to make a story interesting, but also make it easy for somebody else to tell” was one of the key highlights emphasized by Michael Pranikoff, the Global Director of Emerging Marketing at PR Newswire, at this year’s Media Coffee event in Hong Kong. In addition to embedding all the click-to-share social media buttons, adding multimedia to your content has also proven to help you drive discovery and increase social sharing.

Don’t stop there.

Today’s customers are hungry for stories. As Karczewski pointed out, content marketers need to go beyond the “one and done” content strategy and begin to see opportunities to expand upon ideas or create ongoing episodic content around themes. Instead of sending one press release to announce the rebranding strategy of your company, think about distributing multiple stories around the rebranding theme to reinforce your core message, appeal to new and current audiences by pitching different story angles and elements, and extend the shelf-life of your topic.

Always evaluate results and tweak your strategy when going forward.

As marketers, having a comprehensive measurement strategy in mind is a no-brainer. As with any marketing strategy, we need to test the water and factor in the results to plan our next step. Evaluate which type of content was best at generating exposure and bringing in new leads, then incorporate those insights into your next amplification strategy.

We can spend hours on this topic, but I hope this short list of remarks will inspire you to start trying a few new things and growing your audience. Pouring your heart and soul into a piece of content does not guarantee lead generation anymore. Allocate your time and hard work wisely and spend more time on a distribution strategy that can fully utilize your budget and deliver maximum ROI. Please share with us if you have any feedback in the comments section below. Cheers and go get some leads!

Eki Isabel Lau is the Marketing Executive for APAC (excluding China) at PR Newswire.