Content Marketing Distribution Channels and Their Importance

We all create interesting content regularly. However, what matters is making the right content available to the right audience. This is a very important aspect of content marketing distribution channels that most people neglect. When you plan a distribution channel smartly in advance, you have a strategy. This helps you to connect with your target audience whom you can gradually convince into taking the action you want them to. Secondly, you need to know what you expect out of your marketing goals or strategies, keeping in mind essential content marketing secrets.

Right Content Marketing

We all in the field of digital marketing know how crucial and powerful content can be. It is what connects us to the people we want to reach out to. Furthermore, marketers are even doing mobile content marketing to be available to their audience on the go. No matter how powerful your content is, it is all worthless without the right content marketing distribution channels. It’s very similar to being an organic fruit seller in today’s processed food industry. Your product has great potential and also demand in the market. However, you aren’t available in the right marketplace at the right time.

Nevertheless, no matter how great your product is, it is all bogus if you don’t promote it well and with a smart strategy. It will never reach to the customers looking out for it and get lost in the crowd. A content marketing strategy planned well and in advance can bring in sales and convert leads efficiently. In simpler terms it means, the target audience will notice you with the right information you intend to pass onto them.

Gradually, these marketing strategies pay off by churning more engagement with your customers. These strategies work best when sent through the best of content marketing distribution channels. It’s extremely important to understand the right nerve of your target audience for any marketing strategies to work. Therefore it becomes difficult to cater as a business when you don’t know your customers’ needs. It will also tell you about their preferred content marketing distribution channel, and improve your content’s chances of being seen.

3 Major Content Marketing Distribution Channels

All the distribution channels used in content marketing strategies can be categorized into 3 major formats.

Owned media

This is all the media you share as a company or business. Specifically, it includes all your blogs, landing pages, newsletters, and website. All your social media content would also fall under this category.

Paid Content

This category includes all the channels that you pay for to advertise your content or business. Of course, it is ideally all the AdWords you run through Google and social media.

Earned Content

This category includes the distribution of your own content by third parties. In fact, it should be guest blogging, retweets you get, and shares.
Most successful businesses make use of all the 3 media types in their strategies. And this largely depends on what stage of the marketing funnel their audience is in presently.

Popular Marketing Distribution Channels

Here are some popular content marketing distribution channels.

Blogs

Blogs make the best type of content marketing distribution channel because of its versatile nature. They allow you to have the flexibility you want as a business owner to tailor the exact type of content for your loyal customer’s taste. For this reason, maintaining consistency and a familiar tone build trust. Select topics that your customers are interested in. There are many writing tools that will improve productivity considering your creative career. Adding a CTA at the end is part of a smart content marketing strategy and tells you about the efficiency of your blog.

Social Media

Social media platforms are the most frequent distribution channels in marketing. It could be anything of value – blogs, videos, images, promotions, which you share as content.  Not only are they cost-efficient but also allow a worldwide access to your content. Making social media part of your content marketing strategy will establish you as an industry expert and help your branding too.

Emailing

Emails are the most to-the-point content marketing distribution channels. Accordingly, this is because you know the audience is already interested in your content by subscribing to it. The audience loves to read engaging content that reaches their mailboxes. The same plan can backfire if you sent spammy emails that do not add value to your audience. For instance, the types could be newsletters, product releases, marketing messages, and infographics.

Infographics and Videos

Infographics/Videos are the most engaging kind of content marketing distribution channels. Not everyone has the time or interest in reading through text today. However, an image or an infographic that delivers the same message works great. It should be clean, crisp, to-the-point, and make the audience curious. Not only this, visuals are the most engaging and shareable type of content types today. So it should be taken into account in social media optimization strategy.

Networking and Forums

Discussion forums and networking are a new type of distribution channels in marketing today. Discussion forums like Quora and Reddit allow you to answer queries of future prospects, related to your brand. It shows your expertise and garners eyeballs from an entirely new customer base. This provides you with a platform to talk about how your business can come into the picture swiftly. The same also goes for networking events offline, where people are interested in your niche or brand.

Reaching out to influencers that you mention in your posts is another smart content marketing strategy. In every blog post, you write you can refer to popular blogs or influencers that are relevant. It’s wise to reach out to them and tell them about the new backlink they will receive from you. It’s a win-win for both parties, as you get more traffic once they share the article on their media too.

Final Words

If you want your content marketing strategies to work, you should push all your posts at multiple avenues. Therefore this will ensure more traffic and you will gradually learn to monetize it.

This is what I had learned early in life. I started with an academic blog and pushed it through multiple channels. Even though it was pretty nascent, I learned to value content and its distribution equally.