Organically Grow Your Small Business In 2023 With A Creative Content Distribution Strategy

You’ve probably heard the expression “Content is king.” It still holds true, but only when managed with an effective content marketing strategy. While it's been said that this is the golden age of content, it's not always an easy thing to see all of your content efforts pay off. Everything from SEO driven content to social media content creation is getting harder and harder. ​The good news is this means your need for a content distribution strategy isn't going anywhere. You need strategies for better discoverability. The best way to get found is through compelling, engaging and fresh content that gets in front of your target audience in a natural and organic way. This article outlines tips and strategies you can try out in 2023 to help you distribute your content in front of the right people. A consistent distribution strategy is key to successful digital marketing efforts.

What is Content Distribution

A content distribution strategy is the process of distributing your content through multiple channels in order to gain more visibility, traffic and attract the right audience. It's a key piece of growing your small business organically and naturally – instead of just randomly. It's about getting people to see what you have to offer, and it can be done through a variety of different methods. Content distribution is a great way to grow your business organically and naturally. You don't need to spend tons of money on advertising or pay for traffic; instead, you can use your own content to attract new customers and clients who are interested in what you have to offer.

Content distribution can help boost organic search rankings by increasing keyword exposure, building links back to your site, and generating leads through social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. It can also help drive traffic from non-organic sources like email newsletters and social media sites while reducing costs compared with using paid advertising alone.

Why We Need a Content Distribution Strategy

Creating content is only half the battle. If you want to see results from your efforts, you need to get your content in front of the right people at the right time. That's where a solid content distribution strategy comes into play. Without one, all of your hard work will go unseen—and so will any opportunities for business growth that come from it. This is probably the biggest obstacle I see most small business owners face. You may be spending the bulk of your time thinking about, brainstorming, creating and publishing content for your brand…wondering why you aren’t getting the engagement, clicks, or conversions you hoped from it. Sound familiar? This is a surefire sign that content distribution needs to be focused on. In the coming months and years, as content creation becomes more and more of a dominating factor for digital marketing, your distribution strategy will increasingly become top priority in order to see the results you want from your content publishing efforts.

How To Set Up a Content Distribution Strategy

Let’s break down how to set up a content distribution strategy so that your content gets in front of the right audience and you see more results from the content you design and publish for your small business. This will help ensure that your content gets the results you want to achieve!

Create a plan for your content distribution strategy

Before anything else, when establishing a content distribution strategy you want to determine what your overarching plan is. Your plan should define what channels you will be distributing content on and why. It is critical to have a reason for why you have chosen the marketing channels you have. The channels you choose should directly relate to your target market and where they spend their time online. Alongside this, within your plan you also want to determine what types of content you are going to be primarily focusing on creating. This is where you want to be clear on what media formats matter most to your brand to be regularly creating and publishing.

Media formats to consider:

Paid media: Paid media relates to paid advertising

Owned media: Owned media relates to media you create that you have full ownership of, such as blogs, podcasts, and email newsletters

Shared media: Shared media relates to social media; media that you don’t own but share on social platforms like Instagram, Facebook or TikTok.

Earned media: Earned media relates to media that is collaborative or created on your behalf. This could be a partnered article, an interview of you, a feature of your brand, or a publication on your business from another brand.

Incorporate your customer journey

The last thing you want to determine within your content distribution plan pertains to your overall goals for your content. Depending on what marketing channels you are working with, you will most likely have different goals for each channel. When defining your goals, relate to your customer journey.

Awareness stage: The discoverability stage where your content helps you gain the attention of new audience members

Curiosity stage: The interest stage where people who have been exposed to your content now are intrigued to learn more by exploring your brand and content more deeply

Impression stage: The impression stage where people are ‘turned on’ by your content to the point that they start taking some sort of action, whether it be ‘liking’ posts, commenting, saving content, sharing your content, or viewing your profile for more

Trust stage: The trust stage where people have developed enough interest in your brand that they now want to opt into something such as a freebie, your email list, or gated content of some sort (usually still free, sometimes low cost)

Conversion stage: The conversion stage where people have built loyalty with your brand to the degree that they are ready to enroll, register, or work with you in some (paid) capacity

When setting your goals for your content, you want to consider how your goals are creating a balance between the different stages of your customer journey. This means creating content that is designed specifically for each stage of the journey, creating a sustainable content funnel! Your goals may be to create X amount of blogs each month to build the impression and trust stages… or to create X newsletters a month to build the trust stage… or to create X social media posts on Instagram a month to grow the awareness and curiosity stage… or create X pieces of social content a month promoting Y offers to build the conversion stage. The key is to consider what marketing channels you are working with, what stages of the customer journey you are creating content for, and what types of content you are creating!

During this part of your content distribution planning, you want to make sure you have clearly identified your target market. The more you know and understand about your target market, the easier it’ll be to establish a solid content distribution strategy. Start by identifying your audience personas, which are groups of people that share similar characteristics. You should create personas for each type of person who may be interested in what you have to offer. You can do this by conducting research or analyzing social media data from similar brands or businesses in the same industry as yours. This will help you understand where your target audience is spending their time online, what kinds of content they like best, and how often they engage with other brands on those platforms. Determine which media they consume, including blogs, podcasts, videos and social media sites. Identify the places where they spend their time online and how often they visit each site or app.

Create an editorial calendar

Once you have laid out your plan for your content distribution strategy, you now want to organize the plan with an editorial calendar. Your editorial calendar will lay out the specific dates for the types of content you'll publish throughout each month, depending on the marketing channels you are optimizing. Your editorial calendar is a valuable asset to your distribution strategy because it will help you stay organized and clear on how you are touching on each part of your customer journey with the content you create, balancing the content you are creating for each of your desired marketing channels, and defining the types of content you are creating each month.

Your editorial calendar should lay out what types of media you are creating, such as your blogs, podcasts, Pinterest pins, Instagram content, Youtube videos, or emails to list. It should also define what format and creative approach you are taking to each piece of content. This is where you can lay out a content brief for each piece of content you create. For example, if you define what content you are creating for Instagram each month, you then want to define what formats of Instagram content you are creating. Your creative brief will define the scope of the content piece, such as whether it is a Reel, Carousel, Static Graphic, Photo, and so on. If you are planning out blog posts, your creative brief can define what type of blog post it is, such as a thought leadership article, tutorial article, evergreen value article, and so on.

When laying out your editorial calendar, it is crucial to consider how you can create one piece of content and make it work for you in many different ways. Make sure to define what your long form content is, such as your blogs, newsletters, Youtube videos, or Podcasts. Once you know what your long form content is, this will support you in planning out and distributing your short form content.

Here is an example:

If you are planning to write 3 blog posts a month, first plan the blog posts as these will serve as your long form content for the month. Once you plan and write your blog posts, then move onto looking at what your short form content goals are for the month. If you plan on creating 4 Instagram posts a week, regular Pinterest pins daily, and one Youtube video a week, then you can take your long form content and begin ‘trimming’ it down into short form content pieces that direct back to your long form. One blog post could easily produce a handful of solid short form Instagram posts. One blog post could be repurposed into a Youtube video. One blog post could be featured in your Newsletter or turned into half a dozen Pinterest pins. As you can see, creating your long form content first helps your distribution strategy tremendously!

It is also noteworthy to mention the importance of conducting ongoing market research to help you plan your content and distribution methods. You want to stay actively engaged with your target audience so that you get a consistent feel for what content they are looking for, what questions they are asking, what their behaviors and patterns are on marketing channels, and so on.

We hope this article helps you think about your own content distribution strategy, and more forward-thinking ways to drive traffic towards your small business. From evergreen blog posts to timely social media posts, you can use your content to help grow a loyal audience of brand advocate. The whole goal of a content distribution strategy is to set the business up for years down the road. While it's important to keep the immediate future in mind while executing the strategy, the most effective content distribution strategies look out further. They're willing to sacrifice short term gains because they have a long-term plan in mind. The creator of a solid content strategy will also remember that people are at the center of it all and will keep that in mind as they develop their plans. As always, we'd love to hear your thoughts on this or anything else related to digital marketing!

Until next time…

Natalie Brite

DoGoodBiz Studio