Content Distribution

Content marketing is a very basic principle; create and share thought provoking, informative content that demands to be shared and prompts people to engage with you or your brand.

Creating this content is all well and good, but that is only the beginning; content distribution is the real test. How you actually reach your audience is often the most challenging part.

The most commonly used channel for content distribution is Social Media – 87% of marketers use it for this purpose. A recent report asked people who worked in B2B content marketing to cite the Social Media platforms they use to distribute articles, infographics and videos. Interestingly, LinkedIn came out on top, with 83% of respondents saying that they used the platform as a content distribution tool. Twitter and Facebook,came next, with 80% of people naming them. Every brand needs to know where its strength lies; getting your content into the right hands depends on knowing where your advocates are and on which social networks you have the highest levels of engagement.

Another emerging channel that has an emphasis on quality is blogger outreach, which is the development of mutually beneficial relationships between you and relevant bloggers. This is increasingly popular and can also happen between partner websites. This is only set to increase in the future, as 37% of marketers say that blogs are the most valuable content type for marketing (Contentplus, 2012).

More traditional types of content distribution such as press releases still remain relevant, as do news sites. These sites are consistently ranked amongst the most highly trusted sources on the web, so they can provide some of the most powerful links available on the internet.

In December, we successfully integrated all these techniques for one of our B2B clients. Through the use of digital PR, we targeted powerful relevant sites, Social Media, infographic outreach and news sites. By doing this, as well as using the client’s internal community links to make use of all available assets, we increased traffic to their blog by 20%. This was all achieved during the lead up to Christmas, a period that traditionally sees a decrease in traffic for the client. Having said all this, it is still important not to overestimate external channels; a good internal blog or news feed can drive traffic directly to your site and become a highly effective lead generator when utilised efficiently.

If you’d like to speak to 4Ps Marketing about developing B2B content marketing, please contact us at  [email protected] or tweet us@4PsMarketing.