Content distribution at scale: Reaching your global audience with precision

The saying “amateurs talk tactics, professionals study logistics” is normally applied to the movement of people and supplies around the world, but — hear me out — it also applies to digital content.

That’s because logistics is, essentially, about how effectively an organization can distribute its resources, getting them where they need to be, when they need to be there. Brands face a similar logistical challenge with digital content: they need to be able to distribute content across the relevant digital spaces with speed, efficiency, and accuracy, in order to make sure that it reaches, and resonates with, target audiences.

The content distribution process isn’t easy — especially in a crowded and competitive digital landscape, where literally thousands of brands are competing for attention at any given time, across websites, blogs, apps, and social media platforms. On top of that, audiences know that they can find alternatives to what they’re looking for if they encounter friction during their browsing journeys. 

Given the scale of that challenge, brands need to think carefully about their content distribution strategies, including what channels they’re going to use to publish content, what content they’re going to send to those channels, and how to optimize their approach to target each channel effectively.

So, in this post, we’re going to tackle the concept of content distribution at scale, look at different content distribution strategies, and explore some of the key ways that brands can optimize their approach to content distribution. 

What is content distribution?

Content distribution is the process of publishing content across digital channels: websites, mobile apps, wearable devices, store displays, email, social media platforms, and other audience or customer touchpoints. 

An effective content distribution strategy enables brands to optimize the impact of the digital content that they develop and produce — which might include boosting engagement, conversion rates, lead generation, brand awareness, and so on. However, as we mentioned earlier, making your voice heard in a digital landscape saturated with other voices is easier said than done, and requires content teams to think about both the channels on which content is published, and the technology behind those channels.

Understanding content distribution channels

Let’s talk about the different digital places where you can publish your content once it’s been created — in other words, your content distribution channels. We can organize specific digital channels (website, app, etc.) into broader distribution categories: owned, earned, and paid channels. 

Owned content distribution channels

An owned channel is an online platform that a brand owns and controls itself. That means the brand can dictate exactly when content is published, and how it is published. Examples of owned content distribution include: 

• Websites

• Mobile apps

• Blogs

• Ebooks

• Email

• Social media pages 

A survey by the Content Marketing Institute shows that 90% of content marketers rely on social media to distribute their content, 79% have an active blog, and 73% use email newsletters.

Earned content distribution channels 

An earned content distribution channel is owned by a third party that shares it with the brand for free, usually for journalistic or promotional purposes (or a combination of both). Brands obviously don't have complete control over shared channels, but they offer access to larger and more diverse audiences than owned channels, and, depending on the third-party publisher, the potential for profile-amplifying validation. 

Content that gets published on earned channels is typically quite shareable, so in addition to blogs and other text-heavy pieces, think videos, images, or anything that might have any scope to go viral. Examples of earned channels include:

• Social media shares and mentions

• Product reviews

• Backlinks 

• News stories

• Guest blogs

Paid content distribution channels

A paid content distribution channel is a space for paid advertising and sponsored content, which offers an immediate reach and engagement boost. Paid channels obviously require a higher budget (than owned and earned channels) but are ideal if you’re looking for short-term results, to reach a specific target audience, or to launch organic content offerings.

If you're paying for content distribution, you’ll be thinking about value, so you need to make the content as eye-catching and attention-grabbing as possible. Examples of paid content distribution include:

• Pay-per-click advertising

• Sponsored blogs

• Paid social media ads

• Paid influencer content 

Content marketing distribution strategies: Push and pull

Now that we know what content distribution is, let's talk about devising a winning content distribution strategy.

Depending on the content distribution channel you’re using, you’ll need to employ different marketing strategies to optimize the reach of your content, and its impact with its target audience. 

Content published on your blog, for example, is typically better served by an inbound marketing strategy, in which you try to pull visitors to your site by promoting and amplifying it on owned channels. You might drop a post onto your social media accounts, newsletters, and other touchpoints, along the lines of “Find out what our new blog post says about X.” 

The alternative to inbound marketing is outbound marketing. This is a content distribution strategy in which you push content out from its native environment to third-party platforms, such as social media sites. You could, for example, republish the high-level points of a blog via a social media thread, or a post on a forum, and then include a link to the original content in the post as a way to drive views. Guest blogs are another good example of push marketing since they usually enable you to backlink and include a call to action (CTA) in the conclusion. 

Paid distribution channels can help you implement both push and pull strategies. You can use Google search ads, for example, to leapfrog organic search results, and pay for social media posts that appear prominently in your audience’s feeds. You could also sponsor a podcast or blog, or simply opt to pay for a native ad on another media platform. 

Optimizing your content distribution strategy

Successful content distribution is about matching the right content to the right distribution channel. In practice, that means thinking about what type of content you’re publishing, where you’re publishing it, the budget allocated to that content, and who you want to see it. 

Numerous metrics can help you gauge the effect of those efforts, including:

• Website traffic monitoring, including page views and bounce rate.

• Social media engagement, including shares, likes, and comments.

• Conversion rates for actions such as the number of purchases made, sign-ups for newsletters, and downloads of files and other resources.

• The cost of individual conversions in relation to the total marketing budget.

Moving those metrics in the right directions will require you optimize each distribution channel — so let’s look at some ways to do that. 

Audience segmentation

The more you know about your target audience, the easier it will become to get the right kind of content to them. Audience segmentation involves grouping your audience into segments based on characteristics such as age, gender, location, interests, and so on. That process will require a little legwork and statistical research, but should result in hard data that you can transform into accurate segmentation. 

Segmentation will help you identify defining traits, and tailor your content to appeal to those traits more efficiently. Younger audience segments may dislike long-form, text-based content, for example, but react more positively to video-based content, or social media ads. 

Segmentation can be an ongoing process: you can continuously re-segment to inform your content distribution strategy over the long term. It can also help you gauge the value of a certain audience segment: you might find, for example, that it's worth targeting a particular audience segment via paid distribution channels, rather than building that engagement organically.

Automation

Manually distributing content across various owned channels (with separate tooling for each) is tedious, time-consuming, and prone to human error. The better option is to integrate a headless content management system (CMS) with your tech stack that automates as much of the distribution process as possible. Your CMS should give you the flexibility you need to preview and push content out across channels quickly and smoothly, schedule publications, and edit content once published. 

Automation also offers long-term, value-adding possibilities. For example, you could integrate innovative AI-powered personalization tech to refine content on your owned channels, automatically generating real time content suggestions for the front end so that editors and creators can better shape digital journeys based on customer profiles and behaviors. 

Scheduling

Planning is an integral part of effective content distribution strategies — and your planning work should cover not only where content will be published, but when. To that end, you should maintain an editorial calendar that includes all relevant distribution information, such as where the content will be published, how it will be promoted, the resources required, which social media platforms will be used, and any third parties involved in the process. 

It’s worth noting that automation can play a part in scheduling too. For example, when new content is published, Contentful can be set up to automatically send a webhook that triggers a social media post based on the recently published content. 

Performance optimization 

Once content is distributed to the relevant channel, you don’t need to abandon it to its fate. You can continue to tweak and refine to identify issues, and optimize it over time.

For example, you could A/B test different content permutations to nudge up conversions, or use SEO data to add new keywords and build performance organically. Similarly, you could send out periodic social media updates to keep certain content pieces in circulation or to take ongoing advantage of a breaking news event. Data-driven insight can make a huge difference to the long-term impact of content. 

Set performance goals

Content distribution is an evolving, ongoing concern within your wider content workflow, and you’ll constantly need to reexamine and reassess its effectiveness. With that in mind, you should set key performance indicators (KPIs) and other metrics to gauge the success of your approach — these might include the number of unique views a piece of content gets, page bounce rates on owned distribution channels, and so on. 

You’ll also need to be able to leverage analytics to judge content marketing performance over time. Set an appropriate schedule (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.) to track ongoing performance and impact. 

Architecture and content distribution

The architecture in which you’re developing and publishing content can have a huge impact on content marketing and content distribution. The more freedom and flexibility your content distribution platform gives you to work with content, the easier it will be to deploy that content across channels. 

With that in mind, your CMS should be a critical component of your content distribution strategy because it will be the foundation from which you build and refine the digital experiences you create for your target audiences. 

For optimal flexibility, your CMS should be “headless” and API-first, which means that it does not tightly couple the presentation of content to any particular visual format, like a webpage. Headless CMSes essentially untangle content away from presentation code such as HTML and CSS for web contexts. 

In this code-agnostic, headless environment, content is available for omnichannel distribution, anywhere within your digital infrastructure, from a single CMS. You can produce a blog article for your website, for example, and have that same blog article automatically appear on your mobile app as well without any risk of coding complications, or formatting errors.

The omnichannel approach adds efficiency to every part of the content creation workflow since you only ever need to create content once and then you can reuse it anywhere. For example, the image you use on a product page can be reused on a press release, a review, a blog, and so on. 

Headlessness is also an advantage for scaling content distribution to meet growth challenges. Since you can manage all distribution channels from a single CMS, you can increase the flow of your content smoothly, as and when you need to, without adding any new infrastructure to your content ecosystem. 

Composable content distribution

Contentful streamlines content distribution from end to end, across every owned, earned, and paid channel that you operate. That doesn’t just mean you get to produce more content, faster, but that you protect the quality and consistency of your brand voice wherever it reaches your customers. 

From automating manual processes with advanced AI tools, to personalizing content with unprecedented detail and efficiency, the Contentful ecosystem of services empower marketing teams to create and govern content, and provide outstanding digital experiences, at massive scale. 

We’ve worked with some of the world’s biggest enterprise organizations, delivering unique digital experiences to vast audiences in every corner of the world. So, if you’re ready to take your content distribution strategy to the next level, we’re ready to help you get there.

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