Episode 50
If I Were To Start A New Distribution Strategy In 2024, This Is What I'd Do
In this episode, Justin discusses the 9 essential steps for creating a successful distribution strategy in 2024.
He provides his top strategies and valuable tips for content marketers looking to enhance their distribution efforts. Stay tuned for a full breakdown of the key components that drive successful content distribution strategies in 2024.
If you like distribution and repurposing playbooks, you'll love my weekly newsletter (it's free). Join 2,400+ subscribers here: https://news.justinsimon.co/
In this episode, you'll learn how to:
1. Optimize content marketing ROI through effective distribution assessment.
2. Enhance content quality and impact by planning distribution beforehand.
3. Integrate distribution details into your content roadmap for effective reach.
4. Refine distribution efforts by ranking content based on relevance.
5. Achieve successful content distribution through building momentum and collaboration.
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Transcript
So if I were going to start a distribution strategy in 2024,
Speaker:this is the exact nine step system that I would follow.
Speaker:My clients and coaching students have actually been using this
Speaker:system over the past year to ten x 100
Speaker:x, even 500 x. Yeah, 500 x
Speaker:the ROI from the content that they're creating on their marketing teams.
Speaker:But I've got a bit of a disclaimer. Distribution isn't a
Speaker:magic pill. This is not something that if you sprinkle the fairy dust on,
Speaker:is going to completely change your content marketing program
Speaker:before you can distribute effectively. You have to
Speaker:actually know your audience deeply, create content they
Speaker:enjoy, and be willing to put in the work to make distribution even
Speaker:worth it to begin with because it isn't worth actually distributing that
Speaker:content if nobody enjoys it to begin with. But if you follow this
Speaker:system, you might be surprised at how much new content
Speaker:you actually have to create every week. You might be able to go from two
Speaker:new blog posts a week to one. You might be able to go from
Speaker:multiple videos and webinars and all these things that you're trying to
Speaker:do, you might be able to actually scale those down and get more ROI out
Speaker:of the things you're creating, freeing you up to create better content,
Speaker:to be able to actually be strategic, to talk to your customers to
Speaker:understand what they want versus just assuming and thinking, hey, I've got to be able
Speaker:to get content out and the whole process goes awry.
Speaker:So stick with me because this is the first time I'm breaking down this
Speaker:entire system exactly like this, step by step. So
Speaker:let's get into number one, assess. This is the
Speaker:baseline for your distribution strategy. Assessing
Speaker:evaluating what your current distributions efforts
Speaker:are and then building a strategy moving forward. If we don't
Speaker:know what path we've been on, if we don't at least take a look back
Speaker:into the rearview mirror, it's going to be nearly impossible to know where we want
Speaker:to go, what we want to cut, what we want to change, any of those
Speaker:things. So step one is assessing where you're at. And the
Speaker:easiest way to get started is to look at the
Speaker:last, maybe 90 days. Or you could even look at the last q
Speaker:one if you wanted to get maybe two separate snapshots, or the previous year's
Speaker:quarter, whatever quarter you may be in, and take a look at that and
Speaker:understand, okay, here's what we created. Here's how much
Speaker:stuff we got out of it. Here was the Roi of us creating
Speaker:that. What were the outcomes? So when we
Speaker:created x webinar, what were the outcomes? Of this. When we created
Speaker:this series of blog posts over the last quarter, what
Speaker:happened? What was the traffic? Where did the traffic come from? Look at
Speaker:the channels. Look at all the things that go into essentially
Speaker:marketing your content. What did you do to actively market that piece of
Speaker:content? And once you have those baselines, that will allow you to actually go
Speaker:forward and say, all right, you know what? When we released
Speaker:this blog post, we really didn't do a lot. Within the first week,
Speaker:we posted something on LinkedIn and then we added
Speaker:it to our monthly email and that was it. It just allows
Speaker:you to open up your eyes and really see what's going on with your distribution
Speaker:process and know how you can evolve from there. Number two
Speaker:is planning. So actually developing
Speaker:a distribution plan before you end
Speaker:up creating your content. I talk about this all the time. You have to develop
Speaker:a distribution plan before you create your
Speaker:content, not after. You can do it after. You can go back
Speaker:into the assess phase and see what happens and see what we did and what
Speaker:did we create. But if you can build a plan to
Speaker:actually distribute your pieces of content before you even
Speaker:create them, it's going to make the actual content that you create
Speaker:even better. And I have seen this time and time again with the
Speaker:clients and the different folks that I've worked with. When you start to understand how
Speaker:you're going to distribute this piece of content and what you want to get out
Speaker:into the world, it forces you to think about what that piece of
Speaker:content is actually going to be and what makes it interesting to
Speaker:begin with. So for an example, if you're creating a
Speaker:podcast episode or a blog post, and
Speaker:you write it all out and you publish it, and you pat yourself
Speaker:on the back, and then you go to publish it out onto LinkedIn or
Speaker:Twitter or send it to your email list and you start reading through it and
Speaker:you're like, there just is not much going on here. There's not much for me
Speaker:to be able to actually get out back into the world. Like, I thought this
Speaker:was a good post. I thought this was a good podcast episode. I thought this
Speaker:was a good webinar. And it just turns out it's
Speaker:not because the content, while may be interesting
Speaker:for a particular point in time, is not actually interesting to the
Speaker:audience on those individual channels. And it's really, really hard to cut that
Speaker:up and create native content for those things. So by
Speaker:understanding, hey, we need to be able to get LinkedIn posts out of this. We
Speaker:need to be able to get an email out of this, it changes your mindset
Speaker:when you're actually creating that content. So plan ahead to know what you want to
Speaker:do. All right? And this leads in directly into number three,
Speaker:which is integrate. So then after you've assessed what's going on, you've
Speaker:started to build out this plan. You're going to integrate that plan,
Speaker:integrate distribution details into your content roadmap. So
Speaker:almost everybody that I talk to has some sort of roadmap, some sort of content
Speaker:plan. Even if it's a Google sheet or a word doc
Speaker:or something, they have a plan. They have an idea of what they want to
Speaker:create. Now what you want to do is integrate distribution details.
Speaker:There are specific things you can add and integrate into your roadmap
Speaker:and we'll get into some of those. You want to add those into your
Speaker:planning. You want to integrate that stuff back into your planning. So what are
Speaker:the things that I'm talking about as far as adding it? You need to add
Speaker:in things like the actual channels. Where
Speaker:are you distributing this? It sounds so simple, but do you know where you're going
Speaker:to distribute this piece of content? You need to be able to add things in
Speaker:like formats. What are the other types of formats we're creating this in?
Speaker:What are the other types of pieces that we can create around this? You need
Speaker:to add in things like what is the actual demand
Speaker:driver for this? Is this a demand creation type piece or is this a
Speaker:demand capture type piece? All of those things will help
Speaker:determine what type of distribution plan you actually have for
Speaker:that type of piece of content. At the most base level you can
Speaker:imagine a mainly SEO driven piece, right? You're
Speaker:creating this and you know SEO is the main driver. Great. So you will have
Speaker:categories like Google as the main distribution channel
Speaker:or YouTube as the main distribution channel. It's going to be a demand
Speaker:capture piece. It's going to be in these formats. This is how people
Speaker:are actively searching for it. This is how we are going to measure that.
Speaker:These are the KPIs around it, things like keywords, impressions, search terms,
Speaker:organic visits, all that type of stuff. You want all of those pieces around for
Speaker:each given piece because let's say you have a research report that comes out
Speaker:and nobody's searching for that topic. What are you going to do? Okay,
Speaker:you have to build out that plan. You have to integrate that plan. You have
Speaker:to understand how these distribution. Okay, how are we distributing this? How often
Speaker:are we going to distribute this? Where are we going to distribute this? We are
Speaker:creating demand around this topic. That means we might have to put even more effort
Speaker:into this to be able to create demand around this idea, because people need to
Speaker:see this seven, 8910, eleven times to be able to get the value
Speaker:out of that piece of content. All right, the next one, number four,
Speaker:is one of my favorites. It's something that very, very few
Speaker:content teams that I have ever interacted with actually do
Speaker:this or do it consistently, but it can completely change the game
Speaker:as far as your distribution and repurposing process goes. And that is
Speaker:ranking your content. So ranking every
Speaker:piece of content when you're creating something, whether it's a YouTube video to
Speaker:release a product announcement or a YouTube video
Speaker:to share a bit of thought leadership, or a blog or a press
Speaker:release, all these things that we create as content
Speaker:teams, as marketing teams, they're not all created equal. And we have to understand
Speaker:that there are different distribution methods, different levels of
Speaker:distribution impact that we want to have as we're creating those things. You
Speaker:don't want to put the same distribution stamp on a
Speaker:giant original research report that you paid
Speaker:tens of thousands of dollars to get created and then all these assets, you don't
Speaker:want to put that same amount of effort into a press release and you don't
Speaker:want to assume that your audience cares about those things on the same
Speaker:levels as well. So we'll get more into ranking content
Speaker:this year. That's one of my goals, is to be able to share more on
Speaker:how I do this framework and how this works. But the four main
Speaker:categories that you want to look at are relevance, quality,
Speaker:originality and impact. And then you can span that across however
Speaker:many tiers you want at a very basic level,
Speaker:ABC one, two, three, however you want to frame those up, and then you
Speaker:and your team can come up with the ideas of what is a tier one
Speaker:piece of content from a relevant score, what is a tier
Speaker:three piece of content from the amount of impact that it's going to have. And
Speaker:then you actually have to do the hard work of figuring out how that is.
Speaker:But again, do this ahead of time, do this in the planning phases for
Speaker:this piece of content. And honestly, we'll talk about it as
Speaker:we go down at a different step and a different level. But
Speaker:those are the conversations that really help a team understand
Speaker:the overall impact or the potential impact of a piece of content that gets
Speaker:requested, even from somebody outside of your content team and things like
Speaker:that, unless you have a more intelligent conversation around that piece of
Speaker:content. All right, number five is all about building
Speaker:momentum. So you've built out your plan, you understand what this
Speaker:piece is, you kind of even maybe understand how you want to be able to
Speaker:distribute this. But now it's all about building momentum. And I have
Speaker:a whole map, a whole framework that I use for, actually, I
Speaker:call it a momentum map. And this is something I've built out and used with
Speaker:clients and essentially lays out
Speaker:for any given piece of content, typically a larger piece of content. Think a
Speaker:cornerstone or even a bigger core piece of content, something you really want
Speaker:to be able to get more out of. Maybe it's a core idea that you
Speaker:have, and what it does is it forces you to write out the
Speaker:answers, write out what is it that you want to
Speaker:actually distribute, and then how do we plan
Speaker:those things out for the rest of the quarter or the rest of the year?
Speaker:Or maybe we're not going to be able to do all these things in this
Speaker:quarter. But hey, if we did four of the things that we came up with
Speaker:off of this original piece of content sent, and then span those off across
Speaker:the year, that just gives us excuses to keep coming back to the same idea
Speaker:and the same idea. Think about your content marketing.
Speaker:Like an author thinks about marketing their book, if
Speaker:you come up with a really good piece of content, it deserves to get
Speaker:marketed for a good amount of time. So think about any
Speaker:given author. They release a new book, every podcast they're on,
Speaker:every YouTube video they're doing, every presentation. It's all built around the same
Speaker:book. So think about your content marketing in that same way, and
Speaker:think about the impact that you can have if you actually do that
Speaker:consistently. You build momentum around your ideas, you build momentum
Speaker:around this content. How many more people, if you did that consistently, would know
Speaker:about your core ideas, your core content, what you're doing, what you're offering in
Speaker:the next two quarters than if you just hit it once or twice and kept
Speaker:trying to constantly create that new stuff? So build momentum.
Speaker:Step five, you have to build momentum with these pieces of content. And again, not
Speaker:every piece of content. I might do a momentum map for tier one content
Speaker:only, but you really think through those things and how to build that up
Speaker:so you're not constantly running on the content hamster wheel. All right, number
Speaker:six is all about focus. Knowing which
Speaker:distribution channels to focus on, what to avoid. Knowing
Speaker:which types of formats to focus on, which to avoid.
Speaker:There's so many shiny objects out there trying to get us
Speaker:to pull into many different ways. So if you can come up
Speaker:with a very base level plan, this is not rocket science.
Speaker:What two channels do we post on every single week? What
Speaker:formats do we create every single week. What formats do we want to
Speaker:try more of in the future? And which channels do we want to try on
Speaker:more on in the future? These are the very basic questions and then
Speaker:takes all the pressure off you to say, I need to be doing a podcast
Speaker:and I need to be doing carousels and I need to be doing cool graphics
Speaker:and I need to be doing shorts and I need to be doing just focus
Speaker:on a couple, just focus on a couple. Do them really well. Get your
Speaker:audience to know, okay, when I see this in my feed, when this email comes
Speaker:in my inbox, I know what to expect. You want to create consistency and
Speaker:expectation from the audience. When you create this piece of
Speaker:content, you know what to do on your end, but then your audience knows what
Speaker:to expect from it as well, which is super underrated
Speaker:from a marketing perspective. Just in terms of consistency makes sense
Speaker:from a creation standpoint of like, okay, I know what I'm doing every single week,
Speaker:but it's so underrated from an audience perspective of the
Speaker:companies and the creators who do things so consistently. You just come to
Speaker:know what they're going to talk about. You come to know what types of formats
Speaker:are going to be in, and they might experience and expand and grow and
Speaker:try different things as they go, but overall, those things stay the
Speaker:same. So I think that having that laser focus in terms of what you're
Speaker:going to create, how you're going to create it, and then be able to do
Speaker:that every single week really leads into number
Speaker:seven, which is launching. So when you launch a piece of
Speaker:content, sort of like building momentum, but I would think of launch as more of
Speaker:like that consistency. So think about this as your core level
Speaker:content, the content that's
Speaker:driving your engine. When you think about those things, how are you going to
Speaker:launch? So at a most basic level, when you
Speaker:launch podcast episode every week, what
Speaker:does that look like? What is your standard operating procedure?
Speaker:Template, distribution template for a podcast?
Speaker:I've talked about mine before, and I'm sure I'll do a little bit more deep
Speaker:dive on how I'm evolving that for 2024. But at a base
Speaker:level, it's release. The podcast. Podcast email goes out on
Speaker:Tuesdays after newsletter goes out on Saturdays.
Speaker:Based on that podcast episode, different clips get cut up into
Speaker:social pieces. So you're creating the very basic plan
Speaker:for how that goes to be able to launch. And again, so it's not to
Speaker:say this is the end all, be all, this is the perfect plan, but just
Speaker:to give you a baseline to start with, that hey, when we launch a blog
Speaker:post on Tuesday, what happens when we launch a podcast?
Speaker:What happens when we do a webinar? What happens? So build a launch
Speaker:plan for distribution to understand how this content is actually going to get out in
Speaker:front of your audience. And number eight, one of my
Speaker:favorites, number eight, can't live without it.
Speaker:Remixing, repurposing how do you take your best
Speaker:ideas and create, quote unquote new content
Speaker:off of those throughout the year? So whether you are
Speaker:going top down and you're taking that content and
Speaker:repurposing it throughout the year, in terms of taking a blog post and
Speaker:cutting up into a social piece of content, that's a very basic one, or a
Speaker:video and cutting it up into clips, are you even doing that? Or
Speaker:how can you take several of those things and
Speaker:remix them into something even bigger? But you could take a
Speaker:series of blog posts that you've done and turn that into course
Speaker:material. You could take a series of podcasts that you've done and turn that
Speaker:into an ultimate guide with expert interviews. There are these ways
Speaker:that you can take smaller pieces and remix them into larger ones
Speaker:going forward. So think about how you're going to be able to remix
Speaker:the stuff, remix the ideas again, when you think about building
Speaker:momentum, that all goes into that, whether it's a launch, whether it's building momentum,
Speaker:whether it's ranking, all this stuff ties together to be able to build a cohesive
Speaker:plan to where you are marketing the content that you create,
Speaker:where you're not just creating it and hoping people hit your website, but you are
Speaker:being proactive. You are actively getting in front of the audience with the
Speaker:content, with the message, with the ideas that you want in their face
Speaker:every single day. And you are actually building a plan
Speaker:for that. You're not letting that just happen by chance. Because part
Speaker:of the reality that we have to understand with remixing as well is that not
Speaker:everyone wants to watch, listen or read
Speaker:your original piece of content. There are lots of creators
Speaker:that create YouTube content and also have a
Speaker:podcast, and I'm never going to listen to the podcast, but I'll watch their YouTube
Speaker:video. Or there are lots of great folks
Speaker:with great content on social that have newsletters, but I'm not interested in following their
Speaker:newsletter. I've got enough newsletters, but I like their stuff on social. That's great.
Speaker:If you think that you only need to do one, you're missing out
Speaker:on a whole opportunity of other touch points, other
Speaker:impressions, other places where these people who may
Speaker:actually fully enjoy your content could be customers, could be potential
Speaker:clients. But because you don't distribute that content
Speaker:and cut it up and remix it in those different ways, you're completely missing out
Speaker:on them. So don't fall for the trap that a lot of folks
Speaker:fall into, which is, well, I'm doing a newsletter
Speaker:and the people who really want that content, they'll see it in my
Speaker:newsletter, or I already posted that on social, why would I write a longer
Speaker:newsletter about it? Well, that's just not true. There are people, I see it
Speaker:across my stuff all the time. There are people who enjoy LinkedIn content, there are
Speaker:people who enjoy podcast content, and there are people who enjoy the newsletter,
Speaker:and there's crossover there. That's great. If you're following all these
Speaker:things, let me know. Leave a review,
Speaker:say you read every newsletter
Speaker:and check out LinkedIn and listen to the podcast, that'd be amazing.
Speaker:But I know full well there are people who do one or
Speaker:two, and that's great. That's great. If you just follow on one place
Speaker:and not another, that's no problem because I am going to actively get that content
Speaker:out in those places every single week. Number nine, this is
Speaker:more of a bonus, but I couldn't skip it. It's
Speaker:not something I necessarily have to worry about right now. But
Speaker:working with teams and working on teams,
Speaker:you cannot skip number nine, which is collaborate.
Speaker:Collaboration is one of the hardest things when it comes to distribution,
Speaker:because a lot of times there's just not a lot of insight into how these
Speaker:things work. There's a lot of complexity with distribution,
Speaker:depending on platform, depending on format, depending on what you're
Speaker:creating, you might not be the one creating the content, but in charge of
Speaker:distributing the content. I've been there.
Speaker:Product team creates something and says, hey, we want to
Speaker:share this with our audience, share it out, you will consume the
Speaker:content. This isn't very good. So it's hard. It's hard
Speaker:to understand those things. And so I think just being aware of how
Speaker:you're going to collaborate, make distribution a collaborative effort. Understand
Speaker:it's not going to be an overnight switch. It's definitely not going to be an
Speaker:overnight switch. It's probably more realistically going to be months and years
Speaker:of fine tuning and adjusting. Because everything within
Speaker:this I can tell you from working with dozens of
Speaker:companies, every single company is different.
Speaker:How they create content is different. How they create
Speaker:briefs and frameworks and structure projects, it's all
Speaker:different. So understand, there's no perfect framework.
Speaker:Even if you followed these nine steps to an absolute t
Speaker:and you said I hit every single one. I rank my content. I'm building momentum.
Speaker:I'm launching. I'm following your exact templates. I
Speaker:can guarantee you following the exact templates and following the format,
Speaker:it will still look different for your company than it will for somebody else's, than
Speaker:it will for mine. Because just how you create that content, how you can
Speaker:successfully amplify that and talk about that amongst your company, it's going to be
Speaker:totally, totally different. The key is not to have some perfect plan,
Speaker:it's to just do it. The key is to just do it. To
Speaker:have the internal awareness of what we're creating, of how we're getting that in front
Speaker:of the audience, and why it matters to begin with. And just having
Speaker:those things is going to be a baseline for success. So I really hope you
Speaker:enjoyed this episode. It's been a super fun one for me to do, to walk
Speaker:through. Like I said, I've never gone through these steps in public like this,
Speaker:to go through each of the nine, but these are the areas that you have
Speaker:to focus on this year in particular. If you want to get more
Speaker:roi out of the content that you're creating, and if you want more help with
Speaker:that, if you want some hands on help, feel free to reach out. It's something
Speaker:I work with teams all the time and actually help them build a
Speaker:consistent momentum for the content that they're creating. And that would be something
Speaker:I'd be more than happy to help you out with. So until next week, we
Speaker:will chat again, but thanks for listening to distribution first and I'll see you all
Speaker:next time.
