76% of B2B marketers are using blogging as a content marketing tactic. Owning and maintaining a company blog is a great opportunity to enhance your overall marketing plan.
But producing content is more than just pressing “Publish” on a regular basis. An effective strategy needs to include distribution as well. The most difficult task is actually creating the content; you might as well maximize its exposure. Distribution spreads content across multiple platforms—which helps build brand awareness, drive ideal client personas to your website and convert into leads.
Here are the steps to building your distribution schedule:
1) Gather an inventory of existing distribution platforms
First, figure out the existing channels that your company utilizes. Some of these tactics could be dated and in need of refreshing (still sending a paper newsletter?). Here are some to consider:
- Existing social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.)
- Email newsletter
- Direct mail
- Company presentations
- Case studies
- Company website
2) Start building your distribution cycle
Based on your current bandwidth (e.g. available staff, budget and time), start creating a content cycle around your blog. An example can be the following:
The inner ring closest to the company blog is distribution platforms you can re-purpose blog content and disseminate in a relatively quick amount of time (e.g. within two weeks or less of your blog post publishing).
The outer ring covers distribution avenues that require more time and may require input from other colleagues and departments. Again, not all of these platforms have to be employed to execute a successful content marketing strategy. On average, B2B marketers utilize 13 different content tactics within one plan. This seems like a lot, but once you start adding up all the existing channels, your firm’s number could be over that (for example, Bop Design distributes content to 10 social media platforms alone).
3) Determine distribution frequency
This may be the hardest part of a distribution plan: how frequently are you re-purposing one piece of content? There’s value in re-purposing a blog post multiple times for various uses, but there comes a point when your clients will recognize the content as “old news.” In the end, it depends on the outlet. Here are some examples:
Twitter has shown the benefits of tweeting a blog link with modified copy multiple times throughout the month (as long as you’re mixing it with other original and curated content). Since the average tweet life is about 24 minutes, this platform is on the extreme end of the frequency scale.
Email newsletters are an effective channel to re-purpose existing blog content to drive current and prospective clients to your website. When re-purposing multiple times, aim for a maximum of three times (depending on your newsletter send frequency). If done too often, your most loyal clients (the ones opening your newsletter the most) will start to notice they’re being sent to the same landing page—causing your open rate to suffer.
Premium content offers can come in a variety of formats (white papers, eBooks, tips sheets and presentations to name a few). When compiling blog posts to re-purpose for this tactic, it’s all right to source specific ones more frequently than others. What’s most important it that each premium content offer is unique enough from the last.
Building a distribution strategy for your blog will give your blog post a longer shelf life past the publish date. Once you get a handle of distributing content across owned channels (e.g. company newsletter, social media, etc.), look to third party platforms like Reddit, Quora and industry specific forums to also re-purpose your content on.
