6 Content Distribution Channels You Aren’t Using (But Should)

You finally hit “Publish” after hours spent researching, outlining, writing, editing, and proofreading your content. Now it’s time for your content distribution strategy to kick into high gear. If you have content that you love, you should be sharing it everywhere. But, where is everywhere these days?

You share your content on your company’s Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media channels.

You send your content in your weekly newsletter to thousands of subscribers, and in email drips to dozens of high-quality business leads.

You send it in a text to your closest friends and family members.

You may even spend a little bit of money “boosting” the reach of your post.

All of these content distribution tactics are valuable, but what if I told you there were distribution channels you aren’t even using (yet) that can boost your reach even further?

In this post, I’ll list some underutilized content distribution tactics that you may want to consider adding to your content marketing strategy.

BuzzFeed Community

BuzzFeed Community is a platform where anyone (even you) can create your own viral listicle, trivia quizzes, ode to your favorite pop star, or create fun and original content that highlights your personality. The best part is that you could potentially reach hundreds of thousands of BuzzFeed readers if the editors find your post unique and engaging.

The bad news is BuzzFeed Community is all about the community and any posts attempting to promote an organization, brand, or products aren’t allowed.

The good news is that you can still share your content in your own BuzzFeed Community article, but still have a very subtle nod to your brand or your product. Here are a few of my tips:

• Create a personal BuzzFeed Community account, not a branded account.
• Create your own original GIF and include it in your article. BuzzFeed requires every GIF, image, or video to include the name and link to the source where it came from. If you think you can create a brand new photo, video, or reaction GIF yourself, include it in your post and cite yourself. Here’s more info on BuzzFeed’s photo policy.
• Embed 1 (2 max) relevant social media post from your personal or your brand’s Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, Imgur, or Flickr accounts. Pro Tip: Make sure these posts have a lot of engagement, at least a few hundred likes, comments, or retweets. BuzzFeed editors prefer embedding content that has already gone viral in some capacity.

• Embed one photo, GIF or video from a customer or influencer in your clothing, makeup, accessories, or another product, but give full credit to the customer or influencer. This works great if, for instance, you’re writing a listicle on “14 Must-Have Summertime Accessories” and include a social media post from a user wearing a trendy pair of sunglasses that you just so happen to sell.

Quora Blogs

This is one of the Quora growth hacks I shared a few weeks ago: republish your content on Quora Blogs. Similar to content shared on Medium or on LinkedIn, Quora Blogs allow you to share a blog post that will be categorized under relevant topics, (i.e. Marketing, Shopping, Writing, etc.). Therefore, when you share a blog post on Quora, anyone who follows or shows interest in a topic that you write about may see your content. Take a look at my post on Quora growth hacks for step-by-step instructions on how to set up a Quora Blog.

LinkedIn Learning

If you’re not camera shy and you have a wealth of knowledge you’d like to share with other professionals, consider repurposing content on LinkedIn Learning. LinkedIn Learning is LinkedIn’s educational platform that provides more than 10,000 online training and development courses. You can apply to become a LinkedIn Learning instructor.

This is a content distribution tactic we’ve even tried here at Ladder! Our co-founder and COO Michael Taylor published blog posts on the Excel tutorial we present to our new hires. He then repurposed this content into a LinkedIn Learning course, Excel for Marketers. To date, Michael’s course has be viewed 8,275 times!

Speaking of LinkedIn, you should also try…

SlideShare

SlideShare is another offering from LinkedIn that allows you to share PowerPoint presentations and courses with the general public. This is the perfect place to repurpose any PowerPoint presentations you’ve created recently, but don’t forget that you can convert other pieces of content into PowerPoint slides, such as data from infographics, text from your eBook, or a collection of photos from a recent event.

Chatbots in Messenger Apps

Every marketer knows that encouraging colleagues to read, share, and engage with your content is an effective content distribution strategy. But let’s be honest: your colleagues rarely every reply to your company-wide content promotion emails and you really don’t have time to message each person on Slack or Hipchat.

The solution: chatbots! Chatbots are applications that run inside popular messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, Slack, and Telegram and allow you to automate a lot of manual processes.

For instance, businesses can accept payments from users, provide instant answers to customer support questions, send custom notifications and alerts, send updates to users whenever you publish new content, and much more.

The best part is that practically anyone can create a chatbot without any coding experience. Create your own bot using a third-party service like Chatfuel, OnSequel, and Botfisy. Alternatively, you can hire a freelance developer on Fiverr to create a custom chatbot.

However, before you start building your messenger bot, be mindful of your customers’ needs. In other words, it doesn’t make sense for a B2B SaaS company to create a Facebook Messenger bot that accepts payments from current customers; instead, it may be strategic to create a bot that answers questions for potential users about the B2B SaaS product and nurtures them through the sales process.

Press Releases

If you’ve created a phenomenal, unique piece of content, create a press release about your content to send to journalists, media outlets, and even potential investors relevant to your industry.

Contrary to popular belief, your press release doesn’t need to be about a business acquisition or about the release of your latest innovative product. It can also be a content distribution channel! You can share a new study, report, infographic, survey, e-Book, or another newsworthy piece of content that your core audience will find valuable.

When you put together a press release, keep these tips in mind:

• Try to keep your press release to 400-600 words, which is about one page. Feel free to use bullet points to make your content easier to read.
• Include 2-3 hyperlinks maximum within your press release.
• Write your press release with SEO best practices in mind, especially if you plan on submitting it to a commercial newswire.
• Make the headline of your press release memorable and engaging. Instead of saying, “IVY Tech Announces Release Of It’s Biometric Authenticator”, integrate some powerful ad copy and transform it to this: “Military-Grade Security At The Blink Of An Eye: IVY Tech Releases The World’s First Iris Scanner to Secure Smartphone Devices from Hackers”.
• Include pictures, videos, or audio in your press release, if relevant.
• Use the “inverted pyramid” method to write your press release. This method involves capturing someone’s attention quickly by answering the “who, what, when, where, why, and how” in the first paragraph, and then providing supplemental details, quotes, sources, photos, information about your company, etc. However, don’t forget that you’re also telling a story.
• Proofread, proofread, proofread, proofread, proofread! If you’ve never written a press release before, I recommend hiring a freelance writer or getting the help of a PR agency.
• Finally, make your call-to-action explicitly clear to the journalist. Ask them to “View your infographic” or “Visit our website for more information”.

Now, this tactic is pretty time intensive. You can’t upload a press release to a commercial newswire like PR Newswire and expect it to be immediately picked up by a reputable publication. You’ll need to go the extra mile and be comfortable calling news outlets, emailing bloggers and journalists, and direct messaging influencers on social media.

By putting in the hard work and investing in innovative content distribution tactics, you’ll not only earn traffic to your website or blog, you’ll continue to build your brand, establish your brand as reputable and authoritative, increase your visibility in search results, and potentially valuable backlinks from big-name publications that pick up your content.

Reddit

Reddit is the world’s biggest social forum with subcommunities for every topic you could possibly imagine! This makes authentic conversation possible, and it’s a great way to connect with niche audiences. However, the user base works very hard to keep Reddit free from shills and anyone else who tries to use the platform for self-promotion only.

And, while posting your content organically on the site has worked well for us (as long as you’re not just pushing yourself or your product), advertising on Reddit is another story. Check out The Reddit Ads Experiment: What We Learned for $250 for more on that.

What do you think about these tactics?

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