Free Content Distribution & The Channels You Need To Master
How To Get More Traffic To All Your Content
CHAPTER THREE
Before we look at my top three content distribution channels, I think it’s important that we first get clear about what content distribution is.
Content distribution, is when you promote your content using multiple media formats, through various social media channels.
These channels can be categorized into three groups: Owned, earned, and paid.
- Owned content distribution: This includes distributing content to web properties that belong to you like your blog, email newsletter, social media followers
- Earned content distribution: This is when a third-party distributes your content through press coverage, guest articles, reviews, or social media shares
- Paid content distribution: This is when you pay for content distribution, and this is often based on a cost-per-click (CPC) model - which means you pay each time someone clicks through to view your content
So let's look at how distribution looks on those different channels.
3.1 Distribute Your Content Using Email
If you’ve read or watched my content for any length of time, you’ll know I’m fanatical about email marketing.
Why?
Well it's a great low cost way to stay connected with your audience, and repeatedly bring them back to your website - without being super salesy.
My top tips for distributing your content via email
- Schedule an email to your list within a few hours of your new post going live. This will send visitors to your page, which will also make Google index your post faster
- Write a blurb that introduces your email content, make sure your blurb uses an intriguing hook designed to entice your reader to click the link
- Resend the email to all unopened subscribers 2-3 days afterwards and this will help lift your average open rate. The more your emails are opened and read, the more sales you'll make.
How to increase your email open rates
The success of your email marketing is based on having a strong email open rate and email click thru rate.
Now there are things you can do to improve that organically such as:
- Focusing on your email headlines - split test headlines (test two headlines) then send the winning headline to the rest of your list
- Test different times and days to send your email - this about your customers lifestyles and when they're most likely to be in their inbox or have the time and inclination to take action on what they read
- Test different email lengths. Super short, medium, long form
- Test email link placement, colour, size, adding links in the PS. and PPS - the more you test and the better you are at tracking your subscribers reactions, the more effective of an email marketer you'll become
Top Tip: When it comes to email marketing you need to keep testing things. Start with testing subject lines, then test email lengths, send times, and link placement.
Then we get to the thing that many people find uncomfortable - managing unsubscribes and systematically cleaning your list at regular intervals.
There used to be a time when I took unsubscribes personally! This was when I looked at subscribers as a vanity metric and was more concerned with having a large numbers of subscribers, than a list of engaged subscribers who actually BUY something.
When someone unsubscribes from your list it's not a time to get down in the dumps as it's actually a good thing, and here a three reasons why.
- You're no longer in the inbox of someone who isn't interested in what you have to say or sell
- Your email open rate is reduced if you have more people ignoring your emails than actually opening and reading them
- The cost of your email service provider bill will go down - think about it? Do you really want to pay for a bunch of subscribers who never actually open your email.... No, thought not.
Something you also may not be aware of is that your email service subscriber will start to suppress your email and delivery, if you're sending out large amounts of email to what is effectively a disengaged audience.
That's why it's important that you clean your email list (delete disengaged subscribers) at regular intervals.
I usually clean my list at least once per quarter. You'll find if you adopt this practice, not only will you pay less for your list, but you'll also improve your email delivery rate, open rate and click through rate, which means you'll make more sales.
So far from being an indicator of failure, keeping your email list clean and upto date is really a great practice to get into.
Tip top: Clean your list every quarter, by deleting everyone on your list who hasn't opened one of your emails in the last 90 days.
Before you delete these subscribers, download a CSV file - this way you can upload this to Facebook and create a lookalike audience to market to.
Check out these three email service providers:
- Click to learn more about Convert Kit email service provider - Convert Kit mainly work with bloggers but I've been using them for my digital and product service businesses for years
- Click to learn more about Klaviyo - these EMS is designed for ecommerce marketing and has all the built in features you'll need to become a master email marketer, but it does come at a cost as it's a high end ecommerce email service provider
- Click here to learn more about Mailerlite - I often suggest this service to clients on a really tight budget as they have a good free option - however, this free option does come with lots of restrictions.
3.2 Distribute your Content Using Instagram
You may not consider Instagram as the first port of call when it comes to promoting your content, but I want you to think again.
Here's the thing...
As the instagram platform has grown and matured it has become much more than just an image sharing platform.
You can now share all types of media, and content has become more interactive than ever before.
This means if you're clear about how each feature on the platform works, you can create a strategy which is suitable to the platform.
My tops tips for promoting your content on Instagram
- Make sure you're clear about how each feature of instagram works. Get familiar with stories, lives, IG TV.
- Think about how your content can be broken down to either be re-shared on this platform or drive traffic to your site.
EG:
You wrote an article on 5 ways to fold napkins over on your blog. This could be re-purposed for IG in the following ways.
- Break down a few ways on a IG tv
- Create a story showing different ways, then run on a poll on people's favorite
- Create a slideshow and set it to music, post this to your feed with a CTA to come and see the rest of the styles over on your blog
While you definitely want to get as many viewers as possible over to your website, it's also important that you're creating content that is engaging on the platform it's originally found on.
For a long time there's been a statistic floating around that it takes customers at least 7 interactions with your brand before they have a strong enough sense of brand awareness or feel comfortable to purchase from you.
If you're a small/unknown indie brand, it may require more interactions.
Think about how you can use Instagram to help you increase those interactions, in a way that helps build the know, love, trust factor of your brand.
3.4 Distribute Your Content Using Pinterest
Pinterest has got to be one of the most underutilized and misunderstood social media platforms, especially by newbie ecommerce business owners.
What they fail to realise is that Pinterest is one of the biggest search engines, third to Google and Youtube.
Which means if you make sure you're creating the sort of visuals that work well on the platform, this is a surefire way to bring in more views and traffic.
One of my favourite tools for automating my content on Pinterest has got to be Tailwind and Tailwind tribes.
My top tips for distributing your content on Pinterest:
- Create content that is keyword researched and keyword rich
- Create content that is evergreen and is not likely to date, so you can enjoy a long term stream of relevant traffic
- Make sure you use Tailwind to help you schedule lots of pins on autopilot, and make sure you're using Tailwind tribes to help promote your content among niche groups - as that really extends your reach.
Click this link to check out Tailwind and discover how this tool can help you increase your reach and improve your traffic.
Paid promotion on Pinterest
If you have limited time and a limited budget you'll probably want to limit your content marketing to free methods only.
However, even spending just a few dollars a day used paid traffic methods can really improve and speed up your results.
This particular course isn't about paid traffic so I'm not going to go into the ins and out of how to generate paid traffic. But I will tell you that I've found spending a few dollars each day promoting content on Pinterest and Facebook really helps.
The important thing to remember when using paid traffic is to make sure you have retargeting set up, so you can reconnect with those visitors at a later date. First time visitors to your website rarely convert into paying customers, and that applies for free and paid traffic.
ACTION TASKS
- Set up your email service provider
- Set up your Pinterest business account and put your data tracking on your site
- Set up your Instagram business account or convert your account so you can get your analytics (not available on personal accounts)
- Set up your Tailwind tribes free account
- Set up your Canva account - so you can create your pins
key takeaways from chapter #3
Try tailwind for free
Welcome, you just completed chapter #3
This is one of the shorter chapters in this training, but it's actually one of the most important, as if you don't have a content distribution channel it won't matter how bomb your content is, no one will see it! And if no one sees it.... your content won't help generate traffic or sales.