Are You Maximizing Your Content Reach?

13 Ways to Build Content Distribution

Chances are your potential audience is smaller than it could be. Like many content creators and bloggers, you consider you’re finished once you hit the publish button. The reality is content creation is only the first step in getting your content widely distributed to the people most interested in it. Without marketing, your content, social media or blog post will languish with lackluster readership unless you write for an established media entity with a large reader base.

Cautionary note

Before distributing your content, you must have killer titles and amazing content. Without these two elements, your content won’t attract readers and/or gain word of mouth velocity.

13 Ways to effectively expand your content distribution

To ensure your content gets the largest possible readership, follow these thirteen steps to distribute your content cost effectively.

  1. Deliver posts by email. While you may consider email boring and old school, it’s great for reaching those members of your community who want to get your posts without thinking so that they can read them at their leisure.
  2. Provide RSS feeds. Although RSS (or really simple syndication as it’s known by geeks) usage is on the decline, there’s still a hardcore group of users. Make it easy for them to consume your content the way they want to.
  3. Automatically distribute content to social sharing sites. Set up automated feeds to deliver your content.  Focus on the major options, specifically Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+. Personally, I prefer to share hand-crafted links on Twitter.
  4. Encourage readers to share your content. Make it easy for visitors to share your content on major social sharing and bookmarking sites such as Reddit and StumbleUpon. It’s helpful to have a social media tribe to help your promotion. Of course, they’ll expect you to promote their content in return.
  5. Send a broader weekly newsletter. Keep in touch with readers with a weekly emailing that goes beyond your own content. Include links to your posts in case recipients missed a post. Include original content to entice readers to open your email.
  6. Curate content. Use a curation service like Paper.li to highlight content of interest to your followers. Include your posts in each issue. These services allow you to tailor content to your micro-market.
  7. Create a Facebook page for your content. Place a widget on your website or blog to encourage followers. It’s useful to expand your engagement to get followers to visit
  8. Start a LinkedIn Group. Build a following on LinkedIn around your area of expertise. Also, use other people’s groups as a forum for delivering your content more broadly.
  9. Highlight content on internal media. This works well for businesses that have physical mailing lists, websites and packages as well as offline media to reference and share content.
  10. Allow other sites to have second publishing rights to your site. This is a great way to expose your content to another existing audience. I recommend waiting about ten days until your content is indexed on the search engines.
  11. Leverage other people’s media. Expand your reach by allowing another business or organization to link to your content with a short blurb. This is a win-win since you get exposed to another audience and they get to offer your content.
  12. Syndicate your content on other people’s sites. Expand your reach on other people’s websites through the use of a widget. This is similar to letting others link to your content. The goal is distribution without marketing expense.
  13. Promote content in your signature file. While this may sound minor, it can yield results. Further, it’s a great way to reach people without cost beyond setting up your signature file. If you’re part of a larger organization, create a centralized signature file that everyone must use.

While some of these thirteen content distribution tactics may not apply to your content or target market, it’s useful to assess all of the options to see which ones work for each piece of content you create. Also, bear in mind that each of these methods yields greater results as your audience grows.

Do you have any other suggestions that you’d add to this list? If so, what are they?

Happy marketing,
Heidi Cohen


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Photo credit: Stig Nygaard via Flickr

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