Article's Content
Article's Content
Good Content, MAAD City
You just hit publish on a new blog post. Or a new YouTube video, LinkedIn post, Facebook status, Twitter thread…
Regardless of what it is, it’s really good. Eye-catching. Insightful.
But after sending it out into the digital universe, you’re being met with “…” (Those are crickets.) It feels like you’re just talking to yourself.
When you want to be preaching to your audience.
So why isn’t your content performing well?
Most content creators haven’t heard, but content distribution has taken the crown in the marketing mix. When you publish a new piece of content, how do you know it’s being seen by the right audience? Or at all?
Not prioritizing content distribution is hurting your content.
It’s why all those posts and videos are met with crickets. 🦗
It’s why most content creators have a hard time hitting 1,000 followers, subscribers, listeners or readers.
It’s why most creators struggle to reach anyone beyond their close friends and contacts.
Social Platforms Are Now Embracing Algorithms
You can thank Facebook for making content distribution so important—after all, it’s partially their fault that great content doesn’t get seen.
Social media algorithms sort your social feed based on relevance instead of chronology.
And every social media platform seems to change its algorithm every other month.
In 2018, The Onion took an absolute JAB at Facebook for changing its algorithm.
Basically, the online media platform stated that a significant change to the Facebook algorithm emphasized content from friends and family over publishers. And apparently, “The Onion doesn’t receive a single goddamn cent unless you dipshits out there on social media move your cursor over to the link and visit the goddamn website.” Their words. Not mine.
Basically, as if these brands were struggling to get clicks before on their links, now their posts are being buried under in the algorithm sorting.
And the best (worst) part about the changes is that they usually don’t let users know.
Best: If you figure it out quickly, you can get ahead of your competitors.
Worst: How on EARTH can you figure it out and re-strategize in that amount of time?
This is where the content creation vs. content distribution war started.
Who is the winner…?
I think you know the answer. (After all, it’s in the title of this post.)
👀
Your content may be immaculate, but it’s noisy out there. Your insightful, eye-catching content can still get lost in the sea of endless updates.
And it’s not just another LinkedIn status update you’re battling. It’s Facebook notifications, emails, tweets, blog posts—all the dings and the tiny red dots that assail your target audience.
The Digital Marketing Space Is Noisier Than Ever
Content is getting lost because there is more competition than ever before—which in turn means there’s more noise than ever before.
Here’s something to scare—I mean, show you how many competitors are out there:
This is the Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic (from 2019), aka the Martech 5000.
The Martech 5000 (or 8000, to be more accurate) illustrates all the marketing technology solutions you’re vying with for attention.
The martech landscape has grown year-over-year by double or triple digits.
The 2017 edition had 39% more solutions than in 2016.
The 2018 one had 27% more than in 2017.
The 2019 edition only grew 3% from 2018. (Phewf?)
The 2020 edition grew by 13.6% from 2019 (!!)
Its growth has been slowing… But when you’re talking thousands (and thousands) of companies, double-digit growth is still pretty massive.
Rise of Entrepreneurship
It’s easier to create a company now than ever before, so more brands exist today than ever before.
Not only are there more companies than ever, but there are also more entrepreneurs leading these companies and not stopping after creating their first company.
These are hustlers, and like sharks, they need to keep moving forward.
Founders no longer create a company and then stay with it until the end of time… instead, a founder will build a company and then once it’s established, they move on and do it all over again. And again. And again.
More Companies = More Content Competition
Not only are there more companies than ever before, but there is more content than ever before. Think about it: Content is being pumped out from every company and every employee inside those companies. These new brands are popping up in the “everyone is a creator” era.
Let me elaborate on this.
Social media platforms are encouraging and empowering people to create more content.
I assume you have more than one social media account, right?
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, Reddit… the list goes on.
It’s becoming a part of our daily routine to make an Instagram story or send out a tweet on the go; in fact, there are 70,596 new social media posts per second. 🤯
And it’s likely due to like buttons and our obsession with social media recognition. After hitting publish, we are so inclined to keep hitting refresh to see how many likes we have gotten or who retweeted our post. Facebook introduced their like button in 2009, 5 years after its initial launch. Now, 11 years down the line it’s difficult to imagine life without the ‘like’ button.
How would we know what people thought about our latest LinkedIn post?
These social media platforms welcome all kinds of content and topics. People post text, imagery, videos, and everything in between. And with that
Everyone’s A Creator (Or Wants To Become One)
Picture this: It’s 1997, your childhood dream is to become a pro athlete or a Disney Channel star. These days, kids are still dreaming of playing in the NBA, but they also want to become famous YouTubers.
This is where we can really see the exponential growth of content creators entering the digital universe.
We don’t use social media like we used to; it used to be about sharing life updates with your immediate circle or creeping your crush’s MySpace page. Now we use it to gain digital traction.
And it’s not just wannabe celebrities or businesses trying to gain followers—it’s your fam, your friend, your colleague, your college roommate, your neighbour, your neighbour’s kid… Everyone on these platforms wants to become the next gen influencer or game-changer. This means you’re competing for space with everyone and their mother, not just other businesses.
I’ll say it again: The digital universe is so freakin’ loud.
What can we do about it? We need to stop focusing solely on content creation and start prioritizing content distribution.
Here’s Content Distribution In Action
If a tree (your content) falls in the forest (is published) and there’s no one around to hear (view) it, does it really make a sound (impact)?
No! (You can try to argue with me on this… but if no one’s seein’ it, no one’s actin’ on it.)
Distribution is crucial to a successful content strategy. Without it, you’re hitting publish and your content is getting thrown into the digital void with the crickets pulling the sleigh.
You need to ensure that you are sending your content to the right place so it’s being seen by the right people, aka your target audience.
It’s time to get REAL about content distribution.
“I am distributing content! I share it on Twitter, LinkedIn and with my email list…”
If you’re just posting content where it’s mostly read by your friends, family, colleagues and business connections, you’re not reaching your target audience. You can also consider video dubbing as an option to improve your content distribution by making your video more accessible and engaging for viewers who speak another language.
Check out this video that takes a deeper look into content distribution and why you’re likely missing the mark on it:
And once you’ve distributed a piece of content, it’s not ready to sit in the archives for the rest of time. Your content can be repurposed, resulting in even greater reach than that initial distribution.
If you take advantage of repurposing opportunities, you will start to see more and more opportunities arise and the cycle of opportunity will continue. Such as saving time by repurposing instead of creating content.
Here are some examples of content repurposing via HubSpot (the powerhouse of content):
- Turn internal data into case studies
- Use blog content for video content
- Make a slide deck for SlideShare
- Use testimonials for social media content
- Update old blog posts with new information
- Use statistics for social media content
- Refer to blog content for online courses
- Offer guest contributions for topics you’ve already covered
Take your assets and remix and distribute them again and again. It’s not a one-and-done.
How am I supposed to do all this, you may be wondering…?
Introducing: The Distribution Challenge
This challenge delves into every nook and cranny of content distribution. These tactics will help build your audience and reach more people around the world. (I’m talking millions of people.)
Over the last four years, I’ve used this playbook to reach more people than the total population of New Zealand (that’s 4.8 million people, by the way) for both my own brands and our agency’s clients.
Here are some of the results:
- Made the front page of Reddit 7x
- 1M+ visitors via social and referral traffic
- 450,000+ views on Medium
- More than 500,000 impressions on Twitter
- 40,000 views a month on LinkedIn
And now, I want to share with you exactly how I do it through what I’m calling…
The Distribution Challenge.
What Is It And What Will I Get From It?
In this challenge, I’m going to share a framework that will ensure your content isn’t drowned out by all the noise in the digital space.
Instead, you’ll be able to reach new audiences, grow your brand and establish greater authority in your niche at scale.
If you already have blog posts, videos, podcasts or lead magnets sitting around and collecting dust, this challenge will give you the plan you need to strengthen your audience and expand your brand.
Done in 14 days, you will receive a collection of emails, videos, templates and workbooks with tactics you can use to spread your content.
And see the results. 🔥
Saying that I’m excited would be an understatement.
After being in the works for (quite) some time, it’s finally ready to be used and used again to ensure that creators aren’t being consistently met with—you guessed it—crickets.
