3 Steps to Good Content Distribution (Plus 20 Tactics)

3 min readJul 19, 2019

Blogging is boring without readers.

You write a thoughtful post, go through the trouble of researching the article and designing an image, and then you click publish — only to hear digital crickets.

But wait! Isn’t content king?

I created the content, so where’s its kingdom?

Creating high quality content in 2019 is just the barrier of entry. There’s a lot of high-quality noise out there these days. Your readers aren’t wading through that noise in search of your specific blog or ideas.

But, that doesn’t mean you can’t rise above the noise to hand-deliver your blog to them.

That’s basically what content distribution comes down to: meeting readers exactly where they’re at.

I’m talking about manual content distribution, the process that sets popular digital writers apart from everyone else.

Here’s what I’ve learned about content distribution over the years:

3 Steps to content distribution

Step 1: Know your customer

Who are they?

What types of content do they respond to?

Where do they spend time online?

The key is to write content for a specific person. If you try to write content for everyone, you’ll be too generic. No one will pay attention. Understand who you’re speaking to before you start writing the article.

Step 2: Create distribution-focused content

Before you ever start writing an article, you should know how you want people to find it. Determine whether you’re optimizing for SEO or virality. You’ll write different articles depending on which distribution focus you choose.

In short, search-optimized articles will emphasize keywords and best practices. These articles will answer common questions asked within your industry.

On the other hand, viral-oriented content should be optimized for shares. It should present big ideas or some kind of controversy (less about nit-picking and more about challenging the status quo).

Articles can (and usually should) have elements of both distribution plans in mind. But if you don’t know your main distribution plan, you’ll end up creating a post without purpose, which is very hard to share.

Step 3: Distribution

Finally, I believe you should spend 3x as much time distributing your blog post as you spent writing it. This is the step most businesses skip because distribution requires manual labor and can be very time consuming.

But distribution could also be the difference between growing a steady following and hearing crickets every time you click publish.

Common distribution tactics:

Perform keyword research
Create + test at least 5 headlines
Insert a corresponding graphic or video
Create teaser content before the article is live
Repurpose the article for Facebook
Repurpose the article for LinkedIn
Repurpose the article for Twitter
Repurpose the article for Quora
Repurpose the article for Reddit
Share the article to Zest.is
Share key points in images on Instagram
Share the article on Hacker News
Share the article with your subscribers
Share the article with partner newsletters
Share the article with relevant journalists + bloggers
Share link across all social profiles (tag all contributors)
Share the link in niche social media groups + Slack channels
Get your team to interact with your posts
Link your latest blog post in your email signature
Pay to boost your article on social

Hope this helps!

Alexander

P.S. I experiment with content distribution tactics every week. If you want to get weekly ideas about where to spread your blog articles, you can subscribe to the newsletter here.