These days, it is more difficult for marketers to catch the attention of the media. Even if they earn publicity, its impact of PR distribution has become lesser and lesser.
This is true even you’re already a huge company known in your industry. It is hard to stand out among the crowd of businesses.
With these changes, PR professionals have learned to change their tactics. There are those who tried to increase their publicity on the social media. However, even these channels have altered their algorithms.
In reality, distributing content has undergone a lot of changes. It seems not as effective as before. Do you think a lot of people are still reading stories on sites or Yahoo News?
Today, every content should be present on the social media sphere. The approach of doing public relations has changed.
It’s still the same idea but completely different method of doing PR. It involves using the basics of telling a story and finding the right audience.
The key to successful distribution is finding how people look, share and consume content. You need to have integrated strategy that combines the marketing and sales aspects. With this, you can better attract media opportunities that can improve readership and exposure.
Below are ways how you can apply effective distribution strategies:
- Repackage your content.
Are your stories picked up by reporters? If you’re not getting publicity again and again, check your content if you can repackage it.
It doesn’t need to go wasted. Instead, look how you can repurpose it in a way that customers are going to have interest to share it on social sites.
When sharing on social media site like Facebook, create interesting, useful and relevant story for the users. The platform has tools like Google AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) and Facebook Instant Articles that helps enhance the user experience and boost the loading time.
- Ensure back-end hosting and site integration.
Before you even think of distributing content, you need to set up your site integration and back-end hosting first. Don’t forget to optimize it also for analysis, visibility and conversions.
Answer the following issues:
- Decide where to place your content on your site. Do you intend to publish it on your blog, related product page or the resource section? Think where visitors are most possibly be searching for it to boost its visibility.
- Consider the keywords used by your target audience. Search for the proper keywords that they use when looking for the same content. Include these search terms and phrases in your content and the landing pages to boost visibility.
- Assess whether you need a lead form or not. Lead forms can lessen the shareability power of your content. If they aren’t asked to answer any lead form, downloads can increase by 20 to 50 percent. On the other hand, if you want to collect the information of your client, you need to use a form.
- Identify how you’re going to monitor the performance of your campaign. Use analytics to check metrics including social shares, bounce rates, downloads, page views, leads, and inbound links.
- Give your content a social boost.
Make sure that you share your content on the social media. Think what social media site will help your content to have a maximum exposure and assist you in reaching your target audience.
Apply social media techniques like answers on Q & A forums, pitching to influencers, social status updates and linking to a content on blog comments. You may consider giving rewards to your audience. It increases the chance that they will share it. Contest can also be used to drive readership.
- Integrate PR strategy.
To have maximum impact on your distribution, integrate your content with your public relations strategy and pitch to influencers, bloggers and media to reach potential audience. Choose relevant reporters and media outlets that are interested with your topic.
Weigh if there is an opportunity to pitch guest posts according to your topic. Hyperlink anchor text.
Align your content with your media editorial calendar. Increase your chance of getting media opportunities by syncing your internal editorial calendar with the media outlet.
Look for opportunities to align your content with your future events. It would help if you can incorporate it in your upcoming presentations, conferences or materials.
- Launch influencer marketing.
Working with influencers can help you have maximum exposure. It helps you gain social proof and find another source of market that is beyond your reach.
Influencer marketing is flexible because it can be launched in combination with any organic or paid content marketing. Work with influencers who are relevant to your niche.
If they agreed, they can share your product or services with their followers. They can also provide a review of your product or mentions. In exchange for this, you can provide them with incentives like free products or monetary payment.
Today, new FTC rules require influencers working with marketers to be disclosed. It’s something that you should be aware of to avoid any issues with the law.
- Cross-promotion.
After you have written your press release, think how you can promote with your other brand assets. Find some common angle within your content and use it.
You can simply connect an old content to a new one if it is just the same topic. Think of a unique angle to support one content with the other.
Check how your content can be used with your present campaigns. Can you repurpose it on your annual report, blogs, e-newsletter or other programs?
When you cross-promote, you can lengthen the life of your content and get the most out of it. It can also help you tap other audiences and widen your brand exposure.
- Integrate sales in your release distribution.
Writing a well written content can promote sales. It can encourage leads to move into the buying process. Makes sure that you instruct your sales team on available content.
If they know the content that you are currently promoting, they will know how they can promote your products. They can do the sales talk better because they understand their value.
Tell them who your target audience is. Explain to them how they can use the content to convince people to make a purchasing decision.
Always ensure that your sales team is aware of the content you’re promoting. They should know where it is published on your site, so they can share it with their potential clients.
Why not provide a print copy of your content? This is why proper format is essential. With the modern technology, you must also make sure that it is accessible on any device.
- Consider using paid distribution.
If you have extra budget, you may consider using paid marketing tactics. Paid advertising can widen your reach, drive sales and promote your brand.
Consider using Google AdWords campaign. If you want to try it, you should. Another consideration to widen your content reach is through paid social media advertising such as Facebook and Instagram.
You may want to look at sites, publications and associations that you can promote your content. Check the collaboration and opportunities that you can get.
PR distribution is very important for the success of your campaign. Think it this way, if your content is published on one site but no one reads it, do you think it makes sense?
Content distribution strategy should be in place. This is because even the best content and most creative content will not be seen if they is not distribution tactic.
Remember that if there’s a strategy in distributing content, your content will be seen by your target audience. Once they are exposed with your content, they will learn more about your offer and brand.
You can have better connection with them. When this happens, it’s easier to lead them to move into the sales funnel. You can easily encourage them to take an action like download a copy of your content, let them sign up for a newsletter, or leave their data on a lead form.
Determine what will be your PR distribution. You can use paid, free distribution channels or reach out to your target media. Instead of using just one channel, you can combine them for maximum results.
The best tactic in distribution is combining channels. Reach out to the press directly and use paid press release service to get the most of your investments.
There’s no exact formula for a successful content distribution. It all depends on your approach and tactics as a brand. And how you incorporate your goals, target audience, market, metrics, analysis and optimization.
Before distribution, make sure that you know your content marketing goal. Go back to your goals. Is it to drive sales, attract leads, build brand awareness or become an industry expert?
Determining your target audience is very important in reaching your goals. Be sure if you’re reaching out to existing or new clients.
Know how they will consume content. Once you have specified your content goals and audience, use it to arrive with an effective distribution strategy.
Paid distribution is useful but the results cannot last for a long time. For instance, the increase in traffic to your site will slowly go down when you stop using this channel. Use it strategically to avoid wasting money.
On the other hand, using paid distribution can assure you of results. You can also easily measure it using different metrics. Return-on-investment wise, you’ll have a great knowledge of how your campaign is performing.
