The first thing you need to do, is download NewsCred’s Guide to Content Distribution Strategy. You’ll get a detailed breakdown of best practices for both paid and unpaid distribution methods, from social media and native advertising to PPC, SEO, and more. Print it out, grab a highlighter, and take it into your next content strategy meeting.

But for now, if you’ve only got five minutes to spare, here’s the cliff notes version of the guide, and how it can change your approach to content distribution strategy.

Why & Who?

First, answer these two basic questions:

1.     Why do you want people to read your content? You might be trying to increase user engagement, boost brand awareness, promote thought leadership, or drive leads. Have a clearly defined goal so you can create a plan.

2.     Who is your audience, and how do they consume content? They might be consumers or B2B connections; they could be decision makers or information gatherers. Figure out who you want to reach, and then determine where they spend their time online, and what types of content they prefer.

Paid & Unpaid Content Distribution Strategy

Paid distribution:

Ad networks – You might know these as a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns. You can use search PPC (e.g. Google Adwords) or content PPC (e.g. via companies like Outbrain).

Quick tip: This method works well at beginning of campaign to ramp up engagement. Select keywords according to what your users are searching for, and use strong calls to action (CTAs) in your ad copy.

Paid Social – These campaigns can include LinkedIn ads, sponsored posts on Facebook and promoted tweets on Twitter.

Quick tip: For marketers on a budget, use paid social to drive people to gated content so that your social efforts can be used to generate leads.

Native advertising – This is partnering with a publisher to provide content for their audience, which should align with your brand and marketing goals. The content should be stellar, and feel indigenous to the platform.

Quick tip: Native advertising takes time. You’ll have to run these campaigns for 3-12 months in order to see tangible results.

Organic distribution:

Social media – With so many platforms to choose from, each one has its strengths and specific strategies for success. The key is to not spread yourself thin. Choose the ones that work best for your brand, audience, and type of content. Add social buttons to your site, and cross promote your content to encourage social sharing.

Quick tips:

• Facebook: Share content that is highly visual—articles and images get 94 percent more views than those without.
• Twitter: Strike a balance between links to content and conversational tweets.
• LinkedIn: Create your own LinkedIn group for free, and on your own company page, target specific updates to certain Linkedin members by role, industry, and company size.
• Google+: Posting on Google+ results in improved search results on Google. Post actively in order to improve SEO.
• Pinterest: Engage users through visual content to drive traffic back to your site. Use accurate descriptors to ensure your pins will be discovered.

Free content platforms – YouTube and Slideshare are free platforms that allow you to share specific types of content such as video and slideshow presentations respectively. Both formats can be very effective depending on the type of audience you wish to reach.

Quick Tips: For YouTube, be sure to use keyword-rich descriptions to make your video content searchable. For Slideshare, repurpose your white papers and guides into presentations.

Crowdsourcing – Finding ways to engage or incentivize an audience to participate and share their own content can be massively effective.

Quick tip: Such campaigns should encourage social sharing, so that audience participants can spread your message to their personal networks.

SEO – Though the algorithms are always changing, SEO helps search engines figure out what each page on the web contains, and how useful it might be to users.

Quick tip: Strong, relevant content will help you score inbound links to your pages (thus increasing your PageRank), but you should also do your part by identifying the major themes and search terms of your business so you can build content around them. Use keywords in the headline and body copy, but be sure the content is high quality. Currently, Google favors pieces over 500 words.

Lead nurturing – Lead nurturing is the process of building business relationships with prospects early in the buying cycle. To do so, you can feed personalized content to a segmented audience based on their industry, web behavior, job, function, or vertical. Marketing automation platforms like Marketo and Hubspot can simplify this process.

Quick tips: Optimize your site for your CTA or form. Include fields that capture company information, business needs or interests, and contact information. Then, track and monitor user activity, including time spent on your page and bounce rates, so you can properly market to users based on that information.

Getting eyes on your content is no easy task, but by trying a combination of the above content distribution strategy tactics, you can grow your audience and get your brand message across.

This article originally appeared on NewsCred.

The post How to Build a Perfect Content Distribution Strategy appeared first on Relevance.

Before he became known as “The Sales Lion,” Marcus Sheridan was the owner of a swimming pool company that was on the brink of going out of business. His last ditch effort to ramp up the company’s website with some helpful articles not only helped the company stay afloat, but began generating sales that made quite the splash.

Today, Sheridan is a content consultant who shares his knowledge and stories — and those of many other businesses his firm helps with content marketing – to make the point that all types of companies in all industries can benefit from content marketing if it’s done the right way. Whether it’s B2B or B2C, the core of all great content strategy is simple: “they ask, you answer.”

Sheridan recently shared his philosophy of simplicity in a webinar co-hosted by NewsCred. We’ve compiled some of his best tips here:

The “Big 5”

Most companies are thinking too hard when it comes to content, says Sheridan, and as a result, they are overshooting. Simplicity is key, and it comes down to answering the questions and providing the solutions that your customers crave. Here are the five main topic types to get you started:

Cost Questions

Customers will always want to know how much your product or service costs, and they will search for that information online. Five years ago, the question, “how much does a swimming pool cost?” was simply not addressed on any website, says Sheridan. The reason companies don’t like to disclose pricing is that they’re afraid of competitors finding out their prices, and are afraid of scaring people away. You don’t have to divulge every single price that you have, but by offering the consumer a range and an idea of what different price points they should expect, you are being honest and helpful.

Potential Problems or Issues With the Product or Service

The number one keyword phrase that potential pool customers were searching was “fiberglass pool problems.” By creating some content that explained potential problems, pros and cons (and offered solutions), Sheridan’s company was able to generate $500,000 in sales based on leads that came from those articles alone. “You need to be transparent and you will win,” he says.

This-Versus-That

If you’ve ever been asked by your customers to compare products, you should be addressing that on your website. “Stop leaving good content to third party sites,” says Sheridan.

Reviews and “Best Of” Content

The same goes for reviews and best-of type content (which round out Sheridan’s “Big 5”). Become the authority in your industry, and people will find your content and come to you for answers.

Ready to Get Started?

Now that you know what type of content to write, the real challenge is learning how to implement it. Sheridan shares his eight critical steps for creating a culture of content marketing in your company.

1. Have buy in from the top.

The CEO and management need to be all in because you’ll need their support, assistance, and some budget. If you’re constantly having to battle with the higher ups about the value of content, then your content implementation will always be fighting an uphill battle – which can affect consistency.

2. Everyone in the company needs to have the same shared vision.

That allows for in-sourcing  your content, or curating from the inside, so you can use the intellectual property you have on staff already. It’s essential that if you’re going to develop a culture of content marketing in your company that everyone understands what it is, how to do it effectively, and why. If you can explain what’s in it for each person in the company, all of the employees can help you produce content.

3. Come up with “the first 100.”

Where will all of your content come from? Have a brainstorming session with your staff and write down all of the questions they get all the time from clients, customers, or sales calls. You’ll be amazed at how many content ideas you’ll have right from the start.

4. Have a Chief Content Officer.

Call him or her what you will, but you need a chief content officer or some sort of central catalyst who organizes all content efforts and motivates the staff. This role is completely necessary to content marketing success.

5. Use an editorial calendar.

A day is coming when it’s going to be on almost everyone’s job description to create content, says Sheridan. A content marketing platform like NewsCred can manage and streamline the process, especially with many team members involved.

6. Keep It Simple Stupid.

Employees should not be responsible for things like titles, subheads, links, photos, etc. You can get the core of a topic from them, but as a marketer, you add the rest and work with your teams to make things pretty.

7. Identify the 4 types of employees and play to their personal strengths.

• Writers – If you want them to write an article for you, they’re happy to do it, but only about 10-20 percent of staffers will fall into this category.
• Actors – You know that salesperson who can talk a dog off a meat truck but will never sit and write an article? Go have a conversation and capture it on video. A five minute conversation is 500 words. One hour of video time a month with marketers can generate 6-10 blog articles, video clips, etc.
• Talkers – They might be shy to be on video, so just do audio. That can still help you render incredible content.
• Questioners – They are found in customer service or support and they’re the ones who get questions all day long. They don’t necessarily have the answers, but they are keeping track of the questions, and therefore can help fill your editorial calendar.

8. Keep the culture going.

Creating a content culture requires an ongoing effort. You can try using a company newsletter to keep the team motivated with details such as, “Jeffrey in sales wrote an article that generated three new leads.” Sales and marketing teams will feel united as one, working toward the same goals.

For more of Sheridan’s tips listen to the full webinar here.

This post originally appeared on NewsCred.

The post Create A Culture Of Content Marketing From The Top Down appeared first on Relevance.