How To Increase Content Distribution Through Social Media

How To Increase Content Distribution Through Social Media

Are you pro-active business owner who has poured your heart into blogs, ebooks, infographics etc. all with no effect to your rankings? It can definitely be frustrating, especially when employing a long term content strategy with definitive long term goals.

At TechWyse, we strongly believe developing a long term evergreen content strategy is vital to your business, but the strategy itself isn’t a set it and forget it model, and it’s simply not enough, to employ on its own.

Even if you’re writing in an SEO-friendly manner relevant for your industry and geo-target, you could still be producing a billboard in the forest. Why? How could you possibly be producing optimal content that hasn’t improved your rankings overtime?

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Dis’ Tribute

The answer is simple, distribution. To use an example, a hollywood film’s success hinges upon so many different factors. From conceptualization to casting, filming and editing, a film encounters many moving parts on it’s way to reaching it’s final cut. But once the new Batman is finished (and even before then) spreading the word becomes the major focus. Trailers flood the internet and word of mouth creates a deafening demand for the material.

This is something to think about with your content. You may have some of the finest crafted blogs on the internet, but if you’re not jumpstarting content with a little distribution, it could be going nowhere. So how do you go about distribution?

We always advise our clients to start with social media. By developing your social media presence and growing your fanbase, you can essential use this audience as a platform to distribute your content.

This isn’t a shocking revelation to any I am sure, but despite its simplicity it requires a certain expertise to master. For this blog, I figured I would share with you a couple of insider tips that can help you along the way with social distribution.

 Shoot The Messenger

The first element to focus on, is your social message. When putting together a social message we want to do two things, interest the reader, and entice them to click-thru and learn more. Although, this sounds salesy, it truly shouldn’t be. Start by sharing a brief synopsis of why your readers would benefit from reading your materials.

An example for this article could be “Is your content marketing campaign suffering? Learn how to improve your content marketing distribution by using social media.” or “Developing a content strategy might not be enough, learn how to increase your content distribution through social media. Read more...”. Try to keep length in mind here, you don’t want to write a novel, but you don’t want to be too brief either. Try to aim somewhere between 120-140 characters.

 A Sharper Image

Another thing you should be conscious of is imagery. The power of imagery is one of the reasons that the social phenomenon swept the world in the first place. Posting a link to your social media profiles is easy enough but coupling this with powerful imagery through something such as Facebook’s link preview can assure optimal shareability.

An easy way to find imagery is doing a Google image search or other creative commons platforms for free imagery. Try to align your imagery to the tone of your pages. Social media is suppose to be the human side of your brand. If your social presence is a little more informal, humour can go a long way .

For those of you with a stock photo license like Shutterstock or iStock, you can definitely go that route. You should definitely familiarize with a photo editing program like Photoshop, but don’t get scared you don’t have to be an expert.

If you’re not a Photoshop pro, or have access to the program, web based photo editing sites like Pixlr, or Fotor are a great way to resize, add logos, add text and other flair to your images. Just remember to resize, or find original images that are optimal to the platform you’re posting on such as these examples for Facebook.

 Time Is On Your Side

Another facet to think of is timing. Timing is everything and important to think about when scheduling your posts. According to many social media studies, the average lifespan for a social post is no more than 3-4 hours. Make sure you schedule your social media messages at optimal times/days during the week.

This could be highly specific to your industry. Try avoiding high production work hours and look towards lower peak hours such as lunch time, or after work time. Each network is different, and has optimal times. Find out more about optimal posting times here.

If you’re not in control of the blog scheduling, but the social media duties fall upon you, there are many tools you can use to monitor your content. One of the simplest, is a website called ChangeDetection. All you have to do here is input the page address ie. www.techwyse.com/blog and your email as well. You can sign up for daily, weekly and monthly alerts so you won’t miss a post and can assure your content efforts aren’t going to waste.

Automation Nation

 Another strategy of social distribution is using automation. Automation refers to your content automatically posting to social for you. For example, you can use plug-ins on CMS systems like WordPress to post automatically to Twitter/Facebook once your blog goes live.

Another tool for automation distribution is IFTTT. IFTTT (If This Then Then That) is a program that allows you to create if/then relationships that you can control across the Internet. For example, you can create a relationship that states if you have a new blog then it will automatically post, with a status update to your Facebook, or Twitter etc… The possibilities are literally endless and you can create some pretty amazing recipes through the program.

Just remember, often these automation options create bulky, robotic updates that don’t take into account the perfect message or imagery to mind. It’s the human element that makes social media successful and prompts people to act.

Fuel Your Content

I hope you enjoyed some of these tips and tricks, as we just scratched the surface of the nuances of content distribution. If you have any questions about social media, content distribution & strategy or SEO, please don’t hesitate to contact us. My colleagues and I, would be glad to chat about the marriage of content and social strategy to take your billboard from the forest to main street.

At TechWyse, we offer an all in one service known as Social Fuel that combines our expertise in content marketing and social media to create a harmonious amalgamated strategy. Contact us today for more information.