Boomer Elmsdale
Leave no stone unturned – it’s distribution time. That means the work begins after production.
Media Distribution refers to and means methods, by any means, for the publication, transmission, dissemination, distribution and/or delivery of Marketing Media, including podcasts, videos articles, memes and any other content you develop. Simply put, distribution is the process of getting your content viewed by your target audience.
Making great content is useless without your target audience getting the opportunity to watch it or listen to it or read it. Now that you’ve created fantastic content for your target audience, make sure they can see it and interact with it and otherwise love it by distributing the content online, everywhere and every way it could possibly make sense.
There are several techniques to get your media out there. We have outlined 5 methods to get your content seen after release.
Ideally you have a fanatic social media following just waiting to see what your next post is. So you post your new show to your social profiles on places like LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube and Facebook. Your audience sees the content on these platforms and they watch it or read it or listen to it. Simple, right? Well, not everybody has this robust audience in place. Lots of people that produce content are doing so to actually boost their presence and to develop a following on these platforms. Either way, posting on your social media profiles is step one on distribution.
Do you have partners or supporters? If so, a great way to get your content seen is to request that your friends post a quick note about your new content. This takes some up front planning prior to release of an episode. It is helpful to pre-write a message and design a custom post for a partner. Then, you can reach out with a quick email and DM and say something like: we are releasing this Tuesday. Would you be willing to post this on ‘Twitter’ (for example) to help us promote the show? We would be happy to promote you in the future.’
Even simpler than a custom post promoting your show is a simple share of your post. This is even less work for your partner. It is still helpful to pre-write a message for your community when you ask for help like this. But the process would be 1) post your show 2) message your community and ask for share. A good message is: Hey there, please share and like to help us promote the show. Send me yours when you need help. We would be happy to promote you in the future.’
Partners to Promote With
Email is still king when it comes to engagement and ROI. That means getting your media production out by email to a curated email list is very powerful. Social media is great for easy engagement. Email wins for deeper engagement and frankly there are just more email accounts than social media profiles in the world (i.e. around 8 Billion).
With that said, a great way to get viewers for your show is to email them. Ideally, you have a massive email list and just send it out. If not, you could leverage a partner list and request that they promote your show similar to the social process above. Or, you could have a channel partner that does this as well.
If you do not have an email list, then you should start building one by integrating your website with a newsletter service and mentioning that in your media productions to drive that conversion. There are other ways to build lists fast as well, such as purchasing a list or community outreach and asking for opt-ins. Growing your email list could be an objective or strategy for your show overall.
A more formal approach to promoting your show could be warranted if you have the budget and strategy you believe in. Public relations works great with media shows. Write a press release and link the show. Try to identify a relevant story angle that helps your target audience. You can submit a press release broadly by a service like Cision for a couple hundred dollars. This press release will get picked up by several news sources which then gives you more content to share on social media and on your website resulting in more attention and activity online, thus driving viewership. It is not a silver bullet. However, this method can be effective depending on the true impact of your show. Another angle in public relations is reaching out directly to bloggers, who address your target audience.
Slow but sure, the turtle wins the race. Think of SEO as the turtle. This does not happen overnight, but the more you post your media and promote it, the more SEO power your site, brand and social profiles command.
A recommendation is to write an article about your media production episode every time you release. Then, post it to your blog, link the media content and submit the new blog post to Google, Bing and Yahoo at minimum. While results will not come piling in overnight, your efforts will be recognized by search engines and ultimately drive traffic to your properties if you configure keywords and write content correctly.
