Content distribution
KON-tent dis-trih-BYOO-shun
The process of promoting and sharing content across channels to reach your target audience after publication.
Content distribution is everything you do to get your content in front of people after you publish it. Writing is half the work. Distribution is the other half. Most companies over-invest in creation and under-invest in distribution.
Distribution channels fall into three buckets. Owned channels are what you control: your blog, email list, social media accounts. Earned channels are coverage you did not pay for: press mentions, social shares, podcast invitations. Paid channels cost money: social ads, sponsored newsletters, promoted posts.
A distribution plan for a single blog post might look like: publish on the blog (owned), email to the newsletter list (owned), post on LinkedIn and Twitter (owned), pitch to three relevant newsletters (earned), promote with a $500 LinkedIn ad budget (paid). The same content, five distribution actions. Most teams skip everything after 'publish on the blog.'
Examples
A company distributes a major research report.
The report goes live on the blog. The team emails it to their 15,000-person newsletter list. They create 10 social media posts highlighting different findings. They pitch it to five industry newsletters. They run LinkedIn ads targeting their ICP.
A solo marketer builds a distribution checklist.
Every blog post gets: an email to subscribers (day 1), a LinkedIn post (day 1), a Twitter thread (day 2), submission to Hacker News (day 3), and a follow-up LinkedIn post with a different angle (day 7).
A team measures distribution channel effectiveness.
They track traffic sources for each blog post. Organic search drives 60% over time, newsletter drives 20% in the first week, LinkedIn drives 15%, and everything else is 5%. They double down on newsletter and LinkedIn promotion.
In practice
Read more on the blog
Frequently asked questions
How much time should you spend on distribution vs. creation?
A common guideline is 50/50. For every hour spent creating content, spend an hour distributing it. Some marketers argue for 20/80: spend 20% of your time creating and 80% distributing. The right ratio depends on your distribution channels and audience.
What is the best content distribution channel?
It depends on your audience. For B2B SaaS, email newsletters and LinkedIn are typically the highest-performing owned channels. For developer audiences, add Hacker News, Reddit, and dev.to. There is no universal best channel.
Related terms
The plan for creating, publishing, and governing content that achieves specific business goals for a defined audience.
Republishing your content on third-party platforms to reach a wider audience while keeping the original on your site.
Adapting a single piece of content into multiple formats to reach different audiences across different channels.
A regularly updated section of a website where a company publishes articles to attract, educate, and engage its target audience.
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