Before we get started, let's address the two major cliches that seem to come up every time marketers talk about content distribution: If content is king, distribution is queen, and the old "publish and pray" strategy doesn't work.
Now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's be real. Yes, distribution is important, and doing it well takes time and careful planning. But it doesn't have to be complicated, and you don't have to do it alone.
In addition to tried-and-true content distribution techniques and a content promotion template by your side, plenty of great options exist for helping you distribute and improve your content's performance.
Here are some of my favorites (full disclosure: we have worked with some of these brands):
Whether you realize it or not, you've for sure seen Taboola in action. Taboola is a content discovery platform that recommends content across some of the most popular publications. This is a great way to piggyback off of other related articles and get more eyes on your content.
Likable Hub is a tool to help you to manage your social media quickly and easily. It offers plans ranging from free all the way up to $599 per month that allow you to integrate your social platforms, schedule posts, track analytics, and more.
A staple for social media mangers, Hootsuite allows you to manage your accounts, follow relevant conversations, and schedule posts without the hassle. It also offers several solutions to help you manage other aspects of distribution outside of social, like its employee advocacy tool, Amplify.
Buffer is a key tool for marketers and agencies for managing their social accounts. With Buffer, you can schedule posts to make sure they're going out to your followers at the best possible time every day, and you can post to all your social accounts from one simple platform. Plus, its analytics help you track and measure performance.
Quuu allows you to promote your content to influencers in your industry via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+. I actually just discovered this platform and tested it out to promote my first post this month. It's a great way to get real people to share our content, and it helps me fill up my Buffer feed!
Socedo is a demand generation platform that helps generate new leads for your business through Twitter. It helps grow your presence on social media, and it's a great way to promote your content through direct messages on Twitter to qualified leads who engage with you. They now even offer integration with Hubspot, Salesforce, and Marketo making it easy to pump these new leads right into your CRM of choice.
The tools AddThis offers allow you to easily add custom social-sharing icons and subscription pop-ups to your site, and it recommends related content right on your blog. It also has plug-ins that integrate with WordPress and other CMS platforms, and its analytics features help you make sure you're meeting your goals.
I don't know how our blog survived before we discovered BuzzSumo. (I'm a pretty big data nerd, so I might be biased, but I think this tool has made such a difference.) It identifies and compares trends about your content performance, as well as your competitors' content performance. From social platform to content format and length, you can pull trend reports about your performance and make better decisions about future posts. It also gives you access to Twitter share count, even after the platform's API changes.
Canva allows you create beautiful custom images optimized for social, and its templates make it so easy to create something that looks professional — even if your design skills aren't great. Not convinced a pretty picture will help get your content noticed? Consider this: Visual content is 40 times more likely to be shared on social than any other type of content.
Creative content marketing can help you boost performance, and another platform that can help you make powerful creative content at scale without sacrificing your branding preferences is Visage. It has a ton of templates that make it simple for designers, and it even allows you to collaborate across teams. The images are then embedded into your blog or social media post with the click of a button.
You can use Sniply to instantly make any post you share more strategic. Sniply allows you to attach a call to action on every link you share — from asking readers to check out a piece of related content to directing them to your site or to a gated piece of content. It's a great way to capitalize on content that doesn't necessarily have a lead generation focus.
Pushup is a social aggregation tool that allows you to quickly and easily create a "social hub" of content from Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to embed in your website in minutes. It's helpful for adding a human element to your content and integrating your on-site content with what people are sharing via social.
If you're in an industry that needs to adhere to SEC, FFIEC, FINRA, FDA, and HIPAA regulations, Gremln is a great way to ensure your content on social is safe and secure. On top of that, it has tools to help you mange all of your content on social in one spot, taking the stress out of social media management.
Sysomos is a social media monitoring tool that gives you advanced analytics about your social media accounts. Its research, curation, and analytics tools can help you discover trends in your content's performance and optimize your strategy based on this data.
Use CoSchedule to plan your editorial calendar and schedule content distribution all in one place. Whether you're the sole person in your marketing department, the leader of a small team, or an executive at a large company, CoSchedule has solutions that will make your life easier and help you stay more organized, allowing you to focus on strategy and content creation.
MeetEdgar gives you more mileage out of your social media content. Only a fraction of your audience will see the content you share each time you share it. MeetEdgar helps populate your accounts with past content to ensure you're not missing the opportunity to engage more followers with your posts.
If you want a tool to help you increase your traffic, grow revenue, and help you become a better content marketer, this is the platform you should be using. ContentMarketer.io offers three products that home in on different areas that are necessary for successful content marketing: Connector, Notifier, and Marketer. Connector allows you to schedule and send personalized outreach emails, Notifier notifies people mentioned in your posts, and Marketer is an all-in-one tool to promote your content in one place.
Do you love hashtags? So do we. Tagboard uses hashtags to find and collect social media posts, and from there, robust tools allow you to choose which of the collected posts you want to feature. This platform is a great tool for events, TV, brands, and sports.
WiseStamp is a free and easy-to-use email tool that allows you to customize your signature. It works on all email platforms and can even help you build your business through one of many custom features. With the right links in your signature, you can direct potential clients to your social networks, promote your new app, provide a headshot of yourself, and more.
Click to Tweet is a unique (and free!) tool that allows you to promote, track, and share the content you post on Twitter. All you have to do is compose a message, click the "Generate New Link" tab, and share the link. It also helps you track the activity of each link so you know what's working. This tool is the first of its kind and a must-have for companies on Twitter.
Focus on what you actually enjoy — content creation — and leave the rest to Cortex. It uses AI and machine learning to automate content planning and execution based on your past content's performance. You do you and let the robots do the rest (which is really a mantra to live your entire live by, right?).
Whether you're new to the content marketing game or you're a content pro, these tools can help you maximize your content's potential. And with so many options, you're sure to find one that fits your exact needs.
Take your content distribution to the next level and streamline your entire process with your free calendar and promotion template below:
