I’m not saying this because I want to make you fearful or worried in any way, shape or form, because I’m absolutely going to help you sort this out… but something that I have noticed for a lot of online marketers (particularly those who use content marketing and content creation as a way of attracting audience members and making sales) is that they are sabotaging the success of that content.
They don’t even realise that that’s what they’re doing.
In this episode, I’m going to uncover and help you see how you might be sabotaging your content and fix it quickly, in a short, sharp episode.
If you are someone who creates content – whether it’s for social media, podcasts like this, blogs for your website, or webinars – I want you to check out this podcast episode so that we can ensure you’re not sabotaging that content’s success.
Let’s dive in!
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The big sabotage I want to talk about today is the experience you may have had before where you do all this work of creating content, and then you don’t distribute it adequately.
You create a new freebie where you’re thinking about your ideal clients, putting nice imagery with it and making this spectacular fresh content… but it’s not just the existence of that content that does the job of attracting, warming up and converting your audience into paying clients.
The content existing doesn’t do all of the job. It needs to be distributed.
There are two parts to this: content creation and content distribution.
The sabotage that I see people unwittingly doing to their content is they create that content, and then they don’t share it or they don’t share it widely and thoroughly enough.
That is the content sabotage that we are going to sort out in this very short, sharp episode of the Heart-Centred Business Podcast.
It’s the distribution of your content that allows that content to do its job.
Yet there are so many people who put time, energy and effort into creating these processes to create amazing content, optimising their content, and making sure their content is speaking to their exact right clients… but then the content is just shared once or it’s not shared effectively.
You’re doing all this work on the content creation side, but your distribution is sorely lacking. There’s no hope of that content actually doing an effective job of attracting an audience, warming up an audience, or converting an audience into paying customers.
That is what we’re going to sort out in this podcast episode.
If you’re going to all the effort of making amazing content, let’s ensure you’ve got a distribution strategy that does it some justice and gives it a maximised opportunity to get in front of the right people and do its job.
The content doesn’t work if no one’s absorbing that content.
It’s the distribution that maximises the consumption of your content. That’s what we’re going to sort out in this episode!
There are four stages of distributing the content that you’ve created. This is the same whether it’s content for social media, podcast episodes, webinars, free resources, or something else.
Phase 1: Initial distribution
I’ll use my podcast episodes as an example here.
When this podcast episode is completed, it will go into the schedule to be distributed by being released as a podcast episode.
That will go into the podcast feed of anyone who’s subscribed to the podcast (subscribe, rate and review if you want to add it to your shows! Just thought I’d chuck that little plug in there HAHA).
It will also be distributed to my email list, which is more people than the subscribers to my podcast.
I will send it out to my email list to let them know that this podcast episode exists and why they should check it out. I just plop it in front of them in case it might be valuable to them.
Then I also pre-write two social media posts for my team to schedule on my Facebook page.
Those posts pretty much tell my audience that this podcast episode exists, why they should check it out, and a small teaser or point of intrigue so people are interested to go listen or read.
When I initially release this podcast episode, the first batch of distribution is not just going to my subscribers or to random people searching for the keyword on the internet.
I’m not waiting for people to search for this content.
I’m distributing this content so that people can find it, and I’m actively telling them about it.
I am not just sharing it with my subscribers to the podcast. I’m also sharing it with my list, on socials with my existing audience, and in some of the Facebook groups that I’m in if I’m posting in Facebook groups that week.
I don’t use groups as a consistent part of my content distribution strategy these days because I mostly focus on more scalable strategies. But in the early stages of this podcast, I shared the podcast episode in seven groups every week on the days where I could promote podcast episodes because I wanted to maximise the distribution of the podcast.
So many people don’t do this for their content. They’re creating all this content, they’re putting all this thought, energy and effort into it, and then they don’t distribute it.
They don’t distribute it far enough, and they don’t tell people about it.
There are other ways that you could distribute using the different initial distribution strategies.
You could send a message to your biz besties and say that you’ve just recorded a podcast episode that you think their audience might be interested in, and give them the link in case they’re able to share it. That’s also distribution.
Even though I said that I’m not just going to wait for people to search for it, being found when people are searching for that content is a great way to distribute your content in the initial sharing phase.
If you’re going to go to the effort of creating a podcast episode, at least think about what the key terms are that people would be searching for if the podcast episode is the kind of thing that they want to find.
A little bit of keyword optimisation and thought about where people might search for it is a great way of maximising the initial distribution of your podcast episode.
That’s the initial phase in the first week that the podcast is released.
Phase 2: Reshare
When I am doing future podcast episodes, if I refer to anything about content distribution or not sabotaging your content creation process (ie. I might do a podcast episode in the future about how to create amazing content that everyone loves and that gets people’s attention) then I will refer back to this podcast episode and say, “And don’t forget that creating the content is phase one – you’ve got to get that done. But let the content do its job. Don’t sabotage your results by not distributing the content.” And then I’ll refer people back to this podcast episode.
I’m creating this loopback process where if people are reading something that’s related, I’m linking them back to this podcast episode. But also, in a couple of months, I’m going to have new subscribers. I’m going to have new people following me on socials. I might have new people on my mailing list. So resharing is a great way to get those new subscribers onto old episodes.
At the end of the month, I also post my Podcast Round-Up, which is a summary of all the podcast episodes from that month.
I don’t just share the podcast episode the week it’s released. I share it a few weeks after it’s released in my end-of-month round-up, as well as doing a pre-scheduled promo for it on my socials.
And it also goes into my content plan for future posts on socials and future ways that I can roll out the podcast episode.
I don’t just have my initial distribution, I have the resharing distribution further down the track.
Phase 3: Repurposing
Every single podcast episode that I record is transcribed and a lovely article version of the podcast is on my website (this!).
A copy of that article is popped into a file folder in my Dropbox, where when I am looking to create social content or other types of content, I can refer back to some of the things I’ve created and shared that are on the same topic or with the same keywords.
I could create a future podcast episode that shares a similar message. Or I could be creating a webinar on content creation and distribution, and I’ve already got all of these words about content distribution and these four phases of distribution.
Content repurposing is a really powerful way to redistribute the same thought process, idea, strategies, tips and steps in a different format or with a different search term so that different people in your audience either have a chance to listen to it again or relearn. But it also might attract new people because it’s shared with a different focal point or with a different theme.
Repurposing is another great way of making sure that this one genius idea or amazing concept is shared over and over again. It’s distributed more than once.
Phase 4: Content bank
It becomes an ongoing asset in my business that can do its job over and over again.
Podcast episodes are also embedded on my website (like this!).
If someone is searching on Google for something about podcast content, content distribution, content strategy, or sabotaging my content, there’s a likelihood that this content might come up.
Also, I will have this categorised so if people are listening to future podcast episodes and it suggests another podcast that’s in this same category, this asset may be suggested.
In addition, I have every single episode of my podcast indexed in a content bank with the key information about that podcast episode.
That makes my life SO much easier.
If someone ever asks me a question and I know that I’ve done a podcast on that before, I can quickly search through that index and suggest the episode to them.
Now, instead of having to answer this question or walk people through content distribution over and over again, this podcast can do the job for me and continue to nurture and grow my relationship with my audience. It can help people move forward with their content and make sure that they’re not sabotaging their content’s ability to get its jobs done.
All of that without me having to walk people through that process one-to-one and explain what content distribution is and what the four phases are, because the podcast does that for me.
I’ve now turned an action (recording the podcast) into an asset (the podcast episode being shareable, searchable, reshareable, indexed and easy for me to refine and repurpose), just by putting it into that content bank and thinking about it as an asset, not just a one-off piece of content that was distributed that time and now it’s out of date.
When it comes to distribution, one of the biggest challenges that people have is that it can start to create this sense of all-or-nothing thinking.
I’ve just told you all these different ways that you can distribute one piece of content. But what can happen is that you then feel like if you don’t distribute this content 40,000 times over the next three years, then it might as well not exist. And so then they stop creating content altogether.
I do not want that to happen for you.
I want you to continue creating content. But I also want you to maximise the effectiveness of that content doing its job by ensuring that you distribute it.
Two factors come into play when it comes to the effectiveness of that distribution.
Not all content distribution strategies have an equal impact. They don’t all have an equal audience size or an equal quality of audience that it gets in front of effectively.
I want you to think about the quantity of content that you create and distribute and the number of times that you distribute that same piece of content, versus the quality of that content and the distribution channels that you focus on.
Whilst I understand that pinning my podcast episodes into Pinterest is something that a lot of SEO people and Pinterest mentors get very excited about, the time and energy or money that it takes for me to pin my podcast content, come up with all the pins, repin other people’s stuff, manage my pinboards, etc., for me is not worth the return on investment, compared to some of the other strategies that I find are far more my zone of genius and aligned for my audience.
I don’t do every single possible content distribution strategy.
I focus on how I can find the best quality content distribution strategy for my audience and for my content to do a really good job in the most efficient and effective way possible.
One brilliantly written reshare of my podcast is better than creating sixteen terrible dialled-in social media posts that I schedule out once a week for the next sixteen weeks.
I need to be mindful of my distribution strategy being a good distribution strategy for my audience, for my content, for my zone of genius and for the medium of content that I’ve chosen to create, versus the quantity of places, reshares and ways that I can share that again and again into the future.
When it comes to repurposing my podcast episodes, for example, I do not use AI to turn podcast episodes into dozens of different posts for social media.
The quality of the content that AI creates out of my podcast episodes is abysmal.
Before all the AI lovers get in touch and tell me that it’s my quality of prompts, or I’m using the wrong tool, I’ve made an informed decision based on what my audience values, what my values are, and my unwillingness to give over the IP of my podcast episodes into AI tools.
There’s a difference between AI scraping my podcast episodes off the internet uninvited, versus me actively submitting my podcast episodes to AI and saying, “Here you go! You are now the owner of this IP and you can use this to your heart’s content to inform other people’s questions about the things that I’m an expert in.”
That’s a very different experience. And that’s a very different decision.
I don’t like low-quality, unthought-out, dialed-in pieces of content being thrown at social media.
I also know that my audience doesn’t respond very well to those types of social media content.
In the past, I have asked my team to just write a little intro or use the intro of the podcast episode to promote a podcast episode on social media.
For months and months on end, those posts were the lowest reach and lowest engaged posts on my socials.
Every month we collect the top ten best-performing posts on socials and the top three bottom-performing.
Podcast-sharing posts were the bottom three over and over again.
Instead of continuously asking my team to write terrible content that promoted my podcast episodes, I decided I’d just write two really good promo posts that are engaging, well thought-out and have a nice strong opening line.
I chose quality over quantity.
Nowadays, my posts where I talk about my podcast episodes on my Facebook page are some of my top ten posts most months, because I chose quality over quantity.
That’s definitely something to think about.
Sometimes people get very excited about distribution in terms of quantity because of the size of the audience. But there’s a difference between getting your content in front of 10,000 people who don’t care about what you do, versus getting your content in front of 100 people who will hang off every word, love every second of what you share, get very excited, and then go and hunt down more content from you because they love your opinion.
Not all audiences are quality audiences. And not all audiences have an equal weighting when it comes to numbers.
There’s an audience of mine that has 10,000+ people in it. It is a very engaged audience, it’s a highly connected audience, I love them a lot, and I am very mindful of not taking their attention for granted. And then there’s another audience of mine, that is well over 10,000 people, not particularly interested in my stuff, not particularly engaged, don’t have a very high engagement rate, and doesn’t do a lot for my business.
The first one is my mailing list. The second one is the Heart-Centred, Soul-Driven Entrepreneurs Facebook group.
The Heart-Centred, Soul-Driven Entrepreneurs group is actually over 30,000 people. A lot of people can’t understand why I don’t hog the microphone more in that group and share more of my content in there.
But most of that audience is not there to hear from me.
The group is not called “Tash Corbin Audience”, the group is called “Heart-Centred, Soul-Driven Entrepreneurs“.
The value proposition of that group is that everyone has an equal and fair opportunity with the microphone and that we are there to support and encourage each other.
I’m part of that group as a peer.
The time and energy that I put into distributing my content in that space is far less than the time and energy that I put into distributing my content with my mailing list.
My mailing lists have signed up because they want to hear from me. They want to learn from me. They’re interested in my take on strategy. They’re interested in getting my advice on how they can grow their audience, make more sales and improve their offers.
Whereas people don’t join the Heart-Centred group because of what they get to hear from me.
Most people initially join the Heart-Centred community because they want to say something, they want to share something, or they want to promote something.
I can help improve the effectiveness of that promo and I can help them reach more people within that community and make more sales. But am I going to do that for free for a very loosely engaged audience that doesn’t necessarily have any clue who I am? Or am I going to save the juiciest of that content for my mailing list and my podcast subscribers?
I’m going to save it for the most engaged audience!
Just be mindful of where you have your most engaged and warmest audience. That quality of audience can sometimes greatly outweigh the quantity of audience that you could potentially get in front of in other channels.
Of course, when it comes to creating content that is going to get lots of engagement, add value for your audience and move them closer to buying from you, we do want to ensure that we’re creating content that’s going to do a great job.
If we’re going to go to the effort of distributing it, let’s make sure we make content that’s optimised to do its job.
If you aren’t sure whether you’ve got a great content creation strategy, whether your messaging is strong enough or whether you’re hitting the mark when it comes to expressing the work that you do and how you can help people, I recommend checking out my free Core Messaging template.
That will help you map out those key elements of your core messages.
If you incorporate and weave those through the content that you’re distributing, it is going to be far more likely to be doing its job of attracting a great audience, warming that audience, and moving them closer to buying from you.
Once you’ve created that spectacular content, you’re going to do an amazing job of distributing it with those four phases.
You’ll be nailing the initial distribution, resharing so that you’re not just getting it in front of your audience one time, repurposing it so that you’re looking at it from different angles and using different keywords and search terms, and then making sure it goes into a content bank (whether it’s a social post, podcast episode, blog, or webinar), that you can search and index so that you can reuse, repurpose, and reshare forevermore.
That means it will be able to keep doing a spectacular job for your business!
Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of the Heart-Centred Business Podcast.
Until next time, I cannot WAIT to see you SHINE.
