08 — We will craft a distribution strategy
We understand that just because we build it, they will not necessarily come. We will experiment with different approaches to reach and expand our audience, educate and advocate, grow brand awareness, and ensure that our content reaches those who want or need it.
Understanding the attention economy, finding your niche in the ecosystem, building a strong brand, rethinking your digital media platform, and producing scroll-stopping content will set the stage for an audience. But if you do not create a strategy and system for the distribution of your content, your hard work will never fully connect with the people you want and need to reach.
The best approach differs from organization to organization. Social channels are highly effective if your cause intersects with timely cultural conversations or issues already circulating. Email still works effectively across the board, but especially for highly-targeted and niche audiences. Publishing regularly to your website will attract traffic through organic discovery via Google search and referral links.
You must experiment with a mix of owned, earned, and paid media channels to see which formats and platforms prove most effective for your organization’s unique community and niche.
This is a long game, and finding what works best for you can take months of iteration before strong patterns of success begin to emerge. And consistent tracking and iteration should be expected for a successful distribution strategy.
The pre-information-era charity undervalues and ignores the importance of crafting a solid distribution strategy and gives up when it gets difficult or doesn’t work immediately. The future-thinking social impact leader persists in building this flywheel and knows that once it begins to spin it will catalyze the connections required to propel their organization forward.