Season 1 - Episode 07
Create LESS Content to Get Better Results
Explore how a distribution-first content strategy can elevate your efforts, boost impact, and save time.
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What if we told you that there is a way to work smarter, not harder, with your content strategy that can help you get the absolute most out of each piece of content and idea that you come up with?
Whether you’re just getting started on your content creation journey or if you’re a seasoned content creator with established workflows and formats, the big idea and framework we’re going to cover today can be an absolute game changer.
There’s one trend we consistently see holding social impact marketing teams back in their content strategy.
And the worst part is that we see this with teams who put a lot of time and effort into their content. But because they aren’t implementing this strategy, they still aren’t getting the most return on their investment.
So then they have to spend more time and energy thinking about new content ideas and formats, more time and energy creating that new content, and so on.
In today’s episode, we cover:
- Why effective content distribution is half the battle to breaking through in the attention economy
- How to craft a distribution-first content strategy and mindset
- How to squeeze the most value out of your content, whether that’s new content OR content that you’ve already created and published
- And a simple framework you can use to take these ideas and put them into action for your mission
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What if I told you that there is a way to work smarter, not harder, with your content strategy that can help you get the absolute most out of each piece of content and idea that you come up with?
Whether you’re just getting started on your content creation journey or if you’re a seasoned content creator with established workflows and formats, the big idea and framework we’re going to cover today can be an absolute game changer.
Because in our content audits there’s one trend we consistently see holding social impact marketing teams back in their content strategy.
And the worst part is that we see this with teams who put a lot of time and effort into their content. But because they aren’t implementing this strategy, they still aren’t getting the most return on their investment.
So then they have to spend more time and energy thinking about new content ideas and formats, more time and energy creating that new content, and so on.
By the way, did you check out last week’s episode where we covered why no one cares about your content and how you can fix that? No? You might want to hit pause and revisit that episode first, because it will make everything we’re talking about today so much more valuable. Up to you though, because this strategy will be a big help either way. But really, you should listen to last week's episode too.
Ok, back to today’s topic.
The secret to unlocking the most value from all your hard work creating and producing content is to adopt a distribution-first content strategy.
Now you might be thinking, “wait, I already have a content distribution strategy. And it just feels like more work, not less, figuring out how to distribute all of my content across all my channels.”
But if you’re thinking about your content distribution strategy as just knowing what channels and formats you want to use, you’re stuck at Content Distribution 101. Today, we’re going to share how to go from Content Distribution 101 to Content Distribution Mastery. And how making this shift can be a massive time and energy saver, all while making your overall content efforts significantly more impactful.
Today, we’ll cover:
- Why effective content distribution is half the battle to breaking through in the attention economy
- How to craft a distribution-first content strategy and mindset
- How to squeeze the most value out of your content, whether that’s new content OR content that you’ve already created and published
- And a simple framework you can use to take these ideas and put them into action for your mission
Let’s get to it.
Part 1: Content Distribution in the Attention Economy
We started this season of Designing Tomorrow introducing one of our pillar concepts: The Attention Economy. Where information is overflowing and overwhelming us and our attention is being bought and sold by large brands to grow their profits.
Capturing and sustaining attention is the first step in converting your content into engagement and action — and eventually building and maintaining deeper relationships with your community of supporters.
Effective content distribution is critical in the attention economy because our media diets and content preferences are more siloed and scattered than ever before. Our access and exposure to information is determined largely by algorithms. So we can’t just post our content to our website, send out an email, and call it a day.
Now, this doesn’t mean that you have to spray and pray your content across every channel out there. That’s a recipe for spreading yourself too thin, burning out, and getting lackluster results on each channel.
But It does mean that you need to be strategic and intentional about how you plan to distribute the content that you create. And you need to do this before you create your content — not after.
When you don’t approach your content from a distribution-first mindset, it creates a downward spiral. You get less value, reach, and engagement out of any given piece of content — big or small — and this burdens you to come up with new ideas, new formats, create more new content, and so on. But because you still haven’t come up with an effective distribution strategy and workflow, all of these new ideas and content are still not being leveraged to their true potential. So this vicious cycle repeats itself.
The beauty of a distribution-first mindset is that it allows you to squeeze the most value out of your content efforts and ideas. This means that you can spend more time creating quality content based on original, valuable, distinct ideas and messages, and get those ideas in front of the right people, in the right channels, in the right formats, at the right times.
Part 2: Developing a Distribution-First Mindset
So, what does a distribution-first mindset look like in practice?
Before we get into that, let’s make sure you have a few foundational principles in place with your border content strategy. We covered these in more depth in earlier episodes, but it’s worth revisiting here briefly so we can connect content distribution to the larger equation.
First, you have to clearly define and own your niche as an organization. If you don’t position and differentiate yourself within the broader social impact ecosystem, it’s going to be difficult to make good choices around your distribution strategy.
Similarly, you have to clearly define your audience and understand which audiences you are hoping to reach with your content strategy. This is fundamental, because effective content distribution is born from an audience-first approach.
An audience-first approach means deeply understanding your audience, knowing what channels your audience actually hangs out in, knowing what content your audience actually wants and needs, and building a content plan around that — rather than building your plan around your ideas and your goals.
Lastly, how does your content strategy support your broader brand and marketing strategy? Remember, we’re not just looking for likes and clicks here. This ultimately needs to drive actual value for your community and your mission.
Ok, so let’s say you have all of that generally figured out. Here’s what a distribution-first mindset looks like in practice.
A distribution-first mindset, in its simplest form, is really all about reverse-engineering your content strategy. Rather than starting from the idea and the content itself, you need to start by imagining how, where, and when that content will actually be packaged, distributed, and consumed by your audience.
When you think about your content from this end-state perspective, it can actually have huge implications on what content you actually create in the first place.
Because when you start with what channels and audiences you are hoping to reach for any given piece of content, it creates helpful constraints around the type of content that actually has a chance to be effective within those channels and for that audience.
Then, you can outline a simple distribution strategy for each piece of content.
Let’s look at an example or two to help clarify.
Let’s say you’re a conservation-focused organization that helps protect and preserve wild spaces across the California Coast.
Traditionally, you may approach your content strategy something like this:
You want to share stories featuring some of the natural wonder and wildlife to remind your community why your work is so important. So you plan an article featuring a story about sea otters. You know everyone loves sea otters, because they’re cute and adorable and photogenic.
So maybe you interview a field biologist on your staff that has expertise on otters and their ecosystem. You source some photos, and get started writing the article, with loose plans that you’ll post it to your site, feature it in your newsletter, and then maybe do a few social posts to promote it.
That’s a distribution-last mindset at best.
Here’s what a distribution-first mindset would look like instead:
A core pillar of your broader content strategy is featuring stories of individual flora and fauna in your protected area.
You’ve already identified the key channels and formats for this content pillar, with a set cadence and distribution plan and schedule.
Just like you’ve done with past stories like this, you’ll tease the post on social with an emotional, scroll-stopping, image-based post 1 week before the full story goes live to get some early interest and engagement.
Then, the day the story is published, you’ll send it out to email subscribers as a standalone piece that features a compelling hook to click through to the full story on your site.
That same day, social posts will go out on whatever social channels you’ve identified as relevant for this content pillar. These posts feature zero-click content that lives in the channel and doesn't require your audience to click through to your website. They can see some of the featured photos, maybe even a video, some pull quotes from the interview with the field biologist, and the supporting copy does a good job communicating the core ideas and concepts in an entertaining and channel-appropriate way.
And sure, you’ll also invite your audience over to your website where they can dig deeper and connect more fully with your brand and community. But they don’t have to do that to find value in your content, either.
Cool. Distribution-first for the win, right?
Not so fast. We’re just getting started. Because you know that distribution doesn’t end when the story goes live. This is just the beginning. You’ve already identified that you’ll re-feature this same piece of content in 2 weeks when your digest newsletter goes out. And again in 3 weeks when you do your social catch-up post featuring the top content from your brand.
You’ve also created a series of short form vertical video posts from your interview with the field biologist that you’ll drip out over the course of the next few months.
And you cut a long-form video that features the best parts of your interview with your field biologist paired with other content and footage from your existing media library for your Youtube channel.
And you’re planning to pull some of the content and ideas from this story into a bigger piece of hero content when you launch an interactive experience on your site where users can browse through all the different flora and fauna of your protected area to learn more about the biodiversity and rich ecosystem that makes your area so special.
Wait a minute. I thought a distribution-first approach was supposed to create LESS work, not more. This sounds like a lot of extra work.
Think again. Distribution-first is about working smarter, not harder. Look at all of the content and value we’re squeezing out of this one idea. Even if all you’re doing is writing an article about this, you still have to do all of the work to come up with the idea, figure out how to frame and package the idea, interview the field biologist, write the article, post it on your site, promote it, and so on.
With our distribution-first approach, you’re getting significantly more bang for your buck for this one story. So this one idea, this one story, gives you content across multiple channels, for multiple months, from a micro scale to a macro scale.
And because the distribution is considered from the start, you’re ensuring that your story is set up for success before you go through all the effort of creating it. This not only saves more time and effort in the long run, it also makes it significantly more likely that your audience will actually see and engage with your content.
Remember the attention economy? You’ve got to give your content a fighting chance. Our social feeds and inboxes are noisy. You can’t rely on a single post in a single channel to get your audience's attention.
This is just an example of one approach to a distribution-first mindset in practice. It’s probably not the perfect approach for your organization. You’ll need to right-size this for your brand, and your team’s capacity, opportunities, and audience. But hopefully it helps you understand how thinking about your content strategy from a distribution-first mindset can be a powerful way to get more out of your content
But a distribution-first mindset won’t take your content strategy to the next level on its own. For that, you’ll need to develop a framework and workflow for content distribution that connects to your broader content strategy.
The good news is that we’ve got that framework, and that’s exactly what we’ll get to next.
Part 3: A Simple Distribution-First Framework
We’ve covered the importance of a distribution in the era of the attention economy, and what a distribution-first mindset looks like in practice. Now, let’s go over our simple but effective distribution-first framework you can use to get the most out of your content strategy and creation.
Before you can start to use this framework, you’ll need to identify your core content pillars. Now, I’m not talking about formats here, like articles, videos, and so on. I’m talking about the core ideas or concepts or messages you want to get across as a brand.
If you don’t have official content pillars established already, don’t worry. There’s no need to overcomplicate this, especially if you’re just getting started. Begin by writing down the top 5 concepts, ideas, or messages you really want your audience to know. It doesn’t have to be exactly five, but somewhere in that range is usually a good starting point. Whatever you wrote down are now your core content pillars. Easy.
To help clarify this point, let’s look at the top 5 content pillars from our hypothetical example from earlier in the episode for a conservation-focused organization.
They key content pillars for that org might look something like:
Pillar 1: Stories from the field: fun, educational content that features interesting stories about the flora and fauna within the protected area
Pillar 2: Why this work matters: informative content that helps communicate the importance of conservation and biodiversity
Pillar 3: Fundraising Appeals: appeals to the community to help provide financial support to further the mission
Pillar 4: Thought Leadership: larger trend and opinion content that focuses on your niche and social impact ecosystem from a big picture perspective
Pillar 5: “Kelping it Real”: a serialized show that follows the ups and downs of the otter community in your area in a fun and entertaining way
If you’re still feeling stuck, here’s a tip that might help. Do a quick audit on your content to date and start to look for themes or patterns. What content tended to perform best? That’s a great starting point for your content pillars.
Now, once you’ve identified your core content pillars, you’re going to take the following 3-part framework and apply it to each pillar.
Step 1: Identify Your Audiences
Which segments of your audience are relevant to this content pillar? It’s ok if a pillar is only relevant to one audience, but some pillars are relevant to multiple audiences. Just be clear about this upfront. By the way, even if a content pillar might be relevant to all your audiences, you’ll want to make sure you don’t fall into the trap of trying to make everything for everyone. Identify the key audience or 2 for each pillar, even if that content is relevant outside of those key audiences.
Step 2: Identify your channels
Which channels are relevant for this audience or audiences? Where do they actually spend their time and engage in general? Don’t feel like you have to hit every channel possible here. Be discerning and be ready to fully commit to any channel you include. Less channels with more effort usually works better than more channels with less effort.
Step 3: Identify your formats
Based on those channels, which content formats tend to perform best? Long-form written content won’t be appropriate for a channel like instagram. And vertical video isn’t going to play well inside email. So make sure to think through which formats are most viable for the channels where distribution actually takes place. Make sure you also choose formats that you can actually pull off with your current team and capacity. You can also extend formats in the future as you develop your content efforts.
Now repeat this process for each of your core pillars and you’ll be well on your way to a distribution-first content strategy.
Now that you have your pillars established and have identified your distribution strategy for each pillar, the next thing you’ll need to do is outline your ideal cadence for each channel.
It’s best to do this from the viewpoint of each channel. Distribution-first mindset, remember.
Set an aggregate target cadence across all of your content pillars, not necessarily a target cadence specific to each content pillar. If it’s helpful for you to define a publishing cadence for each channel and each pillar, then go for it, but it’s not necessary.
Ok, once you’ve done this, you essentially have an editorial calendar across all channels, related to all of your key content pillars. So now, you’re ready to start actually planning your content production.
With a distribution-first mindset powering your content strategy, things start to get really fun and easy — especially when it comes to idea generation and vetting.
As you identify ideas, concepts, opportunities, and updates as contenders for your content strategy, you can put them through a simple split test. Here’s how it works:
For each idea or concept, ask yourself if it would be more effective to start with a longer-form piece of content that can be “cut down”, or a simple smaller piece of content that can be “built up.” So each piece of content can either start as “cut down” or “build up” content.
“Cut down” content is usually a larger piece, like articles, videos, podcasts, interviews, reports, and so on. Longer form content that has the opportunity to be “cut down” into smaller pieces and repackaged in bite-sized, snackable blocks. “Cut down” content is a super effective way to stretch your content further, extend your content’s lifetime value, and create more content from fewer ideas and opportunities.
But “Build up” content can be equally as powerful. “Build up” content is faster and easier to produce. It’s a great way to test new ideas and formats and see if they garner engagement from your community. “Build up” content might start with something as simple as a single instagram story, or a simple text-based post on LinkedIn, or a short blurb in your next newsletter. Over time, and true to the name, “build up” content can be combined with other “build up” content to form larger pieces, essentially reverse engineering “cut down” content.
Each piece of content now has a simple framework you can put it through to see if it has legs before you go too far down the production path for that piece of content:
First, think about what pillar or pillars would this idea fit into?
Next, determine if this content would work better as a “cut down” or “build up” piece of content to start?
Based on the answers for step 1 and step 2, you can now quickly build out a distribution strategy, release schedule, and production plan for this piece of content.
This simple framework is also scalable. You can take what started as “cut down” content and think of it as “build up” content for a larger “hero” or featured piece. The 12 articles you published in the “Stories from the field” pillar can be repackaged as an interactive field journal. Or the 5 long-form videos from the “Why this work matters” pillar can be integrated into a larger brand narrative video.
You can see how this simple framework can help you not only adopt a distribution-first mindset for your broader content strategy, but also make sure that you’re getting the most value out of each idea and setting your content up to be as successful as possible. It also just helps to have a more intentional and clear workflow to make your content production simpler and easier. Pretty quickly, this all just because muscle memory or second nature.
Before we wrap this section up, there’s one more bonus strategy you can use to squeeze even more juice out of your content, and that’s “remix content.” Remix content is all about taking existing content and finding creative ways to repackage and redistribute old content in new and interesting ways.
“Remix content” works best when you start with existing content ideas that have garnered the most engagement and interest from your community. You want to take the winners and find ways to help them win again.
So if you had a super successful article, repackage that article into a short video where you cover the same key points. Or if you had a bunch of instagram posts that got great engagement, remix and repackage those posts into a blog post. Or if you had a “build up” piece of content, say a single text-based LinkedIn post, that really took off, you know it’s a viable contender to remix into a long-form email that you can share with your community and pair with a fundraising appeal.
Fun fact: Season One of this podcast is actually a remix slash buildup of the manifesto we published at Cosmic a few years ago. We knew we had a lot more to say about the key concepts outlined in our manifesto, and always had it penciled out as a foundational season when we launched our own podcast.
Hopefully you can see how this simple approach powered by a distribution-first mindset can help take your content to the next level and build deeper engagement and connection with your community.
And if this exact approach or framework doesn’t seem viable for you, that’s ok. You can find your own way to adopt a distribution-first mindset and approach. Take the parts you like and leave the rest behind. You’ve got to do what works for you.
But however you slice and dice it, just be sure you don’t fall back into old habits where distribution is considered last, or not given the consideration it deserves. Your content, and your community, will thank you.
Outro
As competition in the attention economy continues to grow and you look to find new ways to connect and activate your community, an effective distribution strategy can be just the edge you’ve been looking for.
Today we covered how you can leverage your content to its fullest potential, how to connect your content strategy with your border brand and marketing strategy, the power of a distribution-first mindset, and a simple but effective framework you can use to start getting more out of your content efforts by working smarter and not harder.
I hope that the ideas, examples, and frameworks we shared today will inspire and equip you with everything you need to pass Content Distribution 101 with flying colors and quickly reach your own version of Content Distribution Mastery.
We’ve spent the last two episodes going deep on content. Because content creation, packaging, and distribution are more important than ever before. But content alone isn’t enough for you to further your mission and reach your true impact potential as a social impact brand.
Much of what we’ve covered so far has been foundational, building towards the true activation of your brand and strategy. And the true power of building movements and creating real-world change isn’t something you can do on your own. For that, you’ll need a little help from your friends — and their friends too. Tune in next week to see what I mean.