Stop Sweating Distribution. You’re a Marketer

Let me begin by mangling Tolstoy: Good content marketers are good in their own way; every not-so-good content marketer universally misunderstands distribution.

Hang around content marketing social media for a bit and you'll run into distribution "playbooks" and repurposing "workflows". The message these playbooks and workflows deliver is simple—you too can be everywhere all at once and "solve" distribution.

Distribution playbooks are solutions to a problem that should not exist in the first place. You wouldn't give an athlete a playbook to tie their shoelaces, would you?

Yet content marketers eat up repurposing workflows and elevate distribution-first gurus to the heavens.

Why are we here?

Content and marketing. 

Or, you create content and market it to your audience. 

Unfortunately, most of us content marketers got too hung up on the content bit and forgot about the marketing. SEO being wide open in the previous decade played a big role in this. 

Most of the big voices in content today earned their chops as SEO specialists—writing content designed to rank high in Google.

This meant better writing—structure, information gain, and word choices—led to more traffic and reach since Google handled distribution for you.

Consequently, better writing made you a better content marketer. For example, here's a popular content marketer's take on the future of "content." Notice how they use content marketing and writing interchangeably.

These days Google is inundated with content and there are few low-competition opportunities left. People are paying more attention to who is creating content, instead of taking it at face value.

Brand recognition comes before content consumption.

This is a problem for most content marketers since we've been told better writing is the only way to market.

No one told us our audiences would rather avoid reading altogether.

Google's reduced relevance for free distribution led to content marketers discovering the second word of their title. Cue the rise of things like "distribution first" strategies and communities.

But the average CM is still behind the curve when understanding what marketing entails. Most of us view distribution—creating a marketing engine—as an ops problem.

Distribution is just another action item to execute. Outline, write, edit, revise, publish, and distribute. If we can't "distribute" on Google, we must figure out ways to distribute elsewhere. 

Hence, it's an ops issue.

Given this view, you can see why slicing off long blog posts for social media, splicing long videos into shorts, and republishing blogs for newsletters are the norm. Like the zero-effort piece of content below.

The purpose of this ops/workflow-oriented approach is to direct visitors back to a central source—usually our websites.

But here's how our customers instead consume and view our marketing presence, including content.

Our websites are one part of a bigger chain of channels that inform customers we exist. These channels work together to capture a person's attention and hopefully, convince them to buy.

In 2022, Amanda Natividad coined zero-click content in a post on SparkToro's blog. In typical fashion, every content marketer jumped on board, shouting about how important it was to optimize for zero clicks.

Unfortunately, the way content marketers understand distribution has made it impossible to create zero-click content.

Here's an example that illustrates why treating distribution as workflow item and thinking repurposing is a solution is foolish. 

I searched "best ETFs to invest in" on Youtube and TikTok—both video channels and extremely popular for investing advice.

Before diving into video specifics, here are my first observations:

• Search results show almost no creator crossover. The people popular on TikTok are not as popular or non-existent on YouTube and vice-versa.

• TikTok follows a "how to make money" theme in its results. YouTube results are more niched and nuanced.

• YouTube dives and explains. TikTok delivers and summarizes.

Right, now let's look at the top results I was recommended on both platforms. YouTube first.

Now TikTok.

These screen captures alone have enough differences between them to fill an entire article. A few highlights:

• YouTube guy minimizes distractions. TikTok guy revels in clutter.

• YouTube guy uses a subtle color scheme and production. TikTok guy is the opposite.

• Polished versus in-your-face

What do these videos tell us about the audiences on these respective channels? Can you really "repurpose" YouTube guy's content onto TikTok successfully?

Will this repurposed content fulfill zero-click criteria?

Those questions are rhetorical. Your customers tell you which channels they want to consume content on. They also tell you how you should optimize your content for zero clicks.

There is no such thing as "distribution." Customer research obviates any need to think about it when done right.

As tempting as it sounds, being everywhere all the time isn't always your best content marketing strategy. Instead of turning distribution into a process to solve this non-issue, let your customers tell you where they want you to show up and how.

You'll create zero-click content. And along the way, you'll nail the marketing bit in content marketing. You know—the stuff we're paid to do.