Social media platforms offer an incredible opportunity for businesses to distribute content and reach new audiences. With billions of active users across sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and more, leveraging these networks is a must for content marketing success.
This guide will explore proven tactics to utilize social media for effective content distribution. Follow these best practices to expand your reach, drive engagement and boost conversions with your content.
Optimize Content for Social Sharing
The first step is creating content optimized for social sharing. You want content that compels viewers to share it across their own networks and profiles.
Here are some tips for optimizable content:
- Visual content – Photos, videos, gifs, and other visual media tend to get higher engagement on social platforms. Infographics and listicles with eye-catching designs also work well.
- Entertaining or emotional content – Humorous, inspiring or emotional content elicits reactions like laughter and awe. This makes people more likely to engage and share.
- Useful, actionable content – How-to guides, list posts, interviews and other informative content provide value readers want to pass on.
- Controversial or debate-sparking content – While risky, content covering controversial topics and opinions can spread like wildfire on social media through shares and debate.
- Personalized, behind-the-scenes content – Give followers a peek behind the curtain with personalized content about your brand, employees and work culture.
- Timely, relevant content – Content tied to major news events, holidays, trends and interests will interest social media users in the moment.
Optimizing your content for the social platforms where you are active will make distribution efforts much more successful.
Choose the Right Social Platforms
Not all social media sites are equal when it comes to content distribution. It’s important to focus your efforts on the platforms where your target audience is most active.
Here are some of the top social platforms for content distribution:
- Facebook – With over 3 billion monthly active users, Facebook reaches more people than any other platform. It’s ideal for image, video and link sharing.
- Twitter – The go-to network for real-time, newsy content. Use it to share brief updates, articles, images and videos.
- LinkedIn – With 500 million members, this platform dominates professional and B2B content sharing. Publish long-form posts natively or link to content off-site.
- Reddit – A collection of forums (subreddits) around topics and interests. Share content to relevant niche communities.
- Pinterest – Highly visual platform ideal for sharing infographics, illustrations and visual how-to content.
- Instagram – Owned by Facebook, this photo and video sharing app is perfect for visual content. Leverage influencers with large followings here.
- Quora – Question-and-answer site where users distribute content by answering relevant questions from the community.
Identify where your audience spends their time socializing online and focus efforts there for maximum impact. Spreading efforts too thin across too many networks dilutes results.
Engage Followers with Content
Driving content distribution through social media requires engaging your existing followers and communities. Here are some ways to get them sharing content:
- Poll questions – Ask for input related to your content topic. What do they think of the advice in your post? Have they tried the tactic you wrote about?
- Calls to action – Directly ask followers to like, share or retweet your content if they found it helpful or interesting.
- Hashtag challenges – Launch a branded hashtag challenge asking followers to share their own related content.
- Retweet/repost requests – Ask happy customers from brand mentions to repost your content. This puts it in front of their own audiences.
- Giveaways and contests – Offer prizes and rewards for sharing content. Require tagging friends or using branded hashtags to enter.
- User-generated content campaigns – Repost visual content from customers using or discussing your products. Always ask permission first.
When publishing content, don’t just distribute and expect engagement. Promote it through direct engagement with the people who follow you to drive shares.
Leverage Influencers
Influencers with large social followings can amplify the distribution of your content in a big way. Identify influencers who create content related to your niche and build relationships over time. Offer to provide unique data, insights or access to company experts to help them create compelling content featuring your brand.
You can also send pre-written content like blog posts for consideration in their feeds and stories. Be sure it is high-quality and brand aligned. Influencers will not post content that seems overly promotional or sales focused. Focus on useful, informative content that also highlights your products or services organically.
Look for influencer marketing opportunities on every major social platform:
- Facebook/Instagram – Partner with influencers by sending products to feature in posts and on Instagram Live.
- Twitter – Have influencers tweet your content, quote tweet with their insights and participate in Twitter chats.
- LinkedIn – Request posts featuring your content in their feed and in LinkedIn Groups.
- Pinterest – Get pinned by influencers with highly-engaged boards in your niche.
- YouTube – Sponsor influencer videos and ask to be featured or mentioned.
This form of social content distribution utilizes voices with established trust and readership. Align with the right influencers to put your content, and brand, in front of more social audiences.
Go Live on Social
Live video represents a rising content distribution opportunity across social media. Platforms are heavily promoting live broadcasts through notifications and search placement. Use these built-in amplification effects to your advantage.
The most popular networks for branded live video include:
- Facebook Live – Stream to your Page and in Facebook Groups to engage followers in real-time.
- Instagram Live – Go live during a product launch or event to expand your organic reach.
- LinkedIn Live – Share live videos in your feed and Group posts to distribute video content.
- YouTube Premieres – Pre-record but premiere video content live with viewer chat.
- Twitch – For long-form live streams focused on gaming, tech and entertainment niches.
Live video is a great way to create an interactive, community experience around your content while expanding its reach. Enable comments and engage viewers in real-time as much as possible.
Then, the archived video can continue to generate views long after the live event ends through organic and paid promotion.
Team Up for Co-Marketing
Look for mutually beneficial co-marketing opportunities with strategic brand partners who have complementary audiences. Arrange cross-promotion of content between social channels through tactics like:
- Complimentary influencer partnerships – Work with non-competing brands popular with your target audience for expanded influencer reach.
- Account takeovers – Temporarily trade social accounts with a partner brand to organically introduce your content to new audiences.
- Linked posts – Brands can now link to one another in posts on Facebook and Instagram, facilitating content sharing between pages.
- Joint live streams – Co-host live videos with brand partners to mash up both audiences.
- Shared hashtags – Promote branded hashtags across partner channels to expand visibility and track cross-promotional metrics.
These social tactics allow you to tap into the audiences of other brands through strategic partnerships. Optimize these opportunities by collaborating with brands that strongly align with yours.
Pay to Boost Posts
Don’t rule out putting some budget toward paid social promotion. Thoughtfully investing in boosting select content can amplify its organic reach at a relatively low cost-per-click compared to other paid channels.
Consider promoted posts on:
- Facebook & Instagram – Boost organic posts or create new social ads driving to content. Target lookalike audiences similar to current followers.
- LinkedIn – Pay to reach more users in your ideal demographics with organic posts or Sponsored Content.
- Twitter – Promote tweets to expand visibility beyond existing followers. Test different engagement objectives.
- Pinterest – Boost pins to reach more users searching for related topics. Drive traffic or conversions.
- YouTube – Promote videos on YouTube and the Google Display Network using YouTube Video Ads.
Monitor performance across paid efforts and double down on the networks, audiences and content delivering the strongest results. Paid and organic efforts work together to expand distribution.
Driving Engagement for Optimal Reach
Distributing content on social media goes beyond simply posting and sharing. You need to facilitate user interaction and engagement for the high visibility and traffic social platforms favour.
Tactics like mentioned above – polls, contests, UGC campaigns, hashtag challenges, etc. – drive comments, likes, clicks and shares. This signals to algorithms the content offers value versus self-promotion. More engagement earns increased reach and discovery in social feeds and search.
Always encourage engagement in your distribution efforts – don’t just broadcast content out to social channels. Facilitate two-way conversations around your content for better performance.
The Power of Social Media for Content Distribution
With billions of active users ready to discover and share relevant, compelling content, social platforms offer an unrivalled opportunity for content distribution at scale. But simply posting content won’t cut it.
Brands must optimize and target content for specific platforms, actively engage existing followers, leverage influencers, experiment with emerging formats like live video, collaborate with strategic partners, amplify strong performers through paid promotion, and facilitate engagement to earn social relevance.
Following these best practices allows you to develop an effective, diversified distribution strategy across social channels. This expands brand reach and visibility for your content marketing.
With the sheer size of audiences across social media, even niche brands can drive significant website traffic, lead generation and online sales through strategic distribution efforts. Measure performance across formats and networks and double down on what works.
Over time, you can build communities of engaged followers who eagerly consume and share your content. This provides lasting benefits beyond individual campaigns or posts.
If you need help developing an effective social media strategy for your content, white label content writers and marketing experts are available. Specialized content writing agencies like Ink Elves offer end-to-end solutions tailored to your brand, audience and goals.
To explore how white label content writing services can elevate your social media and content marketing, contact the Ink Elves team today. Our solutions make it easy to leverage the power of strategic social media for expanded content reach and engagement.