đź’ˇ Module #1: Foundations of Distribution
When I took over my first corporate content marketing role in 2013, I bought into the common belief that the more content we made, the better I was at my job. I thought the more I published, the more people would read, and the bigger our audience would become, and naturally, the more revenue I would help drive. It seemed like a simple formula: write, publish, repeat. So, I pushed myself and the team to churn out two new blog posts every week, rain or shine.
Our content calendar was packed. We had brainstorm sessions that looked like game plans for a championship game. I even had a massive wall calendar with a 6 month plan meticulously scheduled and mapped out. Every week, we were creating something new and I truly believed that each fresh post was another shot at winning readers and racking up views. But after a few months, I noticed something wrong. Despite all of our efforts to pump out new content, traffic was barely moving. In fact, 80 percent of our traffic was coming from less than 20 percent of our pages.
And the truth is, we were all burning out. The endless churn of new content wasn’t sustainable. It felt like we were pouring water into a bucket with a leak at the bottom. No matter how much we created, nobody in our audience seemed to pay attention. If Google didn’t pick up that content and rank it highly, it was going to sit and collect dust on our website.
And that was my first lesson in content marketing’s dirty little secret: without distribution, your content doesn’t stand a chance — no matter how good it is.
Most companies today still run on that old content treadmill. They believe that to be “successful” in content marketing, they need to produce as much content as possible. They hire writers, pile on SEO keywords, and pack their editorial calendar to the brim. Each piece is launched with optimism, and maybe a quick social post, in the hope that it will somehow gain traction (fingers crossed).
But here’s what actually happens: their content goes live to a nearly empty room.
Aside from team members or a few loyal followers, most of it stays unseen, unclicked, and unread. They’re doing the work, but they’re missing the crucial step—getting the content in front of the right people.
Fast forward a few years. I had just joined a small start up as their sole content marketer. I no longer had a 10 person team with specialized talents. I went from a content team of 10 people to an entire marketing team of only three. I had to quickly figure out how to get the most bang for my buck with the content we were creating.
This is when I finally realized that content creation only makes sense if you have a plan to get it in front of people. That’s where the concept of “Distribution First” was born. Rather than focusing on pumping out endless streams of new material, I began to focus on maximizing the reach of each piece we created.
Today, my content strategy revolves around creating fewer, high-quality pieces and repurposing each one across different channels. Instead of rushing to produce 12 new posts each month, I start with one piece like a podcast episode and use that as the core of my content for the week. I pull key takeaways, create short video clips for social media, turn it into a blog post, and distribute these pieces over several platforms, each tailored to where my audience actually is.
I’ll take a single podcast episode, extract 10 unique pieces from it, and release them over the course of a few weeks. This way, each core idea gets multiple touchpoints and reinforces the message without overwhelming the audience. It’s a system that works like a well-oiled machine, and it’s allowed me to stay consistent, reduce burnout, and, most importantly, get the content seen by the people we’re trying to reach.
Throughout this course, you’ll learn the ins and outs of building your own flywheels, but let me give you a breakdown of what this looks like in action:
Start with a Core Piece: Every week, we record one podcast episode. This is the anchor for everything that follows.
Repurpose into Bite-Sized Content: From that one episode, we create four short video clips that highlight key points. These clips go up on platforms like LinkedIn and YouTube to try and reach audiences who may not listen to a full podcast episode.
Extend to Long-Form Platforms: We post the full episode on YouTube, breaking it down into three segments for people who prefer shorter, more digestible content on video platforms.
Written Content: Next, we write a blog post or newsletter that captures the main takeaways. If we’re creating a blog we try our best to make sure SEO is optimized to give us a piece that performs on our website long-term.
Gather Feedback: Finally, we see what’s resonating with the audience. Did particular formats or topics resonate? Now we can double down on what’s working.
Rinse and Repeat: This isn’t a one-and-done process. We cycle these pieces back into the content calendar and re-share them months later to maximize their reach.
This flywheel gives us a constant presence across multiple channels without the grind of constant new creation. And here’s the best part, every single piece is on message and reinforces our core ideas rather than scattering them across dozens of different topics (more on that in later lessons).
