As the digital economy develops search engines and social networks have supplanted traditional publishers and websites as primary as their sources for news, services, and products. Distributed social marketing on social media platforms, search engines, and niche networks is a growing trend in business and marketing in 2018.
What is Distributed Network Social Marketing?
The goal of distributed network social marketing is simple: your branded content creates consumption habits. These habits bring customers back to your platform, driving engagement and increasing brand loyalty.
How B2B businesses can use social media marketing to their advantage
When it comes to looking at the different forms of distributed network social marketing (free, freemium, and pay per click), it’s crucial for businesses to consider where their audience is spending the most time. Who is your audience and what network might they turn to add value to their personal or professional lives?
LinkedIn is quickly becoming one of the most prominent platforms for businesses and professionals alike. At the end of the last quarter, LinkedIn reported 467 million members and counting. No matter their format, content distribution networks and platforms—even paid ones—enable content creators and owners to overcome common social media marketing hurdles because they guarantee that your content gets to the right audience. As a result, content shared through these networks attracts mores traffic, results in higher quality leads, increases conversions, and increases your subscriber base.
Leverage niche content curation and recommendation engines
The increasing popularity of paid content distribution channels has been noted in a number of industry reports for their ability to empower brands with data collection and content discovery tools to drive brand engagement and increase your consumer base.
Examples of successful paid content distribution networks:
- Taboola
- Given the right niche, Taboola can help content owners deliver their content to their target audience. As of 2018, their network boasts more than one billion relevant users who pay to access premium content, while also giving brands the ability to target different countries and geographies, define whether your ad is targeted for mobile devices or desktop and attract more traffic.
- Outbrain
- Though Outbrain has a smaller networks than Taboola, the platform has higher engagement and conversion rates, giving content owners more traction for a similar budget
- Adblade
- Popular with publishers like Forbes, Bloomberg, and Answers.com.
- Zemanta
- Content aggregation and promotion platform. The only draw back is that content owners lack direct control over their campaigns (and thus what is promoted)
- Nativo
- Allows you to pay for viewable CPM as opposed to CPC, ensuring that are only paying for views and actionable leads.
Paid content distribution via social channels and networks
As most brands already know, you’re going to have to pay to play when it comes to social platforms and networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. More than half of B2B marketers report using paid advertising via social media platforms as a part of their content distribution and promotion efforts.
- Facebook
- With more than two billion people and counting on Facebook, the biggest advantage of using the platform for advertising is that individuals and businesses regularly rely on it for interacting with and discovering new content, making it a primary channel for both B2B and B2C advertisers.
- LinkedIn
- Due to the nature of the platform and it’s core audience, LinkedIn’s targeting abilities far outweigh those of any other network. LinkedIn generates more leads for B2B interactions than any other social network or platform. Further, the content marketing institute ranked LinkedIn as the most effective social media advertising platform. At a 66% effectiveness rate, LinkedIn gives more ROI than Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.
- Twitter
- Because of the seamless, native presentation of Twitter’s sponsored Tweets, the platform’s click-through rate range from 1–3% in comparison to about 0.12 % on Facebook. Twitter also gives you options to promote tweets or accounts, giving your brand more flexibility to position itself dynamically on the platform. While Twitter may be popular among younger users, the platform’s audience isn’t as large as Facebook’s and works best with verticals like marketing, media, entertainment, and (in some cases) customer service.
As you develop a content distribution plan, keep in mind that paid distribution is not your main focus, but owned media is.
You also want to consider free media distribution networks as well. While paying for premium channels and networks is an option more marketers and businesses are turning to, decentralized networks and communities are making a comeback in 2018 as well.
Some of the most popular free networks for content distribution include:
- Engage on decentralized content distribution networks like Quora, Quuu, Minds.org., Mastadon, and Sola.
- All these rely on community and sponsor created content. Minds.org also has one of the fastest growing adoption rates among alternative platforms.
- Look into niche-driven distribution networks catered to add value to the lives of professionals and marketers while expanding their networks.
- Blogher
- Contently
- Spiceworks
- SteemIt
- Crunchbase
As you develop your content distribution strategy, bear in mind that the perfect content distribution strategy will combine owned, earned, and paid advertising across a number of platforms and networks. As your strategy develops, its important to stay on top of your online reputation and use audience data to direct your goals and ensure you meet your benchmarks.
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Success on social is about more than ‘likes’ and ‘follows’; our team offers a comprehensive suite of digital marketing services to help you and your clients build better relationships and generate more leads by contacting us about our Soffront partner program.
