Using personal brands to distribute episodes

Content distribution is an essential part of episodic content marketing. Many people tend to focus most of their attention on the creation of content while forgetting all about their methods of distributing said content. Instead of doing this, a better plan would be to map out your content distribution even at the beginning, while planning out the strategy of your show. 

When it comes to content distribution we can break it down into personal brands, channels, and community. And today, we are going to be starting with personal brands. So, here's the thing, whenever we talk about content like company content or B2B content and publishing that on social media, we usually are referring to company channels but for the purpose of this post, we just wanted to discuss the importance of using personal brands to distribute your content.

Some of the benefits we will mention are:

1. Positive impact 
2. Making it relatable 
3. More Visibility 
   
   

Positive Impact

The number one reason is the sheer positive impact that personal brands have when they share content. This is because when team members or employees in your organization share your content, the world views them as humans or as people with their individual voices.

Making it relatable

Think of it this way, every time you share the episodes of your show or repurposed contents with your team members, what you are doing is giving them a chance to take that content and put their own signature on it. And by signature, we mean maybe the way that they caption it or the way that they put some context into it with like a personal anecdote or something like that. This might make your content more relatable to the people who follow or interact with your employees which will, in turn, prompt those people to share your content thus giving you a wider reach.

More Visibility

Using personal brands to share your content equals more views and impressions for your brand or company.

Don’t believe us? Let’s do the math.

Imagine if your content would normally get 50 views from being posted on your company channel, now imagine if that same content is shared or reposted by 10 employees with at least 1000 connections on LinkedIn. Even if only a quarter of those 1000 connections (per employee) view your content, it will still be a win for you because that would mean that you have successfully increased your visibility simply by engaging your team or employees to share your content.

Even though the marketing team is traditionally in charge of marketing and publicity, you should not underestimate the power of using personal brands to share your content. Your employees can do things that your marketing department might not really be able to do so again, it is very very important to be able to find ways to motivate your team to share your content on their own personal social media channels like Linkedin, Twitter, and all the other platforms.

And how can you motivate them to do that?

There are many ways that you could do that and one of them is 

• By involving your team in the actual production of the content: If you involve your team when producing the content that you want to share, then they are more likely to distribute the content when the time comes.
• Another way is by involving your team in something related to them or their line of work. 
• And lastly, by just getting their feedback while you're actually producing the show.

All these work to make sure that they feel part ownership for what you're creating as opposed to you doing something behind closed doors and then asking them to help you distribute the content when it’s already finished

Instead of doing that, why not open it up and get everybody involved in the process. There are more than enough benefits to doing this. You will end up with a much richer product and also a wider distribution channel as your employees will be more than willing to share the content because they are proud of the fact that they were involved in it. They get to show their friends the parts where they contributed and say, “oh that part right there, that one was my idea.”

Another tip that can be really useful if you want your employees to help with the distribution of your branded content is-

• Make the content easy to share: Make sure that the process for sharing the content is easy and seamless. While some employees may be very willing to share your content, if they find it hard or time-consuming to find and share your content, they might end up either forgetting or abandoning their intentions. One way to make sure none of these happen is by making it very easy to find and share your content when it is time to do so. You can provide your team with a direct link to whichever content you have in mind so all they have to do is click to share.

So definitely keep these in mind and have fun experimenting on the different ways to do it but also make sure to take it very seriously because if your content does not get promoted by the personal brands or mini-celebrities that you have in your company, then it might not really go far so you have to make sure that there's a plan in place to get as many people as possible to share your content.

And just to elaborate on the meaning of mini-celebrities in this context, we are referring to those employees or team members in your company who have a large following or have built a personal brand and are seen as an authority figure in some spaces. 

Next, we are going to be looking at how to utilize your brand channels in the distribution of your content. If you’ve been following us in this series of posts about creating episodic marketing shows and you’d like to get started on creating one for yourself, then you’re in luck. Here's a FREE guide explaining just how to do so. Enjoy!