In this episode, Justin talks about the current state and future trends of content distribution, the evolving role of content marketers, and the impact of AI on the marketing landscape with Brett McGrath.

Justin and Brett discuss the current state of content distribution in 2024, examining assumptions about distribution, how it can be improved, and the evolution of strategies from search and social to owned channels.

If you like distribution and repurposing playbooks, you'll love my weekly newsletter (it's free). Join 2,600+ subscribers here: https://news.justinsimon.co/

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why having internal alignment across departments is crucial for distribution.
• How viewing content as a product can optimize distribution planning and resources.
• Why focusing distribution on a core piece can free up time for premium content.
• How building systems to provide brand omnipresence can expand reach.

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Hey, everybody, before we get started, I want to thank my friends at Hatch for

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FM. All right, let's get in the show.

Welcome to distribution first, the show where we flip content marketing on its head

and focus on what happens after you hit publish. Each week I

share playbooks, motivations, stories, and strategies to help you repurpose and

distribute your content because you deserve to get the most out of everything you

created.

Everybody, welcome to this week's episode of Distribution first. Got my

buddy Bret McGrath on the show this week and we're going to go

deep into the state of content distribution in

2024, kind of where everything is at, where

distribution is moving toward what's changed, what's evolved,

what should we be on the lookout for? What are some of the assumptions

that we're still carrying around a decade later based on how some

of these programs are being run and then how can we do it better? So,

Brett Mann, welcome to the show. Thanks, Justin. Pumped to be back, excited about

this conversation. When I saw the topic, it made me

feel, gave me the warm fuzzies inside because I was like, all right, we've

talked so long about content distribution 101, we should do

it. And now we're taking that next step. It's like some of us are

doing it and what is next and what is the future? And I think those

are exciting topics to hit. Yeah. And I think it's important. And it's

interesting because to me, and maybe this is even a good spot to kind of

start is like, to me, content distribution is falling into two camps for

people. For some people, it's the

classic vitamin versus Painkiller. For some people, it's a

vitamin and they don't realize they need the painkiller. And I think that's really

kind of where I'm seeing the landscape at. I'm curious kind of what your thoughts

are as far as that goes. Yeah, I think that's accurate. I

think what else has been interesting to me is the more I think about

it, is that we were on this path for so long,

talking about, like, we need to do content distribution, and here's the

reasons why. And there were adopters along that path,

but at the same time, companies started to cut out

content from their budgets and cut out resources

to produce that content. So it's interesting because I

think there is this road and these paths for content creators

who are kind of maturing with their distribution, where

some companies literally have halted their content process and I

think don't realize it, but maybe will be impacted a few months from

now when there's other companies and brands who are not only investing more in

their content but then giving their creators or whatever

role it is, the resources to focus more on

distribution. So I think I have a guess on which brands

will win that race. But to me that's like one of the interesting

storylines that I'm observing and trying to follow as

close as possible. Yeah. And it's interesting for me too,

because actually I was looking the other day, I'm always kind of peeking

around at different content jobs, not that I'm going to take one, but just kind

of see where the landscape is at. For somebody who's looking for a director of

content, head of content, what are the skills? What are the things people are

needing? And it's wild because on one side I'm

seeing still a sort of traditional

content marketing role that's being asked for in terms of like

SEO and blogging and weekly production and setting up

keyword maps and that sort of side. But on the flip side, I

just saw a few of them recently where explicitly in

the job description was, we need you to lead

distribution, the word like distribution and repurposing

for our content. We need you to build the plan to be able to do

that. And so I think for me that that's sort of like the glimmer of

hope in my mind of like, all right, some companies are figuring

out that this is important enough to even ask that of the role

and where I'm at is hopefully this show, this

conversation, a lot of the stuff that we like to jam on

will help folks sort of understand, like, oh, okay. If I'm going

to take this next step in my career, if I'm going to

be a top content marketer, a top marketer, I have to know what to

do with this stuff that we're creating. I love that you brought this up. And

as a recent free agent who has been having a lot of

conversations and also people send need job postings,

job listings for content jobs, that is like one of the first

things I look at are they calling out distribution? Is this the need?

And to be honest with you, if it's not someone who I know really

well and someone who's like, you got to go talk to this person. They're a

great person. It's a qualifier for me. You have to have something

about distribution in your job description because if

you don't, then likely I can't do any. I'm not going to be able to

help you. And I say that kind of like tongue in cheek. But also

to me, I think those are the places that people

who have deep career experience in

content should be looking for or should be thinking, because those

brands are progressive. And what I have noticed

is what's encouraging about content distribution just in general, is

that there are more companies that are upstream.

We're talking 1000, 503,000 employees who

are focusing on content distribution. Whereas three years ago

I didn't see that happening. So something is happening in the

space. People are talking and maybe bosses and bosses, bosses are

seeing results with distribution. But for me, as someone who's out there right

now talking with companies, that's qualification criteria.

You must be thinking about it and that must be a part of the conversation

or quite frankly, I'm not interested. Yeah, definitely. And

it's an interesting spot because honestly, even how I have these conversations

with people who come to me and want to work with me is typically they

might have a content engine in place, they might have a particular way of

doing things. And a lot of times it's not a complete

overhaul of what you're doing. It's essentially

assessing what you have going on. And then how does what you have go

on match and fit to a distribution strategy across

the funnel, across channels, across

intent for that content, trying to not expect a performance

piece of content to build your brand and not expect a piece of brand building

content to drive leads or to drive media impact and

revenue. So coming up with that balance is huge for folks.

And hopefully we're going to get to that point where more and more companies are

deciding that. And one more note before we move on with that is for

the person who's starting in marketing or even in that, a lot of the folks

that I talk to that are kind of in that maybe like one to five

plus ish range of their career, how much more

valuable are you going to be to your company if you can come to them

and say, you know, this content we've been creating, I'm noticing we're not

doing much with it, or I'm seeing, we're not like, it's not

ranking or, boy, we're spending a lot of time doing

this. Here's a plan that I think we can execute

on to get this in front of people, or it's going to actually make

them just flip their mindset in terms of, you know what, I tried repurposing some

of this stuff to get it out. It's not very good. It's going to change

how those people do stuff. Yeah. So I've been on this path of this

proclamation that the next wave of

cmos are coming from content people, and

part of that came from some conversations that I've had,

and there's plenty of people that have kind of paved that

path. But I think about the distribution component,

and if you're in your company early, five years in, and

you go in and you build out and develop a distribution plan,

you talk about attribution, you work with your sales

team, you communicate internally. Those are all of the

skills that marketing leaders possess in order

to keep elevating their career. So that to me, distribution

is a huge component of that narrative that I continue to push around

content people being the next wave of cmos. And part of the

reason, too is just there's so much green space to work from. So,

yeah, I'm sure part of, or probably all this conversation is going to

be gassing that up a little more because we're distribution people.

But yeah, the opportunities are endless because not a lot of people

aren't doing it or aren't doing it as well as they probably should

be. Yeah, totally. So let's get into a little bit of

current landscape on where we're seeing content distribution.

I know we've touched on a little bit, but maybe talk to me about, in

your mind's eye, how distribution has

evolved. I feel like even in the last three

years, stuff is starting. I mean, even if you look at specific

platforms, like what's working has changed, the reach has changed, and

I think people are honestly, there's a palatable desperation

to me out there right now in terms of just grasping for anything that will

work. Yeah. So I think this is

interesting, and I think this isn't a linear path, but here are some things that

I think here's like a timeline of the way we have thought about distribution

and how that's changed. I think it all starts back to the like,

all right, this inbound movement that we have where it's like, all right, we're going

to create this piece of content and we're going to hit publish, and then the

Google machine is going to find it, and then the algorithms are going to have

it be seen by the right people, and then people are going to come to

our website that literally used to work, that worked before everyone

started to do it. Pre social media, too, by the way. I love

it when the host has the segue. That was the next wave. Right?

It was like it started to work less and then. So we started to put

our content, feed it through our social media channels or had an

email newsletter and we'd send it to our prospects and customers.

Then I think we started to own

channels. We started to focus in on, what is this?

This is like a really good move, I think, and it shows maturity,

but it's like, all right, where are the people who we're trying to reach? Where

do they hang out? Where do they spend their time? And let's own that channel

and own distribution on that channel. And that works to a

certain rate. And then I think let's start

incorporating and using our own people at our company

to be a distribution channel on that channel

or on another channel. And to me, like

that, working with your team to share your content and

share updates. To me, everyone should be doing it. And this

conversation could be used cross functionally, because to me, if

your people are consistently sharing your content, it is a

reflection of your brand and also that is a

reflection of your recruitment process. Like, I want to go work

for companies where people are excited and they're sharing content

regularly. So to me, that wave, there are companies

that do it, and there are companies that do it really well, but still not

enough companies, I don't think are doing it. And then kind of the

rubber hits the road. And I think the highest maturity on the distribution scale

are like, you own a channel, your company, your people are sharing

your content regularly, and you have built this tremendous

network of customers or collaborators or

friends in the space who also share your content. So

to me, the best distribution I see is I just look at

LinkedIn and be like, all right, this content person is literally spending all their time

on LinkedIn. Their team is bought in, and because they've spent

all this time on LinkedIn, they've developed all these relationships. And so

that content person isn't just producing content, but that content person

is really like quarterbacking the process of making

sure the content is being fed to the right channel. And

also the people that should be sharing the content, or they want to be sharing

the content are fully aware and fully on board. So to

me, that's like the evolution, and obviously within that, there's a

bunch of conversation we can have around repurposing and resharing and all of

that. But to me, like 2024, where we're at,

if you are a company or you're a content creator who is

owning a channel and getting engagement, your team is bought in and

other people are helping support that, then you're probably on the

right path to having a really kick ass distribution plan.

Yeah. To me, and I know we'll touch on this a little bit down the

road, too, but to me, a huge part of that is

understanding how the ideas are getting

shared, especially internal. When you talk about internal communication, so

much of a distribution problem is a lack of internal

sync, which is really sort of hidden

distribution problem on teams. I would say, like even teams

that I work with, it starts to become very clear very quickly that, oh, okay,

you're not aligned with the other demand gen, or do you have conversations

with sales about what they need? It becomes very clear kind of

why those gaps exist. And I think at the end of the day, to

me, it's not even about them rallying around the

piece of content. So like, oh, we put together this benchmark report. Let's get

everybody to read the benchmark report. To me, it's actually not about that.

It's about, all right, sales team of the three people who are

active on LinkedIn or who want to be or whatever, that we've built that up.

Here's why the benchmark report is important. It's that internal

education. Here's the main points, here's our points of view on it. Here's the different

channels, and then let's have a discussion about what that

might look like for content creation specific to that platform.

Hey, demand Gen, here's all the main points in it. Here's how we

can maybe drive some native ads around it or create a quick

video about this particular stat or something that's in it

to drive engagement. It's so much more than

just, hey everybody, we launched this new benchmark report. It's really

important. Go share it on LinkedIn. It's really

a massive muscle that needs to get built within orgs.

And I've actually never seen

it work out perfectly in terms of that. I've seen it work

in sort of fits and starts, but do you see the same thing at all,

or is there any pushback on that? So back to my point of content people

are the next wave of cmos. If you, as an

individual contributor or a content leader within a business, are able

to create a content culture at your company,

then your career path is, there are no ceilings. You can

apply that into whatever organization or role possible because most companies

can't figure it out. So to kind of go deeper on your point,

it is about getting your people to understand the why behind what you're

creating. But taking it to the next level is like getting the individual

functions to understand why that piece of content matters

for their role specifically. Think about salespeople. Like

salespeople are notoriously, they're challenging to get

bought into what you're building, creating and have them use it because

salespeople are trying to do their job, they're trying to sell. That's, they're like laser

focused on that one prospect who's going to close tomorrow, which is we

totally get that and we want our sellers to be focused on that. But I

think it's to get buy in. It's doing things like, all right,

hey, I created this report and this is the reason why you should

care and you should distribute it. And as a matter of fact, those prospects on

your list, that CMO, that vp of marketing, that director of content at those three

brands, I actually got quotes from them in the report and we're

featuring them. So all you have to do is take this report now that it's

done, I haven't emailed them the finished product yet and go email them and say,

hey, our team collaborated with you on this, wanted to give you this report

before we shared it publicly. That's how if you can

facilitate and quarterback those types of motions within your business,

the sky is the limit. But like I said, none of this works if you

don't have your team bought into the content and what you're doing. Because if no

one internally cares about it, no one externally is going to care about it either.

Oh, dang, nobody cares about it internally. I mean, that is at the heart

of a lot of it too. Is like as a content marketer, a

traditional, you're so laser focused on getting the next thing out

and just honestly keeping your head above water,

keeping your dang job, making sure you're not getting laid off,

trying to just get x, y and z needs x, y and z thing.

Sales needs this. I'm going to make them their white paper that they're never going

to use or so, and so needs that request. I'm going to try to

fit it in with this particular thing. And that's hard if you're

just talking about even a head director of x,

Y and Z, even a CMO, right? There's that balance, that ebb and flow of

what this other department needs, what this other initiative

has. But I do think it's interesting when you talk about distribution

content, building that up. Just one key note there is, I

think sometimes part of the problem when you don't have a good distribution

engine in place and you're creating so much stuff is there's so many

things, even internally, you can't keep track of all the things

you have and if you can't keep track of it, what's the

point? I mean, I guess in some fairyland world where you're

creating, maybe you're creating so much content and it's all ranking so

well in the background that you don't even need to bother for it. You just

know it's working, I guess. But outside of

that, I can't see a real purpose to building

a gargantuan library. I would much rather build

a better library that has really good stuff that we're

all aligned with and we all know what we're striving for in that any given

quarter. And then building campaigns and things around how to make

that work to its maximum ability versus a little bit

over here, a little bit over here, a little bit over here and try and

hope that eventually it all matches in. This is the hardest part

about distribution, I feel like, because as

content creators and content people, we get

satisfaction from creating brand new pieces,

sharing our thoughts, going through the process and sharing them with

the public. It's like that dopamine hit. We all know it, anybody listening knows

it. The only thing that matters, it's just like a salesperson and their prospect

who's closing tomorrow. The only thing that matters during that moment is that one piece

that we're working on right now. So I struggle with

this. I struggle with, I love to create, but I also love

distribution, but there's only so much time. And I believe

that content should be viewed by marketing

teams as a product, just like your product is viewed

by your team as a product. And when you can position your content as a

product internally, then I think that's where you can get operate marketing

ops and you can get demand gen to start thinking and working with the

content person in a whole new way. And I think

that's where you start getting organized around that stack of content that you have.

And that's where demand gen understands where that content should be

delivered. And that's as you as the creator who wants to create more,

can create more, but you can also spend time with those roles

in helping facilitate the process to make sure that each piece is

getting maximized. I know it's like really freaking hard to do,

but I think the punchline is your content internally needs

to be viewed as a product. And once your team is bought

in, once the content is viewed as a product, then you can start figuring out

where do we need to spend more time? Do we need to create less? Do

we need to spend more time in distribution. And at least it won't just be

you, the content person that will be tasked to doing that. You'll have your

other functional leaders or individual contributors helping

support your process. So let's shift over

toward kind of the always present thing in the

background in my mind anyway, which is how the heck is

AI changing distribution for better, for

worse in your mind? Where have you seen that

evolving? Especially? I mean, man, cat GPT wasn't even around

18 months ago, which is just wild to think about and it's

always changing. But how are you seeing AI affect

how companies are either thinking about distribution, using it

for good or for worse? Yeah.

With all new marketing trends, like when the wave was hitting

last fall, I was highly skeptical. Now, I

wasn't skeptical at its ability to have an

impact. I was just like, just like with anything, it's like everyone wants

to rush to the new shiny thing and everyone wants to talk about create. This

story of this is going to be the best thing ever. And then the other

side, it's like this is going to take all of our jobs. It's like, let's

just let the dust settle for a little bit and let's start using it.

And let's start trying to figure out how we can use these

things to either enhance what we're doing, or if it doesn't enhance what we're doing,

let's not use it at all. So to me, when I think

about AI, and I'm someone who I love to

write and I love to go through the process of creating myself. And so

I was less inclined to figure out how a new

technology can help support or replace anything that I'm doing, because I'm like,

you know what, I've got a pretty good process going. I don't need anything.

Well, that changed when, as I took a step back and

I started to get into these tools myself, and it wasn't like

asking write this blog post or whatever, and it was just like figuring out

the prompts and figuring out how these things could help me save time,

because that's my biggest problem. My problem is time. I need more time

in the day. And creating and distributing takes a lot of time. And

for me, honestly, the moment where it enhanced my

overall content process and distribution process. When I was introduced to a

tool, it was called Toolflow. And so basically my

process was like, create a podcast episode, use that to

create a bunch of other content from, distribute it, continue to

distribute it. And what I learned from toolflow, I just got like

free access. Here's a plug for toolflow, by the way. They're not paying me

or anything. They're not paying me either, so I'm going to block this out,

Bret. So basically what I

was able to do was able to just take my podcast episode

and instead of going through that process of writing the

blog post recap and everything else, their tool helped make

that process easier for me. And did I have to go into the end

deliverable and still make some changes? Yeah, but it literally went from

it being like an hour thing to it being like a ten minute

thing. And so that then gives me more time as the content

person to focus in on distribution and take nuggets

from what that tool is offering to share on social

and that sort of thing. So it's not a one size fits all and it's

going to be different for every, everyone. But I don't know. I think we're in

the era right now where you just got to kind of get your hands on

tools, you got to try it for yourself and you got to figure out what

works or not. Because my problem was time. Your problem might be something else

and the use cases will be different. I think it's always a time

balanced with quality issue, and that's what I think people are concerned with

a little bit. I do think as a creator type,

like most content marketers are, I do think there,

especially initially and even still today, I bet most people

would say like, oh, I'd never use that to write a blog. But come on.

Now I know for a fact there are marketers who are. I mean, the ones

who are like, will actually admit, yeah, no, I use this to build the basis

of emails. I use it to build the basis of newsletter content. I don't

think there's anything wrong with that. Where I think you get in

trouble is expecting it to do all your work for you. But as

long as you are building something, and for me, it's always

coming off of something else. It's coming off of a conversation like this, it's coming

off of a video, it's coming off of a training. It's my thoughts

that are getting then repurposed and remixed, using AI to just help

me along here, right, get me started, get me going to where I don't have

to look at a blank page. And I think that's a huge part of it.

And like you said, for me, it's efficiency

cost. These tools are not super expensive. Like, you can spend

$20 to $50 a month on an AI tech stack

that can save you six to 8 hours a

week depending on what you want to do. For me, one of the things that

I've started to do with some coaching clients too, is have them

just pick a couple pieces of software and build

a flywheel off of those things. So we sit down and it's like, all right,

what's your main piece of content? Is it YouTube videos? It this and that. Okay,

cool, you got a YouTube video. Awesome. Every single week we can build

a workflow to where, when your YouTube video is done, plug it in

here and you're going to get X, Y and Z thing. And if we spend

some time to tailor the prompts, the start, spend some time to figure out what

that looks like, you can get your summary email

automatically after you upload it. And then you have to spend again, ten

minutes kind of massaging the words and making it fit versus,

because I used to do this for years, having to sit down low. Let me

now relisten to this full episode. Let me find all this is

the reality of how it was before. It's hard to imagine that's

how it was, but there was no way to just throw a transcript in

and be like, all right, give me all the main points. And you felt confident

that it could give it to you. Like that didn't exist two years ago, which

is just crazy to me, the amount of time that

saves. And so, yeah, to me it's all about becoming a more

efficient marketer, becoming a more efficient content marketer and

distributor of that content, understanding what outputs, what

channels you need and then framing up a flywheel. Using AI to

help you get that. I've used this example because I heard it and I loved

it and I'm going to keep using it. It's from Daniel Priestley and he said,

AI is like baking a cake. You've got this cake, but

it's just the cake. It's not decorated, it's not iced. It's nothing

like it's just going to give you a cake now. You would never just go,

if you owned a bakery, you'd never just go sell that naked cake out in

the shop window and be like, yeah, people are going to really want to buy

that. No, you would decorate it. You would spend time. And that's our role, I

think now with some of this AI type content is to add the icing, add

the decoration, add the branding, add the flavor, make it your own.

But hey, they're going to at least give you the cake to start and then

you can make it work for you. Yeah, just final point on that is I

think just as marketers, one of the most important skills that we can

possess is adaptability and we need to just

like this trend is not going away, I can tell you every

company is moving towards and wants more. And

so it's one of those undeniable changes that's coming in like

a wave. And whether we like it or not, I think it's

best on us and our career paths to understand what it means

and what it means for us and our roles. And it doesn't need to be

spend all day trying to understand AI, but I think finding those opportunities

and apply and start to experiment, you'll learn a ton. I know I

have just by little by little trying to use different tools

and figure out how I can be more efficient, like you said. I mean, to

me, and I thought about this, it actually probably is way more impactful

than the social media era of a decade ago. Like, it's that same thing. Can

you imagine now a company being like, no, we still don't do

that YouTube and social media thing? Totally, we don't do that.

Maybe there are companies who do that, but you're not going to be

successful if you don't understand how these things work. You're just not like,

that's the baseline know how these things work, how they can impact your business and

make you more efficient. And AI to me is that it's literally

how somebody like myself, a solopreneur, can

put out a weekly podcast, emails, social

media content, et cetera. At the scale that I'm able to,

I couldn't have done it and still run the company

at the same time, work with clients, do sales call. I couldn't do

that and do a content machine without AI or I would be way more

burnt out. But having that ability and when you understand what

you actually need out of it, that's when you can free yourself up to be

like, oh dang, this can be really effective and make me a

much better marketer. I mean, we're just scratching the surface

on some of this stuff. Even for me. I find new things. I'm like, oh,

maybe yesterday I was like, just help me edit this post based

on expert input. And they were like, gave me all these points about

how it could flow better and how the headlines could be reworded. I'm like,

dang, that's pretty awesome. Good for

me. In 30 seconds I was able to get that input and be able to

redo things. So it's not always about creation either. I think that's the biggest thing,

no doubt about it. No, I think the stuff outside of creation to me, is

the most interesting parts of AI at this point. So I think

with AI, there's also this. It kind of bleeds into a lot of the

distribution stuff. But I'm curious from your point, I tend to

think about, when I talk to people about getting started in distribution, it's like,

pick one channel and go all in on that channel, get really good at

it. But I also do think there is this

rising need for omnichannel. I mean, it's not new,

but there's so many platforms, so many formats, so many

things. It becomes overwhelming to think

about how I've got this blog post. How do I make a

blog post? Omnichannel, I've got this podcast. How do I make

this omni channel? What are your thoughts on that, Brett? Yeah,

so I think this becomes like a resource thing. And it

also, I think the other thing that needs to be called out is the size

and scale of your company and team.

I think it is really challenging to ask

one individual to create, distribute, then

also have an omnichannel strategy. The chances

of that working are probably slim to none. And that's why I think you

need support in order to execute. Whether it's getting cross

functional teams bought in to help support the vision of having an

omnichannel strategy, or reaching out to someone like you, Justin, and say,

hey, how do we do it? What do we need to do? I just think

it's really challenging to ask one individual to do that. On

top of that, back to my content is a product at your

company. This is where, especially if you're a bigger company, I

think it's almost like you need an individual, and it's almost like a

product person skill set to be on board

to understand the changes in everything that's happening

across those various platforms, because you don't just want to be doing

the work and feeding it to these platforms and not understanding how

these platforms work. So ultimate level of

sophistication. Yes, it's having an omnichannel strategy, but I also

think you need those support layers and likely need someone

who is maybe not like completely technical, but maybe has the skill

set of a product manager role where they understand the

business implications and understand the technical side to

help support kind of that omnichannel distribution. Now,

I think a lot of people maybe are like running away when they hear all

those needs. When it comes to omnichannel, there might be a way to do it

scaled back. But if I'm thinking about creating a content

strategy that's going to literally transform the way your business

works, I think you likely need more than just one

individual on board running it. Yeah, I think if you're

going to do a full scale, I mean, in an ideal

scenario, and we're going to talk tippy top ideal, I think you've

got somebody at a high level who can just see

distribution, just see all the impacts on where

this thing is. Know that, like you said, see the business impact

of. They're the ones having conversations with sales, they're the one having

conversations with marketing leadership, they're the one having conversations with

customer success, understanding where is everything at with the

business, how are what's currently being created

affecting this? And then you have somebody maybe underneath them, that's sort of

in charge of content and understanding what needs to

be created. And then I think ultimately you've got channel

owners, you've got the YouTube person who's understand,

and maybe this is somebody you hire externally or. I'm not saying you have to

hire an internal hire to run YouTube, but don't

be surprised when things don't work when you just band

aid them. We're doing LinkedIn, but that

doesn't mean you're actually doing LinkedIn. We have a

podcast, but you're not building that

properly. We've got a YouTube channel, but it's all product demos. It's

like, well, who's going to YouTube to watch all your product demo and

your feature. One? Just

to double down on that point? I think companies set the most

unrealistic expectations when they just throw all of

these things at content people and say, go master this or

go figure this out. And when I'm talking about like, channel specific,

I have over the last four years, created

just 600 podcast episodes. So that

experience has allowed me to understand how do you make a good

episode? How do you get people to listen? How do you build an audience? And

I would consider myself, like, highly skilled at that. Now, you asked me to do

that for YouTube and I'm going to fail completely. I don't understand how

it works. I've never spent time on YouTube. And so I think

having those diversity of skill sets used to mean one thing in

marketing now, I think we need to think about that and think about it from

a channel perspective, because it takes different skill sets in order to get

your content not only seen, but consumed regularly across those

channels. So that struck a little nerve for me because I think

people who don't know content have completely unrealistic expectations about

what content people who they're hiring should be doing and how

quickly they should be doing it. Oh, yeah. I mean, I've heard the same. I've

literally been on the calls before where the same thing has been said with community.

Hey, let's just spin up, spin it up.

I'm even experiencing now with building up my own membership. It's like the

learning curve is so steep for some of this stuff where

it's all right, don't try to build the ultimate thing on day one.

I mean, if you are tasked, I guess maybe that's the flip side, right? Let's

say you are. Yeah, that stinks. But learn the

baseline levels of what makes YouTube

successful. There's unlimited content out there to help you

start that. Same with LinkedIn. Hey, we got to get our company going on LinkedIn.

What is that? Google it. YouTube it. Find some resources. Ask

a friend who you see. There's plenty of information out there about how to start

it. And then you just got to start taking actions and figuring out what works

and what doesn't. And I did that with YouTube when

I was still at Texmus and we started building that up, that channel. We had

a channel, but it wasn't like a content

engine for us at the so. But thankfully I

had a couple people who were kind of in charge of YouTube video

guys on the team who figured it out. I was able to work with them

in tandem and it wasn't this overwhelming thing of like, I'm

worried about the blog and SEO and this over here and

social and, oh, by the way, I've got to actually figure out YouTube. That's a

recipe for disaster, 100%. So

we're wrapping up here. We've talked a little bit about kind of where

distribution is at. We touched on some of the key trends around like AI

and trying to balance a little bit of an

omnichannel approach, if you can. One thing I want to touch on before we

get on kind of where this is all headed is a huge

part of distribution for me right now is balancing quality and

quantity in the creation side. And I think the

reality of where we're heading is you

have to have quality and you have to have it at

scale. And I think that can be intimidating.

But I also think it can be really freeing for a company

to think that way versus I have to hit

a two week production goal on this blog. I have to

do this because of X, Y and Z, understanding the goals of the

content and the why behind it matters so

if you have to create and support bottom

funnel demand, yeah, you probably do have to hit a certain

production. There are probably a certain set of pages that you will have to

create. But for top of funnel, like building

a brand and getting you to be known, liked and

trusted, you don't need a

barrage of new content. What you need is a

really good thing that people love and then scale

that sucker out. Yeah, 100%. I think about just

why I like podcasts, because you can literally like

from a top of the funnel perspective, you can be tasked with. I'm going to

do some formatting. I'm going to reach out. I'm going to have one conversation a

week. It's going to be kind of our top of the funnel and it's just

a conversation, right? It's an hour. It's what we're doing here. And that's going to

go out and I'm going to do that every week. I'm going to do it

consistently. And that can be our top of the funnel content where

we then spend the rest of our time building

something that is super premium, that is maybe

once a quarter, that is going to take a lot

more facilitation. Other people outside of ourselves are going to be

involved. We're going to have customer involvement. And I think thinking about the

creation of those quarterly pieces and also spending

time thinking about not just the launch of those pieces, but then how do we

keep the drum beat rolling on those pieces? Helps streamline

your content process and your distribution process. It's

really easy to change a gear where it's like, all right, over here, I'm going

to have this conversation and on Friday it's going to be a podcast episode that

we're going to promote and it's going to go in our newsletter and all that.

And then the rest of the time I'm just going to be spend building this

really kick ass piece that is going to drive everything we

do moving forward. It's hard for companies to move

off that and not say like, well, we need a new blog post every day.

And that's the challenge. And I think where we're moving

is especially from just like a resources, time, energy,

investment, you need to have one thing that's really easy and just

goes like a podcast and where you can spend the rest of your

time building something that's super exceptional, that's going to help not

only get people to notice you, but it's also going to help drive the most

important thing, which is sales pipeline. And that usually comes

with more time and a more premium content piece.

Yeah, I call it that core piece within the content

strategy of like, what's that thing that can feed other things, but

it's the consistent thing that your brand can become kind of

known for. For some people, that's a monthly event. We're going to do a

monthly event where we talk about x, Y and Z thing and we're going to

bring people in and then we're going to spread things off of that for other

people. That's a YouTube channel, for traditionally, that's

a blog. I'm with you. I think podcasts offer a huge kind

of unlock in that area. If you set it up right, there's a lot that

can go wrong with a podcast because we didn't even get into that.

But if you've got bad content that you start to cut up

and distribute, you just got lots of bad content now. So

always thinking about that goes into the quality piece that we touched on, like

quality at scale and how you can do that. Actually, I'm working

with one company right now, and they have an event

that is going to be going out in June,

and we are right now building out the distribution plan

before and after that. We're recording

this in February. Right? They know this event is coming.

They want it to be successful. So literally we just

mapped out the start of the topics

knowing they want to distribute it. So their

keynote is going to be built, written,

designed, created with distribution in mind. You know

what I mean? The sessions are going to be built, created

and designed with distribution and repurposing in mind. So

we can start building out that engine and then

reverse engineer what's happening, topics, formats, all that type of

stuff into lead up content for

March, April, may to then when the event comes,

all of these ideas, these topics, these things have been seeded. And

it's not like, oh, this is the first time I've heard about this thing. It's

like, yes, that thing that you've told me about for the last three months.

Now I'm excited to show up and hear more. I'm going to play the role

of content producer here with this idea or not idea. This

client that you're working with, all your content should be around

packaging up. This is content inception. All your content should be packaging up

what you're doing with this client. Record the podcast episode, write the

thing, share that out, because I feel like that tells the story of the

importance of distribution and the preparation. And then I'm sure the results will be,

obviously, I'm drinking the distribution Koolaid. The results are going to be great,

but you should focus in on telling that story after the fact

because I think it can be super powerful and it's cool companies are thinking that

way right now. Oh my gosh. Yeah. And I would say they are

forward thinking in that. But that's the cool thing about working with

companies who are bought in and believe that way. Right? We're

bringing in the community manager, we're bringing in demand

gen it's not just content in a silo

trying to make something work. It is that cross functional team

with that thread, that line through. That's literally

why they brought me in was to say, all right, we're all so

focused on our things, but you can come in from the

outside and kind of see where it's all going and get us

pointed in the right direction and to be aligned. And that's so fun to

see that and really, like you said, build out

campaigns to where the whole thing can kind of run together. So

yes, I'll be talking about this more as it gets rolling because it's

really cool. And that's the thing. And that's been a mindset shift, I would

say probably for them and it's a mindset shift for a lot of other folks

is to be like, knowing this cornerstone thing is coming,

what can we do before and then how do we execute on that after?

And how does what we need to do after distribution first. How does

that distribution first, how does that inform what the heck we end up creating in

the beginning? And that's the flip. And it's back to this content as a

product. That's how companies think about products, right. And that

keynote, they're viewing that as a product. Right. So I'm

excited to hear more about the results from that one.

Yeah. All right, let's quick wrap here. Kind of future predictions

where you see stuff moving. We've touched on maybe throughout, but any big things

where you see kind of distribution shifting and ebbing as we

continue on through into 2024, past into

2025, et cetera. So this one probably make people feel very

uncomfortable because our jobs as content people is like, get more people

to see our stuff, especially through distribution. But

I see a trend in niching down

and focusing on fewer but higher quality with your distribution. And

so what does that mean from an execution perspective? I think

it means whatever content you're creating being

as specific as possible to a certain

group of people, whether that's role type, interest,

whatever it is. But like creating something super specific that can be

super helpful to those groups and then

creating something separate for them to get the delivery of that

piece regularly. So it literally can be something like, I've got an

email list of 25 people, and when I send this out

to that email list of 25 people, I know exactly

what those people care about. So my content can be

tailored to that. I see this happening just in social

media. I'm so tired of opening up Twitter or whatever

they call x these days and just like, seeing people blabber about stuff

that I don't care about. Like, if I'm spending time consuming content,

I want it to be focused and tailored to what I care about. And that's

why things like discord groups are super popular. Group chats on

Instagram are super popular. And I think that trend continues. So I think if you're

a company and you're thinking about distribution, one

cool angle could be to think about, all right, all these people in our audience,

how do I get more focused and create something that's more exclusive and

special for those groups? What is holding people back from

doing that? Bret? It's the classic. It

starts from the top. It's like, we want more of x. And it's really hard

to shift people's mindset and leadership's

mindset to not pass a wide net and instead

fish with this beer with your content. But I don't know,

I think that's what's holding people back. But I would encourage anyone

who, whatever I just said, if that resonates at all,

just go start, try experiment, something. Because the results

you'll get from that email, you'll get people to respond back. They

will respond and they'll start a conversation where, as opposed to the

results of your normal email is just let me go look in my marketing

automation and see what happened where no one was like, who cares? So I

think I would much rather have the three people respond back and

starting the conversation there than just looking at my dashboard in my fancy

CRM to see, oh, this is how many people clicked on it. Who cares?

That's what I think. That trend, I believe it. We'll see

if it happens. But I can feel it. I feel it personally, so we'll

see. But that would be my recommendation. Yeah. I think for me, it

comes down to fear. I think people, because

I've been there, even as an in house content

marketer, the fear of pushing back and being

like, nobody will care about this. We've all been

given an ebook to write or a thing to produce

or, hey, we should try this and it's fun for us

to sit here on this podcast and be like, oh, yeah, you should

just go do it. And there probably are ways to do that.

But man, it's so scary to try

and have those conversations at times. Or I think it's honestly,

even as the creator, it's a little bit

scary to create something super specific

to start because, you know, it's not going to have as

much like, I know I could probably have more

reach on LinkedIn if I talked about generalized content

marketing topics, but I talk about

repurposing and distribution, and there's only so many people that care about repurposing and distribution

even in content marketing. But the people

who want to talk about it and want to listen to this stinking show

and watch videos and

interact and reply to emails, those people are

bought in to the system and to the idea and to the

framework. And isn't that what we want at

the end of the day for our companies? We want people who know, like and

trust us are bought in, enjoy us, engage with us, want to hang out with

us. That's what we want. I mean, ultimately, we want revenue, we want business, we

want all those things. But in 2024, if we're talking about

predictions, that is how you do

that. You are not going to pull the blindfold

over somebody and lead them into a sale. And if you do, they're

not going to renew, they're going to churn, they're not going to have a good

experience. It's the classic case for a lot of these SaaS

companies is like, we got all these people in, but the infrastructure is not set

up, the product's not great, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. All these reasons, the

audience might not be a perfect fit. They're not using it right, and they, oh,

now we're back to square one again. And so, yeah, I'm with you there.

I think that's a big shift for me. The biggest shift in sort

of content distribution heading forward

is sort of omnichannel. But I think it's like,

what's your omnichannel floor? How can you

provide the illusion that you're everywhere without

being everywhere? And I think that's maybe the trend that I think

companies, and we see this right. There's a few companies on

LinkedIn. I think even when I was at metadata, we kind of had a little

bit of that where it was like, man, I'm not quite even sure what you

guys were like. I'm not ready for it. But when I am. I'm going to.

And it's because I'm seeing you everywhere. I feel like you're doing all this stuff

and you're doing cool, unique things. There was a three person marketing team at that

time before we expanded out. So it's not like this massive team of people. So

how can you distribution shift is how can you

appear bigger than you are and do it in a

way where you're not. Again, if we're talking about content,

not keeping your head above water to do it, either build out

a floor system to where we touched on the core content. We touched on that

thing. Like, what's that thing you can create every single

week or every other week or every month? And then how do you build

a plan to where that's so good you can distribute that and

it can feel like, literally, I could do this podcast once a month. I could

do twelve episodes a month or twelve episodes a year of this show

interview twelve really cool people and I would

have enough content to run the entire year. I can

guarantee you that I don't have to do the show every week to run the

content engine. And so I think for companies that

to me should be really freeing because what I would say with

distribution is have that

engine working for you so that you can

go do other things. When I was a solo content

marketer at Metadata, I repurposed the crap out

of our demand event selfishly,

a, because I thought it would work, but b, so it would free me

up to be able to focus on other things because it's just

me over here and we have to sort of build an

SEO plan and I have to set up for this. And, oh, by the way,

we need to build this podcast. And how do you do that if you don't

have something that's sort of running? So I think having that thing that's

consistent, that's a flagpole that you can count on as a marketer, and then building

out that system that can free you up for everything else, that's kind of the

future for content in my mind. I love it. I feel like everything we talked

about here should and probably would make

anybody listening uncomfortable to try, but

those are the things that create breakthroughs. Is being a little

uncomfortable and trying something new. And also to your

.1 of the greatest compliments you can get is someone coming up to you and

saying, yeah, I thought you had a marketing team of 20.

You guys aren't that big. It's like, no, it's just like me and another person

or whatever. So that's always a good sign that you're on the right track.

Yeah, man, I got on a call with somebody a couple of weeks ago and

they started the call. They said, dude, your machine. I see you're everywhere. You're sending

me emails. You're this, you're that. I'm like, yeah. Because I'm not

overcomplicating that I have the system in place to be able to make that work.

And that's what's the fun thing for me, is working with other teams, working with

other folks. You could do this, too. This is not build

up that little bit of an engine over here, that it's just running for you.

And then you can focus on the other things that frees you up to create

those bottom of funnel pieces of content that frees you up to be able to

listen to sales calls, for God's sake, to create better things, to have conversations with

customers, to be strategic, to think about things, all that type of stuff. So,

yeah, super fun combo, Brett. Yeah, always is, man. I

appreciate it and I love talking about these kinds of things and I'm glad

someone is creating a space where we can talk about it. So I appreciate all

you're doing, Justin. Absolutely, man. We'll catch up next year for

the state of 2025 and it'll be wild and fun to see

where things go. But I think for 2024, we're well on our way.

Are we holding each other accountable for our takes or not? I think

it'd be amazing to come back. We'll see if we're still cruising on this. We'll

have to come back and see where our takes were, but hopefully nothing too

outlandish. But yeah, appreciate it, Justin. Awesome, man.

All right, I hope you enjoyed this episode of distribution

first and thank you for listening all the way through. I appreciate you

so, so much and I hope you're able to apply what you learned in

this episode one way or another into your content strategy as

well. Speaking of strategy, we have a lot of things going on this year that

are going to help you build your brand ten x your content and

transform the way you do content marketing. Make sure to subscribe

to the show and sign up for my newsletter at Justinsimon Co.

So you don't miss a thing. I look forward to serving you in the next

episode as well. And until then, take care and I'll see you next time.