Never Content With Content Distribution

By Scott Signore

As our creative team is in the process of producing a satellite media tour that’s reaching no less than 25 national media outlets today – from the studio here at our office – the increased importance of solid distribution channels is on my mind. It should be on yours, too.

As our business has evolved over the past decade, the quantity of channels for disseminating key messages has grown exponentially, and it’s more important than ever for leading PR and social media agencies to make an array of distribution resources available to their clients.

While “pushing” a press release over a distribution service like Businesswire or Thompson Reuters may still satisfy financial company regulators, it’s merely a drop in the bucket for exposure value. It’s a commodity. Table stakes. Fuel for the SEO fire.

The seemingly endless list of well-defined social media channels that reach key audiences – eyeballs, people! – have created such an opportunity for communications professionals to make an even greater business impact. Managing these channels and a corresponding crowd of “opt-ins” is now what pays a valuable return. And, the opportunity to manage multiple social channels that prioritize various media formats – copy/text, images and video – presents even greater opportunities for PR firms like ours.

So, we’ve added satellite media tours to our list of core services, enabling brands to reach millions of people in key markets in the span of a few hours. We work with an array of influencers in digital media to disseminate our clients’ content to their respective readerships. The key is to produce content that actually has value – content that can improve somebody’s life or make their business operate more productively.

And we’re just getting started. Seemingly every day a new channel opens up – be it a new social platform or content syndication tool. And we evaluate as many as we can to stay one step ahead of the curve. It’s been said that the most dangerous sentence in the English language is, “We’ve always done it this way.”

I agree, because in the digital era of paid/earned/owned media, what’s true today will be history tomorrow. Smart PR agencies know they must continually evolve or perish.

Drop me a line if content distribution is on your mind, too.