In this episode, Ross Simmonds shares a wide range of strategies and tactics for content creators to effectively distribute their content, build relationships, and achieve greater success in the digital landscape.
From embracing the concept of “Content Market Fit” and repurposing successful content to leveraging various distribution channels, collaborating with others, and focusing on continuous learning, Ross offers valuable and actionable advice for content creators looking to maximize their impact and achieve their goals.
Ross Simmonds is the founder of Foundation, a content marketing agency that combines data and creativity to develop & serve ambitious B2B brands.
Name: Ross Simmonds
What Ross Does: Founder of Foundation Marketing
Company: Foundation Marketing
Noteworthy: Ross and the team at Foundation have launched marketing initiatives that reach millions of people on channels like LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, & YouTube. In addition, they’ve planned, created, and distributed content assets that have resulted in millions in revenue for a wide range of brands.
💡The Four-Step Framework for Content Marketing
Ross introduces a simple yet effective four-step framework for content marketing: research, creation, distribution, and optimization. He emphasizes the importance of consistently implementing these steps to achieve remarkable returns.
While he prioritizes distribution throughout the presentation, Ross highlights that each step plays a crucial role in the overall content marketing strategy.
💡”Create Once, Distribute Forever”
Ross advocates for the idea of “create once, distribute forever” in content marketing. He believes that if you create valuable and shareable content, you should continue promoting it indefinitely.
By leveraging various distribution channels and techniques, content creators can amplify their reach and impact over time, potentially generating consistent returns from a single piece of content.
💡The Changing Landscape of Content Creation
Ross highlights how the process of content creation is evolving, with emerging technologies like chat GPT, tools like Jasper, and deepfake apps transforming content generation.
He encourages content creators to explore and embrace these tools to enhance their productivity and efficiency while still adding a human touch to produce high-quality content.
💡Embracing “Content Market Fit” for Effective Content Distribution
Ross Simmonds introduces the concept of “Content Market Fit,” which refers to the ability of a piece of content to resonate and generate traction repeatedly over time. He emphasizes that content creators should not just focus on coming up with new ideas but instead leverage existing successful content to remix and reshare in various formats. By repurposing content into carousels, slideshows, Twitter threads, LinkedIn articles, YouTube videos, and more, content creators can extend the life and reach of their valuable content.
Ross encourages content creators not to fall into the trap of thinking that people have already seen their content, as there are billions of potential audience members and countless ways to present the same information creatively.
💡 Leveraging Data-Driven Content for Distribution Success
Ross highlights the significance of data-driven content in content marketing efforts. He advises freelancers to use data to showcase the results of their work and how their content creation efforts have led to specific outcomes, such as ranking high on search engine results pages or generating substantial organic traffic.
By sharing such data and explaining the strategies used to achieve these results, freelancers can attract more clients and demonstrate the value of their content.
Distribution Beyond SEO: Medium.com and Directories
Ross introduces Medium.com as a distribution platform that should be viewed not as an SEO play but as a way to reach a wider audience. By republishing content on Medium and submitting it to relevant publications, content creators can attract more readers and increase their content’s visibility.
Additionally, Ross suggests considering acquiring media assets, directories, or niche communities to diversify distribution channels and generate new revenue streams.
Collaboration and Partnerships for Content Distribution.
Ross stresses the importance of collaboration and partnerships in content distribution efforts. He advises content creators to seek collaboration opportunities with other freelancers or brands that have complementary offerings.
By promoting each other’s content through newsletters, social media, and referrals, content creators can expand their reach and tap into new audiences. Ross also encourages reaching out to relevant websites and publications to propose content collaborations or guest blogging opportunities.
Leveraging Facebook for B2B Content Distribution
Contrary to the belief that Facebook is not suitable for B2B marketing, Ross asserts that there are ample opportunities for B2B marketers on the platform. He advises identifying relevant Facebook groups where the target audience spends time and actively sharing educational and valuable content within these communities.
By adding value and engaging with potential clients, marketers can establish connections and create business opportunities.
Utilizing Podcasts for Content Repurposing
Ross recommends repurposing podcast appearances and interviews as valuable video content. Using tools like Descript, content creators can extract compelling audio clips from podcasts and convert them into video formats for sharing on platforms like LinkedIn.
Connect with Ross;
Free 100+ content distribution tactics Checklist
Chima Mmeje 0:02
I’m really excited because today we have one of the people that have moved admired for a very long time since I said in content marketing, Ross Simmonds, and we feel surreal that I’m sitting across from him batch while he has virtually complete HR can be.
And Ross is going to be talking to us today about content distribution, what happens after you hit the publish button. So I am going to pass the mic over to Ross, and he’s going to take it from here for us.
Ross Simmonds 0:33
Thanks so much for having me super excited to be here, massive, massive fan about everything that you do, and super excited to be here. So thank you so much for the opportunity to share.
I love what you’ve built with the FCDC, like everything that you folks are doing is amazing. So super excited to be here. And hopefully I can add some value to folks so you can unlock some amazing returns in your careers. Yes,
Chima Mmeje 0:59
yes, yes.
Ross Simmonds 1:00
Let’s jump into it. So yes, we’re going to be talking about distribution distribution is something that I talk about often, but we’re not just going to talk about distribution.
My goal is to make this a little bit of a masterclass if you will, in terms of how to not only distribute your stories, but how to ensure that the stories that you create are actually going to drive revenue, drive results for your business. And ultimately give you the ability to kind of create the lifestyle and the life that you want.
So I’m going to take you back into time a little bit tell you a bit of a story. And then from there, we’re gonna jump jump into a blend of goals, strategy and tactics. As mentioned, feel free to drop some comments directly in the in the in the chat box, and I’d be happy to dive into some of your questions at the end, and answer any questions that you you might have. I do like to have a dialogue a bit.
So I am going to start by with a bit of a pop quiz. So I love these types of events because you get to go global and talk to people all over the world. So based off of where you are, I just want you to drop in the chat really quickly, where you’re from where you’re at where you’re based in, just love to see the different regions, countries etc. So if you’re in the chat, if you’re here, drop it in, I’d love to know where you’re from, where you’re based in where you’re coming from and joining us today.
So without further ado, I’m going to jump into this a bit. And I’m going to start with a confession, a confession that has impacted my entire career, something that I’ve carried with me for decades and years and year after year. It’s something that I’ve run into. And it’s the fact that I’m a wanderer. And when I say I’m a wanderer I’m not talking about wander in the sense that I just walk around and get lost or anything like that. But when I go to conferences, I typically struggle because my brain is always spinning, and it spins when I’m having even a conversation with someone, someone can be sitting right in front of my face having a dialogue, we can be having a chat.
And within a matter of minutes, my brain in my ears just start drifting, they start wandering to other people’s conversations. In fact, I can remember like it was yesterday I was at an event I was at a conference. And I was talking to this gentleman about vertical video, and how back in the day, nobody wanted vertical video, but it had taken off. I love these convos, I love marketing, I love this stuff. So we’re having this dialogue. But my brain completely shut down on this man, he was having a combo. And I just shifted my combo entirely to this other couple that was having a conversation about something as simple as butter, they were having a discussion on whether or not you should keep the butter in the fridge or on the counter.
And I have firm beliefs on this. And it’s really connected. I’ll tell you more on this later. But essentially, it’s all based on where you live. If you live somewhere hot, you put it in the fridge. If you live somewhere cold, you can put on the camera. That’s pretty much the definition, but they were going at it. So I was listening to this. And it got so bad. My brain wandered so much that when my wife came back, I introduced her as my butter half I was embarrassed. If I could blush I would have. But that doesn’t happen melanin. Thank you for that. But ultimately, I was embarrassed in this moment. And I was like, this is rough. This is brutal. Like what happened that made my brain do that.
And I actually did some research. And it’s actually this thing called the cocktail party effect. The cocktail party effect is something that has been studied by scientists for years. And all of us have the ability to do this. Even amidst chaos, even amidst a bunch of noise. No matter what the decibel levels are, we actually have the ability as humans to isolate specific sounds that we want to hear that we care about that we are actually interested in amidst all the noise. So if you’re at an event, if you’re at a party, if you’re at a birthday, if you’re at a wedding, whatever it may be, you’re having a dialogue with someone, you can isolate the sound that you actually care about, and extracted amidst a bunch of chaos.
I studied this and I was like, wow, this is fascinating. But what’s also fascinating is that it’s kind of like the internet. It’s kind of like the internet because the internet is the loudest cocktail party ever. Every single day that you log in, there’s a tonne of content going out on LinkedIn. Every day. There’s a bunch of content going out on Facebook, on Twitter, on Reddit, on Quora on all of these different channels, Snapchat, Instagram, WhatsApp, you name it, there’s content everywhere, right? This is the loudest place to be and it’s our fault. It’s our fault as Marketers because so many of us have preached at the top of our lungs for decades that content is king. If you want to win online, create more content, write more content, develop more content, and the world will be yours and the world listened.
The world listen to that idea in the world started to produce a tonne of content, enter the world of chat GPT. And even more content is being produced than ever before. More and more content equals less and less ability for all of us to get the attention that we are chasing. This is why this whole idea of cream where people say that content rules everything around me, I believe completely needs to be thrown out. I believe that today more than ever before, Google is making our lives much more difficult. It is becoming more difficult than ever before to win in our game. When you look at SEO, you can see directly in the SERP. Google has become a destination. They’re showing you exactly what you’re looking for.
If you try to find books, you’re no longer going to a blog post that you happen to write on. Oh 20 Great keto books, they’re going to pull that directly from your blog post and show it in the SERP. If you’re doing this on marketing, same exact thing. So you they are no longer sending people directly to your site. And as they start to integrate AI into it, it becomes a whole different ballgame. For example, you’re looking for the best foods to improve your skin health. Google’s showing you the images, it’s showing all of that directly in the SERP no need to read a blog post that you wrote on this topic.
Yes, they’re still working on the AI around this and the language. Natural Language Processing isn’t exactly that great, aka AGIS food, but they’re working on it. And it’s definitely improving day by day. I’m convinced that Google’s becoming a destination, whether you’re looking for information on homebuilding whatever it might be, Google is giving you the info right there. And it’s going to be even more intense with the world of chat GPT people are going to chat TPT and getting answers to questions. And yes, we are still in the early stages, we are still in the early days of this technology.
But there’s no question that changes here and the change is happening. It’s becoming more and more difficult challenging to win in the game of content, especially when you look at the bait and switch that is being played by social media channels as well. Facebook, told everyone create content, create content, and that’s what we did. But engagement just continues to go down. The same thing is happening on Twitter, the same thing has happened on Reddit, the same thing is happening on LinkedIn, across the board. These websites, these social channels are reducing the reach that you have on your accounts unless you’re willing to pay to play and it is the best bait and switch that has ever been made. And it is continuing to be a bait and switch played on all of us. You create content on Twitter for decades. And now your rate limits are throttled. You create content on Reddit and it served you well you’ve created a community.
Now there’s an API limit, there’s tonnes of restrictions. LinkedIn, they recently changed their algorithm and took people who have 150, some 1000 followers on the account, to seeing like eight likes on their content, the reach and the ability to rely on these channels has reduced significantly. And the only thing that we can do across to all of it is except the fact that change is going to happen. Change is going to happen in our industry change is going to happen in our space. And we have to react to this change effectively and efficiently to be able to win. I don’t believe that content is king. I don’t believe that in any way I believe distribution is I’m fairly confident that right now some of you have created some pieces of content that are probably worth hundreds of 1000s of dollars.
And what I mean by that is those pieces of content that you’ve produced are probably really, really good pieces of content content that if seen by the right person, if consumed by the right person would reach out to you with a contract would reach out to you with a project and be a potential client for you for the next three to four years and pay you hundreds of 1000s of dollars, you have probably created pieces of content that are that good. But the problem isn’t the content, the content is not the problem, the thing that you created is great.
Maybe you held a webinar, maybe you created a great blog post, maybe you created a entire website, you’ve probably created some amazing things that are worth reading. And that would generate revenue for you today. But you don’t have the distribution to support you, you don’t have the reach to support you, I could probably take that same piece that you produced with the same content, same story, same message, change your image to my image, share it on my channels and generate money on the back of it.
Because distribution is more important today than ever before distribution is more important than the actual content itself. This is why I always tell people, you have to embrace the dream. The distribution rules everything around me. And my goal today is to show you how to distribute your content, how you can do it more effectively, but also give you some insights around how I’ve done it, I’ve been able to generate millions of dollars on the back of it and how you can do the same.
All right. It all starts with a simple framework. And this framework is something that I think all of you can embrace all of you can steal and all of you can use in your own work that you do with clients, the homework that you do for yourself. And it’s rooted in four simple steps, research,creation, distribution optimization. If you do these four things consistently with your website, your own ran your own clients, whatever it may be, you will be able to unlock some amazing returns. I’m going to talk about each of these, I’m going to prioritize distribution throughout this presentation. But it’s through this that I believe you’re truly going to be able to unlock some amazing wins for your organisation.
The motto that I preach often online, and a motto that I want all of you to adopt is the simple idea of create once distributed forever. If you create a piece of content, that is great, that is worth reading, that is worth consuming. I encourage you to distribute that asset forever, for literally ever. And some people will say, Ross, what do you mean forever, like, that’s a long time, it is a long time. But if you create a piece of content, that is good, that is worth reading, then people will love that they’ll share it, they’ll engage with it.
And the amount of time that you should be spending promoting it is infinite, right? distribution has changed tonnes of industries. And it’s going to change ours as well. When you think about music, and the way that that space shows up today, distribution through the music industry used to go through record labels, and then through distributors. And then through retailers. Today, it goes exclusively through aggregators like Spotify, and through iTunes, and it reaches us as the consumer. newspaper companies were the same way.
They used to have these print shops, they would print out the newspapers, they then send them to retailers, then we go to people and those people will go to individuals homes, now people can get the news directly from their phone. And it has fundamentally changed the way that these industries work, it’s fundamentally changed the way that these businesses operate. And as a result, we’re seeing a shift in the way that these organisations are actually operating. And I believe truly that is going to change our space, just the same. Create once distribution is the key, right? Like create once distribute forever. That is the key to this industry. And that is the key to this game.
All right. So when you are thinking about winning at content marketing, and you start with research, you have to start by thinking about keyword research, social research, audience research, computing, community research, backlink research, etc. All of these things are key to get you where you want to be. And I want to share with you just a few simple tools that will help you get there. One of my favourite is spark Toro, I strongly encourage folks check it out. If you haven’t used it, I think they have a handful of different free trial offerings within it. Like I think you can set up an account for free and be able to do a few searches.
But I went to speak to her and I just typed in like my own Twitter account, like who are the people that follow me. And within seconds, I was able to see that it was founders it was marketers, co founders, consultants, strategists, people who follow the hashtags, digital marketing, marketing strategy at large IT showcase like the actual roles that people were in. All of these things were in my account, all of these things showed up in Spark Toro, showcasing that this is my niche, this is the people that follow me. So when I see this, I can quickly say with confidence, alright, this is the type of content that I need to create is for these types of people.
So I encourage you to submit your account and see who’s following you. And if you see a gap where the people who are following you today, aren’t the people that you actually want to connect with. Maybe it’s time to change your strategy, maybe it’s time to create some content that is a little bit different. When you look at this, and you start to see the social accounts that that your audience also follows. It also gives you insight, it gives you insight into Okay, right?
This is the right group of people, people who are following me are also following Caitlin, they’re following Rand the following day. This means that they are marketers, and this is can be a good thing this can give you an insight into Yes, I’m going down the right path, right. There’s also tools like audience, which are great AUD IO en s e that gives you insight into things like this as well, I strongly encourage you to check that out. And you can use these tools to understand the types of channels your audience is on.
Is your audience on Instagram? Are they on Twitter? Are they on Reddit? Are they on YouTube? Where are they spending time, and this should help inform the ways in which you distribute your stories. All right, after that you want you’ve done the research upfront, you want to create great content, I’m going to keep this one short and sweet. But this is really one of the things that I see folks struggle with the most. And it’s pretty straightforward.
You need to embrace what I call the four E’s, educate, engage, entertain, and empower. Sorry that the letters didn’t work out there. But educate, engage, entertain, and empower. These are the four types of content that you should create. If your content doesn’t do one of these four things, folks, you shouldn’t be creating it. It’s a waste of time, you’ve created a piece of content that nobody’s going to care about. educate, engage, entertain, and empower. What does that mean? Educate, you’re creating content that educates your audience on something that they didn’t know before. It could be a how to post.
It could be new data and new research that you’ve developed. It could be sharing information around your services, your product, the things that you’ve developed, it could be a comparison page, let’s say you’re actually doing this for a client, it could be educating them on your product versus another, right, new information. producing these types of assets are in my opinion, the consultant, the Freelancers the marketers best friend, these are the types of content assets that will generate revenue for you, your business, etc. The next type is engage.
Engage is also very important because this is key to getting into the room. Oops that you want to be it. Personal stories, asking questions, thoughts, starters, opinion pieces, topping, even covering controversial topics, fill in the blanks. These are things that start to drive engagement. And when you have engagement, you build a connection with people. When I first got started in this industry, I was a nobody was living in my parents basement drinking instant coffee, and I was in overdraft.
I had no connections in the industry. But I intentionally created a list on Twitter, I created a list of people on LinkedIn. And I said to myself, for the next year, 365 days, I’m going to comment and engage with all of these people frequently and regularly to build a relationship. And by doing that, I set myself up. So a year later, these people were my friends, they were my connections, and they were people I was able to now utilise as introductions as relationship builders, you have to recognise the importance of engagement and building a connection.
This is not a very large space to be in. So you need to build those relationships and finding ways to connect with people. Once you’ve done that, you can throw in the entertainment side, you can start to throw in some things that will make people laugh, make people smile, that’s always a great way to build connection. And then finally empowering, right like empowering content is also huge online. If you can celebrate other people, if you can showcase other people, elevate other brands, other people that you’ve collaborated with your clients, whatever it might be, this type of content drives amazing results as well. educate, engage, entertain, and empower.
If the pieces of content you’re producing do not fall into these four categories, it’s probably not a piece of content that is worth distributed. But the way that content is created folks, is going to change forever. This is something that I think is truly going to revolutionise the way that our entire industry is done. Whether you look at chat gpt, you look at tools like Jasper, these tools that ultimately you can go into, and you can say I write me a blog post on this topic, it spits it back to you uses natural language processing to develop the content uses the LLM to all of that stuff and gives you a great piece and not a great piece in line. It’s a mediocre piece.
But that mediocre piece can be turned great with human touch. In the matter of an hour, you can have a 5000 word blog post, right? In the matter of seconds, you can ask me a journey to create an advertisement for Tylenol, fever and starring Donald Glover and it gives you back some mock ups you can say I need a Pizza Hut ad starring Serena Williams make it hyper realistic. And it will try to do that. These are things that you can do today. And sure, these aren’t amazing apps. They’re not amazing pieces of creative. But it was done in seconds. Right? It was done in seconds. If I’m working for Pizza Hut, I can say hey, what if we collaborated with Serena?
Here’s a quick picture that have some ideas. What do you think of this? Or working with talent? Or hey, we thought there might be an opportunity to do something which are just getting better? What are your thoughts on this? These are the simple things that you can now do with tools like mid journey and discord. Mid journey runs through discord, but you can run with mid journey and unlock some ridiculous results. The process for creation is changing folks. I shared this on Twitter just the other day. If you don’t follow me on Twitter, check it out. I’m at the Cool School. I created this video where it takes literally me and it just has me talk.
It takes past podcast clips of my voice, you upload it, you sync it to this app. And within a matter of seconds, I was able to create a deep fake of myself. And it talks about things that I would talk about It’s wild. This is where we’re going, folks, the way that you create content today is going to change. So with all that said, forget a little bit about the future. Let’s dive into distribution. Let’s talk about how to spread some of those stories.
Create once distribute forever. I believe that there’s a tonne of opportunities in Facebook, a lot of people think Facebook doesn’t matter for b2b and all that stuff. I think that’s incorrect. You can go into Facebook groups and you can find pages that you can ultimately reach out to and start to run. So for example, let’s say I’m targeting engineers, let’s say my audience is in engineering, you can find a page that hasn’t been managed for years, reach out to them because this page has been running for years. But it’s no longer been updated. Nobody’s updating anymore. It see that as 92,000 likes, reach out to them and say, Hey, can I buy this page from you?
Now, I’m not suggesting that you can buy a page for five grand but this page in particular, there was a page that I bought, it wasn’t active since 2015. I reached out, bought it turns out, they had a bunch of traffic, they had a website included, I asked them if they would be able to reduce the price to three grand I was able to buy this page for like 10 cents like It was wild, right? These are the types of opportunities you can have. And then when you take your content and reshare it on that page, I was able to recoup that three grand within the matter of a few months because I was selling products to that audience.
So I bought a page with a relevant audience shared on that page relevant content with sales opportunities upsells etc. Made back that three grand within a matter of a month. b2b decision makers are on Facebook folks. A lot of people don’t Think this is true, but it’s real, right? There’s a lot of Facebook groups where your audience is spending time, join them and share content within them. So if you’re selling to Shopify Ecommerce stores, let’s say you’re a social media manager, let’s say you’re a web a content creator, for e commerce, DTC brands, you help them with SEO strategies, I would join every single Shopify, for entrepreneurs Facebook group, and I would start to add value into these communities, Shopify entrepreneurs has 113,000 members, right 113,000 People who identify as Shopify entrepreneurs, you go into that group and you start sharing blog posts that you’ve written on the ultimate guide to selling shop, ecommerce products through SEO or using this strategy to increase sales through product pages, or how to do on site optimization across at scale for Shopify apps, whatever it might be, you go into these communities and you add value, you share content that’s educational, engaging, entertaining, and empowering. And these people will slide in your DMS and they’ll say, Hey, can you help me to this is where opportunities exist.
But oftentimes, we’re afraid to embrace these opportunities because of the fear that we’re going to be too promotional. The fear of being judged, or maybe the fear of realising that the content that we created wasn’t as good as we thought. But we should chase that fear, pursue that fear and share content there. If I’m targeting moms, let’s say I was running a product, I created a product and I’m selling it to two moms. So there’s a tonne of these groups, folks, right? Like you can go into these groups and start sharing that content with them and start ringing that cash register every single day, create once distributed forever. Here’s another opportunity. This is something that a lot of brands don’t embrace a lot of freelancers, don’t embrace it. I know it takes time. But it’s so it’s getting easier, right, there’s an app called descript that you can use today that will clip videos from podcasts that you’re on and things like that.
And you can start to share it on LinkedIn, a major opportunity. Some of you have been on podcasts in the last three years. And those podcasts when they went live, maybe got you a client, but you didn’t do anything with it for the last 12 months. Why Why take that old podcast that you created back in 2012, in 2020, to 2021 and reshare it today, but find that clip, find a section of it that was gold, and then remix it and turn it into video content. And if you don’t have the skills to do video content, start looking at Canvas, start looking at these tools and bringing to life content that might not have you on camera, not everybody wants to be on camera, that’s okay. You don’t need to be. But if you are if your voice, if you talked on podcast, share it, embrace it, etc.
You can remix text into other pieces of content. So when you take a blog post or a status update, and it generates a lot of traction, that is what I would consider Content Market Fit. That post that you put up six months ago that took off, could be reshard today, and it will take off again. And you can also slightly adjust it you can turn it into a carousel, turn it into a carousel, turn it into a slideshow and reshare that piece that Twitter thread that you wrote three months ago. Take it take screenshots of every single tweet uploaded into a Google slide doc, turn it into a carousel and reshare it. These are things that you can do. But these are things that we oftentimes ignore, we oftentimes get into that trap of content rules everything around me, I need to come up with new ideas, I need to come up with new ideas when you don’t, you just need to keep saying the same things that you’ve been saying that drove results.
But say it differently. There are billions of people in the world, the millions of people who you could sell to or the hundreds of 1000s of people that you could sell to you think you’ve reached them all. Not even close. Not even close, right? I think it’s ego, oftentimes that makes us think, Oh, I can’t promote this. Again, people have already seen it. No one has seen it. Literally no one, you might think that people have seen it. 50 people, 100 people, 200 people, 5000 people, even 10,000 people is not a substantial amount of people, keep sharing, keep promoting it. If you produce data driven content, reshare the data, take a screenshot of the data, this is something that freelancers need to do.
And oftentimes, you might not get access to the to the client’s analytics. But if you have data that shows the results of the work that you’ve done, take that data and reshared talk about the things that you did to get there, especially if you’re a writer, if you’re a writer, it’s easy to get into this habit of just saying like, Oh, I write content for you, I write content for you. Okay, but what’s the result of you writing content for me? Oh, well, I’m easy to work with. Cool, but what are the results that you will get me by writing these pieces, if you can show that blog post that you have written are ranking number one, or ranking number two, ranking number three, and you can share stats and data on that this is where you start to generate money from your distribution efforts, folks, this is the type of content you should be producing. And if you’re creating pieces that are just research driven, share that data We mix it as well.
But don’t let that content live and die the day it’s published, right? I wrote a blog post on air table, it was breaking down how air table was able to generate 3 million organic searches a year, all through a strategy that they had to kind of use longtail SEO, back in 2021, right. And I want you to just see something magical happened within the next 24 hours. Because I’m just remembering this piece, as I share the screenshot, I’m going to reshare this probably in the next 48 hours with a thread or post or something like that. And it’s going to take off again, this post was written back in 2021. Instead of just letting it live and die on the blog, the day won’t publish, we’ve reshard as a LinkedIn article, that is the strategy.
You don’t let it live and die on your site, you reshare it as something else as well, blog posts that I wrote on Reddit marketing, things that you need to know, I turned it into a LinkedIn article, then I turned it into a YouTube video. And then I turned it into a Twitter thread, the content that you create should be used to create more content that can be used to create more content. And if you play your cards, right, you can even use that content in embedded within other pieces of content. Right? It all becomes very meta to a point where you start to understand the realisation of yes, you literally create once and distribute forever, right?
You want to be reactive with this plan in advance, folks, don’t just get excited after hearing me and say, I’m going to promote, I’m going to promote, I’m going to promote, take a step back, take a nice cup of coffee or tea depending on your your flavour, and then start to identify when and what you can share in the next few weeks, that are all pieces that have generated content market fit that resonated six months, three months ago, and then reshare them in different formats, right. A lot of people are are saying like, I gotta leave Twitter, I gotta go on this new app, new app. I hear you Twitter’s chaos right now. 100%. But if you’ve got bills to pay, and you still need to generate revenue for your business in life, Twitter still works. But you might have to pay to play, right? This is the reality. long form content still works well.
Threads still work. Building relationships on Twitter still works. You can experiment with these communities that will give you a more tailored experience. If you’re looking for a better user experience, I strongly encourage you to just use lists lists are way better than the for you page, which is just like rage bait, like just use lists, and it can make your experience on Twitter a lot better. But content here still works, folks, right? Like still works. If you need to use a channel to build relationships in the marketing industry. LinkedIn and Twitter are so great. You can put up a post like I did this post last night 4000 or some engagements views in the matter of a few hours.
Like it’s not reaching my full audience but still got some solid rage. Embrace the idea of creating once and distributing forever. There’s also opportunities on channels like Quora and Reddit, right? Like if you go into these sites and these channels, there are specific niche communities where people are talking about things that are relevant to you. On Reddit, there’s a subreddit called entrepreneur where entrepreneurs go in they talk about surprise, entrepreneurship, you can go into that community. Add Comments, distribute your content. In Quora, there’s places on startups. This was one of the first places that I went. It’s not as great as they used to be.
But I used to go into Quora add a tonne of value in questions that people would ask. And I got featured in Forbes based off of an answer that I had, I unlocked opportunities with a tonne of clients just by answering questions in Quora. But the key is that you take an approach like Jason Lemkin does where you go above and beyond with your answer, you can’t just go into chat GPT and say, Hey, chatty, PT, what are some easy ways to increase sales, and then copy and paste that over? You got to go above and beyond folks, you got to go in there. Start talking from experience sharing images, talking specifics about price raises, how you can do this show a screenshot show images, sounds like a lot of work it is but the work pays the dividends down the road.
This is how you win on these channels, right? You go above and beyond. And if you’re really looking to distribute your content, look for ways to sponsor sub stacks, look for newsletter placements. And if you don’t have the money to do that, that’s okay, I get it. I feel you. Maybe just build relationships. I’m sure there’s other freelancers in this space that have an offering that is different from yours that you could collaborate with, instead of always competing, right collaboration, always Trump’s competition. And if you can find ways to collaborate, you can go further, right? It’s great to go fast alone. But if you go together, you can unlock way more. So find ways to collaborate, okay, you offer landing page writing.
I offer blog writing, you have a newsletter with 500 people, I’ve got 300 people, let’s start promoting each other in our newsletters and start giving each other love. Oh, you’re doing this, I’m doing this. Let’s start promoting each other on LinkedIn. You get a lead, I get a lead. We’ll pass each other back. We’ll do referrals, blah, blah, blah. The game is about collaboration and when you’re distributing your content, it can unlock some amazing returns as well. Of course, you got to use good old Google to find some of these opportunities, right? Like you can go to Google and type in newsletters and CTOs. These are opportunities that you can reach out to and say,
Hey, I just wrote this blog post on a certain topic, would you be interested in featuring it? Right? Like, it doesn’t always have to be pay to play. You can reach out to these websites and be like, Hey, I just wrote a blog post on this topic, I think you would like it. I think your audience would love it. Make sure you position it that way. I see too many people reaching out say, Hey, I think you would like this piece. It’s not about the person who runs the newsletter. It’s the boat, the people who subscribe to the newsletter, right? Similar with guest blog posts. It’s not about the person who runs the blog. It’s about the people who read the blog, and you have to make sure that you’re positioning your pitch that way.
If you reach out to me, and you’re like, Ross, I think this piece that I wrote, and make for great content in foundations weekly newsletter, alright, why? Tell me, we break down this, we broke down this, we broke down this. And we know that you target SAS founders, SAS marketers, etc. We go in depth who share insight around how to do this, I think your audience would love it. break it all down, make it easy for me to say yes, create once distributed forever, right. RedHat is going through chaos right now.
But all of them are going through chaos right now. But Reddit is one of the most visited sites in the world, right? It’s one of the most visited sites in the US for sure. But in the world on a global scale, I think it’s in the top 20, you need to be thinking about Reddit as a channel to also spend time on Redditors love links. If you have blog posts that you’ve created, submit them to the subreddits where your audience is spending time, find time to go into those communities and share your content.
No matter what niche it is, I guarantee you that there is a community on Reddit that would line up with your audience. And one of the best things that you can do when it comes to Reddit is you go in and you saw our content by top posts, when you sort content and read it by top posts, it gives you the ability to start to see what the best content is in this community. So when you give them links, when you share textbooks, you can ensure that the content that you submit is actually aligned with them create once distributed forever, thought I was done, I still got a few more tips, Slack communities, folks, if you’re in traffic, think tank, if you’re in any of those types of communities, if there is a conversation, if there is a thread that is going on, that is relevant to your niche that is relevant to your space. Go in there superpower all these communities, right, like, go in with value.
Look for someone to who’s asking you a question, Hey, I’m struggling with figuring a redirect or I’m struggling to figure out how I should optimise URLs for search, should I do short URL should I use long URLs, blah, blah, if you’ve written a blog post on that topic, you go into that thread, and you’re gonna do a simple thing, you’re going to share your link, but you’re not just going to share the link and walk away you’re gonna go in, you’re gonna say, hey, so and so thanks so much for this question. I was scrolling through this. And I just happened to publish a piece on this, and I think you’ll like link to it. But don’t make them don’t force them to click it.
Then you say, here’s a quick thought on your situation, break it down. Once they read your breakdown, they’re going to feel good karma. They’re gonna say, Oh, this is great. Thank you for sending this, I’m going to click your link. And now I’m going to read your site. That relationship is now built, you’ve engaged you’ve educated, you’ve checked off two of the four E’s, that is the game that you want to play. There’s a tonne of these slack communities that you can tap into top 50 slack.com is filled with a bunch of different Slack channels that you can join. Some are dedicated to backlinks, some are dedicated to growth, some are dedicated to design, find the ones that are valuable to you join them and then start distributing your content.
Another opportunity that I think is slept on is medium.com. If you go to medium, you can take content that you’ve published and republish it, view medium, not as an SEO play, but view it as a distribution play, find publications that already exist on medium.com, submit your content to those publications, and everybody who subscribe to those publications will get a notification that you just submitted it and that they’ve created a piece. Now you get more eyeballs on your content. It’s like guest blogging on steroids do not sleep on the power of that. I really do believe that medium is the new guest blogging, and it’s something that you should embrace.
One of the things I want to talk about is also like a mental shift. Think about business partnerships, not just link building partnerships, right. Like I think distribution is oftentimes just limited to this idea of oh, let’s promote our content. But you also want to think about it as a business partnership. When you’re thinking about the opportunities in front of you think about how you can build a partnership with brands that will link to you that will create content that is worth linking to find opportunities of brands that are talking about things that you’ve already created content on and ask them for links, send them a simple email, Hey, I just saw that your brand is talking about this thing.
Let’s find a way to connect together. I know that we work together on these things in the past. Can you link to this blog post and I’ll exchange a link back to you little simple ways, right? The media opportunity is also real, right like you can if you as you grow as you build your revenue actually start To build your bottom line, you can start to look at things like acquiring actual media assets to diversify your reach and your distribution channels. SEMrush acquired Backlinko. And it gave them 500,000 in monthly traffic visits to their site, major play, right? Like you have to think about what you can do to generate new revenue. Is it acquiring a Facebook group? Is it acquiring a Facebook page, there’s a site called Media acquire.com, where you can find some small accounts and you can start to acquire those, put them into your portfolio, just an idea.
Those are things you can do as well. Google loves these sites. If you look at directories versus serve service providers, Google always ranks directories over service providers. What I mean by that is, if I go to Google and I type in top, SAS freelancers, it’s going to probably show a directory rather than just you. But if you can acquire a directory, or build a directory, and you put yourself at the top could be a major play for you. Alright, I shared a lot.
There’s a lot of tips on distribution, if you want more, Ross in the.com/distro, pack free checklists, 100 plus different ways to distribute your content, I go way more in depth in kind of I’ve done here, but I think you’ll find a lot of value in this spreadsheet. Sometimes people struggle to get the sheet because it’s a Google Sheet is not a PDF. But if you have any challenges, send me a note and I’ll make sure that you get it but definitely download that. Just embrace this model folks create once distribute forever. And you might be thinking right now, bro, what’s right for me, you just talked about Slack, Reddit, medium Cora, all these different things.
What in the world am I supposed to do? There are tonnes of opportunities, I’m not going to kid you there, you can do all of the things and distributed forever. But you have to start with recognising that amidst all of the competition, you have to just start with the foundation, you have to understand your audience, you have to do the research to understand the people that you’re trying to connect with, understand their problems, understand their pains, understand whether or not you’re actually creating great content that can generate revenue and results. And then start planning and start putting in the time. Right, you need to continue doing what you already are doing by showing up today.
Right? When you see these types of offerings for education, FCDC is putting on tonnes of opportunities for you folks to learn to grow to build your skill set. That is where it starts, it starts by making the investment to say I’m going to show up, I’m going to teach myself, I’m going to make time in my calendar to learn to grow to build and recognise that if you want to succeed in the future, you have to continue to embrace that education mindset, learn, learn, learn, teach yourself new things, be willing to constantly show up just like you have today, and you will be able to get there, right? Learn about your audience, but commit to research, commit to self education.
And if you do that, I can say with confidence, if I come back in a year from now, if you commit to education, you commit to distribution, you commit to promoting yourself and amplifying your story. You could probably double your income. I can say that with confidence. But you have to make that commitment. You have to make a contract with yourself today to say I am going to commit to education and then acting on the things that I do. And a year from now you’ll look back and you’ll say I took all that advice. Was it worth it? And you’ll say you better believe it. It definitely was. Thank you all so much. I hope you got some value out of this. If you have any additional questions, by all means, feel free to drop me a line. I’m always on Twitter, always on LinkedIn, happy to connect. I’m rooting for all of you. I want you all to win. Increase your wealth increase your ability to win in the industry. Yeah, let me know if I can help in any way.
Chima Mmeje 38:42
Ross, that was amazing. Thank you. Thank you. That was just incredible.
Ross Simmonds 38:49
Appreciate it.
Chima Mmeje 38:50
So this is my question. Now my first question is with everything that is happening in Google with the madness of landmarks and Sweden ready that everything? Do you think that we should be focusing on building an email list as a way of owning our channels? And if we are going to be focusing on email list, what are we supposed to be doing to nurture an email list and then use it as a way to distribute content?
Ross Simmonds 39:20
Great question. own channels over rented channels every single day, right? Like you want to create your own Newsletter Lists. 100%. If you don’t have a newsletter today, I strongly encourage you to take the time to do it. Here are a few things that you can do to succeed with a newsletter, first promoted daily and be shameless about it right like promote your newsletter daily. If you’re on Twitter, every single time you have a tweet that starts to take off, go back to that tweet reply to it and tell people to check out your newsletter and subscribe on your blog have CTAs at the bottom that are telling people to subscribe to your newsletter. If you have a website.
You should have an exit pop up on your website when somebody is about to scroll and hit that exit button. or back button that says Hey, before you leave, please subscribe. If you have an Instagram account, if you have a Twitter account, if you have a LinkedIn account, there is typically an option to pin something at the top of your account or have a profile include a link to your newsletter directly in there, you can use a site like Link tree, or you can use a site like beacons.ai to actually make it a quick and easy landing page that gives people the ability to find your newsletter.
If you’re on YouTube, you are making a major mistake if at the end, you’re not having a CTA that tells people to find your newsletter. And again, include opportunities with other partners ask people to share your newsletter. And then this last one that I will share around newsletters is in your email signature, have a CTA that tells people to check out your newsletter. It’s a simple one, but you every single day probably send 2030 Sometimes 100 emails, make sure in your email signature you ever plug for your newsletter as well.
Chima Mmeje 40:57
That is That is amazing. Alright, so the question is from Chitras, it says, How many hours a day a week do solo celebrate the solo business owners? How many hours a day? Or should they focus on repurposing content is a shadow that you follow? So basically, do you have a shadow for posting content on social media?
Ross Simmonds 41:21
Yeah, so when I was first getting started, I blocked off an entire day, every week to distribute, create and promote content. So I called it wired him Wednesdays, every Wednesday, I blocked off my entire day, I didn’t take meetings, I didn’t take client calls, nothing like that. And all I did was promote content. This is when I was a solopreneur. So probably in a similar state as you just myself trying to survive trying to make it in the industry.
I blocked off those Wednesdays and every Wednesday from the moment I woke up until the moment I went to bed, I was promoting, I was writing, I was scheduling through tools like buffer and Hootsuite to make sure that I had content going out for the rest of the week. And I was like scheduling those things. A lot of the apps today have native scheduling in them. So you can just block off time once a week. And you can have your content rolling for the rest of the week.
Since we’ve been here. I haven’t been writing tweets, but I think I’ve sent to two tweets. That’s because they were scheduled in events. I have one tweet that scheduled. I always have tweet scheduled over holidays, scheduled over Christmas, all that stuff. I even have a tweet scheduled for the year 2083 That just says I miss you guys, because I want to freak out my kids. Like all of these things can be done in advance folks, like schedule your content, and just make the time.
Chima Mmeje 42:36
Yeah, I’m just trying to picture your children’s reaction when they see that.
Ross Simmonds 42:39
It’s not going to be good. It’s well, I won’t care. I won’t be here.
Chima Mmeje 42:45
Okay. Yes. Precious wants to know, can you throw more light on finding out the roles of your audience like, like learning more about your audience? Audience Insights, that kind of thing?
Ross Simmonds 42:58
Yeah, for sure. So there’s a few different ways that you can go about it. If you already have clients, look at who your clients are, and see what their titles are. That means you’ve already got clarity into who you should sell to. Right. So who has given you a credit card who has sent paid an invoice? That’s where you start, find out what their titles are? What are their roles? What are their companies? Where do they work, etc. That’s your audience.
If I’m getting started, that’s my first starting point. I go to that, and I use it. Now, if you are still new, you want to use it to Alexa back tomorrow and you start to do parallel comparison. What does that mean? It means you’re going to compare other people, other brands who have done what you want to do, and study their audience, because studying their audience is going to give you insight into the audience you should chase, essentially,
Chima Mmeje 43:45
steal from us. Do you have his popular accounts? I do. Can you show us like opening us faster? I can’t I just do something because it’s always easier when you can show us your screen.
Ross Simmonds 43:55
Let’s do it. Awesome. So here’s spark Toro. You go in, go into the dashboard. Let’s say I’m trying to break into what’s an industry FinTech marketing or something like that. So, if I’m going into FinTech marketing, I’m gonna go FinTech marketing best. Best FinTech marketing agencies. Okay, so then I’m gonna go here, I’m gonna find this. Let’s go with growth gorilla. I don’t know who they are. Growth, gorilla, Twitter, see if they exist. They do. They help well funded startups. I’m gonna go here. We’re gonna say, who follows them on Twitter? Do a quick search. Small audience so it might not be the right group. But I can see that they are American strategy. Financial Services is the CEOs, agencies, probably the right group of people.
They follow HubSpot? Probably right. Okay. They also follow FF news FinTech Insider PodCast. This is The money right near here. So I now have the money the money is FinTech Insider PodCast is a channel that my audience probably listens to FF news probably about FinTech probably something that they follow and interact with. I’m now going to use this as an insight. It’s an insight that I’m going to take a look at their podcasts. And I’m going to see like, what is this all about? What are the best podcasts that they’ve recorded? What type of content are they creating all of these different things is what I would start to do from there.
They have a YouTube channel, so I’m going to click on their YouTube channel. And I’m going to very quickly see that they have 90,000 subscribers. So that means they have content market fit, I’m going to click on videos, I’m going to get like popular, I’m going to see what their best content has been. So it’s the CEO of ripple. Fintech is only 1% Finish still searching for the missing crypto queen looks like they’re talking a lot about crypto, proof of stake versus proof of work. Okay, so I’m gonna go this again, I’m just spinning, proof of stake versus proof of work. That tells me that that’s the type of content that I should create.
So what am I going to do? I’m going to start creating content online about, do you want to scale in the proof of stake versus proof of work industry, here’s what you should do blah, blah, blah, banking as a service. Okay, so that’s something that got 31,000 views, I’m going to start creating content on that topic. I’m going to build my reputation to a point where I then reach out to the person who runs FinTech Insider, and start saying, Hey, I created all of these different pieces. Would you like to have a conversation with me on your podcast? Or because maybe I don’t have the skill set to actually be on their podcast yet. But I can write really good. Hey, I’ve been following your show, see that you guys are killing it on YouTube.
Here’s a blog post that I wrote that recaps the interview that you did with the CEO. And I also included five takeaways that your listeners should have. Are you interested in this? Can I publish it, you write that piece, they like it, they approve it? Let’s say you write five more, and they approve it, and they publish it. Now you have a case study, you take that case study and you start to reach out to all of the people who follow growth gorilla, and you take their clients. That’s rough, because now some of y’all may try to do this to me. But those are the things that you can do to really win using audience research.
Chima Mmeje 47:20
Okay, this brings me to a question that I have. It’s around outreach. Yeah. What are your thoughts on outreach? A lot? Most of the time, I think we’re most of us. overstimulated, overwhelmed by the number of outreach messages, we get that we don’t even look at the content anymore. Do you think that outreach is still a way to distribute contents?
Ross Simmonds 47:41
Yeah, the outreach, I think outreach works well, if you focus on value first. And a lot of people don’t, a lot of people focus on value extraction from their outreach efforts versus value addition. What do I mean by that? A lot of people say sliding to DMS. And they’re just like, Ross, I want to work with you. I love everything that you do. I just want you to, to work with me, I want to write for you, I want to do these things for you. Okay, lots of people want to do that.
But I know that you want to write for me so you can get more reach, blah, blah, blah. What can you do to benefit me as the person you’re pitching overreach can work if you said, Hey, Ross, I found these blog posts that you wrote, haven’t been updated for two years, I’ve took the time to go through and identify a handful of opportunities that we can optimise these within the matter of two days, you won’t need to do much. Here’s the price. Let me know what you think I’ll do one for free.
Value, right, that’s valuable. Make me an offer that I can’t refuse. That’s the only way that it can work when you’re starting out and you’re playing that game unless you have inbound. So I believe that inbound is the most powerful, and as an introvert, and you folks might be thinking Wait, Ross isn’t an introvert. My nickname in high school was shy Ross, like I was a very quiet child. I love getting inbound. So I create a bunch of content. That’s why I do that, because I don’t like doing open I don’t like reaching out to people.
It feels thirsty, as we would call it and I get it, but it’s not my style. So I’ve always tried to be like the creator and let people come to me. But if you can do it, and you have thick skin to be able to get the nose and you’re an extrovert and you can just slide in DMS and do that and do your thing. But just focus on the value first. Personally, I want to create great content that makes people want to reach out to you.
Chima Mmeje 49:27
On an unrelated note, I finally I finally hear your Canadian assets. Love it. I love it. I love it. The outreach is true.
Ross Simmonds 49:42
It flares up.
Chima Mmeje 49:45
Alright, next question is from Muna. She says you thought about using paid distribution. Paid media for distribution. What is your approach?
Ross Simmonds 49:53
Yeah, the most powerful paid distribution channel on paid opportunity in my opinion is remarketing. So Remarketing is something that everybody should try to run. If you can’t afford it, I get it, don’t do it. But if you can afford paid media, Remarketing is powerful. Why? Because the people who have visited your site have already demonstrated interest. So now run ads to the people who have demonstrated interest in your content.
If somebody’s reading a blog post that you wrote, are a case study that you wrote, it’s a huge mistake to just let them go. It really is like, run ads that target the people who visited your content, set it up on Facebook, set it up on Google, set it up across all these channels, LinkedIn, run remarketing ads, they’re the most powerful thing that you can do if you are already creating content, because I can guarantee somebody has visited your site, they’re ready to buy.
And then their child started crying and they got away from their computer and they forgot about you 100%. A 100% That has happened. I know what’s happened, because I’ve done it. Like I’ve been on people’s website, I was about to send them a note and be like, let’s work together. I love your case study on the work that you did on this client. I want you to be on be a freelancer for us. And then little ones are crying. I’m going down there, my computer shuts down. I completely forgot about you. But you were close. You almost got my money. But because you’re not running remarketing ads, you lost
Chima Mmeje 51:12
it. Okay, the final question. Okay. I think we have two more questions. Yes. Blessing wants to know, how can I utilise Twitter as a new content writer to build an audience?
Ross Simmonds 51:28
Yeah, it’s not easy. If you’re new, trying to make it on Twitter, I’ll be honest with you like, unless you pay for your account to be verified today, it’s not gonna work, it ain’t gonna work, you’re not going to you’re wasting your time. Twitter is not the same as it was five years ago, two years ago, six months ago. Yep. If you’re not willing to get paid for verification on Twitter, it isn’t gonna work for you. So shift your energy over to LinkedIn.
That’s the starting point. If you’re willing to pay, cool, now we’re talking a different ballgame. Create probably 10 to 15 tweets every single day, some of them are going to be responses to big accounts, you’re going to put out content that is highly educational, engaging, empowering, or entertaining. And you’re going to do that for six months, without stopping. And you’re going to schedule some of the content, you’re going to make sure that you’re replying to people, it’s going to be a grind.
But that’s how you win. That’s it. I’m not going to sugarcoat it and say, Oh, you can send out two tweets a day. And you’ll be successful not going to happen, folks, like you got to, you got to put in the work to win on these account on these channels. And Twitter today. The algorithm is all skewed towards verified accounts, which you can pay for, and people who are there all the time you do that? You’ll be good. But it ain’t easy.
Chima Mmeje 52:41
Yeah, that reminds me of when I just started out and how I used to dedicate two hours every day to LinkedIn.
Ross Simmonds 52:48
That’s where I go. I’ll tell you, I’m just starting go to LinkedIn. You’re not gonna make it on Twitter right now. You might I I’m rooting for everybody. I want everybody to win. But if you’re just getting started, I would say go to LinkedIn and go hard. Go really hard on LinkedIn. That would be my approach.
Chima Mmeje 53:08
All right, the final one is from Sandra. She says this was the most amazing session I’ve ever been on. Thank you for being so generous. My question, is a sub stack a good avenue for distribution? And also, is it a great newsletter platform?
Ross Simmonds 53:23
Yeah, so substack is great. If you’re targeting people in tech, if you’re trying to target tech people, substack is huge. That’s where a lot of them are spending time. If you want to own a channel, then I would look at something like beehive or ConvertKit. I’m personally looking into both of those as options for our newsletter as we kind of start to determine where we go next.
But beehiiv and ConvertKit for ownership of your list and ownership of your distribution I believe are great. substack gives you a little bit of an insight into like, or a little bit of a reach play. But overall, I think all three of those you can’t go wrong. So figure out what your budget is. If it’s if you don’t have budget substack is probably the best play because it’s free. And then go from there.
Chima Mmeje 54:11
Ross, that was amazing. Thank you so much. We’ve come to this session. I feel like everybody anybody who’s watching this definitely benefited from it as much as I did. Ross, thank you so much for doing this.
Ross Simmonds 54:24
Thanks for having me and I appreciate everything that you do. major kudos, I am a major fan major believer in your vision and what you’re doing so thanks for having me.
