How You Can Scale Your Content Distribution WITHOUT Hiring 👇

No budget, tight deadlines, much stress. Yes, I just asked ChatGPT to “Define Marketer” and that came up (ok I’m kidding) but I think you can relate.

Just as soon as you think you have it all under control, something happens. There’s no getting ahead of schedule in Marketing, or is there??

I used to be trapped in the never-ending cycle of rushing to finish projects, scheduling posts last second, leaving minimal time to ideate.

And then I implemented this content strategy (don’t worry I’ll break it down in one sec) which introduced me to an all new level of efficiency.

This strategy doesn’t only apply to content, the fundamentals can be translated across all walks of Marketing AND life.

Let me say that again, this strategy can be translated across ALL Marketing.

So let’s get into it…

This approach I something I like to call the sawdust approach.

Step One: Long-Form Content

The foundation of this approach is long form content, whether it’s a blog, newsletter, article, or podcast. This is the foundation of the sawdust approach.

To build this longer form content, you need to invest hours into research. Google, ChatGPT, a blank Google Doc, and do not disturb will be your best friends here.

Visualize this long form content (podcast, newsletter, blog) as you building a table. The result is something beautiful, the use case is amazing, but you can’t build a table every single day. The lift is TOO much, the time and energy put into it is WAY to much to do every day.

Making it tough to increase your content distribution if you can’t create that type of content consistently.

To really grow on socials, you can’t rely solely on long form content from the start.

Distribution plays a massive role in your growth on socials, I’d argue it’s 50% of the battle.

And this is where the sawdust comes into play.

Step Two: Short-Form Content

When you’re starting out you, nobody knows who you are, they don’t know if they can trust you with their time. You have to earn it. So trying to grow from day one just by posting long form content is not optimal.

That’s why short form content at scale paired with high quality long form content is so effective in seeing growth and building authority on socials. 

Back to the table. While building your table (blog, newsletter, podcast) there will be a bunch of “sawdust”.

And this sawdust is the short form bits you can take out of your long form content to distribute at scale.

Example 1️⃣:

So let’s say you recorded a 45 minute podcast breaking down the best SEO practices in 2024 and you post that to Spotify, awesome. But you’re not maximizing your content distribution and reach by only posting that podcast and moving on.

In that 45 minute podcast there are 3-5 short sound bites that you NEED to clip and post in video format on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram. 

Those 3-5 sound bites can also be transcripted, edited, and be posted as written content on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Just like that, that one long form piece of content is now turned into 10+ other pieces of short form content. Now that’s what we call distribution.

Example 2️⃣:

You spend the afternoon researching out of home advertising trends, finding the best new OOH ads, brands leaning into them, etc. Then you write a newsletter about these trends, build an email campaign, and send it to your subscribers.

Boom. You could walk away and call it a day. ORRR you could be efficient, scrappy, and use the sawdust from this long form piece of content.

Maybe as a result of investing this time in research you stumbled across a few hilarious OOH ads, post them on LinkedIn and IG. 

Then in the newsletter if you have a few hot takes, grab them out, and craft them into a Twitter (X? idk) thread. 

This is how you scale your content efforts. Always keep your eye out for short form content opportunities amidst your long form content.

If your budgets are tight, or you just want to stay lean, the sawdust approach is the simplest way for any Marketer to scale their content distribution WITHOUT having to hire.