The Essentials:
Meeting People Where They Are
Content Strategy Framework Lesson
5/6
This module guides you in how to effectively deliver your content by choosing the right digital platforms and channels based on where your audience naturally spends their time. You’ll learn how to select sharing methods for your user journey, balance organic and paid marketing approaches and create a strong follow-up plan.
Distribution (Sharing Methods)
A brilliant journey that no one knows about will not reach anyone.
You’ve identified your audience, set your goals and determined your content needs. Now you must answer an important question: “Where can you reach your audience?”
Remember the definition of content strategy: getting the right content to the right person, on the right channel, at the right time. Distribution refers to the “right channel” portion of the content strategy definition. Distribution, also known as “sharing methods,” is how you deliver your content to the people you want to reach. It involves choosing the right digital and physical places to share your message based on where your audience already spends their time.
The principle here is this: If you create a brilliant journey but no one knows about it, it won’t reach anyone.
You may already have a good sense of which channels and platforms you want to utilize for your user journey. The distribution step helps you clarify these decisions and make a plan for getting your content to your audience. By the end of this lesson, you’ll be able to determine the channels and platforms for each step in your user journey, decide how you’ll utilize organic and paid marketing approaches, and identify your follow-up plan.
How Does Distribution (Sharing Methods) Connect to the Content Strategy Framework?
Audience
Your distribution strategy relies on meeting your audience in the digital or physical spaces where they naturally spend their time, rather than forcing them to come to you.
Goal
Because different platforms have varying functions, advantages, and drawbacks, your choice of distribution channels must consistently align with the specific strategic goals you want to achieve.
Content
Content and distribution function together because the platforms you choose only support specific types of content, and your content formats must fit the norms of those chosen platforms.
Analysis
Analyzing data from your sharing methods reveals how well your distribution is working, helping you determine if a lack of engagement is due to the content itself or simply because it was shared in the wrong place.
Choosing Your Platforms and Channels
As digital practitioners, we sometimes gravitate toward the platforms we’re familiar with. However, your audience should be your starting point as you consider various platform options. Don’t force your audience to come to a platform they don’t like. Instead, meet them in their “digital living room.”
1. To learn where your audiences are, ask these key questions:
- Which platforms do they use the most? (e.g., Facebook, TikTok, WhatsApp)
- How do they usually consume information? (e.g., watching YouTube videos, listening to podcasts, watching Instagram Reels, following channels on Telegram)
- How do they message each other? (e.g., WhatsApp, Line, Signal, direct messages)
- What security considerations do you need to make? Security issues may impact the ways in which audiences are willing to engage with your content.
Key Terms:
- Platform: A software-based online tool that allows people to interact. Examples include Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp, Discord or a WordPress website.
- Channel: The specific path or method you use to share content within a platform (or in the physical world). Examples include an Instagram story, a WhatsApp broadcast group or a paper flyer.
If you’re not sure how to answer the questions above, you can find this information in other ways. If you know people in your audience, ask them for input directly! But if you don’t know anyone personally, you can ask your preferred AI tool or web search engine to help you learn about the platforms and channels your audience typically uses.
Sample AI Prompt
Simple prompt: “What are the top platforms and channels used in _________ [country] for ______ [audience]?”
To gain deeper understanding, copy and paste this prompt:
Act as an expert digital marketing strategist. I’m building a digital user journey to reach a specific audience and to gently guide them toward a spiritual next step.
Here is the context:
- My Target Audience (Persona): [Insert your detailed persona, including their age, location, life stage, pain points, and desires.]
- Audience Map Stage: [Insert the page link from the Audience Map website that aligns with your audience.]
- My Primary Goal: [Insert your SMART goal here, e.g., “To get 20 first-year university students to sign up for an in-person small group by the end of the semester.”]
- My Team’s Capacity: [Insert your capacity here, e.g., “We have a very small budget, but we have two volunteers who can each dedicate five hours a week to community engagement.”]
Based on this audience and goal, what are the top 2-3 digital platforms (e.g., social media, video sharing, messaging apps) and physical spaces where this specific demographic naturally spends their time and prefers to consume content? For each recommended platform, please suggest the most effective channel or format (e.g., Instagram Reels, a WhatsApp broadcast group, or using physical QR codes on campus) to draw their attention, provide value and clearly guide them to take the action I want.
2. Consider the goals for your user journey.
Different platforms have different functions, which means different advantages and drawbacks. Your choice of platforms and channels should align with the goals of your strategy.
Consider the following key questions:
- What type of goals or KPIs have you set for your user journey?
- Awareness (People discovering your content for the first time)
- Information (People learning about who you are and opportunities that exist)
- Engagement (People showing curiosity or interest)
- Equipping and Resourcing (People taking steps toward growth)
- Something else?
- What is your team’s capacity? Success on different platforms requires different levels of time and resources to launch an account and maintain it. Do you have the time, resources and skills to consistently maintain your account on this platform?
Do you have security considerations to take into account? Some platforms may not be appropriate options in secure areas. If you have security concerns in your country or region, reach out via email: digitalacademy@ccci.org
A regional leader will connect with you to advise you on relevant security measures.
3. Consider each step of your user journey.
You’ll likely need to use several platforms and channels. On the User Journey Template (PDF), list the channels and platforms in the labeled boxes for each step of the journey.
Example: If you want to reach young mothers in Taiwan, research might show that they’re too busy to read long articles but they enjoy listening to audio. You might choose Spotify (platform) to host a podcast (channel). From the podcast, you might invite them to join a community for moms on Instagram (platform with a specific channel) or invite them to come to an event for moms at a local cafe (platform). Before the event, you invite them to fill out a form to register, which you’ve housed on a landing page on your WordPress website (platform).
4. Consider what you might need from the Tools for Content Strategy.
The Tools for Content Strategy section is a collection of trusted, secure, right-sized software tools available to help you manage your distribution. You may need to implement one or more of these tools at different points in your user journey. These are available to you and come with training and support.
To learn more about the Content Strategy Toolset and gain access to the tools, visit the Resources page.
Build a Website
WordPress is a type of Content Management System (CMS). Use this if you would like to build a ministry website.
Design a New Course
Use Gnowbe or LearnDash if you are creating discipleship pathways, leadership development or digital training.
Create a Journey
Use NextSteps to create a simple user journey all in one place. To gain access to this platform and learn how to use it, visit the NextSteps website.
Manage Social Media
Use Metricool for social media management. It allows you to schedule posts, manage multiple channels and analyze engagement across platforms.
Choosing Your Marketing Approach
Now that you’ve chosen your channels and platforms, it’s time to consider your marketing approach, i.e., how you’ll connect your audience to your content.
Below is a brief overview of types of channels. Knowing this information will help you make decisions about whether to choose paid marketing options, organic (non-paid) marketing options, or a combination of both.
Owned, Paid and Earned Channels
When you think of how to make your audience aware of your content, there are three main types of media channels you can use:
Owned: Channels that you completely control.
Examples: Your ministry’s WordPress website, your email newsletter or an app you created.
Paid: Channels where you pay to expose your audience to your content. This method can help you quickly find new, curious people.
Examples: Facebook boosted posts, Google Ads, or YouTube video ads.
When/How to use ads: Use ads when you need to expand your reach beyond your current followers. Meta, Google and YouTube offer their own free tutorials about advertising on their platforms.
Earned: Channels where other people share your content because they find it valuable. You “earn” this by building trust.
Examples: A popular singer shares your IG post with their followers, or your audience comments and tags their friends on your Facebook page.
Other Key Terms:
- Traffic: People who find your content and interact with it in some way.
- Organic Traffic: This is free traffic. People find your content naturally, or “organically,” because you consistently post quality content that appeals to them. Though organic traffic is free in terms of money, it requires time and effort to build relationships and trust with your audience.
- Paid Traffic: You pay money to show your content to a specific audience, such as running an ad or “boosting” a social media post. This option is often used to quickly bridge “missional gaps” and reach people you don’t have a relationship with yet.
Organic or paid?
Choosing between organic and paid sharing methods depends on your specific goals, available budget, team capacity and how you need to engage your audience.
Choose Organic Marketing (e.g., unpaid social media posts, direct messaging, WhatsApp groups) when:
- You want to build deep relationships. Organic sharing is fundamentally relationship-based and focuses on establishing long-term trust with your audience.
- You have zero budget but more time. Organic traffic is free, but it’s not easy. It requires a significant investment of time and effort to grow and maintain.
- You can commit to consistency and engagement. To succeed organically, you must consistently post quality, platform-optimized content (such as Instagram Reels), leverage trends and actively respond to direct messages, quizzes and comments.
- You’re relying on personal networks. Methods such as direct messaging or sharing links in group chats are organic approaches that work well for personal invitations and outreach where you have already established trust.
Choose Paid Marketing (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, Google Ads) when:
- You need to bridge missional gaps. Paid ads are effective for expanding your reach beyond your current network and quickly finding new, broad audiences.
- You have a budget. If you have funds available, platforms such as Google or Meta allow you to set daily, weekly or monthly budgets to expose the audience to your content. Always start small with your budget and test if your ads are reaching your intended audience. Google and Meta won’t tell you if you’re successful and will happily take your money. It’s essential that you start small, test and add daily limits to your spending.
- You want to target specific demographics. Paid tools give you the ability to specifically target your audience based on their profiles, interests and/or search behavior.
Things to consider: Broad paid campaigns often experience higher drop-off rates than personal sharing methods. Additionally, in secure countries, faith-based ads targeting non-Christians can sometimes cause marketing accounts to be flagged or blocked.
In many successful strategies, teams utilize a balance of both — using paid advertising to gain initial exposure, while using organic sharing and community management to foster deeper relationships. As you consider these options, determine which method you’ll start with and add it to your user journey template.
You’ve almost finished this section on Distribution, but there’s one more critical part of your planning process.
Planning Your Follow Up
A great journey fails if no one engages with those who respond. When someone interacts with your content, the journey is not over, it’s just beginning. And the follow-up process is a prime opportunity to build trust with your audience.
As you plan how to distribute your content, you must also plan how you’ll respond to your audience:
- Who will respond? Will it be you, a ministry team or a trained volunteer? Assign an owner for every response.
- How will you track messages? Set up a tracking method to coordinate follow-up messages between your teammates. This ensures that you follow up with every person who responds.
- When will you reply? Speed matters. Set a goal to respond to messages within one hour or at least within the same day. Even a short, human response helps your audience feel seen and valued.
A Final Thought
Remember: If you create a brilliant journey but no one knows about it, it won’t reach anyone.
To help you reach people with your user journeys, we’ve created the following planning resources for you:
- The User Journey Template (PDF) guides you in identifying channels, platforms and marketing approaches.
- The Follow-Up Planning Worksheet (PDF) helps you identify your plan to respond to people who interact with your content.
If you have questions or would like to talk to a coach, email digitalacademy@ccci.org
Learn more about the content strategy tools or access one of them in the Tools for Content Strategy section.