#162 — 📢 Distribution Strategies

0:04  
What's up everybody? This is Lola Ojabowale, founder of Lunch Pail Labs. Welcome back to lunch fail daily my personal audio diary where I share all of the realness on building and growing Lunch Pail Labs, which is a digital product studio based out of Atlanta, Georgia. In today's episode wanted to chat about distribution, distribution, oh distribution.

0:28  
I feel like I see this tweet all over Twitter of like the first time founders focus on product. Second time founders focus on distribution, but I have not yet encountered many resources that have made that very, like visceral and real and understandable to me. And so I just started reading Steph Smith's Doing Content Right so if you don't know Steph Smith, she's an awesome  marketer and researcher, coder and writer. She used to, or maybe even still runs like trends which got bought by HubSpot. And she just has a lot of great insights on content and SEO and marketing and doing content right. 

1:17  
And in this book, she had this really helpful call out that one gave me a lot of motivation to sort of try to better understand distribution and like what that means. And she kind of described it as like taking at  bats and you can sort of write a lot of her stuff is more centered around writing, but I think that to me, as well, like with products, I think there's a lot of parallels. You can build or you can write but if you're not sharing you're only doing like one half of the equation. And you know, building and writing are parts of my daily practice, but actually I do I don't actually share a lot of the actual things that I'm working on. Pretty like regularly or like promote it even with this podcast. Yes, I have this automated feed Lunch Pail Daily, but I don't even retweet it or do anything on my personal accounts. And I certainly it's very much Don't Ask Don't Tell like I think people sometimes stumble upon the fact that this exists, but it's not something that I actively promote. 

2:32  
But besides that, sort of like motivation of distribution is actually a form of showing up which this framing of showing up really resonates with me. And then also the like, she shared a very interesting stat in the in the eBook of like 70% of higher income context of bloggers writing higher income bloggers actively share their work compared to 14% of lower income bloggers. So like, yes, the sharing of the work is obvious and needed. So with that out of the way, she also shared some strategies of like different types  types of distribution. And I thought her explanation was excellent. definitely helped me understand. 

3:25  
Yeah, like what are the different types of distribution and then start to apply it to things like Lunch Pail Daily, which I'll get into and even Lunch Pail Labs as a whole. So the different the six different types of distribution like strategies are bedrock bedrock, she takes to mean as your reliable strategies, those are the places it takes a while to build up. But it's where you can consistently get distribution for whatever you're trying to write, build, sell. 

3:55  
Then you have social strategies or social distribution, things like your Twitter's your Instagram, your social networks, which are a little less reliable, because and some things that you don't own, like a bedrock strategy. You know, Twitter can decide to ban you or you can, they can change their algorithms or prioritize different types of content. Like you don't really own all the rules, but obviously a strategy that works for many makers, 

4:27  
Then you got viral which is like the hardest to predict or make consistently happen. You post something, it goes viral your thing goes off syndicate which I don't completely  like remember really what she her point was the syndicate. I think it was like more so like, distributing through other platforms. So I think the example that she used was like medium in the blogging sphere. You can sort of use mediums distribution to promote your own so maybe going through platforms. That that's like an interesting interesting framing.

5:09  
And then you got your paid obviously pay for it. So I guess like Google ads or ads targeted, what she meant, posting to niche communities so like niche slacks things like that, which has its benefits also has its limits. So really, with like those understanding her she was really big on obviously, like on you want a bedrock strategy.

5:37  
 And I don't think Lunch Pail Labs has one, and I don't think much Lunch Pail Daily has one. So first, I get started with this podcast, the main distribution, I guess, I'm doing some sort of syndicate. I'm on anchor, and I record with anchor and I think it technically goes through anchors. Like it's available to people who subscribe to anchor so in some ways they are. That is, I guess, a part of a distribution strategy. 

6:07  
As I mentioned, I also have this sort of automated notifications that I don't really do anything with, and nobody's actually looking at that kind of posts to like the Lunch Pail Daily account. What I did do to sort of help with a bedrock strategy is I now have a Daily.lunchpaillabs.com, which is for this podcast, and these daily updates. So now there's like an automated feed a use Podpage for that. Each episode will have its own sort of Lunch Pail Labs branded page. And I'm also taking steps to make them automatically transcribed. So I think that will give a little bit more like juice, just from like, you know, maybe some SEO juice, who knows? It'll be interesting to see after a while of that change and upgrade, if like traffic to this podcast changes. 

7:06  
And I think those are like really the main the main strategies that I'm currently Yeah, basically no strategies on the Lunch Pail Daily, but I'm looking really focused. I think on doing more bedrock. Do more of bedrock. I guess I could see some targeted approaches where I do post I am a part of a lot of entrepreneurs slack so maybe I can post some of these there if I really was trying to grow distribution, which sounds like you probably should, I don't know. I guess they kind of go hand in hand. 

7:41  
And then Lunch Pail Labs like this was really interesting. I think with especially on the consulting side of things, feeling it's very much Syndicate, so I have like some partnerships with a few platforms. They have their leads, I get their leads. So I'm not really doing the hand to hand combat. To for for most of the folks I talk to, and I think you know, there there's a little bit of an aspect of like, viral viral, I'll just put like viral slash random. Like, oh, you put up a tweet, it leads to a connection. Bam. 

8:21  
So like serendipitous luck, in some ways that comes from maybe showing up but not something that is repeatable, that you can say that like, if I do this activity, again, sort of like a bedrock strategy, I would be able to produce the exact same results and yeah, there's some like, I think those are the main ones that are currently being employed. Maybe some social ish, like some people are like, oh, yeah, like I ran into you into Twitter. That's kind of like how we are like, I like people who maybe follow me as a person, not related to my work or something. Have sometimes reached out. 

9:09  
Um, I think for something like an agency, the targeted approach might work well like posting in niche communities, but you have to be careful to actually provide value and not just be like, Hey, does anybody need a website or something? 

9:28  
But even still, like, my one of my goals for 2022 and I also sort of mentioned this in the Content Strategy for 2022 episode that I made is for like to really invest, I guess in a content bedrock is really at the heart of that. More blog posts. I did like the lunch pail lab, sort of blog, revamp to better tag and organize information. And I think having Yeah, I think, you know, a lot of this doing content right? Her, Steph's strategies might really, really be helpful there. So very, very, very interesting. Things to think about as I continue to iterate and I can't wait to continue to read on in, in the book, but that was like a very eye-opener of like, dang, like, Yes, I don't think we have one. There's not a distribution strategy here. But absolute good book, I'll link it in the bio. Definitely. A read that is so far feels very practical. So that those are my thoughts on distribution. I hope everybody has a wonderful Tuesday and I will catch all of you later.