Publishing is the start, not the finish
A post goes live, gets a burst of attention from people who already follow you, and then stops. The usual response is to write another one. The better response is to ask who should have seen the first one and did not.
The Content Marketing Institute frames distribution across three kinds of channel: the ones you own, the attention you earn and the reach you pay for. Most small teams put nearly all of their effort into the writing and almost none into the other two.
A distribution plan for one piece
Owned. Send it to your email list with one line on why it matters to them. Link to it from the two or three pages on your own site where a reader would want it next. Post it on your own social accounts in the format each one rewards, not as a bare link.
Earned. Find the places where the question your piece answers is already being asked: forums, communities, comment threads, newsletters in your field. Answer there with substance, and link only where the rules allow it and the link genuinely helps. Tell anyone you quoted or mentioned.
Paid. Only once the piece already converts without help. Paying to promote something that does not work organically mostly buys a faster answer to a question you already had.
One piece, cut into the right shape for each channel, will usually reach more of the right people than three new pieces published once. The Lab's application on repurposing one piece into many shows how to do the cutting.
Refresh before you replace
The same logic applies to pages you published months ago. A page that already ranks and already earns links is an asset; a new page starts from nothing. Updating it is often the faster win.
Google's guidance on helpful content asks whether a page is written for people, shows first-hand expertise and is accurate. Pages drift on all three as facts change. Open Search Console, find pages whose impressions hold but whose clicks are falling, and update the facts, examples and dates while keeping the address the same. The Content Marketing Institute recommends planning those updates when you publish, not waiting for a page to decay.
A two-week test
For your next piece, spend as long distributing it as you spent writing it. Note where every reader came from. Most teams find that one or two channels do almost all the work, and that is where the next piece should be aimed from the start.