How to leverage quality content across platforms to reach both new and existing customers?
The best way to increase both reach and exposure, and spread awareness, organically.
There’s no arguing about the importance of content.
Yet, still, a lot of businesses, content creators are unaware of 2 key factors in content creation.
Leverage and distribution.
These 2 things are interconnected. You leverage the content by distributing it, and you distribute the content by leveraging it.
Let me explain what I meant.
Distribution of content, means publishing the same pillar content, in any form, across any platform. So that same piece of content lives in more than one form in (usually) more than one platform.
Leveraging content means using every piece of content in multiple ways to get the highest return on investment from each piece of content. An example could be a real estate agent, creating content, trying to ‘show off’ his expertise.
Now, you almost can’t leverage content without distribution. Not in this age. You need to spread it over multiple platforms, and preferably, in multiple forms, in order to properly, and successfully leverage it.
Let’s take an example. Just because you started a podcast, doesn’t mean that you can leverage that. After all, there are millions of podcasts around, but not all of them are valuable, nor do they stay around for much longer. You’d have to publish it over multiple podcasting platforms, in order to start gaining some traction. You might even have to write blog posts and guest posts to spread awareness about the podcast, and gain listeners and subscribers.
But there’s a caveat. You can only distribute content so much without leveraging it.
Let me explain that. Let’s just take the same example on here too.
Now, to distribute your podcast across platforms, you can create accounts on different platforms, but they’d still be used under the same brand, with the same or less amount of reach, exposure, and awareness.
Let’s say, you have a Facebook page for the podcast with over 10,000 subscribers. If you start a Twitter profile now, the initial follower count won’t be 10,000. It’ll be 0, or 1, since you’ll be the first subscriber of the page 😉.
So, in order to build up the 10,000 followers, you’ll need to leverage your existing content across Twitter, and ‘show off’ the value in your content.
Also, if you’re planning to write guest posts, you’ll also need to leverage your content to ‘show’ people, that you’re not just another podcast, that’s going to fade out after some time.
So, now that we got the seemingly-complicated stuff out of the way, let’s see HOW you can leverage content by distributing, and distribute content by leveraging.
1. Pick your poison.
Now, there are many platforms to distribute content out there. Not only social media, but also other platforms that you can not only distribute content, but also host the content for future reference, such as SlideShare, Google Drive, DropBox, etc. You may or may not want to use all or most of them, depending on a lot of factors. Though, it is recommended to pick the ones that you’ve the most expertise on, and master those platforms first. Then you can migrate to other platforms later on.
2. Know what you’re getting into.
After picking the platforms, research about them. You have to know these platforms like the back of your hand.
- What type of content is the platform for? I mean, you can’t write blog posts on Instagram, the same way you can’t post pictures on YouTube. Well, technically, you can, but, you get what I’m saying, right?
- Figure out (and find out) the rules of the platform. Official, unofficial, and unspoken. Remember to play by the rules. They’re giving you ‘online real estate’ for FREE! At least have some courtesy. Also, playing by the rules makes sure that you don’t get banned, blacklisted, or even shadow banned.
- Create a strategy. You can’t just click-and-paste the links to your content, in order to get them in front of people’s eyes. You have to have a reason for why you’re posting a piece of content on the platform, and an objective for it. If it’s a part of some big plan of yours, you’ll have to figure that out too.
3. Find an automation tool to post content automatically.
Look. The idea of hustle might sound cool, and all that. But unnecessary hustle is just that; unnecessary. You could go online from time to time, to post the content, or you could use an automation tool for that task, and use that time to make more content, or work on your business.
So, find the tools that are available, and pick one or a couple. The good thing about these tools is that they support for a lot of platforms.
Now that you have the pipeline built, it’s time to get content in those pipes.
You don’t necessarily have to have multiple forms of content (although it’s recommended and preferred) in order to leverage it successfully.
The most important thing to remember here, is that you need a consistent flow of content in the pipeline. Because in some platforms, your reach for posts are going to reduce if you have random pauses in between your posts. Also, make sure that your content has value in them.
