Managing content across multiple platforms can be a challenging task. You want to ensure that your content is consistent, coherent, and relevant for your audience, no matter where they access it. How can you achieve this goal without wasting time, money, or resources? Here are some tips to help you create and maintain a unified content strategy.
Before you start creating or distributing content, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve and who you want to reach. Your content goals should align with your business objectives and your audience needs. You should also identify the platforms that best suit your content type, format, and tone. For example, if you want to share informative articles, you might use a blog, a newsletter, or a social media platform like LinkedIn. If you want to showcase your products or services, you might use a website, a landing page, or a social media platform like Instagram.
Story beats are my secret. Old gum shoe reporters maintained consistency using beat sheets to create stories in line with the paper's audience. 1-- tone (serious, funny, professional, etc) 2-- voice (1st, 2nd, 3rd person) 3-- scope (5 Ws only or 5 Ws + anecdotal experience) 4-- style (your signature...you can read my writing and know it's mine.)
Creating content across multiple social media platforms can be a daunting task but one of the ways to ensure you don't burnout or lose interest in your task is by choosing a brand, product or content source that align with your values and passion - that way, it's more like talking about your favorite things and less about a job. However, sometimes we have to create content on things that we're not necessarily interested in and that's okay too - look out for people who already create such content across the social media platforms and follow in their footstep until you figure out your individual brand.
To ensure that your content is consistent across platforms, you need to establish and follow a content style guide and a content calendar. A content style guide defines the rules and standards for your content creation, such as your brand voice, tone, language, grammar, spelling, punctuation, formatting, and visuals. A content calendar helps you plan and schedule your content production, publication, and promotion, as well as track your performance and feedback. You can use tools like Google Docs, Trello, or CoSchedule to create and manage your content style guide and calendar.
Content style guides and calendars are a proven and effective tool for managing a consistent roll out of a campaign or brand messaging. However, it is essential to ensure that content for different platforms and audiences is crafted and tailored for them. The language, tone, video & image formats, amongst others, should correspond with the targets.
A content management system (CMS) is a software that allows you to create, store, edit, and manage your content from a single interface. A CMS can help you streamline your content workflow, avoid duplication, and ensure consistency across platforms. You can use a CMS to create and update your content, as well as to distribute it to different platforms through APIs or plugins. Some examples of CMS are WordPress, Drupal, or HubSpot.
Once you have created and distributed your content across platforms, you need to review and optimize it regularly. You should check your content for accuracy, relevance, quality, and performance. You should also monitor your audience feedback and engagement, as well as your analytics and metrics. You can use tools like Google Analytics, SEMrush, or Hootsuite to measure and improve your content results. You should also update your content style guide and calendar based on your findings and best practices.
Managing content across multiple platforms requires collaboration and communication with your team. You should have a clear division of roles and responsibilities for your content creation and distribution, as well as a feedback and approval process. You should also use tools like Slack, Zoom, or Asana to communicate and coordinate with your team members, as well as to share and access your content assets. You should also encourage your team to learn from each other and to share their insights and challenges.
Managing content across multiple platforms can be a rewarding and effective way to reach and engage your audience. By following these tips, you can ensure that your content is consistent, coherent, and relevant across platforms, and that you achieve your content goals and objectives.