Create content units around a single effort
Traditionally, when a client comes to Spark Media Solutions they are singularly focused. They come to us saying either they want to create a blog, podcast, whitepaper, or video. While we appreciate the initial intention to create content, a singularly-focused approach to content creation will be expensive and yield very little output.
Five phases of a purchase cycle (cont'd)
Phase 4: UseThis stage becomes the audition for a customer’s next purchase and whether or not that person/organization will become an evangelist for your product or service.
Should not provide unexpected surprises. Use should be as simple or as complicated as expected upon finishing research phase. If help is needed, answers are timely and satisfying. Solutions are found by the user or assisted through customer service. Product or service provides solution that was desired and customer develops an affiliation with the brand. Consumer becomes a “word of mouth” advocate for the brand’s product or service. With brand affiliation, user goes through a mini-discovery and research phase to see what other products and solutions the company has to offer.Instead, we ask clients to step back and try to figure out what it is they’re trying to accomplish in terms of building a voice and communicating with the audience. And then we look at what kind of access and talent they have internally and see how we can spin a single effort into multiple pieces of content, thus allowing people to touch the information in a multitude of different ways.
Its common to focus on the medium (e.g. podcast, video, or whitepaper) first. When you’re in the initial stages of planning, don’t get mired in the medium. Think about the effort. The effort is the subject matter that you want to talk about that would be of interest to your audience. An effort could be a five star interview or maybe a how-to on a subject everyone wants to know. Once you know the effort, then you can determine the media. With proper forethought and production you can actually spin multiple units of content off of a single effort.
Here’s an example to illustrate the need to focus on effort rather than means of content delivery.
Say you’re a mobile technology company and you landed a 30 minute interview with Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple. He’s willing to discuss anything with you and show off a brand new iPhone.
A lazy producer, not thinking ahead, would think, “Great, we can put the 30 minute video interview up on our site and tons of people will come to see it.” That’s very possible, but that kind of thinking misses multiple opportunities for production and distribution. Not everyone has the time or interest to sit and watch a 30 minute interview on their computer and not everybody knows about your company or your site. What you do know is they’re interested in what Steve Jobs has to say, just maybe not in the 30 minute video format on your site.
Instead of just creating a 30 minute video, think about additional content units you can spin off of this singular effort: getting Steve Jobs to sit down in front of a video camera for 30 minutes. For example:
A 30 minute audio file (streamable, downloadable, and made available via RSS podcast feed)
A transcript of the 30 minute interview (PDF and HTML)
A two minute highlight reel (video and audio) of the interview
An article outlining highlights of the interview
Photos in the article
Short 15-30 second video snippets in the article
An article outlining the new phone
Short close up video of the phone and its functions
For just a little additionally effort, what was originally just going to be a single video can be parsed into more than a dozen content units that can be reached and consumed a multitude of different ways.
