Standard content platforms

Most content strategies would involve WordPress, Mailchimp and social media channels like Facebook and Twitter.

They all work well because they’re good at their job and they’re cheap. But usage of these platforms sometimes falls flat because the latter basically serve as content drivers back to the main hub – which is usually WordPress.

In short, they don’t add further value to the user.

Often times, other platforms only serve to grow in connections / followers while pushing back to the main hub. 

Making a platform speak for itself

But really, we should consider each of these platforms in isolation as well as how they’re integrated.

The main questions to ask is: if this content platform existed on its own, what would it do?

Here are four great examples of when content platforms speak for themselves:

  • Main content feed: Net a PorterI have yet to find a better example of a content feed being such a focal point, so richly edited and all the while promoting products. A winner.
  • Email: Only Dead Fish – Basically a list of links and sources which its curator, Neil Perkin, sources from the Internet each week which he feels will be of interest to subscribers.
  • Twitter: Historyinpics. his feed went from zero to 1m followers in six months. How? It has a very strong nostalgic focal point combined with taking advantage of the new image based Twitter feed.
  • Facebook: Captain MorganGenius use of text overlaying strong imagery. Time and time again, it comes up trumps. No wonder 5.1m people like it.

You don’t have to have great resources to make a good channel. History in Pics was done by a handful of teenagers (of course, copyright is dubious here, but no one’s really done anything about it), while Only Dead Fish is run by one person.

A sample from Captain Morgan’s Facebook Page. Notice that these images are all the same size, with the same footer for quicker turnaround. 

Integrating Your Platforms

In the last post I talked a lot about ‘size’ of content, and the size of your content will of course influence where you post it.

But really the big honking idea and the customer journey are the major drivers of what goes where. So start with the big idea, and run it at its biggest size, then break the idea down into components so it works on the other channels.

At this stage, consider how each platform stands on its own in connecting with the customer and driving back to the main hub. 

Breaking down the big idea

As a hypothetical example, let’s imagine that the big idea was to create a white paper about the size and scope of a digital marketing opportunity, like wearables or augmented reality (subject’s not that important for this exercise).

The white paper is an example of supersized content that stands alone. But from it, you’d almost certainly be able to get a series of infographics created for you main content feed. These would give you interesting facts and future headlines, which could make up subject lines for your email or headlines for further articles.

On Facebook you could break the infographic down into bite sized chunks and share the images with links back to content. On twitter you could do the same, but a graphic might not always be necessary.

It’s more than production and distribution of that production!

So rather than just publishing the large piece of content, then tweeting or mailing it out, the depth of the research can go further in delivering for your other customer touch points.

Each touch point has its own reason for existence, but yet joins together with the big honking idea.

In all, the sum of its parts are greater than the whole.

And that’s a good place to be.