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While the average reader casually switches from paper, to app, to Facebook, to website throughout the day, many publishers still approach these channels as different silos.
But a well-wrought omnichannel content strategy relies not only on the strengths of each separate channel, it also seeks to create maximal synergy between them.
This will allow you to serve and reach your audience in the best possible way and create richer experiences and bigger impact.
Mapping and learning
An omnichannel strategy benefits from powerful formats and improves along with the frequency of your posts on the different channels. The most effective approach is to map out your knowledge of each channel and actively learn from everything that happens there.
Ideally, you would appoint channel experts in your organisation. Their specialised knowledge will help you discover what does and does not work, and how to capitalise on that.
Your audience at the center
The most defining factor in an omnichannel approach is your audience. Your reader expects a relevant, enriching and valuable relationship with you as a brand and your content. On every channel! And he/she wants a seamless and consistent brand experience across these channels.
No copy-paste
But that doesn’t mean you can simply copy-paste your output. It’s important to create channel-specific content. Why? Well, YouTube is not tv. It’s consumed in a completely different way. Likewise, you can’t create a tv-item from a Facebook video and an online article is not suited to be posted on LinkedIn. Every channel has its optimum format.
So, time and again you have to choose what’s the best destination for the story you want to publish and what format serves the audience best. It requires you to develop a strategy and tactics that make use of the right metrics and insights, and then create translations for each channel you want to publish on.
The ultimate goal
What you really want your public to do is to cross-navigate these channels to where you want them. For commercial businesses this is likely to be an online shop or subscription. Public institutions will find value in reach, impact and engagement, and deeper, complex metrics such as time spent on page, attention time, public value, loyalty (returning visitors) and so on.
An example of using multiple channels in this way could be to reach a larger audience on Instagram (in short-form) and lead these readers to a longread on the website or in the app, or invite them to participate in a discussion on Facebook.
In this way, the channels can consciously be used to make the most out of that contact with the readers.
Single source of data
If you want synergy on all channels, you also want synergy in their data. A single source of data simply is a requirement for omnichannel marketing.
All data synchronised in a central system, available on all channels, and at all touchpoints of the customer journey.
Wessel Wildeboer
Republished with kind permission of smartocto, the world’s most actionable editorial analytics system offering a bird’s-eye view on The Story Life Cycle©.
