Choosing the right communication channels starts with understanding your audience and where they consume information. Knowing how to choose communication channels that suit your audience can help you reach the right people, adapt content for different platforms and make better use of your communications and marketing resources without trying to be everywhere at once.
We need to be on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, start a newsletter and we need to be on the ‘Google’.
That’s a lot of channels to distribute content on if you have a small team.
Having the right marketing channel mix can mean the difference between a high-performing marketing/comms team and burnt-out one.
You don’t have to be everywhere all at once, you just need to be on the right channels.
How do you know what channels to focus on?
The best place to start is with the WHO you have already identified and understand which channels they actually use.
You can do this by working out each platform’s:
- audience size and reach
- age/demographic profile
- interests or behaviours where available
- type of content people consume there
- geographic reach
- what content formats the channel supports
- cost, if it’s a paid channel
A channel isn't just a social media platform
Your channel mix could include:
- website or internally your intranet, Teams and digital TV signage
- email and newsletters
- social media (organic and paid)
- streaming/BVOD, radio, cinema, print, outdoor and events
- face-to-face communication like staff meetings and toolbox talks, etc.
Just be mindful of what type of content you will need to produce or that you specifically need to communicate. For example, if you need to communicate complex scientific information, then platforms and users that support short-form content might not be the best focus for your efforts.
There are exceptions to the rule also as some platforms, like Facebook, might not be the best platform for your efforts, but could be the most used platform in your area.
Take the Northern Territory: Facebook is the most broadly used platform in the NT with an average user age between 25-54 and good engagement for 55+. So, if you wanted to reach a younger audience between 18-24, then you would likely want to pivot to Instagram and/or TikTok and YouTube shorts. And do not rule out Reddit.
The important thing to remember is not everything has to go everywhere all the time.
Your channel mix should put the right message in front of the right audience, in the right place.
Make content for the audience and channel
Another important consideration is to make sure your message fits not just the audience but the channel too. For example, you have a regular newsletter that you want people to read, a newsletter is going to be too long for platforms that do accept long-form content or those that are not suitable for text-based content (YouTube/podcasts).
So, this is where you would adapt your content to the platform.
Take this article for example.
The main article lives on our website; we put teaser content on Facebook to encourage users to click through to read the main article but on LinkedIn we would write a longer form post to provide a good piece of info and click through to read the full article.
The underlying story hasn’t changed. We’ve adapted how it is delivered to suit each channel and the audience using it. This is commonly referred to as repurposing content.
You could apply the same method to, say, a video message. Your main video you have made might be 90 seconds in total, but when that video is being made, you would pull a 15 or 30 second piece that provides a tasty piece of info with a click to view the full video.
So, choose your channels carefully, pick the channel for the audience, message and content type.
Not every channel needs something new every day or every week.
You can have a broad channel mix, just play the long game and meet your audience where they are.
Once you know WHERE you need to communicate, the next question is WHEN.
How often do people actually need to hear from you, and when is the right time to communicate?
This article is part of The Adaptive Approach insight series.