Social Media Trinity

by Guest Blogger, Lena West

Engaging content is critical for a successful business, blog or podcast but, many times people needlessly stress themselves out about creating quality content.

Number 1: People learn and absorb information in different ways. Just because *you* learn best by reading, don't assume everyone in your audience does as well.

The first thing to do is to make sure your visitors have access to your content in a format that is relevant and useful for them. Get used to creating your content in different content formats.

This doesn't mean that you should create audio and video formats for each text blog post but, for well-received posts, you might want to seriously consider it.

I call this the Social Media Trinity - audio, video and text. 

Number 2: Content is hard enough to create - why make work for yourself?  If you can deliver an attention-holding podcast and get it transcribed to create a special report that makes thousands download it, why wouldn't you want to do that?

My trinity approach requires less work than you think and provides you with multi-use chunks of quality content that can serve you in other areas of your business - like marketing, sales and customer service.

An ideal scenario is for you to plan which parts of your content you'll offer in which social media trinity formats.  Is your new idea better expressed via audio, video or text? Pick the best one and produce it first - then produce the other formats.

For example, I recently was a guest on the Blog Squad's Blogging and Beyond podcast. They graciously gave me a copy of the audio (trinity format #1) so that I can post it in the Free Resources area of my web site.  But, they also gave me a transcript (trinity format #2) of the podcast and I liked the content so much, I took snippets of what I said on their show and formulated a blog post and an article from it.

I can take that same content and create a video blog (trinity format #3) and use it as a lead generation tool for a program or post it to Blip.tv for my own web-based TV channel.

And, depending on my audience, I can point them to the format I think will best serve them. If I'm trying to pitch an editor, I can send them a link to the article. If I'm trying to pitch a blog network, I can send them to the blog post. If I'm trying to pitch a television show, I can send them the link to the video.

Or, I can use either as a lead generation tool or a promo for a new product or service while building my mailing list in the process.

Or, I can provide the video link at another time on my blog...maybe 'reruns' of popular content while I'm on holiday? 

Who knows?! The possibilities are endless.

Here's where people get hung up:

They think if they provide three different ways to access the same content, it's tantamount to 'cheating' or hucksterism.

Here's the truth:

• Don't flatter yourself. Seriously. Most people won't read that much of your content in any form to notice any overlap. And, if they do, you're able to cement your message via different vehicles AND display consistency in your messaging (another critical element).
• Don't be more concerned with the way things 'might look' than you are with staying focused on giving your audience what they need in any formats they need it.
• Save yourself time and energy by creating content that can serve multiple purposes without reinventing the wheel.  That's what smart business-owners do.

Bottomline: You can create three times the content for virtually the same amount of energy.

I'm looking forward to reading about how you plan to use the Social Media Trinity concept in your business communictions.