How do you choose your best online channels? This is our third and final part in this series. We started with our podcast here talking about the various online platforms, then asked ‘What positions you well?’ and ‘What are you good at?’ Today we ask: What do your clients want?

A Better Question

For most business experts your content channels must work for your clients and this shouldn’t be the overriding factor. And, that is why this is part three in this series for choosing your online channels – it’s more of a check than a decisive factor.

And, rather than asking ‘what do they want’, a better question is ‘what is best for your clients?’ This implies that you ultimately must decide as a tradeoff of our three criteria: your skills and expertise, what positions you well and what your clients might like.

[Tweet “Don’t choose your content channels based on your clients #content”]

A Distinct Content Profile

The caveat on this is if your intended audience has a distinct content profile or preference Here are some examples:

• If your clients are all sound engineers then it’s a good chance they don’t read a lot and ebooks may not be a good idea.
• If your intended audience is CEOs and you’re a star on Twitter you have two choices. The number of CEOs who are interested in Twitter is relatively small. Your choice is either to expand from your home city to a global audience or you can use Twitter as a complement to another channel.
• If you work with accountants they may enjoy reading, listening and watching content. Asking them what they prefer might be useful and it might just give you a smorgasbord of answers. In this case, repurposing your content into multiple channels may be an effective strategy.

Content over Channel

Ultimately, you are the one that must choose your online channels. This is crucial because you’ll be the one learning it and delivering content with it. You want to pick a channel that is going to work for you. And, whilst I have downplayed the influence of the client in being the deciding factor, there is one aspect of your content marketing that absolutely needs to be considered with your clients in mind: the content.

TIP: Remember any channel can be successful if you are passionate, enjoy it and are consistent in your output. And most importantly that you address the issues that matter the most to your intended audience.

TIP: Ask your clients what they prefer and unless there is a distinct, definite and deliberate request for one content channel then ignore their responses and rely on your strengths and your ideal positioning instead.

The Ultimate Choice

One final point… Whilst choosing your channels is important, you may also choose to repurpose content for multiple channels. In our earlier example of the accountants who might prefer to read, listen and watch, if you create a video for watching, then you can also strip out the audio as a podcast for listening and transcribe it into words for reading. Using this strategy enables you to cover your client preferences more easily.

COMMENT: Have I got this right? Should your client preferences be the ultimate decision maker? Or is there more to it than this?