There are so many ways to communicate and inform your clients of your business message, but these are not all equal. Are you using the right content in the right format on the right platforms to get your message across effectively?
Newsletters, blog posts, social media updates, emails, product and service descriptions, case studies… it sometimes seems as if all we do in modern business is produce content.
And often we’re too caught up in this non-stop production of content to think about what happens next and whether we are actually communicating anything to anyone.
When you’re producing a new piece of collateral, writing social media or blog posts, or simply writing an email, it’s important to think not just about what the message is – the information you want to communicate – but also about who you are trying to communicate with, and the best way to engage their attention.
Sometimes different audiences need to be made aware of the same information, or a message communicated via one medium needs to be reinforced via another – and that may well mean presenting it in different ways. Text, image, audio, video, animation, graphics, iconography, colour… all these elements play a part in communicating a message; and different media offer different options and possibilities.
Few of your clients are likely to want to read thousands of words if a few pictures sum up the content they are after.
It may sound like a cliché, but an image really can be worth a thousand words – and few of your clients are likely to want to read thousands of words if a few pictures sum up the information they are after. Even then, though, there are different types of image: one message may be efficiently put across via a graph – whether that be histogram, pie chart or spider chart, while another may be better explained using a map or timeline, and yet another via an animation showing stages in a process.
At Tantamount we believe that there is an ideal format and medium to present each piece of information to a particular audience: sometimes it’s better to have a face-to-face meeting with your client to discover exactly what his objective is and help him understand how you can work with him to achieve this; at other times it may be better to present in-depth information in a leaflet that the client can read in his own time; the information in this printed leaflet may be expanded on in the form of videos or texts to download from your website; or perhaps the whole text and video content could be bound together into a digital brochure or informational app.
Content production can feel as if it’s an end in itself. But in reality, your goal is to communicate something to someone. It’s worth stepping back occasionally and considering whether you are actually managing to do this by using the right format and medium for your message and audience.
If you feel your business is producing masses of content, but aren’t sure you’ve found the right words and the right graphic formats and to actually get your message across effectively, why not email us – or pick up the phone for a chat?