To ask everyone to read an 8 page white paper is like expecting everyone to read the hard cover, unabridged version of Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. Or, it's like sharing my monthly lead gen results in raw Excel data -- just numbers, no charts. Probably not the best format to share results with your executive team!
Let's face it: People have preferred formats for digesting information and the format needs to be conducive to browsing as well as deep dive study. If your company's site is a pure play of simple web text content it's probably missing an opportunity to tap into new audiences.
Here are the key advantages of publishing your content in multiple formats:
1. Maximize Your Reach
A few weeks back in my long tail article I emphasized a key way to tap into new audiences by spreading your content around. It's about being accessible. You can upload your podcasts to iTunes, your presentations to slideshare.net, or your videos to YouTube (all for free). Is any of your content being found on YouTube -- the 3rd largest search engine?
2. Better Lead Generation Offers
Packaging up your content assets into "kits" makes great lead generation offers. For example our Inbound Marketing Kit has a couple of videos, an eBook and links to some blog articles in there.
Providing downloadable videos helps us cater to end users who want to consume the info at their leisure or on the go, while the eBooks are for quick browsing, printing and annotating. Each format has its uses!
3. It's an Important Future Investment
Last week Nielsen Ratings reported that Americans view video on the best screen available. Ben Parr from Mashable covered that story with a blog post titled: "You Tube Generation: Online Video up 53 Percent in 2009". Here's the data:
Online video grew 13% in Q1 2009 and consumption of video via mobile phones such as the iPhone grew by 52% from last year.
Chances are a good chunk of your Generation Y and Millennial audiences are not going to read your white paper. And if that's not your audience right now, just wait a couple of years!
4. It is Personal
Blog articles, interviews, video case studies are examples of content assets that are not only easy to digest but also a lot more personal than the typical content on a web page. With video or audio especially you can put a face or a voice to the individuals you hear from and if done right the conversational, informal style can be easy to relate to.
5. It Shows Personality
Are you fiesty, sarcastic or just hillarious? Formal web content rarely captures the personality or flavor or your company or individuals at your company. Companies spend tens of thousands to millions of dollars on brand and personality for their website. But sometimes a simple video could bring that out like text couldn't.
To Sum it Up
In order to tap into new audiences, maximize your reach and provide easy, accessible content you need to publish your content in multiple formats. Not only is this an opportunity to bring out your personality, it's also great for lead generation!
Are you experimenting with different content formats on your site? Please share your thoughts with us in the comments!
Image courtesy: Amazon.com
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