So you’ve got a blog right? You’re on Twitter circulating your links to your followers. You’ve got a Facebook fanpage and personal page to post your blog links on. You’ve posted a similar post on Tumbler and Posterous. I’m sure I’m leaving out some other mediums for linking but you get the point. What else could we be missing? Oh yea, you’re own website right?
Recently I was chatting with some of my colleagues in design and development. One of our main issues is the redundancy of the same content being regurgitated on all of the same platforms. Now I have to admit some guilt and hypocrisy with that because I do the same to some extent. If you follow some industry leaders you’ll see them have profiles and many different platforms. Almost all of which you’ll find the same content when new content is published. This is so that the masses can consume in whatever way they find most convenient. However what if that content wasn’t anything different from what a similar person is saying. It reminds me of that game where you till one person a story, and 7 people down the line will have variations of the main story plus or minus their own input.
How do you know what content is worth consuming? I don’t know of any one answer that blankets all, but I can say you should each really make your own decision on who you decide to hold on a pedestal of worthiness. Not like a monarchy or anything, but more-so for validity. Just because Tom of #1 design dot-com has 1.5 million subscribers and says something key about a subject matter doesn’t mean he’s 100% right for you or your industry. There is a lot of quality insights out there from some well-known people. There are also some great insights from some lessor known people too.
Your website should be your #1 source for your content. Sure your blog should be integrated in that, but people need to be captivated and drawn to your own website. Not consuming your content solely on other mediums and never returning to your site to comment, purchase, or consume more. You should also monitor your outlet mediums. If you find that more of your content is being consumed on a particular outlet AND for a specific subject matter more than others, its time to produce to that demand. Don’t regurgitate that worthy content that works mainly in Linked In, on Tumbler if the audience on Tumbler is obviously different. That could be just lazy tactics, but you’ll grow tired of social media as a whole if you go this route. Especially if you’re doing this yourself outside of using a marketing firm or social media adviser.
Let me know your thoughts on content redundancy in the comments below. I’m intrigued to hear you weigh in.
