What medium should you use?
New media and social media have given rise to an endless array of production and distribution options. It’s not just thinking about blogs, podcasts, and videos, but whether you’re going to do something live, what the quality will be, will you allow for interactivity, what tool you plan to use, and whether you’re going to produce it in-house or hire a professional crew. Ask yourself the following initial questions to help guide your decision making:
How is your audience currently consuming information pertaining to your business?
Is it user-to-user support?
Do they garner all their information from an FAQ (frequently asked questions) list or a help database?
Is there one third-party media outlet that’s considered “the bible” for the industry?
Five phases of a purchase cycle (cont'd)
Phase 3 - PurchaseAt any point along the discovery or research stage, you want to make it easy for the individual to jump to purchase, but you don’t want to force it if they’re not ready. This requires offering options either through your own site, a retailer (online or offline), or third-party to make a purchase. Make pricing easily available for them to find and compare across all these options.
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What is the type of content they’re consuming, and what’s the quality?
Do they seek out documents, discussion logs, audio, or video?
Is information parsed through user discussions or are there certified people that offer qualified actionable information?
If video content is prevalent is the majority of it professionally produced, or would a person sitting and talking to a webcam be considered sufficient?
What’s missing? What does your industry need?
Is your content visual? Would a slideshow or video help?
Do you have access to interview really talented people either within your organization, vendors, or customers?
Once you know the answers to these questions, you can start to think about what you want to produce.
