How do you choose the best medium for your content? Blog vs podcast. Podcast vs YouTube. YouTube vs social media. There are so many options, and every authority could argue one way or the other for any of them!
It’s not always an easy or straight-forward decision, but there are a set of steps and specific questions you can – and should – ask yourself to make sure you’re choosing the best one for your business.
Choosing the best platform
When it comes to choosing the best platform for your business, it’s important to ask yourself three questions:
- What does your avatar (ideal audience member) want?
- What type of content do you enjoy creating?
- What do you have time to create consistently?
1. What does your avatar want?
When it comes to creating content, the most important research you’ll do is finding out what content your avatar wants and needs.
If you don’t know what type of content can help your avatar, then you’re essentially creating content for yourself, which is not the goal.
As you begin to understand what your avatar wants and needs (what topics, questions, answers, strategies, and lessons will help them), you’ll begin to understand more about them as an individual.
Outside of their demographics, who is your avatar?
As you get to know your avatar, you’ll uncover things like:
- Where they hang out at online
- What their daily schedule is like
- How they currently consume content
Finding these things out will lead you directly to what your avatar wants when it comes to how they consume content, which will lead you directly to what type of content they prefer.
An example of uncovering what your avatar wants
Let’s say your avatar is a mom; her name is Lisa.
Lisa spends her days homeschooling her two kids, ages 5 and 8.
Most afternoons around 2pm Lisa is driving her kids to their sports’ practices, and then running errands (like going to the grocery store or picking up dry cleaning).
In the evenings around 4pm she’s usually picking up around the house and preparing dinner for the family before her husband finishes up work for the day.
She loves reading books and watching shows with her husband after the kids go to bed. But because she’s on-the-go a lot throughout the day, she finds herself tuning in to podcasts.
Unlike books and TV shows, she can listen to a podcast even while she’s driving to and from the kids’ sports practices, picking up around the house, and while she’s cooking dinner.
Because you know who Lisa is, you can be confident in knowing that Lisa’s preference and her best bet for being able to consistently consume content is via a podcast.
2. What do you enjoy creating?
Now that you know what your avatar wants, let’s look at what you actually enjoy creating.
What do you naturally gravitate towards when it comes to consuming content that is going to help you solve a problem or learn something new?
Do you tend to…
- Read a book on the topic or Google it?
- Watch a YouTube video?
- Tune into an audiobook or podcast?
- Scroll your social media feed for recommendations?
Knowing what type of content you trend towards can be helpful in understanding what type of content you’re naturally attracted to.
But this doesn’t always mean that’s the type of content you enjoy creating yourself. It can just be a helpful exercise in awareness.
If you find that you are attracted to reading a book or Googling something, but you don’t necessarily like to write, then that’s ok!
Or maybe you love learning new stuff on YouTube, but you’re not interested in video production.
The first part of this exercise in finding out what you trend towards.
The second part of is actually asking yourself what type of content you’re most drawn to when it comes to creating.
What are you drawn to when it comes to creating?
If given a project to create a lesson explaining a recipe, as a random example, which would you automatically choose?
- Writing a post about it
- Creating a video showing it
- Talking about it via a podcast
- Taking pictures and sharing it via social media
Give yourself this task for a few different examples – like the lesson explaining a recipe – but insert whatever your topic is or what the thing you’re going to be sharing is.
There is no right or wrong answer – this is simply figuring out what type of content you actually enjoy creating.
If you’re already good at it, that’s a bonus!
And if you’re not good at it simply because you haven’t done it before, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pursue it anyway. It just means you’ll have to learn along the way!
3. What do you have time to create consistently?
Each of these three questions is critical in deciding which medium and what type of content is best for you. So last, but certainly not least, what do you have time to create consistently?
It’s important to consider the time it takes to create a certain type of content and to actually put yourself in the situation so you know the steps necessary to create what you have in mind.
For example, if you’ve decided you’re going to produce videos…
- What equipment and setup will be required?
- How long will it take for you to acquire that?
- Once set up, how will you prepare your content? Via an outline, will you wing it, or will you read from a script?
- Once you’re all prepped, how long does it take you to actually record a video?
- How long does it take to edit that video?
- How long does it take for you to come up with a title, description, and tags for that video?
- How long does it take you to publish and promote that video?
Run through your content create plan so you have a realistic idea of what it’s going to take time-wise to create a single piece of content, because this could have an impact on what type of content you decide to start with.
Creating consistent content is a key component to gaining momentum and traction; don’t skip this step!
Don’t be a perfectionist
Choosing blog vs podcast, podcast vs YouTube, or YouTube vs social media is an important decision. However, it shouldn’t take you more than a week or so to go through the steps and questions above and make a decision.
And know that whatever you choose, you can always change it!
Maybe you decide to go with a blog vs podcast, but a few months later realize that your avatar actually loves listening to content. At that point you could either add a podcast to your marketing mix, or decide to start producing content via audio instead of writing it.
The most important thing for you to do right now is to make a decision, because any decision will be better than none.
This is true once you choose a medium or platform, too.
For example, when you’re creating videos, don’t feel like every single video has to be the best video you’ve ever produced – especially in the beginning. There will be a learning curve, so know that you will improve and get better the more you do that thing.
Strive for constant improvement, but don’t waste time trying to make everything perfect.
Blog vs podcast
How do you choose the best medium for your content?
Follow the simple steps laid out here and once you’ve answered the three questions above, you’ll be well on your way to making a confident decision about whether you do a blog vs podcast, podcast vs YouTube, or YouTube vs social media!
If you’re strongly considering a podcast but aren’t sure what all is involved in producing a podcast, join us in our Free Podcast Course! This free 8-video series will walk you through every step of creating and launching you podcast.
