In my last post I talked about what makes a good storyteller and I thought this post would be a good follow up to talk about how to use the web and social networks to spread your story. Now we all love a good story and want to share with our friends. But if you are managing an online brand what’s the best method to spread your story via the web and social networks.
We all hear the experts say start with a blog or web site. While this is the starting point it’s important to look at channels that can help spread your story. Feedburner and RSS feed tools are one great way to allow users to subscribe to your content and stay abreast. But are there other avenues to help spread the word?
The answer is yes and to explain this point I’m going to use a recent example I came across. A few weeks ago my friend Greg Ng @gregoryng asked for volunteers for a Freezerburns episode on frozen hamburgers. I was excited to be chosen as one of the taste testers for his “frodown” where he had three fathers taste frozen hamburgers and choose their favorites. The episode was a big success for Greg and even made the front page of YouTube on Father’s Day.
Wow exciting right? But what really caught my interest was when I went to Freezerburns site and check out the subscribe page. I expected Greg to have the leading subscription options like YouTube and iTunes. But what I found was that he had that and much more. A total of 13 subscriber options are available for his content. The usual suspects like Feedburner and email options as well as Twitter and Facebook are present. But what impressed me were some of the lesser known, at least to me, video and podcasting options Greg managed his content through. Take a look below at his subscriber options listed on his page.
Now I know there are tools that allow content creators to autopost to multiple sites. But at the same time that’s only half the work. Setting up accounts, moderating comments and keeping up with all the necessary options, updates and other tasks on these networks is time consuming. What this impressive list tells me is that Greg is dedicated to his audience and wants to deliver content to audiences on sites that are relevant to his content type, video. I know that I’ve had to sometimes not use some social networks or distribution sites for some of the online brands that I manage because I’m not sure if it’s the right audience or if anyone is really going to the site. However in making that decision I may have missed some readers and opportunity to connect with potential customers and audience.
What channels are you evaluating when distributing your content on the web?
