5 reasons you should be developing platform-specific content

Contrary to popular opinion, not every social media platform will be appropriate for your brand’s goals. And, if you hope to deploy an effective and optimized marketing plan, you’ll need to prioritize developing platform-specific content, which can be time consuming! Wouldn’t you rather invest your team’s time and energy into initiatives that will produce a higher return? That is why we always help our clients design platform-specific marketing strategies. Just because we all enjoy watching the latest TikTok challenge, does not mean that is going to resonate with your audience when they need to find healthcare services. To illustrate what we mean, we’ll walk you through a few reasons why you should be developing platform-specific content and then help you navigate integrating it into your existing marketing strategy. 

 

Reason #1 – You can hone in on your target audience

The importance of buyer personas and the customer journey cannot be overstated! By crafting buyer personas, you and your team will have a clear idea of where your audience is getting information and in what form they are consuming it. For example, you may find that hot leads are coming through your website and scheduling system from ads, however, for health-specific information, your clients may be searching for answers on YouTube from health influencers. It would make sense then to continue with the ads to drive leads, but also create short informational videos on a variety of health topics for YouTube, all based on your target audience and what they want from each platform. Additionally, if you need to spend time on a recruitment marketing strategy, you will also have to create different personas to determine which channel appeals the most to your candidates, depending on their different levels and specialties. Buyer personas contain key pieces of demographic data about your audience and can allow you to get a better feel for what platforms are going to be the most beneficial to your organization. 

 

Reason #2 – Drive better engagement with platform-specific content

It may go without saying, but when you create content for a specific platform, it is more likely to receive higher engagement than something general that you share across all platforms. To do this, you have to understand the demographics and unique features of each platform. For example, you’re more likely to wow your Instagram followers with a well-structured health and wellness carousel as opposed to an unremarkable job posting. Then, to drive further engagement, you can use the specific platform tools at your disposal, such as branded hashtags to encourage further brand-specific engagement and boosting posts to reach a broader audience. 

 

Reason #3 – You can accomplish different goals with different platforms

Essentially, you can view each platform as an opportunity to engage with a specific audience and achieve a specific goal. If you hope to achieve different goals for different platforms, you’ll have to first start by honing in on your specific audience as we mentioned above. This will help you determine which platforms to prioritize. From there, you can determine which goals are best to tackle with each platform. If one of your objectives this year is to build brand awareness among GenZ for your healthcare services, it may be a good idea to get a TikTok account. This may sound daunting at first, but with a well-prioritized marketing strategy, you can create platform-specific content, such as short videos with some of your key professionals giving advice or sharing interesting health information. Otherwise, consider working with influencers and others who already have larger audiences to build trust while you build up your brand profile. Another specific goal may be recruiting candidates for which LinkedIn would be ideal. You can spend time crafting a unique strategy and content for recruitment on LinkedIn that may involve getting your leadership team to share high-level culture and organizational content which would not garner as much engagement on Instagram or TikTok perhaps. 

 

Reason #4 – Streamline team responsibilities and objectives

Most likely, your team works on many different campaigns across multiple channels. And ideally, you have team members that are experts on certain channels, for example, website, social, paid advertising, etc. By creating platform-specific content, you can help to streamline responsibilities and clarify objectives across your team and across channels. It might be easier for your team to achieve their objectives if they are focused on a specific platform and have goals for that platform that connect to the organization’s broader goals. This is especially true as you get into the specific content and visual guidelines for each platform as posting a video on Instagram has different specifications than posting on YouTube, and so on. Plus, when your team is focused on the few channels that work the best for your organization, you’re more likely to see results fast.

 

Reason #5 – You can expect a higher return on investment

With better engagement rates, a more connected audience, streamlined team responsibilities, and a well-defined channel strategy, it is inevitable that you will witness a much higher ROI for your marketing activities. Focusing on platform-specific content helps your brand appear authentic, original, and closely attuned to your audience’s needs and wants. With a strong emphasis on targeted platforms, you can also reach a broader audience that you already know is more connected to your message. All in all, developing platform-specific content is the best way to shape your content strategy. If you’re looking for extra help as you build out your strategy for each platform, contact MDG, and we’ll make sure you achieve your marketing objectives.