How To Match Content Type To Target Audience

With great content comes great responsibility and knowing the limits of content will help you plan appropriately and not over-promise and under-deliver. We’ll look at the top five considerations from a whole host of scenarios you may encounter. In this article, I want to talk about how you can match content type to the target audience.

Silent Auto-Play: a key consideration for video content. 85% of Facebook video is watched without sound. Design your video content to not be sound dependent. Consider subtitles for all video content.

Accessibility: does your audience need ALT tag descriptions if they’re hard of vision, see above point on subtitles for the aurally impaired users, high contrast image and colours too.

Refer to the W3C accessibility guidelines especially if you work within a public sector business where accessibility is often mandated by law.

Vertical compliance: speaking of law, if your business is one of regulated interest e.g. alcohol or pharmaceuticals, be aware of the regulations in relation to your content e.g. targeting 18+

Excessive data usage: rich content formats can pose a strain on some devices. A 300MB video might look great but for an audience on 3G with patchy reception, it will be a pain.

Crisis situations: always consider pausing “business as usual” content promotion if you’re experiencing a business crisis situation, depending on the severity of the situation. React to the situation as appropriate.

Thanks to new content segmentation methods available on some social platforms, known as ‘dark posting’, businesses on social media now have the ability to match content to only be seen by the intended audience.

This method of selective content display is available through Facebook and Instagram.

For example, a shoe store may have a storewide sale on with 50% off however the creatives they use in the ad may feature high heels for a female audience and sneakers for a male audience.

Neither audience will ever see the ad or post never intended for their audience as Facebook/Instagram have the visibility of these posts switched off for unintended audiences.

Benefits:

Avoids wastage by making sure the audience who see your content are 100% relevant
Avoids irrelevant messaging reaching the wrong audience e.g. if a follower sees about an event happening in a different country to where they live
Allows for tweaks in language, copy, imagery without interfering with your master brand.

Here is a selection of tools for creating eBooks and white papers. These range from web-based tools to native applications.

MS Word is a native application intuitive for white papers but not so good for eBooks
HubSpot and InDesign work well for eBooks creation
PressBooks is a web-based application for eBook creation.

Here is a selection of free and paid-for tools for creating infographics. Some of these are web-based with others application-based. The web-based platforms contain handy templates that you can customize.

Free Tools include: Picktochart, Infogram (with paid enhancements)
Paid tools include: Adobe’s Illustrator programme and Visually

Here is a selection of tools for creating long-form video content:

Adobe Premiere Pro: a timeline-based video editing app developed by Adobe Systems and published as part of the Adobe Creative Cloud licensing program.

After Effects: is a digital visual effect, motion graphics, and compositing application developed by Adobe Systems and used in the post-production process of filmmaking and television production.

Final Cut Pro: is Apple’s signature professional video editing software.

Here is a selection of tools for creating short-form video content:

Photoshop: you can use Photoshop CC’s image-editing tools to translate to video and transform a selection of clips into movies.

The redesigned, clip-based timeline panel reflects video editors like Adobe Premiere, including transitions and effects that give finished videos professional polish.

Viva Video: comes as a native video app which allows stopping motion, basic editing and branding.

Native video editing tools: YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat:

Instagram and Snapchat’s native cameras include features such as boomerangs (looping forward and back), slow motion, rewind and time lapse

Facebook’s native camera includes features like lenses and filters.

YouTube’s native editor allows for the addition of music, editing, subtitles

Here’s a look at YouTube Editor. As you can see, there are a number of handy editing options including:

Add music/sound effects
Add scene transitions
Text subtitles
Basic edits
Scene additions

YouTube also has an Audio Library of royalty-free music for usage on any videos.

While there a number of content creation tools available it is important to consider the tools and their suitability for your organisation under the following areas:

Functionality: can the tool suitably work to fulfil all the content formats you need to create? Or is there a tool that can create multiple formats e.g. Photoshop can create jpegs, gifs, PDFs, movs etc?

Ease of use: some content creation tools like Canva are very intuitive but a lot of the Adobe Suite require specialized upskilling.

Resource: there are a lot of great tools but they often have limitations on their functionality. Paid-for tools have a much wider suite of outputs but also require upskilling or dedicated resources to get the most out of them.

Frequency of use: before considering resources assess how frequent your need for the tool is

Best Practices

There are many considerations with all of the various formats of content that you can create, however, these rules should hold true regardless of the platform or the content format to help you follow best practices:

Does it provide utility: something useful for your audience – education, entertainment, information, desire, relief?

Is it fit for the platform you’re publishing on – resolution, size, functionality?

Can you measure the effectiveness of the content – the ability to assess success or failure?

Is it consistent in appearance and style with your brand – does it relate back to your personas and brand story?

Is it aligned with your business goals – is it clear what you’re trying to achieve with the content for your business?

Does it provide utility: something useful for your audience – education, entertainment, information, desire, relief?
Is it fit for the platform you’re publishing on – resolution, size, functionality?
Can you measure the effectiveness of the content – the ability to assess success or failure?

Is it consistent in appearance and style with your brand – does it relate back to your personas and brand story?

Is it aligned with your business goals – is it clear what you’re trying to achieve with the content for your business?

Action Point

PS: I know you might agree with some of the points that I have raised in this article. You might not agree with some of the issues raised. Let me know your views about the topic discussed. We will appreciate it if you could drop your comment. Thanks in anticipation.

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