Biz Ninja Says, “Choose Your (Marketing) Channel Wisely, Grasshopper”

Great products DO NOT sell themselves.  In case you missed it, we talked about that in the post: “If You Build It, They Will Come” Is a Lie.  So, if you have a great message or a great product, what is the right way to get the word out?

There are a lot of channels out there and you need to choose the right one to fit your message.

What is a channel?

A channel is simply a way to communicate your ideas and interact with other people.  I’ve chosen the “blog” channel to get this message out.  I also communicate some thoughts on twitter.  Sometimes a book is the right channel to communicate a very complex idea such as “being a trust agent”.  Teachers and Professors like to communicate in small face-to-face groups and that works pretty well, but it would be a huge challenge for them to teach calculus on twitter.  You get the idea; there are a lot of different ways to communicate and you need to choose the channel that best suits your message to get the results you want.

So let’s look at the pros and cons of a few channels

Twitter gives you the ability to broadcast a simple message to a huge number of people simultaneously.  It’s got great reach, but it’s very ephemeral (try searching for a tweet someone wrote a year ago).  Your message can be very timely, because you can see what people are talking about right at this instant.  The downside is that you are limited to 140 characters and if you want to create non-text interactions, you have to link to other sites to add pictures other media.

Facebook combines the timeliness of twitter with the ability to archive all of your history.  There are also lots of ways to create a very interactive communication channel using Facebook.  It’s fast becoming one of the must-see digital channels (even my mother has a Facebook account…and, no, I didn’t set it up for her).  In addition to just using the status updates for short messages, you can create whole pages dedicated to an idea or a business.  This allows you to communicate fairly complex ideas.

Blogs are traditionally much less about short real-time status updates and more about communicating an idea that may take a page or two.  Of course, if you use a blog platform like WordPress with a flexible theme (I love the Thesis theme), you can make a blog into almost anything you want.  Like Facebook, a blog can create a fairly rich interactive experience for a community to discuss ideas.  The biggest advantage to using a blog over a “pre-baked” platform like Facebook is that you don’t have to work within their framework.  You can make your blog into whatever you want it to be.  The biggest downside is that it takes a lot of work to get people to find your blog and build a community around it.

Books are probably the best way to communicate a really complex idea.  Technically, it’s easier than ever to publish a book.  You can even publish an e-book and distribute it on your blog.  On the other hand, if you want to go the route of traditional publishing, the barrier to entry is pretty big.  The other obvious downside to books is that it takes a lot of time and effort to craft a good book and even more time, money and effort to market a book well.  A good book can really help establish your credibility as an expert in your field though.  If you have the energy and desire to write though, a book can be a great way to promote your idea.

These aren’t the only channels.  You could also use small group meetings, a large conference setting, live or recorded video or audio, email, etc.  Of course, its possible to use multiple channels too.  The key is to look at the needs of your community and the pros and cons of each channel you could use for your idea.

What do you think?  What is the best way to communicate your idea?  What other channels do you like to use?

photo credit, riNux