Episode 2: I Want My Multichannel Content Strategy
Making content can be tricky. You might have a great idea and know what story you want to tell. You might take lessons on storytelling simplicity from last week's episode, taking inspiration from David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust and allowing your audience the space to bring their own ideas and narratives.
But once you've done that, where do you publish it? What format do you use? Text? Audio? Video? How do you make sure it reaches the right audience in the right places?
There was once a time on the internet, a decade or so ago, when it was enough to create content, then share that link on social media.
Over time, things changed. Social media platforms got crowded with content. Social media platforms monetized and introduced advertising platforms. In that new environment, the likelihood that the audience you built on those platforms actually saw the content you shared dropped significantly.
Now, we're at a point where each channel you publish content requires some independence. It's no longer enough to use the "hub and spoke" or "publish once - syndicate everywhere" content model.
Your story could be the same, but how you tell it may change to reach the right audience. That's where multichannel content and content repurposing come into play.
What Is Multichannel Content?
Multichannel content means what it says. It's the distribution and promotion of content via more than one channel. Channel examples may include your blog, social media accounts, video streaming platforms, and podcasts.
What is Content Repurposing?
Content repurposing means taking existing content and using it in more than one way - sometimes with modifications - to work on more than one channel.
Looking Back at MTV
For some multichannel content inspiration, let's travel back in time to the 1980s and talk about MTV. No, I don't mean the weird reality show network that it eventually became, but the cable TV channel that became famous for playing music videos nearly 24/7.
MTV launched in the United States on the 1st of August, 1981. It was essentially a radio station complete with deejays - known as veejays - and other trappings that you might find on FM rock and pop radio at the time. The twist of MTV was that you could watch it.
Most early music videos that aired on the network were simple live performances, live in-studio videos, or artist promotional videos made by record labels. In other words: repurposed content. MTV initially took what it could get.
Over a short period, the network started to "move the needle" for some artists in a way that traditional radio wasn't doing anymore. A new crop of artists focused more on visual imagery, and good looks and styles started to appear.
The bands of the 1970s who weren't interested didn't play along with this new visual medium. Either that, or they were simply too old or not attractive enough to make a good showing on MTV. They faded into the background.
Embracing a New Content Platform
For artists that embraced the new platform and started to make content with videos in mind, MTV became a significant driver for promotion, distribution, and record sales.
Dire Straits was one such band. They started in 1977 and had a full four years together as a band with three great albums under their belt before MTV even hit the airwaves. Singer and guitarist Mark Knopfler was not a fan of MTV or music videos. Sure, dire straits released videos throughout the years, but most didn't get the attention they could have.
Then came 1985.
MTV was a few years into its historic climb when Dire Straits began work on their Brothers In Arms album. The variety of videos appearing on the network was wide, and a new industry developed around the new music video medium.
For some artists, doing the bare minimum and releasing performance videos on a concert stage or in a studio was enough. Others had gotten creative, using real film directors and actors to shoot their videos. They used the latest visual effects and developed compelling storylines to create something entirely new as a visual companion to their latest singles.
A Song With MTV In Mind
According to the 2012 book, "I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video," by Rob Tannenbaum, Dire Straits' management went to MTV, asking how they could get their band on the network. MTV's response? Make a hit song with MTV in mind. Make, as they put it, an "MTV-able" song, and of course, a great music video.
Despite his misgivings, Knopfler took that to heart in his own special way. Though he wasn't a fan of music videos or MTV, he started working on the idea after some nudging from his girlfriend and others.
What came next was a cynical song told from the point of view of a couple of appliance movers he'd overheard talking about MTV in a New York City appliance store. They talked about how easy those rockstars' lives must be compared to their own lives.
"That ain't workin'. That's the way you do it."
Money For Nothing: An “MTVable” Song
The song "Money For Nothing" featured their friend Sting, who lent his voice to the song's opening, singing the now-famous words: "I want my MTV."
It was literally an MTV-able song.
Dire straits produced a video using one of the great video directors of the 1980s, Steve Baron, who also had made the videos for A-ha's Take On Me, and Thomas Dolby's. She Blinded Me With Science, among a lot of others.
The video featured digitally animated characters - notably those two appliance movers, now shaped like TVs. Other TVs showing the MTV logo played other music videos within the video. It was rather meta and quite innovative for the time. The video became a massive hit for Dire Straits and, by extension, MTV.
Although the song Money For Nothing was rather condescending and sarcastic towards the network, they loved it. They loved having their name in it. The phrase "I want my MTV" was simple. It was memorable.
Do you recall episode 1 of The Rock & Roll Content Show when we talked about David Bowie and the simplicity in the message in Ziggy Stardust? Fans brought their own narratives to the story. That's what happened here too. "I want my MTV" became one of the great brand slogans of the 1980s.
I'm a big Dire Straits fan. I love the band and Mark Knopfler is one of my favorite guitar players. I could list more than 20 of my favorite Dire Straits songs before I got to Money For Nothing. It's a catchy song with some outstanding elements and a killer guitar riff. Dire Straits has so many amazingly crafted songs that Money For Nothing is reasonably pedestrian by comparison.
Enter multichannel content. By taking that song and reworking it with an amazing, inventive video for play on the the pop culture zeitgeist that was 1985 MTV, you elevate it to another level.
Money For Nothing is likely the first song that comes to mind for most people thinking about Dire Straits.
How do we make our content "MTVable?" Well, we can start by doing just what Knopfler did. He took them literally. He made content that directly addressed the platform and its audience. He even used MTV and music videos as the theme of the song.
Multichannel content not only allows you to reach a wider audience or different audiences. It increases the likelihood that your intended audience will see your content.
If done well, multichannel content can become more than the sum of its parts. But it's more than just taking your content on one channel and putting it on another. It should be engineered or re-engineered to work natively on each channel so that it can stand alone if necessary yet maintain a connection to its source.
Multichannel Content: From Theory to Practice
How do we take these ideas from theory and put them into practice? Here are a few tips:
First, where is your audience? We use audience personas in content marketing to be an avatar for the kind of person with whom you want your content to resonate. Your personas should not only outline who your target audience member is but where they're at online and on what platforms they typically engage.
If you're looking to add a new channel to your content plan, that's the place should start.
Second, get inspired. What are others doing? I don't necessarily mean competitors or other content creators in your area. What are people or brands in entirely different spaces doing?
Case Study: Multichannel Content in Stand-up Comedy
For a practical example of multichannel content and content repurposing and action, let's leave the world of rock & roll for a moment and venture into the realm of stand-up comedy.
Comedian Sam Morrill
I recently saw comedian Sam Morrill at a local comedy club. Sam is one of a number of comics doing some exciting things with multichannel content in the comedy space.
For most comics, their flagship content would be their live performance. This performance is fine-tuned and sharpened over weeks, months, and years, with the goal of releasing a comedy special - often on a streaming platform like YouTube or Netflix.
Most of the bits that go into those specials are evergreen content - meaning that they will feature topics that stand the test of time and engage the broader subset of their audience. Mostly, they will remain devoid of local references and in-the-moment occurrences.
If you've ever seen a great comic live, you know that a lot of crowd work goes on in a live show. Audiences are unpredictable. Things happen in the moment. Sometimes jokes are made off-the-cuff that are local in nature or that reflect something that's happened in the news. Perhaps a heckler might say something that makes a comedian think on their feet or do something funny and memorable.
Sam keeps the camera on all of those weekly live performances, and he clips those out for promotional content on Instagram and other social channels during the following week.
He saves the good evergreen content that he's honing for his next comedy specials, but those in-the-moment bits become the fuel that drives his overall content strategy.
For one more content channel, Morrill publishes podcasts each week, including his primary podcast with friend and comedian Mark Normand, called We Might Be Drunk, and a new sports podcast with retired Patriots wide receiver Julian Edelman.
Both of those channels are mostly unrelated to his live show, though he does introduce and workshop new ideas with Norman from time to time on the podcast. They also serve as a vehicle for promoting his primary content channel, which is, of course, his live performances.
I don't know if comics like Morrell have ever considered this a multichannel content strategy. I also don't know if he does this purely by himself or if he's got a support team that does it for him.
However it's carried out, it stands as an excellent example of multichannel content, content differentiation, and repurposing that content creators can use as inspiration.
What About Your Multichannel Content?
Think about the kinds of content you create and how they might work together like this. What evergreen content should you reserve for flagship content? What in-the-moment content can you use as a promotional vehicle?
Let's return to Dire Straits as we conclude. What are you going to do to make your content "MTVable?" How are you going to change your strategy or differentiate your content? Let me know, and I just might feature you in an upcoming episode of the podcast.
Listen to Brothers In Arms
Dire Straits’ 1985 release, Brothers In Arms is a masterpiece of 1980s rock & roll. Highlights, for me, include So Far Away, Your Latest Trick, the title track, Brothers in Arms, and the extended 8 and 1/2 minute version of Money for Nothing. Below are links to the album on Apple Music and Spotify.