The ever-increasing usage of mobile services in Zimbabwe is quite evident. Mobile phone penetration is way beyond 100% meaning that many people own at least 2 mobile phones. The advent of the internet and social media has also steadily pushed the growth of smartphone usage. Most people now access the internet and spend on social media using their mobile devices. The Zimbabwean context is unique because people are accustomed to SMS, call and data bundles. So the common scenario is that people are ruthlessly frugal when it comes to how they use their data (which is expensive). The other scenario is that content tends to cross platforms i.e. what’s posted on YouTube can end up on WhatsApp. What this means is that if your content isn’t adaptable across platforms people will ignore it. So how then can you make content adaptable across platforms?
Use Infographics
If you want to easily create content that’s adaptable across all platforms then infographics are the way to go. Infographics involve the compacting, summarizing and presentation of important information using graphical representations. By graphical representations, I’m referring to graphs, pie charts, amongst others – or the combination of two or more and presenting them in the form of an image. Infographics are often made in colourful and comprehensive ways that make them attractive. When propagating them they get compressed into reasonable sizes thus making it easy for anyone to open them. After all, the best attribute of infographics is that they can be easily shared across all social media platforms.
Tailor And Diversify Content For the Different Platforms
Here’s the thing, a promotional video posted on YouTube might not be opened when someone sees it shared on WhatsApp. In fact, it’s common occurrence is that when someone sees a link to a YouTube or Facebook video shared on say, WhatsApp they don’t bother opening. This stems from the quest to save data. What this means is that if you had posted just on YouTube not everyone will get the information. This is because people prioritize different platforms according to their data packages. The strategy you can use to get around this is by repurposing your content by tailoring it according to the different social media platforms. For instance, you can transcribe a video meant for YouTube (or Facebook) into a text-based blog post (for your website or even Facebook). You can then share the blog post text on WhatsApp. You can then post it again Twitter in snippet form. That way you would have adapted one piece of content across several platforms.
Structure Your Content Strategically
When coming up with content ensure that you title it and use sub-headings. Titles and sub-headings will not only make the reading or viewing experience for the audience easy and enjoyable it also helps in terms of adaptability. Also incorporate the use of keywords, key phrases, tags and the like. The various platforms have in-built functionalities that enable them to actually adapt your content to the platform’s layouts accordingly. Include links in the form of social media handles so that you can redirect people to your other social media platforms where people can choose to view your content. For instance, someone has read your blog post or Facebook post but they’re interested in going to view the content on YouTube – including a link helps in that regard. Titles are extremely important be it it’s a post, blog post, image or video. It’s the first thing that people see that can either draw them in or turn them off. Virtually all platforms allow for the inclusion of links so leverage on them to make your content adaptable across all platforms. The bottom line is that your content must be structured in such a way that it easily morphs into the respective layout of any platform. Plus it must also be structured in such a way that allows people to navigate across different platforms with ease.
These 3 ways work best in unison so strive to use all of them at once. The cost of data locally and people’s social media platforms preferences are metrics you shouldn’t ignore. What you want to do with your content is to make it reach as many people as possible, getting high engagements and at the same being sensitive to the metrics I just highlighted.
