Is your content strategy optimized for multiple platforms? Learn how to create a successful multi-platform content strategy that reaches your target audience on every channel.
In this guide, we’ll cover the essential steps to creating a comprehensive content strategy that works across all platforms, from social media to email marketing. With our expert tips and best practices, you’ll be able to maximize your reach and engagement while delivering consistent messaging and branding.
As a scaling entrepreneur, there’ll come a time in your business where you feel ready to fly the proverbial birds nest from one platform and start producing content on multiple platforms. And I bet that whether you’ve already started or you’re waiting to start, it feels pretty overwhelming.
How can you create a multi-platform content strategy? It’s hard enough keeping up with one platform.
Well, before we dive into the how to, let’s talk first about the when to…
If you’re still mastering one platform and refining your content strategy for that platform, it’s probably not a good idea to add in more platforms to the mix. You’ll get overwhelmed and water down your content.
The only time I see this working is when you essentially duplicate your content on multiple platforms for no additional effort – such as Instagram and Facebook using the auto-share or TikTok to Instagram Reels.
Here’s when I do recommend you make the jump to producing content for multiple social media and marketing platforms…
When you have nailed your content strategy, regular enquiries and the focus is now on increasing leads for your already established sales processes.
I’ve seen (including in myself) many dwindled out and defeated accounts on Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok after they tried to solve a bottom-of-the-funnel issue with a top-of-the-funnel solution (in other words, they thought more leads would fix their sales issue when they’re already struggling to convert their current leads).
What is a multi-platform content strategy?
A content strategy that repurposes, reformats and reimagines your content across multiple social media and marketing platforms to maximise content shelf-life, increase visibility, and attract more leads.
How to Create a Multi-Platform Content Strategy
Firstly, you need to identify your marketing and brand objective. What type of brand are you building? What niche/industry are you in? Where do your ideal clients hang out online? What content formats work best for your marketing style?
For example, if your ideal clients are the professional/corporate types, using platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Email are likely your best platform choices.
If your ideal clients are Gen Z, then TikTok, YouTube and Instagram are where you’ll find them the most.
If you’re in the e-commerce world, then Pinterest, Instagram, and TikTok might be the most trusted sites for product-based businesses.
Secondly, you need to refer back to your long-term brand vision. What is the ultimate dream for your business? To get into speaking gigs, to write a book, to host a globally followed podcast?
Knowing your long-term brand goals will help you identify what your marketing strategy needs to be to support that goal.
Once you know what platforms you want to use, and your brand goals, you’ll have the foundation for your content strategy. So now, let’s get into the nitty-gritty…
Step 1 – Choose your content cadence
Your content cadence is essentially how often and on what days you’ll produce content on each platform. Your content cadence should support your brand goals, but let’s break it down further. For each platform, what is the optimum number of posts for growth?
Majority of the time, quantity wins the day. The bedrock of marketing is consistency and repetition. Not to mention that quantity breeds quality. The more you do something, the better you get. No one ever said that you could only choose one or the other – quantity or quality. It gets to be both, and the quality will only get better so there is no losing.
With that in mind, identify the optimum posting frequency to help you grow is the first step. From there, map it out in a weekly, monthly and quarterly routine.
Here’s an example:
| Monday | Instagram Carousel | Podcast | Pinterest Pins (5-10) |
| Tuesday | Instagram Reel | Email Newsletter | |
| Wednesday | Instagram Single-Image | Blog Article | |
| Thursday | Instagram Carousel | Value Email | Pinterest Pins (5-10) |
| Friday | Instagram Reel | ||
| Saturday | Instagram Single Image | ||
| Sunday |
Step 2 – Create a Content Bank
The trick with creating content for multiple platforms is not to create original content for every platform, but to have a master content bank for which you will stream each content idea to each platform in reimagined, reformatted and repurposed ways.
Reimagined – turning a podcast into a blog article. Podcast would be more conversational with some storytelling where as the blog article will be far more direct and instructional. It’s taking the idea and refining it to suit the other platform better which might require re-writing the content.
Reformatted – turning a carousel into a talking head reel. The content itself stays the exact same but you simply read out what you wrote for the reel.
Repurposed – turning an educational blog article into a sales email. It is changing the purpose of the content. Usually keeping the idea or even the content itself but refining the structure or the wording for a new purpose. It can also mean simply reusing the post itself for the same purpose, often when you’re bringing back a top performing piece of content.
*This is how I break these down. You may have heard these terms used in a multitude of ways. It is always open for interpretation as long as you identify that there are multiple ways to take one idea and use it again for another piece of content.
Your content bank is the root of all your content. This is where you will regularly drop ideas as they come to you, where you will braindump new ideas, and where you will save top performing content to reuse in the future. This content is usually just the headline or a short title to highlight the focus of the content.
Step 3 – Plan your Content
Depending on whether you plan quarterly, monthly or even just weekly, your content should support your business goals. So first, bring out the calendar and identify what dates and goals you have coming up, such as launches, new marketing campaigns, sales, etc.
Insider Tip –
I plan my business out quarterly and I split the quarter into two 6-week sprints. Each sprint has a front-end and back-end focus. Front-end is anything community focused – the visible part of the business. Back-end is anything client-focused – the behind-the-scenes part of the business. Like a shop front and then the shop itself. My front-end focus usually supports or fills my back-end focus and vice versa. This means I always have a clear focus over a 6-week period for what my marketing is doing and how it is supporting the behind-the-scenes of my business.
From there, work backwards from your goals and any important dates. On the calendar, mark those dates and fill in key content that needs to go out for that. For example, a promotional graphic on Instagram for a new workshop or sales emails for the week of open-cart.
Then, using your content cadence, fill in the remaining days on the calendar so you know what content needs to go out when. Then, with your content bank and your marketing strategy (aka, the buyer’s journey, awareness phases, content that attracts, nurtures and converts), write out the headlines or content focuses for each piece of content.
When you are repurposing content, ideally allow for a gap between the same content idea that way it doesn’t feel like they’re being hit in the face by the same content on multiple platforms in the same time period. It will only train your audience to realise there is no incentive to follow you across multiple platforms because it’s all the same. You want it to feel like your content is diverse and bingeworthy across all platforms so that your community engage with all your content and thus increases the touchpoints they have with your brand. In other words, it nurtures and converts your leads far more effectively and quickly.
For example, if you publish a podcast episode on Content Idea #1, then bring that idea back as a blog article no earlier 2-3 weeks later.
Exception
The only exception to this is if you want to promote one of your longer form content types on another platform to drive more eyes to that content. For example, you send out an email the same day you publish your podcast episode. You post a reel with a snippet of the podcast episode the same day or same week. You post a carousel or single-image with a teaser of a new blog article same day or week.
This is what we call your “announcement” or “promotional” style content where you are leveraging your audience on one platform to send them to a more valuable piece of content on another platform.
Step 4 – Create your Content
From here, you can go into each content idea and start to outline them more strategically, creating the materials and writing the content so you can create your multi-platform content strategy.
Depending on your choice of project manager, you can then add tags and categorise your content so you can see clearly which buyer type it speaks to, what phase of the buyer’s journey it is in, the content format(s), the call-to-action, etc.
The end results is you should have a master calendar and know the following:
- platforms you’re posting on
- frequency of each content type per platform
- headline or summary of the content focus
- which buyer type and phase of the buyer’s journey the content is speaking to
- the CTA
- the content pillar or topic
This means that when you batch your content, all you have to do is log in and start writing/filming/recording/creating without having to stress about the strategising, too.
And that’s our 4-step guide on how to create a multi-platform content strategy.
Want to see a multi-platform content strategy in action and learn from our content?
Then let’s make sure we’re hooked up on all our main platforms:
