In comedy and in credit unions – delivery makes all the difference

I’m a big fan of podcasts – I listen to them, I make them, I study them, I even read books about them—and I learn a ton by listening to them. Podcast are a great content channel, and I’m glad more are being made each day. I hope your credit union sees the value in producing one for its members.

But I can’t listen to podcasts while I work and there are many times when I don’t want content or information in audio format. If I’m searching for a quick answer, I just need an article I can scan. Other times I need to learn and see how to do something, so a quick video tutorial is the best way to deliver the information I seek.

Why do my personal content digestion preferences matter? Because everyone has them, and if your credit union is putting out content, and spending time, resources and money on creating what you know will benefit your members, you’re only half-valuable unless you think about where they are physically and mentally when you deliver it to them.

Even with a limited marketing / content development team and budget, the best way for your organization to effectively deliver valuable content is to have a diversity of delivery options. This isn’t to say every time you have a campaign to execute, you need a blog post, a podcast, a video, an engagement contest, a news release, a pitch to local media, and ten other methods for getting your content out. But you should have a menu of options you’re skilled at producing and pick the method that best matches the content and the strategic timing of delivery. Then think like your audience and imagine where they are in their lives and days when your content might float across their attentions.

Let’s see a sample of what this looks like. On your content calendar this month (you have one, right?!) you are planning to deliver content related to:

• personal finance education series
• new product launch/update
• membership drive and community events
• housing market / economic updates

You might want to align your content, delivery channel and timing as such:

• Financial education: Podcast: Released on Fridays on website, shared via social throughout weekend.
• New product launch: News release, media pitch, newsletter/direct mailing to members: Released on Monday morning.
• Membership drive/event: Video of member testimonials, Infographic of community impact stats: Released 7-10 days prior to event, shared on social media in evenings.
• Housing market news: Interview with expert source, audio and video format: Shared via email to members with loans, around noon on Wednesday.

There is an art and a science to matching content with delivery and timing, so closely measuring results, learning what combinations work best, repeating and re-examining often is vital for success with your specific audience.

Here at Filene, we are going through a similar journey. At our core, we are a research organization and in that way, our research is our product. When a new research report is ready, we have so much love and passion for it that the first thing we want to do is blast it out in full 100-page PDF glory to everyone in the world. But we’re getting savvier about segmenting who in our audience would most appreciate that delivery method (the likes of Andrew Downin, for one!) versus when the research is better suited for delivery via a short-form executive summary, or presentation deck of main findings, or an infographic visually representing key results, or an interactive microsite with quizzes, or multimedia storytelling with audio clips, video interviews, and written descriptions. And the timing of when the report needs to be released will help drive those strategic delivery decisions and vise-versa.  

At the end of a day’s worth of content consumption, I am full and exhausted, but better for the knowledge I’ve gained if the delivery channels met my needs. The founder of viral content website Upworthy, Peter Koechley, spoke recently at an event I attended about what it took to create content that engages 50 million people monthly. He reminded us that whatever we’re doing, we’re not just vying for attention or market share against others doing the same thing as us. The reality of the world we live in today is that no matter who we are if we have a message to tell, we’re all essentially ‘Kompeting with the Kardashians.’ May your message survive its journey and safely reach its destination.