Multimedia: A Marketing Must

There are two schools of thought when it comes to anything in business: specialize or generalize. These are the yin and yang of marketing, vocation, investing and anything you do at work if you are selling, engaging or delivering anything to an audience or market.

My preference has always been for specialization. You look through this website and see “Hispanic market,” not “general market” or “any and all markets.” That does not mean I can’t or won’t do work that is exclusively general (English language) content. Or even in another Romance language (French, for example). As you can see in my Projects page, I’ve done English to Spanish, Spanish to English, Spanish only content creation and while not featured there but certainly a part of my resumé, even English only content creation (The Sun-Sentinel and The Miami Herald were the two newspapers I wrote for first, in English, before Hoy or La Opinion) and work in French.

I choose specialization because it is easier to:

• Search/find/understand (from an audience/market POV)
• Trust (hey, you specialize in this, you must be really good at it - and we are)
• Differentiate (many content creators, fewer content creators that take content from one cultural market into another cultural market)

But because there must be balance in everything, there is one area where I consciously chose generalization. That is the area of media. CPMC offers content creation and translation whether the content is for print, for audio or for video. We can edit your book text and produce your web video. A content or content marketing project benefits from hitting all available media channels, be it print, audio or video.

Why? Because some of us are visual consumers and others are auditory consumers. Some of us want to watch the Facebook ad with the audio off and just read the subtitles. Others want to listen to the podcast while walking or driving. Still, the majority of us probably appreciate the options.

Target audiences have definite content interests. But we are all human and we all want full sensorial experiences, or a variety of options of these available. Humans like options, especially when it comes to how we experience something new.

Now, this is not to say that every business needs to be delivering multimedia. There is definitely something to be said for taking one medium and doing it right, offering frequency, quality and consistently. Especially if one medium is your forté over the others or if you are a small business or entrepreneur, the strategy immediately shifts to “focus on your strengths.”

If this is you, what I would recommend is this: Start niche. Do what you’re best at and focus on where you excel. That’s your short-term strategy.

Later, expand your horizons. Explore other media - the stuff you’re shy of or maybe aren’t (yet) great at. Take a class or hire experts to help fill in where you lack or dislike and don’t want to spend time learning. But definitely expand. This is your long-term strategy.

Specialize one way and generalize another: Focus on one topic but expand its delivery by offering many ways for it to be consumed. This way, you will multiply your chances of reaching as many readers, listeners and viewers as your amazing content, product or service deserves.