Does Multi-Screening make our content DOA?

Where's his iPad?Speaking helps me think. Actually it forces me to think, especially given the fact that meetings, work and life sometimes doesn’t always allow me that luxury.

By speaking I mean speaking opportunities and the research that goes into them. At the end of March I’m speaking to PRSA Richmond about “content.” So when VCU PR prof extraordinaire Bill Farrar asked me to speak to his social media class yesterday, I jumped at the opportunity since it helped me begin to form my thoughts and frame my research.

After Googling about content, etc., I found myself drawn to a recent Google study on “multi-screening.”

This is the act of bouncing from screen to screen to do, well, everything we do. Some interesting facts from the study:

  • 90 percent of all media interactions are on one of four screens (TV, PC/laptop, tablet, smartphone
  • We spend 4.4 hours a day of leisure time in front of screens
  • Most people use screens sequentially or simultaneously and how we use those screens inform everything from buying habits, to how we work, to how we consume media.

You can view the entire Google presentation in the article on Tech Crunch.

So now that I’ve drawn your attention to multi-screening, what does that mean for PR folks and marketers who work with brands every day?

Isn’t it bad enough that we’re all competing for the same social media real estate and that social media platforms are forcing us to buy ads to ensure our content breaks through the clutter? Now the very screens we use to consume information and be social in the first place may be the same instruments that are disrupting our social experience. Think about how different your Facebook experience is on a browser compared to an app, or even how your Twitter experience is from app to app. How can we make sure our messages (and our clients’ messages) are getting past the screen of choice?

The answer is we have to get better.

We have to:

  • Force ourselves not to settle for ordinary writing and posting
  • Break through the clutter with engaging imagery and videos
  • Look for engaging stories and tell them better
  • Post insightful and entertaining information to our blogs
  • Promote all our content across all platforms and make certain that we’ve aligned it strategically and consistently

We just need to get better.

If not, our content is dead on arrival, if it ever arrives in the first place.

Can you get better? How? Please comment with thoughts and examples.

Jon Newman

In 2002 Jon cofounded The Hodges Partnership and has helped to grow it into one of the country’s largest public relations firms (based on O’Dwyer’s annual rankings). Jon has taught communications as an adjunct professor at VCU, speaks regularly at conferences and meetings and blogs and tweets about public relations and marketing issues.

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