Cross-channel promotion: how to run several channels at once

This type of promotion (also called multi-channel promotion) is an effective way to increase the scope of your audience and reach it in each corner of the world. Popular international brands usually use it to increase the brand awareness and to attract more customers using many different online and offline promotion channels and spending reasonable sums on that. In this article we will explain how publishers can do it using their skills of creating good content, not money.

What is it and how to manage it?

Basically, it is when a publisher (he could be a blogger, an influencer, a YouTuber or whoever else) uses several channels to reach his audience and to share the information with them. For example, when a YouTuber has over 3 million subscribers and he feels that it’s time expand, it may be not very wise to keep wasting energy and time on attracting more new viewers to YouTube, they will come naturally without any special actions. Instead, it makes much more sense to put the efforts into taking up the new channels to win the attention of the audience there.

Usually it is better to think about cross-promotion when the right time comes to expand the communication with your viewers and to find new ones not at the beginning of your blogging career. That is the time when a blogger is sure that he/she has a stable number of loyal subscribers on already existing channel, but he wants to share his content with more people so he starts considering trying a new channel. This will arouse fresh ideas and approach to the audience, as well as strengthen the promotional campaigns and perk the viewers up a little.

      To begin with, it is better to choose the next channel not randomly, but having conducted minor research so that you’ll know where your potential audience is. Then you need to find out as much as possible about that channel. For example, if you have decided to create a channel in the messenger Telegram, you need to know how to do it as the process is rather complicated. You can check the detailed instruction in the article “As easy as assembling IKEA furniture: how to create a Telegram channel”.

      Having created the channel, you need to fill it with content before attracting the audience to it. Make a few interesting posts and make sure that you have added the information about your channel, set the images, placed the links to your other channels and didn’t miss other important elements (each of them should be according to the channel requirements).

      You should decorate the channel in a way that the subscribers to your other channels can easily recognize that it is yours and follow it. You are likely to have some style that you use for all channels. The new one must inherit this style but with adjustments according to the channel type.

What about promotion?

Alright, you have created and filled the channel, so what’s next? Now you need to attract viewers to it. Here is the list of easy and free promotional ways:

      The best way to to do so it is to promote it through your other channels where you already have many subscribers. For example, if you have a YouTube channel, you can advertise your newly created website in your videos, also adding links in the description of videos and in the section “About the channel”. You can even shoot a special video with “breaking news” about your new website.

      To increase the subscribers’ involvement you can create a competition with a pleasant prize on your new channel and advertise it on the old channels, the main rule will be that the viewers should subscribe to the new platform.

      Don’t forget to place the link to the new channel on the old ones as through it your viewers will find out that now you have one more platform where they can read or view your content.

      If you are in contact with other bloggers, you can ask them for a little promotion. But, of course, you will have to return the favour and promote them too.

A few things you should know before starting a new channel

How to earn?

The process of earning is simple:  you sign up for the affiliate networks and join the offer which is relevant to your audience. Then you make a post or a video with cool content and paste affiliate links to it. You can create different posts about one product on several channels.

Thus subscribers of each channel will see the promotion and some of them purchase the camera through your affiliate link. Moreover, those who follow all your channels will see all promotional campaign and will be more motivated to buy the camera.

      Tip: as Instagram doesn’t allow to paste affiliate links under the posts, you can make an appealing post informing your followers that there is a cool discount for a sport watch or a competition with a prize sport watch on your YouTube-channel.

You can paste the same links on each channel what will increase the number of potential customers. Or on the contrary, you can paste different links on different channels what will make people subscribe to all your channels to have an access to all bargains and information.

Don’t forget to analyze promotion through each channel. You should know what works well for which platform, thus you will be able to create most appropriate content for each audience what will make them involved and motivated to take your advice and buy what your recommend.

So what do I get from it apart from more work?

Multi-channel promotion is proven to be an effective way to find new audience, but one must be ready for this. It is better to take up new channels by turns, not several at once as you should properly develop each channel. The proper combination of channels will become efficient and will bring profit only if you pay attention to each channel and to the audience there. If you take up a new channel, don’t neglect the old ones as your viewers will still expect getting content there.