Have you ever noticed how, no matter the communications project or tender, there is an unwritten rule that if an owned communication channel exists, it should be used? This is particularly so in the case of social media channels.
Facebook, LinkedIn, X/Bluesky and Instagram are frequently treated as the minimum on EU projects. Of course, it may be that most projects do need this breadth. But it often goes unquestioned whether all these channels are equally valuable, and whether we could be more effective by being more selective. One size rarely fits all.
The tension is that there is no real incentive to be selective. To omit a channel, whether as a client or as a service provider, requires bravery, because it challenges the way things are always done. It suggests that a channel may be redundant for one reason or another. It can make communications feel less consistent across the board. It can look like doing less. The only time selectivity is truly incentivised is when the budget is so small that being broad is impossible.
That tells us something important. The common belief is that, in almost every case for an institutional campaign, breadth is valuable in itself. Coverage becomes a proxy for effort. If we are on more channels, we must be doing more; and if we are doing more, we must be delivering more value. But breadth has to be weighed against depth.
Repeating the same message across four social media channels, even when adapted, might not be as effective as four messages engaging more deeply in a topic, telling more stories, or asking more interesting questions.
This is where the strategic question should shift. Instead of asking which channels we can use, we should ask which channels are worth the budget, time and monitoring effort. Channel coverage is not free. Every additional channel brings adaptation time, approval time, publishing time, monitoring time and reporting time. It creates more work for the team and more review points for the client, while spreading attention across a wider surface area.
If we’re trying to do better work in strategic communications, we need to ask ourselves and our clients whether channel coverage is actually a requirement worth spending budget on. That same budget could be spent on greater intensity and depth of communication: better stories, better audience insight, better creative, better timing, better community engagement and better evidence. Currently the burden of proof is on arguing why something should be removed, questioning that assumption is one step to rebalancing things.
The point is not that fewer channels are always better. The point is that more channels are not automatically better either. Until we are willing to challenge that assumption, institutional communications will keep confusing coverage with strategy.
