One of the biggest hurdles for organizations today is to re-balance their marketing mix between traditional and digital channels and tactics. This is particularly stressful for the many companies and nonprofits whose leaders are aging Baby Boomers struggling to keep up with the digital marketing ecosystem. With stakeholders ranging from Boomers to Gen Y, it’s difficult to determine how to meet the needs of both those who have grown up with technology and those who prefer more traditional marketing pieces that they can hold in their hands.

A few steps we recommend to get started in the right direction include:

1. Take inventory of your existing content sources – Most organizations have a lot more content than they realize, but it is locked in traditional marketing vehicles like printed brochures, magazines, newsletters, case studies and annual reports. It is also residing in client presentations and speeches throughout the organization. Figure out what you have to work with, and which resources are producing this content, and you have the basis to start your journey and unleash your content for use in both digital and traditional content channels.

2. Find out which content interests your stakeholders – You likely already have surveys from newsletter readers, as well as analytics from your website and social media platforms which will tell you a lot about the content that is most popular with many of your stakeholders. This data will likely require further research and analysis to define the demographic and other characteristics that define which stakeholder segments are most interested in each specific type of content. You can also test this by presenting different types of content to them and gauging their reactions.

3. Map your content to social and digital channels – Once you have broken down your content to distinct elements and mapped it to your stakeholders, you can then map what you have been producing for traditional channels and either repurpose it in social channels at the same time, or at the same time as you officially sunset printed materials in favor of more modern digital marketing tactics.

Of course, you may need to continue producing some of your legacy printed content for a while to retain engagement with less digitally-connected stakeholders. However, this is also an opportunity to streamline your print media from lengthy magazines to more targeted and frequent newsletters and test your stakeholders’ reactions to refine your message.

There is value in both traditional and digital marketing strategies, and getting the balance right to align with your stakeholders is critically important to remain competitive and relevant. Taking the first step is the most important part of the journey.