Stop sharing content on WhatsApp! (There is now an alternative!)

You made a group. You put content. Content distribution done?

Hold on!

Were you distributing a newspaper article, or valuable IP? Does your content contain years of work and knowledge that shouldn’t just be distributed and forwarded anyhow by anyone? If you care about content security, ease of use, and a decent experience with audio/video/PDFs, read ahead. WhatsApp is just not your answer. (Neither is Google Drive, frankly!)

THE TYPICAL REASONS GIVEN FOR USING WHATSAPP

I know your reasons.

• The 1 billion user reach dream. While that statistic is true for WhatsApp; it is simply not relevant to most people reading this.

WhatsApp is NOT an advertising/promotion/content distribution platform. They have purposely stayed clear of those channels, and don’t even have a dashboard for you to manage anything, let alone fine-tune content strategy!

• The 90%+ rate of opening messages. True that, but it says nothing whatsoever about engagement.

Just because I scroll through some messages and WhatsApp marked them read, it doesn’t mean I even registered anything of your message. The content experience is so wanting, I might just not even open your media. Unless you shared cat videos, of course! ;) Or wished me good morning!

• You can send it to anyone, whether you know them or not.

Spamming is so rife now in WhatsApp, that the instinct is to block and report anyone other than family and known friends/service providers. Even WhatsApp no longer permits wholesale forwarding of messages in bulk.

But, it is great for hyper-local, small industries, though, because it is primarily the “Word around the village” model of promotion — which is healthy, and effective. If you have dreams beyond your local village, then read on!

THE TROUBLE WITH USING WHATSAPP

Well, it is not a content distribution channel. So it doesn’t even have features that are really basic to that need.

• Encryption — no encryption or DRM of your media is provided
• Content Management — It is consumer-centric; there are no tools for the content manager . It doesn’t offer basic features like tracking of distribution and monitoring of usage.
• High Risk of Customer Loss — Consumers can effectively block out people who are sending them content, throwing baby out with bath water! One bad post can cost you your entire customer!
• Content Security — Just absent! You can’t prevent people from forwarding your content, or from downloading it.
• Content Experience — Basically, absent. While audio and video can be played in-app, PDFs still need to be downloaded. There is no unified player or consistent content experience for the consumer. They can’t even manage the content they are sent.

ALTERNATIVES:

If what enticed you was the ease of distribution and the low barrier to entry, let me propose a better solution. (To your credit, it wasn’t there until yesterday, and this is option has become available for the first time ever!)

Scoot over to www.kitaboobytes.com and check out Bytes.

WHY BYTES?

It takes nothing to get started. It has a zero-cost, no commitment trial offer for a month.

Bytes is an uncomplicated, yet joyful product, offering:

• A very low barrier to entry — no cost, no commitment, no learning curve
• Ease of use — Upload, distribute, experience. That’s it.
• A unified content experience — all your content can be viewed within the app itself. No more switching tabs or downloading content.
• High security — Your content is DRM protected by an enterprise Kitaboo DRM solution vetted by 12 million users worldwide over 10 years.

I won’t evangelize. You try it out for yourself and tell us what you think! Happy to support you at support@kitaboobytes.com.