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Why I like a good content production strategy

8 February 2010 in Explanation, Toolkit by Kate | Comments

Can’t figure out where to start a “social media” marketing program? Why don’t you start with a content strategy. Frankly, I don’t think most social media programs should be done without a content production component, for a few reasons:

It’s your starting point. It’s pretty hard to have a social media program without having content to put out. One way to get that is by pushing out other peoples’ content. But the best way – for obvious reasons – is usually to push out your own content. See below.
It gives you credibility in your industry and backs up your product or service. By putting out your own content, people (end-users, customers, partners) see that you know what you’re talking about, and that you have internal knowledge on whatever space you’re in. This content and credibility also justifies your product/service as a solution when it comes to making a decision.
It’s your brand. By branding your content, and developing a sense of expertise in your industry, you increase your brand image and your brand awareness, and you’re ideally able to reach a lot more people if your content is valuable enough to pass along.
It’s easy. This is the part that a lot of companies don’t recognize. You already have all of this content inside your doors. If you think about it, your company exists because it’s got at least some level of knowledge that’s directly applicable to the solution you’re offering. You may have internal marketing documents, business plans, strategy meeting notes, or product write-ups that can easily be repurposed into content. Not to mention the wealth of knowledge you and your coworkers have in their heads. I’ve never actually seen a company that doesn’t have scores of content opportunities inside their walls.

It doesn’t have to be formal. Instead of dedicating the amount of time it might take to write a white paper, why not try a few blog posts, or a one-pager on the subject?

So if you’re considering getting your feet wet in social media, think seriously about how you can add your own content to that.

What success have you seen with content production in your organization? Do you have any examples of identifying creative content opportunities?

If you’re interested, you can get more information on how we can help you with your content production strategies.

Rant: You need strategy first…. DUH!

28 January 2010 in Discussion, Random Thoughts by Kate | Comments

This isn’t a rant about people who don’t develop a plan before jumping into social media marketing. This is a rant on people in the social media marketing field – myself included – who keep pressing the point about how important strategy is to a social marketing campaign.

[For the record, I AM COMPLETELY GUILTY OF THIS]

The problem is this – we all talk about it is as if it’s a new business concept, this idea of planning and creating a strategy, and thinking about goals and measurement and the bottom line.

They way we should be talking about it is this:

“First things first, starting social marketing in your organization is like any other business decision you’ve ever had to make, since the beginning of time. Know your goals, set benchmarks, etc. Ok, moving on, let’s now talk about social media and how we can think about it at a strategic level…..”

The strategy part is a “Hey, PS, don’t forget that thinking strategically usually increases your chances of success for anything.”

This doesn’t mean that a company can’t experiment and test the social media waters, and it doesn’t mean that many companies will completely ignore strategy – many companies have ignored strategy since the beginning of time. But if they really want business success…. of COURSE they’re going to have to create a strategy!

No upper-level marketer gets to their position without having strategized for each campaign or yearly marketing plan, and this is no different. Yes, clients or teams will need to be reminded of the need for strategy. Someone will always need to be reminded. But we don’t need to make a business case for the importance of strategy.

The thing is, if we just say this to our team and to our clients – “Guys, we all know we need to develop a strategy around this,” they’ll nod their heads in agreement because they’re smart. And the discussion can move on to creating a program etc.

I’ve decided I’m going to spend <5% of my discussion on this topic, and if it gets into that territory, I will treat it as a given, indisputable fact that requires no further discussion. I will of course talk about the actual STRATEGY, because that’s where the real discussion needs to happen.

Maybe I’m being harsh, and – you caught me – I probably won’t actually treat it like that in a discussion. But I sort of want to, ya know? The discussion has gone past the level of reminding people that strategy is important. This is not a new thing. this “strategy.” It isn’t debatable.

So, a call to the industry: Let’s all accept that you always need a strategy for a successful business decision, let’s tell our teams or our clients, and let’s get on with it!

*phew*

Quality vs Quantity in Content: The reality, and how to manage it with your clients

12 January 2010 in Discussion by Kate | Comments

I was just catching up on some podcasts, and listened to Mitch Joel’s Six Pixels of Separation Episode #184 with Jason Falls from last week. I was listening intently – more intently than I normally do to Six Pixels – because not only am I huge fan of Mitch, but I’m also a really big fan of Jason, who blogs over at Social Media Explorer, and I like both of them for roughly the same reason.

They create awesomely high-quality content on a very regular basis.

So I was delighted when they touched on this topic briefly in their discussion:

We’re finding that some of the people who are really standing out may be producing lower quantity content, but it’s of way higher quality.

[Note: That was my summary, not quite verbatim].

Coming from these two, this was spot on. Focus on creating quality content. As many of you know, I pass on a lot of content through various outlets. Jason and Mitch are definitely in my Top 10 of “People Who’s Content I Pass Along” because it’s always great.

However, it got me thinking about how this plays out in the client-agency relationship. As an agency or consultancy, most of the clients we’ve worked with so far have at least some level of timidity/hesitancy about instituting a social media plan, and, as a result, often need some hand holding during the process.

This means that frameworks and guidelines are put into place, along with calendars and expectations. When it comes to content, there’s also that part of the pitch that says “MUST UPDATE FREQUENTLY!” So you inevitably need to put process behind it, which your clients buy into.

So, while the idea of having a strategy that focuses on quality content – which can often feel intangible in the business world – sounds like the best way to go (aright, it IS the best way to go), it doesn’t necessarily jive with the realities of an agency-driven social media marketing program.

We all know that value takes time. And for our purposes time costs money, usually a predetermined amount.

Let’s use a simple example. Let’s say a client social media program has blogging at it’s center, so it’s where most of the content will be produced. As the agency, we work with an internal team of people who are the “bloggers-to-be” of the company, but we’re starting out with the bulk of the content production. We put a “calendar” in place for posts, and here are our choices for conversations:

“For this retainer, we’ll either give you Level One blog posts – our lowest level of value (but trust us it’ll still work) – at three times a week, Level Two posts at twice a week, or Level One – our most valuable content – at once a week. It’s your choice.”
“Well, we like to take the value in one super valuable post and break it into three posts, each with 1/3 the value, so if you do the math, it’s kinda like having one super valuable post but you get more pieces of content up, which we told you was important.”
“Oh, you’re wondering why we didn’t put up our first two posts this week? Well, we’re really trying to feel the vibes over here and wait for the moment when the value just pours out. So we’ve lit some incense and we’re really feeling good that it’s going to come for Friday’s post. High-intensity value.”

Hmmm, I’m thinking these aren’t conversations that will keep us employed for very long.

So then, if we’ve decided that quality is better (which we’ve long ago decided), and Mitch and Jason have hinted at a shift towards perhaps less quantity and more quality – something that sounds like it could also be less scheduled and planned out, but we’re also bound to calendars and we’re communicating with clients who really might not wholly embrace a slightly more ambiguous quality-focused strategy, rather than a little more structured strategy.

We all get this concept, and have gotten it for a while, but our a lot of our clients may not have.

How do we have this conversation? Is it simply a matter of charging more for services? Do we as an industry simply start demanding highest-quality from our content producers (thereby offering highest-quality to our clients), no matter what? Or do we need to start having different conversations with our clients and those we’re trying to educate?And if so, how do we do that in a way that inexperienced people can still feel like there’s something concrete to grasp onto?

Your Blog Isn’t Special And You Have No Followers (socialmediatoday.com)
Harry Rosen’s Blog & Understanding the Dynamics of Slow Social Media (leighhimel.blogspot.com)
An interview with Mitch Joel, author of Six Pixels of Separation (trafcom.typepad.com)

2010 Marketing Predictions and Hopes

30 December 2009 in Random Thoughts by Kate | Comments

Well, it’s that time of year again. What did we all just DO? Where is it all GOING? Here are a few of my predictions. Most of them I truly feel will happen, but some of them I just really really hope to have happen.

Social Media will stop being a bunch of tools and will start being a legitimate strategy. We all know it, and have lamented it before. Too many people have completely ignored strategy when using social media in the past few years and have just started grabbing at the shiney new objects in front them. Social media will actually be viewed as part of your overall communications strategy, as it should be. Which means, now more than ever, if you just start clicking buttons and throwing up Facebook pages, you’ll be behind the eight ball, and fast.

Data will be huge. Not just to sit and prove ROI for your marketing department. The fact that we can measure so much more in the digital space means that we’re going to see such awesome research and data analysis on things on like behavior and social trending… just plain interesting “stuff”….we’ve only hit the tip of the iceberg.\

Social media marketing will explode in the higher ed space. We’ve felt the energy rising on this one all year, and it’s really close to spilling over. Simply put, if there’s any industry that has a pre-established and enormous audience that likes to be communicated to online, it’s higher ed. Just get there.

Social media marketing will start becoming more prevalent in the B2B space, primarily in industries we wouldn’t have imagined. Think manufacturing or construction. More people are accepting the wide-range of possibilities that fall under “social media marketing” and realizing that there really are benefits. They might not be Facebook or Twitter, or they might not be externally-facing, but they’re there.

These industries will have front runners. What I mean is that a lot of the industries mentioned in the above prediction won’t enter the space en masse, rather a small group of companies will start to play around, and they’ll gain the advantage. A lot can happen with a 6-month or 1-year head start.

Video will continue to be used widely. YouTube has been declared the Top Social Media Innovation of the Decade by Mashable.

Personal Branding is going to be very important and influential. I’ve worked pretty darn hard at personal branding, and, if I must say so myself, have done at least a reasonable job at it. But it takes work. Oh, and personal branding online and the effects of web 2.0 on personal brand management are going to be HOT HOT issues.

Cause Marketing will not only be used a lot more, but people will stop scoffing at it as a simply a marketing ploy, and actually accept that it’s still good for society and that companies can still be very passionate about social issues, whether they’re benefiting financially or not (obviously this doesn’t include extreme cases).

Happy New Year!

What do you think the next year brings?

3 things I learned about marketing in 2009

23 December 2009 in Uncategorized by Anya | Comments

Ahh, the yearly round-up. Something about the coming New Years bash makes everyone sit down and write up summaries of 2009 and predictions for 2010. Reflection is always a good thing to start with before launching into another year, so I sat down to think over a few things I learned about marketing and social media in 2009. Here are my thoughts:

1) Measurement is essential, and really hard.

We blog about the importance of measurement frequently, and tell all of our clients how important measurement is to the success of their marketing and social media efforts. But despite the use of myriad tools and the delivery of hundreds of reports, measurement remains a hurdle. Not because we don’t have a lot of metrics and measurements in place or because the numbers are hard to calculate, but because the overall results, despite measurement, can often be a more qualitative sense of success then a quantitative and proven win. Brand perception, awareness and accessibility are not, at the end of the day, easily measured in strict numbers. So while we feel our work has helped clients make great strides, it is often hard to prove that in black and white without a shadow of a doubt. Marketing has always had this hard to pin down side, but with all the numbers that ARE available now, it is harder to say that in fact there really are some things we still can’t measure.

2) Personal branding is time consuming but very effective.

This observation comes both from personal experience and observation as well as from a good degree of reading and writing about personal branding and reputation management throughout 2009. Good personal branding involves work across many online channels as well as a lot of in-person efforts. By the time you factor in blogging regularly, keeping up with twitter, updating your Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, attending Tweet-ups and other local networking events, applying for and preparing for speaking engagements, hosting networking events and following up with contacts, your personal branding efforts can quickly become a full time job. Managing your time effectively so as to allow time for these efforts is essential though, as a good faith effort in all these areas can decidedly pay off. There is no doubt that if you’re looking for work or clients and you spend time each week working on your personal brand, that you won’t at least make some lasting and great contacts who will help you develop professionally.

3) The age barrier to social media adoption is basically gone.

For the last few years, social media and online tools as well as mobile technology have all been discussed as they relate to the younger generations. But in my experience this year, I would argue that is no longer the case. Baby boomers and even the 60-75 year-old crowd is adopting social media in droves, using mobile devices to connect and networking in places like LinkedIn and Facebook more than the teen group early adopters. While their full understanding of how each tool works may not be at quite the level of early adopters, they are using these technologies as much as younger people. This is an essential fact to know for 2010, as marketers consider what tools and technologies to address, don’t assume that the older age groups are still lagging behind.

Publish or die – marketing style

21 December 2009 in Uncategorized by Anya | Comments

Academics hear it all the time, it’s a mantra of sorts. Publish or die. Publish research, books, articles, etc. in order to maintain your career and keep your job. As a tenured professor, you’re expected to be creating new content on a regular basis.

While publish or die has been a long standing expectation in academia, it is quickly becoming a mantra for public relations, marketing and communications professionals as well. Content creation has rapidly become a foundation for successful marketing campaigns across any and all industries. From universities to tech companies, law offices to start-ups, small businesses to international corporations, content creation is often at the core of the marketing plan.

Between blogging, twittering, updating Facebook pages, sharing on delicious, uploading to YouTube or Flickr or maintaining websites, content creation has become the mainstay of communications. In addition to being great content creators, marketers have to be creative and tech savvy, developing not only print materials and website copy, but good design standards, easy-to-use web sites and other online outposts, and video and audio content as well.

Being a good marketer is no longer simply about being a good writer and strategist. It’s about being a prolific, reliable and engaging content producer. As many marketing managers can attest, publish or die can easily be applied to our positions in any industry. I do think that in many cases, especially in higher ed programs that teach communications and marketing, this publish or die concept is rarely addressed. The focus is on more traditional and high-level marketing skills, but the core skills needed to use the new tools of online marketing are rarely taught. We should not assume that correct and effective use of these tools or the understanding of the new publish or die mantra is understood by online-savvy students. Instead, we should focus on educating a new generation of marketers who understand these tools both from a technical standpoint and from a strategic standpoint.

For example, content creation has a significant impact on SEO, and every marketer will be expected to measure and report on web traffic. When is the last time you saw a core course in SEO and SEM, google analytics and web traffic management in a marketing program at the undergraduate or graduate level? We need to teach students about publish or die standards in order for them to be successful contributors to the marketing community.

5 Things to Make Your Website Links Linear and Logical

18 December 2009 in Toolkit by Kate | Comments

I was on a website today (I won’t say which)…. but I left the website probably before I wanted or needed to. Why? I just plain got lost. And the problem was linking… way too much of it! I know, I know… it helps your SEO, but there’s a point at which you’re degrading user experience by leading them on a wild goose chase for what they want.

I’d get to one page, wanting to read about products, and I’d follow one of the page links, which had more links and soon I couldn’t remember what the heck I was looking for to start out with. I got tired of this quickly, so I just left.

So, I thought it’d be a good opportunity to offer a few ways to think about your website when you’re putting it together or planning the content.

Think linearly. When gathering information, people usually want to follow a linear and logical path to get that info. Sometimes it’s from big-picture to details. Sometimes it’s being led through the process your company takes with its customers. Sometimes it’s a look at groups of offerings. Whatever it is, think about how to lay your site out in terms of information-gathering.
Make sure the internal link makes sense. Don’t add a link for the sake of adding a link. It doesn’t do any good to be having your readers move between disjointed pieces of information, as it makes it more difficult for them to put the whole picture together. From a technical standpoint, having your readers feel disjointed will also likely increase your exit rate (in other words, the leave your site!).
Make it very easy for your readers to get back to the original page they were viewing. Much in line with #2, your readers came to a particular page to read about that facet of your company. If they came to your services page, they want to know what you have to offer. They probably want to know about everything you’ve got before moving on, and of course you want them to know that too. Make sure they can get back there to get that info.
Don’t forget your blog and/or your social media assets. Directing someone towards a blog post or two can be a great idea. Ideally (if you’re blogging right) they hang out there for a little while, engage in your contact, and get to know your company more. Without overdoing it, this can be a great way to add an internal link that follows the above guidelines, but also has the possibility to really hook your viewers and supplement your content.
Think about lead conversion while you’re at it. When you’re putting together a logical path for your readers to follow through your website, think also about how that goes into converting them to customers. Would adding a particular internal to your services page add the “right” type of info for them to get out their chequebook?

Any other tips for people to think about?

How to Find Content for Your Business Blog (buildabetterblog.com)
Tips for successful link building (va4growth.com)

SEO Strategy: Short-term feeding vs long-term foundation-building

9 December 2009 in Business to Business, Toolkit by Kate | Comments

I’m working with a company in the B2B space that has an interesting but very common website case:

They have an old, basic and static site
It has very weak SEO
They’re paying significant amounts of money for Google Adwords each month to get them page ranked
They’re not tracking anything

Luckily, they want this to change. In conjunction with a website design overhaul, we’re going to completely up-end this model and flip it on it’s head (or side, or whatever).

One of the main topics of conversation has been the issue of Google Adwords – do we use them or not. My answer is no, not right now. A few further thoughts to that end [Disclaimer - I had a quick call with the team at HubSpot, as I would like to use their product in this process, and some of these thoughts stem from a conversation I had with Vas]:

Firstly, there is nothing in place right now to determine the effects of their Adwords: they don’t know who’s clicking, what they’re clicking on, if they’re qualified leads, etc. All they know is that they’re the first (sponsored) link that shows up on Google for one of the keywords.
There was little research done to choose those keywords, and it was based loosely on product lines. The list also hasn’t been updated in many years.
They have little to no effective SEO built into their site, which hasn’t been changed in over five years.

Essentially, they’ve put Adwords in place and let it run.

They’re simply paying the meter to reserve a parking spot, and hope they don’t have a cop come around and write them a ticket or tow the car away. Because that’s what would happen the minute they stopped paying the meter if they’d relied on their existing website. The Adwords are only giving them short-term benefits while they’re still paying.

What we’re working towards is building their own parking lot where they won’t have to worry about paying the meter: An architecturally strong website, with sophisticated SEO, continually updated content, metrics in place to determine how people are accessing and using the site, and developing more paths for people to get there.

Does that mean we nix Google Adwords? For now, yes. There doesn’t seem to be much point in using them if they don’t know what they’re bringing to the table. It’s sort of like parking in the first available spot before you know if it’s close to your lunch meeting near City Hall (”It’s around here somewhere,” he said.). There might be spots closer. Heck, City Hall could have it’s own free parking lot.

But only for now. Once we’ve gone through the process of developing a much stronger foundation – our website, and once we understand the best keywords to use (though, ideally, we’ve keyword-maximized the site so well that it can stand alone)….once we’ve really built something with a long-term future…..only then should Adwords be used to supplement these efforts. We’re building their own parking lot that they can park in on most days, and telling them where the best spot to pay for is next time they have lunch near City Hall….

Getting to Know Your Website Search Engine Competition (ronmedlin.com)
SEO Program Boosts Auto Supply Sales (prweb.com)
Denver SEO Expert Illustrates Why Websites Depend on SEO to Succeed (prweb.com)

Social media for the (regulated industry) masses?

6 December 2009 in Business to Business by Anya | Comments

Consumer industries are in the thick of it now… for the most part companies selling direct to consumer have recognized the need for some kind of interaction in social media and have made at least some inroads in putting together a plan and a presence in relevant circles.

But B2B companies still struggle with the question of how relevant social media is to their marketing and pubic relations programs and whether or not social media really has an kind of impact on their bottom line. Think that’s a tough nut to crack? Enter an even more challenging question: what about regulated industries?

We often note that B2B companies have some specific challenges when moving into the social media space, but regulated industries have it even harder. Financial, medical, pharmaceutical and other industries are all required to play by very specific rules that have a significant impact on how “social” their marketing programs can be.

This week’s article in AdWeek takes a look at recent forays into the social media realm by a number of pharmaceutical companies, and examines some of the opportunities and challenges regulated industries face in trying to stay up to date on the latest in marketing and communications tactics.

In many cases, pharmaceutical companies and others in regulated industries have addressed these challenges by developing a presence in social media networks, and then eliminating or strictly limiting the actual “social” aspect of their page. While this provides a band-aid for problems they face in allowing for more two-way communications with consumers, taking the social out of social marketing isn’t really a viable long-term solution.

What’s the solution? In some cases we imagine the burgeoning demand for better interaction directly with consumers may actually have an impact on regulations. But barring those kinds of sweeping changes, we argue that in most cases many of the concerns regulated industries have about using social media are largely unfounded. As the AdWeek article noted, many concerns about problems arising online are either extremely rare and unlikely in reality, or do not have the kind of adverse effects many companies assume.

Rather than fear the implications of the unknown, social media can be an opportunity for these companies to spend some time researching ways they can interact in social circles, because in many cases the assumption that they cannot and should not prevents these organizations from even considering or attempting a program in these spaces. Social marketing tactics come in many shapes and sizes, the real challenge is to not try to force existing models to work for regulated industries, but instead to take a creative new approach that addresses the challenges those industries face while still allowing for more two-way conversation to develop.

Targeting audiences: A few thoughts to consider

24 November 2009 in Uncategorized by Anya | Comments

e-mail_icon Every marketer struggles with this idea; if they don’t then they should. How do we know what our target audiences would respond to? What if we have multiple target audiences, how do we engage each without alienating the others? In what cases do we really need to step back and rethink the way we communicate with our constituents?

I came across a great example of this earlier this week when Andy Shaindlin of alumni futures did a quick look at what people on twitter were saying about alumni offices. And let’s just say, the results were not great. My favorite quote was: “Alumni associations are worse than telemarketers.”

This got me thinking. Why do colleges still have telethons? I get called by my alma maters with relative consistency, always at awkward times, and always from some poor undergraduate who has been instructed to not let me get off the phone without basically begging me for $10 on a Sunday evening. The alumni association then follows up with mailings and invitations to local events. There are a number of problems with this picture, so let’s start with a brief list:

- I am not really in a great group to begin soliciting for money, due primarily to fact that I still have a considerable amount of student loan debt.

- I hate phone calls. I’ve never given information or money over the phone before, and I don’t plan to start now with an alumni donation.

- I would rather give online. You’d be much more likely to have success in getting me to donate small sums if you made it drop dead simple and easy, online.

- I don’t need to paper mailings either. I throw them out. I feel bad when I do it because I know how many resources go into those mailings, but they simply don’t work to get me to act.

- I don’t golf or go to meetings at 7:30 am. For years my alumni association has been baiting me with getting more involved with the school through one of three options: Golf, ridiculously early networking events, or “young alumni” gatherings at bars I would NEVER go to.

You get the picture. The overall theme here is that the college is using number of techniques that they’ve used for years to try to solicit funds, but not much thought has been given to audience. For example, I happen to know that a lot of thought goes into whether or not people will be home to receive the phone call at a given time. And yet no one ever asks “should we even be calling these people?” Often the answer is that the telethon at least brings in SOME funding, so we should keep going even though the actual percentage of people who give vs. hang up, get mad, refuse, tell you to never call again, etc. is quite low.

Which brings us back to the original question. Are you really thinking about your audience before you start a particular marketing program? Sure you might think that because someone attended the university they have a greater feeling of association to the institution than, say, a car insurance company. That does NOT mean they want to get a phone call from you. The feeling of rapport with the institution is not aided by what most people have blocked from their phone lines: unexpected and unsolicited phone calls asking for money.

Thinking about your audience then is not just about the content of what you’re trying to communicate (the callers from the university are usually very nice and loaded with tidbits of info on how far the school has come and how my tiny gift could help.) No, in fact, the method of delivery is JUST as important, if not more so. Getting to know your audience is as much about context as it is content, and paying attention to that will allow your campaigns to be much more effective.

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Publish or die – marketing style

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