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Why do you need a bigger picture strategy? Because it’s easy to get bogged down in the details. How many views you get, how many shares your latest post has earned, how much clout you’re wielding; it’s all secondary to the tangible results–are you actually achieving your goals? That’s the key to creating cohesive, worthwhile, 10x content: you need a bigger picture strategy. You can do it yourself, but if that seems daunting you can call Blink.
A little background on why I’m tackling this topic: I teach social media marketing, digital marketing, and marketing strategy courses at two universities and a private post-secondary institution; the two lessons that are consistent between all of them are:
First: Pay your user for their time
Second: Don’t build your house on rented land
They’re simple, and they might seem a little disconnected at first, but let me expand on them.
Pay your user for their time
Pay your user for their time: every day when you wake up what do you do? If you’re like a lot of us, the first thing that you do is pick up your phone, trying to find some context for the day. Those are precious moments in our morning, and if you’re like me, you’re an absolute mercenary with your time. Put simply: if is marketing message doesn’t knock the coffee out of my hand in the morning, it’s probably getting round filed.
If you’re going to command the attention of your audience, you need to give them something valuable back in return. I typically recommend two avenues: you can teach them something (educate them) or you can make them feel something (entertain them) ideally you do both.
Don’t build your house on rented land
If there is anything we take away from Facebook’s recent outages it’s that if you don’t have control of your primary place of contact with your audience, it’s not your audience at all. If you’re using social networks–whether it be through a social site or on an app–you don’t own your audience, you pay for access to them. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use social sites, but you should always be redirecting them to something you DO own. Your email list, your website. These are the things that add value. If you’re going to grow your audience, you need to do it in a place that you control ideas intersect.
Thinking about your customer and their journey
Paying your user for their time is the how of their question: when we create quality content and interactions we make deposits with our customer that we can work with later. This content is, by nature good for the customer, but it’s also good for search engines, and ultimately you. Relevancy scores, Seach Engine Results Page placement, and bidding pricing are all influenced by the type of content you’re linking to.
It may seem obvious to say “make good things”, but this is a process. We’re going to make good things, we’re going to host them on our platform, and we’re going to join our customer on their journey from first interaction to converted client (and hopefully evangelist).
You bigger picture strategy can zoom out here, taking in all of the ways that your customer can find your website, all of those avenues of entry. If you don’t already have Google Analytics setup, now’s the time; analytics will reveal those ways to your site that your visitors are missing. You can build reports pretty easily through Google Analytics that will tell you most of what you need to know about your customer.
The last step in the first part of your strategy (phew!) is beginning to make out their interactions with your brand and your web properties. Whether it’s an on-page customer service rep or a drip campaign of emails finely tuned to answer their questions, overcome their objections, and convert them right off the maybe fence. Mapping these interactions out in a flow-chart style can help you discover and decide where to engage, where to push for a bit more attention, and where to let things be. This visual racetrack is a comfortable, effective way of making your strategy come to life.
Big picture, small interactions that count
With your strategy in place you’re ready to start building and optimizing content. Check some of our previous blogs for content tips; as always, if you feel like you know what you need to know to make the call to engage Blink, we’re here to help.
