Tag

social marketing

Sep 19
Love0

Content Creation and the 14-Piece Bedding Set

By Marketing, Social Media

I’ve been shopping for new bedding lately. Not one to want to spend a lot of time on such a project, I’ve found myself very attracted to the idea of the 14-piece bedding set. It’s the simplest decorating solution you can imagine — in one set you get all the pieces including dust ruffle, comforter, pillow shams, sheets, throw pillows and ideally, curtains — all perfectly coordinated. That’s my kind of shopping.

I’ve been spending more time that I really want to trying to find the mix of colors and patterns that I want; meanwhile, at work, pondering the issue that so many clients have in tackling the challenge of creating content to spread across multiple platforms.

Seems like a leap, huh? Not really — bear with me.

If a company has a marketing piece or case study they’ve spent a lot of time developing, what can come out of that are many coordinating pieces, if you will. A tweet of statistics pulled from the piece. A blog post that gives a more editorial slant to the information. An editorial article pitched to a trade publication on the same topic. A Facebook update sharing information about the author. In other words, the pillows, shams and curtains to the comforter that ties it all together.

How are you doing, coordinating your communications efforts?

Also, anyone have any good recommendations for a nice California King set?

 

Sep 04
Love0

If You’re Going to Use LinkedIn, USE IT!

By Communications

We’re in business development mode today, and that means researching potential partners and clients to assess the opportunities we might have to help each other. One of the steps in this process is to look at the company via LinkedIn–who works there, what positions are filled, what content they share, what open positions they are advertising, what their company profile looks like. After all, there are a gazillion benefits to using LinkedIn as a company now that social marketing and social search have gone mainstream. The network has grown over 45% in the past year, and has over 150 million users! Many of those are entrepreneurs who embrace social tools as a method of connecting to new opportunities.

So why, why why would you set up a LinkedIn account and then PRIVATIZE it so potential connections can’t reach you? Maybe you don’t want the “spam” emails, or you’d rather do the finding and viewing of profiles and opportunities, thank you very much. But if you’re going to bother building a profile on this network, it is disingenuous to expect access to information on others that you’re not willing to share yourself. People are looking for ways to connect because they want to grow their businesses, and presumably you want to do the same. Sure, you’ll want to make sure the profile is set up so your time is not being wasted, but setting it to private sends a message that you’re not that interested in connecting, not really.

Is that the message you want to be sending to potential customers, clients, partners, or recruits?

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Jun 21
Love0

Forget about the Tools: What’s Your Reason to be There?

By Communications, Social Media

We have a lot of initial conversations with client prospects that get hung up on tools. We don’t need to talk about Facebook or LinkedIn or Twitter — the specific tools aren’t any more critical to name in developing communication strategy than defining that we might use phones, or, say, a laptop.

The problem with talking about specific tools is that each person has their individual experience with that specific tool, and it may not be in a business context at all. There are still many business people who hear the word “blog” and think of ranting online diaries in which people air their dirty laundry. OF COURSE that’s not what we’re talking about, but certain words (Facebook, blog, Twitter, e-mail marketing, YouTube) really set people off on a tangent.

We like to derail that conversation by focusing on what message the client is trying to deliver. We talk more about providing content in places where intended audiences ALREADY ARE and will find what the client wants them to find. We try to steer clear of specific tool-driven strategy (tools change; the content and the reasons to use them do not).

What’s useful is defining the best possible outcomes of communicating about your business. Keep focused on that; don’t get distracted by the platforms.