Know Your “Ps” When It Comes to Content and Social Marketing

Way back when I got my master’s degree in Marketing they used to teach the four Ps of marketing – product, place, promotion, and price. While I think there is still some validity in this model, the digital age has caused a need to revamp marketing executive’s approach. This was covered in last week’s post “The New Customer Demands New Marketing.” Use this approach to yield social marketing success and consider the four Ps of content and social marketing.

Content marketing and social marketing go hand-in-hand … you cannot have one without the other. When developing your content strategy to reinforce what your brand stands for, consider People, Publishers, Producers, and Passing-on. These are your four Ps of Content and Social Marketing.

People – as always, you must start with an understanding of the people you are talking to and engaging with. Forget about the content you want to push. Be sensitive to the content that your audience wants and will value as it relates to your brand category and beyond. For example, if your product is a packaged food, you can offer recipes that include your product as well as tips on healthy living. But, always make sure the content excites your audience.

Publishers – marketers must think and act like publishers. According to Wikipedia, publishing is the process of production and dissemination of literature, music, or information. This is exactly what marketers must do to keep their audience interested and engaged. Publishing compelling content keeps the audience loyal to the brand and strengthens user experience.

Producers – the role of a producer is to oversee all aspects of multimedia production ranging from idea development, character development, and shoot supervision. The producer is responsible for the overall quality and survivability. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_producer) There are two reasons why a producer mentality is important for social marketing. First, visuals drive more traffic, click-throughs, and engagement in social marketing than straight text. And the second reason is the need for a storyline and character. Your social presence should be based on a brand story complete with a personality. Even if you are not producing videos, include pictures and think about what you want your audience to feel as a result of your productions.

Passing-on – if your content is truly valuable, informative, and/or entertaining people will want to pass it on, but you have to make it easy for them to do so. Consider sharing tactics such as inclusion of sharing widgets throughout your content posts. Also consider additional ways and incentives to motivate your audience to share your brand content.

Yes, it was a nice little spin to go from the historic four Ps of marketing to the new four Ps of content and social marketing. But on top of that, there is real substance and value in considering your content socialization to include elements for your People, which include Publishing and Production that continues to have digital life as it is Passed-on.

Make It Happen,
Social Steve

Evolving Social Media Marketing – From Content Marketing to Contextual Content Marketing

If I had to pick one key area of evolution of social media marketing in 2012, I would say it was the integration of content marketing into social strategies and plans. For many years I have said that brands need to think like publishers. It is brand content that is often shared among users as opposed to brand products/services. And many brands get this. They are looking at a marketing plan that is integrated – owned and earned media with paid media.

I captured the importance of content marketing as a prerequisite of social marketing in the article “Content Marketing – Social Marketing: You Can’t Have One without the Other.” But content marketing is not enough. Brands need to evolve to provide contextually relevant content in 2013.

Why is this so? Pretty simple answer – there is no shortage of content on any topic under the sun. How many food articles, health articles, or other topical areas are there? So many that it is hard to stand out. Brands need to answer the question, “Why would anyone want to capture and engage with my brand and its content when there is an enormous amount of topical content elsewhere?” There are two parts to the answer. One is that you need to have awesome content. No one is going to be attracted to content that is just okay. And the second part of the answer is that the content must be relevant to individuals’ needs, wants, and interests. Brands need to understand their target audience behavior. By their actions, the audience is literally saying, “Make it worth my while, and I will follow you, like you, engage with you and subscribe to you.” And their behavior also suggests that they get turned off if they are overwhelmed with an abundance of irrelevant content (by their perspective, not yours).

So you have a content plan in place. How do you make it contextually relevant to the different individuals within your target market. You need to concentrate on three areas in order to provide contextually relevant content.

1) Demographics and psych-demographics. Demographics dictate certain preferences of a group based upon such things as sex, age, geography, and household income. Psycho-demographics further consider interests as indicated in social profiles, postings, and digital behaviors.
2) Location. Location based service will evolve in 2013 beyond checking in. There is an opportunity for brands to deliver contextually relevant content and promotions based on location determination. But it is important that brands allow users to turn on and off notifications based upon the users’ preferences. Brands cannot overwhelm users with content like I see certain companies do with email.
3) Buying behavior. No target audience data is more telling than purchase history and buying patterns.

So when I list the three areas above, you should be getting a sense that social media marketing needs to be driven by more applicable data in 2013. I think many people are scared off by the term “big-data.” But big-data is most important. Avoid getting overwhelmed by concentrating on those areas that can drive success. In social, we want to make sure our audience stays engaged with the brand. (I outline measuring social results here.)

As you build out your social strategy and start to think about integrating user data without boiling the ocean, consider:

• Location data and compelling marketing programs for users. Allow them to drive delivery preferences and avoid spamming them and turning them off.
• Integrating social profiles and user conversations to define the content delivered to them. Start there and think about putting further control in users hands with regards to the content they receive (similar to content selections offered in portals).
• Integrating consumer buying behavior to social marketing to drive content and social engagement.

2012 was a year of great strides in social marketing. Many moved beyond the mentality of “oh – let’s put up a Facebook and Twitter page.” But do not rest well … move forward. Think about what you can do to gain greater target audience relationships. For now, I suggest starting with contextually content marketing considerations. But I will be with you here offering additional recommendations throughout the next year. I most appreciate your viewing and sharing my content!

Best to you in the holiday season.

Make It Happen,
Social Steve

Content Marketing – Social Marketing: You Can’t Have One without the Other

Think about it for a second. When you share something with your friends and family, isn’t it most often some kind of content? An article, picture, or video?
So marketers’ social strategy must start with a content strategy.

In a previous article that I wrote, “A Marketing Lesson about Brand Proliferation using Social Media,” I introduced the following diagram:

The point I was driving was you have your brand definition and position at the core of the brand reputation and your audience’s perception. Content is used to leverage your brand position. Continuous and compelling content creates a way to make sure people stay engaged with brands so that the brand is top of mind with the target audience. If that content is truly valuable, the audience will share it with their network. And those that share the most should be engaged with directly to create advocates.

You can get more on this approach at the referenced article. But what I want to touch on in greater detail is the synergy and use of a content combined with social marketing. Assuming you accept the importance that content plays in your social efforts, the next question is where should the content reside? Blog, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc?

The answer is you need a content hub where all your content resides. Then, social channels should be used to reference the content, proliferate the content, and to engage with the target audience.

The content hub should be tied to the brand site. Social channels should be used to present abstracts of the content and refer back (URLs) to the content hub. This is the correct approach for a number of reasons:

1) The portfolio of content should be in one place. If a user wants more brand content, they should not need to go search for it. It should be at their fingertips.
2) While social marketing is not about direct sales, certainly we do not want to miss the opportunity if your reader has that interest. Having the content directly on the site where there is also product information and ecommerce creates increased consideration and sales opportunities.
3) Given the wide breadth of social channels and users preferences, it is difficult to manage content across all channels. It is much easier to manage reference posts and engagements on the social channels.
4) We see numerous different user preferences for use of social channels for brand engagement. Marketers cannot simply assume that Facebook has 1 billion users and all the users want to use Facebook for brand engagement. Brands need to be active on all the social channels that users look to engage with brands at.

More and more, I am finding that addressing brands’ social marketing strategy is not enough. Content strategy and planning MUST be part of the strategy. Once marketers have a plan for content stylization and topics to cover, they must plan where the content resides and the best way to get it proliferated. They must also think about ways that the content builds awareness and relationships and spawns word-of-mouth marketing. At the same time there needs to be subtle ways to capture a sales opportunity when the customer is ready to buy. The content hub, social proliferation approach I suggested here accomplishes all of these goals.

Think big, execute the details, and

Make It Happen,
Social Steve

4 Ingredients to a Winning Content Strategy

Do you want people to be reaching and grabbing for your brand and keep coming back? Well having the right content strategy, plan, and execution is your secret sauce. Your content should be of great value. What does this exactly mean? Why would anyone continue to return to your site and social platforms? Simple – because you give them what they value – great information or something entertaining, and then maybe a little bit more …

Your content strategy should be viewed with 4 key ingredients.

1) Kick-ass Content
You must start by having awesome content. And this great content needs to be produced continuously. There is “Power of Compelling and Engaging Content.” It is not only the reason for getting one’s attention, but you look to deepen the reader’s attraction for your brand and build affinity for you.

2) Awesome Curation
Take it one step further and provide a curation linking to places to go to get additional information. If you really want to be the reference point for topical area, you must have not only great information, but also provide places to get more. This is an area some many have a problem with. You can’t be afraid to show other sources of analogous content as in fear that it might trump your content. Another reason for trepidation is feeling that you are the authority of the subject. (Fine – I would not be the one to question that.) But does this really mean that you are the only one’s that have a say on a subject? I am not saying you should link to your competition, but I am certain there are sources that can complement your content. And by the way … sharing others content will build good will and you will see that referencing reciprocated to your digital assets.

3) Places for UGC (User Generated Content)
Make sure you have places for your audience to engage with you. This takes on many forms, but starts with at least having a place for readers to comment. Do not be afraid of negative comments. You can turn these into positive scenarios by engaging and remedying problems. It is also likely that your community will come to your rescue in many instances.

Other successful forms of UGC implementations include actively asking your audience for content and posting it on your site or social channels. Stories, testimonials, videos, pictures and other types of multi-media drive two positive outcomes … a) they allow your audience to connect, build loyalty, and deepen relationships to your brand, and b) UGC promotes greater sharing. People want to show their friends that their content is highlighted on specific sites. As Andy Warhol said, “everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes” or at least many are seeking this.

4) Sharing Tactics
If you want to drive more awareness, more traffic, word-of-mouth is extremely powerful as it has other people do your marketing. Referrals are generated by trusted, objective sources. To start, you should have sharing widgets (Facebook Like, Tweet, etc.) at a minimum. You can use plug-ins like AddThis, ShareThis, Gigya, and others. Other tactics you can use are voting on content and polling on questions related to content. There are a number of other ways to optimize sharing. The most important thing is not to have the “build-it-and-they-will-come” mentality. Consciously think about and plan how your content will be shared and what will provoke your existing readers to share it with their friends.

At the end of the day, you want to be perceived as the subject-matter-expert, leading solution providers, or one with the best product for your market sector. It obviously starts with having a great product or service, but marketing your greatness is equally as important. Content marketing is the way to reinforce your “wow.” It starts with having superior content, but that is far from the end. Think about the ingredients mentioned here and also think about a holistic “Integration of Owned Media, Earned Media, and Paid Media.”

Make It Happen!
Social Steve

PS – Needless to say, your content has to be SEO-friendly … and that is a discussion unto itself.

The Power of Compelling and Engaging Content

Okay, so you’ve read the title of the article and you say no kidding, I know that. But is this part of your strategy and plan before you start posting and tweeting?

Now that so many are getting on board with social media, the persistent nay-sayers are questioning it’s success. And to some degree they are correct. Because far too many are using social media as a sales tool to simply put out promotions. Promotions are like a one-night stand – not debating whether one-night stands are good or bad … that’s for you to decide, but rhetorical question … how long do they last? When it comes to brand marketing, brand reputation, I think most want to work for the customer’s long lasting love as opposed to quick one-shot lust. (Hey this could be my Valentine’s Day edition of the Social Steve blog, but I guess it’s a bit early for that. )

Bust seriously, this is real important stuff. Especially for product and service companies looking to have successful social media strategy and execution. Brands – you want to have a reason why prospects and customers stay engaged with you and come back. And the magical element (besides your product value) is great content. Think about it from a magazine subscription perspective. Why would you get a subscription to a specific magazine? Because you like the topic(s) they cover and the creative way they deliver the story. Well it should be no different for you.

Start by asking yourself these questions – Who is my brand’s target market? What does our product/service deliver for that target market and why does the segment value what we deliver? For the target market, what are their values, challenges, interests, and how are they entertained? Think about these sorts of questions and produce compelling and engaging content that is relevant to your product/service offering. The content can be articles, pictures, video, audio, and other forms of multimedia. Avoid sales pitches when generating content. Make your production of content a branding exercise. One that reinforces to your market that you are an expert or leader in your sector. Doing this provides a reason for people to stay connected with your brand.

The next aspect that you should think about when producing content is getting responses and engagement from your audience. I’ve been using this quote for sometime – “Content is not king. Conversation around content is king.” So ask yourself, “Are we producing content that provokes interaction with our audience?” Provide a place for your audience to post their own UGC (user generated content). Once someone gives you something they have written or created, they are more emotionally tied to your brand. Inclusion is a strong reason for connecting with brands.

So you’re creating great content and getting your target market engaged. There is still one more thing to address – What are doing to optimize the sharing of your content by your audience? This is the essence of word-of-mouth marketing. Thus, there should be a specific design strategy for delivery of your content. Let me give just one game changing example …

For a number of years, I worked as a marketing executive in high-tech. I would often participate in key industry conferences as this was an important lead generation venue and activity. (Still is.) Producing collateral for the events was very important – you know product slick sheets you pass out to everyone passing by your booth. If your product is compelling, most will grab and save the product one-sheeter or pamphlet. But what is the likelihood that this gets shared by the receiptant to their network? So what if you gave out a notebook (my favorite giveaway passed out at conferences) with a simple insert with your product information with a QR-code and URL for more detailed information. There are two facets of this approach that makes your product content more likely to be shared: 1) Given the content is part of a notebook that will presumably be used for about 6 months over and over again, there are more chances for the prospect to mention it at various meetings and encounters with others. 2) It is hard to share a brochure and much easier to share a digital asset such as a QR code or URL.

The other sharing features that have almost become ubiquitous at this point are Facebook Like, TweetMe, and other sharing widgets that accompany postings on your site or blog. It is a no-brainer to use these. There are a number of other strategies and tactics for sharing, but the point is planning this!

So if you are a brand, product, or marketing manager think content in your strategy. Produce continuous content that keeps people coming back, subscribing, and sharing. Analyze and measure your releases. What type of content gets the most traffic, the most interaction with your audience and the most mentions or sharing? There are a number of tools to support metric analysis. Listen to your audience – they’ll tell you what they want to hear.

There will be huge rewards for product and service companies that integrate a complete and continuous content strategy to their brand management activities. Take this from someone who has been a marketing executive for a number of product and service companies and is now working at a “content company.”

Make It Happen,
Social Steve