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Why Google+ Will be A Hit…..Eventually
Did you google on Mothers Day? Between buying flowers and eating brunch, you may have come across the Google Doodle. If you had a moment to click on it, you would have gone through a clever little animation to produce a “hand-drawn” ( fridge-art style) Mothers Day card. Which then led to a Google-centric page showing all the ways they can help you celebrate (and a video guaranteed to make you smile).
Here are the headlines – can you guess the Google product?
- Need some last-minute gift ideas?
- Keep in touch with Mom
- Entertain Mom
- Find and send flowers nearby
- Share life’s moments with Mom
- Teach a Mom tech
[In order, they are Google Offers, Hangout, YouTube, Google Map/Locals, Google+ and "Teach Parents Tech"]
It’s an impressive list – shopping/daily deals, videochat, TV, Yellow Pages, LinkedIn/Facebook and, well, whatever Teach Parents Tech is.
Google may not be the best at each one, but the key is that they are slowly integrating them into a central hub – Google+. The clever folks at Google want to be the one-stop shop for busy people.
Like many marketers, I’ve struggled with where Google+ fits in the mix. Discussions normally focus on “what kind of unique content should I post; otherwise it’s just like LinkedIn or Facebook”. But we’re missing the point. Google+ as a social media platform isn’t really anything new or different. It’s Google+ as a convenience that is the killer app.
Of course, the other element is the importance of search. With Authorship, semantic search and +1′s, it’s hard to believe that a presence on Google+ won’t have a significant impact on your Google searchability.
So my advice – make Google+ a part of your digital marketing mix. Even if you’re not sure where it will take you, you can be sure Google+ is going places.
What are you using Google+ for?
And on the 90th Day…He Created Content…
The first 90 days of a Digital Marketing Strategy can be a bit of a slog – interesting, rewarding, but a slog. You’ve covered a lot of ground, and no doubt learnt a lot about your business along the way. You’ve studied your competitor, identified the best places to share your knowledge, and built the various digital properties you plan to use. [See earlier posts here]
So I hate to say this but…now comes the tough part!
To be successful in a digital strategy, you have to feed the beast. You have to constantly create compelling
content to keep these digital properties vibrant, keep the dialog moving, and keep Google interested. This is where many companies fail. So here are my quick tips to keep the content flowing – [there are many, many top 10 lists out there that cover similar territory]:
- Create a Writers club - Identify people in the company with something to say; have a group lunch once a month to debate topics and encourage them to write about it. (Even if they’re not great writers, it’s quicker to edit content than create 100% original material yourself)
- Find interesting articles, and write a commentary (here’s a good example from Network for Good)
Photo by William Warby
- Use a photo of a company event, a book you’re reading, a fox in the garden…anything that can inspire you to write 20 words. That’s all you need to make a point. Here’s one from my friend Janet Clare.
- Did I mention Top 10 lists? People love ‘em, and they’re easy to write
There are, of course, many other ways to create content. But I know I only read the first 3 or 4 bullets in any list. So I’ll stop here.
So there you have it. My thoughts on how to kick off a Digital Marketing strategy. It’s not perfect. It doesn’t cover everything you may need. And I can’t even claim that I have done all of these things, every time. But I hope it gives you some ideas.
Let me know what I missed. What else would you do in the first 90 days?
Note: These postings are based on a presentation I gave at BMA-NJ Digital Marketing Summit. The slides and video can be viewed here
The Final Stretch- Part 3 of a 90 Day Digital Marketing Strategy
Is Digital Marketing fun? Many parts of it are – but in the final 30 days of your initial strategy, you have to focus on the more “procedural” aspects, to ensure you’re set up for success.[Earlier postings describe the First & Second 30 days]
Write Down the Plan. This doesn’t have to be over-complicated, but at the very least set up some goals and milestones. How else will you be able to show everyone that this Digital Marketing stuff really works? Make sure you include some business-relevant goals. “500 twitter follower” may be achievable - but does that really have an impact on the business? (Not to mention, any of us could get 500 followers on twitter, so long as it’s quantity not quality!). Look for something that has impact – leads put into CRM from a digital platform; number of shares or comments on blog articles (which at least shows some level of interest & interaction)
Editorial Calendar. Now that you have a plan to use – let’s say – Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest, you need a 
way to keep on track. So publish an editorial calendar which outlines how often you’ll publish, what the topics will be, and who’s responsible for each piece of content. Eloqua produced a useful Content Grid infographic which will help you identify the types of content you need to be producing
Train your Contributors. Hopefully you’ll have a group of willing (or indentured) volunteers who will be creating content. Take some time to train them; maybe they need a “blogging 101″ overview, or maybe just some guidelines on your specific company blog. Either way, prepare some cheat sheets on the key digital properties you’ll be using and run a couple of lunch and learns to help everyone feel comfortable. Point them toward some useful resources to help them get up to speed.
And of course, throughout this last 30 days, start creating some killer content. My advice is to hold off launching these digital properties until you have a backlog of material. That will reduce the initial pressure to keep these pages updated, if you have a week or two’s worth of posting already lined up.
We’re almost there. Next week I’ll talk about how you keep moving after those first 90 days.
Note: These postings are based on a presentation I gave at BMA-NJ Digital Marketing Summit. The slides and video can be viewed here
Building the Foundation – Part 2 of a 90 Day Digital Marketing Strategy
“There are so many social & digital platforms, which should I use?”. That’s not only a common question, but a critical one to spend some time on when you’re developing your strategy. Here’s another one – “I know I have to use Facebook and Twitter, but what else”?
In the first part of the 90 Day Strategy, I described how to create a baseline & benchmark. Now it’s time to build – or fortify – the foundation of your digital properties.
Let me tackle the second question, and one of my pet peeves. Many people assume they have to have a Facebook page, because every company does, and “everybody’s on Facebook”. Instead of assuming, ask yourself how people would interact with your brand there. How does your B2B brand fit in with people’s usage? My guess is, not very well. The truth is, most people want to have fun on Facebook - share personal photos, updates and funny videos - not think about work. Also add the fact that many companies still block access to Facebook at work, and suddenly, Facebook isn’t such a “must have”.
Ask those same questions for any digital property you’re considering. If you want to use Twitter ask yourself:
- How many of my target audience use Twitter
- What do they use it for
- What kind of messages would I send out
- What would be my measure of success
Think this isn’t an important step? Take a look at the chart from Buddy Media which shows how crazy the social media landscape has become! You can’t do it all!
Do the same for every platform you’re considering, and pretty soon, you’ll have a top 3 or 4 that make sense for you. And that’s also key. Unless you have a large digitally-focused marketing team (does anyone?!), chances are you only have the resource to be effective with 2 or 3 social media platforms. I’d much prefer to do a few things well than to try to cover every possible platform and miss the target on all of them.
Then write down a brief summary for each one – it will keep you focused, and give you a way to justify to senior management. (A sample of this is shown in my slideshare presentation or on the Resources page).
Final step – create interesting and compelling home pages on each social media site which represent your brand or products. There’s a great infographic from LunaMetrics that give you the dimensions for each major platform.
The final 30 days will focus on initial implementation – planning, training and establishing a program.
How to Start a Digital Marketing Strategy – The First 90 Days
I recently spoke at the BMA-NJ Digital Marketing Summit on “The First 90 Days of a Digital Marketing Strategy”. Folks at the event gave me some nice feedback, so I thought I would review the same approach here, along with some links to free tools and some useful infographics.
For me, the First 90 Days can be split into three sections:
- Baseline & Benchmark(30)
- Build the Foundation ( 60)
- Implementation (90)
Baseline & Benchmark
As with most things in business, it’s tough to know where you’re going until you know where you are. So the first step is to draw a baseline of your current digital footprint – website, search and social.
1) At Alexa.com, you can get a traffic ranking of any website – a numerical value relating to how often the site is visited compared to all other sites. Do this for your own site, and your major competitors, to see how you stack up
2) Log into your Google Analytics account (assuming your web guys have set it up). Make a note of average visitors, bounce rate, avg pages viewed, source of referrals and any of the other elements that you think are relevant to you
3) Run a free website audit on Nibbler. It gives a fairly detailed ranking on the effectiveness of your site over 17 elements, and then drills down to give you ideas on how to improve. The free version only looks at 5 pages, but it’s a great start. Woorank.com can also give you some insights.
4) Look at all of your social media pages. Are they actively updated? Do they reflect your brand values and core message? Is it easy for visitors to interact? Do you have a presence where you need to be? And then do the same for your competitors. I recommend using a simple Excel grid to record how each company rates for each social platform.
5) Start developing a Keyword list. OK, seems like this one might be a whole blog post on it’s own. Let’s just say there are two ways to do this – “Quick & Dirty” or “Normal”. I’ll go into more detail in a future post.
So, there you have it – almost the first 30 days, with the exception of keywords.
The full presentation is available on Slideshare; and I’ll continue these posts over the next week or two.
Until then, as a preview of the rest of the 90 days, take a look at my Pinterest Board.
And let me know what tools you use to benchmark your Digital performance.
