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
Steve Cummins - B2B Tech Marketer 