Your message is more than the words you choose. It’s how you get the message to your audience.
Social media may be hot these days but it’s just one of the tools in the box. Think about how to use all of your tools to your advantage.
Do you understand what works with your audience? Do they wish to interact? If so, how and where? What channel works best to get their attention and at what point in the buying cycle?
It’s not hard to find a lecture, networking event, or article that focuses on how to use various types of social media to market your business. I’ve talked about it myself.
As the conversation about social media gets more feverish, I get less interested.
Agreed: as a way to get the message out and have a conversation with your customers and stakeholders, social media platforms really do the job.
But shouldn’t the focus be on the actual message? And once you figure out what that is, then spend time thinking about the right medium to share the message? Depending on your message, the best way to share could be rock carvings, skywriting, or good old fashioned paper.
No matter your business, there probably should be some form of social media in the marketing mix. But the exercise of figuring out what platform would work best and why isn’t a trivial step.
What is thought leadership marketing?
What are your great thoughts?
Talking to client is an art, isn’t it. If you know them well, it’s easy to get pally and risk overpromising. If you don’t know them well, it’s easy to hold back in fear of saying the wrong thing.
Here’s a look at 7 words you should never say to a client from iMedia Connection (they’ve always got good stuff!).
My favorite is right up there at number 1: Wait
It’s easy to want to wait to get things perfect, to hold off until you have exactly the right words or the right look or the right approach. Better than that though, is just showing up–in the ad, on the site, wherever, whatever. Unless there are legal or ethical hurdles to jump (in which case the content had better be spot on), don’t wait too long. Like the ads say…just do it.
Who knew the Luciano Pavarotti was such a marketing genius? Check Chris Guillebeau’s Art of Non-Conformity article about the famous tenor’s secret to success. He did it for his audience, it was all about giving.
It might seem to make sense in his profession and not others. But it’s an interesting exercise to figure out how it applies to each of our own businesses. And that it’s possible even without a Twitter account (although he sure got more exposure through his work than the average desk jockey does).
How will you give to your audience today?
These days, social media and mobile apps get all the attention from the marketing set. Not to say that we oldsters aren’t joining the party, but when it comes to making it look easy, both of these are pretty much the purview of the younger set, the Millennials.
But guess what…according to Nielsen (in this report on Marketing Chart) Boomers’ use of Twitter jumped 469% in 2009 (there was nowhere to go but up!). 80% of Gen-Xers use tools like Facebook and Twitter. The Greatest Generation, those over 65, are a different story when it comes to the social media and mobile bandwagon. They are a bunch who like email, though, so you can still reach ‘em online.
Go forth and market…