Tag: digital marketing

Three great questions about social media strategies
Last night I led a full house class called “Advanced Social Media Strategies” at General Assembly. This class is fun to teach, and we had a very large group with tons of great feedback, questions, and anecdotes to share. There were three questions in particular that we spent some extra time on.
1. Should “going viral” be a goal of your social media strategy? No. I could leave it at that, but some explanation is due here. Of course, it’s all great and fun when you post an image or a blog post or a video that generates hundreds of thousands or even millions of views and shares and engagement; however, “going viral” is not a goal. If that is, or becomes, your goal, then you will undoubtedly get caught up in link baits and tricks and gimmicks to try to entice people to engage. That is not the point of social media marketing. Yes, you want to create shareable content, but all your content – every social post you publish – is a reflection of your brand.
2. Does Facebook penalize you for scheduling posts through Hootsuite or other post scheduling software? I had not heard of this issue before, so I did some research and discovered that it is possible that Facebook might ding your organic reach if you schedule your posts using a third party software like Hootsuite. IAG.me has a very informative write up from this past May that includes this issue and one other that does occur when you use social schedulers. There are two issues here. First, if you bulk schedule (upload posts in a .csv file and schedule dozens of posts in advance) from Hootsuite, your posts will not include images. That’s just an issue that Hootsuite has not yet addressed, but not a “penalty.” Second, and this may or may not be a “penalty”, your Facebook EdgeRank score may be affected negatively when you schedule through a third party app. IAG.me’s article doesn’t really give confirmation on this issue, other than to note that “most people in the industry don’t see it as a problem any more” and that Facebook now has it’s own scheduling system. That may mean that Facebook will indeed expressly penalize posts that don’t use their scheduling system.
3. Should you post to all social media all the time using the same tool same image and same text? Again, no. Each social channel – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, Pinterest, etc. – has it’s own parameters for great looking images as well as text limits, links, etc. So, while you might be able to auto-share one image without across all those channels using one automated tool, the image will look somewhat differently on each channel, and you won’t have any text. Taking the time and paying attention to the details to optimize your posts for each channel is what will get you the most engagement on that channel. Also, your audience is not on every channel, and you do not have to be everywhere. Find out where your audience is, and use that channel primarily, while testing other channels for possible fit.
It’s good to remember that social media marketing is – or should be – a part of your content marketing strategy, because everything you push out on social media is your content, and should reflect your brand. Most brands are not about “going crazy viral”, and thus should not set that as the goal. If it happens, great, but what will win over the long haul is sharing beautiful, shareable content that is optimized for each channel where your target audience is most active.
July 31, 2015
Digital Marketing Terms & Metrics
We kicked off a new class last night at General Assembly called “Digital Marketing Key Terms & Metrics.” We had a great turnout, and I tried a non-traditional delivery of this class. I didn’t use a slide deck. #FREEDOM!

Instead, we started off with a little brain-freeing inspiration from this fantastic video.

No, instead, I put all the terms that are generally or specifically defined in the basics of digital marketing on one wall, and a huge marketing funnel diagram on another wall. Then we walked through the digital marketing funnel for three different kinds of business models, from brand to reach to revenue for each business type.
1. Ecommerce
2. Services
3. Media
The math is ultimately the same for each, but the path from reach to revenue is very different, as are the sales cycle and KPIs, among other metrics.

The big take-aways from this 2-hour class are to measure everything, experiment using small, focused digital campaigns, and work towards repeatable predictability in your marketing campaigns.

Saturday, we’ll expand all this knowledge in the #DGM Bootcamp, and add Chipotle for lunch. I hope to see you there!
July 24, 2015
Try a sample, then eat the whole cake
Have you ever seen a big tasty-looking carrot cake in the window of a bakery, then run in and bought that $21.99 carrot cake, and then you get home, nuke a piece, dive in, and…ugh. That’s how my grandmother made carrot cake!! Where are the raisins? It’s so dry! But you bought the whole cake, and fresh baked goods are a bit of a gamble. Either you love them, or not.

I think this analogy works for the plethora of bootcamps and technical education classes that abound in Atlanta and other growing tech cities. I mean, $21.99 is pretty steep for a cake, and some of the classes being offered today are pretty expensive. Many of them are worth it, and worth much more when the class gives you the skills and know-how that you need to change jobs, get promoted, or get your first job in the area you really want to be.

But how do you know the cake (you know, the class) will be good? If you’re going to spend the better part of 3 months learning in a class, you should be able to take a taste, so to speak, of the class itself and see if that’s really how you want to spend your money. You see, one piece of cake is just $3. If it sucks, you’re out $3, not $22, in addition to that 37 minutes of unimaginable anticipation as you speed home to your now totally unfulfilled dessert craving.

That’s what’s happening this Saturday at General Assembly at Ponce City Market. We’re conducting a one-day bootcamp for Digital Marketing. It’s this Saturday from 10am-4pm, includes lunch, and is a great primer for exactly what to expect if you decide to enroll in the 10-week Digital Marketing Course that starts August 18th. The purpose of the Digital Marketing course is to prepare students to actually do the job of a digital marketer, a job which is increasingly in demand, as this most recent study clearly demonstrates.

Saturday’s bootcamp is $100 for six hours of very hands-on, very interactive, very fun learning about the ins and outs of digital marketing. Here’s the basic topical outline:
The link in each one of the above topics points to a blog post originally from the GA Blog specifically aimed at that topic, so right here and right now you can get a free sample of what you’ll be learning. Then on Saturday, you’ll have your sample exactly how you’ll be learning it (and whether you can tolerate me standing up front ~~blathering on about~~ teaching #DGM for 10 weeks!). That should be just enough carrot cake to determine if that’s the cake you want, and need, to take your career or small business to the next level.

I hope to see you on Saturday! Register here for the 1-day bootcamp and here for the 10-week DGM course.

Unfortunately, there will not be carrot cake.
July 21, 2015
4 Steps to Determine How Well You Know Your Brand
This post originally appeared on the General Assembly Digital Marketing Blog.

How well do you know your brand? DO you know your brand? Actually, “brand” is an uncomfortable topic for many startup founders and small business owners, simply because they weren’t thinking about their brand when they started. It’s not a knock on them. Every entrepreneur has a vision of how their organization can change the world and how they can make a lot of money. But very few enter into the world of entrepreneurship intentionally considering and planning their brand.

But don’t worry! It’s never too late to establish your brand—though you may have to re-establish that brand because the market has told you what your brand is, instead of the other way around. Once you intentionally create your brand, then you can set out to make sure you hire and partner with people who uphold and support your brand, and then build your brand into everything about your company.

In the meantime, try this simple 4-step exercise to see how well you – or your employees – know your brand. Answer each of these 4 questions in the form of a tweet, using 140 characters or less. Add an image if you like, if that helps illustrate your brand, but the 140 characters should also stand alone.
1. What are your core values? Here’s a great recent example.
2. What industry or market problem are you solving? Hint: Start with “why.”
3. Who is your optimal customer and how do you reach them? Here’s how to find them.
4. Describe your business. See what Guy Kawasaki says.
Per Mr. Kawasaki’s advice, you and everyone who works for you should be able to spout everything in these four tweets verbatim. It’s not a memory game, but a culture game. You hire people who uphold the values on which you created the company, and then you bake it into the culture each and every day, with the understanding that your brand is everything you do.

Also, this isn’t anything new, but perhaps more people are talking about it. Way back in 1994, Charles Brewer started Mindspring, which eventually became Earthlink, one of the largest ISPs in the business. He built the company on what he called “CV&BVs” or core values & beliefs.earn More About Branding In Our Digital Marketing Course
July 12, 2015
It’s easier – and better – for someone else to tell your story
Since transitioning from a simple content aggregation publication into a content marketing service, I’ve had dozens of meetings with entrepreneurs and marketers about “telling their story.” A consistent pattern has emerged out of those meetings that has become predictable in all my initial consultations with potential clients:

It’s easier for me to tell your story than it is for you to tell your story.

Here’s why, and, while these reasons don’t apply to absolutely everyone, they are very consistent.
1. You’re too close to your product. You know it so well that you lose sight of what your audience doesn’t know. I liken this scenario to when I tried to teach my mom how to use Microsoft Excel a few years back. I’m going on and on about formulas and dragging cells and charts and stuff, and she stops me and asks, “what’s a ‘cell’?”
2. You don’t like to talk about yourself. Most people, despite the requirement of a solid amount of confidence and ego to start, run, and own a business, don’t really like to write or talk about themselves. However, in order to position you or the company you run as an industry authority, thought leader, or expert, you have to talk about you. It’s much easier for me to compliment you than for you to humble-brag about you. Sounds better, too.
3. A third party lends credibility. At the TAG Business Launch Competition finals in May, Gimme Vending reached the final round. Instead of taking the entire 10 minutes to present themselves, they put a customer on stage to talk about them. It was so much more powerful to hear someone outside the company talking about the company than to hear the longer version of their 3-minute pitch. The same thing applies to your marketing content.
4. From your audience’s point of view. This last point is actually the most important, and is related to point #1 above. The words we use inside our own teams are different than the words we use when speaking to our customers and prospects. We just use different language, and we see things from our side of the table, not theirs. Bringing in a 3rd party to voice your message enables that third party to see – and speak or write – from an outsider’s point of view, namely, your prospect’s point of view.
Again, these 4 reasons for third party content creation are not hard and fast, nor do they apply to absolutely everyone. However, the more potential clients I meet, the more I see this pattern. It helps to hear and tell your story from a fresh, different perspective.
July 10, 2015
How and Why to Segment Your Website Audience

This post originally appeared on the General Assembly Digital Marketing Blog.

When you go shopping for new clothes, online or in a brick and mortar store, which section do you hit first, the men’s or the women’s clothing? Good. OK, when you need a new power cord for your computer or smartphone, do you go to the Windows section or the Mac section? Finally, when you are in Europe at a great local restaurant, do you ask for the menu in English or in the local language?

Your specific answers to these questions are not the point. The point is that my answers may be the same or different from your answers. With that understanding, if you owned any one of the store types mentioned above – clothing, computer, food – you might ask me these types of questions when I walk in the door, or you might provide signage that shows me the way without having to be asked.

Do you do the same for your website visitors? I can almost hear the responses through the interwebz: “Wait…what?” Exactly. Whether we realize it or not, we segment our audiences into what we call “tribes” of people who have some characteristic in common. We do this segmenting because different people have different needs when they visit your

We do this segmenting because different people have different needs when they visit your website, and each visitor takes a different journey to get there. The difference to a digital marketer is that we actively segment and track our tribes because they exhibit different behavior, and we can market to them specifically, and more effectively.

Let’s use one of the examples above to illustrate the point further. Say you need a new charging cord for your phone. You know the store near your home carries them, so you go there. You ask where the charging cords are, and the person behind the counter points you to the back. There, you find all the cords in a big bin, all mixed up together, with nothing separating iOS from Android from Windows. Don’t you wish the store you visited had segmented their audiences by device type?

Google Analytics offers many different ways to segment your website visitors, mainly by demographics and acquisition. Demographics shows you who the visitor is, and acquisition is where the visitor came from. You can get very granular in segmenting your audiences, considering that you can drill down even deeper within these lists. For example, you can segment by what kind of mobile device and browser the visitors use.

Google Analytics is a very powerful tool and fairly easy to learn, plus it’s completely free; and because it’s Google, it’s also very well supported. Here is one of hundreds of videos available on the Google Analytics YouTube Channel that explains what segmenting is and how you do it.

Segmenting your audience helps you learn about your audience, but it also helps you customize the user experience for them, so it’s a win-win for digital marketers.

July 9, 2015
4 Steps to Predictable Marketing Outcomes
One of the greatest achievements in starting a business is when you reach the point at which you can conduct a marketing campaign and predict with great confidence the outcome of the campaign, regardless of the end goal. When you can accurately predict the outcome of each individual marketing effort, you can then grow your business rapidly and predictably.

Here’s a scenario from one of my previous lives that illustrates the point. We had grown our opt-in email list to more than 120,000 email addresses. We knew (within a certain margin of error) what our email open & read rates were for various types of campaigns. We knew what our click through rate would be (again, within a certain range). We knew the price of the new product, both as a stand alone item and as part of the bundles we regularly sold. Finally, we knew the length of the sales cycle from each email campaign. Knowing all this information, we were able to predict very accurately how much revenue would be generated and when it would hit the bank.

That’s a very powerful feeling which gives the entrepreneur tremendous confidence in taking risks. So how do you get to that point? Here are 4 steps to predictable marketing outcomes.
1. Start with the metrics in mind. Stephen Covey famously said “start with the end in mind”, and he is of course correct; however, when we begin our marketing efforts with measurement in mind, we build into the DNA of the marketing organization the functional ability to measure everything we do and everything that happens, whether we intend for it to happen or not. If we had never tracked our marketing funnel numbers in the example above, we would never have thought of predicting the outcome, much less been able to actually predict it. We would have guessed, hoped, and waited, instead of pushing forward knowing the outcome.
2. Track every campaign on its own. It’s one thing to know that “overall, our email open/read rate is 9.45%.” Really, that’s great, but every email campaign is different. Your monthly newsletter is different than a hard launch of a new product or service, and your audience’s reaction to each different type of campaign is going to be different. So, tracking each campaign on its own enables you to get more granular with the type and timing of each campaign, so that when you conduct a similar campaign, you are predicting apples vs. apples, not oranges. One of the most powerful tools available for tracking individual campaigns is the Google URL Builder, which I’ve written about here. Create individual tracking URLs for each campaign, and even different landing pages for segmented audiences within each campaign, e.g., Facebook audiences vs. Twitter audiences.
3. Segment your audiences. Put everyone on a list, or multiple lists, especially within your social media audiences. It’s not fun to do this after the fact for social fans/followers, but it’s worth the effort. If you’re just starting to build your social audiences, start out by always always always putting everyone on a list, so you can then later target those lists. Segmenting your audiences in Google Analytics can be done anytime, and is an extremely powerful way to hyper target the prospects who are already familiar with your offerings and have engaged with you digitally in some form or fashion already.
4. Run many tiny experiments. The beauty of digital marketing is the ability to conduct lots and lots of little digital experiments to test various tactical methods of engaging your audiences. We can guess all day at what might work, but in the end, until we put it in front of a prospect, we don’t know how they will react. By conducting many small, inexpensive experiments in a short amount of time, we can get to the point of predictability much faster than we used to. For example, spending $50 on Google Adwords or a Facebook Ad (don’t “boost post”; doesn’t work) or a Twitter campaign can teach you huge lessons about your audience and your messaging.
Building these four tactics into your marketing machine will enable you to get to predictable marketing outcomes very quickly.

I mentioned above that we were able to predict very accurately what the outcome of a given marketing campaign would be. What I did not mention – for obvious emphasis – is that it took us years to grow that email list and understand our audience and how they would react to various marketing tactics. We did not yet have Google Adwords, Twitter Ads, Facebook Ads, and the ability to segment our audiences in Google Analytics. Now you do.
July 7, 2015
Digital marketing summed up in six simple points
Last Thursday, I led a 2-hour version of the six hour version of the 10-week Digital Marketing class at General Assembly. I really enjoy teaching these short, impactful sessions that serve as great introductions or primers for folks who want to learn to talk the talk in Digital Marketing or determine if they’d like to pursue a career in DGM. Last week’s class was no exception to the rule that these classes are always fun.

I’ll be teaching the DGM Bootcamp again at the end of July. That’s the six hour version that dives a little deeper and gets the attendees actually digging into their own digital marketing situations during class.

Here’s the summary of the class, which also happens to be the very high level summary of the 6-hour and 10-week version, if you just want to know what’s covered, again, at a very high level.
1. Your brand is everything you do. We start out every class asking “what is a brand?” and we always get lots of different answers. Logo, identity, perception, etc. Your brand is everything you do, from how you answer the phone to whether or not your personal email signature is branded. Everything you do includes every word on every web page, blog, and social post; every video, podcast, image, photo, and infographic. If you put it on the interwebz, then you just made it part of your brand. Digital marketing starts with your brand, and you must be intentional about defining and maintaining your brand.
2. Measure everything, but focus on a few KPIs. The biggest difference between what we call ‘digital marketing’ today and ‘marketing’ from yesteryear is that we have the resulting data immediately, so we can constantly run experiments and learn very quickly and inexpensively…IF we are setup to measure everything. It’s easy if you start off that way, but much more difficult if you are already marketing without the proper tracking and analytics. But it’s never too late to start. Build it into the DNA of your marketing organization that you will be setup to measure absolutely everything, and then focus on a handful of KPIs, which will change as you grow and succeed.
3. Do the math of the marketing funnel for every campaign. Every campaign is completely different, even if you’re marketing the exact same thing on Twitter vs. Facebook. Those users are different and they take a different journey to your web property, so treat each one as its own campaign. Then measure you reach, click through rates, conversion rates, orders, average orders, units per order, revenue per lead, and cost per lead for every campaign. Doing so gives you the ability to determine exactly which campaigns worked and which did not, and then be able to predict the outcome of every future campaign once you have a baseline of data.
4. Content is king, and you already have tons of it. Just like your brand is everything you do, every post, blog, video, podcast, image, and photo is your content. You may not think you have content, but you do. Everyone has a story, and every entrepreneur and startup has a very interesting story, as well as a reason for existing. You know something of value to someone. That’s your content. In addition, every event, product, team member, victory, feature, update, news, and market shift is your content. What happened yesterday and what are you planning for tomorrow? All of that is your content. Content is king in digital marketing, because when your audience consumes your content, they trust you just a little bit more, and are that much more likely to trust you when it comes time to make the purchase. Tell your story!
5. Digital ads are cheap, powerful, and hyper-targeted. Google Adwords, Facebook Ads, and Twitter Ads are very simple to purchase, very inexpensive to try, and so very targeted to use that any startup or small business can set aside a few dollars a week or month and make an impact on their business immediately. Every social channel will eventually offer ads, but for now, these are the big three, and each offers very specific methods for attracting users, promoting posts, downloading software, or generating leads. The best way to approach these very effective tools is to start small, experiment, learn, and then step on the accelerator with what works best for your goals.
6. Plan everything, so you have the freedom to win. I enjoy telling the #winning stories like the Oreo SuperBowl tweet and the Arby’s Grammys tweet, but I also have to throw in the IAC Justine Sacco nightmare, just to make sure people really understand the power of digital media, for better or for worse. The wins come when the organization has a plan, heavily relies on a content marketing calendar to plan nearly every post, and has a solid branding that its team understands and can execute. Oreo and Arby’s did well. IAC, not so much. It all starts with the brand, which leads to culture, which influences content. Then it comes full circle. The marketing calendar is your best friend, or your worst enemy, because nothing hurts like a date and nothing helps like a plan.
I’m looking forward to another 6 hour class in a few Saturdays, and also to the official 10-week class that starts on Tuesday night, August 18th.
July 7, 2015
Digital Marketing 101: Glossary of Digital Marketing Terms

This post originally published on the General Assembly Digital Marketing Blog.

1. Analytics – information resulting from the systematic analysis of data or statistics. In digital marketing, analytics is the information resulting from systematic analysis of data gathered from marketing activity such as email marketing, landing page A/B testing, or Google Adwords purchases.

2. Average order amount – the amount of all orders divided by the total number of orders; used in digital marketing to help calculate the necessary reach, along with CTR and conversion rate.

3. Banner ads – also known as “display ads”, these advertising units are images that advertisers place on known publishers’ websites in order to attract or re-attract their target audience.

4. Baseline – an established level of normalcy; in digital marketing, for example, the normal or regular number of unique visitors per day to a website.

5. Behavioral email – an email generated when a known user performs a certain action – such as completing a video – on a website, and the owner of the website then contacts the known user regarding that video as a follow up to the user’s behavior.

6. Blogging – from the term “web log”, in which a user actively updates a visible section of a website in order to inform or attract users and customer on a regular basis.

7. Brand – a business’s brand is the sum total of all its users’ and customers’ opinion of that business; a business can choose to intentionally shape its brand or allow the market forces to shape its brand.

8. Business model – an entity’s business model defines how the business creates its product or service, delivers the product or service to the intended audience, and then collects payment for the service or product from the intended audience.

9. Channels – a delivery mechanism; in digital marketing, a business’s message is delivered via one or more marketing channel such as email, social media, blogging, advertisements, etc.

10. Click Through Rate (CTR) – the percentage of the targeted audience that is exposed to the marketer’s message that click on the link provided in the message and land on the marketer’s web property.

11. Consistency – the importance of continuing with a course of action, such as blogging, in a regular frequency in order to repeatedly expose the intended audience to the marketer’s message.

12. Conversion rate – the percentage of unique visitors to a website that are “converted” into customers, users, or leads.

13. Delivery – when the good or service provided by a business is provided to and accepted by the user or customer; in digital marketing, also the receipt of a message from the marketer to a group or individual in the target audience.

14. Digital marketing calendar – a tool that provides for time-based structure and discipline for the digital marketer in planning, assigning, creating, and delivering content to the marketer’s target audience.

15. Digital marketing funnel – a visualization of the calculations that starts with the total universe of targeted audiences, then measures those who click on a link from marketing content, the click through rate (CTR), the conversion rate, total conversions, order amount, and revenue.

16. Distribution – the means by which a product or service is delivered to its end user or customer

17. Earned content – content not created by the marketer, but rather created and shared by fans of the marketer’s message to the fan’s social and other digital connections.

18. Engagement – in digital marketing, the term for user interaction with a particular piece of shared content: Likes, shares, comments on Facebook; RTs, replies, favorites on Twitter, and link clicks on all social media.

19. Facebook Ads – the program operated by Facebook that enables paying customers to use hyper-targeting via Facebook profile tags and traits to reach a certain specific audience via advertisements placed in the users’ timeline.

20. Frequency – in digital marketing, how often a task is performed; for example, the frequency of a blog post or twitter update.

21. Google Adwords – the program operated by Google that enables paying customers to use hyper-targeting via Google Search Engine Results Page (SERP) to reach a certain specific audience via advertisements placed at the top and right sides of the search results.

22. Google Keyword Planning Tool – a free tool provided by Google within the Google Adwords interface that helps users find and plan which keywords to target with their advertising campaigns

23. KPIs – Key Performance Indicators

24. Lifetime customer value – the total sum of all revenue estimated over the lifetime of a repeat customer; often used as a metric in evaluating the pricing and value of a SaaS business.

25. OODA loop – Observe. Orient. Decide. Act. A teaching tool originating from military training that promotes the use of a constant cycle of learning; in digital marketing, used to instill the use of hypothesizing, experimentation, data capture and measurement, and then re-stating a new revised hypothesis based on information gathered in previous experiments.

26. Owned content – content created or curated by the marketer in order to promote the marketer’s message to the target audience; owned content typically consists of blog posts and social media posts and images, but should also be applied to any message that proceeds out of the marketer’s company and into the target audience, such as email signatures.

27. Page views – the number of times a web page or set of web pages are viewed during a given time period.

28. Pages per visit – the average number of pages viewed by a single visitor during a given time period.

29. Paid content – content pushed out by the marketer via any paid means such as Facebook ads, Google Adwords, Twitter Ads, or banner (display) ads.

30. Persona – the ideal compilation of all the traits of the “perfect” user or customer for a marketer’s product or service.

31. Retargeting – the technology, driven by web browser cookies, that enables a marketer to continually put a digital message in front of a user who has visited that marketer’s web property.

32. Sales cycle – the time required for a sales conversion to be completed after the prospect initially becomes aware of the marketer’s brand or product.

33. Seasonality – a business cycle driven by calendar-based events during the year.

34. SEO – Search Engine Optimization – the practice of preparing a web property to be quickly, easily, and properly indexed by a search engine, usually Google.

35. SERP – Search Engine Results Page

36. Time on site – the average time that a website visitor remains active on a particular website.

37. Total reach – the total exposure (measured in web users or “eyeballs”) of an advertisement or piece of content.

38. Transactional email – automated email driven by a certain type of transaction on a web property; for example, an order or email subscription.

39. Twitter Ads – the program operated by Twitter that enables paying customers to use hyper-targeting via Twitter users’ profile data to reach a certain specific audience via advertisements placed in the users’ timeline.

40. Web copy – words that appear on a website that are aimed at the marketer’s target audience and represent the marketer’s brand.

Explore Digital Marketing At GA

July 5, 2015
Digital Marketing 101: Creating Your Digital Marketing Calendar
This post originally published on the General Assembly Digital Marketing Blog.

This post is part of our Digital Marketing 101 series. Sign up to get the full series!

Everything we’ve discussed so far in this Digital Marketing 101 series has focused on what to do and a bit about how to do it. But in marketing, timing is everything, and the two parts of timing in marketing are frequency and consistency. So here we’re going to move past what and how and look into when. The most valuable tool in your digital marketing arsenal will help you know when to do something, help you maintain your frequency, and, more importantly, your consistency. That tool is your digital marketing calendar.

Why do you need a content marketing calendar?

At the most simple level, it’s so you don’t wake up each morning and say, “Gee, I wonder what kinds of stuff we’ll tweet and blog about this morning?” As a professional digital marketer, you want to be thinking about what you’ll be doing 1, 2, 3, and 6 months from now, while today, you’re watching the events of the day to see how you can ride the social wave like Arby’s did at the 2014 Oscars. That moment wasn’t planned, but Arby’s was ready. You need a marketing calendar so you can plan your marketing year, down to the week and day, and be ready to participate in the events of the day via social media.

Where do you start?

My first rule of thumb for doing anything, and in particular creating a calendar of action, is the KIS rule: Keep It Simple. That said, use a tool you know and are familiar with, like a spreadsheet or Google Calendar or whatever calendar app you use all the time. There are dozens of really, really good and simple examples of marketing calendars available at the click of a mouse. Here are just a few:
Now that you’ve got a template from a 3rd party or you’ve made one yourself, here are the main points for each campaign or piece of content that you need to include.
- Date: when will this campaign or content be published?
- Name of the topic/campaign: A name for this content (blog, article, post, etc.) or the campaign
- Owner: Who is the owner or author of the content or campaign? This person will click “GO”.
- Status: The current status of the content/campaign as it moves through your process
You may or may not add to these points, and that is okay. The main point of this exercise is to create a calendar system that works for you and your marketing team, to keep you aware and accountable for when each item in the marketing campaign must be completed.

Planning & Creating Your Calendar

Every business has some sort of “season” or seasonality. For example, retail businesses are strongest between October and December. Software or SaaS businesses are slower in the summer and have high points at the ends of calendar quarters. What events does your business participate in? You may consider building your marketing calendar around those events, or around one particular event that really drives your business, like a tradeshow or annual conference.

Once you have identified those events or seasonal patterns, build your calendar around them. Also, for social media, you can engage your audience by sharing content that is related to certain calendar events like holidays or things like “back to school” or “Breast Cancer Awareness Month.” Take a 100,000 foot view of your brand’s annual cycle, and plan your marketing around it, then work backwards based on how long it will take to produce, approve, and launch each campaign or content.

You’ll be surprised at how quickly the calendar fills up, and then you’ll see where the gaps are that you can fill.

Execution is Everything

There’s a current adage in the startup world that goes something like this: “ideas are easy, but execution is everything.” In other words, it doesn’t matter how incredible your “change-the-world” idea is if you can’t execute on it, and a very simple idea executed really well can also change the world. Your calendar is a very prominent part of your ability to execute even the most complex of marketing campaigns.

It’s also helpful to remember that nobody is perfect. Life happens. You’re going to miss a deadline, misspell a word in a tweet, share a bad link or the wrong link, or think you posted to social media but, for reasons nobody knows, that fantastic image never makes it to Facebook. Your calendar is a reminder, not a taskmaster. It’s up to you to create the calendar system that works for you, and then abide by it.

Explore Digital Marketing At GA
July 4, 2015