The need for a media plan

It’s been said you can’t accomplish anything without a plan, and you can’t get to  places you haven’t been without a map. Your media plan is critical for your social media efforts because it provides you with both your direction and your goal.

In social media and content marketing, your media plan is the detailed written action plan that will tell you and your team how you are going to achieve your goals. The best media plans are detailed enough to provide specific audience, media and message, but still open enough to allow for some serious creativity.

Media plans go by many names: content marketing plans, social media campaigns, editorial calendars, fast calendars and more. We’ll break these down later but all of them are planning documents to be used to organize ourselves and make ourselves more efficient and effective.

Editorial calendars go back years, before the time of social media, where topics were targeted to daily newspapers, weekly newspapers, magazines, trade publications, TV, radio, email, and more. They’re all still there, with the additional of all the new media, the social media, but the goals are still the same, with the addition of these new players.

Editorial calendars are usually organized for a 12 month period, however, that period can be longer or shorter depending on need. It can be divided into quarterly or monthly periods as deadlines draw near. A quarterly period is very effective for medium-range planning, testing your effectiveness 0r  implementation ROI measures.

Monthly planning is perhaps the key unit for implementing your social media, media relations, government relations and content development. This will be broken down further into weekly and daily increments but the month is generally central organizing unit.

The media plan is useful for a number of reasons. It serves as a planning document and we explore our creativity as we approach deadlines. The plan helps to organize us and focus our team. The media plan can also be a vital aid in team building. From a practical perspective, we often need to develop a story 3-4 months prior to the publication date, and even with Facebook and Twitter we often need prep time of several weeks prior to post

With a content calendar, you can look for story ideas from the seasons and the holidays, and milestones for your business and industry. Major products to be released, newsworthy events you will hold, outstanding staff stories, can all help fill your news calendar.  It lists all of your promotions and how you are going deliver them to your audience.

Use an excel spreadsheet to develop your media plan. Palettes can be developed to create copy blocks of frequently used content.  You can do this on your own, but a public relations or social media professional may be able to provide a superior effort and take you to the next level!

Every media plan is different. In future updates we’ll tackle a number of issues regarding media plans. But what is essential for every plan is a listing of the topics to be covered, the targeted audience, the responsible author or editor, and the date to be released.
 

 

Which Social Media Is Right for You? Getting started: Social Media Marketing with Facebook and Constant Contact

I’m frequently asked by small business owners and sole proprietors that have not tried online marketing: what is best way to get started with social media and what are the best tools to access online marketing?

They tell me they haven’t been using these tools for years but they know they should begin to take advantage of some social media products. They want an approach that’s effective, simple and inexpensive.

Many have used Facebook on a personal basis and they may have a LinkedIn page, but not much more than that in the social media scene.

My advice for these businesses is to use their personal Facebook page to create a page for their business(s). Next, they can register for a free trial Constant Contact email account to automate and dress up their email marketing.

For an overview of social media marketing, please check out my post The ABC’s of Social Media.

Here’s how the Facebook Page/Constant Contact approach would work:

A business owner creates a Facebook page, and can begin to market to the current group of friends they possess requesting them to like the page. Next, they can seek out additional likes through a variety of means to continually grow the site. A number of bargains to generate likes exist on Facebook alone.

Now that we have developed contacts to bring people to the page, we need to develop high quality content that they can generate themselves or source on other sites. Other content can be produced from business associates or suppliers, events or promotions, content aggregators, and much more.

In this way you can continually draw new viewers and begin to generate business from your increasing audience. Continuing to post content is key, but it is relatively easy because much of this process is automated. There’s much more involved but we’ll leave it here for now.

Next we need a media plan to develop our marketing strategy, we can see this at blog post  this Why you need a media plan. This will tell you the why’s and the how’s of your media plan.

  

Let’s turn to Constant Contact it gives you a handsome professional-looking page. This is where we can reach out directly to clients, from sales or event promotion to business

proposals.

Businesses can get a free trial membership from Constant Contact, and there are a number of benefits with this product from graphics to distribution and more.

In many ways, email is a highly effective way to engage customers. It’s the link that keeps so much social media going, and we’ll talk more about that later.

This Primer lesson taught me something new in only 5 minutes.

I just took this 5-minute lesson in Primer. Check it out on your phone: https://www.yourprimer.com/app/en/lesson/contentstrategy/

The ABC’s of Social Media

The ABC’s of Social Media are the critical building blocks upon which to develop our social media campaigns.  These building blocks, which are essential if we are to develop brilliant content, in my opinion are, “Audience,” “Branding,” and “Content”.

Audience – Audience is critical. We often refer to “content is king”, but quality and size of the audience has the capacity to determine the impact of the campaign.

Think about it. If a tree falls in the forest and no one was there to hear it, then it didn’t make any noise, in fact. Similarly, it is about quality not quantity.  When you have a large audience of qualified viewers and readers, then you have the potential to make a significant impact.

I believe audience potentially can be an even greater factor than content quality itself. If you don’t have good content you’re not going far anyway.
Branding — Branding is the activity where we connect a direct mention of the name and image of our product, service, or idea mentioned, placed into our content mix, and out to our consuming audience.

Remember, in PR it is critical that we get the name of our client and the brand were representing out to our listeners and viewers. Because it’s essential our viewers and listeners know the think of the company, images and products, etc.

I remember cases where some of the largest clients refused to pay for messages and articles that did not have a branded message. It was their priority. We can develop great and creative content but if it does not brand the product or provide a branded message, we have not accomplished much!

Content — Content is critical. “Content is king”. We’ve heard it all before, and it’s true. We see some great content out there, but some of it’s not the greatest. Also, so much of it is just borrowed; links are passed on, and on!

If you want great content, write something interesting and novel about yourself, or about your business, if you’re a business owner or manager.  Get an editor if you need one. Or, get a staff person who can write to generate content or hire a writer or PR professional.   The same applies when you hire artists, graphics artists,  photographers or videographers, etc.  and they develop creative content that get noticed!

When you develop high quality,  branded  content you increase your chances of successfully reaching out to customers, clients and prospects. You will develop a reputation of producing quality content, which will help increase your audience.  A very large, very qualified client or prospect list as your audience is the best of all worlds.

That’s the ABC’s of Social Media! Please share your comments, or contact me and we can discuss.

Why you need a media plan

It’s been said you can’t accomplish anything without a plan, and you can’t get to  places you haven’t been without a map. Your media plan is critical for your social media efforts because it provides you with both your direction and your goal.

In social media and content marketing, your media plan is the detailed written action plan that will tell you and your team how you are going to achieve your goals. The best media plans are detailed enough to provide specific audience, media and message, but still open enough to allow for some serious creativity.

Media plans go by many names: content marketing plans, social media campaigns, editorial calendars, fast calendars and more. We’ll break these down later but all of them are planning documents to be used to organize ourselves and make ourselves more efficient and effective.

Editorial calendars go back years, before the time of social media, where topics were targeted to daily newspapers, weekly newspapers, magazines, trade publications, TV, radio, email, and more. They’re all still there, with the additional of all the new media, the social media, but the goals are still the same, with the addition of these new players.

Editorial calendars are usually organized for a 12 month period, however, that period can be longer or shorter depending on need. It can be divided into quarterly or monthly periods as deadlines draw near. A quarterly period is very effective for medium-range planning, testing your effectiveness 0r  implementation ROI measures.

Monthly planning is perhaps the key unit for implementing your social media, media relations, government relations and content development. This will be broken down further into weekly and daily increments but the month is generally central organizing unit.

The media plan is useful for a number of reasons. It serves as a planning document and we explore our creativity as we approach deadlines. The plan helps to organize us and focus our team. The media plan can also be a vital aid in team building. From a practical perspective, we often need to develop a story 3-4 months prior to the publication date, and even with Facebook and Twitter we often need prep time of several weeks prior to post

With a content calendar, you can look for story ideas from the seasons and the holidays, and milestones for your business and industry. Major products to be released, newsworthy events you will hold, outstanding staff stories, can all help fill your news calendar.  It lists all of your promotions and how you are going deliver them to your audience.

Use an excel spreadsheet to develop your media plan. Palettes can be developed to create copy blocks of frequently used content.  You can do this on your own, but a public relations or social media professional may be able to provide a superior effort and take you to the next level!

Every media plan is different. In future updates we’ll tackle a number of issues regarding media plans. But what is essential for every plan is a listing of the topics to be covered, the targeted audience, the responsible author or editor, and the date to be released.

 

To tweet or not to tweet, that is the question!

To tweet or not to tweet, that is the question!

When it comes to developing social media marketing plans, one of the biggest complaints I hear from business owners is “I’m not going on Twitter!”

For many — if not most — small business owners this is probably the right way to go. If few members of your audience are on a certain social media outlet, you may not want to post there. Each business needs to look into what is the right mix of social media to use for its marketing campaign.

As things have settled down over the last few years, it looks like most small businesses can benefits from a Facebook page to one degree or another. For some it can be very effective. Also there are few people, professional or technical, who wouldn’t benefit from a page on LinkedIn.

At a minimum, it is like having an on-line resume, and increasingly a LinkedIn profile is expected both for business prospects and job seekers.

LinkedIn also holds the potential for getting real business or a job. It is an excellent way to communicate with peers in your industry or a geographic area, directly or in groups. Check out all it can do!

There are other useful tools like a personal or corporate blog, Pinterest, YouTube, Google+ and Instagram, to name a few, that can be used, depending on your preferences, your audience preferences, how much time and staff you have available and what you’re trying to accomplish.

So don’t agonize over your social media or doubt your mission like Hamlet. Put together a plan on your own or with a consultant and start communicating with your audience. You don’t have to be Shakespeare to get a great return on your investment!

Top 2015 Social Media Predictions – Disruptive Technologies

Trends for 2015

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It’s that time of year again when many social media “professionals” publish their predictions for the coming new year. Rarely, but on occasion, there are less than general forecasts that hit the bullseye. More often than not, many of the predicted transformations, platform trajectories and overall suggested industry paths are more or less off base or plainly obvious already from the previous year.

Although we don’t profess to be any more effective with a crystal ball, we believe we do have a fairly good pulse on the industry and have made some pretty on target predictions in the past. Though this is going to be one of our more lengthy posts, as we attempt to detail the background behind these predictions and outline where we see things going, it will be worth the read.

What we believe is very different about this coming year is due to social media in general, as well as the main platforms have matured in…

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Thoughts for 2015: The Four Agreements

As we close out 2014 and begin 2015, here the wise thoughts from the Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz that we can apply to our business and personal lives:

1.     Be Impeccable with your word

2.     Don’t Take Anything Personally

3.     Don’t Make Assumptions

4.     Always Do Your Best

Have a great 2015 and always apply these principles! See you in the new year

Holiday Blog: Repurposing Content — The Gift that keeps on Giving

Now that we’re in the holiday season, it’s a good time to talk about repurposing content, which I see as the gift that keeps on giving!

Repurposing content is the gift that keeps on giving because we can continuously use the content that we previously created if it’s still good, valuable and timely.

We need to remove content that is dated or out of use, or no longer attractive for our brand. When this process is completed we should have a sizable collection of blogs, emails, white papers, sales materials, etc. that are now available to be reposted and repurposed.

If you have been doing a blog for years, for instance, many of your blog posts can be repurposed. The same can be said for White Papers, sell sheets, brochures, news articles and more. This is one instance where you actually benefit from the fact that so much material sent out online is not viewed by our followers, and it really makes sense to report.

Think about it … in many cases we have tons of material that we have originally created, available for use in our content marketing efforts. It’s here that we can recoup the time and cost of originally invested in developing this material. As the amount of profitable repurposing increases, the cost of developing the material decreases.

These materials can now be placed on your editorial calendar or your marketing calendar. Repost them on Facebook , LinkedIn and Google Plus, maybe Pinterest. Use them in an aggressive Twitter rotation. Email marketing may be the way to go!

Maybe you need or want to update the material, maybe that isn’t necessary. Anyway you now have a full arsenal of marketing materials at your disposal, ready for repurposing.

You may be surprised that there are some absolute gems in there. Something you wrote in 2010 may sound really good today, while others may not sounds so clever today! (Edit or discard them, in these cases).

But just remember, that those pieces that didn’t take off the last time, might take off right now. Have fun with it, good luck!

How to create quality social media teams

The essence of social media is connecting with other people. Social media provides a number of ways to increase our personal interactions, some of them within our own organizations.

In addition to connecting with followers outside our companies, social media also provides the opportunity for internal teams to interact together to manage their monitoring and messaging programs. This also requires the development of systems to manage social media programs, which can offer creative and innovative interactive opportunities for businesses.

Creating social media teams

Teams created to monitor social media traffic and communicate with followers can comprise a wide range of staff, but they require balance. We’ve all heard the complaint that they are just a bunch of young kids managing the social media pages, and the team structure addresses these concerns.

By establishing a team with members at different levels of the organization, we solve two issues. One, we ensure the sites are regularly monitored by staff who  have routine interactions with managers, along with input on negative or controversial topics.  Two, we benefit from the greater interactions between staff at all levels.

Because it is important to monitor social media on a regular basis, you are assured that your sites are now fully monitored with the team in place, and that problems and customer service quality issues are handled rapidly and effectively with management involved.

This team structure was set up for a firm with a good sized staff to deal with client services, but even a smaller staff can set an effective monitoring and response procedure.

At Communication Concepts, we have structured social media teams for numerous businesses large and small, with plans individualized accord to their needs.

Create rules to police your sites

Once your staff structure is established, you can create the rules necessary to police your sites. Comments are a frequent area of controversy, and groups need to develop restrictions accordingly.

Nonprofits frequently have issues with comments and confidentiality. Businesses often need to deal with negative or inappropriate comments about their business. Should negative posts be removed? How long to remove a post? What is inappropriate material? Should commenters be anonymous?  How to remove offensive material?

These topics can be addressed by the team or by management, whatever is most appropriate. They can be handled in a dynamic manner over time.

In terms of outcomes, the creation of social media teams achieves a number of goals. People are able to do what they do best. Writers as writers, managers as managers, customer service as customer service. Young can interact with old. Techies with non-techies!

These teams can keep high staff involved without the obligation of constant monitoring or misdirection of resources for senior staff.

A great team builder

Finally, social media  teams can be a great team builder and customer service enhancer, as multiple levels of managers, staff, consultants and freelancers come together to respond to client needs, and structure social media procedures based on how and when to best communicate the corporate messages and images.