Digital Media, Audio, and Video: It’s BOTH – AND!

Digital Audio Video

Can you hear me now?

Media choices: there seem to be a zillion of them! Curated links, status updates, ads, photos, graphics, GIFs  short videos, long videos, animations, audio podcasts, webinars, hangouts, blogs…..SHEEEESH!!  Look at all the options and it’s easy to just throw your hands up, post a picture of your cat and call it good…

Talk with solopreneurs and small business owners about digital marketing strategy and the need for a content strategy that maps to their business needs, the needs and desires of their audience…..well, it can seem complicated.

It’s not really. There are just a lot of choices.

Based on who you are trying to connect with and how they wish to be connected, that is the foundation. After that comes resources required / available, and the other deciding factors.

Let’s take a look at a couple of these: Video and Audio.

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JULY’s Best – Blogs, Strategy and Design, and Thriving at Work!

July blogs strategy thriving

July is Blooming!

July’s Best brings some familiar themes: blogs, strategy and planning, and making best use of your resources…

Business Blogs

Business Blogs

Blogging for business is hard. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it, right? This article digs into 6 reasons why you should include a blog in your marketing. Take note of the business benefits listed….the effort pays off!

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Collaboration: The Action Side of Conversation

Collaboration

Collaboration

Collaboration is the action-oriented manifestation of dialogue.

I had an online conversation with a colleague during which we each remarked on the current snapshot of busy-ness we have (summer can be notoriously slow, depending on your business…I think the ice cream parlors pick up, but I digress…) and some of the projects we’re working on. Then she offered to “hop on a call” and look at some ways we could collaborate. This caught me by happy surprise, as I’ve never met her face-to-face, since she lives a continent away.

Her suggestion immediately sent my imagination reeling in a kind of high, fuzzy way. By that I mean that I couldn’t think of what such a collaboration might look like immediately, but the chance to take part in it opens up unknown possibilities….which are always exciting! While the possibility may mean work for me that I might not have done otherwise (filling out my “bandwidth” for the week, for sure….) the value of that work would be at the top for me.

Collaboration, as I mentioned earlier, is conversation in action. The shared listening and thoughts, the enlightenment and discovery, the humor and evolution of opinion and points-of-view result in an end-point of sorts that could not have been gotten to any other way.

  • Do you do this in your business?

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WARNING: You’re Losing Money By Not Using Video!

Video is EVERYWHERE!

Video is EVERYWHERE!

Unless you’re completely disconnected, you have watched a video of some kind over the internet…even if it was just a cat. More likely you not only watch them every time you’re online, but also have some kind of streaming service like Netflix or Hulu that you subscribe to so you can watch when you want. The absolute access of video on the internet to our population is staggering.

Now flip that around. As a small-to-medium business owner and entrepreneur, a big pillar of growing your business is, of course, marketing. Digital marketing (which includes social media) is a growing portion of business focus and will only get bigger. It goes without saying that any business that needs to get found by customers (is there a business that DOESN’T need to be found by customers?) has a web site. A significant subset of these businesses have a social media presence of some sort.

How well that aspect of their marketing is working becomes the question to answer…

Quality content drives much of digital marketing success, but without a strategy to reach those markets and customers that want to buy from you, the content may not even seem to exist. These subjects make up a lot of my previous articles, and comprise a large part of what I work with my clients to create and implement.

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ONE THING to Drive Your Business

The One Thing!

The One Thing!

I have written previously about the obsession with THE ONE THING. In the case of my earlier article, it was the THING that you, as a business owner, feel could turn around your business or make a big splash, if you could only get it Just Right. My point in that article is that you need to step back and consider what you’re trying to accomplish, to see if that THING will actually move the needle, or if it is more of a “shiny thing” that you’re chasing, in hopes it will fulfill its perceived promise.

There’s another kind of ONE THING that can have an enormous impact on your business: Clarity of Communication. This breeds and establishes Understanding, which is not the same thing as simply communicating…

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JUNE’S BEST – LinkedIn, Trust, and Making The Most of Your Content

July - Celebrate!

July – Celebrate!

July is upon us, and we here in the States are getting ready for our annual tribute to patriotism, fireworks and barbecues!
June was a bumper crop month for quality content across the digital marketing industry, and I’m only too happy to share the top articles I’ve read:

LinkedIn Ninja Tricks!

LinkedIn Ninja Tricks!

 

 
Facebook seems to get the attention from online sources (granted, cracking the 2 billion users mark is noteworthy…), but many of the businesses I speak with are still kind of scratching their head when it comes to LinkedIn. This top list of tips and tricks from Melonie Dodaro will get you to that next level of skill in using this great professional channel.

Sincerity

Sincerity

 

 
Sincerity and Trust have been the key components for strong customer and business relationships since forever. Building them online isn’t impossible, but it is different. This article introduces some areas of consideration about communication and how you do this. The line between communication and action is pretty clear.

Credibility

Credibility

 

 
Beyond getting found, your website needs to build and maintain your professional credibility. If you’re wondering how a website can do that, then you will find this article Laura Forer of MarketingProfs very, very valuable.

My Community

My Community

 

 
When I speak about online relationships, I refer to the mental model I call VACC (Visitors / Audience / Customers / Community). In this insightful article, Irfan Ahmad digs into how a business can approach this with Facebook Groups, an underutilized resource for most businesses. If you take this on, you’re ALREADY in the lead, since chances are your competition ISN’T doing it!

Social Media Posts

Social Media Posts

 
 
So, that post from last Tuesday blew the doors off in Shares and Comments! WOO-HOO!!!!! Now, how can you leverage what was obviously a Great Piece of Content again and take advantage of it’s quality and virality? Here are 5 ways to look at….

 

Reuse That Content!

Reuse That Content!

As a follow-on to the previous article, how do you take that premier article you’ve written and reuse (or “slice & dice”…) it in such a way that you can make the most of it. Here are nine ways you could repurpose it and reach oven more of an interested audience. Remember, everyone has a preferred way of communicating, and by doing this you are making practical use of that fact!

The Integrity and Priorities of Place

The Priority of Place

The Priority of Place

I recently wrote about how the things you actually spend time on uncover your priorities. A colleague of mine noted that what you spend money on does the same thing, which is partially true. There are a number of things you spend money on that are not discretionary, like food (if you are fortunate enough to have the money for food…).

Other interesting indicators of priority are your decisions made in the midst of radical change.

I recently read an article in the Guardian by a professor at Saint Joseph’s College in Rensselaer, Indiana. I should say ‘former professor’, as the college just closed after operating since 1889. Rensselaer, IN has a population of just under 6,000 souls and is definitely NOT a place you might expect a college to be.  Ranked as a “Best Midwestern College” by the Princeton Review and U.S  News, it nonetheless announced on February 3, 2017 that it will temporarily suspend operations at the end of the 2016-2017 academic year. The article’s author, Jon Nichols, rightly interprets that to mean “Students: transfer now; Faculty & employees: you will need a new job soon.”

Mr. Nichols doesn’t want to move.

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Time Is Truth

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Time And Truth

Time And Truth

Time is Truth.

What that means is you invest time in the things that you feel are important. Work, play, rest, whatever…..time is a consumable and limited resource. Each of us gets 24 hours a day, and none of us knows EXACTLY how much of it we get in total. It’s limited. It’s also a most unpredictable predictable commodity, because there’s no telling, at any one time, when “life will intervene” and you will lose out on how you planned to use the time.

There’s a lot here about life and values, but let’s focus on business and profession.
Whether you go into an office of some kind or are working in some kind of structure for your work that doesn’t include an office, you likely spend more time in that work than almost anything else you do. This is particularly true of entrepreneurs and small business owners. Tack on all the “thinking / worrying about work” time to that, and it’s even more all-consuming.

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White Knuckle Deadlines

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Deadlines

Deadlines

Deadlines for your business are driven by different things.

Sometimes they’re built-in, more or less. That is, the In-Real-Life (IRL) aspect of making a delivery date, or cranking out a report, or arriving at a service appointment on-time make a deadline almost immaterial.

There are a lot of times when it’s a bit squishier than that. Think of all the business and planning work you need to do to stay ahead of your competition, the industry, your profession and just “regular business” (think updating your CRM, or doing your books, or building out a marketing campaign…). You may create deadlines for yourself, and even set aside time periodically to get them done, but so often you are sabotaged by life. You get an emergency call from a customer, or a big order comes in that you HAVE to fill, or you get sick (or someone in your family does…). These all keep you from doing what needs to be done.

Then, of course, there’s the fact that you’re usually a lot more enthusiastically engaged in doing what you love to do (the part of the business that drove you to start a small business in the first place!) rather than the dull, gray “business grind” that you KNOW needs to be done, but is pretty uninspiring and, frankly, easy to put off until tomorrow….or later.

There’s a great quote by Leonard Bernstein:

“Two things are necessary for Great Achievement: a Plan and Not Quite Enough Time.”

Taking these thoughts together, what does this mean for you and your business?

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MAY’S BEST – Blogging, Color, and the Power of Understanding

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May Flowers

May Flowers

Ready for some Summer?!

I am……

It has been a Long Time Coming here in the U.S. Pacific Northwest. Nearing the halfway point in the year can allow you the opportunity to take a look at what’s been going on in the digital world and assess your own goals for your business while you wait for those BBQ meats to finish on the grill. Here are the top articles I read in May:

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7 Blogging Ideas

STUCK? 7 Blogging Ideas

I recently wrote about the challenge of keeping up with the Raging Stream of Content you need to come up with to stay in the game in your digital marketing. If blogging is part of that mix for you, coming up with creative topics and formats can get to be too much. This article will give you some great tips on what to do when that happens.

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