Content Strategy: Get Ready for The Next Generation of Social Media

November 7, 2014 by

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This Old New Business Podcast with Jeff Korhan

This is Episode 16 of This Old New Business weekly business podcast with Jeff Korhan.

In this episode we chat with Rich Brooks. He is the owner of Flyte New Media, a digital marketing agency that he has owned for over 17 years.

Rich not only demystifies social media and content marketing, he offers practical tips for budgeting your investment of time and money to its accomplishment, whether you do the work in-house or hire an outside agency.

Rich shares a wealth of practical experience and delivers it with his wonderful sense of humor. So, get ready to laugh and learn.

Our Featured Guest: Rich Brooks

Content Strategy: Get Ready for The Next Generation of Social Media Rich Brooks is the founder and president of Flyte New Media, a web design and marketing firm in Portland, Maine.

He is also the founder of The Agents of Change Digital Marketing Conference and host of The Marketing Agents Podcast, where he interviews marketing experts from around the world on search, social & mobile marketing.

Rich is an expert blogger, frequent television guest, and a web marketing and social media teacher for entrepreneurs.

Social Media Follows Content Strategy

Rich likes to think of social media as an accelerant that speeds up or amplifies your marketing message. For it to work in your favor, your business needs to clear on two points:

#1 – What does your business do?

#2 – Who are you trying to reach?

The responses to these questions have to not only be definitive, but so obvious as to not be subject to interpretation. To achieve greater clarity, it is helpful to define what your business will not do, as well as who it prefers not to reach.

As social media advances to the next generation, every business needs to be clear about its purpose and who it can help. More important, this needs to be represented well in its content.

Your content strategy drives your social media strategy, and of course the tactics that follow. It all has to be aligned.

Focus on the Right Conversations

Most businesses are aware of the fact that conversations that affect their business are happening online. Naturally, they want to get into it!

Slow down. Instead of simply jumping into social media like every other business, consider taking a narrow approach to get started right. Consider choosing just one social media channel and master it.

It’s one thing to be on the periphery of online conversations on multiple channels. Yet, that is not going to significantly impact your business. Rich suggests carefully building your strategy for accurate and timely deliverly of valuable content.

Deliver the right content, to the right people, at the right time. Tweet this

Invest in The Future of Your Business

When a business creates valuable content, and owns it, it is investing in its future. Those words from Rich nicely handle the myriad questions businesses ask about content, including what type of content to create, how frequently, and why.

Creating content for the platforms you own should be priority. These owned media platforms include your website, blog, and email newsletter. What happens after that with the respective social media channels ideally amplifies and accelerates your message.

Is your business ready for the next generation of social media? 

Lighting Round Tips and Advice

Rich’s Top Sales or Marketing Advice – Consistently provide incredibly valuable content for your audience.

His Favorite Productivity Tip – Delegate. There is always someone that is better at doing what you need to get done so that you can focus on what you do best.

A Quote that has Inspired Rich’s Success – “Luck favors the prepared” (and) “No capes!” – both from Edna ‘E’ Mode in the animated film The Incredibles. Work hard to be prepared for life’s opportunities, and avoid adding anything to the mix that may compromise the accomplishment of your goals.

Key Take-Aways

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About the Author:  Jeff Korhan, MBA, is the author of Built-In Social: Essential Social Marketing Practices for Every Small Business and host of This Old New Business podcast.

He helps mainstream businesses adapt their traditional growth practices to a digital world. Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Google+

Using LinkedIn to Attract Business

November 15, 2012 by

LinkedIn can help you accomplish multiple business objectives, from attracting business leads, to recruiting new talent, and discovering potential opportunities for partnering.

Attraction is Alignment

To get what you want in business today you need to consider the expectations of your target audience. If you are looking for talented recruits you need to know what they will find attractive in a business. The same goes for sales leads and new partners.

What your business wants has to be aligned with the community you are targeting.

You have to speak their langugage, show you care about them, and reflect all of that in appearance and form. For example, if you are recruiting college students, your LinkedIn company page should include relevant experiences from recent hires, not just commentary from the marketing department.

In other words, your business has to be what it desires to attract.

If you want to attract employees that are fun to work with you need to show them your work environment is already fun. New prospects will expect to know that you have successfully served other customers like them.  All of this is easily accomplished online with video.

Every business is being judged by its online presence. In fact, a recent study indicates more consumers are placing their trust in online content.  How does yours stack up?

Everyone is An Influencer

Traditional business practices favored big customers and the executive team that focused on them. Large customers were wined and dined and came to expect that. This is why you lost some of your smaller customers who did not receive that attention.

Corporate enterprises still lavish perks on their top executives. This is one reason they have difficulty attracting top talent. If they did a better job caring for every single team member they would realize they all have influence for attracting more good people just like them.

Everyone is an influencer within their circle of friends, and these circles intersect within the communities you serve.

Thus, you now know why you should should connect on LinkedIn with employees, customers, and even some of your better competitors.

Networks connect influencers of all shapes and sizes, and become powerful forces that affect what your business is trying to accomplish.  This is why it’s best to have only one personal presence on LinkedIn.

Influencers today are not businesses, but people who may be associated with a business.

Play The Game

Savvy businesses realize that sites such as LinkedIn are designed for specific purposes and will change over time.

For this reason, to accomplish your objectives you need to learn the many nuances about the respective sites to make them work in your favor.

In regards to LinkedIn, I have written a number of articles that will help you out, including this comprehensive article on LinkedIn that includes video tutorials.  In addition to that, it’s essential you understand how social graphs work to create alignment on every social network.

Whether you seeking new talent, more leads, or business partners to help guide you into new markets, there are only two ways to make those connections:

a.  Connect the Dots.  This is necessarily a process that requires having a highly active and integrated network to then begin working backwards to make new connections.

b. Be more Attractive.  Search drives the web, and the most effective way to get what you want is to use that understanding of how it affects the social marketing process.

That’s how it works in real life, so it only stands to reason that it will work the same on the digital networks.

LinkedIn is no exception.

How are you using LinkedIn to attract more business?   

Leave a comment below to share your thoughts.

Until next time, Jeff

Photo Credit

Want to Be Luckier, Smarter, and Happier? Connect the Dots

May 13, 2012 by

What could happen if you made a commitment to reconnecting with just a few of your former prospects or customers every day? If your experience is anything like mine, you will get luckier, smarter, and happier. I’ve recently been building a daily habit of reaching out to at least 3 prospects or customers – all […]

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How to Prepare Your Business for Social Search

July 4, 2011 by

Is your business ready for social search? In this article I’ll reveal what you need to know and what you need to do to prepare for social search. This article (now updated) first appeared in Social Media Examiner where I am a guest blogger.  It’s another great resource for you that like this blog is focused on […]

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