Are you a creator? A curator? Or a scroller? 1% of people create the content that everyone talks about and snowballs on social medias. 9% of people are curating existing content and repurposing to leverage their business. 90% of people simply scroll. You want to be part of the first 10% when it comes to social medias in order to leverage them to build your successful brand. Do you often see a post with a million+ likes and wonder how it happened? Do you secretly wish you were the person that had posted that? How do they do it? You already control and produce content for e-newsletters and blogs. The key is to know how to leverage your own assets and the assets of others for media marketing. Mary Charleson, Marketing and Media Expert, enlightened us at CAPS Vancouver meeting today with her 5 steps strategy to grow your audience.
Here is a re-CAPS of my notes.
The five steps include your owned media, your rented media, your earned media, your embedded media and your paid media, which will be defined further. But firstly, here are the 3 reasons why we want to use the medias this way:
Autorithy: You want to be known as the Expert in the field you are working. Whatever is your specialty, you want to leverage your media effort to position yourself as such.
Search: You want to become more visible in searches, ideally showing on the first page so that your prospects clients will find you.
Engagement: You want to build a community that leads to sales. Being “popular” and have lots of likes doesn’t mean much when it doesn’t strategically leads into a funnel.
She gave us the examples of two hotels who built their whole marketing campaign without any paid ads. Have a look at overstaycheckout.com.au who got 1.5 million in global media and the Hansbriker Hotel Amsterdam, brutally wrong. The worse hotel in the world using it to leverage their marketing and create the vibe.
STEP 1. OWNED MEDIA
Home base. You control it, you own it. Your own website, enews, blog, podcasts, database. All traffic needs to lead back to home base.
TAGS
Use tags in your material to help you show up in searches. Tags that will consistently show up are what you do, what you speak on, what is your area of expertise, etc..
EMAIL COLLECTION
Collect emails and build database actively through email collection on your website.
POP-UPS
Get pop up to attract attention quickly, receive email, free material, etc.
E-NEWSLETTER
Send once a week. The newsletter is the best piece of marketing you do. 3 to 6 months return. Give away free advice, personal based, so that people feel that they know you. Mary does Sunday morning and she knows her clients are plugged-in in the morning. She pre-writes them and schedules them to be sent on Sunday am. She plans to be responsive for her audience who gets back to her immediately. Make it a habit for your audience to read your newsletter.
PIXEL TRACKING
Facebook and Instagram. Retarget people that are on your database and find them on Facebook so that you can boost your posts specifically to your existing audience’s Facebook feed.
GOOGLE ANALYTICS
Make sure you have a look at your analytics and know your impact. See if you have a closet of followers in areas you did not expect.
STEP No.2 : RENTED MEDIA
Social medias. We don’t own them, they are rented media – broadcast and social media that you decorate as your own, use to engage, but are ultimately a space where the landlord controls the rules. We decorated them, we feel that we have moved in but someone else owns them. Focus on the strong players or the ones your audience uses.
68% of adults use Facebook. That is the big broadcast platform right now.
28% of adults use Instagram. Very visual, great tool
26% adults use Pinterest
25% adults use LinkedIn
21% adults use Twitter, the medias love Twitter. They monitor everything on Twitter.
The essence of strategy is choosing what NOT to do. Pick one or two and do them well. Forget the rest (for now). Really get to know the platform and engage people. Find your target and know which platform they are on.
Use the Power of Influencers. Search by topic area. Check these out: Klear.com and Traackr.com
STEP no. 3: EARNED MEDIA
Traditional media, picking up stories, print, be the person that gets called, gets their face on the radio or tv program. Then you leverage it over and over. Earned is valued because it is third party endorsement. Someone else’s platform will talk about you to their audience. Other people’s podcasts, blogs, tv, radio, online or offline. This allow you to have leverage with the big guys. Follow the medias, get to know the producers and the content, introduce yourself. Pitch the medias with answering these 3 questions: Why now? Why is this relevant? Why you?
Quote stories, have insider information, quote studies, what is happening right now, how is this relevant with what is on the news. Be a noted authority. Be human, be fun and keep it short. Get out of your social media bubble. Watch the news and write on it. Be creative where you pitch. Once you are in, you may be called back.
STEP no. 4: EMBEDDED MEDIA
Use at leverage. Columnist, opinion editorial, Huffington Post, guest blogger, write for magazine. Someone else owns the media or the platform and you are using your voice on their platform. You become the expert on their authority publishing. They allow you to be the expert and stand out. You can then post on your own platform and amplify the reach. Be a content contributor on different platforms. Columnists, articles, etc. Globe and Mail, Huffington Post, Daily Hive college university crowd, native content advertorial, become the voice, a regular contributor, they like people who commit to contribute on a regular basis.
STEP no. 5: PAID MEDIA
Boosts posts on Facebook, sponsored Facebook ads, Google ad words, Youtube ads, traditional media; print, radio, tv, outdoor, use look alike audience on Facebook. Dump your email list on Facebook so that Facebook will find them (if they signed in with the same email address) and post on their feed specifically. It takes now 16 touch points with your audience with free content, downloadable free content, tips, etc. before it transforms into actual return on investment. They need to see you as an expert and get convinced that you are the expert before they spend any money with you. Remember that traditional newspaper, magazines, direct mail, outdoor transit billboard, tv, radio, etc.
Retargeting: www.adroll.com
Send postcards, direct mail, when people are not expecting it.
Boosted posts, track results on platform, google analytics
Check out Jon Loomer and Sue Zimmerman.
www.jonloomer.com facebook
www.suezimmerman.com Instagram
Video marketing
You tube video ads, daily budget only pay for engagement, target by gender, etc.
Pay-to-Play Editiorial
New trend: native content which is paid content written as an editorial featuring pop ups, etc.
So what is the 1:9:90 rule?
1 : 9 : 90 Rule
1% content creators
9% content curators
90% scrollers
You want to be in the 10% of the creators/curators of content. So you can tag along when things go big.
Examples:
SAM HORN
Sam Horn brilliantly tood apart that speech that Oprah did at the Golden Globes awards
She facebooked and hashtaged Oprah, Martin Luther King and Golden Globes. She published a 10 points analysis of the speech. Within 3 days, she had 251 shares, 394 reactions. She curated content. Oprah was hot and the Golden Globes was hot. Then the hashtag Oprah 2020 was born and going wild.
Sam Horn on LinkedIn. Want people to care? Start with WHERE. Samhorn.com
TRACI BROWN
Traci Brown has done an amazing job at building herself as a body language expert and is now constantly quoted by newspapers and medias. She posted on social medias her analysis of the body language of the candidates for the presidential election. She also used on her own channel. “Body language expert tips to get out of a traffic ticket.” “Body language expert on Donald Trump’s awkward at NATO Summit.” “Manspreading piece.” “A brief history of the Trump family awkward body language.” “There may be a hidden meaning behind prince Harry’s odd hand gesture.”
She uses headlines and position herself as an expert and has something to say about everything and curates content. Nurture relationships with medias. Medias love medias. They quote her all the time. Huffington Post use her as she has become the go-to person for this. She is making her way up through recycling news through curating. She uses politics, celebrities, pop, culture, she creates original content, she pitches medias, she send articles to the bureaus, she sends her articles to reconnect with clients, she uses it on her social medias, she uses them for blog posts, newsletters, she ensures the medias link back to her website and her book on Amazon.
DEAD RACCOON IN TORONTO
Jason Wagar started an innocent post that there was a dead raccoon in Toronto near where he lived. #deadraccoonto was born. The reasons why this story snowballed:
- Strong visual
- Discreted authority
- Hashtag was created so the story could be amplified
- Touch psychology: Care about 1 person more than you care about 1,000.
- Influential followers Norm Kelly and Drake got involved
- The Media monitor online and watch each others’ stuff
- Humour: people went on and on and had fun with it.
- Media craves the bizarre.
- Utilize celebrities
- The evolution of storytelling. Power of how a good story sells.
People get on board when they can watch a dead raccoon instead of being working.
TRUST AND TARGETING.
We trust our friends and we share what they like. If you want people to share your stuff so that it grows, Mary reminds us this:
“It’s not about you it’s about them.”
“Give them something to make them look smart, funny, connected to an inner circle” then they will share it or comment on it.
It takes a lot of time to grow a platform. Take your time and grow it. Stick with it. Spend your time strategically.
Mary Charleson is a marketing speaker, consultant, and author. She is President of Charleson Communications, a marketing consulting company based in North Vancouver, BC, Canada. READ BIO here. She has an MBA in Marketing, she taught at Universities in Canada and in the USA. You can read her marketing blog here at fiveminutemarketing.com Marketing for the time starved.