How to tell your story in noisy digital world

How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World

The incredible brand awareness and bottom-line profits achievable through

social media marketing require hustle, heart,

sincerity, constant engagement, long-term

commitment, and most of all, artful and strategic

storytelling.

Gary Vaynerchuk, Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World HarperCollins. Kindle EdiEon

The eyeballs marketers want to

reach, the ones belonging to people who make purchasing

decisions and who have money to spend,

are spending increasing amounts of time on social media.


But….

The strict dividing lines between marketing categories can no longer exist— they must all be blanketed with

a layer of social. The problem is, most companies, marketers, and entrepreneurs haven’t gotten the message, and so they persist in overpaying for

diminishing returns.

Even though…

71 percent of people in the United States are on Facebook, more than a half billion globally are on Twitter— a population that includes everyone from the pope to a parrot named Rudy, and almost every small business in America in between— and almost half of all social network users check in on these sites at least once a day, often as soon as they wake up in the morning.


Social Media has altered the way people fall in and out of relationships, stay in touch with

family, and find information.

And social media is cannibalizing digital time

•  Social media is no longer just pulling the audience away from traditional marketing; it’s cannibalizing digital media, too. –  The evidence is clear. Emails, banner

ads, search engine optimization (SEO)— the power of all these stalwart digital marketing tactics of the Internet era is diminishing, with one exception: when the digital platform has a social media


At the same time CMO’s are being held accountable

CMOs find it difficult to quantify marketing return on investment (ROI). Nearly one in five score themselves as below average in multichannel attribution, correlating advertising to sales, and measuring media buying effectiveness.

Source: http://www.accenture.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/PDF/Accenture-CMO-Insights-Report-PDF.pdf

Tight budgets and the lack of a clear online strategy have marketing executives concerned about losing business in the digital age. Even though companies are investing in their online marketing operations, chief marketing officers

(CMOs) say there is still too big a gap between the expectations of consumers and the digital manpower they have available to deliver a

satisfying online experience

And digital talent is also an issue

•  Seven in ten execs (71%) at large companies and agencies say their digital marketing teams are strong in some areas but mediocre or weak in others, according to a recent report by the Online Marketing Institute, ClickZ, and Kelly Staffing.

•  Moreover, 21% of executives surveyed say their employees are mediocre or weak across all digital areas.

•  Only 8% of survey respondents say their employees are strong in all areas of digital marketing.

How marketing works today

There is no individual six-month campaign; there’s only the 365-day campaign, during which you

produce new content daily.


It took thirty-eight years before 50 million people gained access to radios. It took television thirteen

years to earn an audience that size. It took Instagram a year and a half.

Your story isn’t powerful enough if

all it does is lead the horse to water; it has to inspire the horse

to drink, too. On social media, the

only story that can achieve that goal is one told with native

content.


Content is king, but context is God. You can put out good content, but if it ignores the context of the platform on which it appears, it can still fall

flat.


Only outstanding content can cut through the noise..

Brands and small businesses want to look relevant, engaged, and authentic, but when their content is banal and unimaginative, it only makes them look lame and their posts are ignored.


Maybe that’s why organic social media is falling short

•  In a big shift from the stance Facebook took a year ago, when agencies called out the fact that posts published by clients were being seen by fewer of their fans that marketers are going to have to pay for reach on Facebook via ads.

•  Less than 1% of daily active users are engaging your content*

Page Lever

You can’t just repurpose old material created for one platform, throw it up on another one, and

then be surprised when everyone yawns in your face. No one would ever think it was a good idea to use a print ad for a television commercial, or confuse a banner ad for a radio spot. Like their traditional media platform cousins, every social

media platform has its own language.


Stop thinking about your content as content

Think about it, rather, as micro-content— tiny, unique nuggets of information, humor, commentary, or inspiration that you reimagine every day, even every hour, as you respond to today’s culture, conversations, and current events in real time in a platform’s native language and format.


Make it simple. Make it memorable.

Make it inviting to look at. Make it fun to read.


Starbucks gets social media…

•  Starbucks became popular by establishing human connections with its customers.

•  The company’s Facebook page has more than 54 million fans

•  Employees of Starbucks are passionate about its products.

•  Establishing trust is the first step in building and sustaining deeper customer relationships.

•  Actively seek customers’ input, in person and through social media.

•  “Being a humane and responsible company is good for business.”

Your job as a marketer is not just about selling more product (though that’s a priority, and don’t forget it), but increasingly about making sure that

you are first to market as often as possible in terms of timing, the quality of your micro-content, and the originality with which you respond to the

world around you. This is true no matter what platform you work with, from Twitter to Facebook,

from Instagram to Pinterest.

Key ideas…

1.  Today social media has to be integrated into your marketing 365 days a year.

2.  Don’t use social media to broadcast; rather, use it to talk to people one on one.

3.  Give your brand a “human voice”. 4.  Give people a reason to listen to you. 5.  Micro-Content + Community Management =

Effective Social Media Marketing.

About me…

•  Marketing Contrarian and author of New Media and Marketing.com.

•  Consultant in online marketing located in Boston area. •  Broad consumer based digital marketing background. •  The force behind a great company has to be more than

the pride of one person; it has to be the pride of everyone who works for the company.

•  2. You can’t make people work for money alone – you starve their souls when you try it, and you can starve a company to death the same way.

•  http:

Business

How to tell your story in noisy digital world