1. "Digital Content –
The Currency of the Web"
Content Creation Strategy for SMBs
Blogs, Videos, Slide Decks, Groups
Sponsored by: Waterloo Region Small Business Resource Center
Presented by: Kelly Craft & Gordon Diver
So we’ve talked about how to share, but WHAT should you share?Content doesn’t just mean blog posts, it can be anything that anything that adds value to your community. It can be news articles, white papers, daily special offerings, sale notices, videos, other tweets, blog comments or discussions, links to your web site, radio/tv/print ads, or cute pictures of kittens.The key is to understand is that people buy, sell, trade and discuss your brand based on the content you provide them with that adds value to their day or makes the job or decision-making easier. How do you find great content? Let’s explore the many sources.
People are producers and consumersContent are your assetsLinks are the value. How they are shared and how they contribute to conversionsThe key is to understand is that people buy, sell, trade and discuss your brand based on the content you provide them with that adds value to their day or makes the job or decision-making easier. Content doesn’t just mean blog posts, it can be anything that anything that adds value to your community. It can be news articles, white papers, daily special offerings, sale notices, videos, other tweets, blog comments or discussions, links to your web site, radio/tv/print ads, or cute pictures of kittens.
We’ll walk through the key elements of an evolved social strategy today. Now, we keep in mind that we have folks here today from both ends of the spectrum – those just starting out with social media, and some who have been participating on social channels for several years. As such, we’ll try our best to
There are many ways to organize and source content, but its helpful if you have a simple framework to work with. We manage it by categorizing our sources of content in this way, not just to have a guideline for discovery of new content or reuse of existing content, but this can also be important when it comes to our campaign and content analytics, just like we categorize other marketing efforts into buckets like: print, radio, tv, etc. The three main categorizations we use are:Internal – content that we ‘own’ or have created ourselves or for our organizationExternal – content that is created/owned by other individuals or organizationsEvolving Content – these are often most readily found via social channels where trends can surface in seconds. An example of this might be a local snow storm. If it will impact your business, this is content you might want to share on the fly. Likewise, you might be attending an local event like this summit and will see interesting trends bubbling up through the social streams as people attend each session and the keynote. Evolving content is usually unplanned and moves rapidly through social channels. We share content with our audience because we all have a common interest. We can expect that the same theme will be covered in various sources of content we curate or discover. Content from all sources should be integrated to deliver your message to your audience to effectively meet your goals AND theirs.
A content calendar is your roadmap to help you determine “What should I post”.Having a content calendar will provide you with guidance and reminders to share all the relevant information that you want on your products, services, industry and more.You can have two types of content calendars. One is a larger roadmap of promotions and special events throughout the year to highlight. The other is a weekly calendar that can give structure to your exact daily content such as 3rd party links, photos, a Fan of the Week, etc.
Determining factors:Your audience, what do they expect – can Coke get away with an iPhone video or do we expect more from themYour budget – if you can’t afford a high definition video production, what can you reasonably do with your budget – some basic and essential equipment really isn’t that expensive and your community may have facilities for you to access.
With a plan, team and willing subjects you’ll be surprised how easy it is to produce a videoWhat is the most important concept/idea to cover in your video (no more than 1 or 2)Develop a list of participants (your on air/voice over folks)Write your interview questions or script in advance – it’s okay to just do bullet points, ensure everyone is on point.Create and stick to a schedule for the shoot and advise participants – if you only need them for 20 minutes, let them know2. Create quality control – whether high quality or product demo, ensure your camera is set properly, eliminate background noise, test sound levels etc3. Edit your raw footage – reduce it to easily manageable segments, if you don’t have budget for someone to edit it for you, there are free tools (but first check your local community college and high school for a worker bee that may be willing to help for a portfolio or gratiuity). 4. Distribution – Up load your video, even if Vimeo, you can share to YouTube – distribute it via your newsletter, embed in your website, blog and get the message out.Tip: Whenever possible, make your video content Evergreen. Resource to share: http://www.youtube.com/yt/playbook/ and http://wistia.com/blog/shot-on-an-iphone
Write BlogCreate 4 – 10 pg slide deck of your blog each page 1 image and 1 or 2 keywords to illustrate blog – up load to SlideShareRead your blog into an audio program and record your podcast – Audacity or suchUse Screenr or like to record your slide deck on your computer and speak to each slide – upload your new video to YouTubeDistribute, Distribute, Distribute
Relate context to the buyer’s journey from the last session.
Detail differences between normal conversation mapping and this mapping.
Notes:As a thank you to all who have attended our sessions today, we’d like to offer each of you a mini-audit of any one social profile/channel you are currently using. We will provide you with a short review including: •Three suggestions for improving presence on the channel.•Three suggestions for additional content sources for their field or industry.•An overall recommendation for strategic improvement. There will be a button at the bottom right of our home page that links to it and the promo code is DDGSMS25 and is needed for submission. Please look for it at the end of today. If you have any trouble finding it please send us an email or a tweet!