As I See It…. Ready, Aim, Fire

Bernie Borges

How many times have you heard the expression “ready, fire, aim?” This cliché is used often in business and sports when making reference to a plan that gets executed without much planning. It’s an oxymoron. Either a plan is a plan or it’s not a plan. You might as well admit that not having a plan is just winging it.

Unfortunately, many marketers have taken a “ready, fire, aim” approach to inbound marketing. Whether it’s not doing extensive keyword or competitive research for SEO, or not planning out effective PPC campaigns and ad groups, a lack of planning is sure to negatively impact your results.

We find this is especially true and prevalent in social media marketing. With such growth in popularity in social media platforms including blogs, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn, many marketers have jumped in with one or both feet without a plan.

Ask yourself these questions: What is your content strategy? What is your content hub on the web? Does your content strategy have C-Level support? Are enough resources allocated to your content strategy? How are you measuring results?

I’ll introduce another very common expression – the 80/20 rule. I passionately suggest that 80% of a marketer’s success on social media is directly correlated to the strategy, in particular the content strategy. And, 20% is correlated to the web communication channels you choose to implement your content strategy.

Did you notice I just renamed blogs, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn “communication channels?” Don’t allow that to get past you. If you buy into this 80/20 rule of planning versus execution, then you quickly understand that the social media channels you use are your communication channels.  You understand the importance of developing a strategy – a content strategy.

In developing your content strategy, focus on your target audience. Don’t limit your target to your most immediate target demographics. Expand that circle to include demographics that interact with your target audience. Depending on your industry, that may include analysts, consultants, resellers, etc. The point is to not limit your target too narrowly. Your content should engage people in your industry in a compelling way.

What happens when you don’t plan and you just implement (ready, fire, aim)? You might have some success. If you do, consider yourself lucky. But, you have a much greater chance of making some costly mistakes. You may attract the wrong people. You may not be prepared to direct people to the right place in your communication and create a wrong impression. For example, if most of your communications point people back to your website’s home page, and it’s not well designed to engage visitors in a way that is consistent with your social media strategy, you’ve blown it. Would you throw a party without preparing for the guests?

Marketers should avoid the temptation to dive into social media without a plan that includes research. Just as in creating any business plan, conducting research to determine whom you’re targeting, where they are, and what topics are of interest to them is crucial. Then, determining a content strategy that addresses your audience is the next step. Then, and only then, are you ready to use the popular social media tools to implement your social media marketing plan. Ready, aim, fire!

The Benefits of a Social Media Marketing Strategy

The following is an excerpt from my book: Marketing 2.0: Bridging the Gap Between Buyer and Seller on the Social Web…

There are many benefits to a social media marketing strategy.  Here is a short list of benefits. Please add to it with your comments…Note, I do not discuss in any detail the benefits organizations might enjoy using social media internally for collaboration and productivity gains.

Low Cost.  Rolling out a social media strategy is not an expensive venture.  In fact, it can be done on a low budget, especially in the beginning.  Many of the social media platforms you can leverage monetize themselves through advertising.  Therefore, the use of many of these tools is free.  The primary benefit to using social media is in the relationship value of the community you create or join.  So the cost of using many social media tools is free or low.  The biggest cost in the beginning of a new social media strategy is the staff’s learning curve associated with using various tools and destination social platforms.

Brand Building. I’ve previously mentioned the importance of building brand whether you’re a large company with household brand recognition or a 20-person company in a niche market.  I am truly of the opinion (shared by many contemporary marketing pundits) that brand equity is the most valuable marketing asset we can achieve, regardless of the size of our company.  Social media provides a platform like none other in modern history to build our brand

Staffing Advantages.  You may be able to leverage existing staff, and you may not.  In some situations, you can awaken a sleeping giant in your organization.  I am referring to existing talent that is under utilized in a role that could be leveraged in social media.  It’s not uncommon to tap into someone’s domain expertise and put it to great use in social media.  Simply put, using social media gives your staff the opportunity to produce good results using contemporary tools in an enjoyable work environment.  Marketing staffers who embrace social media tend to really enjoy it, especially as they begin building a personal brand.  The demographics of the up and coming workers are in our favor.

Loyalty.  Producing content considered useful by your community produces loyalty and can also produce viral marketing value.  Loyalty is very powerful, no matter the source or the medium.  It’s very common for people in online communities to pass around links to blog posts and other content they find useful.  Social media community loyalty is such a valuable asset that you will ask you your accountant to find a way put it on your balance sheet.

Level Playing Field.  Essentially, social media levels the playing field for most marketers.  Small businesses can create loyal communities online just as large companies can, though perhaps not at the same pace or to the same extent.  One of the greatest benefits to social media is the ability to leverage these communities by harnessing the power of their loyalty.  A smaller company can potentially do a stellar job of building a loyal community through great content, or a great service made popular through social media. Just look at 37 Signals. This small software company has a global customer base for their web based project management and collaboration software. Some of their competitors are large software companies including Microsoft.  Word of mouth loyalty spreads on the social web and continues to build their customer base.

Building Trust.  Companies that communicate with a human voice and build relationships online do well in social media.  Companies that behave as companies don’t do as well.  Social media is all about sincere conversations and building relationships.  When a company hides behind a corporate voice, it alienates itself and its people, and doesn’t reap any of the potential benefits, including that all-important loyalty or trust.

Converge PR and Social Media for Viral Marketing.  As social media awareness has been increasing, the role of PR has quickly been intertwined with it.  Effective social media strategies can and should be part of your PR strategy.  Creating content that has viral potential is at the heart of a social media PR strategy.  Give your loyal community access to your news and let them be your media channel.  Let your loyal community promote your news.  Going viral with your news can range the gamut from exposing it to a few loyal fans to getting your news to the first page of DIGG.

Positive SEO Benefits.  Another benefit of social media is the affect it can have on your organic search engine optimization (SEO) strategy.  When you produce good content online in social platforms, you increase the possibility of attracting links to that content, which can also link to your website.  In turn, those links help give your website authority to the search engines, especially Google, which places most of its ranking criteria on the link popularity of your content.

(Not So) Quantifiable Metrics.  As discussed previously, some social media results can be measured quantifiably and some can’t.  You can measure website visits from social media destinations and resulting leads. You can also measure (to some extent) the buzz you create in your market by things such as applications for employment, easier sales appointments, invitations to speak or guest write and other obvious improvements which don’t necessarily show up in a report or spreadsheet.

Educational.  One of my favorite benefits of my involvement in social media is the ability to learn something new every day.  I categorize learning in two ways: Learning and Market Intelligence. Learning occurs from listening to conversations and reading articles shared by your community. Market Intelligence involves keeping your finger on the pulse of what’s happening in your industry through social media. Both forms of education provide competitive edge and insights into customer behaviors.

The primary benefits of a social media marketing strategy can be summed up as building relationships that can bridge that gap between you (the seller) and your buyers.

Bernie Borges
@berniebay

Google Improves Flash Indexing

Google has done it again.  If there is one thing Google has proved they can do is develop sophisticated algorithms.  Now, in cooperation with Adobe, Google has announced a new algorithm that can read the text content of Flash files.  This is a big deal for SEO results.

For years, those of us in the SEO industry have known that Flash content was not able to be indexed by search engines.  So, we’ve always recommended against heavy use of Flash in websites, at least in part for good SEO rankings.  Of course, there are other reasons for caution against the use of Flash in a website.

For the record, our website uses Flash files.  We think our use of Flash is not excessive in terms of the user experience.  Of course, that is our opinion.  If you feel differently, please drop us a comment in this blog.

Besides the user experience, our use of Flash is balanced by keyword-rich, text content on the topics important to Find and Convert, namely SEO, PPC and Social Media strategies.

This announcement is indeed a significant one both for Google and for Adobe.  But, most notably it’s a big deal for marketers who have Flash websites, or who like to use Flash in their websites.

I offer a caution on this announcement.  First, note that Google makes the statement: “we’ve greatly improved our ability to index Flash.”  I wouldn’t bet on this until some evidence is in and I wouldn’t be surprised if this achievement will evolve in its effectiveness. 

Secondly, I especially caution against over use of Flash in a website.  Remember that in addition to the SEO impact of Flash, your user experience is where the rubber really meets the road.  After all, if you work hard to drive traffic to your website through blogging, other social media strategies, organic SEO or paid search strategies, the last thing you want to do is distract your visitors with excessive Flash content. 

Allow your Flash content to work for you.  Complement your text content with Flash.  Don’t put all your messaging into Flash content.  If you don’t get it right (from your visitor’s perspective) you could be betting it all on your Flash content and you could lose that bet.

So, while this announcement from Google and Adobe is good news, I advise marketers to proceed with caution.  I’ve always been a fan of doing things incrementally so we can test, measure and react.

What do you think about this announcement?