The Alphabet of Digital Media Marketing

Digital Media Marketing sounds like a simple enough process, wouldn’t you think? Write or design something awesome, send it out into the world and watch it grow, right? In fact, the process our DMM team works on every day is far more complex and involves a lot more than you might think. So here we present an overview of some of the most important parts of working as a Digital Media Marketer: the ABCs of DMM:

A is for Analytics

You would be wrong to think that the Analytics part of Digital Media Marketing (DMM) only comes after the campaign has finished and you’re measuring its successes and failures. While it’s absolutely true that you need to use analytics at the end, you should be analysing throughout. Before the start of a campaign, analytics are necessary for researching your topic area. During the campaign, keeping an eye on analytics will tell you what, if anything, can be tweaked for better results and at the end a complete review will help you learn from any mistakes so your next campaign can be bigger and better.

B is for Blog

Whether this is your own company blog where you can publish content you’ve created or external bloggers who can promote your campaign on their own platform, a blog is highly necessary for picking up shares and natural links.

C is for Content

Content is our thang. The aim is to create highly shareable, engaging content, so that’s what we spend our days doing.

D is for Domain Authority

Domain Authority is one method of determining the quality of a site. We don’t tend to use metrics like this very strictly, but it does give a general measure of a blog. It’s measured by Moz and on their Open Site Explorer tool.

E is for Editorial Calendar

It’s important for brands to have an editorial calendar, and this is no different for digital marketing. An editorial calendar helps keep track of monthly themes, topics for blog posts, ideas for social media and external content. It makes it much easier to have variety in your content and establishing yourself as an authority in your industry by having regular high quality updates.

 

F is for Facebook

Where would we be without Facebook? It’s the Daddy of social media and the first place most people check for updates daily. Their algorithms might be crazy and their updates might be constant, but our love for Facebook is eternal.

 

 

G is for Google

Google – best friend or mortal enemy? It’s absolutely key in digital media marketing that you get on the right side of Google; it’s where we find sites and research content. They basically control the web!

 

 

 

H is for Hashtag

Hashtags are a great way to use social media to find the key influencers you’re looking for and to measure reach. Create your own hashtag for a campaign, or piggyback off existing hashtags to help grow the reach of your new campaign. It’s a great way to find out who’s getting involved and interacting.

 

 

I is for Influencers

Influencers are a key part of the DMM process as they’re the people who will get your content out to the masses. Hannah’s talked all about influencers here, check it out!

 

 

 

J is for Journalists

Journalists often keep an eye out for original content and part of our job is to provide that for them. Help get your client covered in key publications by striking up relationships with journalists who know their stuff.

 

K is for KPIs

KPI stands for Key Performance Indicator. It’s of utmost important to identify your client’s goals and what they define as success in order to measure how well a campaign has gone for them.

 

 

L is for Link Bait

Love it or hate it, link bait is all over the internet now, even if it is being cracked down on by giants like Facebook, it’s still getting shares. Those pieces of viral content that brands are putting out there? These are all to attract the all-important organic links that signal to Google that you’re an authority in your industry.

 

 

M is for Marketing Plan

Diving into a project without a marketing plan is a risky business. Find out what your client’s aims are at the beginning and focus your whole plan around this so that you’re all working towards a common goal and can measure success. You don’t want to just be firing content into the ether.

 

 

N is for Newsjacking

Newsjacking can be a highly lucrative affair for certain industries and easily done if your client can quickly comment on any relevant stories that hit the news. Keep one eye on the headlines and don’t forget about past releases that can be relevant time and time again.

 

O is for Outreach

Getting your content seen and covered is one of the most difficult parts of a DMM process, so strong outreach is a big factor. Find the top influencers in your desired market whose readers will enjoy your content or who will find it useful and spark up relationships with them. Find out what they need and how you can help.

 

 

P is for Penguin & Panda

Penguin and Panda – two seemingly innocent (and really quite cute!) creatures that can strike fear into the heart of digital marketers, as they also happen to be the two major Google penalties. You want to avoid these to make sure your website stays on Google’s good side!

 

Q is for Quality Content

Quality content – the key to the DMM process! High quality pieces of information that people enjoy and find helpful will naturally be shared, whether through blogs or social media. They will give your client a boost in the industry as an expert, enable their business to be seen as a trustworthy company and increase brand awareness.

 

 

R is for Ranking

Where you appear in a search engine’s ranking can make a huge difference – it can make or break a company. Those sites appearing high up in the first page are sites trusted and recommended by Google. Sites higher up in search results will receive more traffic through Google than those on pages further on.

 

S is for SEO

And SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is important if you want to get your site higher up in those rankings. It’s important to take both on page and off page SEO into account.  Make sure everything on your site is working properly and in line with Google’s guidelines and that you’re picking up organic placements from the high quality, relevant content that you’re pushing out.

 

T is for Twitter

Our other favourite big social media player: Twitter. It revolutionised the way we digest information on the internet with its 140 character limit and has attracted more than 313 million monthly active users. It’s a brilliant way to quickly get your content seen by many people using relevant hashtags and to drive traffic to your site.

 

U is for URL

A URL is like an address for your site or to your piece of content. It needs to be memorable and concise to be user friendly, and for social sharing, using a URL shortener can help in this respect.

 

 

V is for Viral

This is the coveted goal for pretty much every piece of content (as long as it’s going viral for the right reasons!) – getting your content in front of the eyes of millions will give your client a boost like no other.

W is for Widget

Widgets are a great option when creating shareable content – they can be fun, useful and much more interesting than a simple piece of written content can be.

 

 

 

X is for X Rated

You know what they say, sex sells and we’ve seen many a piece of risqué content hit it big! Although we do need to warn you to be careful and stay away from anything too NSFW.

 

 

Y is for YouTube

YouTube is like an old trusted friend nowadays – it’s really the original big player in video content sharing and is still the biggest one today. What would the world of social media be without it?

 

 

Z is for zzzzzzzzzz

DMM is hard work, juggling all the above and more – you’ll find our DMM team bouncing back and forth from clients, research pieces, design, content creation, outreach, analytics and reporting. What can we say, we’re a dedicated bunch. But we all need some sleep at the end of the day!

 

Want to remember this for future? Pin the full Alphabet of Digital Media Marketing below!