Compact guide to digital media marketing

Don’t have time to read lots of blog posts and articles on digital content and social media marketing? I am here to help, check out my compact guide to digital media marketing covering the need to know bits without the fluff.

Content is King or Queen

Campaign creation the basics

We have found from experience that when it comes to creating content, there are a few things you need to consider first and foremost.

Research

Look at what is happening in the sector you are targeting, what the potential customer base is reacting to and also what competitors are doing. This will form the base of your digital marketing campaigns, use Google searches and social media to find out what is happening and set up alerts to keep track.

The ideas and how to make them happen

Use the data and information found in your research, look at data you have as well, such as customer insights and you’ll have a good base for ideas. Working together as a team is key to coming up with ideas, brainstorm meetings which spark new exciting ideas, and you can bounce them off each other.

Putting it/ yourself out there

You’re not just selling your content your selling yourself, you want people to respond to you’re emails, calls, Tweets, skywriting, so you need to make sure you’re not only friendly and polite, but also accurate.

Don’t just send out generic bulk emails, tailor email content to the sender, build up a rapport and make a working relationship. Be open to create new content for a specific outlet and people, lead with exclusive content, quotes and products, stand apart from the millions of other people emailing them.

Review and learn

There will be times where a campaign just falls flat, an idea you thought was awesome, but unfortunately no one else did, or not enough to share it. But fear not this is a great learning opportunity!

Analyse your work during and after, look at shares, like comments and number of placements, tracking this can help you understand how well something was taken. Compare it to other projects to see what does and doesn’t work, and learn from where you may have gone wrong and what you did right.

How to create digital marketing campaigns that work

Getting the results

Targets drive marketing, not only is creating good content important but so is setting targets and goals for your content. We have found this to be a good way to help create effective digital marketing campaigns that get results, time after time.

Research into the topic past the idea is also important. Ask yourself if you have people you think will be interested, perhaps you have had someone requesting something you haven’t yet done. Look to see who is sharing what, are there influencers who will be interested?

Pre-planned and researched ideas aren’t your only option, in a fast paced world such as ours, you can also create digital marketing campaigns that are reactive to what’s happening. Something quick and easy to jump on a bandwagon or a trending topic, if it’s relevant to clients.

Following on from the above point, to be reactive you need to be in the know. Now there is no secret club or anything to get the latest news. Instead it’s all there right at your finger and thumb tips on social media. Twitter in my opinion is the best place to keep up to date with what is happening in the world. Follow trending hashtags, people of importance and news sites. Use their Moments feature to find the most popular content.

Also use social media to analyse what is hot and what is not. What topics get people excited and what turns them off? This is great to look at how other brands past campaigns have worked out. Have they been welcomed positively or have people reacted badly? Social media is a great tool, to gauge the public’s feelings.

Hannah’s top 5

1. Set goals, what you want to achieve
2. Research more than just the idea
3. Be reactive
4. Be in the know (use social media)
5. Analyse, review and refresh

Pitfalls

A big no, no in the SEO world is Duplicate Content, it’s a big pitfall of content marketing and has a negative effect on websites. When creating content, make sure it is unique unless specifically marked, such as using quotes or examples, think dissertation rules. No copying content from another site, do not use Wikipedia as a source and be original, or if your’re re-writing a topic already covered, add your own spin, your own opinion, make it yours.

Check out our tips on addressing duplicate content.

Talking social

Optimising your content

When creating content like a blog post, social media also needs to be taken into consideration when you’re writing and formatting your posts. A good post needs a strong title, something that’s not only utilising searchable terms but also one that will stand out on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Images are also equally important, the header or title image and those used within the post need to be high quality and relevant. When you share your post on social media, many of the apps pull either header or featured images, so you want something to grab the attention of the user, as they scroll through their social media timelines.

Your blog post should also have a strong introduction (Meta description), here you want to utilise relevant key words to the post as this snippet is what is used on your social media posts. Here you want to make it clear what readers can expect from the post and also write it in such a way they want to read more.

How to optimise your content to get more social shares

Drive traffic to your site with social media

The most popular social media platforms the brands and business utilise are Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, other such as Snapchat and LinkedIn are also useful, however the user base is not as comprehensive as the first 3.

You can use social media to drive traffic to your e-commerce site by making sure you at least have some of the basics covered:

Facebook

• A page set up, i.e. Local business or page, company, organisation or institution or your brand or product.
• About completed including; bio, website, address and contact details
• Header and profile branded images
• Regular posts include photos videos and links out to your site and blog.

Twitter

• Set up a profile for your brand/business account
• Header and profile branded images
• Complete bio description with company information, location and your website URL.
• Regular posts, at least once a day for Twitter is recommended. Include image or gif’s when tweeting.

Instagram

• Set up a business account and tie it to your company Facebook account.
• Add a branded profile image
• Complete the short bio and add a link to your website.
• Instagram doesn’t allow links within posts, so sometimes to direct people to a specific page, you can change it in your bio. Write ‘link in bio’ on your posts.
• Instagram is a photo sharing platform, so you need to make sure images you share are high quality.
• Utilise Instagram stories for insights to your brand or business.

What you post and onto what platform, will depend on your customer demographics and also what your’re sharing. For example, text heavy posts are not always suitable for Instagram and on Twitter you’re restricted, however they are great to share on Facebook. Equally short and sweet updates work well on Twitter and curated image/product heavy updates belong on Instagram.

Social media and SEO

Social Media is now a fixed component of digital marketing, so it makes sense that you should also consider SEO implications when looking at social media campaigns. Although it’s hard to measure accurately what effect social media has on SEO and rankings of your website, it does bring some benefits:

• Creating the potential for viral content
• Can earn you natural links
• Allows you to positively engage with customers
• Increase site referral traffic
• Social media posts are searchable in Google

A lot of traffic to websites comes from social media, with over 7 billion users across social media networks, that’s a lot of traffic potential. More and more people are discovering brands and business via social media, using these platforms as a search engine over Google which is why we recommend targeting social media in SEO campaigns.

Cheat sheet

There is a lot to remember when using social media as part of your digital marketing campaigns, there are a lot of different platforms and they are all set up in different ways. To ensure you have the right content, post relatable images and utilise the platforms for your requirements, you need a Social Media Cheat Sheet.