Nicola Balkind

Community Leader

Spring Clean Your Content: Part I, Media Mix

By

Media Mix

Trends change quickly and it’s easy to get in a rut with your content strategy. What better time to clean up your content than in Spring?

Before we dive into defining your content mix, first it is important to understand the type of media you’ll be posting and where to post it.

Today I want to help you take a look at your offering, give you a summary of trends in digital media, and suggest some ways to Spring clean your content. Next week, we’ll talk about the content mix and how to organise your own.

So, let’s learn about your options – or as I like to call it, the “media mix”.

 

Media Mix

Let’s talk about the media mix. We’re thinking about the types of media you can post, primarily text, images, video and audio, and how they’re best placed across digital platforms.

 

Blog Updates

If you’re still blogging – and I hope you are – text and images are probably your primary tools.

Words are always well-supported by pictures. They give your reader a sense of expectation, frame what’s to come, and illustrate your arguments.

Blogs are also important because they are a home for your content that you control. As we’ll discuss more below, every social media platform wants to keep you on-site, so linking out to other places is becoming less effective. The trouble is that you never know when a social media site will crash, go out of style, or even disappear.

Your blog is your home, and it’s an ideal place for your content to live. If you post a video to YouTube or a podcast to SoundCloud, it’s easy to embed these on your home blog. It gives your audience a central place to go where they can always find your latest news and updates. Don’t underestimate it!

As we’ve talked about previously, the same goes for email. Meet your audience where they’re at, get their email address, and keep them up-to-date with links back to your best content.

 

Social Media Updates

Updating your social media pages used to mean posting some text and maybe a link on Twitter or Facebook. Now, things are far more visual.

Currently, two of the fastest-growing platforms are Instagram and Snapchat – both visual, image and video-based platforms with massive young audiences. Not to mention Tumblr, a hugely visual platform and community which, arguably, focuses more on sharing and curating content than creating it. Users still create here, but it tends towards remixing and repurposing extant content from elsewhere (i.e. TV, YouTube videos, new memes).

Meanwhile, Twitter added images and Facebook also favours visual content that keeps users on-site.

My point? Social media still has a strong basis in text, but visual media is taking over.

 

Video

Let’s talk about dedicated video content. Video is one of the most rapidly-changing dynamics online these past fea years. Industry leaders have been heralding its moment for years now.

While YouTube launched 10 years ago and is credited with democratising video, it’s not until the past year or so that we’ve seen more platforms embrace video. Twitter launched Vine and Instagram added video capabilities around the same time; meanwhile Facebook favours auto-play and Twitter has now added a 30-second video option.

These are important changes as they keep users on-site. We can now post video directly on these social platforms – we publish the content directly to social, rather than publicising links and asking our users to follow them. The imperative to leave Twitter or Facebook and follow a link to YouTube has been weakened, so it’s time to start creating video content that’s fit for your chosen platform or platforms.

 

Audio

Audio content has great potential, and some sea changes have taken place of late – not least the massive success of Serial, which exploded the audience and appetite for podcasts.

Podcasts, micropodcasts and even audio clips shared on social media are an intimate way to connect with your audience. The direct voice-to-earbud delivery is unparalleled in this regard. Audio also occupies a different space in people’s lives: you’re reaching them while they’re out and about, walking, driving, doing daily tasks or even sleeping.

 

Next week we’ll look into defining your content mix.

Til then, what are the trends that you’ve seen in digital multimedia? What are you trying to achieve in your content strategy, and do you need help in going about it?

Drop me a comment below, tweet me @robotnic, or email me.

How Often?

By

How Often Should I Post on Social Media?

 

One of the most common questions that I”m often asked when consulting with a new collaborator is a big one:

“How often should I post?”

 

It’s one of the easiest questions to answer, but one of the hardest questions to answer well.

 

The short answer?

As a rule of thumb, I usually say something like:

For blogs, at least one per month, but up to one per week
For Twitter, 1-20 times per day plus retweets
For Facebook, at least 3 times per week
For Google+ and LinkedIn, at least every time you post a blog

If these guidelines sound vague, it’s because they are totally vague.

 

The long answer?

There’s only one way to find out how often you should post.

START POSTING.

 

Maybe it wasn’t so long after all.

The only way to learn what’s right for your audience is through good old trial and error. Try things out, gather your results. Then throw out what isn’t working and focus on the things that are working.

This goes for all types of content, but it also goes for how frequently you post.

As you interact on your social media platforms of choice, listen in. Pay attention to the times of day that are working for your audience. What are they discussing, and in what format? Are they liking pictures first thing int he morning and having debates at lunchtime? These things all factor into your social media and content strategy.

The same goes for blog posts. Are you dragging yourself over the coals to produce 3 blog posts per week that nobody reads? Try scaling back and see if one longer, more content rich blog post per week performs better.

Remember: there is no point in creating tons of content that adds zero value. People have limited time, and it is up to you how much of that time you can encourage them to devote to your output.

Weigh and measure the value your offering against their time until you have a recipe for how often to post. Then keep tweaking.

 

Your turn

How often do you post on your blog and social media channels? What works for your audience?

If you haven’t started yet, what’s holding you back?

Tips for Content Curation

By

Content Curation

When you build a content strategy for your business, creating content is probably at the top of your list of priorities.

Planning your content cleverly means not only creating content, but also curating things that are interesting to your audience.

Curated content is the stuff that comes in-between. It’s not filler, and it’s not an excuse to take a break from thinking about what your audience wants to hear from you. This is the time for you to find and share creative work that demonstrates to your readers and customers that your values align with theirs.

 

User Generated Content

User Generated Content, or UGC, is the media that your audience shares with you. One of the major goals of social media marketing is engagement with fans and users of your product, and UGC is the top tier of that engagement.

It could be an Instagram photo geotagged to your store, a Vine they’ve tagged you in, or a poem that they’ve worked your company name into. Put it this way: it’s online word of mouth.

If you’re lucky, this kind of social sharing is happening organically. If not, you can kick-start the process by running a campaign that incentivises your audience to create UGC and showcases their work.

Either way, sharing UGC lends social proof, places your product in a new and appropriate context, and creates a precedent for more of your followers to share. Encourage it!

Need some inspiration? Check out these campaign ideas.

 

 

Twitter Lists

Twitter lists are one of the best and most underused features on Twitter.

By creating a list, you’re curating a segment of your feed. These could be people you follow or people you don’t.

One of the first things I do when I get my hands on a new client’s Twitter feeds is to create a private list called ‘Sources’ and begin filling it with people and publications that are industry leaders, thought leaders, and the people who share useful links.

Curating lists of the top sharers in your area cuts out a lot of the hard work of curation. By choosing the top sharers, you can save time from combing through your entire feed.

Ultimately, you may be a little behind the top curators, but by finding people and sources you trust, you can take a shortcut to sharing the most relevant and potentially viral content in your area of expertise.

Tip: Twitter lists are also a great way to get found. (But only if they’re useful!)

 

 

Trusted Websites

Now let’s back up a little bit. While social sharing is now one of the key ways to find links to great stories, it’s important to keep your eye out for the items that are flying under the radar.

Keeping a list of trusted websites, say, in your bookmarks, will give you another place to access inspiring content.

For B2B companies:
Ensure you’re on top of the latest changes in your industry through market publications. While some still tend to be offline, demonstrating your expertise and thirst for the latest knowledge can be a great point of differentiation from your competitors. Start discussions around top stories and use the latest news as a jumping-off point for content creation ideas.

For B2Cs:
Are there any publications your audience particularly cares about? If you’re in entertainment, the latest reviews and features from the broadsheets could come in handy. For retail, keep an eye out for what’s trending in the relevant magazines.

Another way to keep these organised is through a trusty old internet friend… the RSS feed.

 

 

RSS

The trusty RSS feed is one of the internet’s forgotten gems. So much so that Google closed the doors on its RSS, Google Reader, in 2012.

However the RSS – short for “Rich Site Summary” or “Really Simple Syndication”, depending on whom you ask – is still one of the quickest and most powerful ways to stay informed.

I personally use Feedly, while Bloglovin’ is a great option for blogs, particularly in the lifestyle space. Click here for some other leading RSS options via Six Revisions.

So, see all those websites I suggested you follow above? Whack them into your RSS reader and you’ll have a goldmine of content to refer back to each time you create your content calendar.

Most RSS readers will allow you to collate and segment your favourite sources by topic, making the process even quicker.

 

 

Newsletters

Think back to those trusted sources and thought leaders you follow. Do any of them offer an email newsletter?

Some companies and individuals are getting super smart about their email missives – and they’re right to. Email is still the most effective marketing platform that you can participate in.

Sign up to some of your favourite curators and see what links and resources they have to offer that you can repurpose as curated content. (And if you end up with too many, clean them out once in awhile or try out a widget like Unroll.me to keep them organised!)

Your Own Archives

Finally, another place where you can mine content from is your own archive!

It’s a good idea to keep checking in to see what your top performing content looks like. Is it still relevant? If so, add it to your social media schedule! Creation is curation, my friends.

Those are all the tips I have for you today. What are your secrets for content curation? Shoot me a tweet @robotnic or email me with your thoughts.

 

––

Fancy receiving a free monthly newsletter from nicolabalkind.com? Sign up here.

Categories