I believe digital marketing can be distilled down into two areas; content and distribution.
Just ways to spread the word
Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Email, SMS, web sites, forums and blogs are simply methods of distribution.
Sure there are a few operational ‘do’s and dont’s’ for optimising their effectiveness, but the reality is that pretty much anyone with access to the internet now has the capacity to distribute content on a global scale for little or no cost.
So there’s really no need to feel ‘bamboozled’ with all this stuff, the mediums I have mentioned above are just contemporary methods for distributing content or put another way, spreading the word.
Content is king
The creation of great content however is a another matter entirely. It’s very easy to get this bit wrong and very hard to put it right if you do;
Who wants to enter a competition to win a crap prize?
Who wants to buy a product which is too expensive?
Why tell me about a product which is not available in my country?
Why would I want to hear about a boy band concert when I hate boy bands?
If you distribute content digitally there’s a chance its found its way to all sorts of places in an instant. People can comment on your offering and there’s nothing you can do about it! In other words, you can’t put the genie back into bottle.
So what makes great content?
I think its about relevancy, clarity, and timing.
Imagine this. Your local cake shop has just baked some of your favorite cakes. You got their tweet on your smartphone so you made a detour to pick some up on the way home.
Because of Twitter, I now read my local newspaper for the first time in twenty years. Small, local stories feed onto my desktop along side the big global issues of the day. Surprisingly I’m becoming more interested in the local stuff. So the great content was always there, its just that its started to be distributed more effectively.
Digital isn’t just for the big guys. In fact it often works just as well and with lower risk for small organisations.
So a few things I feel people ought to consider when trying to make digital marketing work for their business.
Is this content good for us?
Is this content good for our customers?
Can we deliver on our promise?
How and when should we distribute this content?
So don’t worry about how all the technical stuff works and keeping up with latest buzzwords, just concentrate on what you’re going to say.
