Using Automation and Building Engagement

Automated Robot
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot

In our attempts to be more “social”, there seems to be an ongoing discussion / battle around automation and engagement. Is it okay to automate some, all or none of your social media activities? I’m aware of folks that have totally abdicated the responsibility of their social media efforts to either automation or a consultant/agency. Conversely, I’m aware of other folks that struggle mightily on a daily basis to create “original” content and manually post to all of their social platforms, in many instances becoming so overwhelmed they abandon their efforts. In both of these cases, the individual/team are operating without any real strategy as to why they are posting, to who, on which channel and when.

First, let’s examine what is meant by automation.

The dictionary (Random House) defines automation as: the technique or system of operating a mechanical process by highly automatic means, as by electronic devises, reducing human intervention to a minimum.

And therein lies a portion of the issue, in our efforts to reduce human intervention of repetitive tasks, some have approached social as a mechanical process (think, I must post five times a day or my boss will be all over me). The difficulty is that most relationship building endeavors, are anything but mechanical or routine. Each of our audiences are unique. Sure, we can categorize them into similar groups or buyer personas based on interests, needs or geographic location, but those are meant to be guidelines to determine what we need to communicate at the right time and place to solve a particular issue, not a sum total of any one person.

In her excellent post “How to use Social Media Automation to Enhance (not hurt) your Social Media Strategy“, Kristi Hines covers the good and the bad of social media automation. Like Ms. Hines, I agree that a preferable tactic is to vet the posts that you are going to schedule for the day/week or beyond (I personally only post out about a week ). As she notes; “By automating (to an extent) the content that you share, you will keep your profiles up to date while opening up more time to do more personalized interactions (read engagement)”. You only have so much time to invest in your efforts (thus why it may make sense to outsource your community management, but that’s an entirely different conversation) and it’s important to be spending it where you’ll get the best return (measuring your success, yep, another post), that I’m sure you’ll agree will be in chatting to your future and current brand advocates. By using automation effectively, you should have more time to engage with those in your community (future clients, clients, influencers, vendors and as importantly employees).

Our goal in automating certain tasks should be to allocate more time to making those meaningful connections that can lead to both tangible and intangible returns (part of the measurement chat). I believe that by fully automating your social; “so it looks like your active” and not engaging with those that connect with you is a drain on the little financial and time resources you commit to it. In his book “Social Media Explained“, Mark Schaefer outlines three key elements behind every successful social media interaction that he studied or was informed of;  “Targeted Connections + Meaningful Content + Authentic Helpfulness = Business Benefits”. As he clearly illustrates in the book, building relationships, nurturing those relationships and being helpful, leads to returns – tangible (a speaking engagement) or intangible (an introduction to a new connection that leads to other indirect opportunities).

As noted by Schaefer and fellow marketing authors and leaders Bryan Kramer and Ted Rubin, we’ve moved away from the traditional Business to Business (B2B), Business to Consumer (B2C) to a more personal relationship of one to one, or as Kramer notes Human to Human (H2H – title of his new book). By fully automating your social efforts; especially automated replies on Twitter (DM and tweet), you are demonstrating, or at the very least implying that you are not truly interested in engaging with those that engage with your content. Find the right balance for yourself and build meaningful relationships.

As Ted Rubin noted in a recent Instagram/Facebook post and quoting Maya Angelou:

 

Ted Rubin Instagram post
Ted Rubin Instagram post

 Resources:

“How to Use Social Media Automation to….” Kristi Hines post on iAquire blog, published June 5, 2014.

Ted Rubin Straight Talk – Blog

Rich Brooks interviews Ted about “Being Human in the Digital Age”

“Is Social Automation the future of Social” Matthew Sweezey post on ClickZ published June 26, 2014.

“Be Relevant or Die: The New Nature of Nurture”. Will Spendlove post on Marketo Blog published June 26, 2014.

 

Should you have Goals or Systems?

Goal Planning

In December, James Clear wrote a post for Entrepreneur magazine entitled “Forget Setting Goals, Focus on This Instead“. The “this” of the piece was creating systems. It was a thought provoking piece, especially given the number of posts exuding the benefits of goals setting and planning for the year to come. A lot of the post made great sense, but lead me to ask should you have goals or systems, and are they mutually exclusive.

I enjoyed a lot of the piece and fully believe in building effective systems to get work done, but it appeared that Clear was purporting that you should have one without the other. That you only needed to have systems and all else would fall nicely into place. To illustrate his point, he noted that he had written 115,000 words in the 11 months prior to posting this piece, enough for two books, though he had not set out to write a book. Clear, to distinguish between goals and systems, used the book instance a little further:

“If you’re a writer, your goal is to write a book. Your system is your writing schedule that you follow each week”.

And it’s true that you need good habits (or systems) to help you stay focused on task. In his post he asked that if you focused on the habit, would you achieve your ultimate goal. It of course presumes that you have an end or a sign post in mind at the outset.

The only area that didn’t sit quite as well with me was the assertion, that having a goal inhibited your ability to  enjoy the process; or as Clear notes “goals reduce your current happiness”. Now it’s true that too many people penalize themselves by believing that they have to achieve a goal before they can be happy, or as Clear rightly echos “Once I reach my goal, then I’ll be happy. Once I achieve my goal, then I’ll be successful.” Fortunately, we are learning so much more from the social sciences on being mindful that we can lay that “puritan work ethic” to rest and allow ourselves to enjoy the journey. After all, we’re all likely familiar with quotes  like Greg Anderson’s ” Focus on the journey, not the destination. Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it”; or Jim Rohn’s “You can not change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction”.

It’s been my experience that building systems (habits) to help you reach a destination is a sure way to experience happiness and success. We all get great enjoyment from the hit of dopamine we receive for checking off a task from our to-do lists. Those destinations can be our ultimate task or the benchmarks along the way. For me our goals are not commandments, set in stone without the ability to rewrite them as situations or opportunities arise, but are merely signposts to help us know if we are on the right track to the destination we initially envisioned. When we do stray off track, it also provides us with the opportunity to know if the original destination was the right one in the first place, if not, then we can start to alter that destination. Without a destination in mind, how will we ever know if we’re heading in the right direction. Clear notes that having that big goal can add so much stress, but it’s been my experience that if you break the big goal into it’s component parts, you reduce the stress and get to enjoy the process more by setting up mini-wins along the way. My concern with the tenor of his piece goes to the fact that Stephen Covey so elegantly noted (paraphrased) “We can build a ladder, and climb the rungs, only to find that we’ve got it balanced against the wrong wall”. It’s so important to know where you are going.

We both agree that goal setting is an important element of success. Clear notes at the end of the piece “that goals are good for planning your progress, and systems are good for making progress”, and without a doubt a goal that doesn’t have a plan (process) attached to it is just a dream.

I see this so often with clients, the one or another dilemma, do you focus on goals or systems. All to frequently, they have an end goal in mind, but haven’t built effective processes or habits to implement the plan, or they focus to much on the “How” and don’t have any idea of “Why” they are doing what they are doing, thus missing out on the passion and ultimate destination. A great work to refer to from a social media plan and execution regard is Neal Schaffer’s “Maximize Your Social” [review coming] and “The 4 Disciplines of Execution” by Chris McChesney, Sean Covey and Jim Huling.

I’d encourage you to read the initial post and share your best practices to execute, monitor and reach your goals.

 

3 of the Weeks Best Stories – Jan. 19/14

A great week for content last week, seems everyone is really getting back into the swing of things. Here are our 3 of the weeks best stories ending Sunday January 19, 2014.

This weeks contributions come from some very recognizable names in the content marketing world and indeed some topics that generated a lot of conversation. One of the biggest topics was and is around the conversation on “Content Shock”. The term dubbed by Mark Schaefer in his post sparked a lot of conversation. It will be the subject of the next best of the week installment, as there were and are more opinions coming in.

This week, we’ll be looking at the continuing discussion on “gaming” the social proof measurements; some excellent tools to help you to understand your social media analytics and activities; and a compelling podcast PNRs This Old Marketing. All told you’ll need about an hour to go through all three pieces. In my opinion time well spent and an opportunity to gain additional tools to help your social efforts.

1. Can You Build a Career on Social Proof – [Blog] Mark Schaefer’s {Grow} Blog.

Fake Followers, Social Proof
Photo Credit:AlbumExchange

The on-going discussion of “fake it until you make it”, has been rampant the last week, with serious discussions about the social gaming platform Empire Avenue. In this post Schaefer explores the allure of building an impressive array of followers and likes so that others coming to your profile believe you must know what you’re talking about. Like the cover of Elvis’ compilation album “50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can’t be Wrong”, the thought is that if all those people are following or like what you’re doing, you should be worth following.

Of course, as the post clearly demonstrates, this is “folly”. Once someone starts to pay attention to what you’re doing, then you will need to really deliver the goods. This is hard enough to do in today’s world of instant news, distractions and tons of content when you do have some knowledge of your topic, never mind how impossible it is when you really don’t. In Elvis’ case, he had the chops to keep those followers and it is evident when someone doesn’t. Most of these folks are banking on two things, 1. you won’t bother to unfollow or unlike them because it takes time and effort. Also, 2. you’ll stick around long enough to keep the pipes open and keep their numbers up for the next person to see.  Schaefer goes on to make the argument about why the numbers matter, to a certain extent. For a large portion of folks gravitating to and paying a little attention to the social space, those numbers are indicators (whether the followers or Klout score), whether we, that are a little further along and mature in the field, like it or not. We know this is a short term strategy, but it can work. The difficulty comes when the person gaming gets addicted to the easy way and doesn’t put in the hard work to effectively build their following, which unfortunately impacts us all negatively. One of my three words for the year is “courage” and it’s why this post resonated with me. Mark states that it takes courage to stick to the right path and I agree.  I do believe it takes courage to do the hard work, stick to your principals and build lasting and valuable relationships with the new tools we all have at our disposal. In the long-run, we all benefit.

2. Social Media Dashboard – 4 Dashboards to track your social media performance.[Blog] Ian Cleary – RazorSocial

Google Analytics Dashboard custom
Photo:razorsocial.com

From all appearances, Ian Cleary is not only someone that provides exceptional value with the information he shares on his blog, but easily could be the top contender for someone you’d want to share a Guinness with. Ian knows his stuff and is very generous with his time and knowledge. The Razor Social blog is definitely worth bookmarking and paying attention to when you’re in the market to find tech to help make your social media activities better and easier to understand.

So if we’re encouraging you to do the hard work and grow meaningful, mutually beneficial relationships on your social channels, how do you know what you are doing right or where you might need to improve. Maybe, your information is solid, but your posting at the wrong times. All of these integral pieces to social success can be learned, discovered, analysed and acted upon. In the Social Media Dashboard, Cleary shows you four tools that you can use to get a clearer picture of what is happening with your activities. Three of the suggestions, I’ve not looked at or used, so really can’t honestly comment on them. However, the clear synopsis’ provided for all of the dashboards’ demonstrates them to be powerful tools. I do however have a custom dashboard on my Google Analytics and coupled with my Hootsuite analytics,  I get great information to work with (also excited that Hootsuite has just purchased uberVU).

What is nice about this post is the detail and step by step guide to using the recommended tools, with an honest evaluation of any potential limitations. I’d encourage you to find the one that most appeals to you and start using it to get the most from your work.

3. Will Native Advertising Ultimately Become the Norm – [Blog and Podcast] – Content Marketing Institute Pulizzi and Rose.

This podcast is a great addition to the content marketing environment. Full of great information, a splash or two of humor and a look at great integrated marketing programs from the past (you’ll enjoy the G.I. Joe story), this podcast is worth paying attention to. In each episode Joe Pulizzi and Robert Rose take the pulse of current events in the realm of content marketing, including a fun “Rant or Rave” segment.  This episode was of interest for me because of the conversation around native advertising and what is called native, but is really “sponsored” content. Though as the authors/announcers clearly demonstrate, not a new field for advertisers; it’s just that we have much more powerful tools to take advantage of native advertising.  If you’re not sure what native advertising is, a great description from an earlier post should help:

“According to digital advertising firm Solve Media, native advertising refers to a specific mode of monetization that aims to augment user experience through relevant content that is delivered in-stream” (link to this post in the podcast post).

In addition to the ongoing discussions on native advertising, the podcast also looks at evolving areas like “the internet of things” and is digital marketing too complex?  I really enjoy listening to this podcast while taking a break and find I revisit the topics on a regular basis.

Hope you find the information on our top 3 best stories of the week of value for you.

One last thing (yes, I watched a Steve Jobs documentary this week); the discussion around native and sponsored advertising got me thinking about the work of Brett Heard and Fresh Baked Entertainment. If you’re a marketer or a producer of content and you’re not familiar with their work, you’ll definitely want to check them out, especially the new avenue that they are exploring to connect content producers and marketers together to mutually benefit their audiences. Full disclosure, Brett is a high school mate and I’ve really enjoyed watching the growth and excellent products, that he and the talented folks at Fresh Baked have created over the last few years, including web-based video series for notable brands. Their new venture though I believe holds great value for all. I’d encourage you to take a look at what they are doing – your clients will be glad you did – Fresh Baked Online Services [Video 1.42].

Website for Fresh Baked Entertainment
http://www.freshbakedent.com/

What was your favorite story from last week?

 

Why You’ll Want a Content Calendar

Content Calendar Sample

The most common objectives that I experience when I discuss integrating blogging and social into a small business’ marketing and communication programs are 1. I don’t have the time and 2. I have no idea what I’d talk about. Both of those are blog posts onto themselves, in fact on my personal blog, I covered time management and ways to overcome that hurdle. Of the second, the issue is likely that you have much more content than you believe and just don’t know where to start. If these common issues sound familiar, then you are ready for a content calendar.  Not only will you benefit from easily finding the time to create a weekly blog, but you’ll easily know what to share on your social channels. It will also provide you with a laser focus on the themes and issues that matter most to your audiences.

Maybe in the past, you’ve considered them, but every time you’ve looked at one of those online content calendar templates, they look like they require a PHd in mathematics and mad excel skills, so you haven’t pursued it. Truth is, with a little bit of thought and some serious R&D (rob and duplicate) you can create your own version that will work for you. There are certain aspects of course that are fundamental to having a successful calendar and you’ll be able to easily incorporate them into whatever system works for you. In the resources below you’ll find links to deeply developed templates and easy to use online calendars (using your Google Calendar to schedule your posts). Using a content calendar will also help you to visually see what you are planning by month, quarter and year, to ensure you capture key dates; such as that must attend industry conference. Just seeing that date can provide three or more posts for you, the lead up to the event, what’s happening while you’re there and what you took away and applied to your business. It will immediately help you to identify parts of your plan that you don’t have content ready for, giving you plenty of opportunity to crowd-source topics, write a follow up on an earlier issue or find a guest post to include.

Your goal in adopting and using a content calendar is to be prepared, to know what you are talking about and to ensure that it meets the needs of your audience, remember your content is looking to provide information that is useful to your audience in their professional or personal lives. The fundamental steps that are essential to an effective content calendar are: to know who your audience is and what topics they are interested in, to know what content you already have that you can use to answer their common questions and the build your calendar and put it to good use.

Audience and Topics:

The odds are really good that you have more than one type of audience that you need to communicate with. Therefore, you’ll need to create a few segments of your audience that have different interests or issues that need to be addressed. To identify these groups, it is best to get in touch with everyone that is client facing in your organization. Have a meeting and with their help, identify potential topics from the issue, concerns and praise that your clients, prospects, vendors, staff and partners identify about your service, products and interactions with them (whether in person or on line). From this conversation you’ll be able to identify topics to talk about, what you’re looking to add, questions about service improvement, different ways to extend the life and value of your product, new product initiatives, old product revitalization opportunities,  new strategic partnerships and more, all leading to improved communications and relationships.  Another great suggestion that I’ve come across is to use this time to help establish what weight do you want to give each of these different audience segments and then allocate what percent of time you’ll invest accordingly. One area to not overlook is to talk about what makes you and your working environment a great place to be. By creating content to demonstrate that your a fun, fair, exciting place to work that is creating great value for your customers can only help you identify the best and brightest to add to your team.

Podio Workflow Management Content Calendar

Content Inventory.

Most organizations that I’ve worked with or have presented to, feel that they don’t have anything to talk about and don’t know where they would begin. It doesn’t take long to turn those thoughts upside down when, as an outsider to their organization and a potential customer of their product or service, I start asking questions or suggest things that I’d like to see covered in their communications. For example, I recently did a workshop for senior staff in the early childhood education community locally that are facing some difficult times as businesses.  With our Province adopting all day junior kindergarten, a stream of revenue is vanishing before their very eyes. When we came to the subject of blogging and social as part of their marketing mix, a quick 10 minute chat identified a 4 month calendar of blog ideas. I was outside of their industry and it was easy for me as a parent of a child that recently got to the age that he could take care of himself to talk about information that they readily have, that I could have benefited from as a parent.  No matter your industry, you have them too; presentations for industry trade shows, customer stories, customers questions that can all be turned into blog posts. Industry data from your finance department for infographics, quick and easy how to videos (for example having one of the daycare centers do a quick craft demonstration for parents to use over the holidays). Re-purposing content from previous blog or newsletter posts with updated information or sharing the best ideas of others with your own experiences woven in (like this post, with a grateful hat tip to the resources below, Lee Odden and his book Optimize and the first content calendar I used from HubSpot). Create a place where you can take stock of the content you already have, the most frequently asked questions your staff get, ideas from an industry wiki. Make it available to all so everyone can add to it as they come across additional resources or information. I use a workflow management system called Podio and keep all of my blog ideas there, where I can track them from the idea stage to publish. I can tag them for future reference and so much more. A couple of other great suggestions I’ve heard of is using a content catalog (simply an excel spreadsheet) and using Evernote (Mark Schaefer on the Grow Blog).

The next step is to publish your content, track what becomes of it and then modify what you are doing (a completely different post). The key is to do more of what is generating your desired results and less of what is not.

How to use your Content Calendar

If your using an excel spreadsheet (recommended) for your content calendar here are some suggestions on how you may want to use it, by columns.

The first column is for the date range going (weekly activities).

The second column is where you can insert any upcoming calendar events, like Christmas or a tax deadline.

The next 3 or so columns are for your topic/industry events like your industry conference, local chamber tradeshow, etc.

The next column would be for any specific company events, such as a product launch, anniversary, price change, etc.

The next set of columns are for scheduling the pieces of content such as your blog, podcast, video, etc. You might consider color-coding these pieces for your various audiences.

The next set will be for the social channels and distribution channels you’ll use to share your content (Facebook, G+, LinkedIn, Twitter, Stumble Upon, etc.). Each with an appropriate message for it’s defined audience.

The number of columns will vary depending on the amount of content you are producing and the number of audiences you are producing for.

Content marketing is key to your overall business success. It can help you find new prospects (or more accurately, let them find you), create better relationships with your current stakeholders and provide additional support to your current customers. Having an effective content calendar will keep you on track and illustrate what you have to share to make the lives of your customers, staff and business partners better.

Are you currently using a content calendar? If so, what does yours look like and what successes can you attribute to it.

Recommended resources: 

Search in your favorite browser for an editorial or content calendar and you’ll find tons of helpful information to help you get started. Some of my favorites sources are (in addition to the links above):

Essential Content Calendar – [Blog] Social Media Today – includes free template

Why you should create a detailed Editorial Calendar – [Blog] Sprout Social

Build your Content Calendar, in three easy steps – [Blog] Content Marketing Institute

15 Most Life-changing Editorial Calendar Tools – [Blog] Writtent

Create a Content Calendar using Google Calendar – [Video] John Haydon YouTube

2014s Three Guiding Words

3 Guiding words

This year as part of my overall planning, I’ve taken Chris Brogan‘s challenge/suggestion to heart and have adopted three guiding words for 2014 to use not only in my business, but in my personal development as well. Below you’ll find the 2013 and 2014 posts that Chris did in regard to his words, the process and what he’s found it means to him. I personally like the idea of having words (mental images) that I can return to when weighing decisions about how I’ll spend my time and energy. My hope, is the addition of the guiding words will stimulate more creativity and help get me back on track, anytime I stray away from the path I’m looking to take/share this year.

Why adopt this challenge? It’s a good question. I was looking for a way to revitalize my planning process and the subsequent journey. In his 2013 post Brogan noted “I’ve found the concept of three words allows me to think in more dimensions about what I want to do with my life and it lets me apply lots of tangible goals…” and this resonated with me. In both of his posts (see below), he gives clear directions as to how to create yours, the words he’s used in the past and how when he experimented with 4 words once, what the result was.

The process in discovering my words was easier than I had imagined. I had a good idea of what I wanted to accomplish in 2014 in the three areas of professional, personal and financial health. Lately, I’ve been reading and studying the activities of Simon Sinek and Brene Brown and the first word was very top of mind. As Brogan noted, “The words are meant to be a “shorthand” or memory trigger to your larger vision, goals and plans”.

2014 Three Guiding Words:

So without further adieu, here are my three guiding words:

Inspire:

My goal is to inspire others to achieve their personal and professional goals in 2014 and beyond. For myself, it’s also a reminder to continually seek out different perspectives and ideas on ways to lead an inspired life. I’ve been fortunate to have had so many divergent influences and interests over the years that I don’t fit nicely into any one category. It’s a small problem in trying to develop a niche, but a real benefit in searching for innovated solutions to problems. Brian Fanzo wrote this post on Twitter, and I couldn’t agree more. I hope to inspire others to do so as well.

 

Cultivate:

I’m looking forward to cultivating stronger personal and professional relationships, with old friends and new alike in 2014.  The power of social for me has been the ability to connect with so many interesting and talented people throughout the world. The next step for me is to meet some or as many as reasonably possible this coming year. I’m looking to forge strong working relationships with others that share my passion for delivering exceptional service and who are looking to inspire their communities to achieve success and happiness. The power of social has reconnected me to folks from my past. Each have gone on to do wonderful and creative things from the last time I got to spend time with them. An example is Brett Heard. An inspiration for certain. Brett has forged a great career at Fresh Baked Entertainment. When Brett released his first, of what I’m sure will be more motion pictures, “Stag”, I got to see an early cut of the film with a focus group. The invitation to attend was a great honour, but the best part was being able to see Brett, shake his hand and congratulate him on his hard work and success over the years. It’s been a real treat watching his wonderful career and skills grow. In addition, I’ve got to see how he is a great family man as well. I really am looking forward to experiencing that feeling with others, I feel I know, but haven’t met yet this year and sharing those experiences with Joan and Spencer.

Courage:

Having the courage to step out of my comfort zone to achieve happiness, health and to ensure I continue to cultivate and inspire. This one will take more work, as in the past I’ve allowed myself to be sidetracked by projects that were not necessarily a good fit for my values or goals. Over the years I’ve gotten very possessive of my time, especially in carving out that time for family. I’ll need the courage to say no to projects that don’t fit, but still have the humanity to guide them to someone who may be a much better fit. I’ll need courage to avoid falling into easy patterns and to make commitments to stick to habit changes I want to push beyond settling for the status quo.

So far, with these three guiding words, I’ve committed to my four “study” books for the year, a commitment to pursue podcasting, commitment to complete a couple of online courses and certifications, improve the service levels for clients, develop a proprietary online training course for a niche industry in transition and schedule opportunities to meet more people in person.

I’m lookingforward to seeing the impact of these guiding intentions on this years journey.

 What are your words or techniques that help keep you on track to achieving your goals?

 

Resources:

Chris Brogan’s “My Three Words for 2013” post

Chris Brogan’s “My Three Words for 2014” post