actionable marketing guide

If you missed my workshop or weren’t at SMMW17, here’s the inside scoop:

• My favorite color is black and my favorite food is ice cream. (Hat tip: Lisa Jenkins of Social Media Examiner—The best introduction ever!!!)
• Here’s the link to my handout

While the Icelandic attendees in the second row were fun (and wore coordinated red dresses to Thursday evening’s party), Teri and Serena’s response to my presentation moved me to tears. Hugs for everybody!

Since you, my dear reader, are my squad, if you attended SMMW17 and write a related post on your blog by Thursday, April 6, 2017, you’re entitled to my free gift:

You’re welcome to submit your SMMW17 blog post to my roundup. send an email to: [email protected] for instructions.

On a personal note, unlike my past SMMW experiences, this year was transformational. I came home not only with my head bursting with ways to up my social media and content marketing game but also, (and more importantly) inspired to rethink and change my life.

I’m excited about the future.

May be it was the keynotes:

• Joey Coleman spoke about your customer’s first 100 days. (BTW—20% to 70% of people who’ve bought your product leave within this period of time! YIKES!)
• Charlene Johnson, an infomercial exercise queen turned social media expert, showed us how to use live video to drive sales.  My mother would have approved. (My mom believed you must take care of your body. Since the body you have at 20, 30, and 40 is the one you have at 50, 60, 70 and beyond.)

While I could fill this letter with my laundry list of take-aways, here’s the big picture:

Social media isn’t going away any time soon. Not that you my smart readers would believe that!

That said, social media is going through a period of transformation. This can be attributed to the maturing of the major platforms we use.

But this change is bigger than that.

It’s a matter of seeing social media as a communications channel. It’s how we connect and communicate with the people we care about. While many social networks call participants users, we need to realize they aren’t numbers but people.

Bryan Krammer calls this human-to-human, I prefer the term person-to-person because there’s an emotional, personal component. This is what we learned as small children.

As social media evolves and extends its functionality, it’s becoming integrated into other areas of our lives. It’s not just marketers. My contractor showed me how to use Facebook to sell old furniture. In his opinion, it’s better than Craig’s List.

As marketers, social media’s shift to a broader means of communication is BIG. You have the ability to be available across a number of platforms when and where your prospect and customer are ready to engage with you.

But it’s more—Social media is no longer just siloed in the marketing department. You must integrate it across your business. Even more importantly you need to be prepared to provide quality content your audience needs at every step of the buyer journey.

What’s happening is a melding of social media, content marketing and customer experience (including customer service and sales) to be the best option for your customer.

Stay tuned I’ll be writing more about SMMW.

What can you do even if you didn’t attend SMMW?

1. Get out from behind your computer to meet people face-to-face. Being together in real time cements and builds relationships. If you can’t afford to attend a conference, volunteer to help. At a minimum, you’ll get in for free. You’ll learn the ropes and meet people. I did this in my early days. There’s no shame in it.
2. Attend local meetups. For example, Andy Crestodina hosts a monthly Wine & Web for those of you in Chicago.
3. Build your posse. Get like-minded professionals and meet or talk once every few weeks. Be a sounding board to push each other forward. This applies whether you’re a solopreneur or employed by a company.
4. Support others. Reach out and share their content. Participate in Twitter chats and other social events.
5. Read broadly. Yes I know this sounds old school but you need to stay up-to-date.

That’s it for this week. I have to catch up on everything I didn’t do last week.

Since I’m revamping my editorial calendar based on SMMW17, I’d love to hear from you. What is your biggest marketing challenge and why?

Happy Marketing
Heidi.

Heidi Cohen
Actionable Marketing Guide

Looking for help with your SEO Strategy? Check out Ahrefs’ article.

On a personal note, here’s some advice from the University of Chicago related to goal setting. If you’re like me, you’re always looking for new ways to improve your performance. This is real research on goal setting that’s worth your time.

• Actionable Marketing Guide clocked in as a Top 75 Blog on a list of online marketers. Check out the list to find new people to follow.
  
  
• Top Rank’s Lee Odden, the master of influencer marketing, does it again with a great Top 50 Social Media Marketing Influencers at SMMW17. It’s worth your time even if you’re not attending to help you fill your Twitter lists. 
  50 Social Media Marketing Influencers to Follow in 2017 #SMMW17
  
  
• Heidi Cohen is one of the 45 Influencers Share Their Best Networking Tips. This article is worth your time since it’s not your typical collection of influencers. Further, a number of the participants give very in-depth answers across a vary of platforms. 

7 Steps to Optimise Your Content Marketing Strategy

Learn the most crucial components of building a content marketing strategy and improve on your team's execution and delivery of content.

In this report we outline 7 straight-forward steps to build a strategy that ensures your team is aligned, on message, and creating content that will deliver effective results.

We also address the trend toward marketers investing in content marketing platforms to build out in-depth strategies that incorporate audience personas and workflow management - all of which is housed within a robust content calendar.

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