Destroy Digital

There is content strategy and then, there is content strategy. As with any strategy, we can talk about it until the cows come home. This is hopefully not one of those episodes. The key thing to remember is that while some strategies fall into categories, the best strategy for your particular situation is not always the same as someone else’s.

That was a diplomatic way of saying – don’t steal. Just because you’ve seen someone do it once, doesn’t always mean it’s going to work for you. Take the time to allow your team to investigate, formulate and test any new strategy. There is no such thing as a silver bullet – especially if you’ve never had a content strategy before. All too often, we hear of clients wanting immediate ROI – like stepping on the accelerator and just…go.

All too often, they forget to factor in the actual building of the car.

Having said that, there are a few guidelines to help ensure your strategy has as close to a 100% chance of success as possible. The key word here is chance. In every strategy, you will have factors that bolster your chances and factors that could literally or figuratively, kill your chances.

The first and most important thing is knowing your audience. Take the time to learn about your audience and perhaps even test any new material with a sample group. Standup comedians live and die on stage – in the most public way possible. Take a page on how they write, prepare and deliver new material.

Next is to determine your content channels – this will also help shape the kind of content that you make. We covered this in a previous episode of the podcast. If you remember CORE, full marks to you.

The third and the most critical thing to long-term success is to structure your efforts to maintain consistency and regularity. You want to cut your coat according to your cloth. This has multiple ramifications across your organisation.

Biting off more than one can chew might be ok for short stints but online content is a long game. Make yourself a strategy that is sustainable.

However, if there is the will and budget to make a big splash – then make the biggest splash possible. Risky, but possibly glorious beyond words. But we did say risky.

Finally, other critical factors that are not actual content per se are the state of your brand, the ability of your marketing team and the resources you have to execute the strategy. Finally, having good writers and creative people onboard is the difference between so-so and wow-awesome. Aspire to be wow-awesome, please.

Remember this mantra:

No strategy; no content.

Image notes: The image we used for this episode comes from Jason Mey. It’s a Go Chessboard. Also known as wéiqí, it is predominantly played in China, Korean and Japan. It is also known to be easy to learn, impossible to master. A bit like Content Strategy, really. More on Wikipedia. 

The post #016 – Content Strategy appeared first on A Digital Marketing Podcast - Destroy Digital.

Jack the Bear is on the move. He’s looking to diversify, enter new markets and in the process, elevate himself to a household name – not unlike his erstwhile fire-fighting cousin. The first thing we suggest Jack do is to conduct a domain name rationalisation to leverage the authority of his current domain – which has been in use by him since forever.

Meet Jack the Bear. He’s an audio mastering engineer who runs a studio called Deluxe Mastering. Or as we like to call it Melbourne’s premiere, musician’s mastering studio.

However, Jack is now heading towards another calling – a public speaking offering called “Mastering Music, Mastering Life”. Having put in the hard yards and eaten much salt (as they say) Jack is in a position to help and inspire others in regards to navigating the music industry, overcoming drug addiction and personal motivation. Inspirational stuff.

As part of his website rebuild strategy – we highly recommend that he keep jackthebear.com.au as his personal brand site. Capitalising on the historical domain name search authority and from there host his “Mastering Music, Mastering Life” public speaking offering. Deluxe Mastering Studio can have its own site, as it is a separate business entity with different audience expectations. Links between the two will assist users searching between the two.

Domain name rationalisation can be as simple as that.

Jack the Bear wasn’t always called Jack. His real name is Tony Mantz. While Tony Mantz is a man’s name, let’s face it – Jack the Bear has more street cred and is heaps more memorable. I’d know which I rather be called.

So, something as memorable as Jack the Bear is something that when linked up with a URL is hugely searchable. And that is the root of all personal branding. You want to be memorable AND searchable.

Again, that C-Word makes it into an episode. A well-curated closed Facebook group with specially invited, engaged members is the perfect place to continue the goodwill generated by the public speaking engagements. Imagine being invited to Simon Sinek’s personal closed Facebook group.

Thanks for making it to the end. Here’s another cute bear pic as a reward.

The post #015 – Jack The Bear appeared first on A Digital Marketing Podcast - Destroy Digital.

What do vinyl records, slide film and hardcover books have in common? Yup. They’ve all become niche media. Streaming video, online newspapers, ebooks so on and so forth have taken over. Digital content is here to stay. The landscape is only going to get more saturated (said with no hint of irony). The real new frontier is where your content is published and distributed. Going from paper to pixel is a no-brainer.

When we first brainstormed this episode it was pretty much a no-brainer. The initial idea was to essentially make a list of all the traditional media that has fallen by the wayside to be transformed or resurrected into their current digital incarnations. Boring.

So, we dug deep and here’s an episode worth getting out of bed for. The fun part in this age of digitised information is in looking for less than obvious channels to distribute that content. And boy, the sky’s the limit here.

The thing about making good digital content or making good content digital is that we’re in an unprecendented era of being able to reach a massive audience without having to invest in very expensive infrastructure.

We’re suggesting that any channel can be repurposed for content distribution. Kickstarter for example. It’s a great place to do something completely out of left field. Chris created a comedy channel there called Ratschitte Industries which yielded some really interesting data.

April Fools’ is also another good excuse to make waves where you normally wouldn’t. A good way to protect your brand and still allow for some silly fun. Here’s an example from REI (the outdoor brand)  that went viral. Introducing the ZipAl. A quick Google search will yield a great many brands that have leveraged April Fools’.

The takeaway here is in the clever matching of alternative channels and slightly left-of-centre campaigns. Beat your competition in the digital content stakes with alternative and innovative content.

If nothing else, it’ll be a blast to make and do.

PS Making good useful content on a regular basis should still be a cornerstone of your marketing mix.

Image Credit – Pixelated Jesus by Justin Grimes

The post #014 – Paper to Pixel appeared first on A Digital Marketing Podcast - Destroy Digital.

Creating self funded content is a great way to showcase your skills and your expertise. This is quite often true of content creators who make content for others. And even more so if they are on the cutting edge of their craft. This gives creators total control over the end product and is the perfect vehicle to market to clients looking for that something extra.

Meet Will Gaffney from Weightless Films. Will is Weightless and Weightless is bigger than Will. He’s in the old school as far as being a filmmaker goes. An artist and auteur, Will approaches his craft with painstaking care and attention to detail. The very opposite of throwaway social content.

Here’s one such piece of self funded content called Over The Line – it features some slick motion-steady camerawork and awesome drone footage.

So, what sort of digital marketing can be done for Weightless Film?  Well, heaps.

There is much that a high-end practitioner can do when it comes to building a reputation and a steady pipeline of work. One often overlooked digital methodology is in building an online community.

“It’s great listening to these guys workshopping various business strategies and marketing ideas! Subscribed!… Listening to 2 people chat about you in the third person is strange haha. Good job! Commmmunnnnnnnity.” Will Gaffney, Weightless Films

Social media channels make it very easy to connect with like-minded people. Having a place where practitioners can come together and pool their resources is perfect for a team-based industry like filmmaking (corporate or otherwise). It’s a great referral network.

The role of making self funded content is the ability to then call upon your community to come together to make content that highlights everyone’s skills. It also gives all involved a marketing tool that will allow each contributor to not only market themselves but also the entire crew.

This episode is brought to you by the word “COMMUNITY” – which is also a keyword in Episode #009.

Check out Will’s website here.

The post #013 – Weightless Films appeared first on A Digital Marketing Podcast - Destroy Digital.

The Holy Grail of content is arguably user generated content. Content made by your customers that is on-brand is something that is worth its weight in gold. Retail brands are well suited for this. Food and Beverage outlets even more so – cue cafés and restaurants.

Two Lost Boys is a local Windsor café that almost didn’t come to be. There was nothing here (a defunct nightclub) before the original lost boys, Mike and Justin decided to start something in an un-trafficked cul-de-sac just behind the Windsor train station in Melbourne.

Now owned and run by Dan, it has solidified its position as a local mainstay tucked away and yet easily accessible. Like most local cafés, Dan is faced with the usual time and budget issues when it comes to creating content for social media. And like most local cafés, Dan’s customers are just waiting to come to the rescue.

User generated content is the perfect way to get Instagram chock full of hashtagged food and coffee porn. Give them a reason to (or several) and let the games begin. Weekly online contests are a great ongoing way to do this and it won’t cost much – a week’s worth of coffees perhaps.

Pro-tip: If you can make online content whilst doing your job even better – imagine a live barista breakfast coffee show. Not for the faint-hearted, but perfect for a showman.

Don’t lose it now.

Check out their website here.

And their Instagram here.

The post #012 – Two Lost Boys appeared first on A Digital Marketing Podcast - Destroy Digital.

Did your mother ever say, “Just because Sarah from next door has one, doesn’t mean you need one too!”? If Sarah had a pet rock named Millicent, your mother was right. But what about a podcast? Well, everybody needs to start a podcast like yesterday. Seriously.

The numbers are all pointing that way. Sure, a podcast isn’t a sexy piece of kit like a television commercial or a celebrity-driven YouTube campaign – but there is a reason why podcasts are growing. Fast.

You can’t watch a movie and drive a car at the same time. You can’t read a magazine while going for a run. Ever tried to read a novel and ski cross-country? As you can see, some things just don’t go hand in hand. However, all you have to do is to substitute movie, magazine and novel for “podcast” all of a sudden you’re multi-tasking.

High-performance, time poor executives have mostly cottoned on to the fact that they can still fit that podcast into their commute, waiting for kids to finiish swimming class or while making dinner.

Getting your very own podcast isn’t hard. In fact, it’s downright easy. The real trick is to make it entertaining and useful. The key is understanding your audience and creating content that they’ll come back for.

When we brainstormed the concept for Destroy Digital, we were quite clear on what the podcast was about – but the reality is that we enjoy the process so much that it doesn’t seem like work at all.

Google “podcast growth” and then listen to this episode. We promise you’ll be thinking about getting yourself a podcast.

Just don’t name it Millicent. It’s a terrible name (Sorry, Millie).

PS Listen to the podcast’s intro episode to hear Chris and Mark talk about why they created Destroy Digital.

The post #011 – Podcast. Shmodcast. appeared first on A Digital Marketing Podcast - Destroy Digital.

Mark has recently had a client who refused to conduct a business-wide digital transformation and ended going into voluntary administration. Aside from the pain of having to watch good people getting laid off, he is also in therapy over the sheer wasted opportunity.

Chris is there to help him through it with a massive rant and if nothing else, they got to talk through the issues.

This was a solid, nation-wide, legacy mail-order catalogue business that had every chance of staking out a large chunk of the online retail sales market – if only…

If only they’d undergone a root and branch, search, content, social and e-commerce digital transformation. Forging ahead into new markets and catered to new digital-savvy audiences (like everyone else). Instead, they steadfastly held to old paradigms and legacy customer interactions (e.g. print ads with order forms that customers have to fill out and mail in). Probably from fear of losing the dwindling sales from that group.

Granted that any whole-of-business transformation is a bold and high-risk move. It takes decisive leadership with strong charisma, vision and conviction to steer any business through this kind of change. With no guarantee of success. However, the alternative is either to end up being irrelevant, at best or bankrupt, at worse.

The people that worked there in middle management, were very good at what they did. This was simply a failure of leadership. Or more to the point, a lack of leadership and the employees paid the price through no real fault of their own.

And in the end, what was full of potential was no more.

*Sigh*

PS No, we won’t name names. That wouldn’t be very nice.

PPS One simple digital “must-have” for smaller businesses is a mobile responsive website. Check out our episode on the Mobile Web to understand some of the ramifications of not being mobile forward in this day and age.

Note: A lot of Australian businesses are finding it hard to undergo root and branch digital transformations. There are publicly traded, blue-chip entities that have the talent to innovate but are unable to do so successfully. Mostly due to system-wide, structural flaws in upper management and shareholder culture.

The post #010 RANT – Old School is Dead School appeared first on A Digital Marketing Podcast - Destroy Digital.

Nanna. Nanna who? Nanna your business. Actually, it’s Morry Morgan and Ben Horowitz’ business. And we have to say, they’re killing it. In spades. In the process, they’ve built a strong and engaged online and offline community.

Since March 2016, School of Hard Knock Knocks has been teaching budding comedians and bucket-listers the fine art of the delivery. It isn’t always that we get to see and learn something working well end-to-end and this was one such opportunity. After speaking to Morry at length, Chris was able to come back with a treasure chest of knowledge and an insight into the method that is a finely honed methodology.

Comedy techniques can be a powerful tool in focusing concepts and creating verbal shortcuts. This applies greatly to training scenarios and is even more effective when there are language and cultural obstacles to overcome. Morry’s experience as a corporate trainer in China sowed the seeds to the social marketing and business model they now use to such great effect.

“Love the podcasts. The lads apply real-world ideas to problems, which are practical.” Morry Morgan, School of Hard Knock Knocks

The magic is how they tie it all together via social, search and good old-fashioned offline marketing. Online to Offline (O2O) methodology is practised by many businesses, the trick is maintaining continuity in the messaging and being able to track where your conversions come from.

As a result, School of Hard Knock Knocks has shone a light on the future of social media and content marketing. Their entire operation engenders the building of a robust And supportive community. The cornerstones of which are a low-cost, bricks and mortar presence and social media content generation.

Every venue used to conduct their comedy workshops is listed on Google as a school venue. This helps lift their search visibility and also helps the venues out with theirs.

Every workshop culminates in a performance at their said venues. Some of the budding comedians are on stage, in public for the first time and these performances are videoed to be posted on social media for sharing and tagging.

Performances are usually attended by friends and families. Everyone is there to have a good time and support their budding comedian and it usually goes down well.

Genius.

Knock knock…

Check out their website here.

Here’s a link to an episode of the podcast that talks about getting the right content for the right channel.

The post #009 – School of Hard Knock Knocks appeared first on A Digital Marketing Podcast - Destroy Digital.

At the CORE of it –  Create Once Repurpose Everywhere will ensure that you get maximum traction for your content across all channels and platforms. Every one of those has specific idiosyncrasies that will either boost or hamper your content. You need to adapt your content for each one.

The list is long and the requirements are constantly changing across desktop and mobile platforms and apps. Like Instagram – isn’t just for pictures anymore. Youtube – has an insatiable need to generate eyeballs and time on the channel. Facebook – is making video their number one priority.

How does one make it work? At the core of every good piece of content is the ability to retell it to different audiences and platforms. A traditional example of repurposing content is how a novel gets turned into a film, comic, TV series, fan fiction and even, a video game (or board and card games for that matter).

In a similar vein, you should also be finding ways of re-editing your digital and advertising content to extend to the various platforms that you want to be on. The exact same creative that works as a 90-second TVC, will generally bomb on social – but a few simple edits with additional footage and it could be a total winner on YouTube. Just don’t try to upload it to Instagram, as is. Instagram only takes 3 to 60 seconds of video. And video for Facebook? Make sure you have subtitles.

Finally, don’t forget about aspect ratios and formats – each of these platforms has a ‘pet’ format. Do your research and be prepared to do extra edits and post-production work.

We all know about COPE – where you Create Once Publish Everywhere. And for the longest time, we were coping fine. However, with the proliferation of social and online media channels with channel-specific platforms, we just can’t COPE anymore.

Here’s a link to Daniel Jacobsen’s blog article (circa 2011) about COPE – he’s the guy who coined it while he was Director of Application Development for National Public Radio.

Note for later: Asher’s Hierarchy of Content: HERO; HUB; HELP – Chris has a simple three-step taxonomy for content and they should all be treated differently but can be part of the same overarching concept. And here’s an episode about the power of video content.

The post #008 – Platform Specific Content appeared first on A Digital Marketing Podcast - Destroy Digital.

Sit. Stay. Don’t roll over. Giant online retailers might be good for some segments of the market, but what do you do if you’re a smaller start-up with a passion for your chosen industry? Simple. Demonstrate expertise – show customers that you’re the absolute experts in your field and that they should come to you first.

Undercutting by your more well-heeled competitors has always been around – some price wars have been the stuff of legend. Having an e-commerce store means that your prices are open for all to see and that alone makes it super easy for your competition to keep tabs on you. However, the internet can provide some creative avenues to beat the big boys.

Everybody knows how David beat Goliath but how many of us use those lessons in our business life? David refused to engage Goliath where he was strong. The little guy can never beat the big box on price. David chose to engage at distance with a sling – putting himself out of range of Goliath’s big sword and hitting him where it would do the most damage.

They say knowledge is power – learn how to outmanoeuvre the big box movers by giving away some of your knowledge to create a stable and loyal customer-base. Make content that is useful, that increases the knowledge of your target segments. People will know you as the experts and will take your recommendations seriously. They will keep coming back to your website, blog, Youtube channel, online store to learn more and buy what you suggest.

Build a newsletter database. Offer premium content to your subscribers and great store offers too. Create branded merchandise and products that aren’t available elsewhere. Sourcing local or hand-made products is a proven winner. Hold workshops and master classes where your students buy course materials from your online store. Make the emphasis of your inventory about exclusivity, value and move away from commodity products.

He who owns the customer(s’) relationship hearts owns their business.

Who’s a good boy, then?

PS Here’s an episode on building brand loyalty if you’re a service-based business.

The post #007 – Another Online Pet Shop appeared first on A Digital Marketing Podcast - Destroy Digital.