Bueller, Bueller?

The World Wide Web seems to have made the world not so wide anymore. With a click or a swipe we can easily get connected to different countries, languages, cultures and even planets.  Social media theorist Clay Shirky, discusses how the media landscape of the 20^th century dramatically changed with the invention of the internet and how this lead to “the largest increase in expressive capability in human history”.  It falls in line with historical changes on communication such as the printing press, telephone, television and radio. It has changed how we communicate with each other personally, in masses and how we relate as a society.  It has changed how we watch television, get our news, and listen to music and a whole host of other activities.  A 2015 Pew Research Center poll shows about sixty-one percent of Millennials state they get political news on Facebook in a given week, a much larger percentage than turn to any other news source. We’ve seen in the last two elections how social media and the internet have played key roles in the political process. So how is a strategic communicator to harness this information and power?

In order to develop a digital strategy that is effective for your organization you must learn the best ways to grab the attention in an ever-buzzing, fast moving, always changing digital world. Forbes writer Neil Patel discusses a few digital strategies that marketers should consider in their digital marketing plans. Strategies such as moving to content marketing as opposed to outbound marketing are shown to be far more effective. The Content Marketing institute defines content marketing as 

“Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action”.

Your content should be interactive. It should engage your target audience.  It can be in the form of a podcast, infographic or any other format that consumers find relevant and want to share. WiseGEEK.com defines interactive media as “in its broadest sense, is any source of information that forces direct participation from the consumer”.  Examples include everything from video gaming, social media, quizzes and infographics. You can see them in the device sitting on your table at Applebee’s which allows you to play games, order food, look at the specials and pay all while sitting at your table.  Or take a look at the iAd video below. 

Social media is a great platform that should be included in your digital strategy. Clever ideas such as the Cisco Integrated Workforce Experience that was implemented in 2010 are great ways to incorporate social media even on an internal level. Cisco built an internal social media network designed to enable internal and external partnerships and decision making. It gave real time news feed which provided updates on employees’ status and information about significant projects and customer interactions (hbr.org 2011). Social media can also be a great avenue to gain insight about what is important to your target audience. What are their interests? What content instigates action from them? My organization recently reviewed our social media analytics and one thing we discovered was that there was more interaction when we posted human interest stories. There are a lot of places where patients and their families can get statistics about cancer. But what they really seemed interested in were the stories of hope or just unique features relating to cancer. As we began planning our 2017 social media strategy, one thing I said to my team was that I wanted them to think about the things they are most likely to interact with on social media. What kinds of content caught their attention or did they see floating around on sites like Facebook, besides talking dogs and dancing kittens. Then our task was to take the core components that lead to the attraction of the content and see if it had a place in our social media plan. As we all saw from Dallas resident Ana-Alecia Ayala who posted videos of her and her friend dancing during chemotherapy, cancer doesn’t always have to be serious. 

Her video went viral and was an inspiration to many battling cancer. So look at your organization and how you can use social media channels to create interest in your products and/or services.

Other ways strategic communicators can use the digital world to develop smarter communications and marketing plans is by collecting and analyzing data from the analytical tools available to dig deeper into consumer’s digital habits. Tools like Google® Analytics and Facebook® Analytics can give you great insight into the demographics of your target audience.  Data can be pulled from any electronic device with web capability. By looking at trends and patterns, you can see how your audience behaves in the digital world.  Adage.com lists four ways you can measure your social media: identify your key performance indicators (KPIs), align your social media goals with your business objectives, set up Google Analytics to track conversions and assign values to your KPIs. Those values can measure things like how much do you earn from each customer on average? How much is each potential visit worth to you based on the percentage that converts? How much is the average purchase through your site? How much would you end up paying if you were to use ads to achieve the same social media results? And finally benchmark against your competitors. (adage.com, 2016)

There truly is a world wide web out there filled with a million ways to inform, educate and entertain us. Strategic communicators must find creative ways to harness these resources sift through the clutter and create communications strategies that engage consumers.  Communication strategies have to be more sophisticated and use a variety of platforms.  All statistics seem to point towards mobile devices and PC’s being where the majority of consumers get their information. So ask yourself, are your digital communications interactive? Do they draw your audience in and make them want to learn more about your organization. If not, then maybe it’s time to utilize some of the strategies mentioned today. Otherwise you might as well be saying "Bueller, Bueller" to your customers.