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Resolutions for a Great New Year!
Entering a new year is always a great time, I think, to establish goals and plans for the next 12 months. Whether you call them "New Year's resolutions," or simply "goals," the point is the same--looking forward to a new period of opportunity and a fresh start. Whether you've already completed your annual planning phase (and hopefully you have!), or whether you operate on a fiscal year that gives you a bit more time than those bound by the calendar, here are some suggestions for things you may wish to add to your strategies and tactics for the new year:
- Review your marketing expenditures for the past year and determine which you should, and which you shouldn't, carry forward. My experience has been that many of the expenditures that companies large and small make are unnecessary and are not driving any measurable results.
- Take a look - or another look - at social media and the opportunities various social media outlets may offer you. I say "may" because social media is not for everyone. But, as with any emerging tool it pays to stay on top of new developments and new adopters (especially if those adopters are your competitors or potential customers!). You want to make sure you're continually monitoring the online habits of your market to help ou engage with them wherever they may be. If that's on Twitter, then you should be on Twitter, regardless of how "goofy" you think it is.
- Closely related to this...err on the side of using data vs. intuition. Far too much time and energy is spend pursuing communication activities that are based more on personal preference on "commonly held beliefs" than legitimate evidence that your audience (based on both demographics and psychographics) can be effectively influenced through these activities.
- Plan to plan! I have a decided bias toward planning - I think that regardless of whether you're planning a dinner party, a vacation, a new product release or a marketing campaign, taking the time to go through the basic steps of any good planning process will help you achieve better results. (I'm as guilty as anyone of not always doing this, but it's definitely on my list of goals/resolutions for the new year).
There's a good start - I'm sure you have more to add! Best wishes for a healthy, happy and prosperous New Year! | |
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Stretching Your Communication Effectiveness
One of my strategies for the New Year is to "become more productive by leveraging my communication activities to achieve maximum results." In other words, "to achieve more by doing less." In working with clients, as well as working on my own efforts at business development,
I find that the greatest challenge is covering all bases effectively with limited resources (time and money). To help, I've developed some specific, documented processes to help ensure that we're getting the greatest benefit from all of our communication activities. It's a tactic I'd recommend to all of you as well. The idea is to start with one baseline piece of information and use it as the starting point for a variety of other activities. For example, let's suppose you have a blog. When you write a blog post, you could also: - Tweet about the content of your blog with a link to your blog or a relevant study or statistic.
- Post about the content of your blog on appropriate LinkedIn groups or other online forums.
- Offer your blog as a contributed "guest post" to blogs on related topics (and, in return, offer to reciprocate by posting selected blogs on your site).
- Summarize the content of the blog for use as an item in your monthly eletter.
Or, suppose you're interviewed by a trade publication, You could: - Tweet about the article, including a link to it or another relevant, related bit of information of interest to your followers.
- Post about your mention on appropriate LinkedIn groups or other online forums.
- Reference the article, with a link, in a blog post.
- Include a link to the article on your web site and in an upcoming eletter.
You get the picture. The idea is to be process-oriented with regard to your communication activities. Rather than just leave it to chance that you'll remember to leverage these activities through all available means, make a list of the possibilities and refer to that list whenever a new communication lends itself to follow-up action. It won't take that much time, but it's likely to help generate additional exposure for your efforts.
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Local News: Where It's At for Advertisers?
A recent study from Frank M. Magid Associates, Inc. and Hearst Television, Inc., sends a hopeful message to local news media-and an educational message to advertisers (local and otherwise), I think. The study, reported by Marketing Charts, indicates that 49% of respondents consider local news as the most "major part of their daily routine." With the segmentation of media today into so many different channels and target groups it can be very challenging for advertisers of any size to determine where to best place their messaging. Online opportunities offer great potential and the ability to very narrowly target specific segments, but for many advertisers it seems there may still be opportunities to take advantage of the reach and impact afforded by local television advertising. And, while this study seems to be TV-centric, the same is likely to be true of advertising in the local newspaper (not so sure about radio which has become less and less localized in terms of news coverage over the years). Despite-or perhaps because-we're living in such a global market, the drive toward "all things local" seems to be increasing. The "buy local" movement - the focus on purchasing food products from local farmers and vendors - the localization of web search. As our world grows bigger, it seems, there may be a yearning for the small, familiar and simple. It's an interesting phenomenon I think and one that is likely to continue to grow. What does it mean for communicators-whether they're communicating via advertising or other means? | |
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DESIGNING EFFECTIVE BUSINESS METRICS
Designing effective metrics often seems deceptively simple. But, while it may sound simple, for instance, to conclude that the proper metric for evaluating the success of a public awareness campaign is whether or not public awareness was increased, a good set of business metrics will dig much deeper than this.
Contact us for a free copy of our latest white paper, Designing Effective Business Metrics.
Strategy Matters! linda@stratcommunications.com
| | Offer Expires: 2/1/11 |
Watch for this new book from Strategic Communications:
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