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Success Through Strategy!

Strategy Matters delivers news, tips and strategies for effective communications through traditional and social media. 

Happy New Year! This Year Resolve to...

Be "planful"!

 

With the arrival of a new year, it's time to begin thinking about New Year's resolutions. 

 

So, with that in mind, here are our marketing resolution recommendations for 2015: 

  • Create a plan. This is so often overlooked, yet so important. It doesn't have to be anything long or overly complex. Just identify your goals and measurable objectives and the strategies and tactics you will use to achieve them.

  • Strengthen your brand! Determine how you wish to be perceived and how you are perceived, then make appropriate changes to your communication materials (and products/services) to support your desired brand image.

  • Stand out from the competition. Make sure you understand the alternatives your target audience has to choose from and how you stack up against those alternatives. Be different. Be better!

  • Commit to being "you"- vs. "we"-focused. So many get this wrong. The more you can make it about them, them, them and the less about you, you, you, the more successful you'll be in the New Year.

  • Celebrate your successes! Hopefully there will be many of them in 2015. 

Happy New Year!
How Well Are You Managing Your Personal Brand?

Most of us are familiar with the concept of branding from a marketing perspective. Brands like Nike, Coca-Cola, IBM and Target are well known. Also well known is the time, effort, expense and attention that goes into managing these brands. But brand management isn't just for organizations; individuals have brands too. And, just as with major companies, those brands need to be carefully managed to achieve desired results.

 

The concept of branding individuals draws upon the same principles as any other form of branding or brand management. A brand can, essentially, be thought of as a "personality." So, in many regards, personal branding may seem more "intuitive" than other forms of branding. All branding requires:

  • A clear idea of the brand perception you would like to convey
  • A clear understanding of how the brand is currently perceived
  • Identification of the gaps between these two levels of perception
  • Strategies and tactics designed to close these gaps
  • Consistency, consistency, consistency - not just in terms of your messaging (whether written or verbal), but also in terms of the services you deliver, your clothing style, the car you drive, the things you have on your desk, etc., etc.

Importantly, the "little things" matter.

For individuals, those little things might include hairstyle, the photos in your office--even the people you associate with. They include the image you convey in both face-to-face and online interactions--personal as well as professional! We often fail to recognize the impact (both positive and negative) that our social interactions both online and offline can have on our reputations--our brands.

Everything you do, in any setting, matters! As the saying goes: "Your reputation precedes you." What kind of impressions are you making?

 

It's a new year--what better time to make a resolution to boost your personal brand in 2015?

How to Establish Yourself as a Thought Leader Through Content Marketing

A strategic combination of quality communication to key audiences, delivered across a wide range of channels (traditional and digital), can be a very cost effective way to build credibility, and business, if done efficiently and correctly.

 

By learning from our own and our clients' activities, and by analyzing the work of others, we've identified some key best practices that seem to generate results. They are:

  • Legitimately having something of value to say!
    No amount of expert content marketing will propel a poseur into thought leadership ranks.
  • Knowing your end game. It's important to have a very clear idea of what your desired outcomes (goals/objectives) are, for each of your target audiences.
  • Clearly identifying targeted market segments that you wish to influence. Be as specific as possible. It's not about connecting with the masses; it's about connecting with finely targeted niche markets.
  • Understanding those target audiences thoroughly. This means doing the research and gathering the information to truly understand your audience and what's important to them--not guessing based on personal assumptions.
  • Understanding your competition. What does your competition do well? What do you do better? 
  • Identifying the appropriate communication channels and key messages. A solid understanding of your target audiences and the competition will help you strategically create messages that cut through the clutter and resonate with your target audiences.  
  • Developing a strategy and plan for creating content and communicating across various channels on a regular basis. (This is one key area where we see many fail. The good news is that content can be multi-purposed in a variety of ways, reducing the burden of ongoing content creation.)
  • Measuring results and modifying strategies/tactics on an ongoing basis.

What would you add to the list?

 

Recommended Reading:

 

The Everything Guide to Customer Engagement

Featured White Paper

"Building a Content Management Strategy for 2015" -- a step-by-step approach to developing and implementing a cost-effective content management strategy tied to your marketing objectives.

Volume: 7 - Issue: 1
 January 2015
Strat Comm logo
In This Issue
Marketing Resolutions
Personal Brand
Thought Leadership
We're In the News! 

How to Make Your Seasons Greetings Stand Out From the Crowd

B2B Marketers: What's 2015 Look Like for B2B Content?

Leveraging Third Party Curated Content 

Social Media Analytics: Going Beyond the Numbers


Research Matters
Some recent news and  research you may be interested in--we were!  
 
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