I had the pleasure recently of presenting and facilitating a workshop for many Columbus-area businesses as part of our Social Madness sponsorship with Columbus Business First. It’s always an adrenaline rush when you get an opportunity like this, but this one was particularly unique because the attendees for the workshops had a broad range of social media experience – some were already very active in social media, while others were brand new to the game. So preparing something relevant for all attendees was quite a challenge for me, and frankly had me pretty nervous leading up presentation day! But I think it went over quite well.
Here’s a summary of what we learned together:
Social Media is Distribution
The first thing we touched on – mainly to lessen the anxiety some businesses feel about entering the social media game – was to frame what social media really is…a distribution vehicle. Sure, it’s a powerful one given that traditional media is a one-way communications system whereas social media is about a two way conversation. But if you can think of it as a distribution opportunity, then it changes what’s really important about social media – you need the “stuff”, the content, to fuel the system.
How Do You Create the “Stuff”?
The focus of the workshop was on how to methodically organize a content creation calendar to fuel your social media outreach. Due to time constraints, we focused on two important areas – stakeholders and your own business
Know your audiences…all your audiences. Every organization has a variety of stakeholder groups – customers, shareholders, government, advocacy groups, vendors, your own employees, etc. – that have an impact on how you are perceived in the marketplace. Research your stakeholders, and strive to “paint a picture” about what motivates each group. What motivates them? What are their pressures? How do they talk? Why should they be interested in your organization?
This exercise in itself starts to reveal opportunities for creating content that will appeal to a particular stakeholder group.
Your Own Business Creates Content
The next thing we worked on was looking in the mirror. Each person started by brainstorming and documenting the things each attendee’s organization does. Some examples:
- We hold workshops for our clients
- We cut men’s hair
- We help get performers settled in before show time
- We strive to forge meaningful relationships with providers
Looking at your own operations – what your business does day-to-day – reveals a ton of opportunities for content creation.
Categorize and Think Proactively
Once the attendees finished the brainstorming exercise, each was asked to categorize the day-to-day activities (again, some examples):
- Customer Service
- Events & Promotions
- Performer Relations
These categories help to keep your content efforts organized and focused. When you’re determining what kind of content to create, you should consider these categories, and seek out the experts within your organization that you can leverage for content ideas. For example, the director of customer service probably has a lot stuff going on in her department that could be content worthy.
Producing an Editorial Calendar
Next, we took the categories, and talked about things that were going on right now, or in the near future, around that category. These become your story ideas…these are the things that – if appropriate – could be produced into content sharing opportunities. The final step – though we didn’t actually do this in the workshop because we only had a set amount time – was to show the attendees an example of how these brainstorming exercises are used to produce a editorial calendar. Components of the calendar may include:
- Category
- Story Idea
- Working Title
- Who is the subject matter expert to be interviewed
- What kind of media am I going to employ – blog, video, white paper, etc.
- Where am I going to distribute it – Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- What other content opportunities may arise around this topic in the near future?
Other Content Opportunities
There are lots of other areas where you can focus to find content opportunities that can then be used to fuel your social media system:
- Stakeholder Groups – leverage your stakeholders to develop more content; interview them, and write an article
- Industry News – respond to industry news with your own points of view
- Customer Testimonials – short videos of customers saying good things about you
- Tour your company’s departments – there is something interesting going on in every department… just seek it out
- Talk with trade associations – these are the thought-leaders of your industry, and they are always looking for ways to show off their thought-leadership
- Integrate content curation – organize other peoples content under your brand with tools like Paper.li and Scoop.it (just make sure you give proper credit, and don’t make this your only content effort…people want to hear from you, not the just the things you read and like)
I think it ended up being a productive session for everyone…at least that’s the feedback I got from some of the attendees. Lastly if you haven’t registered yet for Social Madness, there’s still time left. Registration ends on May 15, 2012…so get moving!
Tags: Columbus Business First content curation Paper.li Scoop.it Social Madness