WEBSITES • EMAIL MARKETING • SEO • SOCIAL MEDIA

The Content Connection

21 Jun 2016
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Video SEO: Get Optimized

Sticky Post By On June 21, 2016 With No Comments

We’ve established that video is vital to your online marketing efforts. Today’s world is all about images, and why have still when we can have video? It’s exciting, it’s dynamic, it’s engaging. Overall, it’s a fantastic way to present yourself and your products to the world. But, of course, it’s not as easy as taking a video of your product in action and then sitting back and watching the new customers come rolling in. Video SEO optimization will help you push that video out to the public to help it get found.

So how do you dive into the video SEO optimization process? Never fear, Filament is here to walk you through the steps necessary to achieve search engine optimization for your videos.

 

Keywords

Like everything in the SEO world, keywords are the central focus. There’s a little bit of magic in those keywords/keyphrases because they define you, your business and/or your products so choose well. Do your due diligence and research and then keep coming back to your same keywords. In relation to video you want to work those keywords into the file name, title, tags, URL, and any link text. It may not be possible to link them in every area and you don’t want to use every keyword you have but be logical and write “comfortably”. You’ll also want to create a brief paragraph that describes the video and work in those vital keywords again.

 

Share!

Post your video on your website, obviously, and then share it on your chosen social media outlets. You never know who’s going to have the next viral video – it could be you. Just remember to optimize wherever possible to include those keywords.

 

**Just a note here: your company name is your first keyword. It may seem obvious but it ALWAYS needs to be included as a keyword.

 

Link Strategy

You should be familiar with links and trying to earn links from reputable sites and also using hyperlinks to take people from one place to another, like from your blog page to your home page (see what we did there?). This strategy needs to be applied to boost video SEO optimization as well. Link to other, related videos that you created, even that others created. Link to pages that are related to the video content. Tweet the video link and put it on Facebook. In short, create a smart video link strategy and follow it.

 

Share!

Wait, didn’t we just say that a minute ago? Of course we did. We want to encourage you to share and then we want to encourage everyone else to share, that’s how you go viral. So make it easy for others to share your videos by including the top social media share buttons and even different video formats so users can pick what works best for them. In addition to making it easy to share, you have to make it something people want to share. Find your niche and speak to it in a way that they appreciate. For some it’s facts, others like DIY-style help, humor is very popular and if all else fails – go for the kitten video.

 

These four tips for video SEO optimization will get you started and help in generating interest in your website. It’s a great starting point but real success comes with continually looking at your market and responding in a way that encourages them to engage. Once a video is out there, don’t orphan it. Come back to your video, add to it, create a family of videos and share them with the world.

17 Jun 2016
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The Impact of Video on Social Marketing

Sticky Post By On June 17, 2016 With 2 Comments

Why invest in a social media video strategy?  It’s where and how your customer is consuming content right now.

With Snapchat surpassing 10 billion daily videos views last month, and recipe videos dominating your Facebook feed, the impact video is having on social is growing rapidly with no signs of slowing down. Not only is video dominating but it’s quickly becoming the key to creating a successful content marketing strategy for your business.

Gone are the days of expensive, multi-day video shoots followed by hours spent in an editing suite.  Today’s social media videos are comprised of – live or prerecorded – short, impactful bursts of content that can be easily created, edited, consumed and shared with a device you hold in your hand.

YouTube has long been the stand-alone juggernaut of social media video. They dominate the scene with over a billion users and are reaching more 18 – 35 year-olds on mobile alone than any cable network in the U.S. Overcrowded?  Perhaps. But with 400 hours of video being uploaded every minute YouTube has an engaged and loyal audience eager to discover and consume new content.

Buzzfeed’s Tasty, launched last July, has racked up over 8 billion views alone. They consistently secure the top spot as the most-viewed publisher on Facebook with their 30 to 70 second recipe videos. And with the launch of Facebook Live late last year, Facebook has adjusted its algorithm to rank live video higher in a user’s news feed.  A bold statement that supports the rising dominance of live video as a new type of content on its platform.

With an audience of 1.65 billion active users Facebook not only has the reach to have more eyes on your video but the data to zero in and target not only your current customer, but also your potential customer with content that’s relevant and shareable.

Snapchat, the current darling of the social media world, has proven the impact of video on millennials not only consuming but also creating content with more than 60% of U.S. 13 to 34 year-old smartphone users Snapchatting.

So what does this mean? You need to have compelling video content where your customer is consuming it.

Define your video strategy.  Ensure that it aligns with your overarching content marketing strategy to create value and speak to your customer in a new way.

Go where your customer is and speak to them directly.  Do you have an in-house personality that would be able to answer questions live on air?  Or is a pre-recorded “how-to” video demonstrating your latest product more on-brand. Not there yet?  Find an influencer with a built-in audience and an authentic voice to speak to your product while you’re getting your video strategy off the ground.

Less is more.  Create short videos that grab your customer’s attention within the first 30 seconds. The shorter the video the easier for your customer to consume, engage and share.

Optimize for each social channel.  In a perfect world video would be created natively for each channel but with time of the essence, ensure that you are optimizing the video you have for each platform.  Already on YouTube?  Upload the video natively to Facebook.  Over one minute?  Edit a clip to post on Instagram.  There are endless opportunities to work with what you have to get started and then roll out a unique plan that provides a strong video strategy for each social channel.

Video delivers measurable ROI.  Views, impressions or shares? Define KPI’s from the get-go to create a measurable plan to track the success of your campaign.

 

YouTube, Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Vine and Periscope provide endless opportunities to reach and engage with your customer in new meaningful and authentic ways every single day.

Where does social media video fall within your 2016 content marketing strategy? If you are looking for impactful ways to engage with your target audience on social contact us today.

15 Jun 2016
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Why Video Email Marketing Is a Must

Sticky Post By On June 15, 2016 With No Comments

Video has become one of the most important types of content online. Between April 2015 and November 2015, the amount of average daily video views on Facebook doubled from 4 billion video views per day to 8 billion.1 Plus, after watching a video, 64% of consumers are more likely to buy a product online.2

Email, on the other hand, is still the most effective way to communicate with your target audience and is a huge driver of ROI. It’s key for building relationships with customers because it lets you speak directly to them, in their inbox, at a time that’s convenient for them. Pair that with video’s powerful storytelling and branding potential, and you’ve got an effective formula for deepening relationships with customers and reaching new customers, too.

Increased ROI

The email design and HTML coding company Email Monks has reported that video email marketing offers a return 280% higher than traditional email. In an internal study of nearly a billion video emails, Get Response saw a 5.6% increase in open rates and a 96% increase in click-through rates in emails that included video. GetResponse has also reported a 24% increase in conversion rates and a 10% increase in average order value in emails with video. If these numbers are any indication, including video in your email marketing could go a long way toward further increasing your ROI.

Better Branding

Video content is a powerful way to convey your brand values and identity. It offers greater potential for storytelling, which can allow your brand to present its more human side. Visually stimulating, video conveys messages faster and easier, and audiences retain information better in video form than in text. Plus, video has the capacity to create an emotional experience that in turns builds a memorable connection with your brand.

Greater Reach

Just like online video content, video email marketing lets you expand your reach because it can be easily shared and can help create buzz. However you decide to use video in your emails—embedded right in your email, as a GIF, or with a static image that links to a video location you own—you can create great opportunities for reaching new customers. That last option—linking out to a video location—offers opportunities for distribution via social shares with the potential of going viral. Plus, all that traffic and having video on your site will improve your search rankings. Even if you don’t link out but use a GIF or embed the video right in your email, you can still expand your reach since video has been shown to increase email sharing and forwarding by 41%.3 Video content can boost engagement, increase conversions, and positively impact people’s perceptions of your brand. Why not combine that with email’s already powerful impact by making video part of your email marketing strategy?

 

Have you seen video content impact your email marketing success? Share your story in the comments section below. If you haven’t yet included video in your email marketing and aren’t sure how to get started, check back with us in 2 weeks when we cover how to include video in your email marketing. Or get in touch with Filament to find out how we can help you create effective email content for your email marketing campaigns.

 

1. http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/04/facebook-video-views/ 2. http://www.hyperfinemedia.co.uk/infographic-31-must-know-video-marketing-stats/ 3. http://blog.getresponse.com/use-video-email-infographic.html

14 Jun 2016
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How to Optimize for Higher Video SEO Rankings

Sticky Post By On June 14, 2016 With No Comments

There’s a lot of research out there that proves video has become an essential aspect of online marketing. Make the most of your videos, and your video SEO rankings, by focusing on the following tips.

1. Keywords

Does it seem like we keep harping on keywords? Why yes it does and this is intentional. Keywords are the definition of your business/product/website and they need to also define your video. Use those keywords to describe the video and its relevance in titles, tags, file names and descriptions.

 

2. Video Sitemap

While this may feel like a duplicative process, it isn’t. Reusing those keywords here along with other useful data is actually reinforcing your brand.

 

3. YouTube et al

Publish your video content on all sorts of social media sites and platforms but make YouTube your top priority. YouTube is the second largest search engine in number of search queries and it’s owned by Google; making this the first stop for your website video. So in addition to hosting the video on your own website, add it to YouTube and other sites as well.

 

4. Speed

It’s important to optimize your video for load time or you’ll lose your audience. People have very little patience online so you need to give them what they want when they want it. Along those lines, create videos that don’t open until someone clicks the play button. Automatically loading videos can slow down the entire webpage and chase away valuable site visitors.

 

5. Be Social

So much of the video element is social. It starts with your concept and how people will react to it. That’s actually the beginning of the social plan and should help you determine who your audience is and where to best reach them in the social realm. But what may be the most important aspect is making your video easy to share. Sure there’s the old clip and paste URL method. Then there’s YouTube with its easy buttons on the page for sharing. And now you can (and should) also have those buttons connected to your video on your webpage for one-click social sharing of the original video URL.

 

6. Stay Focused

You’ll get all sorts of advice on the length of the video and SEO rankings but the real guideline here is to say/do what you have to say/do and take as long as you need. A how-to video may take a long time to fully explain the topic while a viral video may literally be only a few seconds long and it’s goal may be just to make people laugh. The best advice here is to stay focused and on topic. Blabbing on and on about off-topic information will surely turn off your viewers and send them elsewhere.

 

These Filament tips should help you use video to improve your SEO rankings but, please, take a step back and be logical. Don’t make a video just to make a video. Have a goal in mind, a target audience and then make a video using our tips. You’ll find that this is the real recipe for great video SEO rankings.

13 Jun 2016
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Video Content Marketing is the Future

Sticky Post By On June 13, 2016 With 2 Comments

Video is the future of content marketing. We see it every time we scroll through our Facebook, Twitter and Instagram feeds. And we see it in the stats. Per YouTube’s website, “every day people watch hundreds of millions of hours on YouTube and generate billions of views.”1 As of January 2016, Snapchat video was getting 7 billion views per day.2 For businesses, having a video on a landing page has been shown to increase conversions by 80%.3 Plus, more than 80% of senior executives watch more video than they did a year ago; 75% of executives are watching work-related videos every week. Given the choice, 59% of executives would rather watch a video than read an article.4 Whether you’re a B2C or B2B company, video is essential to your digital marketing strategy.

Looking beyond the stats, why is it that so many people love video? First of all, video is easier to digest quickly. The human brain was designed to take in images. As a result, video content can to be more succinct while conveying a lot of information in a short time. It grabs our attentions and holds it because it uses more of your senses. Since it’s naturally engaging, video content is great for storytelling and building an emotional connection, two things that are key for your brand.

Second, video is inherently shareable. We’ve all heard the success stories of viral video. When video content is done well, people share it, especially via social media. Check back in a couple weeks as we discuss how to harness the viral potential of video for your brand.

Third, video is mobile—and so is your audience, most likely. When consumers want something, they reach for their phones. And when they’re on their phones, they’re more likely to watch and share videos, including content from brands. YouTube has reported that more than half of all YouTube views happen on a mobile device.5 Research by Google and Ipsos has shown that Millennials especially are less distracted when they watch video on smartphones than on any other screen.6 As a result, video content—especially mobile-friendly video—is a must-have for your content marketing strategy.

Last but not least, video is easily searchable and packs a powerful SEO punch. High-quality video content naturally attracts a lot of links, which helps with ranking a website in the long term. Because of the shareability we mentioned above, it can generate a lot of social shares, which increases traffic. And all the major search engines have made video a key factor in their search algorithms. Whether it’s amusing or informational, video can make a significant impact on your SEO strategy if done well.

Despite its many advantages, video content marketing does have a few disadvantages, though they’re not impossible to overcome. First of all, there’s the cost. Part of the cost is that videos need to be continually produced since they don’t work as evergreen content as well—they become dated quickly as technologies continue to evolve. That said, it’s becoming cheaper than ever to create compelling, quality video content that engages customers. Productions costs continue to fall, and you don’t have to be a tech expert to learn how to use the latest video apps.

Like it or not, video content marketing is here to stay. The advantages far outweigh the disadvantages. Videos can help improve brand awareness, lead generation and online engagement. Plus, your customers are already watching video. It’s your job to meet them where they’re at and give them what they want—while keeping your business goals in mind.

Have you seen video shine a light on your brand in the digital sphere? Share you story in the comments section below.

Learn more about Filament and how we can create the content your business needs.

 

1. https://www.youtube.com/yt/press/statistics.html

2. http://fortune.com/2016/01/12/snapchat-facebook-video-views/

3. https://www.marketingtechblog.com/10-benefits-video-marketing/

4. http://www.spiceworks.com/marketing/rise-video-marketing/

5. https://www.youtube.com/yt/press/statistics.html

6. https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/articles/youtube-insights-stats-data-trends-vol6.html

02 Jun 2016
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Email Tracking 101: Build a Better Email Campaign

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Email is a great tool for strengthening relationships with people who may have first gotten to know your brand via social media or search marketing. Email tracking offers insight into how well you’re doing that via data like open rates, click-through rates and conversion rates. These numbers show you what your target audience wants from your business, so you can deliver that. Once you know what’s working and what’s not, you can better maintain loyal and productive relationships with your customers.

Depending on your business, basic email tracking might start with looking at overall open rates, mobile opens, open rates on desktop versus mobile, which will help you make sure your emails are optimized for all the devices and environments in which your subscribers interact with your emails. After that, you can dig deeper to get an understanding of specific customers’ interests as they concern your business. Oftentimes, delivering what your audience wants requires better segmentation, be that segmenting by location or transaction history.

Before you get started with email analytics however, you need to identify 3 things: 1) your business goals for your email marketing, 2) key performance indicators (KPIs) for your email campaigns, and 3) the email tracking tools you’ll use to assess email performance.

 

1. Identify your business goals.

It’s crucial to determine exactly what you want to achieve with your email marketing before you begin to send and track emails. It could be anything from attracting more visitors to your site, signing up more blog subscribers, lead generation or converting existing leads into customers.

2. Identify KPIs.

KPIs are the metrics that help you see if and how you’re meeting your business goals. Your business goals dictate your KPIs, so they’ll be specific to your business. Depending on where you landed with #1 above, you might consider the following KPIs for starters:

  • Click-through rate
  • Conversion rate
  • Bounce rate
  • List growth rate
  • Email sharing/forwarding rate
  • # of new leads generated
  • Lead-to-customer conversation rate
  • Overall ROI

3. Identify email campaign tracking tools.

Integrated email analytics give you the full picture of how your subscribers are navigating their experience with you—from your emails to beyond the click.

Google Analytics is a good place to start. It can be useful for tracking what happens after subscribers click through from your email to your website. And you can integrate email marketing tools like Campaign Monitor directly with Google Analytics.

 

Email tracking can help with everything from creating win-back campaigns for subscribers who haven’t interacted with your emails in a while to setting up loyalty programs for people who forward your emails the most. It’s also uber helpful for personalizing email campaigns that speak to customers’ specific interests. In short, email tracking done well will make your email marketing more efficient and productive.

Learn more about Filament and how we help brands create effective emails.

31 May 2016
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Creating Content Made to Be Repurposed

Sticky Post By On May 31, 2016 With No Comments

Onward and upward! Step 6 for building an integrated digital campaign is to create content that can be easily repurposed. Repurposing content helps you get as much as possible out of every piece of content you create, and it allows for better integration, which is our goal. In this post, we’ll discuss what we mean by content that can be repurposed, why it’s important, and how to create it.

 

What?

To start with, let’s define repurposeable content. Content that can be repurposed is flexible content that can be used in as many places as possible—social media, email marketing, your website. It involves altering a piece of content to make it fresh by giving it new angle and/or a new format. For example, you can turn a single popular blog post into a whitepaper, slideshow, infographic, videographic, video, podcast, and a webinar.

Potential Content Types for Repurposing:

• Blog posts

• Whitepapers

• eBooks

• Videos

• Infographics

• Videographics

• Slideshows

• Podcasts

Why?

Why would we want to create content that can be repurposed? For starters, creating content takes a lot of resources. It requires time and money to come up with ideas, do the research, create the content, and then promote that content. Creating content you can repurpose again and again saves you money since you can use the research for your original piece of content for other content projects.

Secondly, content that can be repurposed makes the content creation time for all the repurposed forms shorter, which frees up time for other important tasks, such as coming up with more new ideas for future content. Parts of your content that you’ve already created, such as images, quotes and text, can be applied to related content.

Creating content that can be repurposed also expands your reach since you’re able to get in front of segments of your audience that prefer other forms of content. As such, it lets you serve up content to multiple audiences and cross-promote your content across channels. For example, you can link to your original blog post from repurposed video you posted on YouTube or the slideshow you posted on SlideShare.

Content that can be repurposed tends to have greater longevity, too. Your target audience may have missed your original piece yet come across the content after it’s been altered and made available through a different channel.

Last but not least, repurposed content is a great tool for link building since you can include a link to your original piece of content from the altered form whenever possible.

How?

1. Create a plan.

A plan will help you streamline and align content across channels. Start by brainstorming general topics. As you evaluate topics, consider how they’ll translate across different key content types for your target audience. Then, brainstorm how each topic can be altered to fit your key content types and different segments of your audience. Identify the first piece of content you’ll make—typically the one that makes the most sense for your audience­—and the repurposed forms that will come later.

2. Research.

As you research, keep your first piece of content in mind. It’ll take the most work since it requires the most research and development.

3. Repurpose.

Translate your original piece into key content types for your target audience, giving it a different angle or point of view depending on the channel and the target audience you want to appeal to.

 

A Final Word on Consistency

Creating content that can be repurposed makes your content do more work and lets you dig deeper into ideas and create content that’s relevant to a wider cross-section of your audience. However, no matter the forms your content takes, be sure it’s clear, compelling and consistent with your integrated brand identity. Focus on the same SEO keywords and phrases throughout your campaigns, and utilize whatever graphic elements you created for your brand.

 

Looking for some help in creating content that can be repurposed? Get in touch with Filament to find out how we can help you create content that shines.

24 May 2016
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Measuring Search Results and SEO Analytics

Sticky Post By On May 24, 2016 With No Comments

The first part of search engine optimization (SEO) is exactly what the term implies: optimizing your site in a way that is recognizable by search engines so that your website gets classified correctly and becomes a legitimate response for related queries. Once search engines are working for you, it’s time to evolve your optimization and start measuring the results of your optimization. Enter SEO analytics.

SEO analytics can be incredibly complex. There are companies all over the globe that are built on analyzing your data, providing reports and tweaking your SEO strategy. This can be a very timely and expensive venture.

On the other hand, SEO analytics can be fairly easy for even a layperson to understand if you focus on the basics. A good place to start is Google Analytics. And best of all, it’s absolutely free!

Please note, this discussion assumes that you already have a basic SEO plan in place and that you’ve optimized, at the very least, the content of every webpage. Once you’re at that point, there are three key areas of Google Analytics you should explore and can take advantage of to hone your SEO plan of attack: Landing Page Analysis, Google Search Console and Internal Site Analysis.

 

Landing Page Analysis

This is a great place to start looking at the traffic that comes to your web pages through organic search. Let’s say your website sells cat toys. You look at your landing page analysis and you see where organic searches on Google brought people to your website. You may discover that one particular toy is bringing everyone to your page but no one is buying. Look at how much insight that gives you and how you can work to remedy any underlying problems. You can also learn how the traffic ebbs and flows over time, how long people spend on your page, goal conversion rates, revenue and other data.

Remember, there is no reason to get bogged down in all the numbers and data that is being thrown at you. It’s great to have all this knowledge in your hands, but you only have to use what is important to you or what you want to use in your SEO analytics. This applies across the board.

 

Google Search Console

This feature reviews search queries that drive traffic to your site. If you’re not capturing an audience using what you thought was your primary keyword but you’re getting them from other keywords, well then, you’ve got some content rewriting work ahead of you. That, or you need to find a way to push that keyword. To do this, from your Google Analytics console find the Search Traffic and Search Queries. These searches can be filtered so you get more specific results and can narrow them down more easily. Play around a bit to discover where you’re doing well and what needs work. Then check the tips and techniques segment of the help center and Google Analytics will even help you come up with some possible solutions.

 

Internal Site Analysis

One really useful bit of information that sometimes gets overlooked is where people go once they get to your site. Think about it: you’ve not only captured their attention, but you also have them so interested that they want to look at something else on your site. These are the very people who may likely become your newest brand advocates. So where do they go? Move to the Behavior > Site Search and there are the organic search terms they used. Narrow your data even further to find landing pages associated with internal searches.

 

Remember that SEO analytics can be as vital to your success as setting up an optimized website. To learn more, this Google support page provides even more information on the tools we mentioned along with others.

If you’d like help creating optimized content, contact Filament today.

18 May 2016
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5 Tips for an Integrated Marketing Team

Sticky Post By On May 18, 2016 With No Comments

Integrated marketing communications create a unified and seamless brand experience for costumers across channels. This requires deconstructing silos while building an agile and integrated marketing team. Getting different disciplines to work together takes some finesse, but an integrated approach has the added benefit of utilizing the strengths of your team members.

You want to create a team of colleagues who have the responsibility, vision, understanding and commitment to engage in a media-agnostic planning process focused on strategic goals. Here are 5 tips to get your teams in sync and ensure consistency:

1. Connect

Aligning your teams starts with connection. Create opportunities for team members to connect via 1) regular meetings that keep everyone on the same page about your brand identity and your ultimate purpose and 2) team-building activities that cultivate trust and cooperation.

Brainstorm a key phrase or hashtag that focuses on a goal team members can work toward both personally and as a team. Organize social gatherings, such as a monthly breakfast or weekly lunch paid for by your company and hosted in your office, that offer a simple way for people to form relationships and opinions beyond the work itself.

When teams come together, share their talents, and communicate well to maintain consistency, it fosters a creative and collaborative environment that will help you get the most out of your team and your efforts.

2. Document

Every marketer and agency needs to understand who your target audience is, what your brand represents, and how marketing can be optimized to reach your target audience when and where they’re most receptive. A strong, differentiated, and documented marketing strategy offers a single point of truth for each of these areas and should be used to drive each channel’s tactics.

Your brand’s documented identity works along the same lines, ensuring consistency in the look and feel of your integrated marketing communications.

3. Cross-Train

An integrated marketing team involves the reinvention of your marketing organization by customer-centric marketing leaders who are system thinkers. These marketers should be cross-trained to understand the entire marketing spectrum and learn discipline-specific skill sets. Provide opportunities and time for team members to shadow each other and create cross-functional teams that include people with strong quantitative skills.

4. Share

A clear flow of information between writers, designers, marketing, sales, and social media is key. Document how your customers move through the buyer’s journey as well as how content flows and information is handed off within and between teams. Create a content repository for sharing information and allowing access to all materials quickly and easily.

5. Measure

In the past, each marketing vertical has used its own benchmarks for evaluating success. To evaluate integrated marketing, you’ll want to come up with a consistent set of metrics specific to your business and your goals that can be used across channels that not only represents this new, more comprehensive cross-functional approach but also isolates the effects of individual elements.

 

Aligning your marketing teams requires a cross-disciplinary approach that fuses disparate consumer-engagement channels. It also calls for flexibility, creativity, and a willingness to change and work together.

If you’re using different agencies to produce different aspects of your marketing campaign, make sure someone on your in-house team monitors and coordinates their efforts, too.

Check back with us next week as we continue our series on integrated marketing.

 

Learn more about Filament and how we can help you integrate your marketing efforts today.

16 May 2016
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Building Your Integrated Strategy & Identity

Sticky Post By On May 16, 2016 With No Comments

Today we continue on our journey toward creating an integrated digital marketing campaign. We’ve covered getting to know our target audience, identifying prime channels for our audience and identifying the key content types our audience wants. Now we’ll discuss creating a formal, documented strategy and identity for your content.

 

Strategy

All the listening and learning we did in the earlier steps will help us create a strategy shaped around our customers. Make it a document that everyone on your team understands, respects, finds inspiring, and knows how to act on. Good strategy motivates, is simple to explain and carry out, and offers a good rationale for what you’re doing. It should also do these three things:

  1. Define your purpose and direction
  2. Plan how you’ll meet your goals
  3. Bring together your resources

A great way to put together a documented strategy is to use the PASTA model. PASTA stands for Purpose (or Problem), Aim, Strategy, Tactics, and Action.

Purpose

Consider why you do what you do. What’s your mission? Alternatively, the ‘P’ can stand for Problem. What problem are you trying to solve? Shape your answers into a single statement that’s short, memorable, and inspiring.

Aims

What are your goals? What are you trying to accomplish? As you’re writing down your goals, make sure they’re SMART: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound.

Strategy

How are you going to meet your goals? If your goal is to get 200 people signed up for your service by the end of the year, your strategy might be to make people aware of your service.

Tactics

What steps will you take to carry out your strategy? What tools, techniques and channels will be used? Write a detailed action plan that includes the creation, repurposing, amplification, and distribution of content across all your digital channels. Each element should be set up to drive traffic toward your primary objective. For our example above, your tactics might include improving your website content for ranking, starting an email newsletter, and being more consistent with your social media.

Actions

This steps includes the Who, Where and When for each of your tactics. Who’s going to create that AdWords campaign? Who will design your email newsletter? When and how often will your post to your Twitter account? Create a timetable, determine a budget, and designate people for each action.

 

Identity 

With our strategy in hand, it’s time to concept an identity that will reinforce our brand. This identity, unique to your business, includes what your brand says, what its values are, how you communicate its concepts, and which emotions you want your customers to feel when they interact with your business. As with strategy, it’s important to create a well-defined identity for your brand.

Values

Brand values are the desired set of experiences or associations a business wants customers to make with its products, services, or identity. Before you start defining your voice and visual identity, take some time to define your values by documenting the following:

  • What do you stand for?
  • What do you talk about?
  • What makes you stand out?

You want a clear picture of what your brand stands for and how you want it perceived by your customers.

Voice

A large part of what we say is how we say it. With everything you say, communicate your company’s style, the passion and expertise of your team, and how your customers can benefit from your uniqueness. To create a consistent brand voice, you need to come up with a definition. Write down three to five words that your audience would use to define your company and then focus your communication style around those words.

Design

In order to create a cohesive look, establish all the elements that make up your basic look and feel, your graphic identity, including the following:

  • Logo
  • Library of logo lockups
  • Key colors
  • Additional color options
  • Typefaces
  • Standard typographic treatments
  • Consistent style for images
  • Library of graphic elements (for example: background texture, line style treatments, use of white space, color blocks)

Once your visual identity is defined, put it to use in all your content across all channels.

User Experience

User experience affects brand identity, too. Your content needs to be usable and look great on every device your audience uses, be that a mobile phone, tablet, laptop or desktop. A positive user experience has a direct correlation to positive brand perception.

 

Every piece of content you create should help reinforce your business’s brand identity. That brand identity is continually evolving and will require continued attention and adjustment as your business grows or changes.

With a documented strategy and identity in place, you’re well on your way toward creating an integrated digital campaign. Check back in a couple of weeks as we wrap up our series.

 

Contact Filament to learn more about creating a digital campaign that will shine a light on your brand.

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