Daniel Eizans: Content Strategist, Geek

I’ve grown incredibly tired of hearing about the next big thing in marketing. Almost everyone seems to have their own version of snake oil that will magically increase ROI, increase customer engagement, grow consideration levels overnight, or improve the overall image of a brand in just three short weeks. Bad news friends — there is no magic bullet, no tonic or single tool that will fix a brand.

Social media won’t do it, digital won’t do it. Neither will print, mobile, TV, emerging media, gaming or whatever comes next. All those things are tactics. And while brands will toss millions on one or a combination of several of the above, most of them fall short on the most important part of their execution … the strategy.

Instead of simply patching the holes with tactics, wouldn’t it be better to eschew the promises of salvation made by individual practitioners and start thinking more skeptically in regards to your marketing/advertising campaigns? As a content strategist, my favorite question to ask any person in a meeting that brings up a creative concept or suggests the use of some sort of tactic is, “What does that mean to the consumer?”

It seems so simple, but 9 times out of every 10, no one thinks of how creative will ultimately be interpreted by the consumer. Perhaps our biggest challenge as strategists is attempting to persuade a client that we need to talk about our audiences and messages – and ultimately whether we have product or service that satisfies those audiences – before we get anywhere near a tactical discussion.

My recommendation to brands and the content strategists and content planners working for those companies, is to place the greatest amount of initial emphasis on finding out who the customer is.

What do they do? Why do they need your service or product? How do they consume media? What do their activities in social media look like? Develop personas for consumers you’re likely to encounter given the economic and product landscape and then figure out what kinds of messages need to be created to satisfy those minds.

Once we know who they are and we know what we need to say to them, we hopefully have something in our wheelhouse that they give a damn about. Then we can take those learnings to decide what we can do to creatively satisfy them, but whatever we come up with better execute against the strategic thinking we spent all that initial time on.

Social media and emerging media may be all shiny and new, and I’m sure brands have every ‘media expert’ that’s blogging in his or her basement telling them that they need a “Twitter-Strategy” or a “Facebook-Strategy.” That’s a farse.

All the “strategy” in the world won’t mean a thing if your customers aren’t looking for you to be there. Be skeptical, be like Socrates or like your 4-year-old. Ask these so-called experts “Why?” Ultimately, both strategists and brands should be asking the same question, “What are you trying to accomplish?”

“Why do I need to build a Facebook app that lets you change the color of my product and then gives me a badge to annoy their friends? What does this tactic accomplish and how does it support my strategy?”

“Why do I need to ‘tweet’ about my guys who drain septic fields? What does tweeting about that accomplish?”

“Why should I make a mobile game for my family sedan? What does that tactic accomplish?”

Brands get to where they are for a reason. They either have a service or product that satisfies a need or they don’t. All the tactics in the world won’t help boost profitability if they don’t have skeptics to make sure that the tactic is being executed to a strategic umbrella that ultimately influences brand consideration.

It’s time to stop being creative for creativity’s sake and time to start communicating with consumers in the ways they choose.

In short, brands shouldn’t steer away from delivering messaging in print because it’s percieved as a dying art, or put all of their eggs into digital and social baskets because many people access their information in that fashion. It’s about being accessible to all, being strategic with your messaging platforms and spending less and less time focusing on your campaign creative or tactics that may not even be appropriate. What are your thoughts?

Photo: Billie Hara

This morning I was following more than 900 people, and even with Tweetdeck, I decided that it was just information overload. I had to narrow my scope and damn the gushing stream of information, only allowing relevant (to my newly intended purpose) tweets to trickle through.

A few posts back, I wrote about how I converse on Twitter. Even since that posting, I’ve changed how I use it.

Why the change? I’m simply missing information I believe I NEED to receive. I may WANT to follow everyone who follows me back, or follow a ton of brands to dig up information on new products; but the fact of the matter is, I don’t NEED all of the information I’ve been getting.

So, how does this happen? How does someone get overwhelmed by Twitter? My answer would be that it happens differently for different users, depending on what they’re using Twitter for.

Personally, I’ve now resolved to use Twitter for three things:

1. To keep tabs on friends and co-workers, discussing like interests and projects with them
2. To monitor the automotive industry, automotive enthusiasts and brands I have a particular interest in
3. To monitor trends in social media and content marketing

Somewhere along the line I got clumsy, and greedy. I followed far too many people and invested follows in folks who didn’t contribute anything that I could offer a point of view on. And I was getting so much data, that I’d consistently miss conversations I should have been a part of. I believe I was getting too focused on improving my Twitter Grade, and forgot about what I began using Twitter for in the first place – to take part in conversations about the things I’m interested in.

The real goal is to keep information relevant and interesting to those that are following me. Sure, the three different audiences may get tired of the odd combination of tweets I provide, but that’s the beauty of social networking. We get exposed to some things we otherwise may not have ever known about. Because of this, I’ve hung onto people who share my other interests, which include racing, outdoor activities, hockey and green living. I didn’t want to give up those occasional things that broadened my horizons on these topics.

I’ve managed to pare my follow list to 729, and vow not to breach 750 (still a sizable list!). In that process, I did end up removing people who were still following me. This was a difficult thing for me to do, but when it comes right down to it, I caught myself following people and brands I had absolutely no interest in. Not to mention, my Twitter use is not singularly focused on one client, product or the agency I work for. If I were tweeting with a singular focus I’d probably follow everyone back, attempting to engage those folks in conversation about the brand they followed in the first place.

I like that I’m leaner, and if I unfollowed you or don’t follow you back, I hope you don’t take offense. I’m simply trying to make Twitter’s valuable information stream work for and with me. Open to thoughts and comments. Fire away!

Photo: Michelle Kwajafa