Setting up Initial Social Media Channels
You've developed your brand, mission and vision...you have? Your website is up and running, connected to your analytics and potentially the phone. Next Step...
First step into the marketplace. Lets look at it in order. Facebook owns Instagram. Google owns pretty much everything else - and you've already got a gmail account, so first stop is Facebook, then Twitter.
The trick is to be able to move website information across your social (and print) channels with the mimimum of fuss. I make the association with "Russian Dolls" (Matroshka). The same brand image and feel dominant across web, print and mixed media.
"Russian Dolls"
From there its about filling your pages with good, relevent, content. At the beginning there will be the "what will I put here" dilemma. This will clarify itself once you refer back to your initial market research, your USP and marketing strategy. This gives you three vectors (triangulation) - what are the competition doing, what are we doing (better) and what steps do we make to get to market.
This issue inverts after a few months, when you begin to develop a surplus of information, available on your topic, from multiple sources. We will discuss later the different (often free) tools to flesh out your content.
Another nice trick is to reuse content on different platforms. Remember most people stick to one key platform, rather than buzzing around from written to static image, onto moving media platforms. As a digital marketer, your job is to spread your message to "your audience," wherever they may be. That does not mean you need - all the platforms - just the ones with most return for your time investment.
Powerpoint is a great tool for this purpose. With powerpoint you are forced to develop punchy content and rich visual imagery - ideally less than three lines with a strong illustrative graphic. Once you throw in slide animations, you've got a video...and hey presto, enough good material to cover word, image and video sites. I will go into tools in greater depth in future articles - but for now we're almost done!
Here is a topical and informative link...
Developing printed materials from branded web content...
Business Card: Front side (Same theme and typeface)
Business Card - Reverse
Brochure
Last, but not least, here is a PDF using the same material as the slides, images and cards above...enjoy!