digital marketing strategist

4 Important Beliefs a Digital Marketing Strategist Has About Their Craft

For those of us who are actively trying to figure out how to get our work out into the world, we know that the way to do that is through digital marketing.

Digital marketing simply means building awareness of what you’re doing through internet.

Nothing more.

You’re not asking for a sale – you’re just simply building awareness.

Marketing is not sales.

Let me repeat that.

Marketing is not sales.

As you probably know, digital marketing is all about creating content. For example, this post is a form of digital marketing because you, the reader, get to see what I know as the writer.

But, as you know, there’s good and bad ways to approach digital marketing.

In this post, I’ll be sharing with you what I’ve learned about digital marketing and how you should approach it. That way you can become the next awesome digital marketing strategist.

 

“Buy Here” Digital Marketing Doesn’t Work

The way that digital marketing is today, there’s a lot of noise out there. There’s a lot of companies that simply are using their blog, their website, or their social media accounts to shout “buy here!!!”.

It’s understandable. I mean, take Twitter for example. You really can’t fit complex thoughts, messages, and meaningful conversations into 140 characters at a time.

Perhaps you can chain a few messages together on there, but doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose?

Then, you look at Facebook. A whole nother beast in itself.

The Facebook algorithm basically decides what you’re going to see based on what you’ve liked in the past.

Because of that, you are segregated into a different silo and echo chamber on there than say, your best friend. (Maria’s feed is hugely different than mine.)

It’s kind of like that anywhere you look online these days. Every person is split into a silo of content which is tailored to them.

If you have no idea what you’re doing in marketing via social media, it totally makes sense why it would seem that sending out a message of “BUY HERE!” is the best way to get people’s attention. It’s to the point and it seems like what most marketers are doing to cut through the walls and clutter.

But it isn’t.

Why is that?

 

1. Digital Marketing Should Be Considered an Art (Because It Is)

Personally I like using platforms that aren’t all up in your face. While there’s a lot of video online these days, I can’t say that I personally pay attention to everything that comes across my newsfeed. In fact, I’ve always had this feeling that if I’m forced content too rapidly, I might choose to ignore it all together.

Personally, I’ve always been more of a fan of evergreen content. This includes movies that stand up to time. I’ve been a fan of TV shows that people actually put time and production into. I guess that’s one of the reason why I’ve been a fan of Star Trek vs say any given reality show.

Heck, even when it comes to video games – I’m so much more about quality than quantity.

I could care less about today’s Candy Crush. Give me a good RTS like Halo Wars and I’ll play that for 8 years straight (which I have).

This being the case, I know that not everyone likes what I like. Just like we’re drawn to different types of content, there’s a good chance that we’re all drawn to different kinds of marketing.

So, let me ask you, does your digital marketing express your preferred content? If not, why doesn’t it? It’s your art after all!

Also, are you putting it out there in a way that jives with the social media that you’re using to share it?

Here’s a short speech summary of Gary V’s book Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook:

2. Great Digital Marketing Is Inspiring

Because of my tastes, I have a certain expectation of what good is.

As a creator, there’s a point in your own development where your ability doesn’t necessarily meet your tastes.

Ira Glass calls this The Gap:

If that video doesn’t inspire you as a creator, then I don’t know what will.

And truth be told, it makes a great piece of marketing. My first question that I asked when seeing this video was “Who is Ira Glass?”.

This speech and this video, are pieces of marketing for Ira Glass as well as the artist that made the video – Daniel Sax. You realize that Ira is the man behind the words, but Daniel is actually pretty good at what he does as well!

So, question 2: does your digital marketing inspire others? Remember, it doesn’t have to be as in depth as this video – it can be as simple as quote images in Instagram.

 

3. Your Digital Marketing (Your Art) Needs to Create Raving Fans

There’s a lot of people that want to impact as many people as they can with their work.

You might hear people say they want to inspire millions of people. Get millions of views on YouTube. That’s great for a metric, or if you’re an entertainer, I suppose.

But if you’re wanting to really make an impact on people, then I’m not sure how you’re really going to be able to do that yourself – unless you have a an army that will help you.

I’ve heard that 1000 True Fans is the secret.

But even 1000 fans seems like a huge number. How do you tackle that?

By impacting 10, 20, 100 on your own. Those people will then go out and help you build that army for you.

And at a personal level, I’m not interested in getting myself out to millions of people on a superficial shallow basis.

If I can personally impact a couple hundred if not a couple thousand folks, I’m totally up for that.

How about you? Does your media marketing have a deep impact with just a few people? Are you creating it just for them or are you creating it for everyone?

If you’re creating it for everyone, maybe you might have better results if you focused on just a handful of folks?

 

4. Your Digital Marketing Should be About Monetization

Again, there’s a lot of ways that we can all screw up our content. We can screw up on all the above. But if we’re going to make a living on our work, our marketing needs to be about monetization too.

I mean, you can go hungry while delivering your message if you want – but why if people are willing to help you foot the bill to keep creating?

What exactly does that mean if we can’t say “BUY HERE!!” in our messaging?

Well, it simply means that you have to know how to get people into your sales funnels.

You have to learn how to move them away from Facebook or Twitter to your site – to get their email, to give them value (for free) and eventually give them the opportunity to buy from you.

If they’re not ready yet, no big deal, if they like your stuff enough, they’ll eventually find a way to give you value in some way – even if it’s simply telling other people about you!

 

Action Steps

So now that you have these 4 ways of building better content and hopefully better fans, I’d be interested to hear if any of it sounds like it’s something you’ve been missing out on.

Were you not making something you liked as content? Maybe you were using Facebook like Twitter – #hashtags everywhere!!

I’d love to hear if this changed your perspective on something or how it will help you out in the future below.

 

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