Apr 10 2019 
The First Step You Should Take to Optimize Your Data – Validation
How Can Marketers ‘Level Up’ Their Data Analytics Capacity?
This question in itself is somewhat enlightening, when applied to data analytics. In order for you to understand that you need to ‘level up’, you must be at some point of measurement currently that leads you to believe you need ‘leveling up”. But how do you know what you need to improve, where you need improvement, and the who, when and especially the why?
Is Your Data Accurate? How Would You Know?
One approach to level up your data analytics capacity is to ensure that your data is providing you with up-to-date and timely information, and the insights that can guide and support your company’s business vision and objectives. Most companies stay in business when their employees and customers are happy, along with meeting company objectives for revenue and profitability, among other things. Your data analytics capacity should complement these objectives.
Data Validation
When was the last time you reviewed and validated your data sources, systems and outputs, and the information and insights from that data? How accurate can you say they are in supporting your overall companies objectives? Can you say with a high level of confidence that all lines-of-business that impact your company’s objectives are represented in the data? Is the data accurate and up to date, how would you know? When was the last time you audited and validated your data sources with company stakeholders to ensure that your data is accurate?
“Levelling up shouldn’t be a ‘one-time’ event. Your company is an ecosystem that should be continually evolving, adapting and changing with the market and with your customers evolving needs. Data validation should be an ongoing activity which includes your stakeholders and lines of business requirements and metrics.” ~ Robert (Rob) Burns
Stakeholder Involvement
If stakeholders across your company were not involved with your initial data analytics project and its on-going integrity, then the information that is being presented in dashboards, reports etc., may not be timely or represented accurately.
If the information from the data is not accurate, then it may not be providing the essential data required to help your company make critical decisions and take action when needed.
Perhaps it’s time for a data analytics audit, and/or a continuous stakeholder validation and review?
If you want additional insights about the future of data driven marketing, a recent blog and eBook was recently posted by the folks at Arm Treasure Data that provides ‘expert insights” about Marketing Technology trends, check it out at ‘The Future of Martech is Data Driven’.
gnooko Digital Marketing
Robert (Rob) Burns is the Managing Partner of gnooko Digital Marketing. Rob is a recognized specialist in digital business development strategy and its implementation. Rob has over 20 years’ experience advising companies of all sizes in various business development, sales, and marketing roles. In addition to global conglomerates, Rob has also assisted small and medium sized companies with digital marketing strategy, solutions, tactics and implementation.
Sep 19 2018 
Taking a Business Approach to Social Media
Are You Connecting With Your Audience?
When it comes to social media, a lot of people try to make it a numbers game. “My brand has 10,000 Likes!” “Well, my brand has 100,000 Likes!”
It makes sense on the surface. The more Likes/Followers you have, the more popular you are, and the more people you’re reaching. But are you really reaching them?
Are the people who follow your posts looking at them and interacting with them? Are they taking the next steps towards making a purchase from your company? If not, then it’s all for nothing.
How many Likes or Followers you have is secondary. Social media management is, first and foremost, all about engagement and connection.
This concept has perhaps best been illustrated by Mark Schaefer, author of the marketing and branding handbook, ‘Known’.
Mark’s entire philosophy of social media in business is that it’s purpose is to create connections, and that it’s useless without them.
Or, in his own words, “Content is the currency of the social web, and sharing that content is the catalyst to new relationships and business benefits.”
Social Media Management in a Silo?
The problem many businesses have when it comes to social media, and marketing in general, is that they see it as a separate entity from the rest of the company.
While the marketing division is working to build popular social media pages, the rest of the organization is somewhere else, doing the actual work, and the two divisions rarely encounter one another.
It’s much more effective to work together, making sure that the goals of each division are aligned across the entire organization. That way, when you’re building your social media strategy, you’re not just thinking about Likes and Follows, or improving your company’s image.
You’re working to boost sales, increase revenue, and improve the bottom line. That’s the business approach to social media management. And here’s how you can go about achieving it.
Why?
Taking a business approach to your social media efforts should include beginning with its primary purpose.
Taking the time to reflect and ask yourself ‘why’ you need to use social media would be a good start.
What is the end game?
How will your social media efforts impact in your company and what will the desired results look like?
How will you measure success and how will your business based social media effort evolve over time?
Building Your Strategy
Your first step in social media management—or indeed, any marketing venture—is to develop your strategy.
Many companies make the mistake of thinking that all they need to do is have a Facebook page or a Twitter account and post things occasionally about their brand, and that alone will help bring in new customers. But there’s a lot more to it, particularly for a B2B company, where individual fans and followers aren’t the only major goal.
So before releasing any content under your company’s banner, sit down and figure out exactly what you want to get out of social media.
What are your goals? What are the goals of the company overall? To increase sales? Make higher value sales? Retain more customers over time? Now, how will your social media presence help you to achieve those goals?
Once you’ve done that, you can create buyer personas. This is an essential part of strategy building. Who are the people you’re trying to reach? Who are the decision makers in the companies you target? What positions do they usually hold, how much do they make, and what are they like as people?
It’s also important to look at your target audience in relation to your products or services. What problem is the buyer having that can be solved using your products? What end result are they looking for?
What obstacles might there be, to make them think your company might not be the best solution to their problem?
How is what the buyer is searching for at the beginning of their research different from their searches at subsequent stages of the buying cycle?
What are the deciding factors in the buyer’s choice, which will ultimately cause them to pick either you or your competitors?
By creating these buyer personas, you can target your audience more effectively, presenting them with content that they’re more likely to respond to.
Know Your Audience – Ask Them
Do you really know your audience?
Have you researched your audience to best understand their needs and insights at all stages of your audience’s research and or customer journey? Knowing your audience is not just about a customer profile and their demographics, but their behaviour and the insights they can provide.
One way to understand your audience and discover their insights is to interview them and to ask your current and future clients about their research and buying behaviour.
What are their priorities? Their definition of success? What business obstacles are preventing your audience from achieving their objectives and goals? What criteria do they use at each stage of the entire research and buying journey?
What are they typing into Google to get the information and answers they need at all stages of their journey?
This information is crucial if you want to understand your clients and future clients research and buying behaviour, and will also help you create content with the answers your audience needs.
Creating Worthwhile Content
If you want to connect with your social media followers, you need to give them something worthwhile to connect with. The content you post on your social media channels is an important part of your brand, and must be carefully curated as such.
So, what should you post? That depends on what your audience wants to consume.
Based on your buyer insights, what do they respond well to? If they prefer a lighthearted and friendly tone, you can post things like memes and photos, to make them laugh, or at least smile.
If they respond better to a more professional approach, then establish yourself as an expert who’s knowledgeable in your field.
You can post things like links to the latest news and articles that are relevant to your industry. Or if your target audience is more in tune with a helpful and friendly demeanor, you can post quick tips and advice that will appeal to them (this idea is particularly ideal for Twitter).
All the content doesn’t have to be yours: you can share things you find around the web, and on other social media channels like your own.
Just be sure always to give credit where it’s due. Whatever you post, make sure it’s something relevant to your field, which your target audience will be interested in.
Keep your buyer personas in mind at all times, and know who the target is for each piece of content you release. And never release anything that isn’t aligned with the overarching strategy you’ve developed.
Encouraging Interaction
Once you’ve settled on the type of content you want people to associate with your brand, you need to think about how to get your fans and followers to interact with it. It’s not enough that they follow your page and occasionally scroll through your posts.
If you want to convert them into leads or sales, they need to be invested in who you are and what you’re doing.
Images are particularly effective in this regard, as they catch the eye more effectively than plain text. So, tag posts with an image whenever possible, and keep your descriptions short and to the point.
When you post links, you should craft your headlines to grab people’s attention and make them want to know more.
Some organizations use inflammatory or intentionally deceptive headlines, called clickbait, to accomplish this. This is a bad approach, though. Sure, it may entice people to click the link, but when the content fails to deliver on what was promised, it often leaves the reader feeling angry or annoyed and therefore less receptive to the actual message being conveyed.
Instead, try taking a single fact or interesting quote from the content you’re posting, which will make the reader curious to know the context.
One great way to encourage interaction is simply to ask questions. “Do you agree with this?” “What’s an example from your own life?” simple prompts that lead people to replying to or commenting on your posts and bring them one step closer to conversion to a solid lead.
When they do comment, engage with them. Have someone on your marketing team whose job it is to monitor your social media accounts, replying to comments, addressing concerns, and generally interacting with your followers. This will open the lines of communication and show people that you’re more than just a faceless brand. You’re someone who really cares about and wants to help them.
Taking the Next Steps
Most importantly, be sure to include a clear way for people to get more information about your brand and products, if they want. Post links to a landing pages on your site—places where people can provide their contact information and show that they’re interested in what you offer — turning that interest into new leads which you can begin to nurture in earnest.
Don’t be afraid to experiment a bit!
Post new and different types of content and use different techniques, to see what people respond to.
Try new things and measure the results, then focus on what gets the best reactions. Find the approach that works best for you, to generate leads and increase sales.
This is the ultimate goal of your social media presence: to generate leads and ultimately make sales.
Your Facebook page or Twitter account is just the method of introducing people to your brand and showing them who and what you are.
By establishing a connection with your social media audience, you can gain their trust and become an important part of their online world. And if you can build that kind of relationship, you’re paving the way to make them lifelong customers.
gnooko Digital Marketing
Robert (Rob) Burns is the Managing Partner of gnooko Digital Marketing. Rob is a recognized specialist in digital business development strategy and its implementation. Rob has over 20 years’ experience advising companies of all sizes in various business development, sales, and marketing roles. In addition to global conglomerates, Rob has also assisted small and medium sized companies with digital marketing strategy, solutions, tactics and implementation.
Aug 09 2017 
How to Keep Your Digital Marketing Continually Optimized
Digital Marketing Optimization
gnooko has just released a new white paper, The Anatomy of an Effective Digital Marketing Strategy. It covers a variety of different tips and ideas for implementing digital marketing effectively in your company, from audits to analytics and more. Below is a preview of some of the ideas explored in the white paper. To download the full white paper for free, click the link at the end of this blog.
Your company has decided to delve into digital marketing. It’s a great way to generate leads and increase sales. But how do you go about it? You’ve got your marketing strategy mapped out, but how do you achieve it? Digital marketing is a very broad term, with a number of different facets. How do you find what tactics work for you, and make them work in the long term?
One approach you can take is PDCA: Plan, Do, Check, Adjust (also known as the Deming Cycle). It allows you not just to improve your digital marketing strategy, but to continue optimizing it over time, fixing problems and improving your approach in order to see better results. Here’s how you can utilize this tactic to help you implement your digital marketing strategy effectively.
Plan
Create a plan. This shouldn’t be confused with a digital marketing strategy. What’s the difference? A strategy lays out the goals you want to achieve using digital marketing. It covers the What, Why, and Where: what you want to do, why this would be beneficial to your company, and where you want to focus your efforts. For instance, generating more leads, converting them to sales in order to increase revenue, using digital content, e-mail, and social media, would all be important aspects of a digital marketing strategy.
Your digital marketing strategy goes hand in hand with your overall business strategy, but it evolves over time, based on what’s working and what’s not, as well as things like evolving technology and new ideas. This allows you to optimize your digital marketing and continually improve what you’re doing.
A plan covers how you intend to achieve those goals. What tactics do you plan to use, and how will they help you? Unlike a strategy, plans don’t change over time. If a plan isn’t working, you get a new plan.
So how do you create a digital marketing plan? First, you may want to identify what your customers are looking for. Next, you may want to understand who they are and how you can best reach them? For example, what problems are they looking to solve, which your company can help them with? Use this information to create buyer personas, to reach them on a personal level and address their needs and concerns at each stage of the buying cycle.
Then, determine content that will help you reach them at each stage. This may include blogs, white papers, videos, social media, customer reviews/testimonials, and a host of other types. What are they most likely to respond to? How can you best get through to them and nurture them towards a purchase?
You’ll want to try several different approaches, to get a feel for what’s most effective. One way to do this is using A/B testing. Choose two small groups from your target audience (group A and group B), and give them two different but similar options, to see which one gets a better response. For instance, on your website, will you get a better response from a call to action button that’s big and flashy, or smaller and more muted? Give Group A the bigger, flashier button, and give Group B the smaller button. Then see which group has a higher lead generation rate.
You can perform A/B testing for just about any aspect of any plan you implement, from e-mail blasts to blog structure to social media, and much more. You can even test several different variables at a time (multivariate analysis). And it can be applied to the Do, Check, and Adjust sections as well.
Do
Once you’ve got your plans in place, it’s time to implement them. This means creating the content that you’ve outlined in the previous step, but there’s more to it than that. The point is to use that content to achieve your goals. You’ve published a blog post and people are taking notice of it on social media. But how do you turn the people reading it into qualified leads, and ultimately sales?
For one thing, your content needs a call to action. Now that your target audience has read your blog post, what’s the next step? How do they get more information? Include links to landing pages. Invite them to contact you if they have any questions or concerns. Invite them to join your e-mail list and receive regular updates about your company, your industry, etc. Invite them to download additional, premium content, in exchange for their name, e-mail address, and other contact information.
Once you’ve obtained their contact info and a basic idea of what they’re interested in with regards to your company and the products/services that you offer, you can start to nurture them. Send them additional content. Reach out to them and ask if there’s anything you can help them with. Use your buyer personas to target them with content and guide them through the buying cycle. Show them how your company is best positioned to help them meet their particular needs. Implement your plan and use it to turn viewers into leads and leads into sales.
Check
How effective is your strategy? Are people actually being driven to your site by the content you release? Are you generating more leads? Are those leads being converted to sales? It’s time to check and see what’s working and what can be improved.
For this, you need some good analytics tools. These tools can tell you how many people are opening the e-mails you’re sending, and how many are clicking through to your site. They can tell you how many followers you have on social media and how many of those are actually interacting with each piece of content you put up. They can tell you how many people are viewing your blogs and other content, and how many of those are actually following the call to action and becoming leads.
Furthermore, analytics can help you determine if one piece of content—or one type of content—is more popular than another. It can show you what search terms people are using to get to your site. Through analytics, you can monitor every aspect of your digital marketing strategy and receive concrete data on how successful it is, at every stage in the buying cycle.
Adjust
Once you have your analytics information, it’s time to use it to improve your digital strategy going forward. If some tactic isn’t working the way you had hoped, determine why not, and fix the problem. If one type of blog is getting less traffic and another type is getting more, focus your efforts on more of the latter type. If your social media followers seem to be migrating from Facebook to Twitter, then put more effort and resources into Twitter. Your digital marketing strategy should be constantly evolving, based on the data at hand, in order to optimize your results and help you better achieve your overall strategy.
PDCA is a great guide for implementing digital marketing in your company. The step by step approach allows you to continue to improve and optimize over time, to help you towards your goals. How will you use PDCA in your company?
This is just a small part of what you can do to develop your digital marketing strategy. Learn more about how to implement PDCA and other digital marketing tactics, by downloading our new white paper, The Anatomy of an Effective Digital Marketing Strategy!
Robert (Rob) Burns is a digital business development specialist in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). Rob prefers to discuss a business strategy with his clients before talking about any technology, marketing or digital tactics. Once Rob understands a client’s business objectives, he will then advise them about gnooko services and solutions: including Digital Marketing Strategy, Audience Segmentation and Persona Development, Website Design and Development, Search Marketing and SEO, Social Marketing and of course Inbound Marketing, Marketing Automation, and Marketing Technology.
Apr 24 2017 
Great Expectations: Has Managing Expectations Become a Lost Art?
Is There an Expectations Gap Between Your Customer’s Perceptions and Their Actual Experience?
To begin with and to set expectations, this post will be of interest if you are in sales or business development or another client facing role. If not external client facing, you may have internal clients and deadlines to meet for internal stakeholders. Effective setting of expectations impacts most people in their daily work activities and can have a positive impact for both internal and external client satisfaction.
Is it Just Me? Is Expectation Setting Being Ignored?
For business development and sales professionals, we are most likely aware of the critical importance of managing our client’s expectations, initially prior to a sale and throughout the client relationship process.
I read a post recently, “The Complete Guide to Customer Expectations”,which captures the essence which I’m trying to make here in this post, from a customer expectations perspective. Prior to “setting” expectations, you may also want to understand your client’s or customer’s expectations to begin with. Essentially, it should come down to under promising and over delivering… why is that concept becoming so foreign?
Perhaps, many of you have felt disappointed when you were about to buy something or shortly after you made a purchase and encountered an “un-welcome surprise” that wasn’t disclosed prior to or during the sales process? A surprise that caused you to seriously reconsider or cancel the purchase altogether? It might even have driven you to share a negative opinion of the vendor with your offline or online network?
Early in my business development and sales career, the effective setting of a client’s expectations was integrated into most of our sales and business development training and considered an essential “best practice” for high client satisfaction and a solution’s success. Over time, through my experiences and observations, I find that “setting client expectations” is becoming a lost art. I’ve included an “expectations” observation that will serve as an example and a framework to help alleviate the concern.
Wardrobe Box Promotion – “Your Website Says You Sell Them?
A few months ago, my family was on a long overdue mission of de-cluttering our home. To store some of our clothes, we needed “wardrobe” boxes. I Googled “wardrobe box” and our city name and was delighted to see relevant search results. I selected the first organic result and was directed to the web page of a prominent moving and supplies company that had a sale on wardrobe boxes and a phone number to call for the promotion. At this point, my expectations were high, “Great, this is going to be easy” … or so I thought.
I called the phone number and asked the person who greeted me about the wardrobe box promotion. Unfortunately, they didn’t even know what a wardrobe box was… I mentioned the promotion and began to explain what a wardrobe box was and what we needed it for. She still didn’t seem aware, and after searching her product database without finding anything, put me on hold to ask around… She returned to the phone to tell me they didn’t have stock of the wardrobe box but could have them shipped in from across the country… for an extra cost!
My high expectations were now deflated… In my view, there are a few different opportunities for improvement here, from internal training to communications across the different lines of business about preparing and delivering on promises and promotions. As a buyer, there are steps that we take, prior to reaching out, that could take many months (or longer than a year), or just a few minutes. Companies should be aware that our expectations are set during our research and our buyers journey. In this example, my expectations were high when I saw the promotion on the website but were gradually depleted as the process was prolonged and confusion set in. A lost opportunity for the seller.
Defining the Disconnect – “What about B2B?”
Setting expectations should apply in all sales environments, in my opinion, including Business to Business (B2B). Business to Consumer (B2C) customers’ expectations are driven by their previous experiences with a company or the company’s reputation, and B2B client’s expectations are driven by the contract or agreement they negotiated and agreed upon.
So where exactly is the expectations disconnect? Where are solution providers falling short? I like the way this “Bridging the Gap in B2B Service Expectations” article and the linked whitepaper break expectations down into three types:
- Failure of the customer to buy what they need
- Failure of the vendor to deliver the designed solution
- Failure of the vendor to execute on the solution
Common scenarios where expectations aren’t aligned
It may be difficult to set expectations externally, when internally, the lines of business have different expectations or a different understanding about what’s important to the company. My quest for moving supplies is a relevant example of what can happen when sales, marketing and operations are not in alignment.
From a line of business perspective, here is a helpful Forbes article which provides some insights on what different lines of businesses expect from each other.
How to Improve Expectations Alignment – “What Are They? … We Sell Those?”
Setting expectations can also be a part of the digital experience, the perception or expectations created while the future customer or client is reading your website content, downloading your online materials, or during any other touch points of their research in advance of doing business with you.
Other expectations insights:
Consider the full experience. Expectations aren’t just for future clients or customers, consider your current customers’ expectations as well. Each stage in the buyer’s journey should be considered when setting expectations
Get agreement or buy-in. Don’t just state your expectations – make sure they align with your customers thinking or what they believe about your business. Avoid the assumption that they “get it”, just because you think you did a great job explaining your solution, agreement or proposals
Alert the other party of changes immediately. As a personal “managing expectations” best practice, I always ask my internal delivery team how much time they need to deliver on a client or stakeholder requirement. They will provide me with a time they are confident to deliver on that expectation. In addition, I also ask them to let me know in advance if they cannot meet that commitment so I can re-set my client or stakeholder’s expectations accordingly. Telling me that you are going to be late, shortly before or when the requirement is due would be an expectations management fail. In my books, also responding with a low quality or sub-standard response that also doesn’t meet expectations is the same as being late.
Wrapping it up…
Perhaps the customer service representative at the moving supplies company wasn’t aware of the wardrobe box promotion or wasn’t trained about company products. The key to fulfilling external expectations is to ensure every department and employee knows what the company stands for and how to deliver on that promise.
Maybe it comes down to alignment, communications and training? How can your client’s expectations be set properly, if the internal lines of business are not communicating effectively?
There are bound to be times when you can’t meet expectations – everyone is human, and some circumstances are out of our control, however I found these best practices, approach, and expectation setting philosophies works for me.
Robert (Rob) Burns is a digital business development specialist in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). Rob prefers to discuss a business strategy with his clients before talking about any technology, marketing or digital tactics. Once Rob understands a client’s business objectives, he will then advise them about gnooko services and solutions: including Digital Marketing Strategy, Audience Segmentation and Persona Development, Website Design and Development, Search Marketing and SEO, Social Marketing and of course Inbound Marketing, Marketing Automation, and Marketing Technology.
Apr 17 2017 
5 Reasons Why I Haven’t Posted on a Blog or LinkedIn Publisher
My objective with this post is to share my experiences with those of you who are considering posting and haven’t yet. Hopefully you’ll find value in my experiences getting over my fear of publishing.
Although I’m heavily invested in digital business development and digital marketing, I wouldn’t consider myself an expert. There’s so much change and so much to know. However, I do consider myself an “expert” in procrastinating in not setting up a blog or publishing on LinkedIn Publisher. I have listed all of the reasons behind my fear and how I overcame each obstacle, allowing me to finally write my first post on LinkedIn Publisher.
1. Procrastination and Fear – “Read A Lot and Write A Lot”
I’ve procrastinated publishing on LinkedIn Publisher since it was introduced back in early 2014 – almost three years ago. Sure, I have posted more than my fair share of updates on LinkedIn and other social platforms, but on LinkedIn Publisher… yikes… I don’t even have a blog.
My intent was sincere, but I always found an excuse to not take that next step and get down to writing. My justification was that I wasn’t sure what to write or who to write for, and which voice to publish in. At the time, I was in a contract role that was continually being redefined. The other reason was that I wasn’t confident that I had anything compelling or different to say other than what my peers or the marketing industry were already writing about.
My writing was usually focused on business proposals, internal business communications, and responding to Request for Proposals (RFP) or Request for Information (RFI) for clients or future clients. I had very little focus on external writing.
“Read a Lot and Write a Lot”
Early in my technology career, I was fortunate to sell to a popular author of horror novels. He was actually my first computer system sale. He and his wife invited me to their home to set the system up, which I did, and we enjoyed a nice dinner together afterwards. We fostered a friendship from that point, and I remember him telling me about a discussion he had with Stephen King. He told me that Stephen said writing all comes down to “reading a lot and writing a lot.”
How did I get over this fear? To be honest, I haven’t. It’s still a concern…but my first step? I just started writing to get past that fear, and I asked for help. I have resources available that could help me edit and condense my writing. I can get verbose, but I knew that already.
My first few go-rounds at writing this post, although edited and ready to be published, weren’t. I just didn’t feel they were on-target or strategic, but I gained experience writing them and my confidence increased. Plus, those first pieces of content still have value for future posts.
2. Confidence and Imposter Syndrome – “You Know More Than You Give Yourself Credit For”
After seven plus years in the digital sector, I was reading and learning non-stop. I was (still am) an Amazon book junkie. I was regularly attending digital marketing and marketing technology conferences, continually taking online courses from leading digital marketing authorities, in addition to pursuing on-site certifications from leading educational and Ivy league institutions. I was growing and expanding my knowledge and gaining credentials within the digital sector… yet I couldn’t muster the confidence to start writing… Why? Even with this knowledge and my experience of 25 plus years of business development and over 7 years in the digital sector, I couldn’t get past that fear.
My industry peers and colleagues encouraged me to write and start a blog. They told me that I was more than qualified, with expertise that people would learn from, and readers that would be interested in what I had to say.
But what would I write about?
3. Topics – “Eat the Elephant a Bite at a Time”
Over-analysis paralysis. I’m a bit, maybe a lot, analytical and detailed. I didn’t want to write something of low value or interest to my audience, which added to my procrastination. I knew that I didn’t want to write about topics that were being over-blogged about, and I still have an issue with that. But the more I thought about it, the more granular I found the topics. Instead of boring subjects, I just started focusing on smaller elements… like this post. I was going to write about much more, but will leave that for another post, segmenting this into smaller pieces.
4. Edits and Proofing – “Ask for Help”
As I started writing, I first wrote all my ideas down and tried to adhere to a writing framework:
- a strong headline
- knowledge I want to share
- information my audience would find of value
- ideas I am trying to help my audience with
- being thought-provoking
- writing in a story format about a truth
… and leaving the readers with a lesson learned or a thought-provoking conclusion.
Although there is more strategy to writing on LinkedIn Publisher, I started from this vantage point. My first attempt was based on this framework and I became a bit better with my subsequent edits and content.
Hitting Publish – Be strategic, but “Just Do It”
Sometimes good enough is perfect and trying for perfection isn’t. I’ve learned that posting original content that is interesting and of value to your audience is important, however there are many people that don’t have the expertise, insights and experience that we have who could find value in what we have to say. Over time, as we create more content and share more of the tacit expertise within us, we will add value to our audience.
Future… Seeing that that I’m now past the fundamental, but important milestone of publishing my first post, I am now working on new topics to write about and doing research about them, while fine-tuning my content and post strategy… All of which I hope to share in future posts about what my clients, future clients and my peers would find of interest.
Robert (Rob) Burns is a digital business development specialist in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). Rob prefers to discuss a business strategy with his clients before talking about any technology, marketing or digital tactics. Once Rob understands a client’s business objectives, he will then advise them about gnooko services and solutions: including Digital Marketing Strategy, Audience Segmentation and Persona Development, Website Design and Development, Search Marketing and SEO, Social Marketing and of course Inbound Marketing, Marketing Automation, and Marketing Technology.
