[This is the first post in my #ContentHacks series, where I break down fun work arounds and hacky ways of improving your social media and content marketing processes and workflows. Le sigh, so much to do and so little time.]
Remember when it was just Twitter and Facebook? Amirite?
The social web is a massive, sprawling mess. It’s really all over the place, and trying to get things done in an organized fashion can be a major headache. There’s new social sites and apps to keep track of almost daily, a million new WordPress plugins to ramp up sharing on your site, new content marketing ‘gurus’ to follow (if you don’t you’re, like, totally screwed), companies with dev cycles lasting in the hours—not weeks like it used to be—with products ever changing, ever improving, always new (have you ever tried to keep track of improvements to Google+? Be honest. Nope. I don’t try any more either).
How do you keep track of this stuff? Is there even a point in trying to keep track of all of it? No, I don’t think so. I’ll tell you why. Oh, what, a ‘content + social media guy’ telling us not to try and learn everything out there to keep up with the big guys? That’s right.
When it comes to innovation on the web and mobile, it’s impossible to stay 100% ahead of the curve. There will be some of you that argue with me on that point. That’s OK, I welcome any form of engagement on my blog (that said I’ll still boot you off if you’re mean, profane, intolerant, etc) and welcome diverse opinions. It’s how I learn.
Stay Loose
Back to my point. Don’t even try and stay 100% ahead of the whole curve. Stay ahead of the part of the curve that matters for your niche, brand, company, blog, etc. and become the best you can possibly be where it counts and stay loose. What do I mean by loose? I mean be agile. Never allow yourself to become complacent. Don’t become set in your ways. At any moment you might need to jump on the Vine/Pinterest/App.net etc. wagon, so stay loose. You know what else? At any moment Vine/Pinterest/App.net etc. could be gone, and all your company’s marketing hopes and dreams with it. Poof. Be ready to make big changes. But stay laser focused on what matters for your product and your customers. Find the angle that works for your product and get stronger and stronger in that channel. Don’t fragment yourself by jumping on every band wagon that rolls your way.
#ContentHacks isn’t meant to solve this problem. Sorry folks, this problem isn’t going away any time soon. #ContentHacks is just my way of curating interesting little work-arounds in content marketing and social media marketing, new apps, cheap hacks, etc. that (hopefully) will make some tiny part of your day a little easier. I like discovering new things that make something easier for me, or help a client save some money, or improve my Twitter experience.
There’s no one solution. There’s lots of little solutions. The magic mix depends on the cauldron. Hint: the cauldron is your company, your brand.
So here’s 3 #ContentHacks I discovered this week:
1. IFTTT Recipe: Twitter ► Google Drive Spreadsheet.
If you’re not familiar with IFTTT then head on over via the link and check’er out. In a nutshell: IFTTT (If This, Then That), is a platform that connects API’s all over the web and lets you set triggers (called recipes) to automate workflow via a variety of connected services like Twitter, Gmail, Google Drive, etc. etc. The Twitter ▶ Drive Recipe automagically posts your tweets to a Google Drive spreadsheet. Couldn’t be simpler. Or more usefull. Use this fun hack to easily browse old tweets or notate them and send ’em out again! View the recipe ▶▶
2. Edit Flow – An Awesome WordPress Editorial Calendar Plugin.
I stumbled across this WordPress plugin, EditFlow, the other day rambling around on Jeff Bullas’ blog. I’m always looking for new plugins for WordPress to make my editorial life easier. EditFlow makes it super easy to collaborate on your blog via your dashboard and saves time in your blogging workflow. I’m always building tedious Google Doc editorial calendars (Grab this one I built for free). No more!
3. The SEE-THINK-DO Content Marketing Framework
See – Think- Do is a Content Marketing framework developed by Avinash Kaushik. It’s an elegant way to figure out what problems you’re solving for your audience and at what stage of funnel. I’ve used this already with two clients and it really helps them understand the content marketing process.
Over to you, any great content marketing tricks to share?
Figuring out an optimal content marketing strategy for yourself or your clients isn’t simply a game of Tetris – you can’t just put all the pieces together and hope they fit. The magic starts to happen when you truly understand the problem you’re trying to solve for your target audience — be that a hole in the market or a pain point in an existing market — understanding and research lead to great insights, and from there all the pieces start to not only fit, but to gel and work synergistically. That being said, for an independent consultant as geeky as myself, all the little tools and tricks floating around out there make my life so much easier. I’ll break them down here and I hope you join me.
Let me know in the comments if you’ve stumbled across any great #ContentHacks this week.
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