Content marketing and social media are important, but let’s face it, they can take a tremendous amount of time to produce and manage. You can’t retrieve time once spent.
Many of us get caught in an endless vortex of creating MORE content for MORE channels. We write a blog post here. Get some media coverage there. Post a photo to Instagram. Share some stuff on Facebook. Update that LinkedIn profile with awesome stuff. Tweet it. Snap it. Chat it. Maybe give that new live stream video thing a go because everyone says you’ve got to be on it. Then press repeat and do it all over again in the hope that it will push the needle on sales. Sound familiar?
“The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.” – Michael Porter
Many businesses have yet to build a truly loyal audience in any one of these channels, or they’re targeting too many audiences with their content. Is it perhaps time to make decisions on what you are not going to do? Be honest with what is working, do more of that and you’re apt to have the biggest impact.
When we look at great media brands like the Huffington Post or the Globe and Mail, they started by building a dominant presence on a single channel, before branching out to more channels. There’s much we can learn from this strategy, even if you are a smaller player.
Scott Stratten, the UNmarketing guy built his initial following on Twitter. He’s at over 184,000 followers these days. I had the pleasure of meeting Scott in Phoenix while speaking this past summer. He was an early adopter on Twitter, and believed in total real time commitment to the channel, rather then the automation that has taken over the platform for many now. His irreverent musing and total commitment to the platform gave him dominance to then spill over into other channels. Check out his website HERE. Or follow him ON TWITTER.
Chris Brogen is unshakable in his belief that e-newsletters are a core strategy channel for his brand. I’ve learned a tremendous amount from him that I’ve applied to my own business. Check out his approach HERE.
Jeff Korhan is making huge gains with podcasts these days engaging with small business owners and their marketing challenges. Check him out and sign up for his podcast HERE.
Jeannie Robertson, a veteran speaker and comedian, plays in a dominant way on Youtube and Facebook. Link to her site HERE.
In all of the above cases, these folks are of course on other channels as well, but they chose initially to dominate one in particular before branching out. They also knew intimately who they were targeting, and created content for that audience. That is key.
Today’s technology allows us to publish in many different places and to reach thousands of people. But just because we can, doesn’t mean we should. Perhaps we need to consider that LESS could in fact be MORE.
