Did you know we actually run social media for clients? Maybe you did, maybe you didn’t but you know now. I thought writing this article would be a useful way to explain what’s involved and why we do things in this particular way. Hope it’s useful, questions and comments are always welcome!

How it works:

• We always start with a workshop – more about this below under the “Onboarding” headline!
• Sometimes we run your social media and digital marketing for 3 months and then we do a handover – we’ve done this for several clients so far – where you take some of this activity in house. Why would you? Could be cost, could be that you want to develop that marketing function in house, could be a way to develop your team. We are happy to work with you on this.
• Or, we continue “ghost managing” your social media channels long term. This means we send you a weekly content calendar to approve, and we take care of the copy writing, caption writing, branded designs, research and ideas – as well as the preparation and publishing of the prepared and shared content.

The process we go through:

Onboarding:

We always start with a half day workshop about Content Marketing, designed for 2 reasons:

1. It lets us get a lot of information out of you about your brand, values, insights, experiences, challenges, goals, network, team and sales processes. No one can ever properly do your marketing for you without knowing these things. It’s just a start but we get a lot out of this time.
2. It allows you to understand content marketing and how it could work for your business. You can get a good idea of how it’s used and how it can change perception. You will see how other businesses have used content and the way they have managed it with a mixture of in-house effort and some outsourced help.

Value and takeaway tools

Once you understand the importance and see the variety of types and channels possible, you will be able to apply your experience and insights about your business to generate unique and creative ideas that will interest and appeal to your intended audience.
The workshop includes a series of “ideation” (fancy word for idea generating!) exercises and a chance for you to document your company’s differentiators and the things you want people to know and believe.
You will see the different ways these can be implemented so you can use this highly effective type of marketing to increase brand awareness, share your expertise, show your business personality, and build relationships.

Actions we take after

After the workshop, we have some work to do. This can be done in different ways (we can decide who will do what during our time together). The basic initial tasks are:

• We need to prepare a draft content calendar for 3-6 months, which will include milestones and calendar events, publishing dates for different types of content and topics, and details on what will be going out relating to any campaigns we are planning.
• We also get to work to collect information, draft blog posts, draft the design of shareable images, storyboard videos, and mock-up simple infographics – all in line with the key messages and priority campaigns that come from our workshop.

And it goes on in a loop

Workshops, calendars for approval, ideas that come to us in the middle of the night – we keep an open line of communication with our clients and plan regular sessions for you. Planning no more than 6 months in advance, usually a lot less, means we have a chance to look at the statistics, see what’s working and what’s not for you. It’s different for everyone and we can only learn by doing and measuring. For the hundreds of clients I have worked with, I have yet to meet someone who thought that introducing planned and properly considered regular social activity was a waste of time. Some of the people who started off with us are now “flying” – many have even started additional businesses –and it’s a distant memory that they ever needed lessons to begin with.
If you want to know more about how we could help setup you up and get you going – get in touch and we will get started!