5 Elements To Building a #Social Media #Strategy Around #Storytelling

In today’s digital landscape, staying competitive is a constantly evolving battle. It doesn’t matter if you’re working in a B2C or B2B environment, competition is fierce! Keeping up with the latest trends and consumer preferences is a must. In 2014, social media in particular, is no longer a luxury - it’s a necessity. I’m passionate about delivering this need throughout our organization. If done correctly, it could be an amazing way to differentiate our brand among the rest. Social media has changed the way people communicate, connect, research purchases and build brand loyalty. The inflection point of growth we’ve seen in social media is so prolific that it’s changed the very fabric of culture, across nearly every continent. One would think this revolutionary adoption had run it’s course over decades. Not the case. If we look at the origin of social media, it only goes back to about 2002. And yes, I realize bulletin boards are somewhat social and date back even farther. But if you look at when the inflection point of growth grew in a more “public” or broader sense, it began withFriendster™. That’s only about a decade of time that has passed for social media to grow to where it is currently. Over time, MySpace™ de-throned Friendster™ and eventuallyFacebook™ ousted MySpace™. To this day, Facebook™ continues to maintain the lead with over 1.3 billion users and growing.¹ How many websites can tout an audience of that size? Given these consumer preference changes, it’s more critical than ever that brands embrace this shift in behavior or be left behind. So how does Avery Dennison® approach this challenge? We believe in providing our investors, customers, new talent and others information in the most transparent way possible. We do this by always approaching with transparency and an ethical mentality. The story we tell in social media largely centers around five key areas:

1. Innovation- Focusing on product and how they solve problems that innovate and inspire our customers is a key focus. Recently, we had our Metria™ Informed Health sensor device showcased on Lifetime TV’sMission Makeover. This was just one of many advancements in technology that we are excited to bring to market. Learn more about Vancive® Medical Technology: news & events orproduct & solutions.

2. Sustainability- Finding ways to reduce our carbon footprint and get closer to usage of more sustainable and renewable ingredients in our product is at the top of our priorities. This is a topic that you’ll find that we share consistently throughout the year. We’ve even found some friends along the way, like Rainforest Alliance and Sustainable Brands®, to help amplify the message and create sustainable momentum.

3. Culture/Heritage- Avery Dennison® is a company that dates back to 1935. Not many brands can say that - and we’re proud of this history and legacy. On a regular basis we share our history by participating in Throwback Thursday. Follow us on Facebook to join in on the fun. If you’re not active on Facebook, we also have corporate accounts with Twitter , LinkedIn , Google+,Instagram and Sina Weibo.

4. Careers/A World To Work With- We understand the value each individual brings to our organization, and we celebrate the good work of our talented team. In the dynamic, responsive world of Avery Dennison®, career development isn’t just a buzzword, it’s a way of life. We give the resources and opportunities to make the most of our talent and initiative. Whether you’re just beginning your professional path or are looking to take your career to a new level, we provide the support needed to realize professional goals. This element is so important to our overall story that we created separate social media profiles to talk about our careers. Thinking about a career change? Then we need to talk, careers-related social media channels can be found onFacebook™ or Twitter™. We’re constantly posting new career opportunities, find out if something catches your eye on our careers website.

5. Social Responsibility- Our socially responsible actions run deep in our company. From promoting ethical business conduct and fair labor practicesto supporting employee development and community investment, Avery Dennison® has built a culture of integrity and purpose that unifies our employees around the world. This is a tactic we are very pleased to share with the world and the hope is that it becomes a viral phenomenon.

By focusing on innovation, sustainability, culture/heritage, careers and social responsibility we feel we can deliver a unique experience for those that want to learn about our business. With the recent launch of our company blog, we feel positioned to curate, create and deliver content that establishes another vehicle for the above strategy. It’s also a great outlet for spreading the things we value as an organization. By delivering the content in social media, a blog, etc. we are able to show our passion and how it lies within our ability to make the world a better place for us and future generations to come.

To learn more about Avery Dennison and our suite of products, click here. To see the company blog, click here.

¹ Statistic Brain (pulled March 19, 2014). Facebook Statistics.http://www.statisticbrain.com/facebook-statistics/

3 Key Content Marketing Trends

Do you like free traffic? Then you come to the right place. Many feel that this year, more so than previous years, will be the year of content. Last year, the top 3 digital trends consisted of Facebook, other social networks and mobile. While this year's top digital trends will continue to include mobile for obvious reason, the other two trends are equally interesting - i.e. local blogging and ratings/reviews. As you can see, 2 of the top 3 trends this year are expected to be purely content based. What does that mean for you? It means that you need to know your clients/customers, don't be a bore, have a call-to-action, it's all about quality and be consistent with that approach. One thing, build those content related alliances. If you don't, someone else will. Is your market Chicago? Then make sure you have a partnership with top, I'd say, 10 bloggers in the area.

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10 Tips for Writing Content that Ranks

Many factors contribute to a website reaching and maintaining high positions in search results for target terms. These factors include user experience, site structure, alt tags on images, site maps, and more. Above all content is definitely still king. However, not all types of content can rule over the kingdom of SERPs. The following are 10 tips for writing content that will help your website rank higher in search results:

1. Write for users, optimize for robots

2. Forget about keyword density and keyword stuffing

3. Integrate related keywords, synonyms, and grammatical variations into your content

4. Use Google’s free tools to find long-tail keyword variations that you can blend into your site copy

5. Focus on writing long, in-depth, quality content

6. Target high quality low competition long-tail keywords

7. Write content that answer’s common questions from prospects

8. Get your content noticed and shared on social media platforms

9. Strive to build your AuthorRank and develop your Google+ profile

10. Don’t forget about title tags and meta descriptions, they are the first thing people typically see in search results

While there is no simple formula for achieving top positions in search results, these tips will help appease both search engines and your site visitors. In addition to the tips above, focus on adding new and sharable content to your website or blog regularly. Google prefers websites that update their content on a regularly, so the more often that you update your website the more likely Google is to crawl your website. Don't make it complicated, keep things simple, manageable and have with it!

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3 Ways To Drive Leads For Your B2B Content Strategy

Reuse, Repurpose, Regenerate - The 3 Rs of Content Marketing

A mentor of mine once said something I have been saying for quite some time which is basically that not only is it ok to reuse existing content, it makes a lot of sense, too!

She said "marketers can derive multiple uses from a single piece of content." She used examples such as a video that could double as a call to action while also living on the given company's YouTube channel. The transcript of the same video could be converted into a white paper and/or blog post.

In other words, go ahead and use the materials you already have "lying around." Companies have a wealth of information they use every day that would make for great fodder for Content Marketing such as information they can glean from sales fliers and presentations, annual reports, user manuals, customer service manuals, charts, and on and on.

All they need to do is position it as a value added service they're providing to their prospects and customers. Use the information from the aforementioned items as a way to educate their prospects and customers on ALL that they do for chances are there are some products and services that they may not even know you offer which could of course lead to more sales opportunities for you

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7 Keys to Making Your Content Curation Effective

There are plenty of good, tactical guidelines out there for content curation (as well as rationales for why it’s so important). But in addition to the day-to-day tactics and objectives, here are seven keys to making your content curation efforts more efficient, effective and productive.

1. What would your customers-prospects want to read?

This isn’t about you. It’s about your customers and prospects. You know that they’re starved for time, yet they wish they had more time to consume valuable information. What magazines are stacking up on their desk, too important to cancel but without time to read? Which RSS feeds are the same? Email newsletters, etc.? Narrow in on those sources and treat them as the core of your curation efforts.

2. What channels will they use? Where do they want to read it?

Curation is as much about delivery as it is content. Don’t assume your customers will all gravitate towards your Twitter feed, just because that’s where you’re most comfortable sharing content. Maybe you should be using a weekly email newsletter. Or a blog digest. Or a printed newsletter. Know your customer’s consumption and channel habits.

3. Curate from the curators

Find the customer-friendly news sources that are already curating content for like-minded audiences. SmartBriefs newsletters, for example, are a daily source of great content from across the Web focused on a single subject or audience. Many popular blogs also do weekly or occasional digests of great content they find from across the Web. Similarly, many popular Twitter feeds that your customers and prospects should be following (but don’t) offer content to curate. A handful of sources may become your primary curation sources, but themselves provide a wide variety of source content.

4. Set everything up in advance

If you’re using a service such as Timely.is to spread out Tweets, for example, put a bookmarklet in your browser so that you’re always one-click away from adding great new content to your feed. If using email or blogs as your channel, build the template in advance and simply add newly-found content to that template until you fill it up to distribute. In summary, make it as easy as possible to curate content on the fly as you see it, so that you’re more regular about doing it.

5. Follow a daily process

Get into a routine to check the same sources on a regular basis. Schedule it specifically on your calendar if you need to, but otherwise build an explicit daily checklist that allows you to execute curation tasks in a shorter and shorter amount of time.

6. Be consistent

The more your followers can expect regular, consistently good content, the more likely they will regularly follow you, read you, and forward your content to others. Setting up curated content in advance is an easy way to do a bundle of curation work at once, and have it spread out to readers over time. If your readers establish habits and expectations of following you, don’t let them down.

7. Watch metrics for what resonates best

Keep close watch on what content gets the most clicks, the most shares and retweets, and what day/time that happens. Timely.is does some of this work for you, for example, but you’ll learn a ton about your prospects by watching what they respond best to, and that will only improve your engagement metrics and curation selections over time.

Finally, remember that curation does not replace good original content

Successful curation is a great way to service your customers and prospects, but it is not in any way a direct substitute for creating original content. Curation gives you a following, but creation gives you the traffic and opportunity to build deeper relationships, drive value-added registration, and accelerate pipeline progress.

Like what you've read? Comment and let me know what else your interested in reading. I take comments VERY seriously and want to write about, well, what people want to read about in the digital space.