This Is Sparta…

Leadership, particularly in digital content marketing and social media strategy, is rarely about title or position, it’s about skills and personality. Even if you’re an unpaid intern clocking in a handfull of hours per week, you can still demonstrate leadership- be it directly, in taking charge of projects and tasks, or indirectly by collaborating with your colleagues authoritatively and confidently from a place of experience/expertise. When you factor in the title and position, your management style becomes all the more pertinent, as it’s literally your job to lead the team, project, campaign and/or department. I’m no expert in business management. I don’t have an MBA (yet) but one of the most important aspects of working in a team environment is leadership style. Are you a lead from the front or lead from the back? Or, in slightly more geeky terms: Are you a Spartan or are you a Senator?

What? You don’t wear a Mohawk helmet to work?

You may recall from Frank Miller’s wholly entertaining-though not exactly historically accurate- graphic novel, 300 (and subsequent film by Zach Snyder) that King Leonidas led his 300 warriors into battle, he was not doing so from an indirect vantage point, watching the events unfold on the battleground.  On the contrary, the ruler of Sparta was the first into the fray, leading the charges, fighting alongside his soldiers. He was a Spartan.

Casual Friday can, in fact, be taken too far…

Leonidas’ managers, in the story it’s the Senate council, never leave Sparta but instead brainstorm concepts and spend their time debating, pontificating and in the case of Senator Theron, scheming. They knew little of the situation impirically, and rather hid behind their stations, calling out decisions that had significant impact on the tale.  SPOILER ALERT: It’s their fault only 300 Spartans are sent to fight the armies of Persia, as their consultations with the Oracles (and Senator Theron’s treachery) lead them to hold back the full army pending further review.

This party is a total brodeo…

In your role are you a Spartan or Senator? Success can be had both ways, but achievement can only be had from the front. When things don’t go as planned, as they often do, are you there on the front lines to assess and revise immedeiately, ensuring that your audience and clients and customers are getting the fastest service possible, or are you waiting for more input, which in turn forces your customers and audience to wait for results as well?

Race you to the bottom…

In our modern marketing landscape, you literally can’t afford to wait. The public expects answers and responses as quickly as possible in real time, in all aspects of your business. When your new subscribers join do you immediately thank them? When you receive customer service correspondences, are you following up to queries within a reasonable window of time? When problems arise with the project, do you jump to action to alleviate the possible damage to the overall objective? Or are you and your clients loitering in digital purgatory? There’s no wrong way to handle customers per se, just ways that are effective at driving engagement, satisfaction and retention, and methods that drive customers to the competition.

See this chair? I built it using revenue from your dissatisfied customers…well, that and slaves, lots and lots of slaves

If you’re not using Spartan approaches to leadership, rest assured the competition, be it internal, external or both, definitely is. When you lead from the back, what you’re really doing is saying I don’t care enough about this activity to dive in, and as such, you’re allowing someone else to step up and take charge and achieve. In your current position, if you brought your boss original concepts that pushed the company forward versus bringing the boss someone else’s work that could push the company forward, in both cases, wouldn’t your boss probably lean towards the originator of the concepts?

Joe’s Myspace campaign idea was met with a less than favorable response…

The era of the middle man is long in the past. Someone is breaking new ground and leading innovation in your organization. Someone is assessing data, resolving issues and making revisions quickly and accurately. Someone is poised to bring about the next big thing in your company. Is that someone you?

If it’s not, it should be.

Show, Don’t Tell: The Absolute Necessity of Visual Content Marketing Strategies

This past January, Pinterest  saw just under 12 Million unique visitors. We upload 250 million photos a day, on Facebook and according to one study,  over two-thirds of Facebook activity involve interaction with photos and videos. Nearly every phone, smart, average and ‘dumb’ alike have a built in camera. The average person takes 2000 photos per year, that’s 166 per month, over 5 a day. People upload 3,000 images to Flickr every minute! Basic marketing savvy tells you to go where you customers are, find out their interests and model your content/message/product to suit. Numbers like that are impossible to ignore. In addition to digital content, social media and mobile/QR strategies, you absolutely need a visual content marketing strategy.

In designing your visual content marketing strategy, you’ll want to keep the focus on engagement. Images for images’ sake are a waste of time and resources. With every video you produce and photo you take, ask yourself how can this visual content increase engagement within my current fan/user base? How can this visual content increase acquisition of new fans/users? Basically, you need to ask yourself, Why?

A media page on your website, comprehensively detailed Facebook galleries, infinite TwitPics and Pinterest boardsrds are a fantastic way to catch and hold viewer attention, but cultivating engagement is about being selective, using only the most impactful, compelling, funny or mind-blowing pics and videos. Think of it like a recipe. The right choice of seasoning can make an otherwise bland dish a party for your tastebuds. Over season a dish, no matter how bland, and you’ll find yourself exploring new and exciting ways to curse the day you were born.

1 potato + 18 tablespoons of garlic = 1 bad night

It’s the same with visual content. Your clients will tire quickly of over saturation, especially if the product or service doesn’t necessitate a lot of interesting content. Try to limit your visual content, both on your web pages and social sites to what will be the most striking.

Making It Viral

Another vital component of your Visual Content Marketing Strategy is virality. It’s not enough for you to share pictures and video, you want your audience to share it as well. It’s important to note that there’s no guaranteed process or formula to ensure virality. If there were, we’d all be using it to make everyone and everything famous. Even though there’s no set map, but the following simple but effective tasks will definitely increase the likelihood that your content will be shared.

Capture/produce interesting content.

"I can't wait to see your empty conference room!"- Nobody

Pictures for business are different than pictures for personal use. I shouldn’t have to say that, but there are so many companies that put up images of employees, offices and locations with no context to their product or services. Hire a professional photographer/videographer when you can, and in cases when you can’t, only shoot what you need to shoot. Imagine that every picture you take will be the first and only  image someone will see of your company.  Picture every video you shoot as a client’s first and only impression of your organization. Doing so will help guide your eye to ensure that you’ve got interesting subjects and great visuals.

Make your content easy to access and share.

These products look amazing if you use your imagination...

Make sure you host your content well.  Don’t cover your images in watermarks or bury videos in the back of your webpage. Tag your Facebook photos, encourage sharing, leave the watermarks to the studios and stock photo salesmen. You want people to see and share your image. It’s one thing to protect IP, it’s another to be so protective that it turns people away. Remember, you want this to go viral.

Promote your content directly to fans.

You've got to see this!

So often people, organizations and companies just post a video with nothing more than a line reading “check out the new video” or “see the pictures from such-and-such event.” You need to seriously promote your content like a new parent showing off pictures of their baby. Before the event/activity where you’re going to create content, promote it. Post a line on Facebook saying “we’re going to be shooting a new video next week” or send out tweets asking for suggestions on best places to take product photos? Make the making of your content an event.  Even days/weeks/months/years after the content is posted, refer back to it. People love retrospectives. Something as simple as a Top Ten of the week, or Year in Review list are great ways to breathe new life (and gain new attention) into old content.

A targeted visual content strategy won’t guarantee success per se, but not having one will definitely put you at a disadvantage.