A Strategy for Content and Advertising

I’ve been thinking about content, advertising and social media recently and have shared the following guidance verbally with a few people, so it’s time I write it down and share it.

My guidance to get the most out of your content, especially if you are focused on brand management, brand strategy and how they can work in the online world. The following is high-level, since each topic includes a wide variety of strategies, goals and tools. However, this can be a good starting point for you:

1. Have an editorial calendar that makes sense for your brand. Think of holidays to align your brand to, days of the week, number of times per month, and so on.
2. Using your content management system (CMS), publish your content (text, images, video) to your site. This could be your blog, your brand’s own web site, or wherever you deem is your primary repository for content. A few services that run in the cloud on Windows Azure include Umbraco, SiteCore, Kentico, and Composite C1 
3. Use a URL shortening service for the URL to your new piece of content. Such as http://ow.ly/ or http://bitly.com/. These will give insights as to where the URL is being shared.
4. Share that short URL to the different social networks, but time it so you get the maximum benefit. You should do your own testing to determine that, but Dan Zarrella just shared some great data via his blog that gives you starting point. For example, share on Facebook and e-mail on Saturdays, but Twitter on Friday. See http://danzarrella.com/infographic-how-to-use-contra-competitive-timing-for-more-retweets-likes-comments-and-clicks.html for the details. 
5. While this content is being posted and shared, run advertisement in parallel that is obviously related to the content with elements such as color, imagery, tone of voice or content. I of course suggest using http://advertising.microsoft.com, but I admit to being a bit biased since I work at Microsoft.
6. Measure the traffic to your content and advertising and where it’s coming from so you can optimize for the next time.

Once you figure out the right tools, services and the process that works for your brand, you could build a custom service to automate the publishing, URL shortening, sharing at the right time, publishing/purchasing advertisement and reporting of the results. This would then allow you to focus more on the content and less on the infrastructure.

Do you have any other suggestions? 

Combining Technology and Marketing

A favorite topic of mine is creative (and fun or useful) marketing solutions that are built on the latest and greatest technologies. Related to this, my colleague at Microsoft, Adee Wada, just posted a blog entry about how marketers need to create or update their smartphone and table strategies. These are still new channels for many marketers, and what you can do with them makes them quite interesting. As Dan Heaf, Digital Director at the BBC said:

‘..the context is different, the interactions different between devices and screens. Those that understand that are poised to succeed.’

Adee and others make note of the need for good design with high-quality back-end system that, when working together, create great consumer experiences. From Microsoft, this means building with SDKs for:

1. Cloud computing: Windows Azure
2. Native Mobile Apps: Windows Phone 7 and Windows 8

Read the full article: CONTEXT MATTERS – Building Blocks for your Multi-Screen Strategy

December 31 houseboat living

This shows our dock and the waterways on the North and South sides. It also wraps up my 30 days of life-in-Seattle photos.

Any suggestions for my next photo or blog project, which I post to http://grothadventures.wordpress.com/?

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Marketing with Technology and Social: Chevrolet Route 66

Chevrolet and Microsoft Advertising (where I work) have created a great example of putting technology and social media to work together for a marketing campaign.

The highlights for me include:

1. Tech: The site has a nice design with integrated video as the primary content type
2. Social: The goal is to share videos you like with a leaderboard of top sharers
3. Marketing: The site is for GM’s Chevrolet brand and the winning video could end up being shown on NBC during the Super Bowl

See http://chevroletroute66.msn.com/ for the solution and check out the descriptions at MediaPost, Big League Sports, and Torque News.

Leveraging Technology & Content

Microsoft (where I work) and our partner Shoothill just released a great example of bringing content to life with technology, while also promoting a product (a movie in this case). To see ‘The War Horse TimeMap Journey’ and follow the fictional horse ‘Joey’ from southern England to the Western Front in France using archive material from World War One, go to: http://movies.msn.com/warhorse/map/

I consider it an ‘edutainment’ piece using Bing Maps, Deep Zoom and Azure to tell the fictional story of Joey (the horse) and his owner Albert’s journey from Devon to the trenches of WWI through the use of scans of real trench maps, aerial reconnaissance imagery of the battles (one of which shows a British attack on the German lines), historic imagery of real war horses and Calvary officers from the Dragoon Guards War Diary extracts from the beginning of the war.  BTW the project is built entirely on AJAX and has been optimized for PC, Mac and iPad. (admittedly, being a long-time Microsoft guy, I have only played with it on my Windows 7 PC)

See http://www.shoothill.com/blog/2011/12/war-horse-timemap-experience/ for more information, plus some great graphical explanations below, compliments of Rod Plummer at Shoothill.

Warhorse Journey opens:

The War Horse Gallery

War Horse Time Map

Some example content: Scans of British Battle Maps

Same place – today

Some example content: Aerial reconnaissance imagery of the battles

Movie clips

Sights from London, November 2011

Oops, I posted to the wrong blog again. If you want to see my November 2011 photos from London, go to my personal blog at http://grothadventures.wordpress.com/2011/11/29/sights-from-london-november-2011/

Phases of Online Marketing

Intersection Consulting created an image about online marketing, which was blogged about by Fuel Lines and shared on Twitter by Michael Gass (also of Fuel Lines). I have to say, I love it! However, it was completely missing digital advertising in the “promote” phase. Therefore, I have augmented it as follows. Please let me know what you think – and let’s have that conversation on Twitter via @BrianGroth 

Note: I do work in the advertising business for Microsoft Advertising.

Hands-Free Twitter via Windows Phone

I just experienced something technically cool, which was new to me. I subscribe to Zune and use a Windows Phone, so it’s sometimes the device I use to listen to music. (I have a cool little speaker I hook up to it for good sound)

I also have Twitter set up to send me a text when @BrianGroth is mentioned in a tweet.

Today, I was listening to music on my phone when I got a text, which means my phone vibrated a bit. But then, the music paused and I heard a computerized voice tell me that I had received a text from 40404 (the number associated to Twitter). It was a tweet from a friend of mine. Windows Phone then asked me if I wanted it read it to me. I told it I did and it proceeded to read the message to me. It then asked if I wanted to speak a reply back! So I did, and said “thanks Shish”, which it recognized it perfectly. I told it to send it and then my phone went back to playing music.

So, I was able listen to and respond to a tweet via a text message, hands-free while listening to music. I think that’s pretty cool.

Example of Technopology on MSN

We have a great new example of combining technology, social media and marketing at http://lifestyle.msn.com/your-life/live-your-best-life/. To summarize the blog article by Keith Lorizio:

The centerpiece of the campaign is a completely customized Mosaic experience using our Deep Zoom technology that lets users share their best moments in their lives, through an interactive social experience that engages and encourages people to upload photos, tag friends’ pictures, answer trivia questions, “like” updates on Facebook and follow conversations on Twitter.

Check out the blog for more details.

Thanks to Shoothill for the great work!

Inspiration from TED

This blog post is to let you know that there is a bit more to me than social media, marketing, advertising and technology. So, here are a few things that I find inspirational.

1. You might quit your job after watching this video: http://www.ted.com/talks/caroline_casey_looking_past_limits.html
2. Imagine if you had this guy as your 4th grade teacher: http://www.ted.com/talks/john_hunter_on_the_world_peace_game.html
3. Spoken word poetry, but so much more: http://www.ted.com/talks/sarah_kay_if_i_should_have_a_daughter.html
4. Inspiring and stunning: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/aimee_mullins_prosthetic_aesthetics.html
5. What makes someone row across the Pacific Ocean? http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/roz_savage_why_i_m_rowing_across_the_pacific.html
6. The problems with recycling plastic and someone who has made a business out of it: http://www.ted.com/talks/mike_biddle.html
7. Can anyone truly empathize with another? http://www.ted.com/talks/sam_richards_a_radical_experiment_in_empathy.html
8. Why the International Day of Peace is on September 21. It’s long, but the guy is passionate:  http://www.ted.com/talks/jeremy_gilley_one_day_of_peace.html

Thank-you TED! Please keep it up.

Please let me know if one of these really sparked an emotion in you.