This initial blog will focus on content investment and is a broader introduction to many of our future posts: many of the digital content tools and messaging techniques referenced here will form the basis of future posts. (We always love suggestions for blogs or questions about existing topics.)

It isn’t news that business owners and leaders, from the newest start-up to well-known brands, are investing more time and money each year in growing and promoting their digital identity.

Growing Facebook pages, managing digital ad spending on both Facebook, Google and now Twitter (recently launching an ad program in Canada – a discussion for future blogs) and working with emerging tools, like Google + and Instagram, are all part of the many ways business owners, communication professionals and beyond are looking to attract and grow their network, regardless of industry.

After a Facebook page is built and established or after a Twitter account is opened, internal teams managing the digital need to keep investing and managing content – content not only retains customers and grows relationships but adds tremendous brand value through the establishment of a brand voice that speaks to the values of the brand.

• Planning: Crafting a content management strategy and using a digital media editorial calendar ensure your message isn’t duplicated across forums – keep messaging unique and vary wording of messaging across your digital platforms. (This isn’t to say that your brand messaging has to vary greatly but use different platforms as a way to reach different audiences, at different times, is a chance to keep content working for your team, the brand and your messaging.)

  Sometimes random posts are indeed all you need to effectively communicate: in the event of a winter storm, or urgent issue, social media is prime for messaging changes to customers and partners. Yet, planning some posts ensures your content overall is balanced and meets the other goals of strong content investment.

• Brand Voice: Think about your brand voice: visit competitor websites and social media channels. Good content strategy involves the development of a distinctive brand voice – speaking to your audience the way you’d speak to them in a print ad but often with less characters (Twitter – another story for another day) or Google +, an emerging forum with less character restrictions but more considerations for the share factor of the post.
• Compelling Visuals: A must: good visual images drive sales: small business without access to professional photography can use Instagram and produce images with the filtered, often grainy style currently trending on social media. Using Pinterest or existing corporate photography is another way of making content compelling and keep it as part of a bigger brand story. Balance the formal with informal: too much formal photography or too much staged, posed photography often does not work in social media channels that drive relationship building in a more casual digital world.
• Responsiveness: Having the best content is a Facebook page with many ‘likes’ or a Twitter account with tweets that retweet often is a measure of success of your strategy but it is also critical that you have a team (a team of one or a team of many, depending on the size and scope of your organization) that responds to questions or comments about your content.

Investing in the foundation (a perfect brand name, a winning logo, well advertised digital media tools) is just part of the broader digital media success story – the well-timed, well-positioned and photographed content will make those well-worth-it investments work for you and impact sales.

Our next blog will focus on moving from the broader content needs into specifics on making content meet commerce with heightened sales measurable by content strategy.

More from The Digital Collide…
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