I had a great conversation this past week with good friend of mine, who is in an influential and important role in Grand Rapids. She was looking to amplify her brand, meaning raise her profile in the community. Although she is very involved in the community, which is a huge part of her job, not a lot of people realize her level of engagement or the breadth of that involvement. Why? Because if it didn’t happen on social media, then did it really happen at all?

I know this sounds utterly ridiculous and in some ways it absolutely is, however we now live in the digital age which affords us a lot of opportunities but also takes away anonymity. Unfortunately, you can’t have it both ways.

My advice to my friend on increasing her visibility within the community, was the following.

• Utilize social media to educate, inform and share your life. There are multiple ways to do so, which I’ll cover in the next few bullet points. Start with Facebook and Instagram, Twitter is a time suck and the network is losing the relevancy it once had.
• When you attend events, go to meetings or are giving a presentation; be sure to check-in on social media with an explanation of what you are doing. This broadcasts your involvement to the community and also allows those attending the same event to find you and network.
• Share photos of your adventures. If you are walking in downtown Grand Rapids, grabbing coffee, attending an event, grab a photo and share with your followers. This showcases you are out and about and involved. I realize this may seem silly, but how often do you check social media in a day? 12 times? 15 times? Too many to count?
• Post articles or blogs you have written or feel will educate on a certain issue that is important to you or relevant to your job. This will help position you as knowledgeable, informed and thoughtful.
• Take advantage of either Facebook or Instagram Stories. Have fun with it! Show a more personal side, take pictures with your dogs, put on those damn bunny or dog ears/nose, make a video, get your emoji game on…the possibilities are endless.

For this blog, I focused on social media as a tool to increase your visibility, there are so many ways to do so, but all roads lead back to social media when it comes down to communicating what you are up to.

Looking for more resources or articles on personal brand, check out the below blogs.

• Why you can’t afford to ignore personal branding
• The value in speaking
• Make your own opportunities
• Becoming the salesperson of you

So many stories.

I had a friend pose a question to me this past week on the future of social media. Will it remain an important tool for marketers? Has fake news, spam accounts and the ever present trolls reduced the value? I would also add changing algorithms and the trends towards pay to play to the list.

The networks we are all familiar with such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Instagram, etc. will exist in some form in the future. Each of these companies are working to address fake news, spam and the troll issue. Does it make these networks any less valuable?

Yes and no.

The Value:

1. A two-way conversation. Social media is unique as it gives customers a platform to interact and communicate with a company. Marketing is no longer a one-way interaction where companies push out a message and customers have no opportunity to respond. Social networks are often an extension of a company’s customer service or their main portal to deal with complaints.
2. SEO. A social presence enhances a company’s search engine optimization. The more content you share and traffic you drive back to your website the better your results will be. This won’t change in the foreseeable future, how social interacts with your online presence will.
3. Pay to play. As marketers we want to focus on organic growth and save our money. Social networks give preferential treatment to the company’s that advertise, which seems kind of shitty but in reality is still a great value. Running ads on Facebook or Instagram is much more beneficial than a billboard off the expressway.

What will change:

1. The networks we are so familiar with now will evolve or become extent. What you see now is a lot of copycatting. Take the ‘stories’ feature for example.
2. Third party apps. How we manage the networks will improve with better tools coming out to cut down on the amount of time dedicated to scheduling and monitoring.
3. How we use social will most definitely change, although I couldn’t tell you how. Whether a company is using it strictly for customer service, product sales or as brand awareness…the networks will change to better serve these needs.

We will never go back to the traditional ways of marketing. Consumers are demanding more from companies as it relates to transparency, service and communication. 20 years ago the United incident would have received little coverage. Companies now have to conscious of the fact that they are always being watched and held accountable. Social media plays a large role in this and will continue to do so in the future.

Team 834 is working with our local community theatre on the promotion of an unknown play that deals with some very real but difficult issues. In an effort to bring awareness to the play, which will absolutely make people uncomfortable, we had to get creative.

When we develop campaigns, we always go the integrated route..I mean we are an integrated communications firm so it kind of makes sense.

What that means, is we utilize a variety of tools and tactics to disseminate the message and for outreach to the target audience.

Here is what I mean:

1. Social media: Besides the obvious posting about the event, we created imagery, an event, ads and a hashtag. We also created a partner promotional packet that outlined content for website, social media, email and more – making it a no-brainer to copy and paste.
2. Event: To better highlight the main themes in the play, we are partnering with a community nonprofit to host a panel discussion. By bringing in community leaders and inviting the general public we are promoting the less-known play while also bringing to light the larger issues in our city. We also just increased our reach by partnering to reach an audience we typically wouldn’t have access to.
3. PR: The 834 team will write up a variety of articles that touch on the issues presented in the play and submit to local bloggers, publications etc. We are also recruiting a media sponsor that will assist in the promotion and ensure we get coverage.
4. Advertising: Our digital team outlined a Facebook ad campaign to reach the target audience for the play.
5. Influencer outreach: West Michigan is home to a number of bloggers, which we will invite to the VIP reception and provide complimentary tickets to promote over social and their blog.
6. Email marketing: This should be obvious, but we will be creating a variety of email blasts that will be sent in the weeks leading up to the play.
7. Creative: Design is at the core of everything we do. Let’s be honest if it isn’t pretty, you probably aren’t going to look at it. As part of the promotion we are and have created imagery for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, email, flyers, event material and more.

For the integrated approach to be successful messaging and creative has to be consistent across all channels and campaign management is key. If you don’t have the right individual pushing the campaign forward and coordinating all moving pieces then the campaign will appear disjointed and confusing.

We are always innovating and finding ways to improve. What our tools and tactics are at the planning stage often ends up very different than the end product.

Designing is not a skill I possess. I do, however, understand the importance of integrating visual content into every aspect of your communication tools. A recent article by HubSpot states:

When people hear information, they’re likely to remember only 10% of that information three days later. However, if a relevant image is paired with that same information, people retained 65% of the information three days later.

So what does that mean to us as marketers or business owners? Write less, show more. At 834, we harp on you to create quality content consistently on a weekly and daily basis. That doesn’t mean it has to be all written, tell your story in other ways. Here are a few suggestions:

1. Infographics. Have a lot of statistics or a complex process you are trying to communicate? Infographics are the way to go. MassPlanner writes: Infographics are liked and shared on social media 3X more than other any other type of content. Can you really argue with that stat?
2. Video. I am not talking 50k video projects, just your smartphone, a stand, a remote and the addition of your logo at the beginning and contact information at the end. Did you know that according to Syndacast, using the word “video” in an email subject line boosts open rates by 19%, click-through rates by 65% and reduces unsubscribes by 26%.
3. Images. We incorporate header images into every single blog we create for our clients. The image represents what the blog encompasses as well as catching the attention of a potential reader. The Kissmetrics‘ blog writes, content with relevant images gets 94% more views than content without relevant images.

Need more proof? Just look at the fastest growing social media networks – Pinterest, Instagram and SnapChat. All of these are built around, what? That’s right…imagery, video and infographics.

What is your visual content strategy?