Steps to Becoming Digitally Relevant
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio — Face-to-face meetings are the best. Highly personal, very effective and basically banned by the Gov. Mike DeWine due to the coronavirus pandemic.
So if your marketing plan has relied almost exclusively on lunches, on-site visits, and meetings in a conference room, then you’re in trouble and we need to talk.
How do you deploy a high-touch, personal approach to building relationships and business development when social distancing is required?
Things are very different now. In this “new normal” you need a robust digital presence to make up for the lack of face time. Now is the time to evolve your personal approach, and build a more scalable, effective, and safe method for communicating by publishing digital content.
Did you know that 93% of communication is nonverbal? To break it down even further, 55% is body language, 38% is tone of voice, and 7% are the actual words spoken.
The phone gets you about 45% and it’s not scalable. It’s hard to reach people in an office these days.
Effective communication now must incorporate a digital publishing strategy.
Publishing simply means documenting, recording, and/or writing down your knowledge and expertise in a coherent, organized and compelling way. And you must put it somewhere where your prospects and customers can find it.
Digital publishing means leveraging tools like LinkedIn or a local media partner, like The Business Journal, to illustrate the value you add.
Here are some basic ways to get started and get a few quick wins on the path to becoming digitally relevant:
Write One Blog Post
If you find yourself answering the same question via email and phone all the time – then that’s a blog post. (Otherwise known as answering frequently asked questions in your own words, with your specific take on the topic.) Just write it down and the next time someone asks, shoot it to them. It will save both you and them time.
Shoot One Video with Your iPhone
It’s proven that video is the most powerful and effective way to establish emotional connections when you can’t be physically present.
Videos can work on your behalf 24/7/365. If you’re authentic and simply share what you know, those videos can establish an emotional connection – and give someone a sense of what it’s like to work with you. They hear your opinion and your voice and pick up your non-verbal signals.
Be sure to focus on education or industry analysis and not just product promotion. Consumers want education and not a sales pitch.
Work on Distribution
Now you’re ready to invest some time in LinkedIn. Make sure your profile is up to date with a good picture, images and details of your career. Your profile should not merely focus on your titles and pay grade. It should convey the impact you’ve made for your clients.
I can send you a worksheet to help you build your profile if necessary.
Make an Effort to Send Connection Requests
Now that your profile is up to snuff, spend 15 to 20 minutes per day in the feed, liking and commenting on your connections’ posts and articles.
Take the newly created content (blog or video) from above and “publish” it on LinkedIn. You can do it as a post or an article. It depends on what you’re trying to accomplish.
One and done won’t do the trick. You have to be consistent, but today we’re only focused on getting started.
If you’re stuck or want to move faster, the team at The Business Journal Content Studio can help you. LinkedIn gets you part of the way there, but you might not have the depth of connections you need.
We have a simple and effective way to help you build a library of compelling and educational content. And we can distribute it across our platform that includes print, digital, email, video, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Youtube… We already have the audience assembled and can give you instant distribution.
These are the steps to ramping up your digital relevance. Are you ready?
Copyright 2024 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
