I’ve been getting some questions this week about digital media strategy and execution and my experience these last several months. Late last spring I decided to become an expert in this space and realized I was very far from it. Still am. Though I have been diving deep as a practitioner and have learned a tremendous amount. I needed to do this so that I could make effective decisions about communication and sales platforms for my businesses going forward. Here is a step by step sequence of what I’ve done, feel free to reach out with any questions.
Step 1 – I re-engaged BrandonGreen.com as a personal brand site. I used Danny at One Week Website to help me think through what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it. I had very little clarity but I knew it needed to evolve. I was a little embarrassed that I hadn’t done anything with brandongreen.com for years but got over that and went to work. This process brought to the surface a lot of unanswered questions.
Step 2 – I went on a 6 month listening tour where I traveled around the world speaking, teaching, writing, meeting, and most of all…listening. That time helped me get in touch with myself again.
Step 3 – Meanwhile I knew I needed to get Facebook Business, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Medium, email campaigns, my blog and a podcast up and running. But where to start? I started with Instagram and quickly realized it was a very visual platform. I can write, I’m not a designer and so I knew I needed to find a resource to help me post on Instagram’s main feed so I could curate a visual look for my personal brand and post my thoughts consistently and have them translated visually. Kristen Merie Wieder at Wildflower Marketing has been helping me with the aesthetics of my brand.
Step 4 – Oh but wait. Video! I’m great on camera, speak, present, teach all the time – but had very little recorded to put on the platform so I started consulting with Brandon T Adams and Mike Silvestri on that. That lead me to putting together a team of freelance videographers, and 2 editors to record and edit the content. Both components have been difficult to get right and I’d say I’m just now starting to see video content that is what I’m looking for, for my brand.
Step 5 – Soon I realized producing a volume of content required more writing resources so I engaged a part-time editor to help go through all my native from the last several years and organize it and bring to the platforms.
Step 6 – And soon enough this was taking a lot of time and I saw I needed to manage my own personal schedule to create. Right now I have 2 hours a week of blocked time to create content (mainly writing) and then I spend another hour or so a day engaging the platforms by creating Instagram stories, ad hoc videos, posts and comment engagement and corresponding with my team.
Here’s the thing. I’m just getting started! The next several months I will be upgrading brandongreen.com again, bringing more unique content to my Facebook business page, will activate consistent content on LinkedIn, Twitter and Medium, and starting an e-digest. I’m going to save Youtube and Podcast toward the end of the cycle because I want those two mediums to be powerful platforms to assist my newest investment. More on that soon! I also need to figure out media buying. I haven’t yet cracked that code so let me know who you know who can help with that, or the other platforms that still need activating.
Why do this and make this investment? Because right now it’s a land grab for attention on these platforms to build businesses and brands. This is the way we communicate now and people who have the largest audiences will have significant advantages over those who do now as we move into the next decade. It’s already happening. This is a moment in time, I can feel it, and I’m going to squeeze everything out of it I can. You should too.
