Create a Communications Plan That Works – Include Social
April 20th, 2012For the past several months we have been testing the affects that Social Media has on certain Keyword ranking (if done correctly) and what we have found is quite interesting therefore we decided to share with the Community ways in which you can unify your messaging across multiple communication channels such as social, blogs and articles to have the largest impact for your marketing efforts!
Let’s cut to the chase – there is a lot of information to share with you:
Step #1 – Build a Communications Calendar
A Communications calendar is a simple but effective way to ensure your communications strategy is actually targeted as opposed to random.
Here is a sample of what a communications calendar looks like (built in Excel):
- You can see above that for this example we are using 6 Keywords for the month of April.
- We started by focusing on only 1 week, then extended this across the entire month
- 80% our communication via our various channels will focus on these 6 Keywords.
- Communications across all channels will be directly related to the Niche Categories that we are targeting
- Blog posts, articles for marketing, social messages and other communications such as videos, webinars or pod casts.
We will mainly focus on Blog Post, Articles for Marketing and Social Messaging, the communications calendar is extended to include all your communications efforts.
Step #2 – Build your list of Keywords you want to target for next month (in advance)
Now that you have a better understanding of what’s involved with a communications calendar, its time to figure out what you will be focusing on this month.
We are going to be assuming you have already generated your list of Keywords using Google Adwords, Google external keyword tool, or other tools you use.
Pick your top 6~8 Keywords but no more. Too many Keywords will not be effective and will cause you grief in your efforts.
Step #3 – Schedule the Keywords you want to communicate by day of the week.
In the above example, we have chosen to use only 6 Keywords for this month and we rotate them accordingly across the various days of the week. These keywords are statically set to repeat themselves across 7 days a week. However; it would be just as easy to rotate these keywords on a week by week basis. For simplicity we have opted to keep the keywords static throughout the month.
During this time, you should also go through the weeks posting schedule for your Main Website Site.
Answer these questions:
- How many do you want to do in a month… realistically how many could you do?
- Do I want to do a blog post for every keyword? Do I have time? Can these be outsourced?
At first we recommend that you take it slow, you can post 1 new article every 2 weeks or if you have the content ready, you could schedule a post every 4 days. You can further define and then determine the frequency once you have completed the next step…
Step #4 – Articles for Marketing
Now that you have defined the Keywords and understand your desired blog post frequency, you can then incorporate these Keywords into your articles. Remember that you need to write for the readers 1st, make these articles engaging, high quality so that your readers will share and engage them.
Since we are targeting 6 Keywords in this example, you will want to have a minimum of 6 source articles that you either create or get created by a writing service (outsource) that specifically discuss the Keyword topics you are targeting.
NOTE: If you outsource, ensure the quality of the articles are high with a higher word count.
If you write the source articles, you can either rewrite the articles or use a service that will rewrite the articles for you, thereby creating a UAW Set of articles ready for input and scheduling into the Wizard. – In today’s environment its better to focusing on higher word count and quality articles, thin is not in!
Now that you have your article written and ready, what’s next?
Step #5 – Make a Blog Post
You now have unique articles ready to go but your site needs to become the authority for this article content, how do you do that?
Use a unique version for your Blog, this is the very 1st place that you will be posting and then informing the Search engines that you have just made the post. We recommend for best results that a minimum of 4 days after posting is when you schedule the release of your content to the community.
You need to let the engines know you have fresh content, that its there ready for the indexing… Let it get indexed 1st through your social sharing, light ping or other methods used to get noticed – such as our Social Beta 
After you have posted to your blog, this is the time that you would input and schedule the article set to be released to the community, schedule their release for 4 days after your initial posting to your blog. The Wizard has a great scheduler that will enable you to do this.
Example:
Post Unique Version to Blog – April 4th
Do social signals about the new post – April 4th
Schedule release to the UAW Community – input April 4th, scheduled for April 8th to begin
Step #6 – Write Your Daily Social Messages for each Keyword (or outsource these)
It is important to be consistent in your messaging ensuring that your efforts are concentrated across all your communications channels. We find that the various social networks are weighted in the time that they hold value for your various social messages. For example, Tweets seem to last 1~2days, Facebook 2~3days, LinkedIn 3~4days. Remember that frequency does matter.
Its important that you mix up your communications socially so you don’t just look like a spammy advertisement… this does take some effort but it is very well worth it. You will be surprised to see the natural following that will take place within your niche. This following is in addition to the new direct traffic that will occur (over time).
Using your articles for marketing, you should now be able to quite easily come up with your social messaging. You can take snippets of content from these articles that are focused on your Keywords to be used across your social channels. For example:
Keyword: Dog Collars for Poodles
Article Title Example: How To Select The Best Dog Collars For Poodles
Article Snippet: When you are researching the best dog collars for poodles, how do you know that you are getting the best deal?
Social Message (Twitter): The Best Dog Collars For Poodles – a great article on how to decide what collar is best for your poodle – http://<yoursite URL linking to a deep page>.com
You would then go through this process for each day, you can reuse your messages but we recommend that you rewrite them in a manor that will make them appear unique each time you post them to a social network.
Once you have written your messages for the week/month, you have the ability to either schedule the social messages to be time released or you can do this on a manual basis. Tools such as Hootsuite enable you to schedule social messaging to your various networks in a time released, scheduled manner.
Step #7 – Finalize your Communications Schedule and Go For It!
Now is the time to ensure that you have all your items ready for the week/month and when you do, you can finalize your schedule. Input all the necessary communications messaging into your communications calendar accordingly and implement your strategy each and every day.
Let’s recap of the process you can take to effectively increase your communications, engagement and messaging across multiple channels:
- Create A Communications Calendar
- Build your Keyword List
- Schedule your Keywords and Blog Posting Dates
- Write your Articles for Marketing
- Ready Your Blog Posts
- Write Your Social Messages
- Finalize and Start
As you follow this process each month you will see your communication plan grow steadily from the first month. Not only will it keep you on track but it will enable you to rank with social signals, help create engagement that surrounds your niche content and create authority in the niche you are promoting.
