I sometimes wonder if prospective clients look at my own Twitter and Google + accounts and think “there’s no way I’m letting her handle my social media strategy – she doesn’t even have a community of her own!” but one of my resolutions for 2013 is to stop caring, because a large social accumulation of online contacts is not within my specific content calendar. As a brand (freelancers get to be a brand, right?) I am less concerned with promoting myself, but rather focus on promoting my clients and writing to further their brand.

Twitter Envy

Recently (up until last week) I would view the Twitter feed of other strategists or friends about my age / experience level, and feel a pang of guilt that I didn’t have a larger social network. I wasn’t “an influencer” and nobody would ever try to connect with me to gain any kind of ranking or further their prominence in the online social sphere. And as much as I hate to admit it, it honestly made me feel sort of bad. I felt lazy, like I wasn’t trying hard enough to promote myself as a freelancer or as a writer. I was at work one day, cherrypicking ”influencers” to follow based solely on the number of their followers, not the value of their content. I felt like a bum because a guy with 300 tweets (mostly retweets of other writers’ articles) had 11,000 followers and I had 80. And later that night, as I lay in bed at 2 A.M., catching up with the insane amounts of content from my Twitter feed, Google Reader, Facebook feed, work email, freelance email, etc., the guilt turned to annoyance. I had become a person that an online human interest blog could cite as a statistic. An airline magazine could use me for a source in a sidebar article. They would probably use the word “milennial.” “Fear of Missing Out” had caught up with me.

Fear of Losing Sight

I actually have a personal calendar of online content that I curate for myself. I cross-post links that I think my small community of friends and acquaintances would find useful. I write the occasional post about my feelings regarding social media. I will tweet at a friend to reply to a comment they posted. But afterward, I put on my hiking boots and go outside to a park. I keep my feelings about politics to myself. I don’t pick fights or respond to feed into aggressive comments online. I typically wait to comment on celebrities or movies over drinks with my friends. I shouldn’t have to feel bad about that. I also shouldn’t feel like a bad strategist because I didn’t take photos to post and geotag on Instagram to then link back to my blog immediately after a hike to promote the fact that I was there. It REALLY HAPPENED. Follow me to find out what I do and say and eat next!*

Though I recognize the professional implications of a fully rounded social network, it is not something I wish to create for myself, either as the 9-5 content strategist self, or the self that sits around in pajama pants in my down time. It is simply not true to my nature, and I think that the essence of a quality content strategy is identifying your core concept, creating messaging that rings true, and broadcasting it through as many relevant channels as possible.

Balancing the Line Between Overkill and Relevance

It’s a good thing that my background in rhetorical composition and my strong drive  of empathy exists, because while I largely eschew social media, it is still a space in which I can navigate and command with ease. I can choose to keep my personal business personal, yet strategize campaigns and respond to social media crises when needed. While I elect to keep my personal activities hosted and maintained within my own blog, I know how to utilize the overwhelming majority of social applications and analytics to my client’s benefit.

The fact is that we live in an age where social communication is the norm – people shout and complain over Twitter or have hangouts with their sister where they do yoga in the living room 800 miles apart. I am guilty of both. Just as the expectation of being available to work 24/7 has crept into our professional lives, an irritating sense that we need to be constantly connected to our peers on a personal level to influence them, inform them, help them, socialize with them, whatever else with them has dominated our free time.

So while I’ll post this on Twitter because it’s professionally relevant, my resolution for 2013 is to not look up the ending of a movie on Wikipedia while I’m still watching it and then tweet about it. I’m going to stop “checking in” at restaurants and I’m not going to piggyback on the coattails of an established social persona in hopes of a repost or mention. If it keeps me from having a focused discussion with a friend over dinner or spending quality time with my dog or nature, it’s not happening. I’ll certainly do it for you if you pay me, but it’s just not who my personality test said I am.

*Um, I sort of do have a blog at www.thebluetrail.com where I do just that. You should follow me and feed my ego.

To me, content strategy is a no-brainer: I strategize ways to create and disperse multi-media content in the most effective way possible within a set of parameters dictated by an editorial calendar. But that begs the questions “what kind of content?” “Do you make videos?” “Are you a writer?” “That sounds like something a media planner or brand strategist would do, right?”

The best way I can explain what I do for the majority of my week is as follows: I sit back and carefully consider the publishable assets that are currently available to me and my client, and brainstorm those assets that need to be created. I consider the brand’s current customers, its prospective customers and its latent customers who can benefit from digesting textual or visual content that we’ve carefully placed in their line of sight. I consider the company’s needs and identify ways that we can create media that can help drive sales, increase engagement, foster goodwill and facilitate a rich user experience.

How Rhetoric and Composition Works with Content Strategy

I’m a big fan of referencing my academic experience in rhetoric and composition when explaining my work, because it serves to prove that content strategy isn’t a flash-in-the-pan reinvention of traditional marketing – it’s a method of fully utilizing the historic principles of classical rhetoric.

When you’re creating content, you often begin with personas. You’re considering the audience, first and foremost and using methods of persuasion that appeal to a targeted audience.

• You use ethos to establish your authority by writing white papers, thought leadership articles and consistent blog posts to establish your brand as reputable.
• You use pathos to understand and touch on your audience’s emotions about how your brand, product or service can positively impact them on a human level. How can you and your offerings make their life easier, solve a problem, or give them more time to spend on personal projects or with family?
• And finally, using a logical approach or logos provides the reader with the core information he or she needs to make an informed decision.

Editorial Calendars

Carefully planned editorial calendars keep a strategy on track, and help you get a big picture view of your content map months down the line. By developing editorial calendars (often shared with the department, sometimes private for my own reference and revision) I can ensure that I don’t have duplicate topics or tangential articles that deliver little or no value to the consumer. It helps to offer transparency between team members and brings everyone into the fold to create the most effective messaging strategy possible.

Content Development

In my current role, I write…a lot. I write blog articles, respond to social media complaints and inquiries, edit brochures and white papers, draft award submissions and work on almost anything else that has words on it. As we work toward developing a style guide for a consistent tone and voice across communications, we’ll expand these duties throughout the department, but for now, my duties as a “writer” are primarily to maintain a consistent brand presence.

There is a lot more that I do on a day-to-day basis. With digital media comes the technological side of SEO, taxonomy, 404 errors, redirect issues, page load, duplicate content considerations and a host of other governance issues related to content strategy. It’s a role that is continually evolving and has quickly evolved for me. Three years ago, I was an SEO copywriter and now – while I am still an SEO copywriter some of the time – my job has morphed into vendor management, analysis, social media and community management, brand strategy, establishing a POV and tone of voice and whatever else comes my way.

It’s an exciting and expanding job, and I love doing it. If you have any questions about content strategy for your business in Atlanta, or just want to talk about your communications roadmap, give me a call. I love working with new people to help transform their messaging.

Since I came on board in July 2011, this has been my primary project and I feel an incredible sense of relief that it’s over. So far, we’re seeing incredible usability results including substancial gains in time on site and pageviews as well as a drastic reduction in bounce rate.

So even though I can finally breathe a sigh of relief, the visual and IA aspect of the site is just the tip of the iceberg. Now comes the continuation of content strategy to make sure this site stays strong and works with all of our other assets.

Check it out! A great team worked on this project and there will be many more iterative changes to come in the next few weeks / month.

Fast forward a few years, and I’m actively seeking out relevant conferences and seminars to attend in order to boost my inspiration, spur creativity, and gain an ancillary interest in related industries. Sure, I’m taking a few hours off of work and I do feel a little stressed knowing that my inbox is expanding with every minute that I’m sipping my coffee in the conference hall, but the long-term results are invaluable.

I went to Matt Rollins’ Creative Mornings presentation a few months back, and immediately broke out my copy of the Narrative Paradigm I had meant to read in graduate school (but never got around to…whoops.) Which led to a renewed interest in narrative structure, storytelling and big picture content strategy. My attendance at A Web Afternoon got me thinking about the evolution of a personal brand and prompted me to spruce up my online portfolio site, and my participation in Global Service Jam – Atlanta inspired me to look for pro bono projects or set aside time to help my friends use digital marketing to further their own endeavors.

The moral of the story is that I may have done these things by myself anyway – Walter Fisher may have made it on to my Kindle and I may have purchased dozens of eBooks about marketing and content strategy sometime down the road, but these seminars (which I really consider to be continuing education because I learn so much) prompt me to be curious, inspired and hungry for more.

Upcoming:

This afternoon, I registered for Digital Atlanta in October,  I’m really looking forward to battling it out to get a seat for the next Creative Mornings at the High Museum, and hoping to attend the High’s upcoming ACP lecture series.