100 Digital Assets Strategy Providing Online Content Building Relationships Description of Digital Assets Step-by-Step Process for Building a Digital Asset Library Best Practices for Delivering Digital Assets and Building Relationships Online
Overview Many organizations trying to leverage social technologies wonder why their channels grow quiet. Or why they don t have many followers? Or why no one interacts with their posts? Often this comes down to content, and are you providing a benefit to a would-be online follower? One-to-One Digital Marketing techniques allow us to have a much more direct interaction with customers and potential customers than we ve ever had before. Those relationships can be cultivated, monitored, and eventually turned into sales if handled correctly, but it all starts with relationship building. Think about your own online use; sometimes you go online seeking information, sometimes you re just on there looking for entertainment. Part of building relationships with people online is recognizing what they are on there for and using that. If the only posts you make have to do with selling a product, there s a good chance your followers will become annoyed and ignore you or stop following you altogether. If that happens, the relationship is basically over (at least until you change your ways and win them back). The 100 Digital Assets Strategy provides step-by-step instructions for enhancing your organization's brand through developing valuable content and strategically placing it through your various online platforms. When we say 100 Digital Assets we mean that literally; you need to go to work developing some combination of 100 videos, documents, presentations, and infographics that you can share across your channels and use to interact with people. Tagging and backlinking the
digital assets you develop supports building your online reputation and relevance as a trusted expert, improves your online findability, and helps your constituents and potential customers get to know you. We ve developed a seven-step process for developing these assets and sharing them online for maximum effect. Goals The basic goal of this strategy is to begin building a library of digital assets that can be used to help develop your organization s brand online. These assets will have several uses as well: salespeople can use them as follow up tools, they can contribute to buzz about your company, and they can be designed to be spread broadly or to target specific audiences that you re trying to reach. These assets will provide ground support to your sales force and create an environment in which they are able to close more sales. These days, the old Rolodex used by the sales departments of the past has moved online, and these assets are great tools for helping to increase someone s list of contacts. For example, digital assets can be traded for customer information through web-downloads, and then that information can be used by sales to track down a potential customer and hopefully close a sale. Developing a consistent process for refreshing and creating new content and linking it to your website will improve your online findability and position you to establish a reputation as an expert in a particular field. You can use this to increase your name recognition and the amount of people that know about your organization or products. This increases your pool of
potential customers. Finally, you can target the placement of these assets to reach new or larger markets than you had been selling to previously. For example, let s say you re a car seat manufacturer and one of your assets is a video showing your car seat in a crash test compared alongside your top competitors and your product performs better. When that video is distributed, it would be a good idea to target it so that parents see it, and maybe more specifically so that mothers see it. They are the people most likely to act because of your digital asset, so they should be the ones to see it. Although teenagers might enjoy watching the crash tests, positioning the video on channels that are primarily used by younger audiences would be the wrong market because those viewers aren t going to be buying car seats anytime soon. It s not rocket science, but you should put some thought into it; this will give you better results than a, spray-and-pray campaign would bring you. We want you to have this library so that you can begin cultivating these relationships and turning them into sales. Process The following steps outline how to craft and execute the 100 Digital Asset Strategy within the context of your overall Digital Marketing Strategy. This includes defining your goals, selecting the platforms, and deploying the assets. 1. Clarify what value (beyond the specific product or service you sell) your organization is especially qualified to provide to your constituents. What is the benefit you provide to your customers? It s important you know this because
it will help you narrow in on the types of digital assets you will need to build relationships with your customers. In other words, what are the types of assets that people online will interact with instead of ignore? By defining the value that you provide, it will help you stay on track with the development of appropriate assets. You may have multiple values that you provide. That s fine; it gives you more content ideas for digital assets. 2. Set a goal to deploy a certain number of assets across multiple channels over a specific time frame (we suggest shooting for 25 in each category: video, documents, presentations, infographics). The point here is to think big. How can you get 100 assets out there quickly? Once you have those 100 you can build more over time. 100 Digital Assets seem like a lot, but by breaking them down into 25 videos, 25 documents, 25 presentations, and 25 infographics, it makes it easier to plan out how they will be built. Plus, this gives you a mix of materials. Begin thinking about what the best mix would be to reach the audience you hope to reach. 100 Digital Assets is not a magic number, it s just a goal so that they assets are created at a good pace. Once you ve built your 100 Digital Assets you should set a new goal and start creating more. 3. Do the research to identify what resources you already have that would be of value to certain constituents. These resources could be assets that somebody already created and are simply lying around, they could be a person with a specific skill set or knowledge base that you could tap into, or it could be a unique perspective on a topic that could be developed into digital assets
and deployed. You probably already have things around the office that others would find interesting. Maybe people in your office like to share videos they find about topics related to your industry. Do you have anyone with a specific expertise that has resources on topics or could write articles about the topic to use? All of these could give you a big head start in building a library of 100 Digital Assets. 4. Develop strategies for each asset class: videos, documents, presentations, and infographics. Think about what assets you could create. This step is really an extension of the previous point, but in this step you want to think a bit outside the box. Ask yourself some questions like these: What would be a series of five videos we could create that would be clever, funny and somewhat true? You re looking for ideas that would make a certain impression, and have a high pass-around rate. What kind of short product or branding videos could we produce? What about a series of three videos on the history of the company? What topics could we develop white papers on to add to a particular field of knowledge relevant to our constituents lives? Are there how-to s or instruction manuals we can create? What focused content could we create as a PowerPoint that would make a relevant point? What complex issue could we develop an infographic, or a graphic representation, around that could explain with visual power and simplicity? Begin listing off your answers to each of these questions and how each of these would be a
benefit to the people you are trying to reach. Keep this list so that, even after you ve passed 100 Digital Assets, you ll have ideas to continue to build your library in the future. 5. Select the actual platforms you will use. Some examples are YouTube for video, Scribd or Reddit for documents, SlideShare for presentations, and Flickr or Pinterest for Infographics. Picking the right outlet is extremely important to this strategy. It would help to get an understanding of the demographics using each social tool and how they are being used. To that second point, of how they are being used, it would also be a good idea to use the tool personally; this helps give you a better understanding of the tool and if it is the right choice for putting a particular digital asset on. As you re making your list of the digital assets you have, also list which platform you want to use it on. 6. Refine the targets described in step 2 and assign people to own each one. By assigning an owner to each category of assets, you re putting responsibility on a single person and holding them accountable to develop these assets. It s a good idea to pick people who are familiar with the type of asset you are trying to create. Find people who know about making videos, and others who are good at making infographics, etc. Lean on them to help you fill in each category. After you have your 100 Digital Assets. It might be a good idea to switch people into developing different kinds of assets so that they improve in other areas outside of their strengths. In the meantime, creating ownership will help ensure that your assets get created.
7. Develop a release strategy to deploy the assets in ways that coordinate with existing blogging and social media efforts. You don t want to blast out every asset you have at once; create a schedule so that you can spread these out over a period of time. Also, put some thought into when these assets are going out. Putting something out at 2 a.m. probably won t get as much attention as something posted at 10 a.m. (unless you re trying to reach overnight workers or night owls). Find out when your audience is most active and try to reach them at those times. Use the tools you have to maximize the impact of each asset by generating attention for them through your blogs and social networks Expected Outcomes Our expectation is that this strategy will not only increase the traffic and interaction that you have through your social outlets, but that it will also eventually help you build better relationships with customers (or potential customers) and hopefully lead to more sales. The better you are at tracking this, the better you ll be at projecting revenue that can be brought in through Digital Marketing campaigns. This strategy also gives you a repeatable process to generate useable online content, and developing a well-rounded library of it. The different types of content (video, documents, presentations, infographics) reach different people. The variety ensures that you are using multiple tools to distribute it, and interacting with each tool s users. Steadily building quality content to distribute online is tough to do, but this strategy will help you do it by process. It never ends; you re always going to need more content to build more
relationships. Once you have 100 Digital Assets, it s time to start building 100 more! Supporting Documents Here are some additional things to keep in mind as you generate ideas for each channel: Video Runtime should be short - around 90 seconds Use humor Establish characters if possible Tie to QR codes Create different types that will support sales efforts Refresh them regularly Documents Whitepapers Product data sheets Customer case studies Industry recap Positioning statements How To documents Competitive analysis Graphics/Photos/Infographics Pictures of offices Pictures of products Pictures of executives
Performance Graphics Maps Diagrams Presentations Overviews of products or services How-to s on industry subjects Best industry practices Future positioning statements Case studies Graphical installation instructions Competitive positioning Advice for setting up and effectively using Social Media accounts When you set up your channel(s) and playlists, here are some best practices to keep in mind: Learn the community culture of the platform s ecosystem. Think about why and how your followers will share your content. Shareability is a huge factor; without it your idea or perfect execution won t matter much. YouTube and channels like it are a way to make your corporate face multi-dimensional and real. In this way you can use it to create real relationships with real human beings... it s a long-term strategy, so be patient! Once you start, stick with it. Refresh content often. Don t get discouraged. EVERYONE started with zero content. Use the new channel design to your advantage: create a high quality channel header, and a channel trailer (to attract non-subscribers). Use your accounts to push people to your website and integrate activities of both. Here s a great short list of techniques from udemy.com:
For most businesses, it doesn t do much good if your YouTube subscribers only hang out at your channel. At first you may be focused on growing subscribers and views on YouTube, but at some point, there should be a focused effort to push people over to your website. A few tips to encourage this transfer: I. Include a link to your website in the first line of each video description. II. Include links to your site in the about section and in the header of your channel. III. Release programming that appears on both YouTube and your site. For example part 1 of a video is on your channel but part 2 can only be found on your site. Or you can use a teaser video on YouTube and direct people over to your site for the complete video. Or you can post supplemental content, like a blog entry, that is only available if they visit your site. In addition, most online tools have detailed content that is designed to help you optimize your use of the platform for a range of purposes including branding and advertising. You can also search online (and through other tools) about best practices for any platform.