Marketing Calendar Blueprint

The Symphony Strategy

I’m not sure if you know this but I interviewed some cool companies for our Marketing Calendar Product. One of those companies was the Nashville Symphony.

Recently I got a chance to sit down with them and learn more about their social media strategy; they’re one of the few symphonies in the world that has a social media staff.

The most interesting thing about their role is that is has nothing to do with sales. (You probably read more about that in my interview with Nissan and how they do their social media).

Their only goal is community engagement and involvement. And their metrics are all about comments, likes, questions, emails, discussions, followers and stuff like that. They truly want to be a community partner.

But that’s not why I wrote you today. I thought you’d be interested in seeing their “micro-social media” strategy. This is what they try to do every day. I thought it was fascinating:

Facebook: No less than 1 post per day, no more than 3. They respond within one hour. They use Hyperalerts.no to manage their Facebook comments

Twitter: No more than 22 tweets per day, no less than 3. Respond within 15 minutes. They use Hootsuite to manage their tweets.

YouTube: A new :90 second video 2 times per week.

Tumblr: One post per department, per day (that’s amazing to me)

Instagram: Share Photos & Likes to Twitter

Email: No more than 2 emails per week to one address

That’s real strategy and thinking eh? Are you being that “on purpose” about your efforts? And was that cool or what? Come over to http://FreeWeeklyMastermind.com and chat it up!

The Problem with Marketing Calendars

I opened up my email today and noticed quite a few people talking about marketing calendars. I even saw a few screen shots of people’s calendars that said things like:

Feb 1 Send email about chocolate
Feb 3 Upload chocolate blog post
Feb 5 Start promoting Reggies book

Some of the marketing calendar suggestions just made me chuckle.

Just because you put your to-do’s on a calendar doesn’t mean you have a strategy, doesn’t mean you understand your customer base and doesn’t mean you’re going to be any more successful tomorrow than you were yesterday.

A marketing calendar needs much more thought than putting to-do’s on paper. A strategy laid out and thought through lays out on a calendar quite nicely. It’s not as if you’re going to implement an entire strategy in one day, right? So don’t even begin to put one together until you understand these things: Continue reading “The Problem with Marketing Calendars”

Using Analytics to Fuel Your Marketing Calendar

Hopefully you’re using an analytics suite like Google Analytics to track your efforts. The information you get from these statistics enable you to make decisions, change your methods and better target your revenue sources. What most people don’t do however, is use their analytics to improve their marketing calendar strategy.

Let’s take Halloween for example. You’ve used Google Trends (among other ways) to figure out when your marketing should begin, you’ve used your keyword research tool to figure out what to write about, and you’ve used the AdWords Contextual Targeting Tool to help figure out how to structure your internal linking.

And then you’ve got Google Analytics (and to some degree WebmasterTools) to help you assess your progress. Well if you stop there, you’re only using half your resources. What you learn in your analytics package is how you begin putting together your marketing calendar in the first place. (it’s like a vicious circle) Continue reading “Using Analytics to Fuel Your Marketing Calendar”

Using Hashtags in your Marketing Plan

Are hashtags part of your annual marketing plan? Have you ever even considered doing something more proactive with them than just using your normal ones? If you spend any time preparing for holidays, seasons and events, then you should actively market with hashtags.

[stextbox id=”black”]In case you missed the memo, a hashtag is a set of characters used to organize content in social media. Typically a hashtag starts with the pound sign (#) and is followed by some characters. Since common English words don’t start with a pound sign, using a hashtag means you can easily search for content that contains that unique phrase. Both on Twitter and Instagram, for instance, you can click on the hashtag and find everything else using that tag.[/stextbox] Continue reading “Using Hashtags in your Marketing Plan”

A Marketing Calendar: More than holidays

Every December I see people peddling marketing calendars. Most of them are blank templates which I’ve always called a calendar. Others include lists of holidays to put on the calendar, and places for “important dates”. But planning your business is way more involved than labeling a few holidays.

While an editorial calendar is useful, it should be part of your overall plan – not THE plan. Whether you’re a scrapbooker, a service based business, a holiday decorations website or Nike – you need tie everything you know about marketing to a timeline from which you can plan your success. Assigning dates to your productivity makes you a ton more productive. Continue reading “A Marketing Calendar: More than holidays”