Vancouver 2014

All posts tagged Vancouver 2014

Dear Diary, I had a Content Marketing Makeover Today

by Kelly Kubrick on April 30, 2014

First published Digital Strategy Conference blog, authored by Tara Dong: Lover of learning, coffee and all things digital. Social media junkie, digital strategy consultant, SFU instructor and raiser of super heroes with puppy breath. Want to know more about me? Visit spryberry.co

When I read through a conference line-up and see a name such as Ann Handley, that same little part of my brain lights up like it does when I find out my favourite shoe store is having a sale. The cynic in me then says: the deals won’t be THAT good, they won’t have my size left, I’m sure she just has a great content strategy and PR team. Well folks, the woman ahead of me in line just handed me the last pair of boots I was lusting after. In my size. At 95% off.

Ann dove into Dear Diary: A Content Marketing Makeover with an terrifyingly accurate representation of my day. She claims that this is a fictional marketer character, and I appreciated her use of a highly attractive model standing looking wistful and lost in a field…rather than one of me (covered in mud and pulling out my hair).

Dear Diary: Today I created a blog post and I tweeted four times. No one commented or retweeted me. I felt alone, especially when I went to my company Facebook page, and saw that my PTAT score is -42. How is that even possible? Only our Google+ is hopping. (Ha! Just kidding)

We emulate publishers, but the question is:

Are publishers the ones to emulate?

 

We can borrow much from what we know about publishing and modify it, but it’s not enough to be a publisher anymore. We need to give it a makeover:

  1. Focus on empathy and experiences instead of articles and blog posts
  2. Focus on relevance and inspiration
  3. Focus on useful

Useful x Empathy x Inspired = Great Content

 

The multiplication sign here is key, because if any of the three elements is zero, the result is ZERO.

I know, it’s easy for Ann to say this, but how do I know if I’m inspired (My mother thinks I’m brilliant – does that count?)? Fortunately she provided us with an easy to follow list of questions to ask to ensure that you’re useful, empathetic and inspired.

Ask yourself:

  1. Who do you want to reach?
  2. What value do you want to give?
  3. What do you want them to do next?
  4. “Will my customers thank me for this content?”

If so, then you know you are doing it right.

And so began a wonderful wander through examples from what best-in-class marketers are doing to create content.

Pillar Properties, an apartment rental firm in Seattle, is getting it right. Check out their development, The Lyric. They are providing real content that is useful, empathetic and inspired. They are using a lot of “you and yours” and not “us and them”. They are sharing about the community, and in it they are building community.

Don Murray, Author of Lessons from America’s Greatest Writing Teacher puts it this way, “Does what you’re delivering to your reader make them say: ‘Now listen to this, Ira!’?”

Wistia, a video marketing platform demonstrates both through their initial series, “Top Hat Tuesdays” and its deconstruction demonstrate a profound level of mastering Ann’s formula.

Levenfeld Pearlstein, a law firm, asked their employees revealing questions like “what did you want to be when you were a little girl” “If you could time travel where would you go?” telling the inner story of their people.

How do you do this?

  1. Tell stories about people
  2. Use fun language (“Don’t want to sign up for our email list? It’s ok, but you’re breaking our hearts”)
  3. make a commitment to think about things differently

What about SEO, does it matter?

Bottom Line:

The best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing,

it feels like content.

Be sure to ask for an Indigo or Chapters card for your birthday because Ann is releasing a new book in August: Everybody Writes: Your essential guide to publishing content you’ll be ridiculous proud of.

About the author: Tara Dong
Lover of learning, coffee and all things digital. Social media junkie, digital strategy consultant, SFU instructor and raiser of super heroes with puppy breath. Want to know more about me? Visit spryberry.co
~ Tara Dong ~

read more
Kelly KubrickDear Diary, I had a Content Marketing Makeover Today

Every Bottle Has a Story: Digital Maturity Lessons from Coca-Cola Sustainability

by Kelly Kubrick on April 29, 2014

First published on the Digital Strategy Conference blog, authored by Tara Dong. Tara Dong:
Lover of learning, coffee and all things digital. Social media junkie, digital strategy consultant, SFU instructor and raiser of super heroes with puppy breath. Want to know more about me? Visit spryberry.co

There is no doubt in my mind, or likely anyone’s, that Coca-Cola is an international brand with serious clout.  This clout can raise both kudos, questions and criticisms.  Having volunteered extensively in some of the poorest regions of Mexico, I’ve watched with deep concern as parents gave their children bottles of Coca-Cola to drink because it is cheaper than bottled water and contain desperately needed calories.  Empty calories yes, but when your family is struggling to survive in a region with undrinkable water, you do what you can. I wondered to myself if Coca-Cola cared about these families, these impoverished communities…

Enter Tim Goudie, Social Media Director, Sustainability for Coca-Cola.  His presentation was powerful, but for more than its emotional impact on our attendees and organizers.

The Coca-Cola Company is 125+ year old organization that didn’t just transition into the digital and social business age, it is leading the way. Among many achievements in 2013: the Company was named the Cannes Lions Creative Marketer of the Year; it is in a 13-year run as Interbrand’s Most Valuable Global Brand; and the Company’s marketing strategies and innovative consumer engagement work earned it a place among Fast Company magazine’s Top 15 Most Innovative Companies in the World.

No small part of the Coca-Cola Company success is due to its strong leaders, including Tim. In 2005 Tim led a team of four people responsible for designing, building and delivering global interactive marketing experiences for key Coca-Cola Company brands across multiple markets in multiple languages; and contributed to the design and launch of coca-cola.com.  The organization journeyed towards sustainable growth by instituting five key “Principles for Change“.

Tim began by entertaining and moving us with how digital has both made us ridiculous and transformed lives.  He challenged the room to realize that sustainability is the next frontier, how we are giving back, treating the resources and communities that are entrusted to us is our Social Purpose.

Social Purpose becomes the single most important factor in distinguishing you from your competitors.

Coke is seeking to: refresh the world, inspire moments of optimism and happiness, and create value and make a difference.

These are wonderful ideas, but how do you tell someone who is making less than $1 a day that you want to “inspire moments of optimism and happiness”?  You don’t, instead you move to the third element and create value and make a difference.

The model behind Coca-Cola’s magic

Social Business Strategy | If you have a hierarchical structure that is not nimble and responsive, and you’re compensated to operate within that structure, human nature says that’s where you’re going to operate.  That structure needs to be turned on it’s head if what we want is nimble and responsive.

Data & Technology | Measurement is essential, you need tools, good ones to measure if your campaigns are having any effect on consumer trust.  You need to know who, what, when, where, why.  And tell your data story, Coke turns each 60+ page report into a one page infographic summary that can be given to executive, etc.

Content Strategy | Once you know your data and demographics, adjust your content to suit your followers.  Coke liked creating documentary style stories, some upwards of 5 minutes.  To respect and engage their audience these lengthy videos needed to be turned into 30 seconds “shorts” that engage on mobile devices, and then funnel their audience to YouTube. On YouTube their longer videos were there for those interested.  More shockingly Coca-Cola discovered if they dropped their branding off the first posts (30 second videos) their engagement rates went up all the way down the chain, ultimately leading audience to the journey website .

Channel Strategy | Stick to the meat and potatoes (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) and avoid shiny pennies (Pinterest, Vine) where you can’t target by demographic. Don’t pay to target people you’re not trying to reach.

Tim Goudie, Social Media Director, Sustainability, The Coca Cola Company

read more
Kelly KubrickEvery Bottle Has a Story: Digital Maturity Lessons from Coca-Cola Sustainability

Six Dimensions of Digital Maturity – Introductory Review

by Kelly Kubrick on April 29, 2014

Originally published on the Digital Strategy Conference blog; republished with permission from dStrategy Media. Author: Jeremy Whittingstall – Professional communicator with a penchant for filmmaking on the side. Masters Degree. Accredited Business Communicator. Husband. Dad.

Take a deep breath, here is the Digital Maturity Model™ from 10,000 ft

The Digital maturity Model exist to give perspective on your current state and prepare you for moving forward. In 2013, Andrea Hadley and Kelly Kubrick introduced the dStrategy Digital Maturity Model™ and over the past year have conducted research that suggests the point in which an organization graduates from one level of maturity to the next. When you understand how the dimensions of digital maturity are measured, you’ll be better positioned to rate where your organization stands today and how to anticipate the next curve in the road.

Let’s dive in!

What is Digital Strategy?

Digital strategy is the process of identifying, articulating and executing on digital opportunities that will increase your organization’s competitive advantage.

So – if digital strategy is a process, remember that a process presumes a progression – from an initial starting point, to the approach of and overtaking of milestones to destinations both identified and unknown.

However, most of us need something far more concrete to take those first steps into digital. A practical and efficient way to do this is to take advantage of established planning tools, such as a maturity models. “Maturity Models” are a tried and tested planning tool and can be found across industries and topics.

Maturity Model = Planning Tool

“Maturity” relates to the degree of formality and optimization of processes. Think about a process in your organization, complex or simple:

  1. Opening a new store
  2. Publishing a web page or email newsletter issue
  3. Producing a conference

As a planning tool, maturity models can be used to help you improve these processes by assessing your approach to them today. As with other maturity models, the Digital Maturity Model™ is also a business planning tool. It is intended to help your organization assess and improve its digital processes.

The Six Dimensions of Digital Maturity

Think of these as the resources and capabilities your organization must have in place in order to identify, articulate and execute on digital opportunities.

  1. Human Resources
  2. Technology Resources
  3. Data Strategy
  4. Content Strategy
  5. Channel Strategy
  6. Social Business Strategy

Ratings of Digital Maturity

The second key component in the Digital Maturity Model™ is the rating scale. The model contains assessment criteria you can use to rate your organization’s current approach to each dimension.

Image of dStrategy Digital Maturity Model™

dStrategy Digital Maturity Model™

Breaking down the dimensions

Human Resources

The first dimension of digital maturity is Human Resources. Think of your people in three different groups:

  1. People currently working with digital technology and process.
  2. Senior management / C-suite looking at threats and opportunities resulting from digital, and the impact of digital on the organization’s business model
  3. People who are not using digital technologies, processes or media who could be; finding increased efficiencies

Now, think about your organization’s approach to its people working on digital:

  1. Who are they and what level are they at?
  2. Is digital their primary responsibility or is it an ‘off the corner of their desk’ prioritization?
  3. What kind of organizational support is provided?
  4. Do they work alone or as part of a larger team?
  5. Do they report to management that has digital training and or expertise?
  6. If part of a team, is the team predominantly working on digital or non-digital initiatives?
  7. What kind of training – in digital – is provided to those resources?
Technology Resources

The second dimension of digital maturity addresses your organization’s approach to the technology resources your organization uses to implement its digital initiatives. Think about your organization:

  1. Which technologies have you invested into support your digital initiatives?
  2. How are those technologies used / supported?
  3. Are the technologies used by individuals? By teams? Or across the organization?
  4. What policies and procedures do you have in place to govern the use of the technologies?

We’ve identified four core technology categories:

  1. Content management systems
  2. Analytics
  3. Channel management
  4. Social business
Data Strategy

Data strategy reflects all the ways you capture, store, manage and use information. What do we mean by data? Your data sources might include:

  1. Email marketing, Social media and/or campaign data from ad networks or paid search
  2. Market Research data from surveys, focus groups or usability testing
  3. Sales, prospecting or lead nurturing data; or CRM data; ecommerce data
  4. Call center data from call logs, interactive voice response (IVR)
  5. Web analytics data from tools such as Adobe Analytics or Google Analytics
  6. Data from Content Management System or social business tools

In our “digital” world, it is a key dimension of our digital strategy. Data is the output of the implementation of our digital initiatives and it is what’s driving continuous improvement processes (or optimization); as well as increased accountability and the opportunity for making more informed business decisions.

Content Strategy

This section relates to your organization’s approach to content. content strategy is a comprehensive process that builds a framework to create, manage, deliver, share and archive or renew content in reliable ways. Remember, your content assets could include:

  1. Sales / advertising collateral
  2. Product support and / or customer service content
  3. User generated content such as reviews, testimonials, customer service tickets.
Channel Strategy

Our model assumes three potential channels you may be leveraging:

  1. Marketing/Communications channels
  2. Transaction enabling channels
  3. Distribution channels

You’ll notice that “mobile” is not a channel – instead, our model assumes your digital channel interactions regardless of the customers use of desktop web vs mobile environments.

Social Business Strategy

“Social business” is an emerging term with a three pronged approach. It presumes an intent to interact and collaborate:

  1. With your community (Requires a foundation in social media)
  2. Between your employees (Requires the culture and technology to support a collaborative work environment)
  3. Between your customers (Requires infrastructure to support their efforts)

The Social Business Dimension speaks to the organization’s approach to interaction and collaboration with all three audiences.

So that’s it! The Digital Maturity Model from 10,000 ft. Over the next three days we will be going into granular detail on what each dimension means and how to map it for your company. Stay tuned!

kellykubrick_100

Kelly Kubrick, President, Online Authority / Partner, dStrategy Media

andreahadley_100

Andrea Hadley, Conference Chair, Digital Strategy Conference Vancouver

read more
Kelly KubrickSix Dimensions of Digital Maturity – Introductory Review
Six Dimensions of Digital Maturity Icons

Introducing the Six Dimensions of Digital Maturity, aka the dStrategy Digital Maturity Model™

by Kelly Kubrick on November 19, 2012

Originally published on the Digital Strategy Conference blog; republished with permission from dStrategy Media.

Do any of these sound familiar?

  • A digital campaign launches without measurement
  • A new product launches but the online customer support content doesn’t get updated
  • A new technology conflicts with an existing process in the online sales channel

Given all that we know about digital business today, how do these things happen?

It starts innocently. The pressure to launch – a responsive website, a Twitter account, anything – everything! – is such that the project kicks off without a clear, let alone known, process.

The requirement for action overwhelms the time available to plan. Suddenly, your digital presence suffers from the old “Fire, Ready, Aim” joke.

We promise there is a better way. Take advantage of established business planning tools such project plans and budgets. And, maturity models.

Take advantage of maturity models

A maturity model is business planning tool to help your organization improve processes against an established standard. Maturity models include assessment criteria and a method to score your efforts relative to the criteria.

The lower your score, the more opportunity there is to improve. The higher your score, the more you have optimized a given process, and the higher your maturity rating is.

Most importantly, the simplicity and clarity of a completed maturity model provides everyone in your organization a common starting point: the equivalent of the arrow on a map saying “You are here”.

 

What is a digital maturity model?

A digital maturity model is a business planning tool specifically intended to help your organization assess its digital processes against an established standard. Doing so will provide a framework – a road map, if you will – to progress your digital efforts.

By knowing where you are today, you are better able to decide where you could be in the future – and how you will get there. Assessing your digital maturity will help you visualize your path forward and set priorities for digital process improvement.

 

Introducing the Six Dimensions of Digital Maturity – the dStrategy Digital Maturity Model™

We created the dStrategy Digital Maturity Model, including assessment criteria and a rating method – from Zero, through Low, Medium and High – to help you assess your organization’s current digital maturity.

Image of the Six Dimensions of Digital Maturity - the dStrategy Digital Maturity Model

Six Dimensions of Digital Maturity – dStrategy Digital Maturity Model

Our assessment criteria span six dimensions, each of which is necessary for the successful execution of digital strategy. The Six Dimensions of Digital Maturity™ are described at each link below:

  1. Human Resources
  2. Technology Resources
  3. Data Strategy
  4. Content Strategy
  5. Channel Strategy
  6. Social Business Strategy

We look forward to discussing the dStrategy Digital Maturity Model™ with you here, and at the next Digital Strategy Conference.

In 2013, we introduced the dStrategy Digital Maturity Model™ at Digital Strategy Conference Vancouver, British Columbia and Ottawa, Ontario. Our audience not only confirmed the tremendous value that the Model provides, they asked, “What’s next?”

Share your insights

Next, we’re happy to report, is the dStrategy Digital Maturity Benchmark Survey. Now in it’s third year, we invite you to share your insights.

Learn how to measure and map your organization’s digital maturity

Then, you asked us how you could map your organization’s digital maturity and how you could apply and act on your assessment results. We listened and launched the Mapping Digital Maturity Workshop Corporate Training, a practical, hands-on learning session to help your organization create a road map for digital success.

We look forward to the next step in our collective path to digital maturity with you!

read more
Kelly KubrickIntroducing the Six Dimensions of Digital Maturity, aka the dStrategy Digital Maturity Model™
Digital Strategy Conference collage

What is Digital Strategy?

by Kelly Kubrick on November 9, 2012

Originally published on the Digital Strategy Conference blog; republished with permission from dStrategy Media.

Defining Digital Strategy: Finding Common Ground

As a relatively new concept, there is no commonly understood definition of digital strategy. Many would say that digital strategy has to do with incorporating email, websites and social networks into marketing and communications efforts. Some might say it has to do with accepting electronic payment, registrations or donations. Others would say that it relates to going mobile.

Depending on your sector and industry, the perception and role of digital changes radically. To some, it’s disruptive in the worst possible way. To digital–first companies, it is their native habitat. To many, it hints at new opportunities – and to far too many, it is threatening, impacting roles and job expectations.

To muddy the waters further, the rationale for digital is ever evolving. Initial efforts focused on substitution – uncovering cost savings and improved efficiency. Then, focus shifted to identifying what we could sell online. And today, focus has shifted again, as we find ourselves asking how to use digital to improve the overall business.

Which brings us to this:

Digital Strategy Leads to Competitive Advantage

Digital strategy is the process of identifying, articulating and executing on digital opportunities that will increase your organization’s competitive advantage.

A competitive advantage is found when your organization “acquires or develops abilities” – such as technology or people – that allows you to create value, which no other organization is capable of. Those in the public or not for profit sectors might bristle at the term competitive, but we believe it still applies when seen through the lens of a competitive–comparative set.

A critical word in our definition is “process”. If a digital strategy is a process, remember that a process presumes a progression – from an initial starting point, to the approach of and overtaking of milestones to destinations both identified and unknown.

A practical and efficient way to do this is to take advantage of established planning tools such as maturity models. In our next post, we’ll introduce you to the dStrategy Digital Maturity Model.

We look forward to discussing our definition with you at at Digital Strategy Conference.

read more
Kelly KubrickWhat is Digital Strategy?

Featured Blog Post

Six Dimensions of Digital Maturity: dStrategy Digital Maturity Model™

Recent Posts

Categories