Blu Maya Digital Marketing Agency

I’ve got a BIG smile on my face. I just got a refund of just over $130 from GoDaddy because I was paying for an SSL certificate that kept renewing itself since 2006 and I wasn’t aware of it much less using it. Yes you read that correctly, not just a refund for a recent renewal but for all of the past one’s!

I’m happy because I wasn’t expecting any type of refund and boy did I get a BIG surprise with no questions asked.

Thank you GoDaddy!

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If you spend a good amount of time on the internet then I’m sure you’ve heard and watched OK Go’s latest video masterpiece. These guys have built a following by their sheer video producing talents. I didn’t know who OK Go was until a few days ago, when I watched the above video, it was enough for me to do some research and conclude that their music isn’t appealing to me but I have much to say about their dedication to producing pretty damn good videos.

Their videos alone are word of mouth worthy!

The band OK Go is probably more famous for their videos than their songs. That’s more a testament to the greatness of their videos than anything else. When these guys put out a video, you can be sure it’ll make your jaw drop at least once or twice. "How did they do that," is a typical reaction.

And that, is exactly what you want. To be known for something!

Just like Common Craft has built it’s reputation on creating ‘explanation video that anyone can understand’ and own that space in people’s minds, OK Go is doing the same with their music videos.

OK Go probably didn’t set out to differentiate themselves with videos and most likely didn’t have a ‘what do we want to be known for?’ brainstorming session. Most likely they started experimenting with ideas and kept going at it until something stuck and became so good at it that they can do these videos on a single take!

The takeaway here is you want to experiment with ideas with the goal of doing something distinctive that pushes boundaries. Do you think you could produce videos like OK Go? You probably can but have you ever tried?

Ask yourself: What do I want to be known for? And experiment with something that will push your boundaries.

What do you think? What are you experimenting with?

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We’ve seen that clients and prospects ask for and want a secret ‘recipe’ to start a social media programs that they can ‘plug and play’ into their business without considering the ‘why’ of their business, this leads to ‘more of the same’ strategies that lead nowhere.

To help you answer the ‘Why’ we recommend you read Jay Bear’s 7 step process on how to develop a social media strategy and then come back here.

Thanks for coming back, now on to the ‘How’.

Framing the challenge

Since we’re always in the ‘let’s shake things up’ mood we’re testing a new approach to develop strategy, here are some questions to help you ideate a social media strategy around the most important things:

• In what ways might we spread the word about our product or service?
• In what ways might we create a following on Facebook and/or Twitter?
• In what ways might we create content?
• In what ways might we publish content?
• In what ways might we create engagement?
• In what ways might we help people subscribe to our newsletter?
• In what ways might we help people share our content?
• In what ways might we help people take useful action from our content?
• In what ways might we show people the benefit of doing business with us?
• In what ways might we prove to people the benefit of doing business with us?
• In what ways might we make our product or service be talked about?
• In what ways might we convince our customers come back?
• In what ways might we convince our customers to tell their friends about us?

These questions are meant to open your mind and create a list of possible options. The next thing you have to do is get a group together of no more than 5 key people and brainstorm around these questions and stop once you have enough answers for each question. At this point you have all sorts of ideas and now it’s time to start making choices depending on your strategic goals.

*For another approach check out Steve Koss’s comments below and clickthrough to his website for more depth.

Strategy should be unique to you

Next, to get really creative instead of going out and seeing how other businesses within your industry would answer these questions, think about how businesses in other industries would answer them. Why? Because all the good ideas in your industry are already taken and they’re called best practices.

The whole idea of strategy is not to replicate what your competitors do but to create a strategy that’s unique to you. 

We’d love to know what you think? What’s your approach to developing a social media strategy? What questions would you add?

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