Backbone Messaging with Campaign Specific Content

Yesterday I wrote a quick blog post on my personal blog called, “Keeping Social Media Going.” The basic idea was “we are all set up on Social Media, now what?” It’s a fear of many companies and something that is continually on my mind. How do we as marketers stay relevant on social media while continuing to communicate our brand message on a consistent basis without overwhelming? There is an art to walking this thin line.

The answer… create a content strategy with two components:

A Backbone Message – This is the overall brand message that we want to continually communicate to our consumers. This will become the starting point for all messaging and content throughout our social programs. This could become the “big idea” that draws consumers to engage with our company.

Campaign Specific Messaging – To keep our company relevant and exciting and to create multi-touch engagements throughout a given year, we need to create campaign specific messaging. While creating our social strategies for the year, we will need to identify these different campaigns. These could be product launches, community involvement, marketing campaigns, etc. These campaigns will likely become the big ideas that continually engage consumers. During the engagement, the consumers will then be exposed to the backbone messaging, allowing us to communicate our brand correctly during each engagement.

This combination of backbone and campaign specific messaging is vital for any social success. Too much of one or the other will sway the consumer in the wrong direction. Too much Backbone Messaging, the consumer will feel “marketed too,” which they don’t like. Too much Campaign Specific Messaging, the consumer won’t fully understand the brand message and our marketing objectives won’t be achieved.

Here’s some bullet points that I outlined in the Keeping Social Media Going post from yesterday to help with other strategies to stay relevant and engaging:

• Keep responding and answering fans, followers, friends
• Continue to share content of affinity organizations and information relevant to your brand message
• Cultivate relationships with your most loyal followers and your loudest influencers
• Build mini conversational campaigns around company milestones or important company dates
• Continue to scan the ecosystem for opportunities, discussion topics, etc.

What are your thoughts? How do you stay relevant to your consumers?

Photo courtesy of Flickr – Paul Garland