When you look at the various content you deliver to the outside world via digital marketing channels, the view is sometimes surprising. Anything you deliver digitally, your website, your Facebook page, Instagram, YouTube, your newsletter, even your presence in various listing pages is content. But also things other folks deliver digitally that has any reference to your business is also content, albeit outside of your control.TripAdvisor comments and pictures, Google images, Yelp Comments, Facebook posts others make or share all become part of your overall digital voice.

Content management is the process of changing and shaping that digital voice to support your business growth objectives.

Goal Number One – What are the messages you need to be getting out?

Digital marketing, without a messaging strategy, is a big waste of dollars and effort. Every piece of content you have on your website, Facebook page, newsletters, etc. needs to support your messages. And then you can best define what kind of content will work best to deliver that message. So for instance “We are a Living Room Bar”

We offer a very different food and beverage experience then you can get at a destination restaurant, Chile’s, a party bar or the Four Seasons down the street.

It’s about a casual no pressure situation where its fun to hang by yourself, as a couple or with friends.

There is always a comfortable place to park and watch TV, work on your computer or just hang with friends.

There doesn’t have to be a reservation time, no loud music drowning out the best thing to do in this world – talk with your friends.

You can have great bar bites food and we have great sharables.

There is no sit down and have dinner pressure and the freedom to eat or not eat and feel okay.

You can try some interesting cocktails, or just have a beer.

You can relax with your kids after a long day of exploring, the kids can eat burgers and Mom and Dad can have a cocktail and some great appetizers.

And check out our famous $4 Bruschetta which is grilled bread with grilled whole cherry tomatoes soaked in a balsamic sauce.

Or try our $5 Jalapena Martini.

And no parking hassle.

And yes there is the most incredible view you can imagine and you can take a quick walk along the beach if the right moment comes along, because our hotel is also an incredible place to visit.

Once you know what the messages are that you want to implant as best you can in all the potential non hotel guests who could choose to visit your venue, you are ready to look at delivering those messages. What’s the best way to get the point across?

Video

Pictures

Customer’s love us testimonials

Words

Promotion programs – click here and we’ll send you a $7 Prime Rib sandwich coupon

Knowledge programs – click here and we’ll send you Chef’ John’s Bruschetta tomato soak recipe

Goal Number Two – What kind of content would be valuable to someone you would like to connect with?

The reality is that your target customers are not sitting out there interested in hearing about every bar option in your city. So you may have great fit for someone’s preferences and great messages ready to go to make that fit point, but you have to get the connection first. Now you have to figure out what kinds of valuable content could you provide that would:

Answer curiosities people have

Insert a key message about the unique experience option you offer when someone is searching for something else

Be something someone would want to share and point other’s towards.

Be something someone would trade you their email address in order to get

This is an ideas process and then once you settle on a list of all the ideas you have, you have to create great content associated with that idea and based on the media strategy. World Class content is interesting to people – amateur content is normally not.

Goal Number Three – How do you make sure that valuable content gets served to that someone you would like to connect with?

Today you probably have two channels open for your bar/restaurant content. The Hotel website and the Hotel Facebook page. And while it’s exciting to be able to look at all the like’s hotel guests have given the hotel, that does not do a whole lot for you in terms of non hotel guest marketing. Non Hotel guests are by default not interested in hotel information even though it includes the bar/restaurant. Locals are looking for great personal entertainment options that fit their and their friend’s desires and transient visitors are looking for interesting places to explore as they are passing through. The channels those potential customers tune into are very different then the ones potential hotel room buyers tune into.

There are hundreds of channel choices that often are specific to a local market situation that can be a great connection opportunity channel. For example in Santa Barbara, CA there is a Facebook page called I Love Santa Barbara. There is no for profit business behind it, its just a place where people send what they think are great pictures of moments in Santa Barbara, and then the site manager posts the pictures. Anyone who likes this Facebook Page is getting these posts and the posts are always excellent. Which means folk share and comment on the posts – which increases the distribution of the posts dramatically and more importantly increases the frequency with which the posts show up on someone’s news feed. In Facebook the more active you are in terms of engages, comments and shares, the more often you see posts to that page in your newsfeed. If you are a living room bar in Santa Barbara it’s a target portal…..

If you write a great article about the local Lemon festival, you are creating connection potential. If you post that article in dozens of places you increasing connection potential. If you repurpose that article and post variations of it through the same portals, you again are increasing connection potential. That’s how it works. You take valuable content and get it ultimately in a thousand places where it can be found, and because its great content, and it has been developed to encourage an inbound marketing decision, you get the connection.

And yes digital outbound marketing programs work as well. Sometimes to get a quick result we have to push content in front of folks via Ads. As long as the content is valuable and of high quality it can avoid the interruptive character that folks instantly turn off on. Outbound digital marketing connection returns offer a better result than comparable dollars spent on newspaper, television or direct mail programs.

And there is an opportunity to promote. It’s valuable to be able to get an email with a coupon for a $7 prime rib sandwich (that normally costs $18) – so you can trade in this market space a connection for a specific value. Another thing you can trade a connection for is an internet connection while on premises. Imagine a customer sits down in your bar and you offer a simply click sign on. No need to enroll or type, just choose which of your many social media portals you will use. In this case the connection information delivery is far more than just an email unless the customer chooses to disable it.

Goal Number Four – And when you get the connection, how can you keep that person tuned into your ongoing content deliveries?

The key to success is building a channel. A regular delivery of valuable content that pulls your connections into paying attention and sharing as they feel is warranted. It’s more than just happy Fourth of July notes and announcing your summery cocktail program. Its hard work to keep developing great ideas and then translating ideas into great content. But the result ends up being a fast growing non hotel guest connection world around your business.

Goals number 2 and 4 involve executing an idea process that:

Scoops up every event that occurs inside and around your business and develops interesting content around it.

Mines for information assets already out there that you can make your own

Based on a channel strategy seeks to drive events which will support your overall messaging

Goal number 3 involves an effective distribution strategy that:

Takes the same content and finds hundreds of way to get it out in the digital world – a key concept in search engine optimization

Layers in an outbound marketing strategy that pushes great content into connection range of target audiences

Delivers an ongoing great content channel experience to your connected followers

Outbound marketing must be part of your digital marketing strategy, but it is effectively interruptive. And all the trends point towards less and less success in these kinds of marketing programs as digitally connected consumers get smarter and tune out interruptive marketing. Think about it – when ads first started appearing at the top of every google search page you probably noticed them and may have even clicked on a few thinking they were Google suggested portals. But eventually you probably learned to look right passed those ads to the point where the real search engine responses show up and search from there.

So if your customer signs up for a newsletter, send them valuable information, not just special promotion flyers.