Hitting Content Strategy Out of the Park

By: Casey Kleekamp, UMSL MBA Student
I recently attended an UMSL Digital Marketing Seminar: “Blogs to Buzz” hosted by Danielle Smith – A digital correspondent, host, storyteller, speaker, media trainer, vlogger and author! The seminar was not only very insightful, but totally fun and engaging! I enjoyed her style (both teaching style and fashion style – ha!) so much that I immediately started following her on Twitter and Pinterest.
dani
Danielle shared tons of information on Blogging – the history of blogging, how marketers should be leveraging blogging, how to get started, and how to go beyond just a blog utilizing it on all social media platforms.
The takeaway from the seminar that could be applied easily and quickly to your blog and our very own UMSL Digital Mindshare Blog is Jason Calacanis’ “5 Tenets of Content Perfection.” Calacanis is an entrepreneur, blogger and keynote speaker for the digital industry worldwide (so I’d say his advice is pretty solid!).
5tenHere are the 5 Tenets. Plus, I have included ideas on how the UMSL Digital Mindshare Blog could bring them to life.
1. Speak in Real-time: Talk about current events and show that you are “in the know.” There is so much going on in our world today and there is so much news every second of the day that UMSL Digital Students should definitely be “in the know” and most importantly, be able to connect it back to UMSL and our digital marketing program. An example shared in Danielle’s class is Evernote. On their blog they wrote about Fantasy Football. Evernote and Fantasy Football you ask? After reading the blog post, it all made sense. Evernote told their readers how to get the most out of Fantasy Football by using Evernote to stay organized.
2. Think Fact-Driven: Pretty self-explanatory.
3. Use Visuals: Blog posts with images = 94% better. Pretty simple right!? Even for this blog, since unfortunately I wasn’t able to take personal photos, I used visuals that hopefully have made reading this post a little more fun?! Danielle might have thought it a tad bit weird if I was snapping photos of her during the seminar – right?
4. Be Efficient: Resources. Let’s get smart with the important questions: Who, What, When, Where, Why, How? One thing that really stood out to me in the seminar was “micro-blogging.” I love the idea that we can create a blog and then pick “pieces” of it to share out across other social platforms. Or use “story-telling” where you can write several blogs all at once on one topic and then post one blog at a time over a period of time. Seems pretty efficient to me!
5. Curate: Discover and share the best. For UMSL, we could have someone focused on looking for fun, informational and engaging content to repurpose and connect with UMSL Digital.
After reading my own post, I realize it’s not rocket science what I’m talking about here, but it does take time to get organized and plan. I hope this was helpful and that UMSL’s Digital Blog can continue to be a source of great content for digital marketers and beyond.
And just in case I didn’t say it enough – take the Digital Marketing Class and Danielle Smith’s “Blogs to Buzz” seminar as soon as you can. You will NOT be disappointed!
All seminar course descriptions and dates are here: http://umsldigital.com/courses.