To position an outbound marketing program for maximum ROI, strategic planning and set-up is essential before the execution phase.
- Start with a clear definition of your client’s goals and budget.
- Identify audience segments and channels where they live.
- Conduct an audit for keywords, phrases, hashtags, competition and thought leaders by vertical.
- Initiate an ongoing listening system for content farming and social signals that uncover opportunistic engagement (or mitigation).
- Optimize or build social assets (channels, branding, SEO, PPC, etc.).
- Finally, consider a UX review and content audit of an existing landing page to optimize conversions.
This is not meant to be an all-inclusive list, but during this infrastructure-building initiation phase, consider up-front what tools you plan to use to accelerate results and data collection.
There are a vast number of tools to choose from for a variety of uses, but I want to showcase one that I’m sure you’ve heard of in the past few weeks from WSJ to TechCrunch. Little Bird by Portland’s Marshall Kirkpatrick is in beta, and I was intrigued by Joe Chernov’s post in CMI to review it for myself.
Little Bird produces a mashup of top influencers and experts on any subject based on Twitter engagement. Some are well-known and others, not so much. This is where it gets interesting. Little Bird slices and dices these “Insiders” in some novel and meaningful data sets.
Joe wrote through the lens of content marketing and identifying affiliate topics. My POV here is on selecting a tool to create a more robust outbound marketing program.
Start by entering your report topic. I selected an existing report: Startups (a highly relevant topic for Portland). Then enter a portal to a marketer’s nirvana. Rather than making this a run-down of the application, I’ll hone in on some intel that especially pops off the site as opportunity.
Insiders Most Followed by Topic Insiders (read: topic influencers who are followed by the most influencers of that topic).
The leaders are no surprise, but as Joe mentioned for mining content, the payola is discovery of lesser known but relevant topic experts. In outbound marketing, the opportunity is additional audience segments. As you navigate further down the list, the more topical nuance you will find that can lead you (and your client) into divergent but related pockets.
I give the next report a full-on +10: New Accounts Followed by Insiders, or emerging leaders. Get in on the ground floor and ride up the influencer rail together. It’s easier to build sustaining relationships at this stage. Can your client’s brand offer reciprocity to a rising star?
Most Active Accounts – you know if you connect with these heavy hitters that your client’s reach and impressions will spike. Review the tweet stream for relevance and tone to ensure it’s a good match or complement to the brand you represent.
Next, I left the Insiders page and from a drop-down menu, found other enticing feeds.
Hot News reports on what Insiders/Influencers are reading. This can be used to educate the marketing program’s community manager on language, trends and information sources to engage authentically. Are there hashtags your client’s brand can adopt to work into, and be discovered by new communities?
What the Experts are Sharing: similar to “reading” above but rung up a notch; this content is relevant or provocative enough to share, and likely with a thought leader comment.
Top Blogs by Inbound Links not only opens doors to new verticals, but offers a ready-made list of SEO-rich links. Consider embedding in website and YouTube content.
Spend some time doing your own analysis of Little Bird – how else would you use this as a tool for outbound marketing?
Janel, I am sorry I just now saw this post – it’s great! You so nicely articulated the ways Little Bird can be used. I hope you, your clients and your community find it super useful!
Thanks, Marshall! I think as strategists, we’re just beginning to conceptualize how data can be mined and integrated into other marketing tools from Little Bird’s reporting options.
Audience segmentation is key to a successful outbound marketing plan – I’d like to test this with Facebook Custom Audiences and lead gen on LinkedIn. And at the very least, I’ll be adding an expanded array of influencers to Twitter lists and listening systems.
Thank YOU for your work in starting up and serving up Little Bird as a great new discovery tool for marketers!
Being able to pinpoint influencers has me feeling like I’ve stumbled on a playground meeting of the cool kids and now I have to figure out a way to infiltrate their clique! So as to not appear to be pandering users will have to be even more careful about how they represent themselves. I think there are endless ways to use this information and across many different disciplines. I would be interested to see how much lift this could give to an already optimized social program.
Tyler, thank you for your post! Great point about remaining authentic. I think in social media, there is an inherent invitation to interact. One key to “playing well” (in this analogy!) is to be relevant and add value. This way, you win, your client or audience base wins, and so does the influencer by deepening his or her position as a subject matter expert. Let’s check back in after an A/B test on additional lift!
Just signed up for the beta. found this article, and it is a great place for me to start.
Thanks Billy
That’s fantastic, Billy! I’m very interested to hear what you discover in your beta test. I’ve been testing with Facebook’s relatively new feature to import email lists with Power Editor. Another aspect to keep in mind is progressing along the cycle of outbound to inbound marketing. That is, outbound strategies that raise a brand’s profile, value, affinity etc., creating an inbound response from new audience segments.
Thanks for your post!