On Monday, we talked about positioning, which is the art of knowing what you want to achieve professionally and the steps you’re going to take to get there. So much of digital marketing hinges on collecting, creating, and sharing the right type of content – but, what, exactly, is the right type of content.

Many people answer this question by looking at the numbers of likes, shares, and comments that their content gets. I can understand this tendency – there’s nothing more a marketing professional loves more than a good metric! – but let’s unpack it a little bit.

The fact that content is widely shared in no way implies that it’s helping you achieve your business goals. If you’re posting a lot of content that’s cute, funny, or headline driven, but this material has little, if anything, to do with your brand, you’re not helping your business. There needs to be a fairly clear relationship between everything you post and what you do. For an example, an attorney who wants to share funny cat pictures (and let’s face it, it’s not social media without a funny cat picture now and then!) needs to limit themselves to funny cat pictures that have a legal theme:

It’s important to remember that brands aren’t built by laughter alone. While humorous content does get lots of likes and shares, it doesn’t do much to reinforce your company’s image. Let’s bring the conversation back to positioning. When you’re thinking about what type of content you want to create, collect and share, ask yourself, “Does this content communicate what I want it to?”

Let’s say our attorney wants to position themselves as the go-to family law attorney in their region. It’s vitally important that a significant portion of the content that they collect, create, and share talks about family law issues. Blog posts and social media posts need to demonstrate both your expertise and your personality. This does take time, but it’s time well spent.

The content you collect and share may be dramatically different on different social media platforms. The information our family law attorney shares on her website or Facebook – where it’s most likely to be seen by potential clients – may be more elementary than the information shared on Google + or Linked In, where the audience is professional peers and colleagues, who could be good sources of referral business.

Understanding what your business goals are, what you want to communicate to reach those goals, and who you’re communicating to on each particular platform where you have a presence is an essential part of a successful digital marketing strategy. When you’ve incorporated all of those elements, then the metrics become more meaningful.

This can be a tough transition to make, so if you’re having difficulty making your digital marketing work for you, don’t despair – help is available! Give us a call. We’ll help you make sure that the content you create, collect and share is working to build your business.