welcome to solve it like a marketer i'm stephen hobay today we're exploring the rule of thirds in digital marketing if you like this video please subscribe and don't go away [Music] so i've had quite a few of you asked me to do a series of videos on digital marketing so this series will cover all aspects from the platforms themselves to their individual strategies and of course uh some of my own opinion thrown in for good measure so for this video i wanted to start off with the rule of thirds now this is a great theory
to begin thinking about your digital strategy from a bird's-eye view before we get deep into the specifics of content creation and choosing appropriate platforms now the rule of thirds is basically a guide post to keep in the back of your minds as you formulate posts during the course of the year so generally speaking social media accounts want to abide by the rule of thirds so a third promoting your product or service a third interacting with others and a third sharing industry news and tips you believe your followers could benefit from so first up promote so
promotion may include sharing a new blog post you wrote advertising an upcoming sale or inviting people to a webinar you're hosting for most of us this is an easy one talking about yourself or your company but the drawback is that your audience will get bored if you do it too much so make sure you switch things up then there's engage so this category is where you build a sense of community it's based on personal interactions and humanizes your business so you should be conversing with potential collaborators and current like-minded people engagement includes say liking your
followers posts answering their questions and responding to their comments now the key here is to think of this as a form of networking and generating open conversation within your community finally share so just as conversations show interest in other people sharing relevant content shows interest in your industry something greater than your brand so this approach also allows you to avoid the trap of talking too much about yourself which would otherwise take away from the validity of your social media messaging in other words it can't all be about you so you need to show support for
other community members whether that's clients customers or other people and collaborators you work with now here are some ideas for you to consider on each of these three categories as you plan out your rule of thirds messaging first up promotion content these could be success stories testimonials events training opportunities facts day in the life of your business giving back to the community product of the week getting to know you posts and behind the scenes engagement content india's industry trivia build connections through shared experiences contests q a motivational quotes open-ended questions and share content these could
be educational posts interesting articles market updates industry-based tips cross-promoting other industry professionals and local area content so in order to monitor this approach i advise you to create a spreadsheet to keep track of the content you intend to post and this is especially important if you work with a team everyone needs to be on the same page and consistently evaluating the balance of content during a given period of time so work with a platform like google's spreadsheets so everyone can edit include categories such as posting dates topic ideas hashtags links post content and then a
section for measurements tracking this spreadsheet will be extremely important for you when you look back and evaluate your social media campaigns to figure out what you can do better in the future now one area i didn't really touch on here is the personal so people connect with people over brands so you may have a great logo but who are the people behind the logo or the company name you need to humanize your brand so as you consider the rule of thirds add the personal approach into this mix areas that you can post about might include
personal content family pictures trips events content related to your interests for instance golf or biking etc local areas you love what's your favorite place to go in the fall for instance stories related to your personal life did anything interesting happen projects or committees you're involved with appreciation posts for the talented people in your life now as you can see when we when we really dive in there's a lot to keep track of but a lot of possibilities as well it's easy when you're starting out to become overwhelmed so have a plan execute and then evaluate
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