BAU is dead, long live the KING – Mike Blake-Crawford

Mike Blake-Crawford, Strategy Director of Social Chain
BAU is drowning us in a sea of indifference. We’re becoming part of the wallpaper. People walk past us every day, but they never stop to notice us.  Things need to change. In this podcast, Mike Blake-Crawford, Strategy Director of Social Chain discusses how business as usual, is dead. He also explains how killer creative, along with a purposeful content strategy can make your brand stand out from the crowd. 

In this podcast, Mike Blake-Crawford, Strategy Director of Social Chain discusses how business as usual, is dead. He also explains how killer creative, along with a purposeful content strategy can make your brand stand out from the crowd.

If you’ve got another 9 social posts to get out today, don’t worry. We’ve summarised Mike’s main points below.

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Mike’s Slides can be found here so you can click along as he goes!

What is BAU?

Business as usual. All year round, always on. In terms of marketing, it basically says that you should post a minimum amount of times per week on your social media channels. 

However, this is based on a theory, a theory that says we’ve moved away from the traditional ways of marketing through newspapers, billboards, radio etc. Marketing today is social-driven. Which if you look at the data, is true. But theories can be wrong, take Albert Einstein’s theory of the eternal universe for example. All BAU is doing is creating…

 

…Sh*t content overload.

It’s causing a decline in engagement and a decline in people following brands. People are posting for the sake of posting, there’s no thought, time or effort going into content, thus it’s getting lost in a sea of sh*t. Mike points out that despite this, we’re still creating 5 petabytes of data every day on Facebook alone. He puts that into perspective by saying “50 petabytes is enough data to encompass the entire written works of man, from the beginning of recorded time, in every language”. 

We need to slow down, stop posting 10 times a day and start focusing on creating quality content.

Be purposeful with your approach to content.

The solution is here. 

Look at the value of your content and social media channels, analyse the data. This data holds the key to a successful content strategy. It’s telling us what our audience likes and doesn’t like, where we should be distributing content, how we should be distributing it. By listening to it we gain the ability to mould our content strategy into one our audience can appreciate. We’ll start to stand out from the crowd. Engagement will increase and we can leverage that to work towards our overarching business goals. 

“Engagement is not a strategy, it’s a tool that helps facilitate real business objectives. It is not an indicator of success.”

All hail the K.I.N.G

Killer creative
Be original. Be genuine. Be remarkable. We need to present ourselves in a way that makes our audience’s want to connect with us. Think Seth Godin’s ‘purple cow’ theory.

Intelligent distribution
Think about how you’re going to put your brand out there. Younger people don’t interact with brands, they follow influencers. If you’re trying to attract a younger audience then leverage that.

Native execution
Focus on meeting the expectations of the audience. If we want them to do something for us, we need to make it as easy as possible. Again, 98% of 16-24-year-olds use messaging apps. If you’re targeting that younger audience then consider a platform like WhatsApp.

Goal-oriented
We should ensure we’ve got a goal for our campaign and it is at the forefront of every decision we make. This means every step we take serves a purpose.