If the content you put out into the world isn't helping you, it's probably hurting you. Web and social media content are important tools. Do more than remind customers you’re there. Define your aesthetic, assert your personality, and create your tribe. Here’s why most companies are missing the mark.
Read MoreHow Adding Your Authentic Voice To Content Boosts Your Company
Fast Company's article What Most CEOs Get Wrong About Becoming Thought Leaders hits on why it's so important to take your content seriously- and how developing your own voice as a company CEO or leader can boost your content. Astoundingly, over 60% of CEOs don't have their own social media presence. A few key takeaways for CEOs (and everyone else):
First, sharing good content is about marketing AND a whole lot more:
Ideally, the content you generate isn't just a way of promoting your ideas, your business, and your work. It can actually change the nature of your industry. That requires setting a higher bar, but when you do, the content you produce as a thought leader can help raise the value of ideas and the spread of information in general within your space.
In other words, if you're really an effective thought leader, you aren't just slavishly self-promoting—just as your business aims to do with its products, you're helping your audience solve a problem or fill a need with your ideas.
Second, CEOs sometimes worry about detracting from their company's social media. But actually, the opposite is the case. CEOs sharing their own content puts a "human face" on their company:
The underlying premise of "thought leadership" itself, after all, is that the CEO got to where they are by collecting knowledge and skills, and developing the aptitude to oversee a company. That’s why most people don’t really want to hear from a marketing manager about what’s happening in the company.
Third, the authentic voice the CEO brings to social media and blogs should be part of an underlying, cohesive strategy:
While CEOs need to take the reins and establish an authentic voice on social media and elsewhere, companies still need to devote a portion of their overall content marketing plan on their leaders' messaging. They shouldn't be identical—readers can tell in an instant when they're being fed canned messages—but they should inform one another.
Give us a shout to learn more about how to use content marketing to boost your architecture, design, or real estate company.
Los Angeles' historic Palace Theater, built 1911. The theater's recent restoration was part of a 10-year plan to revitalize LA's Historic Broadway corridor
The Trouble With Aging Into Historic Preservation
Professors in my Historic Preservation Masters Program lectured us time and again that the Preservation industry is an aging one, in desperate need of a youthful injection if it is to continue. During a Preservation PR class, canvassing websites for preservation organizations, most looked out of the 1990s. Text was haphazardly strewn about in large and tiny font sizes. There were multiple calls to action. Photos were small and randomly spaced. The closest thing to social media links were icons for Blogspot.
How do you take an industry, whose roots are in a bunch of old white ladies (I'm looking at you, Mount Vernon Ladies Association) getting together to save the home of an old white guy (oh hey, George Washington), and make it matter to younger generations? How can it modernize and engage?
It's all about context.
Photo via Mt. Vernon Ladies Association
The National Trust for Historic Preservation started the This Place Matters campaign in 2008 to shine a spotlight on the historic places that matter in individuals' lives. Viewed as a success, the campaign made history and historic preservation personal.
Other preservation organizations are creating events and initiatives that highlight the importance of history and preservation in a way that appeals across generations. Los Angeles' recent Night on Broadway comes to mind, creating a festival atmosphere designed to encourage historic preservation and revitalization of the city’s historic downtown theater district. But even with a cross-generational event like this, are attendees aware of the underlying cause represented? Has it been contextualized for them? Does it matter to them?
If historic preservation and conservation groups think that starting a Facebook page means they can check off the 'modernize and engage' box, they’re wrong. Today, virtually everyone's grandmother has a Facebook page. In the world of social media outreach and engagement, organizations are going to have to, at least, one-up grandma. Even still, for organizations with website content that hasn't been updated since 2000 (or 2010), a Facebook page that few people engage with, or an Instagram with visually unappealing photos, they're failing the very demographic who can ensure their future - and preserve everyone's history.
Convincing a new generation that this place matters?
STRUKTR tells stories of heritage, architecture, and preservation in a way that's relatable for a new generation. Our blog content, videos, press releases, and copy are smart, form an emotional connection, and are sometimes (often) a little irreverent. Our streets, neighborhoods, buildings, and homes already have wonderful, curious stories to tell. So all of us readers and consumers connect with architecture -- a lot more than we even realize. Plus all of our work fits within a greater story, never a vacuum. It's about context. Work with STRUKTR today to bring your preservation initiatives to a new generation.
Night on Broadway celebration, Downtown Los Angeles. The festival was part of the larger Bringing Back Broadway initiative.