As we enter 2022, are you looking for some new inspiration for your digital marketing? If so, this is the episode for you!
Join me as I give you my suggestions on which 10 channels you should consider launching, or if you are already active but not getting the results you need, relaunching in 2022.
Specifically, these 10 things that I discuss in detail on this podcast are:
Key Highlights
[03:22] First Area I Recommend To Invest: TikTok
[04:33] How To Launch TikTok Channel
[06:07] Looking At The Patterns And Formats
[07:10] Type Of Content To Launch In 2022
[07:43] The Importance Of Storytelling
[10:07] The Third Channel To Launch Or Relaunch
[11:00] Type Of Content To Create For YouTube
[12:10] Developing Your Own Podcast
[13:51] How You Should Think Of Your Podcast
[16:00] Fifth Channel To Invest To Pinterest
[18:07] Why You Should Be Blogging
[19:08] Number 7: Email Marketing
[20:44] Develop A Membership Community
[21:36] My Community Membership
[22:30] Develop A Workshop
[26:12] Creating Course For Your Business
Notable Quotes
Learn More:
As we enter 2022, are you looking for some new inspiration for your digital marketing? If so, this is the episode for you!
Join me as I give you my suggestions on which 10 channels you should consider launching, or if you are already active but not getting the results you need, relaunching in 2022.
Specifically, these 10 things that I discuss in detail on this podcast are:
Key Highlights
[03:22] First Area I Recommend To Invest: TikTok
[04:33] How To Launch TikTok Channel
[06:07] Looking At The Patterns And Formats
[07:10] Type Of Content To Launch In 2022
[07:43] The Importance Of Storytelling
[10:07] The Third Channel To Launch Or Relaunch
[11:00] Type Of Content To Create For YouTube
[12:10] Developing Your Own Podcast
[13:51] How You Should Think Of Your Podcast
[16:00] Fifth Channel To Invest To Pinterest
[18:07] Why You Should Be Blogging
[19:08] Number 7: Email Marketing
[20:44] Develop A Membership Community
[21:36] My Community Membership
[22:30] Develop A Workshop
[26:12] Creating Course For Your Business
Notable Quotes
Learn More:
It's 2022 it's time to think a new and it might be just the right time to launch a new marketing channel or if things aren't going according to plan to relaunch one. This next episode of the digital marketing coach podcast is all about launching or relaunching a marketing channel in 2022 listening for the details. Digital social media content influencer marketing, blogging, podcasting, blogging, tick tocking, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, SEO, SEM, PPC, email marketing, who there's a lot to cover, whether you're a marketing professional entrepreneur, or business owner, you need someone you can rely on for expert advice. Good thing you've got Neil, on your side, because Neal Schaffer is your digital digital marketing marketing coach, helping you grow your business with digital first marketing one episode at a time. This is your digital marketing coach, and this is Neal Schaffer. Everybody, welcome to episode number 244. Of this podcast, which is named after myself, I am your digital marketing coach. Neal Schaffer, welcome to part two of a two part podcast series to get 2022. Off to a great start series is called New Year New Digital Marketing. Hopefully you listen to the companion episode, which was just released a few days ago, episode number 243 10 things to invest your marketing budget in in 2022. Today, I want to focus on launching something new and some of these channels you might already have, but they're not going according to plan, I want you to consider when I talk about launching for you, it's going to be relaunching, I believe these are or I should say the channels that I'm about to discuss are the most underutilized. Or if you really put some focus and energy and strategy behind it. These are the 10 marketing channels that will have the biggest impact for you, at least in 2022. But hopefully beyond and a really become the gift that keeps giving some of these, if you heard my podcast some time ago, about the value of long form content versus short form content, some of these, in all honesty are going to have more longer term value than others. But for instance, a site like tick tock we really can't ignore in 2022, even though that content might be very short lived. And there's a need to create content on a frequent basis. Like with any other social media platform, it still might be the gift that keeps giving if one of these videos just happens to go viral, which we understand happens a lot on that platform. So let's take a step back. And let's look at the top 10 areas in which I recommend you invest in in terms of launching a new channel. And I'll also want to give you a little bit of hand holding to help you launch or relaunch these new or renew initiatives for the new year in a successful way. So I already hinted at it, but number one has to be tick tock. We know I mentioned this in the last episode, but it was just announced from one data point that the amount of traffic going to tick tock in 2021 was greater than that. Going to Google Now. Google is a search engine. Tick tock is an interactive entertainment engine. So while people on Google have search intent, people on tick tock have entertainment intent. And generally speaking, maybe it's because this generation came up swiping things left and right. You can look at your kids, if you have them on the phone swiping up and up and up and up from one tick tock video to another tick tock video. And this is where either you're in the game or you're not in the game. Now tick tock has a heavy entertainment focus. It doesn't mean that there isn't a place for education. And there have been some channels that have been very, very successful in Tech Tech, there are more b2b brands that are trying to get into tick tock as well. It really is the year where if there's one channel that you haven't launched, then you should, it's tick tock and it really leads into I mean, obviously launching as your channel is is not easy if you're not there yet. Like with any other channel. It begins with becoming a user, understanding the content trying to put yourself in the foot of your customer, and really trying to create your own newsfeed as if it was a customer. So begin to like not things that you personally like, but begin to like those things that you think your ideal customer would like. And let the Tick Tock algorithm do its job in recommending you, content that your customer might see on their feed. And really, I believe that tick tock is such a creative platform, it's become popular because of a few ways in which people create content, you know, beginning with dances, beginning with, you know, lip syncing, famous people, you know, whatever it is, you'll see a pattern. And we see this in Instagram reels as well, of people sort of copying each other or emulating each other. Or there's a term called remix that a lot of people in social media marketing use these days, it's re mixing music or remits re mixing what someone said or re mixing concepts into our own way that become popular on Tik Tok these popular norms or ways of communicating information. And I think the only way to understand this in all honesty is you got to be on the platform, you got to be consuming. follow that advice. And I think, you know, I always try to look at the processes, right. Okay, for instance, and I'm going to get into this a little bit later. This is going to be another channel to launch or relaunch, I'm going to talk about video pins. And I noticed when I'm doing my own research because I want to go all in on video pins in 2022. Is there certain formats there is the square video with a top and bottom, title and description or title and call to action that doesn't change with a square video, there is a full video that takes up the entire vertical pin with text overlay on the top and bottom or there is more of the storytelling a cover pin, a video and then a call to action video at the end almost like three literal pages on Canva to create one video, Pim, once you begin to look at tick tock or any new social media in this fashion, you begin to re engineer the processes. Okay, this is how people are telling their story, or sharing information. These are the patterns that exist. Which pattern now makes most sense for my brand, or for myself. That's the process I want you to all go through. It's a process I've yet to do, which I plan to do. And maybe a better way of working yourself into this is the number two channel or type of content to launch in 2022 is short form video. And if Tik Tok is too much for you begin with an Instagram real, or a Facebook story, even for your brand Facebook business pages can do Facebook stories as well. And think of short form video, which is by far the most popular type of content that every social network is pushing. Think of it as visual storytelling. We know as marketers, as businesses stories sell, we need to do more storytelling. Well short form video is visual storytelling and how can we tell our story in a visual way. And you may not see this as much on tick tock because of the entertainment that just the rawness the entertainment value. But this is where my looking at Pinterest pins realize that you're telling the story. They're showing how the product works, how the service works, they're trying to include people on tick tock, we see a lot of people trying to include animals. But needless to say, it all comes down to how can I visually tell the story about the product, about the concept about what I want to teach what I want people to know, how can I do that in a visual way, in very, very little time. And once again, you know, I believe that there's any year to immerse ourselves as consumers of short form video to get this right. This is the year now with short form video, you can begin on tick tock, and you can repurpose this across other platforms, there's always new sites popping up where you upload a tick tock video, and it will remove the watermark and you could put it under other sites. I've seen people do this with their Instagram reels. Now there's no data behind this. But it would be intuitive to think that by creating content on the platform that you want to publish it on, you're going to get the best chance of success. Just from my own experience tick tock does offer the most robust experience in terms of the different types of tools, the amount of music available, etc, etc. So if you are able to create these on tick tock awesome. If you're not ready for that tick tock channel yet, begin by using Instagram reels, or Facebook stories, or YouTube shorts, or Pinterest video pins, or just telling your own story in your own way. But when I talk about short form video, it is vertical content. And it is short. We're talking 15 seconds, 30 seconds, 60 seconds, consume process reengineer and you need to find your own pattern, your own process that works for your company, to be able to do visual storytelling. I'm hoping that gives you enough advice to get you started on the journey and I hope in 2022 to offer more podcast episodes to give you even more education around this now Obviously, every year is the year video. 2022 is no different. This year we talk more about tick tock and short form video. But number three, the third channel that I want you to launch or relaunch really is your YouTube channel, there is still a plethora of opportunities for any business in YouTube. I think I've said this on many podcast episode. And if tick tock is now the place where people consume more short form video content, I would argue that YouTube becomes more and more a place for long form content for deeper content, and for educational content. And there are still plenty of eyeballs and too little supply of good content or of new content. Now, the thing about a YouTube channel that you need to realize is, like any other social network, YouTube wants people to stay on their platform. So you can't take this, you know, 2008 Social media marketing approach to YouTube, which is I'm going to develop a video. And the whole purpose of the video is to get people outside of YouTube and onto my website, ah, you want to create enough content on your YouTube channel to keep people watching, you want to be able to create a few playlists, just like you have blog categories, you want to be able to create a few playlists around common themes that you cover. To keep people in your YouTube channel, this is going to help you gain more subscribers, more views, more viewing time. And at the end of it, it will lead people back to your website, I would also say the more these videos you create, if your video content strategy is aligned with your blog content strategy, you begin to now embed your blog posts with these videos as well, which will help your SEO both on Google. And it will give additional views for your videos on YouTube. And I would assume the YouTube algorithm loves when people watch YouTube videos even off of the site. So that's really the concept I want you to think of in 2022 for your YouTube channel, something I plan to be doing something I wanted to implement a little bit early on in 2021. I already have several videos in the works. And I look forward to really drinking my own medicine, you know, doing this together launching these things together with you in 2022. Number four, well, you're a podcast listener, you're listening to my podcast, why haven't you developed your own podcast, for your personal brand, or for your company. There are more and more businesses that are launching podcasts. And one easy way to think about it is its interview our customers, you don't have to use the podcast necessarily for marketing. You can use the podcast as a networking vehicle, I'd say it's almost the best process. To use a podcast as a networking vehicle. I'm a fan of several podcasts myself. One of them is content TEDx, Amy woods, she has Jay Baer on her podcast every year and Jays like look, the Social Pros podcast that some of you may listen to as well, was not developed. In order to create this huge audience. It was developed to create relationships with people that are social media managers at large companies, right. And through those relationships, you know, Jay, and convinced convert, we're able to develop business relationships that lead to consulting, I have been a guest on other podcasts that have led to my own business relationships. But think about the relationships that you can develop your podcast, and therefore Who do you want to develop a relationship with? The marketing book podcast is one example of a guy who's like, I want to develop relationships with authors and marketing books. And now that is the not only top marketing book, podcast, but might be just one of the top marketing podcasts period. So think of the objective because guess what if you're just doing podcasts, because you want to get a lot of listens, you want to get a lot of business, make a lot of money, whatever it is, it's a long haul like anything else. But if you start with the objective of I want to develop relationships, I want to deepen relationships with customers. Or I just want to understand how people that have a passion for something think, or you know, whatever it is, that objective will keep you going will keep your podcast going, I think it's going to be easy to achieve. And really relationships are the central piece to anything we do in marketing I, I as I progress on the concept around my digital first book, yes, been delayed, but it's still coming. It really comes down to those analog relationships and digital gives us the ability to develop those relationships of value that will reap dividends. So think of your podcast in that way. But a podcast obviously is a great channel to launch this year. And if you were to do it with YouTube in mind, in other words, I will record podcast episodes when I interview people over zoom. And but I've yet to publish those videos now I've started to publish. Recently on my YouTube channel. I published two episodes that were solo episodes. So it was just me talking to the mic but I recorded on video and there was a have not been that bad in all honesty. So there are ways of thinking about it. But if you want to repurpose your podcast for YouTube, really think YouTube first in how am I going to record this so that it's going to be compelling for YouTube? And the answer you're going to get, maybe you know what, I'm just going to publish a summary of this and YouTube, or I'm just going to publish certain points that we bring up on YouTube and make shorter, more digestible snippet videos out of it, then a longer video, which may make more sense. Regardless, though, there is a way to strategically think about this. Like, when we think about short form video, we're gonna think about at the end of the day, how do we get on tick tock? Or how do we get an all of our platforms? When we think about a podcast? It might also be, how are we going to create a process around it so that we could repurpose it for YouTube and it makes sense for YouTube channel and or social media? Hey, we still got six more to go here. I'm introducing 10. We have number one, tick tock number two short form video number three, YouTube channel. Number four. podcast number five is, drumroll please. Pinterest. Pinterest is a platform that a lot of people a lot of marketers just seem to ignore. And while like tick tock, it's more popular for b2c than b2b. You can be successful b2b content as well. I have seen that for my own blog. And Pinterest definitely rewards those. That's look at Pinterest in a new way. What I mean by this is, I have been doing the same thing on Pinterest year in and year out, and I saw my traffic from Pinterest literally get cut in half last year, I don't have the final number. as I record this, I should have my apologies. But I saw every month that dwindled. And this is because the algorithm is favoring new types of contents favoring Pinterest idea pins, which are their version of stories. And if you can do educational short form video content, then Pinterest idea bins are great for you and video pins as well. They just appear in the newsfeed they really pop out at you. And there's a reason why Pinterest is probably prioritizing them in a newsfeed as well. But there are very very few people that are actually developing them. So I think if you were to launch or relaunch in my case is going to be relaunching pinches for 2022. With a video only mindset of Pinterest idea pins and video pins. The algorithm is going to love you and I think you there is still a ton of website traffic to be gained from Pinterest maybe not as much as before, but still a ton and the data does show that Pinterest did grow quite a bit during Coronavirus. Like other social networks, maybe not as much as Tik Tok. But it still did grow. It still should be Pinterest thing for all of you marketers. And once again, if you're not sure, do some searches. See if your competitors are on there. See if there are content creators on there already creating content about your market. And if you see enough of it, go for it. If you don't see enough of it, I would still keep an eye on it and consider experimenting with and perhaps launching something on it and 2022 and the great thing is if you're already making this short form video, then there are ways of repurposing that for Pinterest like you could repurpose it for Tik Tok. Alright, number six blog, you should be blogging not everyone's blogging, it is the number one way to really get found in search results. It also is a way for you to answer questions that you get from your clients. And it's a way to offer value and add resource to the world, to your customers, to potential customers. And to all those wonderful people that are going to find you via search engines. I really want you for those of you that are thinking of relaunching your blog, have think about it strategically, with a keyword strategy in mind. Hopefully by the time you hear this episode, I will have launched my workshop, which is going to help you do this, of really creating a strategic editorial calendar for your blog in 2022. In what I think can be done in less than two hours, be sure to look out for that workshop if I haven't announced that already. If I have, you'll probably hear about it in a dynamic ad. Before you heard this episode. I will also put the link to it in the show notes. Number seven, an email list or I should say email marketing. Do we have any new lead magnets are the lead magnets that we have relevant for what we're doing today? Are we using the right email marketing technology? are we sending out the right messages? Are we messaging people too frequently too infrequently? Are we still doing newsletters where maybe we can have more sequence based content which is really the My Plan I should say for 2022 is really think of my email marketing in a way to how can I best develop relationships not only with website visitors to have them opt into my email list, but once they're on my email list, how can I generally develop a better relationship with them that is going to pay higher dividends for my business in the future. It is just a way of rethinking email Marketing that I want to challenge you to do as well that I'm already doing this. Right now, it's still in the planning stages, but it's something I hope to relaunch in 2022 as well. Now, the last three I'm going to talk about are more relevant for content creators, or entrepreneurs, solopreneurs that are out there, but I think they're equally relevant to businesses as well. These are three of I would say the most common ways in which content creators and you should have heard my episode a few episodes ago on the crater economy and its relationship to influencer marketing. But these are ways in which we can monetize our audience. Or if you are a business, that you can deepen relationships with them, that will lead to more business down the road. So number eight on the list is going to be develop a membership community. Now, if you're a business, this is going to probably look like a Facebook group, it could be a LinkedIn group. But I see more and more especially b2b SaaS companies creating Facebook groups for their customers. They're offering customer support. They're, they're offering resources, they're promoting things, but they're also answering questions. And the community members are developing relationships amongst themselves. That is a beautiful thing, which really deepens the value of your business and allows you to create a true community, which is not you in the center of every conversation, but everybody in there talking about you, and you are the reason that they are there. So I challenge you all, even if you're a b2c, I don't care what industry you're in, there is a role that a community can have in your marketing. And I encourage you to create one, Facebook is a great place, if you want to stay off of Facebook, I highly recommend circle. I'll put an affiliate link in the show notes. But you can go to Neal schaffer.com/circle. It is the platform that I use to launch my own membership community digital first. And yes, if you're a content creator, a membership community, I think is the first place you should start. And I say that because it gives people access to you at a very, very low cost. It does not require a lot of your time to invest in creating it. You don't need to do a whole pre launch set of content, or what have you. It could be a very, very easygoing, low investment of time and resources way of allowing people to access you, but I think from your perspective, it's less about monetizing this and more about deepening the relationships and then getting the feedback for what you need to develop next. And if you were to ask me what to develop Next, number nine, it would be a workshop. The workshop is a funny word, because I consider workshops, webinars, and I consider masterclasses webinars, but for some reason, webinars, sort of it's old school world that we don't like to say anymore. So we say masterclass, we say workshop, they're all pretty much the same thing in my mind. So if you're a business, offer more webinars, live streams, once can give your customers and prospective companies give them access to you, but teach them a the whole idea about a webinar or a masterclass or workshop is it's around a theme. And you're going to give people a mini transformation. From the beginning to end, you're going to teach them something. Now, if your business, you're going to teach them something that either about your product or would want them wanting your product, because it's a natural solution to that problem. If you're a content creator, then you are going to be monetizing your IP or intellectual property by giving people a mini transformation. So the mini transformation for my workshop is stop thinking about what you need to blog. Stop confusing what keyword research is, or SEO for blogging, how it all fits together. I'm going to teach you all that in one hour. And then I'm going to teach you how to implement all of it yourself to create your own SEO optimized blogging calendar for 2022. In less than two hours, that is the transformation. That's the promise, right? Perhaps I don't get many people joining the workshop. Well, I'm going to do a different workshop. Maybe the next one will be about email marketing. But it's this iteration. That is why why serial entrepreneurs are so successful, because we know that 90% of things fail, or 90% of businesses fail. But it's the entrepreneurs that keep trying different things that read success. And if you haven't listened to her before, listen to the blogger Jr. Podcast with gentlemen Lesley, and she has a company called milotree which is the pop up that you see on my website, asking you to subscribe to my YouTube channel Hinton's youtube.com/neal Schaffer, but they've also created a platform called Milo tree easy payments, which basically takes the platform away from your product. And what I mean by this is when I launched Digital First, I had to piece together using Zapier to piece together email and a payment gateway and a landing page on my website and the actual platform which was served Which now, actually, oh, and then, you know, zoom, right where I have my weekly calls. So I know that circle is actually working more and more of these things into their platform. But instead of thinking, oh, I want to do a membership, I need a complex platform. You know, I need Kajabi, or, oh, I want to do a workshop, I need like teachable or Thinkific or poda, you don't. And what might not your EZ payments does is it basically provides you the landing page, the payment gateway, the integration with your email software, and then it says, Look, do a landing page for whatever you want to offer, get money for whatever you want to offer, and then offer that product, whether it is a masterclass whether it is a monthly membership, right, or access to a Facebook group, separate the platform from the product. And to me, it is absolutely been an incredibly enlightening way to think about business in 2022. And beyond that, I want to challenge you to do as well, once again, if you're a business, it's not about the monetization, it's really about having the same mindsets when you do, hopefully, more regular webinars slash live streams. But for content creators, it's a mini transformation. Because if you can do this, it leads up to number 10, which is the course now if your business, I believe you can create, and you should create courses for your business as well. A lot of businesses have like onboarding, and I'm speaking mainly about b2b businesses that require a little bit more education. But even b2c businesses can have a full on course, on how to use your product. Because what I find is that a lot of b2c companies, people don't necessarily use the product the right way, it ends up being a burden on customer support, and or the FAQs that they need aren't there. But if you were to create a course, to walk people through at the beginning to make sure that everything was answered. And when you get a question asked you add it to that course, and you refer people to take this module of this course. And then they see oh, there's other content here, I might be interested in it, you're obviously building more mindshare with that customer, there is a greater chance that they're going to consume more of your content, and have a greater love for your product, and become a more loyal customer, and maybe even share that content with their own community or obviously share their love for your product with their community. And now you're inciting word of mouth, which is obviously the holy grail of social media marketing. So you can see how by educating your customer, it gives you the ability to do this, if it's b2b, you know, create a full on course, and I've seen some b2b SaaS companies do this. But I really want to challenge you to create a course, for your clients. If, if we take the workshop or webinar as a mini transformation, how can you expand on that and go into more depth, and the questions that you get asked in that workshop or webinar, now you begin to flesh those out and develop more of a full on course. And if you're a content creator, same thing, begin with a workshop. And you know, if I want to create a course, I'm not going to put all my eggs in one basket, or try to figure out what people want. And I can ask them in a survey, or I can ask them with their wallet and say, Hey, what are people willing to pay for? And if they're willing to pay for it? What are the further questions they ask, How can I further help them, that to me seems like a more natural way to create a course that has a higher chance of success. And now you have members that paid for your workshop that are going to be your early adopters for your course, or they're going to be your beta testers for your course it all links together. And it all believes I believe, I believe with the community, where you get to understand the needs, that people who follow you have. And I'd say the same for business, leverage your community to better understand the needs of your customers. It's an iterative process. But I'm hoping, and I think you see the themes here. Big theme on video for 2022. Big theme on education. And whether the education is through the blog through the email, or whether it's through these crater economy type of products, which you can or don't necessarily need to monetize. Depending on if you're a business or you're a content creator, you begin to see the themes that I believe whether you're launching or relaunching a marketing channel in 2022, that will have the best chance of leading you to success. Well that's it for another episode. What do you think, agree? Disagree? Am I missing something? Am I on target? Feel free to reach out to me on social media tag me share this if you think there's a friend that this can help. And as always, I really appreciate all the reviews that you've all invested your time in writing on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen this podcast. Please make sure that you subscribe. Some great episodes as always coming up for 2022 at least for the first month. I plan to be released. Scene episodes twice a week. And then starting February we're going to go back to that once a week cadence. And I'm just going to try to stay as consistent as ever in 2022 and try to get to episode number 250 Excuse me, episode number 300 That I can launch on the first week of January in 2023. But until then, there is a lot to teach a lot of information to share. I hope I get a lot of feedback from you. But I also hope that this podcast really serves as your digital marketing coach to provide you clarity, strategy, and results for your digital and social media marketing in 2022. And well beyond. This is your digital marketing coach Neal Schaffer signing off. You've been listening to your digital marketing coach, questions, comments, requests, links, go to podcast dot Neal schaffer.com. Get the shownotes to this and 200 plus podcast episodes and Neal schaffer.com to tap into the 400 Plus blog posts that Neil has published to support your business. While you're there, check out Neil's Digital First group coaching membership community if you or your business needs a little helping hand. See you next time on your digital marketing coach.