Does your business have a distinctive culture outlining the shared values, attitudes, and practices that amplify its uniqueness? That company “personality” influences everything from daily interactions with customers to major decisions shaping the future, and can be a powerful tool when it comes to content marketing. Additionally, a strong, confident company culture projects the same image to others, whether they are prospective clients or the broader community, and usually leads to projects that align with your own.
Here are a few tips for weaving the trifecta of mission, vision, and values into your daily operations:
Make it central to your business
Guiding principles are functional beliefs that act as a compass, both personally and professionally. For a company, those compass points are integral to internal and external operations. They are the ‘why’ behind decisions and the ‘who’ behind accomplished tasks, so it makes sense to hire employees who share these values. Ensure your team is committed to supporting the company’s mission, vision, and values by providing them in writing before hiring. Also, provide prospective clients with the statements during the initial discussion phase for total transparency.
What is the return? A team secure in the knowledge that their business leadership is solidly in their corner, and clients who know from Day 1 their marketing and content needs will be addressed in a way that meshes with their own foundational convictions.
Know your niche
A business does not need to serve every type of client, and not every type of client will be a good fit for every business. Especially within the realm of content marketing, it’s critical to understand a company’s “voice” and be able to project information using that same tone. Ever watch “Big Bang Theory”? Physics genius Sheldon Cooper has his way of explaining complex topics, and his roommate and friend Leonard Hofstadter, another. Yet both are brilliance personified and understood by their own niche audiences. Figure out if your business is a Sheldon or a Leonard, and stick to it using tactics that work with your company’s professional knowledge, skills, and abilities.
What is the return? Well, one character won the Nobel Prize, and the other didn’t, but this point aside, it is important to note that each man explained theories differently, but with the same result: Their audiences understood. That’s the goal.
Resist social media’s tendency to distract from your company’s mission, vision, and values
Easier said than done, right? While social media’s pull can be irresistible, a company with clear-headed focus on what matters most is bound to overcome. How? Keep the business mission, vision, and goal statements in a prominent place, and refer back often, especially while working on social media platforms.
Thinking of typing a biting retort to a divisive post, or sharing a controversial post by someone else? Consider your response against the company culture. If the two don’t align, skip it. Understand too that there are “agents of chaos” everywhere in the realm of social media, and those actors thrive on negative or false content, which tends to high engagement rates and thus, more money.
Develop a list of responses to hot-button questions that can be quickly accessed by your social media team. Additionally, make a policy and a process for handling harassment and/or inappropriate comments or messages. These presets can also be copied and pasted as needed, ensuring the exact wording is used without an emotional response initiated “in the moment”.
Additionally, as a company, think twice about engaging with or endorsing political candidates, unless it directly affects the business. Personal convictions and business ethos should always, always remain separate from each other. Always.
And finally, recognize that marketing trends don’t always translate into success for every company, and that’s OK. Each day, approximately 8,000 social media trends hit the platforms, so find the one that will serve your company, and customers, best.
What is the return? An authentic business that stays true to its core values will earn the respect of current and potential customers, and experience growth among other companies aligned in similar ways.
Regularly curate followers
If company authenticity is important to you (and it should be), removing bots, trolls, “dead” accounts and accounts that don’t add anything but numbers to your pages.
What is the return? Not only will this action allow you to focus efforts on the community you wish to cultivate, but platform algorithms will also start referring the account to those most likely to actually interact with your brand.