Take Care. Schemers are afoot. And misinformation is one of their favourite toys.

I recently read a series of articles in the latest Wired Magazine about how Russia, master minded by Putin, is now using the world wide web as a weapon against the West.

Because it’s there, and because it is the ideal platform from which to foment unrest, influence elections, undermine financial and political institutions and disseminate misinformation. Because a hacker can remain (relatively) anonymous and easily cover his tracks.

And equally importantly, most of us trust the net.

We believe what we see and read here and don’t take the time — don’t have the time — to check everything we read.

Take the 2016 US elections. US intelligence services tracking the activities of APT25 (Fancy Bear) know this Russian hacking group targeted the Democratic national Committee and officials on Hilary Clinton’s campaign. And set things up so that leaked emails found their way into the public domain by way of Wikileaks and other sites.

Security sources now say that such hacking groups are still active in Europe, where elections have just taken place in France, followed by our own here in the UK and in Germany later in the year.

So what does this mean for you, innocently going about your business and assuming that every article you read, every post a friend shares with you is bone fide? That even the good old BBC, the Times or your most trusted news source may be picking up misinformation from online sources without realising it and giving it a ring of authority? What if journalists don’t do enough due diligence?

First of all there are the ‘leaks’ — the revelations. Before you believe what you read ask a few questions. Who might benefit from leaking that information and getting it out in to the public domain? Who is damaged by it? How might it change or influence your decisions — to vote, say?

Take some care too, about what you share. You may be inadvertently spreading misinformation.

The buzz on social networks is another area where you could exercise a bit of caution. State hackers create thousands of twitter accounts and flood them with tweets to push their agenda. Just because something is trending on twitter does not mean it’s genuine. Whatever you do, don’t base an important business or life decision on it until you can verify it in some way.

Those same hackers are also really good a flooding comments onto popular blog posts that serve their ends. Take all those comments with a grain or two of salt. And form your own opinions.

It’s not just Russia and North Korea who are in on the action. Our own government is far from blameless in this respect. GCHQ, the CIA and other intelligence agencies in the West are happily at work here, manufacturing half-truths to influence public opinion and setting up hacks and stings to exert pressure on governments or organisations they want to bring to heel.

The world wide web is not as safe as you might think.

So you’ve found your niche, you’ve got great strategies and tools for finding your ideal clients, and you’re ready to grow your audience online. What next?

One of the most common challenges small business owners face is knowing what to say, and where and how often to blog. There are a couple of issues here.

Finding and posting great content that will draw the right audience to you and
Publishing that content consistently — at the same time and with the same look and feel

Many of us get started, write a few blog posts, or get a video or two ready and promote them on social channels. Then, we get busy; life gets in the way and that ‘regular weekly blog post’ gets put on the back burner for a week or two.

Or a month or more. Eventually, it’s forgotten about.

When months pass, and still we’re not getting a post out there, we become discouraged and a lot of us give up.

Like growing your list, publishing great content consistently needs a strategy and plan, something that makes it easy for you to share your message, with a consistent look and feel on a regular basis. And ensures it fits in with your lifestyle, your budget and your business objectives.

First and foremost, you need

A Mind Set Shift

Think of yourself as a Publisher, not simply as an Advertiser or someone who sells particular products or this specific service. That old way of thinking is obsolete.

It worked well in the past, when businesses advertised in trade publications, magazines, or newspapers in order to reach their audience. The publishers took care of creating and curating content, and of publishing it regularly, in a particular format that everyone came to know, understand and expect.

With the rise of social networks, the game changed. And this game is played by different rules. Once you know them, you can play both to win and to become a better player.

It’s now possible for any business to create and curate content as well as advertise in order to reach their target market. Indeed, it’s the only way to go to reach your target market and ideal clients on line. But, many of us have failed to grasp the fact that we are now Publishers. And haven’t a clue what that means or how to go about it.

And that’s why it’s so hard to get this social posting ‘right’ and keep it consistent. We haven’t got the right strategy — or any strategy — that will ensure consistent publishing, day after day, week after week, and month after month. A strategy that works for you and reaches your audience at a time and in a format that they find engaging. And from that strategy, a plan to work to on a daily and weekly basis.

A Simple Publishing Strategy

With so many social networks to choose from, and so many different media to engage in, it’s easy to get lost online. What’s important, initially is to select your primary channel and approach, and focus your attention on that until you have established yourself there and grown your audience.

Now that you know your niche, and have some great strategies and tactics for finding and engaging with them online, you’ll have a pretty good idea of what channel and medium to use in order to best reach out to and engage your audience.

Do Your Research

I’ve touched on this in previous posts, Finding the Right Prospects and Finding your Target Market Online. Nothing but nothing is more important than doing a thorough job of getting to know your target audience. There are several ways to do this:

121 conversations can uncover a lot about what customers want and need, as well as feedback on what you are currently doing well and not so well

Search of keywords using Google trends and search engine keyword alerts to track what customers are searching for and where they are hanging out on the web. Dig deeper into related topics and how these are trending

Web analytics to find out what your customers are reaching and what they are not interested in.

Social media listening to discover what your customers are sharing, talking about and struggling with in their jobs. Use groups and hashtags to follow these conversations.

Customer surveys to gather insights into your customers’ needs for information

Once you know this, you can craft…

2. Your Content Mission

Every publisher has an editorial mission — which needs to address three key elements:

Your core target audience
The material you’ll deliver to that audience
The outcome for your audience

Take the time now to craft your content mission. Let your audience know what you do for them and how this will benefit them. And share it in the comments below.

Keep in mind:

Fill a need. Your content should answer some unmet need or question your reader has
Be consistent. Always deliver your content on time and as your audience has come to expect it.
Be human. Find your voice and share it.
Have a point of view. Take sides where you need to. Be controversial.
Above all else, avoid sales speak. Talk about what interests your reader and matters to him or her
Be the best in your niche. And in time, you’ll be delivering the very best content that can be found.
And finally,

Your Medium is your Message

Choose it wisely.

3. Choose your Medium & Platform

Every publisher has a preferred medium. What is yours? How will you tell your stories? Where will you publish them? Will it be

Videos published on YouTube?
Written blog posts published on your website?
Podcasts uploaded to the iTunes store?
Engaging images on Pinterest or Instagram?

Your choice depends on your own natural talents and what you know of your audience. If you’re great in front of a camera, but find it a real challenge to write more than a few sentences coherently, then video is your route. You can always have someone strip out the video to give you a podcast, and/or send it off to a transcription service like….. to be turned into a word document, a pdf to download, etc. Video gives you the most options, if it suits you and your audience.

But it may not suit you. If you’d sooner die than sit in front of a camera and talk, then another medium — the spoken word or written word — may be better for you. If you have a knack for design, maybe images are the best way for you to communicate with and engage your audience.

Your choice of both your medium and your platform are important. Find the medium that best suits your personality and engages your audience, and use the platform or social network that gives you the best opportunity to grow your list of qualified leads quickly.

Here’s what you need to consider when choosing your platform.

What channel offers the best opportunity to reach my target audience?
What channel gives me the most control over my content and growing my audience?

Ideally, you’d like high control and high reach, but that’s often not possible. Your choice is always a tradeoff between the two.

If you use your website and blog as the platform, you have more control, but less reach. In order to grow your list, you’ll need to put in place a system to attract people to your content because your WordPress blog is not hosted on a network that naturally brings in traffic.

Use YouTube or iTunes and you have tremendous reach, but little control. What happens to the audience you’ve nurtured on You Tube if one day Google decides you’ve infringed one of its rules and shuts you down?

That’s why an hybrid approach is so valuable. We’ll look at that in another post.

In the meantime, share this post and let others know your content mission in the comments below.

Archives for May 2017

Misinformation: Don’t Believe Everything You Read