How can you catch more fish? By using more poles.
If you’re going to create social media content to establish or perpetuate thought leadership for you, your company, or your clients, you can’t silo your ideas.
The old method of thought leadership was to create a white paper. A carefully crafted, highly edited, incredibly boring, 18-page tree killer that you provided for download on your Web site.
Guess what? In a 140-character world, a white paper feels like reading Moby Dick. Backwards. While covered in maple syrup.
Mmmmm. Info Snacks
Don’t put all your thought leadership eggs in that one, large basket. Like a salad at a fancy restaurant, deconstruct that white paper and instead create an array of info snacks that you can sprinkle across the Web.
Each of those snacks will be consumed by a slightly different audience, and perhaps more importantly each will be indexed by search engines, multiplying your inbound marketing opportunities geometrically.
Let’s think about how this might work in practice. Let’s say your core concept is that Blue Cross/Blue Shield in your state is helping improve the health of the citizenry through community health initiatives like immunization, exercise classes, and so forth.
Sure, you could create a report and a press release that talks about the good works of BCBS. You could probably even get a reporter to write about it in the local paper, or the TV station to grab some footage of the line for flu shots. But that’s not “atomizing” content (in the words of Todd Defren from Shift Communications). That’s siloing content.
Instead, you could create:
- A blog post about how immunizations work, and whether there’s a danger of injecting people with live virus.
- A blog post about the effectiveness of immunizations in controlling infectious disease.
- A blog post about the history of immunization.
- A blog post that compares the impacts and benefits of various types of exercise (aerobic vs. anaerobic, etc.)
- A blog post that reviews equipment you might need in BCBS exercise classes like fitness balls, yoga mats, steps.
- A “biggest loser” style contest in major cities in your state, including weekly blog posts, Facebook page, and videos of weigh-ins.
- A video blog post (also on YouTube) interviewing an immunization nurse and discussing the craziest/funniest things he/she has seen (good for humanization).
- A video blog post (also on YouTube) showing scenes from an exercise class, and interviewing participants.
- A weekly podcast that features discussions with fitness instructors about easy fitness tips that consumers can do at home.
- A Powerpoint or Keynote presentation (uploaded to Slideshare) that covers the history of immunization and its importance in modern public health.
This doesn’t even begin to exhaust the options, and doesn’t include content on Wikipedia, Google Knol, Hunch, Squidoo, or blog comments.
Thought leadership via social media content is about thinking big. And then thinking small.
Are you ready to fish?
(photo by Laszlo-Photo)
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Fitness Tips – Get More Bait in the Water | Social Media Marketing | Social Media … [link to post] – Nice Read
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Soc Media Link: Get More Bait in the Water | Social Media Marketing | Social Media …: Each of .. [link to post]
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Get More Bait in the Water | Social Media Marketing | Social Media …: A video blog post (also on YouTube) int.. [link to post]
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Love it Jay! As always great insights. No one wants to read Moby Dick backwards!
.-= Leah Kaiz´s last blog ..Can’t We All Get Along: I Think People Have Lost Their Minds =-.
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Get More Bait in the Water | Social Media Marketing | Social Media … [link to post]
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No more data jails! same issue plaguing open source in a different context here: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1282
Always informative, I appreciate what you are doing here. I forget sometimes just how many ways there are to get the message out… thank you for the reminder!
.-= Josh Kilen´s last blog ..How your values may be all wrong… =-.
My own information consumption habits are a testament to this principle. I don’t print out the white papers and I get distracted after 3-4 pages anyway. All of your suggestions would make for more compelling content. Thanks for the tips.
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RT @jaybaer A great reminder for us all! Get More Bait in the Water Convince & Convert [link to post]
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RT @jaybaer Get More Bait in the Water | Social Media Marketing | Social Media Consulting – Convince & Convert [link to post]
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Jay, this is so good. My budget is small so this big little thinking is how I operate. It works too because I’m number one in Google for my expertise and I never paid one, red cent to make it happen. I’ve always done exactly what you’ve described here.
.-= Peggy Duncan´s last blog ..Running a Non-Virtual, Virtual Business Made Easy with New Technologies =-.
Excellent examples of how an organization can go further with smaller bits of content. Though I think a few industries still have a role for freely available (without registration!) meal-sized content — big ticket B2B technology, for example — even they can benefit from relying on these lengthy communications less. “Info snacks” are now an important part of any plan – great summary!
.-= Kellye Crane´s last blog ..PR Consultants: It’s Twitter Time =-.
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Marketing article: ‘Get More Bait in the Water” [link to post]
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RT @jaybaer Get More Bait in the Water. Excellent article on promoting what you know with little dough [link to post]
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RT @PeggyDuncan: RT @jaybaer Get More Bait in the Water. Excellent article on promoting what you know with little dough [link to post]
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More good advice – fish where the fish are: in lots of ponds – [link to post]
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Deconstruct that white paper and instead create an array of info snacks that you can sprinkle across the Web. [link to post]
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RT @JayPeete: Get More Bait in the Water | Social Media Marketing | Social Media … [link to post]
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R u ready to fish? RT @randylewiskemp Marketing article: ‘Get More Bait in the Water” [link to post]
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Awesome post : Use more social media “info snacks” to reach larger audience [link to post]
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[...] Leave a comment Go to comments I love this description of white papers from Jay Baer on Get More Bait in the Water ( yes I’m a victim of my own snark having posted multiple white papers on our Web site) [...]
[...] and utterly… inspired by Jay Baer over at Convince and Convert. His blog post titled Get More Bait in the Water has a great thought that pushed me to write this blog. “Thought leadership via social media [...]
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RT @randylewiskemp Marketing article: ‘Get More Bait in the Water” [link to post]
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Awesome post, love the like reading Moby Dick comments, I actually laughed out load. Which caused some looks since I’m sitting in a coffee shop
Getting customers to understand content distribution and siloing can be interesting, but once they get it and see how it works, they love it.
Doug
.-= Doug McIsaac´s last blog ..4 Ways to Create Value Through Social Media =-.
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Social Media Marketing. Get More Bait in the Water | | Social Media Consulting – Convince & Convert [link to post] #Facebook #Twitter
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Brilliant post about spreading your thought leadership articles around – More Bait in the Water [link to post]
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Coming out of an ‘esoteric’ mouth-to-ear tradition, I find myself having to re-orient (-occident? hardyharhar) a tendency to –as you say– silo the product of my enterprise. Since I am trying to redefine Tantra as something that exists out beyond the sexreligion continuum within which it has been circulated for the last 100 years (in the West), social media seems to be part of that process. I just have to keep a sharp eye on my Swiss Vault default, while remaining responsible to what Tantra *can* accomplish. (See the Tantra for Bobos! blog for a Bigger Idea.)
~Leu
.-= Eleusis D´s last blog ..Yogis & Yoginis! =-.
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RT @tweetmeme Get More Bait in the Water | Social Media Marketing | Social Media Consulting – Convince & Convert [link to post]
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Jay loved your title and a very good illustration of how you can tactically stretch out your thought leadership campaign with a particular focus on social media. I do, however, think that what you use is very dependent on your target audience. If a white paper is what turns your target audience on, then don’t throw out the idea. To me thought leadership is all about tapping into what your target audience consumers and then packaging it accordingly.
[...] of inbound marketing. Create content about your brand, and distribute it as widely as possible. Get more bait in the water. Optimize EVERY piece of content for [...]
Great post. More posts more traffic.
Also breaking up a big post into 2-3 smaller posts is good way to get more posts on your blog.
.-= John Paul Aguiar´s last blog ..Blogging for Money Then Stop Stealing Your Own Sales =-.
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Get More Bait in the Water (about social media…NOT fishing) [link to post]
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Jay, I just started reading your blog recently and think you do a great job at… Getting More Bait In the Water. You share valuable info in bite size chunks to help people stay (or get) on track with their Social Media Marketing efforts. Well done!
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RT @jaybaer Get More Bait in the Water | | Social Media Consulting – Convince & Convert [link to post]
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RT @jaybaer Get More Bait in the Water [link to post]
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Hard to argue with the more bait in the water approach, but the big question is what’s behind the hook. I’m all for bite-size content, but I also think it’s important to have some well-thought through arguments behind it — and those arguments often need to be developed by producing the long white paper (or other report) in the first place. The big risk with just serving up bait is that there’s nothing truly satisfying after you bite the hook.
.-= Rob Leavitt´s last blog ..More evidence that give-to-get is the key to success =-.
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Great @jaybauer post on taking content from “Moby Dick” whitepaper to tasty snack-size: [link to post]
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Get More Bait in the Water [link to post]
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Mmmm Info Snacks…Embrace the power of atomic messaging. A thoughtful blog entry by @jaybaer [link to post]
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Ah! Thanks for the post. I forgot that big things come in small packages.
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Ha! RT @EmbarkCreative In a 140-char world a white ppr feels like reading Moby Dick. Backwards. Covered in maple syrup [link to post]
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Ahhh – like a mediasnack
DK
MediaSnackers Founding Director
mediasnackers.com
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Good tips: go from white papers to “info snacks” | Get More Bait in the Water | [link to post] (Convince&Convert via @SBoSM)
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Atomic Messaging – Get more bait in the water: [link to post] RT @jaybaer
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RT @EmbarkCreative: “In a 140-character world, a white paper feels like reading Moby Dick. Backwards. …” [link to post]
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Good stuff here on the power of bite-size messaging/atomizing content: RT @jaybaer Get More Bait in the Water [link to post]
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Are white papers too cumbersome? Blogger Jay Baer suggests atomizing your content using social media. [link to post] #socialmedia
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“In a 140-character world, a white paper feels like reading Moby Dick. Backwards. While covered in maple syrup.” [link to post]
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RT @jmctigue: Some good advice for social media marketers and bloggers: Get More Bait in the Water – [link to post]
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Some good advice for social media marketers and bloggers: Get More Bait in the Water – [link to post]
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