Overview
In this presentation, Thomas Helfrich talks about digital relevance and how a company can gain revenue from its relevance online.
Speaker
Thomas is the CEO of instarel.ai, a company that helps users create thought leadership content using Ai-powered technology. Relevance will lead people to think of your product when a buying moment arises. Setting goals, creating content, and having a strategy around those goals will help your organization be relevant in the space where it operates. This presentation contains some great tips and tricks that will help any organization gain digital relevance and drive revenue.
Quotes
“It’s okay to create lots of content. But you need to make sure that it’s all aligned to the goal. So let’s first start with the types of content you could create and maybe where you should use them and where it should be leveraged.”
“What I do suggest when you’re first starting a digital relevance journey is to pick one social media platform and stick with that for a good amount of time for a good year.”
Key Points
In order to create digital relevance:
- Create content
- Engage with that content
- Have a strategy that drives towards a goal.
Transcript
Hello Thomas Oberg. I’m founder and CEO of a company called instarel.ai. Now I’m here to talk to you about digital relevance and specifically how to create revenue from it. I’m going to give you a bit of my background, I’m going to go over the core components of what digital relevance is, and some really good tips and tricks on what you can do and should not do when you’re in this journey. So I appreciate the time you’re going to listen today and the time we’ll spend together I do encourage you to reach out if you have additional questions. And And now, let’s learn a bit about digital relevance. Let’s begin with the basics.
What is digital relevance? Digital relevance has three main components is creating content. It’s engaging with that content, and it’s having a strategy that drives towards a goal. When you combine all three elements of this, you have digital relevance. And that’s when people will perceive you or your brand or your products or services in a timely way that they buy them, or they think of you in the moment when they want to buy them. And there’s a whole way we do this. You can do this, starting with a goal. So let’s discuss starting with the goal.
Goal setting is always something we all do. It’s something you need to think about, but specifically when you’re trying to become digitally relevant. You want to think about what is it I’m trying to accomplish? Why would I create a single piece of content and engage with it? Are you just trying to get more followers? Are you trying to change your personal branding? Get a new job? Are you trying to get people to think of your brand in new light? Are you just trying to grab more leads and sales? Start with something, never write content or engage with it? For the sole purposes of just doing it because someone said to do it, create a goal and then all pieces of content and all engagement should follow that goal. That’s the way you can focus on generating revenue today and focusing on generating revenue for tomorrow. Start with the goal at a time, make it realistic and start don’t overthink it. Just create the goal and you have the first component to digital relevance.
Set a goal and by the way, it’s great because what people don’t but once you set a goal, you’re on your way. Now the goal will determine the strategy and the strategy will determine what type of content you want to make. Where do you want it to live? What like platform? Is it web is your website? Is it social media, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc? And how long should it be? What types will I need? How often should I post? Where do I engage with it? How do I engage with it? So starting with the goal leads the strategy and you start going through what can I support? How often can I go create these things? And how often should I engage with them. But start with that goal that will define that a strategy that’s realistic to help you chase it and then digital relevance is important. No more can be more. The more content you put out there that’s relevant, the quicker and the faster you become relevant. So keep this in mind. It’s okay to create lots of content. But you need to make sure that it’s all aligned to the goal. So let’s first start with the types of content you could create and maybe where you should use them and where it should be leveraged.
So let’s start with content. Now when I say content, what I’m referring to are things you create. And this could be a post. It could be a blog, it could be an article. It could be a meme, a gift, an image, a video, a podcast, anything where you’re taking your point of view, the thing that you care about, you’re expressing it and it can be done in a number of ways and it can be done number places. So what I do suggest when you’re first starting a digital relevance journey is to pick one social media platform and stick with that for a good amount of time for a good year. So it let’s say if over a 12 month period, you really don’t have a presence, you’re kind of everywhere. Try picking let’s say just LinkedIn, and go all in on LinkedIn. Just get into the weeds with it. Post everything there, do everything you need to so pick your social media platform that you first want to go on.
Now. If your blog is where you needed to be picked your blog, but go all in on one reason for that is likely you’re not going to have time to go do more than one if you do then pick a secondary one and go after it when most people when they’re first chasing their digital wallets. Even companies can only really go deep on one social media platform or one online platform or digital platform for that matter. The point is pick one.
Now when you do this, you’ll create all types of content for that platform. So an example of LinkedIn. There are posts, there’s articles, there’s documents, there’s longer form posts, short performer posts, there’s polls, images, audio, video, all of it. When you create these things, have in mind what it is you’re trying to achieve in the future. So remember the goal, the goal has to be first Now does that mean you only talk about you and the businesses and what we do or what you do?
No, the thing is you don’t want to we all over people no one likes to get weed on. No, we do this we do that. You have to have a little bit of different strategy when creating the content. You’re gonna want to mix links of forms and what you say and what you do. And one of the kind of approaches you could take is, let’s say Monday through Friday, you try to do a post today, and the post could rain or motivational and like on a Monday, or hey, I’m trying to make you motivated and I’m trying to get you to be expired for the week. People like these. They tend to follow people who are like these and they will listen to what you have to say on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, if you’ve kicked them off in the week really nicely. And on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, maybe talk about more industry things or things you do with your business.
You could throw a couple of weeks in there. We do this we do that. But if you tend to focus on the pain points, and the things that your customers feel and how they perceive your industry, or the buying cycle of whatever it is you’re selling, now you’re on your way to connect with people better and that content can be written. You can be in form of an image with some text on it. It could be a video you saw our video you made or a podcast you produced all those counts. But remember, what is the goal you have a goal in the future. So you have to do this in a number of ways.Often, like the end of the week would say on social media was something more uplifting, something fun, Fun Fact Fridays.
So write content or create content that’s fun. It gets people to like you remember you with a smile at the end of the week. created some content, you’re going to need to post it you’re going to need to engage with it. How are you going to do that? Does it take you a long time just to create the content but engaging with it’s going to be even more work? So think through this. If you post something on any social media, it’s really important when people comment, and people respond that you comment back you actually give actual thought and be thoughtful in what you say back. So remember, when you post something you don’t just fire and forget it. You want to make sure you’re engaging with it. Example being LinkedIn, you may want to go to groups and post it. You may want to get out there and tag a few people or put in hashtags. There’s a lot of things you can do to drive engagement on your post, or your article or whatever you put out there for the day. But you have to make sure you’re responding back to the people that are engaging with it. Some really good tricks is always ask a question. Whenever you’ve read someone else’s post and you say something or you someone’s reading yours and they’ve made a comment, read what they have to say and maybe reply back with a question. It’s very, very important.
That’s part of the engagement strategy, the content you produce. The other engagement strategy components are you going out and connecting with people that you need to meet in your industry, some people that you think will be influential to help your brand, your personal journey, digital relevance matter.
So you have to actively be engaged and actively connecting. There’s a lot of technologies out there that can help you do this automatically. You do have to be careful. Sometimes some of the platforms will give you some warnings for doing this. But you need to make sure that you some form or another are connecting with other people. It’s called outbound strategy. You have to connect to the right people. It’s it’s super important. But more importantly, as you connect with them, don’t just collect it. Engage with the posts they create. Go give three times go give at least three comments on someone else’s posts before you ask them for a meaning for them. Ask for anything, give real engagement, real organic thought and truth to what you say take the time because it really does matter. It is time consuming. But the engagement with content you create and the content others created will create trust and that trust is a core component to getting people to want to follow you buy from you even look to your product or services. If you’ve been in their feeds, they’re likely going to listen to when that time comes. So engage. There’s lots more strategies with this. But know that the point is that you need to be authentic, and you need to be engaging with people often, in particular with the content you create and the content that they’ve created. So give time to it and know it takes some time. But engagement is absolutely core to driving digital relevance.
So I know we went through this pretty quickly, but the main three core components of strategy with a goal that determines the content, where it should be and how long in the forms and the types, but also then just simple engagement models to make sure that you’re driving attention to the posts you create or the content you create, and those others that you’re interested in. Those are all the core components.
Now once you do this, there are other elements to really drive revenue. Revenue is in the follow up revenue is in you getting out there and getting on podcast creating live videos and live events, you writing articles and Industry and Trade. It’s doing other things out there that further your brand to the person and to your company. You have to do more than just post every day. It helps it’s a start to really become relevant to really drive revenue. People have to think of you as the person they have to meet before they buy anything. That industry that you represent. It could be a product or service anything they have to think of you and to do that you need to stick to a thought leadership level you need to get out there and raise your personal company persona to be the one to be thought of. So keep this in mind. It’s incredibly important to be doing lots of things that drive engagement and the content but also to raise your personal brand beyond just those content pieces. You you produced people buy from people, people trust people, trust the companies. So you want to make sure that they trust you as a representative of a company or a brand. Very important.
There’s a couple takeaways tips and tricks as you do this, by the way think through this now, what I’m describing nothing do with cost per click, if you have great budgets and you can do these things to go do some cost per click ads. All those things still matter. You still want engage you just it’s a different model. What I’m describing though, something on the other side, it’s not on the business cost per click side. What I’m describing is using your own personal social media presence, to allow those algorithms to reshare the content that you’ve created to reshare the presence that you are creating.
The social media algorithms will share personal side all day long. You don’t have to pay to do that. They want you to contribute content they want you to produce they want you to be a creator, because the platform is designed for consumption. So keep this in mind if you do these things on your founders or new or in the people that are key in your company are producing lots of good content and engaging with it. whole company that of which you’re trying to market or the whole brand or the service you’re trying to sell or the product will get the raise, they’ll get the rise they’ll get everything from it. Because when people check out people the first thing they typically do is where do they work? What do they do? And once you’ve had somebody make that kind of motion from Hey, I saw this post on the social media piece or read this blog on their on their personal website or they saw it on even on the company site. They always check out the person who wrote it. They check out the person who did the video or sit the podcast and they look to see where you work or what it is you do. That’s the marketing stroke that creates revenue when you’ve gotten into someone’s feed enough times and you’ve put out enough content where people perceive you and they think of you as that thought leader or is that industry leader will come buy from you when they’re ready. And what happens is they come to inbound. You don’t have to go out to them and market to them and sell them and try to get them on your schedule
and do cold calls. You’ll find more people will come to you for the services or products you sell. And this is the stroke of revenue. When you have high digital relevance people come to you to buy what you are selling.This is a much more effective way to create revenue.
Now you may be wondering, is this just made up? Does it really work? I will tell you when I started this company almost about a year and a half ago. year doesn’t 2022 I started in September 2020. In about a year’s journey. I took my own personal profile LinkedIn from a few 1000 to over 160,000 followers. That’s a vanity metric except that I went from absolutely no inbound Kalindi links and things like this to my entire schedule being full of people wanting to meet me and went from never been on any industry or trading platform five platforms to write about to writing for Forbes tech Council. entrepreneur.com To the AI journals was cognitive.
I wrote a piece of content that ended up creating a multi million dollar deal for a company. I’ve done this with customers where they’ve written lots of content, we’ve helped them engage and they’ve gotten hundreds and 1000s of dollars of savings from not having the higher marketing costs but also millions of dollars of opportunities from revenue. It does work with a couple other thoughts during this journey. There’s a lot of things you can do to enable scale.
Now if you’re doing this all yourself, it’s a lot of time and effort. I used to spend about 30 hours a week in social media, creating content engaging with it. It’s exhausting, and you feel like you’d never get the break. Now what I created with with Instagram and not to do a shameless plug but I created away while me don’t need to be in social media about an hour a week. Yet I have the ability to social presence almost 24 hours a day, seven days a week. There’s a lot of techniques with technologies and leveraging people and AI that you can do to help enable scale for not only producing content, but engaging with it and also creating inbound interest to the products and services you do.
Now I’ll leave that as kind of a call to action if you’d like to learn more about that how I do that how I have effectively 24 hours a day seven days a week coverage across all social media of Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn website, I’d happily loved it. I’d happily tell you about it. And you can learn more from it. You could do it yourself. Or you can hire install.ai as well. Shameless plug, always gotta throw that in there.
But that’s my last thing is you always have to have a call to action and the call to action might be as simple as follow me. The call to action might be Hey, come check out my website or come to my calendar. And in that case, I would tell you do the same coming to my calandy calandy.com/instarel.
I love to have a conversation with you learn more about what you’re doing, and how possibly I could personally help you for listening today. I do look forward to meeting everybody who took the time to watch this. Thank you