How to Create a Newsworthy Online Presence
First, we need to define digital marketing:
Digital Marketing: the process of gaining traffic or attention through electronic channels and using that traffic to sell your product. Also known as Internet marketing. (Business Dictionary)
On a more personal level, digital marketing is anything you do online to promote yourself or your brand/product/business. For example, if you’re an author who wants to get people looking at her book on Amazon, she can create a Facebook page and post updates about her book in hopes of getting people interested in buying it. She could also use Twitter and Instagram for the same purpose—to get people interested in reading her book by posting pictures and quotes from it or sharing sneak peeks of new books she’s writing in hopes that they’ll click the link in her bio when she tags them with #readersofinstagram (or whatever hashtag she uses). Or maybe when she tweets about something unrelated to writing, but relevant enough that someone will click through out of curiosity (e.g. I have an online presence in the music world, so I sometimes tweet about my favorite bands when they release a new album to bring attention to their latest work).
In other words, you can use social media in a variety of ways to promote yourself and your business. I’ve written about this before in my post on social media for authors, but it’s worth explaining again because the more places you’re present online, the better. The more people who see that you’re an author with a book out or that you have a blog where they can read what you have to say from different perspectives—even if they don’t buy your product(s) yet—the more likely it is for someone else who does buy what they sell/follow them/whatever will see your name and think “Hey, she seems pretty cool. Maybe I’ll check out her stuff.” That’s digital marketing.
Second: having a newsworthy online presence isn’t just about being active on social media; it includes things like creating content that appeals to people. If most of what you share is just links or pictures of cats (I’m guilty of this), then most likely no one will click through unless it’s something super relevant (e.g., “Cats are awesome!” or “Cats vs dogs? [insert picture here]”). But if all the pictures and updates are relevant (e.g. you’re an author), then someone might be interested in what you have to say.
For example, if you have a blog or are active on social media, then share your latest blog post or link to your book (or whatever it is that you’re selling). If you do this often enough, people will come to know who you are and what kind of things interest them; they’ll see your name pop up all over the place and start to trust that it’s worth reading/watching/listening to whatever it is that you’ve posted. It’s like advertising—the more exposure the better (I’m thinking about this thing called banner blindness where people just ignore everything they see; I think everyone should read about it because I’ve fallen victim myself). People remember names more than brands. So if someone sees your name over and over again linked with quality content, they’ll eventually click through out of curiosity—but only if their first impression was positive (you can’t take for granted that they were drawn in by the first thing they saw because there’s always something else competing for their attention).
Third: newsworthy content can be created in many different ways—it just depends on what works for each individual person or brand.
I hope this post was helpful!
