Revvity

Accept, Adapt and Keep Attempting

I started in social media in 2007. I was there early, and I saw it in its most raw, nascent form. From me, it started with blogging. I just marveled at how people were essentially saying and writing what they thought and publishing it. This new extension of marketing appeared to be a very low barrier to entry. And that fascinated me.

If I look back to when I first got started and where I am today, I see an evolution of communication. The backbone being social media. Think about it. Anybody can say, post and create anything they want, with various degrees of success, and with virtually zero obstacles in their way. Pushing content out takes seconds. Creating it takes minutes. A communications platform for everyone.

Social media has become this globally accepted open forum to communicate. Where everyone can find their tribe. When you take all of that into account, social media has always been in a perpetual state of change, just like our society and our culture; a parallel duality. For me? It’s no less difficult trying to manage it today than it was back then. Leading in social means accepting, adapting and attempting. The one constant? Change.

Content Resets Every Single Day

First off, I'll say that as much as I love social insights and need them, they’ve always been lacking. I’ve always wanted more.  Even back in the days of Radian6, the data was rich, but it was never a complete picture. Insights that drive change and can really determine your next step? The data gold? That’s stuff sits behind a gate or a walled-off community. i.e., LinkedIn. And even when you access what they provide? It’s limited.

“Leading in social means accepting, adapting and attempting. The one constant? Change.”

All of the other social platforms give you insights and analytics, but not the really good data. They know that. They do. We’re beholden to what they give us. The amount of data that we would like versus the amount of data that we get? Night and day. That being said, our brand awareness is as much driven by our content as it is by the data. I think that can be said about any entity. Be it an SMB or the enterprise.

You create a piece of content, you see how it performs. If it does well, you rinse and repeat. But to me, creating brand awareness never stops. And if you think you're in a position where you can stop, or you think you don’t need to create brand awareness content, then you're just giving an opening to your competition. You’re laying down. You’re assuming you don’t need to.

Limited or not, analytics drives everything we do. I tell people all the time that we are a data-driven organization. Social data can tell you a lot about how your organization is perceived or not.

That being said, and I’ve written about this in the past: content resets every day. So if your stuff wasn’t so good data-wise yesterday, well, today you have another chance to get it right.

To that point, the possibilities are endless when you have a great creative team. We at Revvity are blessed to have one of the best in the business leading our creative team, Bradley Smith. That dude rocks. Because of him, no idea is completely daft, and there’s no limit when it comes to creative ideas and outputs. And I think that's exciting.

Keep Telling the Story

Well Revvity has only been in existence for three years. Because of that, we're pretty much always in awareness mode to a certain degree. We’re still “telling” as much as we’re selling. So strategically speaking, our social media content and our channel initiatives are all completely aligned with our business goals. For the social team, we like our content to be answering the 7 W’s of writing as best it can and when it can; meaning does it provide the Who, What, Where, When and Why in the body copy and image. Can people figure out what we’re all about from our social content?

In the context of our company and social media, telling people who we are and what we do is equally as important as why we're doing it and for whom we're doing it. From a corporate standpoint, we live and breathe this mantra every day. We need to. We’re only three years old, remember? Whether you're three years old or 30, you have to continuously tell your story. Why? Because everyone and every entity is continuously being vetted via search and social media.

Own Your Space and Stay Curious

A few years ago, I was at the Forbes CMO Summit. It was a fantastic event in which you had CMOs from some of the largest brands like Subway, Wells Fargo and MasterCard, etc... The talks were fantastic, but everyone had a similar central theme to their sessions. It was essentially this. “We will consider anything as long as it drives business value.” To a CMO, it’s always about growing the business. These are not just figureheads in leadership positions. They are there to move the needle. The goals are the same across our business as well. Whether it’s search, social, print or hieroglyphics, it doesn’t matter. We’re all here to grow the business. I’m here to grow the business and to let people know about the business.

And to that point, if this is what you do, in my case, social media, you should own your space. Be the SME as I like to say. Be the subject matter expert. If things aren't working, ask why, then adjust. Pivot but be thoughtful and data driven. In the words of John Wooden, “Be quick but don’t hurry.” Nobody's hired just to keep the lights on, especially in digital marketing, where success can be so nebulous and fleeting.

The last thing I’ll say on this is, be curious. Everybody's burning desire should be understanding why something worked, or why something didn't work. For me, I'm innately curious, so I always want to know why. And I think that’s what I want from my peers and teams. I’m pretty sure being curious is a great trait to have.

Prepare for the AI–Search Collision

If you're not thinking about AI, then you probably shouldn't be in the business. But what I'm thinking about is the collision of social media, AI and search. How is it evolving. How is it already changing what we do? The upside and interesting thing about all of this is that social media is gaining a second wind, but from a different standpoint: it's now being used as a citation source for AI engines. What that means is that platforms like YouTube, LinkedIn and Reddit are now primary citation sources for AI answer engines. How does that change and affect content? How does that disrupt marketing and communications?

Social media has always been in a state of change, acceptance and development. That's one of the constants, but social media is also a phenomenon. It has fundamentally changed the way we communicate and interact now, to the point where everybody is jumping on some type of social platform to read content, create content or consume content. There are certain physical actions people do online every day, and I'm willing to bet that partaking in social is one of them.

So I think there's a lot to be anxious about. But I'm also the eternal optimist. I think social media is getting ready to enter a renaissance here shortly.