Stop Marketing, Start Programming

20 years. That’s how long I’ve been in this marketing game. I didn’t mean to become a marketer, but if you’re an entrepreneur, you have no choice. And if you’re a writer, you quickly gravitate toward copywriting and branding work because businesses pay more than publishers. And if you’re an English major, no one warns you that becoming a professor of English is cutthroat and saturated.

I had an AOL AIM account when I was 16. To this day, writing is still my 100% preferred way to communicate, much to the chagrin of exes and ex-friends who that my letter writing to get through conflict was childish. Alas. Then, I got a Facebook account in 2003, my first year of grad school at Marshall University. MySpace was before that, but I don’t recall the year and I was never the biggest fan. I didn’t like how it looked—same reason I still don’t use Reddit even though I know there is a shitton of great nuggets about literally everything on there, and I love the meritocracy of it. I just wish it was more pleasant to look at.

The point is, I have been doing digital marketing since it started. I taught classes in 2006 at the now-Georgia Southern campus in Savannah, Georgia, called in those days Armstrong Atlantic State University. I’ve seen the trends. I fell in love with Vine, and then everyone bailed—I’m still not exactly sure what happened with that one, as it is basically today’s TikTok. I had my Foursquare so perfect, and it was my absolute hands down favorite way to plan vacations.

But the truth is, the sheer volume of content unleashed every single day is completely overwhelming. Social media has lost some of it’s power for businesses. That doesn’t mean stop using it, it just means that you have to be super intentional with what you are putting out where.

One of my favorite educators on digital marketing, Gary Vaynerchuk, instilled in me from the beginning that it’s not about the number of eyeballs—of course, he now has 6.8 million followers on Facebook and he literally owns https://www.facebook.com/gary like the freaking Madonna or Cher of business. But I will never forget this video’s lesson:

So, we’ve all been dealing with brands punching into our feeds on every single channel—remember when Facebook really was just pictures of your friends’ kids and dogs? Posting every day is no longer the strategy. Just capturing “behind-the-scenes” content doesn’t cut it anymore.

5 Shifts To Make Now

  1. People need to know that you care—about their support, about your business, and about making the world a better place. Are you heart-, community-, and service-led?

  2. They want to know your core values and what kind of people you are and how you impact your community.

  3. They want to feel valued, heard, and respected. Just flooding your feeds with pretty photos or videos isn’t enough.

  4. They have to feel surprised, delighted, happy, taken care of, comforted, understood… some positive emotion that helps them navigate this tricky thing called life.

  5. Thinking in terms of programming will make your marketing more fun for everyone, get more employees and customers involved, and give you peaks and boosts so you’re constantly hitting new plateaus, aka Sprints and Saunters. Plus, you can align to nonprofits, causes, festivals, and events that share your values—and your customer base.

What it boils down to is, what do your customers care about and how can you better serve them? Then, implement programming that supports their needs. If you’re an art gallery, can you curate more daytime programming? Host more salons or cultivated conversations? Workshops for artists? Field trips? Auctions? Start a podcast? Host other types of pop-up events?

Programming is a mindset shift for those striving to be legacy businesses. If you own a lifestyle business that you hope to one day sell to family, employees, or someone who can carry on your legacy—something you foresee yourself doing until you can’t anymore—then it’s imperative that you figure out where you want to show up, how, when, and how often—documenting versus creating as Gary Vee teaches us. If you’re in this business for the long haul, wear your heart on your sleeve, be you, and be there for your team and your community. Then you don’t need a marketing strategy or some big plan. You can just be real.

Shawndra Russell