Question of the Week

What are the most important aspects of online marketing?

I’ve been giving thought to my own online presence lately, and the different aspects and parts of that which contribute to increasing attention and interest. The following can probably be applied to marketing yourself as an individual—your personal presence—as well as online marketing more generally for companies and organizations.

The primary difference might very well be budget and scale, though the model itself might prove useful regardless of whether you’re considering this personally or professionally. Some of this you can do with funding, and some of it you can even do for free just as an individual. 

Regardless, here’s how I break it down:

I’m not necessarily doing all of this yet, but if you follow me at all online, you can see some of this in action already.

I consider the Web site the primary focus of all our online activity. It’s your online home, and it’s where you put the bulk of your content and commercial opportunities. In my case, I don’t have a full Web site yet, just a blog—this blog, Media Diet—so I have dynamic content, but little static content. At some point, I’ll consider a more formal Web site, but for now, this and my other components are sufficient as I build out the content model.

My blog, Media Diet, currently draws on two other media sites for assets and content management: YouTube for the video components, and SoundCloud for the audio components. I don’t view either as content channels worth promoting on their own, but that could change in the future. (Others certainly use them as their primary content focus.) Right now, my presence there is merely functional, though I could use them to drive traffic to the main site (or in my case, blog) if I wanted to.

Then, on the side, we have more social media. I have an email newsletter, also called Media Diet, which draws on my other social media activity. I’m active primarily on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, as well as on Instagram, but I use each of them slightly differently. Some LinkedIn content mirrors blog content. Some Instagram content also ends up on Facebook and Twitter. And Twitter is my main social media channel, with multiple updates a day, all contributing to the email newsletter.

The relationship between the newsletter and the blog isn’t as strong as my content plan would suggest, and at some point, I’ll have to add another more marketing-oriented list to augment the newsletter.

Ideally, you’re using analytics to improve and optimize each of your content channels. And if your site warrants it, you can consider online marketing to drive traffic to the site (or to the newsletter, for example). At some point, you might even have something to sell, which would change the structure slightly.

What am I missing? What else do you think is important in terms of online marketing? What do you think I should consider adding to my content model?