One of the first things that we do in any content strategy is to review the organisations hygiene factors.

Hygiene factors are the things you really need to do before you start any form of marketing, in particular content marketing because of the potentially long term relationship with your audience it can create.

The best way to understand these factors is to think about you going on the pull.

So for a minute imagine that you are going out tonight to pull a member of the opposite sex (or the same, does not matter to me), you want to meet them, chat them up, and sorry but you do want to take them home and have your wicked way with them (I don’t mean in a serial killer, stalkerish way, but perhaps I have betrayed my age by calling it a “wicked way”)

Spend a minute thinking about what you would do before you went out.

(The list below is not exhaustive, it;s just a quick mind dump, from a mans perspective).

  1. Have a shower, you want to be clean.
  2. Clean your teeth – no bits of spinach left there.
  3. Brush your hair
  4. Have a shave, potentially anyway (on the face at least – back sack and crack if you are that way inclined)
  5. Put on some clean, really nice pants
  6. Choose and put on some clothes that make you look good
  7. Shine your shoes
  8. Make sure you have clean sheets
  9. Make sure your bedroom is clean
  10. Make sure your bathroom is clean
  11. Perhaps put a new unwrapped toothbrush in the bathroom
  12. Put a bottle of white wine to cool in the fridge
  13. Move any sad geeky stuff (put your Batman comics away!)
  14. Find the best place to go
  15. Think of some things to say – you might watch the news or read a magazine

and so on….

Now think about your business, are it’s teeth clean, does it look nice, is it appealing to the audience. When they get to your shop, site, call in what is the net effect? Is the experience good, are there any obvious flaws? Will you even know if people do actually visit your site/shop/business.

So take your list and apply it to your business, and make sure that your hygiene factors are in place before you start. Think about

  • Where are you directing people – to a landing page, your blog, or your website home page?
  • what is your process for following up on people when they have visited your site?
  • Are you capturing data?
  • Is your dirty washing on show? so are there lots of negative reviews and comments on your site?
  • Do the relevant people know what  you are doing, so that they can respond accordingly?
  • Have you tested your contact process – does it really work 100% of the time?
  • Is the site strucutured properly from an seo perspective?

and so on….

We will look at a full checklist for content marketing hygiene factors – email us at martin@mcm2.co.uk if you want us to let you know when we finish it.

 

mcm2 – content marketing in cheshire and the north west