As we become more sophisticated digital marketers, it is easy to get enamored with all the cool things we can do to push our content to new eyeballs. Even saying it that way sounds crass. Here are some examples of cool things we can do, none of which are wrong to do per se:
- Put insights and research content in front of readers of top publishing sites like cnn.com and health.com, based on complex algorithms to target the right content and the right people (via content marketing tools like Outbrain)
- Profile people who visit our websites—with both demographic and psychographic data—and target ads to similar groups of users who may not have heard of us yet
- Send emails or show ads to people who were shopping our ecommerce sites, reminding them of the products they were looking at and didn’t purchase (retargeting)
- Automate the timing of our social media posts based on when the largest number of our followers are online and likely to see our posts (via tools like SocialFlow)
I am concerned that we may focus so much energy on these really cool tactics that we might begin to sound robotic, forget to respond to (all) customer inquiries/brand mentions, and lose our human-centered approach when it comes to digital marketing, especially social media.
This article from Moz, 4 Ways to Build Trust and Humanize Your Brand, offers 4 ways to humanize our brand, and some great reminders of why we need to.
Photo credit: File:Nao robot, Jaume University.jpg – Wikimedia Commons
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