Richard Medic
16. 6. 2015.
It was more than two years ago that my first article for Netokracija went online, complete with a sex metaphor and a new word. I'd recently coined "beforetime" to describe the period that comes before "realtime" when publishing content.
The post was titled “Beforetime” is to realtime what foreplay is to sex. So why are you ignoring it?
Beforetime marketing can be applied to any scheduled happening online, whether it be live content (live streams, live tweets, live chats etc.) or a scheduled moment online (site launch, blog post or sale). Beforetime Marketing drives traffic, discussion and SEO before the content is even published, so it’s not such a big deal if the content doesn’t perform so well.
When I first wrote about beforetime marketing, it took me weeks to craft the text for what became a two-part post in Netokracija. But while the sex metaphor and new word made for a catchy title, I didn’t have much in the way of visual aides and data to back up the methodology. Now that I do, I’d like to share it with you.
Join a live experiment
I’m hosting a workshop in Brussels tomorrow, which you can join online via Periscope and Twitter @happeningo. You can also get an email alert or add it to your iCal via Soonfeed (you heard it here first folks, Soonfeed is now live).
The 60-minute session covers “realtime growth hacks” such as beforetime marketing, live community building and 5a growth strategies, all hammered into ruthless efficiency with the help of Lean Startup principles. The workshop will be a live experiment and case study of how realtime growth hacking works. Or doesn’t.
In the meantime, here are those visual aides I was talking about. No sex metaphors, I promise.
Exhibit A:
You may have seen this graphic doing the rounds. Kissmetrics published it last year and the Buffer blog posted a similar one last month. The guru ninjas have been peddling it for years. After you publish new content, share it on social media more than once, slightly adapting the message each time. Kissmetrics reckons this will double your website traffic from social media.
Exhibit B:
What the guru ninja graphic doesn’t show is the time period starting the moment you know you’re going to publish the content. I call this period “beforetime”. Provided you start early enough, Beforetime Marketing can triple your social media traffic. So here’s how the graphic should look.
Exhibit C:
Any content can be a “happening” online if you start marketing it beforetime. All you need is a landing page to start generating returns before your content is published. The lifespan of the “perfect” happening looks like a letter “S”, so the longer the story (horizontal axis), the higher the returns will be (vertical).
Comments
Nitty
7. 7. 2015. in 9:08 am
People are fed up with too much (useless) content , now you are advocating that they should be prepared and informed in advace for that contant. To me it sounds like a big miss.
Richard Medic
24. 7. 2015. in 11:11 am
This methodology actually reduces the sharing of useless content. You focus on marketing the best, most useful content for a longer period of time, rather than scraping the barrel for evermore sludge to share, just for the sake of keeping your buffer or hootsuite topped up.