If you haven't heard, we shared some pretty big news yesterday. As you might imagine, a lot of planning went into our efforts to get the news in front of clients, potential customers, friends and reporters yesterday. Last week, we covered how to prepare for a big announcement like this -- but what are some of the best ways to share that news once the big day comes? Here are a few ways we shared the news.
We created a microsite.
For this announcement, we wanted to do something different while giving readers a one-stop place to read all content drafted by Todd Defren, our CEO, and Scott Monty, our new EVP of Strategy. The result was a microsite filled with content about Scott coming aboard, including the option to easily share the page via several channels, a Q&A video with Scott, blog posts from Todd and Scott, coverage like an article in AdWeek and finally, a Twitter collection of the day's best tweets pertaining to the news. (Okay, we threw a newsletter subscription form in there, too.)In my own personal experience, when I read a blog post on a certain news story, I follow the links that the author deemed important enough to direct attention away from his or her content. I want to learn more. And with that in mind, all of the content is here for any audience to filter and read what they want to read. This also gave us an easy place to direct reporters who needed photos and quotes for their stories.
We continuously monitored all channels.
When you have big news, monitoring for comments, articles and reactions from an audience is important. We made sure to have our social channels open and were monitoring them throughout the day, ready to respond as needed. We also kept an eye out for any articles or posts that went up that we didn't know were in the works. Overall, it was great to see our audience's excitement about the announcement.
We prepared.
In order to make this all go as smoothly as possible, we put quite a lot of thought into what materials we needed to create, what the deadlines needed to be and who was responsible for what pieces. Announcements at the last minute will rarely go well, so preparation is key. Knowing what content was finished, what needed to be finalized and what each person was responsible for lent an order to things that helped each of us stay productive throughout the planning and creation stages.On the day of, an exhaustive check list of what needed to be pushed live and when helped us greatly yesterday morning. I knew we wouldn't forget to add one piece, one link, one image. It was all written down. That made a world of difference.
We made sure all of our properties aligned prior to release.
Another super important thing to do prior to a news release is double check that all content on the website is updated, all images are aligned and showing up, all forms are working and that any user who visits will have a great experience. The odds are you'll be attracting more new visitors than normal, and you want their experience to be ideal so they keep coming back even after the news dies down.
Conclusion
One thing I wanted to also mention is the importance of finding the right audience that will be interested in your news. In our case, it was our main audience. But that can differ depending on the subject of your announcements. Make sure that you're reaching the right people with relevant news.If you're on the verge of releasing news to the masses, start planning. Discuss creative ideas, and get to work on the pieces needed. A blog post can always be revisited and edited, but writing at the last minute will leave no room. The same is true with all the other materials that you'll need to create so start early and end with the best results.Finally, I want to say personally, that I am so very pleased to welcome Scott to SHIFT. It's going to be an awesome ride.Chel WolvertonAccount Manager, Marketing Technology[cta]
What’s a Rich Text element?
The rich text element allows you to create and format headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, images, and video all in one place instead of having to add and format them individually. Just double-click and easily create content.
The rich text element allows you to create and format headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, images, and video all in one place instead of having to add and format them individually. Just double-click and easily create content.
Static and dynamic content editing
A rich text element can be used with static or dynamic content. For static content, just drop it into any page and begin editing. For dynamic content, add a rich text field to any collection and then connect a rich text element to that field in the settings panel. Voila!
How to customize formatting for each rich text
Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.
