This week, I sat down with a small group of digital marketers in our first Interactive Minds Mastermind session. It was amazing!

We spent the full day on all things digital marketing, discussing challenges and making suggestions, giving input and talking through ideas. Each participant came to the day with a specific challenge to share and also we selected some additional discussion topics as a group which were covered. Throughout the day we talked about social media, integrated marketing campaigns, resources, stakeholder management, content strategy and more. Each participant also set a no fail goal based on our discussions to achieve in the next 90 days.

Tips to Share

As we talked I made some notes of some general tips that came up on the day and I’d like to share those with you now:
  1. Don’t only use email to communicate. Sometimes making time to go for a coffee and discuss something properly can shortcut the process and get better results than sending a bunch of emails back and forth.
  2. Give to get marketing – often you have to give, (or even give in) in one area in order to gain in other. With many stakeholders in a lot of decisions we make, we don’t always get everything exactly the way we want it. We need to be flexible and make sure we are adding value to others in order to get the involvement or buy in that we need.
  3. If you’re using a tool like Yammer, Salesforce or Slack for team communications, you can streamline passing on information to your team with a few simple codes. Simply @tag someone to copy in team members on important messages. To let you know that they've then seen the message, they can "like" it which is an easy method that doesn't require a separate email or other communication.
  4. Try and understand your stakeholder’s challenges and objectives rather than simply engaging when you want something. Ask them what their top 3 challenges are and identify their priorities, it enables you to communicate your efforts back to them in a more meaningful way.
  5. You can always produce content, but what use is it unless it is solving a problem for someone? Work out what problems you’re solving and this will feed the direction and efforts you put into your content.
  6. Every question a customer asks can become a piece of content. Look at your website queries, your call centre or contact centre questions. The most frequently asked questions should be addressed through content as a priority.
  7. "Everyone’s a marketer". Your extended team or stakeholders can sometimes think they can do parts of your job as well as you. As digital marketing experts, we need to prove the value we are adding and have the tools, processes to do so and the data to prove it.

Tools

Some of the tools that came up in our discussions were:

  • www.snip.ly – add a call to action on any link you share
  • www.upwork.com – for finding virtual team members
  • CX Social (http://cxsocial.clarabridge.com/)
  • www.buffer.com - for managing social media

Feedback 

The digital marketers who participated in this session provided some feedback on their experiences of the day:

“THANK YOU! It was so valuable to have the opportunity to talk openly with peers, and build some good friendships. I am very excited about everyone’s 90 day plan, now I just have to get focussed on actioning mine.” “Thank you Louisa for running a great session yesterday and to all of you for your feedback! It really was invaluable to be able to spend a day with peers, build connections and realise that some challenges are common, no matter what the industry!”
“I found the Digital Marketing Mastermind workshop extremely valuable - a great opportunity to connect with industry peers and gain some new perspectives on my own challenges. Will definitely attend again. Thanks Interactive Minds for a great concept!”

Join a Digital Marketing Mastermind 

After the success of this Mastermind session, we now have some regular mastermind programs for marketers, business owners and consultants called The Circle