If you look at the backgrounds of the SMC team, you’ll find a diverse range of histories. Our founder, Kris Kluver, began his career as an entrepreneur by starting his first company when he was only nineteen. Managing Editor John Darwin specialized in John Milton’s Paradise Lost while working on his B.A in British Literature. One of our writers, Matt, is currently working on a M.F.A in English with a specialty in Creative Writing, after graduating with degrees in English and Philosophy.
Although we’re a diverse crew, there’s a common thread: everyone at SMC loves producing content, and everyone has a passion for helping clients build social media strategies based on ROI. However, there is a reason that there are a number of English and Creative-Writing degrees on the team. Frankly, skills that writers have are a perfect fit for adapting to social media work. But, the catch is that this isn’t a vice versa situation. To have the perfect storm of great content and great strategy, it is incredibly important to utilize the skills of a professional writer AND a professional strategist.
Think about it: literary strategies, or tools and techniques that have been around since ancient oral storytelling, are part of an education in Creative Writing, Journalism, and English Literature. In every single class, the importance of audience, tone, and context, are figuratively beaten into students until they can analyze these factors in any text they read.
Social media is a text. Therefore, the same analytical processes apply to a Facebook page or Twitter page. Putting aside current critical debate about how interpreting meaning of a text really works, we’ll claim that a “text” is a unique entity with its own set of rules. This applies to your Facebook page, your Twitter page, your physical marketing materials like brochures or handouts, and even your website. Depending on how involved you want your marketing efforts to be, we can help you use each of these “texts” to their utmost advantage.
So, if you have great writers writing content and a team filled with English lovers to edit for clarity and conciseness, brand image, citations, and punctuation, where does the professional strategist part come in? Digital strategy is a unique skill on its own, and it takes an enormous amount of time to research and fully understand the “whys” and “hows” of strategy. Without the strategists, writers can’t write for audience or establish an effective tone. Without the context, a reading of a “text” is nowhere near as accurate. But combined? Well, as we’ve proven in the past, it’s a pretty successful combination.
If you want to learn more about everyone else with hands and opinions on our clients’ social media, feel free to check out the team page. We want you to know the names and faces of the people putting their hearts and souls into content creation and social media to ultimately produce results that couldn’t be made possible on their own.
Image credit: CC by Martin
