Nick Baggott is the Founder of Navigate Consulting, world class CRM, data & digital marketing consultancy. Previously, Nick was the Group Client Service Director at Chemistry, where he led the team that won the Microsoft, Diageo and Transport for London pitches and worked with clients of the calibre of Kodak, Toshiba, Unilever, Nestle, Yell and Manchester United. Nick is also the Course Director at CIM and a Fellow of IDM. You can follow Nick on Linkedin or his blog.

G: How and why did you get into social media business?

N: I have always been fascinated by how brands can engage more effectively with their customers. I started my own CRM focused agency with 3 colleagues back in 1993 and the agency evolved as the marketing environment changed. By the time I left Chemistry and set up my own training and consulting business (Navigate Consulting) in 2007, social media was being used but not really understood by marketers. It was natural therefore, for me to focus my new venture on enabling brands to build engaging relationships with their customers using digital channels. I was appointed by Microsoft to run training programmes for their marketing teams in EMEA and LatAm, covering CRM and digital, and that was the springboard I needed. It was also natural for me to use social media to promote my business and built my reputation though thought leadership on my blog and Twitter.

G: What is it like to be a real Social Media Citizen?

N: You need to be alert and inquisitive. I am always switched on to the social media channels that I use (blog, Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, Linked In). I reply quickly, try to stimulate thoughts and debates and share best practice from the many experts I meet in my day to day work. I work with so many great global brands and they all have experiences and challenges that I can learn from and share.

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Welcome to my new series of posts “Social Media Strategies” where I will try to clear up some taboos about social media strategies, tools and other buzz words of our social life which sometimes unnecessary confuse us in this industry. Today I will discuss the content strategy and the changing role of content strategist.

Content Strategy

I think it is always a good idea to look from the consumer’s perspective and answer the questions which drive the strategy. I’ve been browsing through my daily reads and thinking why I am reading the posts I am reading and I came up with a very simple answer: I am reading it because:

• The content adds knowledge (adds value) or entertains me;
• The content is supplied by trusted source;
• The content is accessible to me.

Adding value and the art of Curating

In order to add value the content strategist has to think like a scientist:

• Has to recognise the problem why he/she is doing the project and foresee the possible outcomes in order to monitor them. The content strategist has to understand the target audience and analyse what are the main objectives of the brand (provide knowledge or entertainment) and how does the company want to affect this target audience (stimulate action or spread brand awareness).
• Has to do the research and find a gap in the market. It is one of the most challenging tasks today – finding something new, interesting and engaging to write about and that is a problem that the most bloggers face at some point if they haven’t got a clear content strategy, but that’s Read the full story