If you’re still relying on FOMO as the key lever for your marketing strategy, hate to break it to you, but in a world where almost nothing isn't recorded and available on demand, eyeballs in real time are harder to come by than ever before.

Why? “Live” is just plain passé....

You binge-listen Spotify galore. You stream Apple+ at will. You Amazon. You Instacart. But marketing? Time for a major mind shift – and that means switching from "promo"-based marketing to "postmo"-based marketing.

What is "postmo"?

Promo is before-the-fact marketing. Postmo is after-the-fact marketing.

Promo is finite. Postmo is infinite.

Promo is experiential. Postmo is exponential. 

Here’s how it works:

Take any live event, for example – bursting with long-form content, usually in the form of video (think keynotes, panels, workshops, etc.), text (like a daily blog wrap up) or even audio (i.e., podcast interviews with various guests). Most of the time, though, all that gold gets shamefully wasted because only two things happen with it:

1. Nothing.

2. Maybe a couple of mentions on social.

But because nearly all content is evergreen, all you have to do is fire up a combination of "postmo" with the "long tail."

The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More (written by Chris Anderson) describes a business strategy that, even though it was published in 2006, STILL boosts significant revenue! The idea is to sell low volumes of rarities to a whole bunch of customers instead of only selling massive amounts of a reduced number of hot-ticket items. The low-volume items end up generating more sales overall because even though they are smaller quantities, there’s a ton more variety. 

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Long tail in marketing is when you atomize long-form content into dozens of miniature pieces for social and then light up your postmo with a drip feed that trickles them out over weeks, months, or even years. (Some may refer to this as the Pillar Method coined by Gary Vaynerchuck but — little-known secret — he didn’t invent it.)

That means that the event itself is just the tip of the iceberg. It’s the long-form content you generate from the blog, spliced up into an army of social media posts (each linking back to the original), scheduled out overtime — that’s your goldmine. 

Like the long tail, multiple posts stretched out over time (postmo) generate more sales and engagement overall.

Just a few posts? You might as well be winking in the dark. GAH.

Remember: the old marketing adage used to be that you had to see, watch, or hear an ad seven times before it sunk in. These days, that’s 12 to 14 times. Quantity matters. (Of course quality does too; we’ll get to that below.)

A whole bunch of posts all in a short timeframe? SpamFest. That’s why the trickle out is CLUTCH to long tail.

Plus, because long tail marketing relies on dozens of variations which naturally happen in the atomization of long-form content, you’re able to get infinitely more eyeballs looking your way.

Again, the old way was to hit home the same exact message repeatedly. But because humans are multifaceted, we react to multiple trigger points; the new way means appealing to our different sensibilities, i.e., pitching the sale multiple ways.

And it doesn't only apply to blog marketing – ANYTHING. If you have longform content that's either owned (created by you), earned (created by someone else about your business) or found (content worth sharing, created by someone else), this method applies.

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‍Postmo Marketing in Action

So here’s what the process would look like:

Take a blog, for example. First, run through each sentence and slightly modify the text, as needed, so a teaser to promote clicks back to the full version of the blog content. Each sentence should be able to standalone as a single social media post. If not, combine one or two sentences and edit the copy to contextualize it just enough so it doesn’t sound out of left field but also piques curiosity. Don’t give them the whole kitchen sink! The headline does that and it’s built into the meta-text. Withhold a little bit, and keep some mystery. (PS, there's a pretty awesome piece of software that does this automatically and its name is Lately.AI.)

Now for your social posts:

When it comes to hashtags, in line almost always work better than a string at the end. This is because they draw visual interest to the eye inside the message itself. You can put some at the end but they should always further contextualize the message rather than just glom on as indexers. Plus, hashtags with multiple words squished together almost always outperform single word hashtags. This is because they are often perceived as commentary, which is very human and engaging — as opposed to just a faceless brand.

Also, be sure to drive momentum to that shortlink in your social posts. Don’t put a period in front of it, as that stops the ball. You want to keep the air in the ball, keep it moving towards the goal. You can visually do this with ellipses, a colon, an arrow, or an emoji of a finger-pointing toward the shortlink, for example.

Next, look at your post with “chef’s eyes.” How does it look on the plate? Overwhelming? Tasty? If it’s more than one sentence, is there a rhythm when you read it out loud? Short sentences and long sentences? Have you emphasized words with all capital letters to make them stand out? Are there emojis to visually expand what you’ve written? Visual appeal is crucial. Don’t be boring!

For a single blog, if you do the above, you should have 20-40 lead-gen optimized social posts in under an hour — that’s the power of this method (although, Lately.AI does this in 1.8 seconds #justsayin). It’s not about putting content out there. It’s about putting content out there that makes people take action. Bonus effect: You remove the fear of the blank page, too!

Lastly, schedule all of your social posts out in a drip feed over time. It could be one a week for 40 weeks, one every other week for 80 weeks, etc (broken record alert, Lately.AI also does this automatically). Apply this method to all of the long-form content in your universe, whether owned, earned, or found.

This is the gravy train. This is how we here at Lately.AI get a 98% sales conversion (not a typo), spending $0 on marketing — using this strategy and this alone.

Think: What are you leaving lying on the table? Because if you're still locked into promo and its reliance on FOMO, your marketing strategy needs a brush up.

Like we said, mind shift time.

Lots more tips and tricks in this e-book. Enjoy!