Video: Think Inside The Box to Get More S#*T Done
How do you approach task completion?
We all have goals but most of us struggle to implement an effective strategy to actually accomplish our goals. Goals and ideas are worthless without an effective game plan to execute.
Our marketing department at CPC Strategy had a ton of goals but we were lacking a clear game plan to execute on them. We were great at goal creation but we needed to start thinking inside the box.
We recently changed our strategy development process for video marketing by implementing a method called Unpacking The Box.
In the video below, our CEO Rick Backus explains the Unpacking The Box method and how it can be applied to any business model and even into your personal life to help you complete tasks more efficiently.
Video Transcript:
Hello, world, it is I, Rick Backus, and this video is a
little bit different than the videos we made up to this point.
A lot of our favorite SEOmoz videos are more about strategy and kind of higher level
approach to their business. I think that so far we’ve used a video for
tactics. This is about tactics to a certain extent, but it is going to be a
little bit more general. Hopefully, anyone watching this video can figure
out how to apply some of this unpacking of boxes, to their life. I know
that it is kind of a weird phrase, “unpacking the boxes”. Where I got the
idea from was Chris Brogan. I read his newsletter. He’s pretty awesome when
it comes to marketing, so thank you, Chris, for this idea.
The general concept is that, when you have something that you want to
tackle as an organization, or even individually, if you can actually put it
into a box and separate each of the goals, and put it in a separate box, it
becomes a lot easier to then unpack the box. To illustrate that on the
whiteboard, our marketing department has a lot going on. We have a lot of
different people. There’s limited resources. We have to figure out how to
prioritize the best use of our time. This concept of putting things into
boxes, we are still working on it, but I’ve really enjoyed it so far.
For marketing, there would be a box for webinars, and then there’s a box
for eBooks. Then we have a box for video. We have a box for case studies. I
wanted to give you something tangible about our business. A lot of the
times when people talk about to-do lists and action items, like, “How to
lose weight. I need to eat less calories and I need to run.” To me, it
comes across as very common sense stuff, but then when you try to apply
that to your business, or the things that you’re working on, it becomes
much more difficult. So as an example, now we know what the boxes are. Our
marketing has more boxes than this, but this one specifically, video, since
we are shooting video and it is something that we are trying to get better
at, I want to take this box and unpack it. We are going to stop the video
for a second and when I come back, you are going to see the video box
unpacked.
Now that you’ve determined that video is a box that you want to unpack, we
now need figure out exactly what that means. The first step in unpacking
the box is to determine the goal. This is the what part of the goal. You
want to understand what your long-term goal is for coming up with a step-by-
step process. In this instance, really, all we want to do, as a company, is
create a video habit. We want to have everyone in the company think of new
ways that we can create video. We want to build a team of people from the
content producers, to the talent, to the person filming the video, so that
we can all work as a cohesive unit. That’s really the goals to create a
video habit. That’s more general. More specifically, we want to get to a
point where we can create one video per week.
Now that we know what, we need to define why. This is about the benefits.
You want to unpack the box. You want to do this video. Why? You need to
really demonstrate why you are doing something to get an entire team of
people to buy in. A video is great for our brand. I think it’s really
important for our clients to see who they are working with. It also allows
us to demonstrate expertise. David Weichel, an account manager here, is
doing an entire series on Google analytics. He gets into a level of detail
that after you watch the video, you see that, “Hey, this guy actually knows
what he’s talking about. This is a pretty well-produced video. This company
knows what they are doing.” So that’s the whole point of content marketing
in general. Video is just another way that we can use content marketing,
hopefully get to a point where we can produce it efficiently and it’s a
great way for us to build brand and show expertise. It’s fun. Internally,
it’s something that a lot of people are passionate about. It’s something
that we enjoy doing. So there are a lot of other benefits for the company,
besides just what we are posting on the blog and what we’re presenting to
the world.
Once you know the goal, is the what, the benefits are why. And the process
is how. This is the hardest part. This is really where you are unpacking
the box. You’ve got buy in. You know what the goal is. You need to come up
with a step-by-step process of how this is actually going to get
accomplished. So for us, what that meant is, we sat down and we tried to
determine every single step involved with making video happen. We actually
came up with 20 steps, total. That’s far too many to write on a whiteboard.
I’m just showing you the first four. These should be extremely specific. In
this instance, for video, we said that the first step that we have to take
is to determine the tops. Once we know the topic of the video, we can
figure who the proper presenter is. Once the presenter has been assigned,
the content team can work with the presenter to develop the contact of the
video, and then the next step is to schedule the filming.
There are 16 other steps that came after that, but I think that you get the
idea of this being the box. We need to unpack it, so come up with a goal,
the what, the benefits, the why, and the process, how. Be as specific as
possible with how. Otherwise, you’re not going to be able to accomplish the
goal.
That’s it. Unpack your boxes. Thanks, again, to Chris Brogan. It will make
your life infinitely better. That’s all I’ve got.
http://cpcstrategy.wistia.com/medias/0yw8mjhlb9
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