HUM, SING, SHOUT
A simple framework to keep your content flowing
HUM, SING, SHOUT
A framework to keep your content flowing
A blank calendar stares back at you, just waiting to be filled with content to delight, inform, motivate and inspire your audience. What’s your next step? Run for the hills or sit down and plan.
Before you grab your boots and head for the door, take a few minutes to read this. It’s a framework that will help you to pull your ideas together into an easy to follow plan.
Hum, Sing, Shout
It’s called the Hum, Sing, Shout framework. (Huge thanks to LinkedIn’s Purna Virji’s talk on creating sustainable content at The Marketing Meet Up where she covered this in detail. If you haven’t come across The Marketing Meet Up, head over and check out the huge library of webinars, articles and Podcasts.
Why have a content plan or framework?
It'll help you to organise your content, breaking it down into manageable chunks whilst ensuring it makes sense and supports your goals.
This framework helps you to create content with breadth and depth and breadth that will support your customer or client journey – from initial contact and kick-off conversations through to signing on the dotted line.
It’s mostly known as a business to business (B2B) content framework, but I think it can easily be adapted and used with any audience. That’s the beauty of a great framework – it gives you flexibility so you can tailor it to your needs.
And finally. Hum, Sing, Shout gives you a holistic view of your messages and content. You can see if the balance is right and where the gaps are. You might want to put more detail beneath it but it gives you a great bird’s eye view.
What is Hum, Sing, Shout and how does it work?
Put simply, this is a three-layered framework. I'll start with Hum - your baseline content.
HUM: your baseline, your regular diet of news which should be relatively easy to produce. This might be daily social media news and stories – your own or shared from elsewhere or a weekly email. It’s the baseline. The heartbeat that keeps the lines of communication open, initiating conversations and giving you regular touch points with your community.
Think: keep in touch phone calls and emails, news, ideas, behind the scenes, human interest and curated (shared) content. Make it personal.
SING: the verse. Raise your voice a little, and give people something to get their teeth into. Delve into the detail and add context and colour. Paint the picture of what you do, why and who for.
Think: monthly blogs, articles podcasts, videos and polls.
SHOUT: This is your ‘hero’ content. You only need to do this a couple of times a year so make it stand out. Give you and your community the chance to engage on a deeper level and drive home why people should connect and work with you.
Think: Events – online or face to face – whatever’s possible in this weird Covid world. Workshops, webinars, talks and research. Engage and turn those interested bystanders into active clients and connections.
Why you’ll love the HUM, SING, Shout content framework
It’s catchy and simple to remember and understand, isn’t it?
The layered approach means you’ll be producing the right content for your audience at the right time, at each stage of the client or customer journey. You'll never not be sharing your thoughts and ideas.
Each layer of content has a purpose: from sparking initial conversations to converting into paying clients
It gives you a holistic view so you can see if you’ve got the balance right before you get stuck into the processes and channels
Top and tail with your goals and key measures, core messages and tone of voice and you have a fantastic foundations for creating and sharing valuable content throughout the year.
Drum solos, remixes and a change of beat
The best frameworks take complex and floating ideas and pulls them into line, giving you a coherent plan you can stick to. It should be focused on helping you to reach your end goal but crucially, giving you enough flexibility so that you can respond to changing circumstances.
Because like all good tunes there are remixes, drum solos and sometimes a modulation or change of beat. You can dial-up (or down) or repeat the layers to reflect what's happening in your world. It can adapt to changing circumstances.
But I’m curious, what content plan to do you use and does it work for you?
If you want to find out how Hum, Sing, Shout can help you plan your content, drop me a line.