Yesterday I went on about strategies & tactics. You need to start with a strategy and there are a few ways to go about it. One exercise worth performing is the SWOT analysis. This is an analytical framework that helps you visually map out your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
It was developed in the corporate sphere In a past life I performed a SWOT analysis for social media branding. As artist’s our brands are our business. This means if we want to come up with an effective strategy to market ourselves, we need clear ways to organize our thoughts.
Today we’ll introduce the concepts of a SWOT analysis. You can Google 100 examples of companies using SWOT after the fact, but if we want to build together, we need that money talk on deck. Having a SWOT analysis in your presentation deck is only going to help you.
What is a SWOT analysis?
I’m glad you asked. The end result of a SWOT analysis is a table that has four quadrants. Within each square is a bullet point list summarizing key points of focus. It spans four main areas of impact:
Strengths - What you are good at.
Weaknesses - What you are bad at.
Opportunities - What’s out there you can capitalize on.
Threats - What’s out there that can mess up your day.
To perform a SWOT analysis is pretty easy. You and the homies get in a room and brainstorm. Write down all kinds of ideas. Then go do some research and find some data. Once that is done, regroup and decide what was fact and what was feeling from your original brainstorm. In the end you’ll fill out a table like this example I took from Mind Tools.
It’s pretty straight forward actually. But it’s something standardized that is easily understood by a large group of people. Going through the motions of identifying where you are actually positioned in the market, will become the bedrock of your new brand strategy.
Let’s start with what you can control.
Strengths & weaknesses - internal factors
The top row of your SWOT analysis are what the jargon-heads call internal factors. It’s an evaluation on your current performance with your current resources. We are talking about your strengths and weaknesses.
Strengths are the things you do well. As an example for Behind That Suit, we are an agile operation. We can flip up what we are doing and pivot direction at will. A strength of this blog would be my ability to explain things. Chris is an inhouse resource for graphical needs like thumbnails and other editing tasks.
Weaknesses are things like despite the fact that we grind hard, we have not done a great job attracting paying clients. We need a better value proposition. Because of regular life shit, we end up distracted and not focused on the greater mission. We struggle to attract long term help partners, so something needs to flip up with the vision and direction of the opportunity.
Strengths are what you and your people do well. Weaknesses are what your people do poorly.
It’s important to be honest about your weaknesses. These are the areas of improvement you can focus on. We need more funding, lately I’m on a money hustle. Chris is equally on his grind. It may take awhile but when we get to the place where that’s no longer a weakness, financial stability will be a strength.
We’re creative and passionate. It just will require real focus this year on developing a monetizeable strategy we can act upon. So, this blog is going to force me to do the work. Otherwise what will I write about. Anyway let’s move on to the other half of the SWOT spectrum.
We are good at making content. Once Chris and I sit down and start our SWOT (he’s going to read this and message me) we’ll be stronger for it.
Opportunities & threats - external factors
The bottom row of your SWOT analysis are the external factors. These are things that are outside of your control, but still impact your operation. Whether it be competitors, technological innovation or anything else that happens in the world, it will either be a threat or an opportunity.
Opportunities are things like trends or grants or community events that exist in life that you can tap into and take advantage of. It’s a pretty broad category. Anything that you can leverage to your advantage is an opportunity. In music there could be events like Growve MTL that let you reach new audiences and showcase skills. Or it could be Spotify stream teams that convince an algorithm your music is popping.
You need to do some market research and see what your competitors are doing. Chances are there are tactics they have in play that will support your strategy. I’m not saying to blindly copy them, I’m saying go research how a lot of people are winning in your field. Identify which ones fit you and your brand, then add them to your SWOT analysis.
As you are doing that research you will come across threats. This is anything that’s out there that will serve as a roadblock to your success. An example could be Spotify, or any other streaming service, preventing monetization on run it up efforts. Perhaps tourism efforts in your city will dwarf local music scene efforts. Maybe the government doesn’t prefer music in the language you speak. Anything that blocks you can be a threat.
The idea is to pay attention to what is happening. Plenty of artists describe the threats they face across different interview platforms. You can informally ask your peers about their experiences. You want to come up with a clear list of things that will hurt your success alongside the things that will help you succeed.
Combining it all into an action plan
When you have done the research and created your lists you will have a clear view of where you stand. The positive side of your business/brand will be on the left and the negative side will be on the right.
This snapshot can help shape your strategy. How can you leverage your strengths to take advantage of your opportunities? What can you do to improve on your weaknesses to create new strengths? Are there any threats that combine with your weaknesses will mess up your day? Can your strengths create a moat to protect you against those threats?
As you start to answer those questions you’ll be able to shape a real strategy. You’ll need to turn your brainstorming session into real goals. Let’s talk about revenue goals. We know that we can create content for people. By doing a competitive analysis we can identify the kind of content people would pay us to see. Then we create more of that.
The SWOT analysis will give us a systemic approach to finding out what content to make in an objective way. It will help us from getting too ambitious and focus on what we can actually deliver consistently. Then our strategy will be built around the discoveries we make.
It’s important to note that a SWOT analysis on its own is kind of useless. It is a good way to concisely see what you are good and bad at while developing your goals. SWOTs should also be specific. Do a SWOT for your social media, for your music, for each thing you do. There may be overlap but the exercise will be worth it.
Also this doesn’t address prioritization in any way, it is a snapshot of where you stand compared to your peers. You will need to prioritize and develop tactics after the facts. Don’t worry we’ll get into it together. If you DO want to join me on this quest we can make a group chill and plan session.
Either way we’ll get deeper into it in the future on this blog.
Live Long and Prosper Everyone
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