It’s a cautionary tale replayed endlessly across one of the world’s most influential community-driven platforms.

But for brands, Reddit can no longer be dismissed as a marketing minefield to be avoided. The platform has around 108 million daily unique visitors worldwide, and users spend an average of around 16 minutes consuming content per session — far more time than on many other social platforms.

Perhaps most importantly, the site’s sprawling archive of authentic conversations now serves as one of the primary gatekeepers for AI Search. Google’s $60 million-per-year agreement to license Reddit content signals that this influence is now entrenched at the highest levels of SEO and GEO.

The message for marketers is unambiguous: The rules of digital influence are being drafted on Reddit, whether you’re participating or not.

Reddit Has Traditionally Been Thorny Territory for Brands

Historically, Reddit has been hostile to overt marketing efforts. The graveyard of brand blunders is filled with failed AMAs and cringey misfires: Nissan, REI, and travel ticketing site Skiplagged have been dragged for clumsy attempts at engagement. Electronic Arts’ now-infamous 2017 defense of “pay-to-win” mechanics in Star Wars Battlefront II earned the most downvoted comment in Reddit history.

The platform’s persistent hostility to brands is tied to three deeply structural and cultural dynamics:

1. Authenticity above all. Reddit’s entire ethos centers around authentic, user-first contributions rather than top-down brand messaging.
2. Community-driven scrutiny. Every subreddit has its own culture, rules, and moderators, which means outsiders — especially brands — are expected to adapt seamlessly to the community.
3. Anonymity breeds candor (and crass comments). Under the cloak of anonymity, Redditors can be brutally honest. They won’t hesitate to tell you exactly what they think of your brand, and they have a keen nose for sniffing out inauthenticity.

As a result of all of the above, traditional marketing tactics that may work elsewhere are swiftly rejected here. Marketing-speak is mocked, subtle self-promotion is quickly exposed, and contrived campaigns are dismantled within minutes. (If you want a vivid illustration of this, just head on over to r/HailCorporate, a subreddit dedicated to unmasking brand intrusion.)

Reddit’s upvote/downvote mechanics also impose real-time accountability on content. Public comment and post histories are visible by default — though since June 2025, users can hide it from their profiles. (Moderators, however, retain 28-day access.)

Finally, moderation can be a rude awakening for brands accustomed to sanitized feedback loops. Volunteer moderators enforce each subreddit’s rules publicly and quickly. Missteps can result in instant removal or bans. And unlike platforms where content disappears, Reddit has a long memory: Deleted posts often persist via archives and mirrors, which means that one ill-conceived campaign can haunt a company for years.

2025 Reddit: New Rules, New Tools, New Stakes

All that said, Reddit in 2025 is simply not the same beast it was in 2015. The platform is evolving, both in how it equips brands and in how its culture is shifting under the spotlight of AI search.

New Tools for Marketers

Recently, Reddit itself has signaled openness to brand partnerships and data licensing deals — a perhaps not-unrelated response to the widely publicized revenue struggles leading up to its 2024 IPO.

Whatever the motivation, over the past five years, the platform has rolled out a slew of products that signal a new posture toward brand participation, including:

• Reddit Pro: A native suite of analytics, post scheduling, and community insights to help brands engage more effectively.
• KarmaLab: Reddit’s in-house creative team, built to help brands craft content that won’t instantly get flamed.
• AMA Ads: Launched in 2025, these let brands promote upcoming Ask Me Anythings in relatively “safer spaces” than past free-for-alls.

These tools make it clear that Reddit is building out infrastructure to help brands participate without breaking community norms.

AI Search: Raising the Stakes for Authenticity

Despite the hurdles involved, there’s real urgency for brands to engage with Reddit. If you’re not active on the platform, you’re forfeiting control of how your brand is represented in AI-generated answers. Competitors or critics will happily fill the void.

A few clear indicators of Reddit’s growing influence in digital discovery include:

• AI systems cite Reddit constantly. After OpenAI’s July 2025 update, Reddit citations surged 87% and now account for over 10% of ChatGPT’s references.
• Search engines elevate Reddit threads. Google increasingly surfaces Reddit discussions when users want lived experiences, not polished marketing copy.
• Meritocracy rules. In Reddit’s culture, genuinely helpful contributions — not ad spend or brand size — determine visibility. Smaller, scrappy brands can punch above their weight if they provide genuine value.

The TL;DR: The world’s toughest focus group is now also the training ground for AI, and brands can’t afford to sit it out.

Subtle Cultural Shifts

The culture is also softening, at least in pockets. In certain subreddits, more specialized experts — engineers, academics, clinicians, etc. — are welcomed when they contribute genuine expertise. The implicit bargain is simple: Show up as a person first, a brand rep second.

How Brands Are Experimenting Successfully

Even with the tailwinds created by new tools and shifting community norms, it’s no excuse for brands to fall back on lazy campaigns. Success on Reddit requires a radically different playbook that centers patience, humility, relatability, empathy, and a focus on providing value.

A few brands getting it right:

• The Economist has run thoughtful AMAs with its editors, leaning into expertise rather than pushing subscriptions.
• Mint Mobile earned credibility by having employees (including Ryan Reynolds himself at times) participate directly in r/mintmobile, answering questions and cracking jokes rather than shilling.
• Purple Mattress launched r/LifeOnPurple, a community dedicated to sleep health. Instead of spamming product links, it became a global focus group where users traded advice.

There can be real results tied to these efforts. Mint Mobile, for instance, has seen over 44% of its social media referrals (more than 101,000 visits) come from Reddit.

On the other hand, there are real risks. Brands have very little real control over even the most branded of subreddits; a recent comment on the Purple community, r/LifeOnPurple (headline: “Purple has no moral fiber”) highlights how quickly conversations can turn critical.

Technical Brands and Radical Helpfulness

Technical audiences reward brands that bring real resources to the table. Sharing a GitHub repo, being candid about a failed migration, or troubleshooting alongside users builds more trust than a dozen blog posts.

Imagine for a moment a parallel universe to the scenario at the top of this article. In this alternative outcome, the same company’s lead engineer joins a thread about database performance concerns. She candidly shares the team’s journey migrating 50 million records, drops a link to their GitHub tool, and highlights both successes and setbacks. The community responds positively; screenshots begin circulating on X. Months later, her answer resurfaces when developers search for scaling advice.

This example showcases the real value of Reddit for brands: credibility meets connection at scale. In a world in which AI slop dominates feeds, people are flocking to Reddit presumably because of the very human, messy, and unfiltered exchanges that happen there. By showing up authentically — not aggressively — brands stand to win trust and gain relevance.

Contently helps the world’s top brands create stories that resonate with real people — and stand out to both audiences and AI.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs):

How do you measure success for brand activity on Reddit?

Engagement looks different on Reddit than on other platforms. Metrics include upvotes/downvotes, comment sentiment, referral traffic, and whether brand posts are organically referenced in other threads. Increasingly, success also means being cited frequently in AI Search results.

Can paid ads work on Reddit, or is organic participation the only path?

Reddit Ads can be effective, but they perform best when paired with authentic community engagement. A promoted AMA or native-style post without organic credibility often falls flat. Brands that invest in both paid reach plus ongoing community presence may see the strongest results.

What types of subreddits are most open to brand participation?

Smaller, niche, interest-driven communities (tech, health, hobbies) tend to be more receptive when brands bring expertise. Large default subreddits like r/funny or r/pics are usually hostile to overt marketing. The key is finding communities where your brand can add value to conversations that are already happening.

The post Reddit’s Resurgence: How the Internet’s Toughest Crowd Became AI’s Favorite Source appeared first on Contently.

In response, brands are investing more in video marketing content than ever to meet such strong engagement and potential ROI. Of the marketers who responded to Wyzowl’s State of Video Marketing 2023 report, 92% say video gives them a good return on their investment.

Yet marketers are still challenged by new, fast-moving video formats that continue to redefine the landscape.

Let’s explore three emerging video formats and how brands can integrate them into brand awareness and lead-generation campaigns.

Top 3 video formats and how they drive engagement

Brand videos can be lighthearted, but there’s a danger in thinking of video as only a top-of-the-funnel (TOFU) asset. If executed well, video formats such as short-form, live streaming, and user-generated content can serve all stages of the marketing funnel.

As you execute your video marketing strategy this year, keep these trends in mind.

1. User-generated videos

User-generated content (UGC) videos, from unboxings to tutorials to reviews, can help build trust in a brand because they come from regular people who simply enjoy the products they’re posting about.

But UGC can also meet middle and bottom funnel goals such as leads and sales. Nearly eight out of 10 consumers say user-generated content highly impacts their purchasing decisions. As any consumer can tell you: a thumbs up from a fellow shopper is often the final push to click the buy button.

The benefits of user-generated videos are clear, but that doesn’t mean marketers should throw out branded content. Combining user-generated videos with more polished, professionally generated videos is the sweet spot for most brands.

To get your brand fans to submit UGC videos, you should:

• Ask followers who are active on your brand’s social channels to shoot short videos using your product. In return, you’ll feature them on those channels. (Ask users to keep it short and simple. You’re not looking for a documentary!)
• Run contests that encourage customers to create short videos. Incentivize them with gift cards and other rewards. Good examples are shoe brand DSW’s #DSWCutLoose campaign on TikTok and GoPro’s #MillionDollarChallenge on Instagram)
• Create Google Alerts to capture any mentions of your brand online. This is a great way to discover existing user videos. Be sure to always ask users for permission before reposting their videos.

2. Live streaming

Live streaming — defined as video streamed in real-time where viewers can interact by liking and commenting — delivers numerous benefits, including humanizing your brand, generating revenue, and expanding your target audience. Livestreams are also affordable to produce if you have a smartphone, basic lighting gear and microphones, and decent on-camera talent.

It helps that consumers strongly prefer live video, too. Facebook Live videos drive three times more engagement and 10 times the amount of comments than traditional videos.

Livestreams can take on many forms. Big, elaborate events such as conferences switched to a livestream model during the pandemic. But tech giants like Google (Google I/O), Microsoft (Microsoft Build), IBM (IBM Think), and Apple (WWDC) have continued to stream their conferences because they’ve experienced firsthand how live streaming can increase a conference’s reach beyond in-person boundaries.

As for more specific examples of live streaming, Q&A sessions are becoming more popular. Typically, a host will answer viewer questions or do a fireside chat-type interview with an industry influencer or customer. Enterprise software provider SAP live streams conversations with its high-profile customers each month in a series called “Better Together: Customer Conversations.” In 2021, Salesforce live streamed a series of Q&As with industry influencers on LinkedIn Live as 600,000 organic viewers watched.

Some brands have taken to live streaming to teach new skills. Adobe, for instance, live streams classes for illustration, photography, and graphic design taught by influencers in the creative space.

On the consumer side, one of the hottest ecommerce live streaming trends is live shopping, where an influencer promotes brand products in real-time. Consumers tune in to learn, chat, and purchase products directly from inside the live video.

To live stream effectively, consider the following.

• Have a plan. What are you trying to accomplish? What are the topics you want to cover? What is the structure of the live event? What’s the takeaway for viewers?
• Live stream where your audiences live. That could be Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, or LinkedIn. To promote your livestream, start advertising it two weeks in advance, and then send out a reminder a week before the livestream, and then a day before, and then two hours before. Promote it via emails, newsletters, and blog posts, as well as on all social channels where your brand is active.
• Record the livestream and repurpose it in blog posts, embed it email newsletters, and
  turn excerpts into Instagram Stories or TikTok videos. Livestreams can generate interest long after the actual stream happens.

3. Short-form video content

Influenced by TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts, short-form videos that use humor, music, and on-screen text were the most popular type of content on social media in 2022.

And brands noticed. Ninety percent of marketers who leveraged short-form video in 2022 plan to keep doing it this year. It also has the highest ROI of all social media marketing strategies.

Whether your brand serves up short-form video on TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube, the best practices are similar.

4. Be authentic and informal

With short-form video, your job is to quickly entertain and inform consumers using a conversational style, on-screen captions, polls and quizzes, and of course, music. On-camera talent matters, so tap your brand’s subject matter experts — or influencers, if possible — to give your short-form videos authority and personality.

Don’t use short-form video as a sales vehicle, though. Soft selling is OK if the video is about the lifestyle around a brand rather than the product itself, as L.L. Bean does brilliantly in this Instagram Reel.

5. Get to the point immediately

According to Facebook data, 45 percent of people who watch the first three seconds of a video will watch for 30 seconds.

Every second counts, so start talking or offering on-screen captions the millisecond your video starts. This TikTok video from Levi’s about stain removal gets your attention right away and holds it (without any spoken words!).

6. Stay on a publishing schedule

Your brand should post short-form videos consistently during the week. The number of videos per week varies by platform — the rule of thumb for TikTok is at least once a day, but for Instagram, social experts recommend four to seven Reels per week.

Brands should experiment with video post volume and monitor audience feedback. The key is to be consistent. Algorithms favor regularly scheduled content, and your audience will look forward to your videos if they know they’re coming.

Posting consistently also provides more accurate data on what works for your target audience and what time of day they’re likely to engage with your videos.

A chance to refocus strategies around video content

Consumers have spoken: They prefer video content over written content.

But if you’re stuck in the past creating long-winded videos focused on your product and not your audience, you won’t engage with the millions of consumers craving short bursts of lively, visual information.

And that audience includes two key demographics for most brands: Gen Zers and millennials, who now list short-form video as their preferred format to learn about new products. To keep up with the demand, marketers will invest more in short-form videos in 2023 than any other social media trend. Why? Because they’re seeing consistent engagement and ROI.

If your brand is not yet a believer in video content, 2023 may be your wake-up call. Let this be the year you stop treating TikTok as a punchline and prioritize UGC, live streaming, and short-form video within your marketing strategy.

To stay informed on all the content trends that matter, subscribe to The Content Strategist for more insight on the latest news in digital transformation, content marketing strategy, and rising tech trends.

The post How Video Marketing Is Reshaping Content Strategies appeared first on Contently.

But that makes sense. It’s extremely difficult to turn a profit without offering (or leveraging) some kind of tech, which means marketing those products has become very complex. It’s looking more and more like the intro sequence of HBO’s Silicon Valley.

Among the legions scrambling toward profitability are tech startups (unicorn or otherwise), legacy companies adding new branches of innovation, B2B tech, and consumer tech, just to name a few. Many are chasing the path set forth by the technology titans: Apple, Google, Amazon, and Facebook.

We’ve surveyed the offerings of some of our favorite tech companies in order to bring you a short list of stand-out content marketing. Most of us could learn a thing or two from these industry leaders.

Slack | The State of Work Report

Every brand wants to carve out a space of authority. Releasing a branded data report on your industry is the perfect way to do that. Published by Slack, the company that brought you the biggest disruption to corporate communication since Gmail, the annual State of Work report isn’t just a nice advertisement; it’s a genuinely useful piece of content for anyone who needs to think about how workspaces are built.

By gathering data, Slack makes a compelling case for streamlining office communications. The report is interesting enough that the company doesn’t have to seed CTAs throughout the copy, but any reader who enjoys it will likely conclude that Slack knows the lay of the land really well.

2019’s report found that workers who feel misaligned from their company’s central goal are the most likely to feel unhappy in their jobs: “When we’re not in sync with our company’s goals, we tend to feel more pessimistic about where our company is headed, and that’s reflected in our perception and experience of our workplace across a wide range of factors, from collaboration to productivity to compensation.”

What’s one way to connect your employees to your C-suite and a company’s high level strategy, you might ask? Downloading a chat program like Slack might help. Just saying.

Buffer | The Science of Social Media

There’s a paradox to branded podcasts. Every brand on earth wants to create an engaging podcast, but it’s hard to think of listeners who actually prefer branded programming.

But, like GE’s incredible show The Message, Buffer’s branded podcast is actually an exception to this rule. If you’re looking to dive into issues related to communication, marketing, and publishing, during your commute, you could do worse than tuning in to Buffer’s The Science of Social Media.

In one particularly interesting episode, co-host Heather-Mae Pusztai breaks down social copy into more detail than seems possible. “Consider the specific letters in the words you’re using,” she said, “particularly when it comes to stop consonants and glide consonants. Stop consonants are those that cause the vocal tract to block when pronouncing the consonant. Glide consonants do not obstruct the vocal tract and are quite frictionless when spoken.” Stop consonants, according to Pusztai, are ideal for clustering around your CTA, because they force the reader to pause.

Additionally, Buffer writes up a blog post for each podcast episode, which is a really great way to drive additional traffic and ensure that your audio content ranks on search. The Science of Social Media is just a great content product, and it enhances Buffer’s brand identity without getting into the promotional weeds.

Blendtec | Will it Blend?

The conceit of Blendtec’s massively popular YouTube series is simple: using their blender products, the company tosses in ridiculous objects to see if their patented blade technology will shred it. Put simply, “Will it Blend?” is a masterwork of a social campaign—it’s actually a deft bit of product marketing, wrapped up in a platform-specific package that respects the kind of content YouTubers like.

Based on the tone, costuming, and set design, you can tell watching the videos that Blendtec didn’t just start churning out this content on a whim. It researched what works on YouTube, and it paid off. The brand’s channel has 876,000 subscribers, and the top video (blending an iPad) has been viewed 18 million times.

Bumble | The BFF Tour

When I was single and living in a new city, I relied on Bumble for finding dates. For that, the app rocks. But when it came to finding girlfriends to meet up and confide in, I was definitely out of luck, relying on long distance phone calls with faraway buds.

Thanks to Bumble’s BFF option, singles can use the dating app to meet up platonically with new people. This update to the dating platform was launched with a live events tour, which followed a traveling airstream trailer. It’s that fun loving, surprising bit of event marketing (and content marketing!) that lands Bumble on our list.

Capitalizing on the “pop-up cocktail event” craze that’s been sweeping the nation for over a year, the BFF Tour offered a social setting for lonely singles trying to find their crew, and it fit perfectly with Bumble’s other marketing events.

Dell Technologies’ Perspectives | Girl Scouting for the STEM Age

Modern consumers want to purchase goods and services from brands that reflect their personal beliefs—the data tells us that much. That’s why creating content about empowering girls in STEM was a great move for Dell Technologies, the tech company that puts out the digital magazine Perspectives.” (Full disclosure: Contently partners with Dell Technologies to produce Perspectives.)

By describing a tech-related event that might seem small to most audiences—one girl scout troop leader taking her girls to a coding academy—Dell Technologies centers its brand in a detailed discussion. The story’s existence implies that the brand values even the smallest movements in its industry. Best of all, it leaves the reader feeling inspired about the world.

Squanch Games | Branded subreddit and discord

Few creators have a better understanding of our digital world than Justin Roiland, co-creator of the uber-popular cartoon Rick and Morty and head of the VR brand Squanch Games. Maybe because Roiland’s cartoon picked up steam in online fan communities, he was fully aware of the power of user-generated content when he launched his games studio.

Instead of waiting for consumers to start conversations about Squanch, Roiland and his team created dedicated spaces on the platforms their target audience was already using: Reddit and Discord. Combing through the discussion channels, you don’t see a lot of intrusion or advertisement from Roiland himself—unless he’s doing an AMA (Redditspeak for “Ask Me Anything” session)—but both websites are linked on Squanch’s homepage. They bear an official stamp of approval, which makes users feel like their conversations are being heard.

No matter how you fit into the technology industry, you can find creative ways to stand out by studying your target audience. That’s the bright line connecting our favorite content marketing campaigns from tech brands. The best ones meet consumers halfway.

The post 6 Examples of Incredible Content Marketing From Technology Companies appeared first on Contently.

According to Randy Parker, founder of Facebook marketing tech company PagePart, Facebook’s value to your business will depend on how much leverage you get from the social graph. In other words, as long as your business relies on building long-lasting relationships with a reasonably large audience that you can target, Facebook ads are worth a try.

Industry concerns?

That idea even applies to industries with smaller audiences, such as B2B companies. We at Contently are a great example. We use Facebook for targeted paid distribution of our content—the specificity of the targeting and relatively low CPC allow us to reach potential leads and grow our audience effectively.

MetLife has seen similar success on Facebook. According to Facebook’s case study, the insurance company saw a 2.4x increase in lead-to-sale ratio compared to the next best-performing channel, and a 49 percent decrease in cost per lead.

This is true for B2C companies as well. Banana Republic (retail), Zynga (gaming), and Verizon (telecommunications) have all seen success. Your industry shouldn’t determine how much you value Facebook.

Part of a cohesive strategy

Even though it’s effective across industries, Facebook shouldn’t be your only channel. Using it in chorus with the rest of your marketing repertoire is critical.

“I don’t think it’s the most important marketing channel,” said Deacon Webster, CCO at digital agency Walrus. “It completely depends on what your brand is. There’s some brands that I would say one hundred percent shouldn’t be using Facebook. But more and more people are spending time on mobile devices, and if you need to get in front of those people, Facebook’s a really good way to do it.”

Using Facebook in conjunction with other channels is a key part of understanding the platform’s overall place in your marketing plan. For big brands, using Facebook as one part of a larger media campaign can be a valuable way to take advantage of the network’s unique capabilities, while some brands may be better off creating Facebook-only campaigns.

“It’s always good to have a mix of different mediums happening,” Webster said. “People have a different reaction to seeing something on their phone compared to TV or interacting with outdoor or wherever else. I think it’s part of the mix, but it’s not the whole mix.”

Ubisoft, the Montreal-based gaming company, took this to heart in a recent campaign to increase the reach of a TV ad for the launch of its new game. Because its core user base, 18- to 34-year-old males, tends to be less active on TV, Ubisoft used Facebook to extend the effectiveness of its expensive TV ads to the digital sphere.

Brad Goldberg, vice president of of advertising operations at OrionCKB, believes that Facebook should also only be one part of a digital marketing strategy.

“I don’t know if I would say it’s the most important,” he said. “Obviously, you have to have the right mix of different digital strategies because Facebook is still very much a social channel, and is about building a brand. That’s opposed to something on the search side, where people are typing in exactly what they are looking for. You have to have a good kind of mix between the two.”

Goldberg sees Facebook as “top two” in terms of digital importance for marketers, but it’s not necessarily more important than that other behemoth, Google.

Facebook for mobile, targeting, and video

For mobile, targeting, and digital video, it’s hard to beat Facebook. If your marketing goals are tied to those elements, Facebook is your place. Its vast reach makes it appealing for any campaign aiming at a broad audience, while its targeting features make it worthwhile (though somewhat expensive) for a campaign aimed at a very specific one.

As TV slowly dies, Facebook has been positioning itself as the next platform for TV ad money.

Facebook’s video ad push is an excellent example of how these kind of campaigns—targeted, mobile, video-based—are an excellent fit for Facebook, whether you’re using the platform as a supplementary or primary marketing channel.

As TV slowly dies, Facebook has been positioning itself as the next platform for TV ad money. Socialbakers revealed that marketers plan to spend more ad money on Facebook video than on any other platform.

Lexus, for example, recently ran a campaign with an astounding 1,000 unique video ads in order to utilize Facebook’s granular audience targeting features—something that could never be done with a traditional TV ad. Campaigns like this one, which make explicit use of Facebook’s unique features, are worth experimenting with, but otherwise it’s likely best to keep the platform within a larger marketing mix.

Again, this all depends largely on your brand’s idiosyncrasies. Once you understand both Facebook’s evolving model and its place in your marketing strategy, it’s time to start building your Facebook presence.

This is an excerpt from “The Marketer’s Guide to Facebook.”

The post What Role Should Facebook Play in Your Marketing? appeared first on Contently.

Since debuting in 2004, Facebook’s platform has evolved dramatically thanks in part to a workplace ethos that could best be described as move fast and break things. With that type of turbulent approach, there’s bound to be plenty of new ideas from those who work at Facebook’s Menlo Park, California, headquarters. Oddly enough, a catalyst for one such idea—Facebook Stories—came in the form of a more old-fashioned social network: snail mail.

By 2010, Facebook had received countless handwritten letters from folks all over the world, thanking the social giant for opening up the world to them and connecting them with important people in their lives. And so, Facebook decided to create a platform—an app and website—to publish those stories and let users submit new ones. Thirty thousand submissions and millions of shares later, articles such as “The Healing Power of Friends,” “Paying It Forward Through Facebook,” and “How Our Town Came Together to Make My Daughter’s Birthday Special” hosted on the Facebook Stories site would melt even the hardest of hearts. Another bonus? Facebook’s employees eagerly read all of the content, albeit with a slightly different angle.

“These stories are everything to our company,” said Facebook Managing Editor Allie Townsend, speaking at the Contently West Coast Summit, held in San Francisco on June 9.

“We use them internally,” Townsend said. “The employees really want to know how the things they are working on are making a difference.” That may not be an easy task considering there are 1.44 billion people on Facebook and thousands of employees handling so many different projects, but publishing that user feedback in a creative way seems to be working just fine thus far.

Facebook isn’t alone in using content creatively in this way. In the last year, we’ve really started to see companies get more comfortable with user-generated content, since it’s an effective way for employees to get feedback on their projects and organizations as a whole.

For Kim Hillyer, the director of communications and public affairs at TD Ameritrade, generating user stories, like this recent piece about retail investors, can be challenging due to strict regulations in the financial services industry. Interviewing clients about personal investment strategies or unearthing market trends among users can be tricky, but Hillyer has been determined to capitalize on the important perspectives clients can offer.

Her team created a collaborative workflow with the company’s compliance and legal partners that minimizes gridlock whenever customer information is involved. It starts with an idea: How can the data be presented in a more personal and engaging way? Hillyer also makes an effort to include partners in the ideation process.

“We say, ‘This is the problem we’re trying to solve, will you help us?’ Rather than, ‘This is what we’re doing, please don’t say no,'” she said.

TD Ameritrade may not have a need for handwritten letters from its clients, but customer feedback has really refined the company’s internal publishing process. In addition to the storytelling benefits for the company blog, information about how clients feel, coupled with trading data, helps advisors do their jobs more effectively.

“At the end of the day, we’re all working toward the same goal—making TD Ameritrade a better place,” Hillyer said.

Meanwhile, back at One Hacker Way, Townsend’s team continues to pore over stories from people like Sheena Sharma, who, after moving from India to Virginia, discovered her largely luddite mother joined Facebook just to keep in touch. Sharma’s story, among others, proves to employees that their work serves a greater purpose than just driving likes and shares.

“We want great characters and great stories that resonate,” Townsend said. “That’s what we care about.”

The post From Facebook to TD Ameritrade, Corporate Giants Inspire Employees With User Stories appeared first on Contently.

There’s some awkward laughter. Then a few beats of silence.

“No guys, seriously,” you say enthusiastically. “Really, tell me your story, the one about how much I mean to you. I want to hear your story.”

A few more awkward beats. “That’s kind of self-centered,” your friend Pete says.

“Oh no,” you respond. “You don’t understand. I want to hear your story. I care about you. So much so that if your story is good enough, I’ll amplify it on my social channels.”

Even though it’s completely ridiculous to imagine yourself acting this way, the scenario is still cringe-worthy. Yet, it’s the approach many brands take with their social and content strategies. “Tell us your story!” they plead. Sometimes, the type of story is specified: “Tell us your story about this brand-related thing!”

“Tell us your allergy relief spray story!”

“Tell us your electrical lineman story!”

“Tell us your adult diaper story!”

These calls to action are all real examples captured on the hilarious Tell Us Your Story Tumblr, created by ad copywriter Brian Eden. It’s pretty simple: Just a collection of many, many, many brands demanding that people tell their stories (about brands).

According to Click Z, the idea came to Eden when he was drinking Dr Pepper, which, of course, asked him for his story. “I was drinking a soda, and the can blindly said, ‘Tell us your story at drpeppertuition.com,’ and it seemed really funny to me,” Eden said. “What story were they looking for? My life story, or my soda story? As an advertising writer, I started seeing this trend everywhere, and it occurred to me that it was getting a little silly. All these products wanting to know my story about their products, and I don’t have a Dr Pepper story to share. My story is I bought it and I drank it.”

Scrolling through Eden’s Tumblr, it’s a little shocking to see how many brands employ this lazy strategy, which never seems to work. It’s a bizarrely self-centered request that doesn’t naturally occur in any social context. If anyone did this in real life, they’d never be invited out to dinner again. I’m not sure if some brand advertisers are that delusional about their importance in the universe or if it’s just an easy way for brands to fake a heartfelt social strategy and side-step the challenge of telling people stories about things they’re actually interested in. My suspicion tells me it’s the latter. Then again, I don’t work inside the belly of big brand advertising, so if you do, email me at lazer@contently.com and, you know, tell me your story so I can use it to report a story people hopefully find interesting.

The post TellUsYourStory Tumblr Reveals the Tone-Deaf Social Media Strategy Brands Use Way Too Much appeared first on Contently.

Will a yelling, hopping fish be enough to convince you to buy a big bag of nacho-cheese-dust-covered chips? By the time the Super Bowl’s two teams (R.I.P. Pittsburgh Steelers) actually go head to head, which commercial actually wins its 30 seconds of fame might not even matter. That’s the brilliance and the promise of “Crash the Super Bowl”: Doritos has been crowned the Super Bowl champion eight years in a row, and there’s no reason to think they won’t do it again.

It’s perhaps one of the most prominent and successful displays of user-generated content in the business. Rather than pay an ad agency to script, shoot, and test out the perfect Super Bowl advertisement, Doritos made the shrewd move a few years back to crowdsource. They ask their fans, or at least the general video-making population, to send in their own 30-second Doritos spot, with the simple guideline to “just make it awesome.”

For a 30-second video, there’s a lot to be gained for an amateur filmmaker. The grand prize winner will not only have their spot played as the official Doritos Super Bowl ad, but they also win $1 million and a job with Universal Studios to work on a major motion picture. Not too shabby. According to Today, one runner-up gets $50,000 and the second Super Bowl ad spot, and the other eight finalists will win $25,000 (and all 10 get Super Bowl tickets).

That’s big money, but so is the Super Bowl—30 seconds on NBC will cost you $4.5 million, according to Variety . The potential impact is likewise just as big: “Fox’s broadcast of Super Bowl XLVIII reached 111.5 million viewers, according to Nielsen, making it the most-watched event television event in U.S. history.”

Eight years of success shows that this is a pretty safe bet for Doritos, which rarely strays from their straightforward message. “With something like Doritos, there isn’t really anything the client wants to say other than ‘Doritos are tasty’,” ad expert Steve O’Connell explained to Forbes.

While their Frito-Lay brethren may use Super Bowl time to ask the chip-eating public to come up with new flavors like kettle-cooked wasabi ginger, Doritos only needs to get their name out in a memorable, funny way. Unlike beer, which—if last year’s Budweiser commercial is any indication—apparently involves emotional baggage, chips are strictly fun.

Playing on Doritos’ “For the Bold” tagline, most of this year’s finalists focus on just how desirable Doritos are—bold, but not dangerous. In one particularly odd ad, Doritos make a fish jump out of a pond to steal the bag of chips right under the nose of a fisherman. In another, “Doritos!” is a baby’s first word. Doritos turn a girl running a lemonade stand into an auctioneer and, in a dark twist, two kids have their dad arrested because he wouldn’t share his bag. Doritos turns grown men into needy man-children, are used to seduce women, are hoarded, and may cause death. But who most wants Doritos, according to these ads? Everyone: men 18–34, small children, really attractive women, animals of all species. Target demographics be damned.

Doritos’ ad recipe—a sprinkle of weirdness and a dash of stoner-chique—is ultimately family-friendly and gender-normative. You’ll never see a woman using Doritos to pick up a man, or anyone picking up someone of the same gender. Last year’s winners both involved children and their dogs, and both did particularly well. USA Today’s AdMeter ranking for the 2014 Super Bowl had Doritos’ “Cowboy Kid” ad at #3 and its “Time Machine” ad at #5, while Nielsen ranked Doritos at #7 in total tweets about Super Bowl ads.

There are weirder contest entries out there—their gallery of submissions is an easy time-suck—but the ones you see do their job just fine. After shotgunning 12 ads in a row, I can testify that I have a mighty urge for some Cool Ranch. It’s all about repetition, repetition, repetition.

In fact, the Doritos formula is so easily satirized that Newcastle Brown Ale, in a stunt not dissimilar from last year’s incredible “If We Made It” almost-Super-Bowl advertisement, made their own entry into the contest. Well, sort of. In their own 40-second spot, Newcastle pretends to craft a generic, broad comedy ad that masquerades as a promotion of Doritos (bleeped out in the video) chips while actually doing a pretty great job of showing a lot of Newcastle ale. A dopey husband ends up doing chores around the house in order to find the bag of chips his wife hid, all in a great plot to get him to clean. But the ad is so over-the-top obvious in its push for the beer—at one point, the guy wears a shirt that says “Newcastle is an excellent beer”—that it proves a pretty sharp critique of standard marketing techniques.

Of course, as Newcastle admits in their similarly satirical behind-the-scenes video, there was no way they could enter the contest, seeing as third-party brands are prohibited from entering. But just as they never intended to do a Super Bowl ad with Anna Kendrick last year (but actually sort of did—it’s all very meta), Newcastle reveals the constructed nature of the Doritos brand, while cementing their own brand image as a different breed of company.

It doesn’t hurt Doritos one bit, though. Newcastle gets A+ marks for its underdog strategy, but Doritos has proven that the over-done—the safe—is bold enough to get the job done. Doritos wants to be earnest in its self-love, so that’s what it gets. And this year, the obvious winner in that category (and my personal favorite entry) is “When Pigs Fly.” Clichéd turn of phrase, bold little kid, adorable animal? Check, check, check. Having all three trite motifs in one ad might be a turn off for some brands, but for Doritos, it’s checkmate.

(Editor’s note: Since the publication of this post, Doritos has finally ended its “Crash the Superbowl” campaign. You can learn more about why the campaign came to a halt here.) 

The post How Doritos Turned User-Generated Content Into the Biggest Super Bowl Campaign of the Year appeared first on Contently.

This is the question nearly every content marketer asks today—and if they’re not asking it, they should be. At the Contently Summit last Thursday, I had the honor of being the least impressive person on a panel tackling the audience-building topic. After 40 minutes of jamming with Steve Rubel, Edelman’s industry luminary and resident tortured Jets fan, and Audrey Gray, a lead communications strategist at MetLife and an incredible journalist-turned-marketer, five trends stood out:

1. Agencies will push brands toward sponsored content in 2015

Rubel was bullish on sponsored content—the act of brands sponsoring content that runs on publisher sites—pointing to a comprehensive Edelman study that showed sponsored content can succeed when it’s relevant to reader interests, tells a story, and comes from a trusted brand. With those factors in place, Edelman found sponsored content can deliver a significant boost.

“If you publish with The New York Times, Slate, Vox, The Atlantic—all these high end publishers, you can see a 33 percent increase in favorability.”

Rubel also noted that there are tons of lessons brands learn from publishers when they work with them.

“The best practices for audience development are in the media world, they’re in Hollywood,” Rubel explained. “They’re not—with all due respect—with marketers. This is why I spend the bulk of my time with publishers: They know how to build an audience. Especially the digital-native publishers—if you look at BuzzFeed and Business Insider and Vox and The Huffington Post, if you spend time with them, you learn how they test and try different formats. Those best practices can be reverse-engineered and applied to marketing.”

I then questioned Rubel about whether it really made sense for brands to shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars to rent a publisher’s audience instead of investing that money in building their own audiences. Rubel responded that he’s most interested in sponsorship models in which a brand “carves out a section of the [publisher’s] site that they own.”

From the conversations I’ve had in recent months, I think Rubel’s stance is representative of how agencies at large will push brands towards native advertising in 2015. Native advertising fits the campaign mindset many brands are accustomed to; and for agencies, coordinating native campaigns is simply a safer proposition than attempting to build owned publications on behalf of brands—especially since brand publishing efforts typically take months, if not years, before they really start to pay off.

2. Go where your audience is

Now that most brands are at least somewhat comfortable creating content, the real challenge is getting people to actually consume it. Rubel advocated for sponsored content can be a powerful way for brands to introduce themselves to a publisher’s loyal targeted audience, but also noted that “a lot of old school channels can be overlooked.”

“Email!” Gray cut in.

“A lot of the time I go in and talk [to clients] about email and they look at me like I’m from the ’40s—and I am,” Rubel joked. “But the data supports it. There’s a study out there about how executives consume content, and email ruled.”

I agreed, noting that email is the biggest driver of traffic for us at Contently, sparking the daily wildfire of social shares of our content. I also advocated for brands to use paid social distribution to get more eyeballs on their content.

For instance, The Content Strategist’s content performs extremely well on Twitter; the social network is the driver of a large chunk of our daily traffic. While we don’t do much paid distribution, we do dabble in Sponsored Tweets to seed our best content in front of new audiences, and it works brilliantly, often sparking a wave of social shares. We also test the hell out of our tweets and optimize accordingly. As a result, we often end up paying just a few cents for new readers and get a ton of value out of our relatively limited content budget.

For other brand publishers, their channel of choice might be Facebook. Or LinkedIn. Or Tumblr. Regardless, brands need to explore different avenues for getting their content out there.

“If you come at your audience [strategy] with data that gives you an educated guess on what they’re consuming, and balance an experimental approach with tried and true, you can get somewhere,” Rubel said.

3. User-generated content is about to make a comeback

“User-generated content to me is the holy grail right now,” said Gray. “And it’s gotten so much better over the last year or so.”

Gray helps create content for MetLife’s 60,000-plus global employees—a task she likens to running a small-town newspaper—but her most successful content series wasn’t something she created. Recently, MetLife put out a call to employees to submit selfies while holding up a sign that summed up their relationships with clients in one word.

The series generated a tremendous response on MetLife’s internal site, with high-quality submissions pouring in from all over the world. Gray said the support was indicative of how user-generated content is back on the upswing, which presents a huge opportunity for brands. “User videos used to be terrible,” she said. “Now, they’re just great.”

4. Bigger, better, richer stories are the future

Rubel said brands need to look to Hollywood for best practices on audience development—and as a model for how to tell dynamic stories that capture people’s attention. Now, brands need to do more than publish simple blog posts. Multimedia must be a core component of every brand’s content strategy heading into 2015.

“When stories are told well, you see changes in metrics that quarter,” said Gray, who’s a big believer in the power of visual mediums. “We do some very beautiful video work and I always try and make a big case for it. I feel even more strongly about photography. You can get just beautiful photography—you pay a Getty photographer about $1200 a day and that’s totally worth it because people are just as likely, maybe even more likely, to scroll through a photo slideshow as they are to watch a 3-minute video.”

Final thoughts

It may sound obvious, but it’s worth spelling out: If brands want to become publishers with large audiences, they need to act like media companies. That means testing and tracking success with deep engagement metrics, experimenting with new forms of content and distribution, and doubling down on what works. There’s no single answer to the question, “What does it take to build an audience?” You have to do many things, and do them all well.

Dig into the session more with this amazing graphic representation by artist Kelly Kingman:

This article has been amended to correct some factual inaccuracies about Audrey Gray’s role at American Express.

The post 4 Audience Growth Trends for 2015 appeared first on Contently.

Geeknet Senior Editor Nick Kolakowski and Storyful’s Erica Berger discuss user-generated content.

How do you vet, distribute, and monitor an Internet’s worth of that material without losing focus on accuracy ? How do you keep your company above the editorial fray? How do you do all of this at the pace of the news itself?

Carefully, very carefully, said Storyful’s Erica Berger.

Berger, director of product partnerships for Storyful, spoke at the first fall installment of Content Conversations on Oct. 8 at Contently’s New York headquarters.

User Content: Fact-Checking

Storyful delivers user-generated content to news outlets in two ways: Content is provided in front of its paywall and content is supplied through its subscription service: Storyful Pro. You get the one via platforms such as Twitter (two accounts, actually) and YouTube. You get the other content by buying in as a subscriber.

As for how it works on the curation end of things, Berger suggested one scenario in which Storyful might vet a piece of information that came in from a (hypothetical) source.

“All right, ‘Nick’ found this, who’s Nick?” she said, running through the steps she would take with a submitted photo. “He took this photo here, at this time, on this day. How long has he had a social-media account for? Is he sharing this information in the correct language?”

The next steps are almost like forensics: Google is used to check images against street-view mapping, and weather reports are consulted to match conditions in an image. Even the shadows thrown by the sun can be telling. Ideally, sources are backtracked. E-mails and phone calls are made.

But what happens when the news is coming too fast for all of this verification?

Vetting User Content at the Pace of News

However deep the fact-checking process, Storyful’s methods, at times, can stand in opposition to the speed and intensity at which online stories are in demand. Where’s the threshold between fact-checking and supplying wanted content to a client, quick?

A crowd of about 60 listens to Berger speak.

Take for instance the Aug. 24, 2012 Manhattan-sidewalk firefight between a gun-wielding suspect and several police officers. Video and photos and tweets, these things flooded the Internet during and after the fatal drama outside the Empire State Building.

“With the Empire State Building example,” Berger said, “We were uploading a bunch of stuff in realtime and we were indicating to our clients that this is pending contact information; we haven’t been able to get in touch with these people, yet. Here’s the witnesses willing to talk to right now.”

Impartiality and Indemnity in Front of the Firehose

Another question that came up: What editorial impact might Storyful  have upon the news agencies that use it? Is their curation something like pre-editing?

“We want media companies to make their own editorial decisions,” Berger said. “We don’t want to make those decisions for them. We try to present every side possible of an argument by putting up content, even when we’re not sure what” the argument will develop into.

Storyful provides context along with its content, from a few sentences to thousands of words.

“We acknowledge, however, that content can be inherently political,” she said, speaking of a case in point — material emerging from the conflict in Syria: “These people have a stake in this civil war, if that’s what we’re going to call it. How do you present that to your clients? Well, that’s the New York Times‘ job, and that’s the Wall Street Journal‘s job.”

On its website, Storyful posted this: “Storyful accepts legal responsibility for the editorial guidance provided to clients. It will not be liable for any legal difficulties arising from the use of content in a manner which contravenes that guidance.”

Another question was about liability. Which organization carries the burden of a copyright infringement, should rights and clearances prove a complication after a client has taken and purposed a piece of  content?

“If we know that something is public and or cleared, and our client gets in trouble, then we’ll take the blame for it,” Berger said.

It all depends on the circumstances. Berger and others said during the discussion that when it comes to content and the news, it’s still a bit like the Wild West.

Meetup images courtesy of Erica Swallow.

The post How Storyful Is Shaking Up News Reporting with User-Generated Content appeared first on Contently.

Top Media Plans of the Year 

Which company had the most effective creative blueprint this year?

Adweek.com picks their Media Plan of the Year, according to the site’s editorial team.

Winners include “plans that moved the needle for clients like Chrysler, Samsung and Dunkin’ Donuts.”

How to Build an Infographic

Infographics and journalism are forever intertwined. Visual.ly’s CEO Stew Langille spoke to Wired.com about the right and wrong way to build an infographic.

“An infographic starts with a great data set,” he said. “Even if you’re not a journalist — but an advertiser or independent contractor, say — you need to represent the data ethically in order to preserve your credibility with your audience. Don’t source from blogs. Don’t source from Wikipedia. Don’t misrepresent your data with images.”

Social Media and the Age-Old Question

Now that the tweeting oldies out there have had the weekend to stew over NexGen Journals’ article Why Every Social Media Manager Should be Under 25, they’ve put their arthritic fingers to keyboard and come back with a few reactions.

Many take issue with the age limit, but some, in their archaic wisdom, agree, says Forbes.com.

Not Yet Making Social Media House Calls

Don’t look for your family doctor on Facebook right now, she isn’t there.

Forbes.com reports that while pharmaceutical companies are trying to sell influence physicians through digital advertising and online interaction, their audience is seeing patients, writing prescriptions, but generally, not on social media.

Run, Jump, and Watch What You Tweet

Social media has grown leaps and bounds in the last four years as evidenced by the The International Olympic Committee’s guide to blogging and social standards.

Already, a few Australian swimmers have already been banned from social media.

“Social-media experts say these bans likely won’t be an isolated incident, given the inherent difficulties in policing thousands of athletes, many of them amateur, from 204 countries over the course of 17 days,” AdAge.com reports.

Lucky Magazine Launches User-Generated Content Board on Pinterest

Lucky magazine is jumping on the Pinterest bandwagon and launching a user-generated vertical.

“The vertical, dubbed “Community,” will pull from a pool of bloggers who have applied to have their content featured on luckymag.com.” Mashable.com has the full story.  

The post Year’s Best Media Plans, Infographic Basics, Social Media Age Wars appeared first on Contently.

The campaign, “Find Yours,” was introduced with a television spot “stitched together entirely from user-generated content, featuring video footage from people’s travels,” according to AdWeek.

The content “will endeavor to explain how seeing the world has transformed the travelers as people.”

Along with the first spot, Expedia is asking users to share their stories and content via Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter. The company is also producing a mini-documentary series showcasing travelers’ tales, as well as sponsoring a short-film contest.

Integrating user-generated content into marketing campaigns is wise for companies because it’s easier for customers to relate to, says Christine Dunn of Content Marketing Institute. But, it can’t be a free for all.

“There’s a perspective-driven UGC [user-generated content] approach and an open-forum approach,” said Ian Chee, a strategic planning director at interactive agency AKQA. “With a perspective-driven approach, you’re asking consumers to participate in your brand dialog from your perspective. I find that useful. Giving people a tight brief and asking them to articulate it in their own voice is a very positive way of approaching the problem.”

Expedia is asking for specific content, and shaping the way the conversation is going. Its bigger message is not about promoting the brand, but promoting the idea of travel. This focus, on the experience rather than the product, is what contributes to the success of brand content campaigns.

The post Expedia’s New Campaign Features Travelers’ True-Life Experiences [VIDEO] appeared first on Contently.

A deal between Turner and Bleacher Report is being worked out and may be announced this month, according to an anonymous source interviewed by AdAge. Rumors regarding the deal have also appeared on AllThingsD and Business Insider.

“Bleacher Report, which has raised $40 million in venture capital since its arrival in 2007, seems to be the latest new-media upstart to make good on user-generated content, although contributors do need to pass an application process, combined with search-engine optimization, slideshows and the occasional photos of scantily-dressed women,” says Jason Del Rey of AdAge.

Since its inception, Bleacher Report has made more money each year. In 2010, writes Rey, the site saw a profit of $5 million. This year, it’s projected to make $30 million.

According to the Associated Press, “The purchase would enable Turner to sell ads to a broader sports-focused audience and could help boost online traffic and network viewers.”

Turner already owns NBA.com, PGA.com, NASCAR.com, and MLB.com, so Bleacher Reporter would give it more power in the world of sports.

If the acquisition is completed, it would be the fourth major change-up in sports media this summer. CBS Sports Radio plans to launch in early 2013, and NBC also announced plans to dive into the world of sports radio soon as well. Turner’s former partner, Sports Illustrated, will premiere its new show on NBC Sports Network at the end of July.

The post User-Generated Content Site Bleacher Report May Fetch $200 Million appeared first on Contently.

These influencers are often sought out for content on emerging platforms like Instagram and Pinterest, but YouTube has long been a place where brands can find users to create what might be the elusive viral video.

A new video marketplace

YouTube has made this process easier, with a new marketplace to connect YouTube “stars” and brands.

At a keynote presentation at VidCon last Thursday, YouTube vice president of product management Shishir Mehrota announced Video Creation Marketplace, a platform that will connect content creators on YouTube with marketers or agencies looking for viral buzz, Ad Age reported.

YouTube has had a history of supporting video creators since 2007 by sharing ad revenue, allowing people to create YouTube content for a living.

“We pay out millions of dollars to partners each year,” said Baljeet Singh, group product manager at YouTube. “Thousands of channels are generating six figures a year.”

Custom search for video stars

The marketplace platform will allow partners to set up profiles indicating what they do, their past successes and the demographics or types of brands they are best suited for.

Advertisers or agencies will be able to search by parameters, such as content type, target demo and keywords, to find the right YouTube star for their campaign.

Then, they can negotiate separately. YouTube will play no part in the negotiation stage.

As for other visual content platforms, The Mobile Media Lab represents Instagram influencers for brands to partner with, and Pinbooster works with Pinterest influencers willing to pin advertisements in exchange for compensation.

However, what creators offer on YouTube is perhaps more valuable than influencers on Pinterest and Instagram, which are largely curation sites.

YouTube creators have the experience and talent for creating videos that have the ability become viral. That is a very valuable partner for any content marketer.

The post YouTube Launches Marketplace for Brands and Content Creators [VIDEO] appeared first on Contently.

Every organization needs efficiency, but even the most formal and regimented ones need to allow users the freedom to share ideas.

The Pentagon recently decided to create a network called Eureka that will allow military personnel to share and rank stories, according to PSFK.

Limited access, controlled content

Eureka will only be accessible to military staff and will be heavily controlled by the government, but the intention is for Eureka to be a site where users are encouraged to send and vote on ideas that “improve training, or solve problems that plague the military and hamper efficiency.”

If the concept is popular, it could end up in updated field manuals. The Pentagon already has its own military version of Facebook, YouTube and Wikipedia.

The creation of Eureka was the result of two different objectives: to allow suggestions to be submitted in real-time and to create an exclusive and guarded network that can’t be hacked.

Unexpected influence

The fact the inspiration came from Reddit, the link aggregator known for memes and niche humor, shows that sometimes the content of a platform overshadows its reputation. One clear example of this is how Pinterest is considered mainly a site for women, despite the fact that the platform provides a new creative means of sharing content. Just take a look at how Uniqlo used Pinterest to create a mosaic around their line of mesh clothing.

Allowing a community to give feedback also strengthens users’ ties to a brand or company — or government armed services —  and can be effective for any content strategy.

The post The Pentagon Wants User-Generated Content appeared first on Contently.

Frank Findley, vice president of research and development at comScore says, “Professionally produced content and product videos drove strikingly higher lifts when used together than when either was used individually. While marketers may already be familiar with the effectiveness of professional video content alone, these results suggest that even greater returns can be had by combining their use with authentic, user-generated content.”

While the professional videos work well when it comes to getting across the company’s key messages, user-generated ones “are easier to relate to, perceived as being unbiased, and were considered more believable about verifying specific product claims,” writes Content Marketing Institute’s Christine Dunn.

All it usually takes is a sizable budget and a good production team to create quality videos — those details can be figured out pretty easily with enough will power. But companies may be clueless when it comes to getting users to submit videos. To encourage consumers, marketers need to place reminders on advertising materials, make it easy to send in videos by taking out any registration process, and request testimonials immediately following a sale, says Sean Rosensteel of Site Sketch 101.

People relate to and value visual storytelling. By combining professional and user-generated video efforts, marketers have the opportunity to gain users’ trust and keep them interested in their companies’ messages.

Image courtesy of Flickr, hummingcrow

The post The Combined Power of Professional and User-Generated Videos appeared first on Contently.

The popular stock and flow content debate continues in Digitay’s recent post “Brands Want Content Curator Jobs.” Their take? A lot.

“It takes time to build that reputation, whether creator or curator,” explained Neil Chase, svp of editing and publishing at Federated Media. “It might take faster if you’re good at what you do, but you still have to get it up and running. You’re competing with a lot of other stuff in people’s in-boxes.”

“Take AmEx’s OpenForum, for instance. It took four years to get 1 million people aboard, and now it gets about 150,000 unique visitors per month. They have the resources to build and cultivate an audience others may not. Additionally, OpenForum was put on the shoulders of the end-user: small-business owners. These business owners are able to communicate and share ideas with one another, but they must be American Express Cardmembers. AmEx recognized the need to provide small-business owners with a connection platform and information that will help their business succeed.”

The post How Much Original Content Makes A Strategy Effective? appeared first on Contently.

Of course, the particular balance depends on your resources and your needs.

Original Content

This can be a strong draw for an audience, because it’s presumably something unavailable elsewhere. When you have the right original content, results are sticky because you give people something they can’t find elsewhere. You also have the opportunity to develop a unique voice and personality for the company.

However, there are some drawbacks. Someone has to create the custom content. To get something of quality can be either expensive (depending on how much you need created) or time consuming (if you decide to write it yourself). Even if you hire a writer, it can take more of your time to communicate the style and type of material you’re looking for. Put the necessary time into blogging and you may find yourself diverted from other aspects of your business.

Curated Content

This is in theory much easier to obtain. You find links whose content supports the message you’re trying to deliver through your blog. Another advantage is volume. It becomes easy to refresh your site with new material. Curated content is less expensive to assemble than creating custom content.

But, like original content, there are obstacles. Any number of other sites, including those that belong to your competitors, might choose similar links. You can’t guarantee that yours is the only site that mentions the links, so your search engine ranking takes a hit. And it’s not as though it’s effortless. You still need to add a unique take or angle that helps your audience see the relevance. Plus, maintenance can be a little difficult. A site might change its Web structure and suddenly break any link you’ve made to it.But there’s no reason to stand at one end or the other.

Stock and Flow

A mix of stock and flow content is the best way to approach your blog. Stock content is the original material, longer in form that expresses your views and personality. It will bring the audience in the first place because it’s your site’s unique selling proposition.

At the same time, you can use flow content — curated aggregation — to add more volume to your site. With proper curation, where you add something to the conversation, you also help build bridges with other sites and increase your SEO strength.

The good news is that you don’t have to nail  the “right” amount of each right away. Find a mix that seems to address your audience, your communication needs, and your resources by experimenting. For example, see what happens when you mix the two together or keep them in separate areas. Try different schedules of when you add curated and original content. Just be sure to watch the metrics for how your audience reacts.

Related articles

• A Marketer’s Guide to Content Curation (hubspot.com)
• How Google+ Fits Into a Content Strategy (contently.com)
• How To Write Traffic-Gobbling Headlines Like Huffington Post (contently.com)

The post Balance your Mix of Stock and Flow Content Like A Pro appeared first on Contently.

The company capitalizes on the efforts of its sellers, offering the “Etsy Guide to SEO” with tips and tutorials for users to optimize their Etsy store, bringing in more traffic. The strategy is genius, because it places the effort in the hands of the user, strengthening the overall optimization for Etsy as a whole with minimal effort on the corporate side.

The result is a whole sub-culture of Etsy strategists, the sales force using the platform to sell their own handmade goods who relentlessly discuss and analyze ways to generate more traffic for their Etsy stores. A search on Google for “Etsy strategy” brings up hundreds of forums, discussion groups and blogs offering the latest inside techniques for building traffic on Etsy.

Easy on the Content

The term content strategy is an interesting one in relation to Etsy. Realistically, Etsy’s traffic strategy isn’t fundamentally grounded in blog content, as most major internet presences are.

Etsy has a blog, but beyond this, its content strategy primarily consists of on-site SEO, such as circular in-site links using searchable keywords to drive visitors to certain areas of the site.

The Etsy forum, another genius user-generated content strategy, houses the usual site outage reports as well as provides a built-in area for sellers to discuss sales and traffic strategies. Again, this content contributes to the overall SEO value of the Etsy website as a whole, and forum posts are generally naturally packed with relevant keywords.

Relying so heavily on forum content to drive SEO is an interesting risk in the post-PANDA web era, as little discussion has been made among industry analysts about the impact of Google’s PANDA update on forum content. That said, Etsy has plenty of other avenues through which it’s building organic inbound links: Through sellers’ blog posts on their personal blogs, aimed at driving traffic to their own Etsy stores and forums found elsewhere on the web.

The Risks Work

Risks associated with forum content include the natural tendency to write as one speaks, resulting in less “professional” content, and the collective nature of a forum as a place where hundreds — or thousands — of authors share their brief musings about a topic.

Etsy balances this well, however, with a high-quality blog periodically featuring various sellers, taking an in-depth look at some of the more unique offerings found on Etsy, and of course the crafty how-tos.

The Community Speaks

That said, Etsy’s blog is also populated with a multitude of voices, albeit moderated and professionalized by a team of editors, who also contribute regularly to balance out the cacophony. Sellers can pitch story ideas to editors, an appealing opportunity to those who are driven to attract more attention to their Etsy offerings.

The nature of Etsy’s business model is such that it allows a mass effort to contribute to the overall pie in terms of content and SEO.

Unlike a general forum, where contributors are motivated merely by the sound of their own keyboards, Etsy users have something to gain by being an active community participant on a personal and financial level.

The result is a win-win solution that has helped catapult Etsy, a site that started as something of an online flea market, to a major web enterprise. The business model allows the masses to earn recognition and profit financially in the hand-crafted goods vertical, one that otherwise has multiple barriers to entry, including high production costs.

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