Though everyone’s brand is unique, there are some best practices that apply universally to how marketers can build up their personal brands and grow followers into customers or clients.

From building a dynamic website to creating a personal content marketing strategy, use this guide to get started.

1. Showcase Your Authenticity

Above all, be authentic. If you blend in too much, you’ll never stand out.

Your specialized skills, work ethic values, sense of humor, and even the way you speak are what make you unique.

Ask yourself: How can I use the characteristics my friends love about me to make my personal brand resonate with my target audience?

Take Andrew Davis, for example. Can you tell what his favorite color is? You can recognize him by his glasses and bowtie, but his voice also remains consistent. He’s cheeky, interesting, and creative all at once.

Once you’ve established your “voice,” stay consistent with how you present yourself. This applies to your social media profile photos, the design of your website and business cards, and the way you dress and carry yourself at in-person events.

The key is to stay consistently you as you put yourself out there. A personal brand that switches personas to please everybody will end up pleasing nobody.

2. Find Your Target Audience

Before unleashing your marketing know-how across the digital world, research your target audience. The more you know about your audience’s needs and pain points, the better you’ll be at creating content that strikes a chord with them.

Some demographic details to focus on:

• What is the age group of your potential audience?
• What industries do you have marketing expertise in?
• What are the marketing challenges in those industries?
• What conversational tone appeals to your target audience?
• What are the topics they’re most interested in?
• What social channels do they prefer?

Finding your people requires both audience research and your own self-awareness. If your specialty is content marketing, don’t present yourself as a master of all marketing practices.

A great example of aligning a personal brand with an audience is digital marketing influencer, author, and content expert Jay Baer, who targets mostly creatives and marketers. His personality and social media presence — which exudes clear-thinking, empathy, and humor — align with his audience’s needs as creators.

3. Build a Dynamic Personal Website

LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter are important channels for personal branding, but they can also be distracting. You’ll be surrounded by a sea of content and hundreds of marketers just like you.

That’s why a personal website is so important. Here, you are the sole focus. A well-designed, easy-to-navigate website is a platform to show your target audience who you are and how you can help them without the noise of social media.

For instance, Pam Didner, a marketing consultant, speaker, and podcaster, created a personal website with a clean look that makes it easy to learn who she is and find her recently published content. A pop-up box just under the hero image links directly to her latest blog post. This is a smart way to bring content to the visitor rather than hoping visitors will seek it out.

4. Create a Content Marketing Strategy

Some of the most successful personal brands in marketing have a content strategy, publishing significant amounts of free content.

But before you start cranking out blog posts, podcasts, and videos, make a list of the topics that appeal to your target audience. BuzzSumo and Google Keyword Planner are two popular tools for researching topics and keywords.

Once you’ve established your keywords and topics, decide which content types you should create and where you should publish them.

The content types you focus on — written articles, short videos, podcasts, infographics — will depend on your audience’s preferences. For instance, if your target audience is Gen Z, you’ll want to focus more on video content for social media instead of other mediums.

As for where the content should live, your website should have a resource center as a home base for blogs and videos. Content should also be featured in an email newsletter to amplify its distribution impact. You’ll want to share your content on the social channels where your audience is most active, whether it’s LinkedIn, Twitter, or TikTok.

As you start pushing out content, be sure to look at content performance metrics for your website (visitors, time on page, bounce rate) and social media marketing efforts (likes, comments, shares). If the metrics are positive, slowly expand your content frequency, add more content types (podcasting, anyone?), and share on more social media channels.

If you’re looking for a personal brand content strategy to steal ideas from, check out Ann Handley’s blog. Her posts merge a personal touch with business wisdom as she doles out tips on work-life balance, general marketing strategy, and how to be a better writer.

Evolving Your Personal Brand

Change is a constant in the digital world, so your personal brand will need to stay fluid enough to evolve with the times. But never change your nature to please everybody.

Ultimately, with a well-honed personal brand, you can show people who you are and what you stand for as a marketer. With this solid foundation, you’ll be able to adjust to marketing trends while staying uniquely you.

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 to Build Your Personal Brand in Content Marketing appeared first on Contently.

But with so many options and variables, it can be easy to burn through your ad spend with minimal return.

Here are five Facebook ad tips that will help you maximize your ad performance and drive more conversions.

1. Choose the Right Campaign Type

Facebook ad campaigns come in various flavors, each tailored to specific goals. That’s why it’s important to consider your campaign’s objective before you get started with your Facebook ad campaign. Some questions to ask:

• Are you trying to build awareness, encourage engagement, or drive leads and sales?
• What metrics do you plan to measure?
• What would success look like for your campaign?

Taking the time to solidify your objectives before diving in will give you greater alignment as you build out your campaign.

Automated Ads

Automated ads are an efficient way to reach your target audience. This type of ad allows you to set up a campaign and then let it do the heavy lifting with minimal upkeep.

Facebook’s algorithm optimizes automated ad delivery, ensuring your message reaches the right people at the right time.

As long as your targeting details are on point, automated Facebook ads are the go-to choice for campaigns that don’t require constant fine-tuning or optimization.

Boosted Posts and Stories

Put your organic content to work with boosted posts and stories, a type of Facebook ad that amplifies the reach of existing content through paid campaigns. Embrace this strategy to breathe new life into your content and maximize its potential for audience engagement.

Boosted posts and stories are best for campaigns where you already have strong organic engagement, or if you want to quickly test out a post before investing in a more complicated Facebook ad format.

Content marketers can also use boosted posts and stories to reach new audiences, amplifying their content’s reach while still utilizing their existing assets.

Fully Customized Ads

Fully customized Facebook ads empower you with unparalleled control over your campaigns. These ads are ideal for campaigns that demand significant customization of visuals and messaging or target a highly specific audience or conversion objective.

Marketers should embrace the flexibility of fully customized Facebook ads to incorporate multiple creative elements, such as images, videos, carousels, and more.

Content marketers should use fully customized Facebook ads when they want to create an impactful and engaging experience for their audiences.

2. Determine Your Target Audience

One of the most valuable Facebook ad tips is to determine your target audience correctly. Knowing who you’re trying to reach will help you create ads that resonate with them and drive conversions.

Although it’s tempting to aim for a wider reach, narrowing down your audience ensures you’re not wasting ad spend showing ads to people who will never convert.

Keep Your Audience’s Awareness Level and Buyer Journey Stage in Mind

When defining your target audience, don’t forget to consider their level of awareness and where they are in the buyer journey stage. For example, if you’re advertising a product that’s unfamiliar to most people, you’ll want to craft an ad that presents the product in a straightforward and engaging way. 

On the other hand, if your audience is already aware of what you’re promoting, you can focus on ads that highlight your product’s value and benefits. Understanding these elements will help you fine-tune your Facebook ads to your specific target audience.

As you’re creating your Facebook ads, select a campaign objective that will improve audience targeting and ensure your ads align with the desired action you expect visitors to take.

Align Your Offers with Your Audience’s Needs

Matching the offer in your Facebook ad with the viewer’s buyer journey stage is crucial for boosting conversions because your target audience has different needs at different stages of the buying journey.

For instance, someone just becoming problem aware is likely more drawn to educational content that helps them understand the issue, while someone ready to make a purchase is more interested in a special offer or discount.

For example, Asana has a top-of-funnel ad promoting a topical blog post as well as mid- and bottom-funnel ads promoting their product with a call-to-action to sign up for a trial.

By aligning your offer to the viewer’s buyer journey stage, you can address their needs directly and heighten the chances of a conversion. For instance, targeting people in the consideration stage with a free trial or product demo is more impactful than a direct sales pitch. This tactic fosters trust and positions your brand as a valuable resource.

3. Craft Captivating Ad Messaging and Visuals

When it comes to creating a successful Facebook ad, writing engaging messaging is vital. The platform offers several ad formats, each with its unique specifications.

Compose messaging that is crisp, succinct, and addresses your target audience’s needs directly. Focus on various components of a Facebook ad when crafting your messaging, such as the primary text, headline, and description.

Ensure your ad visuals—like images or videos—harmonize with your messaging to capture the viewer’s attention and convey your offer effectively.

Opt for eye-catching and relevant imagery that embodies your product or service and mirrors your brand’s style and tone. Feature images or videos that demonstrate your product or service in action, emphasizing the core benefits.

Steer clear of generic stock photos that may fall flat with your target audience. It’s important to ensure that the visuals complement the messaging and work together to create a cohesive and impactful ad.

4. Set Your Initial Budget

Allocating a budget for your Facebook ad campaign is a crucial step in ensuring that your ad reaches your target audience effectively without overspending. When determining your budget, take into account:

• Overall campaign goals
• Target audience size
• Anticipated ad reach
• Average customer order value or lifetime value

One way to calculate the cost of a lead or customer is to use the Cost Per Lead (CPL) or Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) metrics. CPL refers to the cost of generating a lead through your ad, while CPA refers to the cost of acquiring a new customer.

To calculate the CPL or CPA, divide the total cost of your ad campaign by the number of leads or customers generated. By tracking these metrics, you can determine the effectiveness of your ad campaign and adjust your budget accordingly. If your CPL or CPA is higher than your target cost, you may need to adjust your targeting or ad messaging to improve your ad campaign performance.

It’s important, however, to evaluate these costs against the potential revenue each new customer could earn for your company to determine ROI. If your ad spend is low compared to the business each new customer brings in, increasing your ad spend could be an easy way to scale your business.

5. Analyze Your Results and Optimize for Greater Returns

To analyze your ad results, start by tracking key metrics such as click-through rates (CTR), conversions, and cost per conversion (CPC). This will give you an idea of how your ad is performing and whether it’s generating the desired results.

After pinpointing areas for improvement, consider adjusting your ad targeting, messaging, or visuals to boost conversions. For example, if your ad is generating many clicks but few conversions, you may need to improve your ad messaging to better align with your target audience’s needs.

Another powerful way to optimize your ad campaign is through A/B testing. Experiment with ad variations to identify which resonates most with your target audience. Test different ad images, headlines, or CTAs to uncover the winning combination.

Creating effective Facebook ads requires combining strategic planning, targeted messaging, and ongoing optimization. Remember to tailor your ads to your target audience’s needs and interests, align your offer with their buyer journey stage, and continuously analyze and optimize your ad performance. By following these five Facebook ad tips, content managers can maximize their Facebook ad campaigns’ impact and drive more conversions.

Sign up for The Content Strategist Newsletter to get content strategy tips delivered to your inbox weekly.  

The post Distribution 101: The Content Marketer’s Guide to Facebook Ads Tips appeared first on Contently.

Previously, publishers would post content on a website and then push out a link to distribution platforms like Facebook or Twitter. But now, those platforms don’t want to be middlemen for links; they want to host the content directly.

We’ve seen this change with Facebook Instant Articles, Google AMP, and Snapchat’s Discover, each of which, to varying degrees, lets publishers run content right on the platform. The same switch has also happened in digital video, thanks to Facebook’s native video player (Instagram and Twitter recently allowed users to host videos natively in the platform as well).

The switch has huge consequences on the power dynamics of the publishing world. If you click an Instant Articles link instead of a referral link, Facebook has more control over the experience and data collection.

This trend doesn’t just affect journalistic publishers like The New York Times or BuzzFeed. If a brand produces an infographic, it needs to know the nuances of different publishing platforms, especially as more people adapt to the incredibly fast speeds and superior user experience of Instant Articles and Google AMP.

It’s more important than ever to understand how content flows across the digital landscape. Let’s start with Facebook.

Facebook beefs up its pages

When people use the cliché that Facebook is “eating the internet,” they’re really saying that Facebook, with its vast portfolio of apps, is in many ways recreating the open web within its own walls. The native video player (designed to kill YouTube), Instant Articles (built to colonize publishing), and new marketplace tab (modeled to recreate Craigslist) are just a few examples. Now, an under-the-radar change is reshaping one of Facebook’s oldest features: Pages.

As I covered in my Facebook e-book, Pages are the glue that holds Facebook’s News Feed together. It’s where companies and people pump out their content. Now, Facebook is positioning Pages as a replacement for the open web homepage.

According to an October 19 press release, Facebook offers four new features for Pages. You can order food, request an appointment, get a quote, and buy tickets through a company’s Facebook Page.

It’s a minor but important adjustment. Pages can now perform core sales functions for companies, particularly small businesses. Instead of sending a user through a maze of clicks from your company profile, you can put the CTA right at the top of your page.

It’s safe to assume that this is just a sign of things to come from Pages, especially given the financial upside of e-commerce.

It’s also worth noting that the appointment CTA works through Facebook Messenger, something that the company has talked up repeatedly as one of the most valuable business functions of the app. Facebook wants consumers to browse, buy, and chat with businesses through its kingdom of apps, instead of calling a company or visiting a brand’s website.

Pinterest jumps on the bandwagon

Pinterest has always been more of a niche player when it comes to content distribution, due to its smaller user base (100 million) and specialty appeal (fashion, home decor, and so on). But it’s now following the lead of the big players and building a native media channel for brands and publishers, according to a report from Ad Age. The feature is still in its early stages, though publishers will apparently be able to run a variety of media types while Pinterest places ads against the content.

Pinterest president Tim Kendall is clearly on board with the move away from owned sites, if an interview with Ad Age is any indication: “I think it is pretty clear that the world of the value being the click to your mobile website is going to eventually go away. […] What media partners want is for their media to be consumed, and I think they are open to exploring where and how that media gets consumed, whether it is on their website or within a partner app.”

The announcement comes shortly after Pinterest’s introduction of video ads, which explains a lot of this thought process. There wasn’t really a section on the platform suited for video before, but clips will presumably fit in seamlessly on the native media channel.

For brands, the calculus here is similar to publishing natively on other platforms: You may see more eyeballs, but you also risk losing control over the user experience and the data you can collect, analyze, and act on. Additionally, Pinterest’s e-commerce opportunities likely aren’t as sophisticated as what you can do on a custom website. For publishers, deciding whether to jump on the natively hosted platform depends more on whether Pinterest will share ad revenues, which is unclear thus far.

Snapchat as TV

For brands engaged in content marketing, Snapchat may be the hardest platform to penetrate. Unlike Facebook—which wants user attention of any kind and can make money on boosted, targeted content—Snapchat has always funneled brands into old-school advertising buys.

The platform’s latest move confirms that Snapchat hopes to replicate TV’s advertising model for the mobile world. Snapchat used to share advertising revenue with partners on its native Discover platform, but the company now sells sponsors flat licensing fees in exchange for complete control over advertising sales.

As others have noted, the model is an exact replica of how TV content licensing works. It’s unclear whether this is a blessing or a curse for publishers, who, depending on their success, may either hate or love the fact that they don’t need to chase clicks and sell their own ad space.

Snapchat has shown it is only interested in working with the biggest brands—namely, the NFL—on its Discover platform. Meanwhile, the only ads that run on the platform are either traditional, TV-like spots or ads made specifically for Snapchat.

Put simply, Snapchat is going in a completely different direction than platforms like Facebook or Twitter. For any brands still trying to make content work on Snapchat, it may be time to give up and look elsewhere.

The post Platforms Push: How Big Changes From Facebook, Snapchat, and Pinterest Will Affect Marketers appeared first on Contently.

The social giant partnered with ABC to live stream the debates via Facebook Live, putting the much-hyped feature on the national stage. Early reports suggested the debate drew a Super Bowl-sized audience. And Politico reported early Tuesday that 55 million people watched debate-related videos on the platform, building on Facebook’s success with the Democratic National Convention, when over 28 million people tuned into the live stream.

Outside of Snapchat, there is no more interesting corner of the social media universe than Facebook Live. Live has been touted as Mark Zuckerberg’s pet project, one he’s “obsessed” with. Some believe Live is the key to Facebook’s future—a resource that will help it compete against broadcast television. Others doubt that Live will ever take off. But no one can deny the potential of live video on a platform that has over 1.71 billion users.

What makes that potential even more incredible is that Facebook Live was almost shut down before the public ever got to see it.

The birth of Facebook Live

Facebook’s mythology is rooted in humble beginnings—a site started in the dorm room of a socially frustrated Harvard freshman. Similarly, Facebook Live began in relative obscurity.

After graduating from Columbia’s journalism school, Vadim Lavrusik joined Facebook in April 2011 as the journalism program manager. He launched Facebook’s partnership efforts with the journalism community and set to figure out how to make the platform more useful for reporters.

“I had been trying to convince people at Facebook to build live video four years ago when I was working with journalists,” Lavrusik said. “But the technology wasn’t quite there, and also I think people internally just didn’t believe it was going to be a consumer use case.”

But over the next few years, mobile technology accelerated. Data plans grew, and 4G LTE became widespread. In the fall of 2014, Lavrusik made his pitch again.

“We were able to convince our executives to give us one engineer,” he recalled. “I remember the fall of 2014, when we had recruited one engineer to work on it, [John Fremlin], and he had made some progress by December. We started to get more infrastructure engineers involved, and then Meerkat launched in March of 2015.” [note] Allison Swope, a product manager for Facebook Mentions, recruited Fremlin. [/note]

People inside Facebook were still skeptical of the live-streaming project. According to Lavrusik, the biggest concern was whether Facebook could build something that could compete with established platforms like Periscope and Meerkat.

“My argument was always, look, we have the scale,” he said.

Lavrusik’s argument resonated. Facebook transferred him from the media partnerships team and made him a product manager for Facebook Mentions, an app that helps verified celebrities engage with their fans. Lavrusik and Fremlin pivoted the seven-person engineering team to work on Facebook Live, with plans for it to operate as part of the Mentions app.

“They were all working on different projects, and I was everyone’s least favorite person because I was getting them to work on something they didn’t want to work on,” he said. “Once we started making more and more progress, actually everyone got really excited.”

On August 5, 2015, Facebook launched Live on a limited basis to celebrities with a verified page. Even though the product “still wasn’t in a great place,” by Lavrusik’s own admission, it got its big break. The day after the launch, comedian Ricky Gervais went live from his bathtub.

It was a bizarre yet charming video capturing Gervais’s trademark awkward humor. Over 800,000 people watched it.

Right after the launch, Lavrusik showed the initial response to Facebook CCO Sheryl Sandberg and her direct reports. “Everyone had their ‘aha’ moment in the room,” Lavrusik said. “They were like, ‘Wow, we get it.'”

It didn’t take long for celebrities like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Perez Hilton, and Carson Daly to broadcast using the app. Soon after, the team opened it up to all users, not just celebrities. And as they did, a treasure trove of data came back that would make Live even bigger.

“This thing is going to blow up”

Internally, Facebook monitors a metric that focuses on how friends share. The goal is to figure out how to get more users to post original content that’s native to Facebook, instead of just liking, commenting, or sharing a link from an external news outlet.

“Our U.S. release [of Facebook Live] basically moved that metric more than all of their other launches and efforts over the course of the previous year combined,” Lavrusik said. “At first I was like, ‘Oh, this can’t be accurate’, and then we had another analyst look at [the data] and it was real. I was like, ‘This thing is going to blow up.'”

Then Mark Zuckerberg saw the data.

Zuckerberg was already a fan of Live. But then he saw how much people were sharing live video compared to links and other video formats. He also noticed that, on average, people were watching live streams three times longer and commenting 10 times more than on regular video.

With Live, Facebook had an instantly valuable product. The videos were exclusive because users had to access the platform to create them. Since streams were live, the content was timely. And there was also an inherent interactivity to them, since people could comment as they watched.

“Mark was like, ‘Wait… why wouldn’t we make the video tab all about live video?'” Lavrusik recalled.

Live would give Facebook something it needed: a dedicated home for video. Zuckerberg planned to announce the new tab at Facebook’s F8 Summit the following April. Facebook’s product team liked the suggestion, telling Zuckerberg to expect a plan the following week.

Only days later, however, Zuckerberg emailed the team. He laid out product specs for the Facebook video tab and ordered the entire media engineering team to spend the next few months focusing on Live “in lockdown.”

Lavrusik’s team suddenly went from 12 people to more than 100. They worked through the end of March to make Facebook Live accessible to all users in time for the F8 Summit. Rumors spread that Zuckerberg was more “obsessed” with Facebook Live than he’d been with any Facebook feature.

Then, a couple of weeks before the announcement, Lavrusik left Facebook.

The future

Since Zuckerberg announced Live with much fanfare in early April, telling users that it’s “like having a TV camera in your pocket,” the media has been considering one question: How big will Facebook Live really be?

Outside of all things Snapchat, Facebook Live has been the biggest social media story this year. After more than 800,000 people watched BuzzFeed explode a watermelon with rubber bands, Jonah Peretti, BuzzFeed’s founder, boasted that they had cracked the code, producing something online capable of topping the reach of live TV.

BuzzFeed’s watermelon video had 800k concurrent views, a number @peretti says “is the first time we’ve had a number comparable to live TV."

— Natalie Jarvey (@natjarv) May 2, 2016

At the Digital Content NewFronts conference in May, media companies eagerly assured advertisers that Facebook Live was a game-changing platform.

To capitalize on that momentum, Facebook also paid approximately 140 publishers and influencers a combined $50 million to start creating video for Live.

some more numbers on what Facebook is paying media companies/celebs/athletes to do FB Live https://t.co/Gqaujftimp pic.twitter.com/s2rxGuqi7F

— Steven Perlberg (@perlberg) June 22, 2016

But the content that might have shown the greatest potential for Live didn’t come from a media outlet or established publisher. Instead, it came from a 37-year-old mom from Texas named Candace Payne, or, as you probably know her, Chewbacca Mom.

On May 19, Payne live streamed herself in her car, unboxing a Chewbacca mask she’d just bought from Kohl’s. Her infectious laugh made it hard not to smile while watching, and Payne soon went viral as countless media outlets embedded the video on their sites. In total, it’s been viewed over 161 million times.

This type of success story highlights the potential of Facebook Live as a large-scale platform for both media organizations and professional content creators, as well as a place where amateurs and influencers can build an audience and go viral.

“The vision is basically, ‘How can we create the next generation of TV on mobile?'” Lavrusik said. “It’s going to start with this video tab because that will be a discovery surface for you to actually consume and discover interesting creators or content.”

Why, then, did Lavrusik leave Facebook while sitting atop the live-streaming world?

Facebook’s broadcast problem

“Most people think I’m crazy because they’re like, ‘Why would you leave your baby when your rocket ship is taking off?’ For me, I felt like that rocket ship was taking off, and I wanted to build another rocket ship.”

As The Wall Street Journal reported last month, Lavrusik left Facebook to launch a “one-to-few” live-streaming app called Alively. The startup was born, in part, out of user behavior trends Lavrusik noticed at Facebook.

When Facebook Live rolled out in the U.S., Lavrusik was surprised to see that teens used it at a much higher rate than anticipated. “We asked people who would try it once and wouldn’t use it again why they hadn’t used it again, and the number one answer that we got was along the lines of, ‘I want to be able share live, but I only want to share with a few people.'”

Facebook has known about this problem for a long time. The platform has become a place where you broadcast updates to everyone in your life, not share information only with close friends.

“I knew that we weren’t going to solve this problem when we made this strategic decision to basically punt on it and focus on making Facebook really good for broadcasting to lots of people—growing your audience, almost using Facebook Live to become famous, things like the Chewbacca lady,” Lavrusik said.

For now, Facebook has a legitimate challenge when it comes to the intimate sharing of live video with small groups of friends. That space seems destined to be dominated by Snapchat—which started dabbling with live streaming through its Live Stories feature this year—or by an upstart competitor like Alively.

The measurement problem

The biggest questions about Facebook Live come down to money.

Facebook clearly has a video measurement problem. Last Thursday, The Wall Street Journal revealed that Facebook had inflated the average viewing time for its video ads for more than two years, infuriating advertisers and damaging trust. When calculating the average time users spent watching videos, Facebook excluded sessions of less than three seconds. Facebook told Publicis Media it likely overestimated viewing time by 60 to 80 percent.

Even if the data was accurate, it would still be difficult to assess the value of live video for advertisers. BuzzFeed and Peretti, for instance, argued that the 800,000 concurrent viewers on their watermelon clip represented a turning point for online video, which could now compete with primetime TV. CNN, for instance, averages 723,000 primetime viewers.

The problem, as Kevin Draper explained on Gawker, is that Nielsen calculates television viewership on a per-minute basis. In other words, it’s an average of how many people are watching across each minute of the show. Draper writes:

Since it was broadcast live, the watermelon explosion has been watched by 10.7 million people, per Facebook’s count. If those people were as engaged as online World Cup viewers—and I’d venture that, on average, they were less engaged than people watching the most popular sporting event on the planet—those 10.7 million digital views would translate into an average-minute TV audience of 28,563 persons. If Peretti brought that number to advertisers at the NewsFronts as evidence of wild success, they would’ve laughed in his face.

Nonetheless, Facebook is forging ahead with a pricing model resembling television advertising’s. In August, Facebook rolled out the ability for publishers to insert 15-second mid-roll ads that would essentially act as commercial breaks for live streams. The feature is still in the testing phase, and Facebook doesn’t know if it’ll become permanent.

“That type of format doesn’t work as well for something like Facebook Live as it does for TV, because TV is completely a broadcast model where the audience can’t interact with the broadcaster,” Lavrusik said. “They can’t leave feedback.”

Lavrusik suggested that advertisers and Facebook could find a different solution, such as allowing advertisers to insert polls and other interactive content into mid-roll ads. However, the mid-roll format may not work as well for influencers and amateur video content creators, since they may not have the structure in place to sell and program 15-second spots. Facebook seems more intent on convincing those folks to use Facebook Live over other platforms like YouTube or YouNow, rather than setting up advertising infrastructure.

To tackle this problem, Facebook might adopt a tip-jar format, which has worked thus far on YouNow. Another possible avenue, Lavrusik said, calls for users to pay to have their comments and other interactions featured more prominently in the feed. He also said that branded content was a logical solution.

“What works for people who have huge audiences is different for these kind of digital influencers who might have smaller audiences,” Lavrusik said. “You need something that incentivizes up-and-comers to actually create content and grow their audience using this format. Then you also need something that works with existing models for big media companies and influencers with huge audiences.”

To virtual reality and beyond

As of today, Facebook’s hyped video tab has still only been released to a small percentage of iOS and Android users. Since Facebook has not released usage data for Facebook Live, it’s unclear how successful video has been on the platform. However, Lavrusik claims that before he left, Facebook had already eclipsed live-streaming competitors like Periscope, YouNow, and Twitch even before it rolled out Facebook Live.

“Facebook will win the one-to-many fight because of that scale.”

Despite the reach of its platform, Facebook’s biggest challenge for the future will be differentiating itself from those competitors, which is where virtual reality could come into play. (Facebook owns Oculus, which makes VR technology.)

“We started working pretty closely with our 360 team on Live 360, and I think that there’s going to be a big investment there,” Lavrusik said. “It’s going to take time for that to come to fruition. But you think about Facebook’s advantage, it’s the ability to move faster than some of the traditional media companies. They could figure out and jump into the live VR space before a lot of these traditional folks figure it out.”

Today, you might only opt to watch a presidential debate on Facebook Live out of necessity. But if Facebook Live were to become the dominant platform for live VR, that could be a game-changer. With 1.71 billion active users and growing, the platform’s potential is too big to bet against.

“Facebook will win the one-to-many fight because of that scale,” Lavrusik said. “Because you have so many people on your platform, you can deliver them the best audience and the most relevant audience.”

This piece has been updated to acknowledge John Fremlin, the engineer responsible for Facebook Live. 

The post The Untold Story of Facebook Live appeared first on Contently.

In the days after, Stiller fans, accustomed to artsy shots of New York autumn days, were inundated with Zoolander’s signature Blue Steel pose and captions such as: “Ornaments are actually tiny mirrors if you look close enough..#ornamentselfie” and “2 things I love: a hearty breakfast, and my first @Voguemagazine cover with Pineapple Cruz!! ((link in bio)) #cheatday.” The latter caption accompanied a photo of six pomegranate seeds and a green juice.

As the Zoolander 2 release date of February 12 has gotten closer, the movie’s marketing push has been on full display online—with an interesting wrinkle. Instead of a standard press junket, Stiller has been promoting the movie in character.

This month, he appeared as Zoolander on the cover of Vogue, dressed in his character’s flamboyant style while recreating iconic fashion photos from history. The magazine has portrayed actors dressed as their characters before, like Carey Mulligan for The Great Gatsby and Kirsten Dunst for  but four days after the cover reveal, Vogue took the collaboration to the next level by making Zoolander the first fictional personality to participate in the publication’s popular “73 Questions” video series.

Part apartment tour and part interview, “73 Questions” confronts celebrities with hard-hitting queries such as “What’s your favorite spirit animal?” and “Cake or pie?” while they walk through their homes. Zoolander’s version included a view of his “winter house,” complete with Blue Steel portraits and models on stationary bikes.

With help from the world’s biggest fashion magazine, Ben Stiller has used the industry that his films satirize to his advantage. On Instagram, Vogue‘s glossy images and videos were mostly a convenient launch pad for Zoolander’s social media marketing.

Forget #BlueSteel, remember #voguestagram? Our February cover with @zoolander and @penelopecruzoficial is on stands now.

A photo posted by Vogue (@voguemagazine) on Jan 26, 2016 at 7:07am PST

Scrolling through Zoolander’s feed is a star-studded experience, with photos and videos featuring Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, and model Cara Delevingne. And those celebrities are happy to reciprocate for more exposure: Katy Perry posted a video for her 39 million followers, and Delevingne spread the word of her walk-off with Derek to her 26 million fans. Zoolander himself is nearly up to a million.

Recently, the self-described “#1 MALE MODEL IN THE WORLD” posted a photo of himself holding a neon yellow beanie labelled with “DonAtari” in graffiti letters and a caption that read: “Follow @donatari_69.” The handle belongs to a fake fashion designer (played in the movie by Kyle Mooney), who exhibits typical vapid behavior on the platform, accompanied by captions riddled with spelling mistakes and emojis. He goes to lunch with Man Repeller’s Leandra Medine and Instagram’s head of fashion partnerships, Eva Chen.

The characters’ Instagram accounts are almost indistinguishable from those of your average celebrities. The images are self-involved and squad-conscious, a low-res look at a life in the spotlight. Who better to update the way movies are marketed on Instagram than a character like Zoolander?

As Vogue contributing editor André Leon Talley put it in a recent podcast with Stiller, Zoolander is “the absolute innovator of the selfie duck face.” Zoolander came out in 2001, before there were camera phones, so Derek’s pout was a prescient choice. “Just another reason we had to make the sequel,” Stiller told Talley, “Because Derek taking a selfie had to be part of the movie somewhere.”

In a larger sense, Stiller wanted to make a sequel fifteen years later so his characters could play with the gadgets of today. “[Technology has] changed how young people take things in and what they experience, and really globally, the way images spread all over the world,” he added. “For Derek … to enter that world would be an interesting thing, to see how [he] would react to it.”

Until now, movie marketing on Instagram has mostly been limited to promotional imagery, clips, and fan regrams, a common strategy of repurposing old materials. As a consequence, the typical branded images blend together like the dull ads that play before movie trailers.

By leveraging their main character’s quirks and the realities of his fashion world, Zoolander 2′s marketing team has managed to use Instagram in an organic way while still giving followers daily reminders of the upcoming film. Timely memes and cross-posts with celebrities make for easy audience growth; followers are compelled to comment, inviting their friends to take part in the Zoolander revival.

Such an immersive marketing plan is aided by the fact that Ben Stiller wrote, directed, and produced Zoolander 2. He’s deeply invested in its success, so he’ll do Blue Steel all day for Instagram. But what if a social media strategy like this were built into a film’s production? Michael B. Jordan, who played Adonis Johnson in Creed, could have posted inspirational boxing quotes and training videos. Jamie Dornan, who won the part of Christian Grey in Fifty Shades of Grey, might have populated an account with skyscraper views and leather surfaces.

Derek Zoolander may be the most superficial guy in fashion, but from a marketing perspective, his approach to social media marketing is full of substance. Rather than just plastering feeds with digital movie posters, savvy marketing teams have the opportunity to do the same, encouraging their stars to blur the line between fact and fiction.

The post How Zoolander Started a New Model for Instagram Marketing 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.

This month, content marketing platform BuzzSumo and inbound marketing software developer Moz released the results of an extensive joint study on the correlation between content, shares, and links. The researchers set out to uncover what type of content receives both—assessing a million posts in the process.

Let’s take a look at five major takeaways from the report and how brands can apply these findings to their own marketing strategies.

(All charts via Moz and BuzzSumo.)

1. The majority of posts receive very few shares and links

It might be hard to believe when you’re looking at that BuzzFeed article with 10,000 shares, but most content just doesn’t get shared or linked to much, if at all. After looking at sample of 100,000 posts, BuzzSumo and Moz found that more than half had two or fewer Facebook interactions and Twitter shares, one or zero Google+ shares, and no LinkedIn shares.

A larger sample of over 750,000 posts that received numerous shares was discovered to have very few links. In fact, more than 50 percent of these had no linkbacks at all.

From this data, we can extrapolate two things: Most digital content has no impact, and marketers may not be paying enough attention to distribution to increase the exposure of their content. BuzzSumo’s Steve Rayson writes:

What we found is that the majority of content published on the internet is simply ignored when it comes to shares and links. The data suggests most content is simply not worthy of sharing or linking, and also that people are very poor at amplifying content. It may sound harsh but it seems most people are wasting their time either producing poor content or failing to amplify it.

2. Content with research and strong opinions drive more shares and links

We might assume an article with a lot of shares will also generate a lot of external links, but that isn’t the case. While some sites do see a high correlation of shares and links—The New York Times, BuzzFeed, and The Atlantic among them—this overlap was not visible with content from the majority of sites analyzed (which include 600,000 other domains).

Why do some sites fare better than others in this respect? The study concludes that the sites with higher correlations tend to be “respected sites that produce regular content about the latest developments in their areas.” See the chart below for a few more examples of sites that had strong correlations between shares and links.

The takeaway here is that people link to content backed by research and reporting, as well as opinion content that’s respected for its distinct point of view. Here’s another way of looking at it: Audiences may feel more compelled to share and link to content that has gained their trust. Rayson writes:

Whilst almost everyone can share content, often through the click of a button, not everyone can easily link to content. The fact that sites such as Five Thirty Eight and Pew Research achieve over 18 referring domain links on average is a testament to the power of research content.

3. Certain formats—listicles and videos—get more shares

To determine which content formats perform best, BuzzSumo and Moz analyzed list posts, quizzes, “why” posts, “how to” posts, infographics, and videos.

List posts, “why” posts, and videos were found to have a higher correlation between sharing and linking.

Interestingly, not all videos have the same ability to acquire links. The study found that Vine videos received many shares but hardly any external or referring domain links. “Six-second content is likely to be entertaining rather than informative and helpful,” Rayson explained. YouTube videos and quizzes also got many shares but no links.

The bottom line: Strive for a balanced publishing output if you’re aiming for both shares and links.

4. The length of your text content matters

Last year we learned that, contrary to popular belief, longform stories have a better chance of going viral than short posts, with the optimal length being upwards of 2,000 words. After studying close to 490,000 text-based articles, BuzzSumo and Moz found that 80 percent of content contains fewer than 1,000 words, while only 2.5 percent surpasses 3,000 words. Once again, though, longer content was found to produce more shares and links.

In fact, the average number of shares of stories between 3,000 and 10,000 words had more than double the average number of shares and triple the number of links than articles under 1,000 words.

With so much evidence pointing to the benefits of longform content, it’s time for brands to commit to high-quality, in-depth storytelling. Snackable content isn’t filling readers up these days.

5. People share content that’s personal, but link to content that’s useful

Why consumers share and link is still a bit of a mystery, but BuzzSumo and Moz have some solid theories. Based on their research, they believe these behaviors have become very personal acts—we do it to reveal our passions or show support for colleagues and friends. Because clicking a share button requires minimal effort, the majority of content will always receive more shares than links—particularly if it’s entertaining.

Since getting some to link to your work takes more effort, authoritative content that delivers value and is backed by sound research is your best bet, which also explains why insightful longform articles from respected publications have performed well on this front.

Hopefully this analysis will take out some of the guesswork moving forward, but remember that going viral is never a sure thing, not even if you use the perfect number of emojis.

The post 5 Ways Content Goes Viral appeared first on Contently.

To use a cliché, it’s been a crazy ride.

As we’ve seen with past ad industry trends, the number of companies developing products and services to support content marketing is flourishing. Many of us have bet careers and life savings on creating or pivoting businesses around content marketing. And though building a martech (marketing technology) company isn’t easy—especially in the shaky early days of a new industry—several players have established valuable enterprises in various slices of the biz.

It’s clear that the next couple of years will see content marketing transition past its early adopter phase. So I reached out to the creators of some of the top tech products in the space—including our own competitors—for a glimpse of their vision of the future.

What will happen in the next 12–18 months in the content marketing space?

Allen Gannett, CEO of TrackMaven: Gut-driven marketing is still rampant in Fortune 500 companies. We’re now seeing early adopters and media companies using rigorous data-driven approaches to editorial decisions with success. Over the next 12–18 months, expect to see Fortune 500s work to move away from gut-driven programs and instead focus on using data that predicts what their audience will react to.

Yaron Galai, CEO of Outbrain: I’m not a big believer in the “brands as publishers” mantra… Being a publisher requires deep expertise, and brands have enough to worry about with their, well, brand! So instead of “brands as publishers,” I’m going to bet on “publishers as agencies”—as agencies are slow to embrace content marketing, I predict we’ll see more publishers fill that space and become de-facto agencies by providing marketers with full content marketing services. We’re starting to see that at companies like BuzzFeed.

Tom Gerace, CEO of Skyword: Brand marketers, recognizing the rapid decline in interruptive advertising, will shift an increasing share of the $600 billion they spend annually on ads toward original storytelling. When they do, smart marketers will shift most of those dollars into creation, rather than distribution, of their content. They will recognize that extraordinary creative, created and shared regularly, earns audience and engagement at a rate that mediocre creative and distribution spend cannot match.

Carlos Dominguez, President and COO of Sprinklr: Great content has always been the lifeblood of a brand, but most companies are not organized for a social world where people share, repurpose, and interact with brand content as they see fit. Brands today need to know everything that’s out there in the public domain—whether they created it or not—but increasingly, that’s not enough. Over the next year or so, customer-facing teams will need to have cross-functional workflows so that any employee or agency partner, across any line of their business, can work with any piece of content in real time, along with all the metadata associated with it.

Toby Murdock, CEO of Kapost: “Content marketing” has, to date, been an amorphous, jumbled space. As it matures over the next 12–18 months, it will evolve into a sharpened category segmented by the dimensions that have defined prior markets (i.e., the B2B vs. B2C and enterprise vs. SMB that segmented marketing automation) to better address specific customer needs.

Shafqat Islam, CEO of NewsCred: There will be massive consolidation. Smaller content marketing players merging. Content marketing and social marketing companies merging. And content marketing and paid distribution companies merging. Should be fun.

Ross Crooks, founder and COO of Visage: Brands will begin to lead with their purpose and values in marketing content as a means to establish deeper and more authentic connections with their audience. Many are now learning that merely publishing is not enough—they need to be sharing a unique perspective on the world they’re trying to create. Content marketers will increasingly leverage internal data and original research to publish original insights. Industry studies quickly become picked over, and republishing the same content with a new take holds decreasing value. The best marketers will establish strong connections and communication with the analysts and data scientists in their company, and cultivate strong data journalism skills in their team to tell these stories. The content marketing industry as a whole will establish commonly accepted frameworks for content strategy. Many brands have complex strategies but struggle to execute. Others have scattered execution of ideas that don’t align to a central strategy. Simplifying content strategy will aid in getting organizations aligned in their efforts and relieve the pressure to do everything.

Chris Bolman, director of integrated marketing at Percolate (CEO Noah Brier is on paternity leave. Congrats!): We’re about to see quality content recognized for what it truly is: advertising creative that delivers value to its recipient, not just a forgettable impression. Marketers who get this are going to design their content to be interactive, mobile-first, and amplified by media dollars, and they’re going to create it within a system that enables continuous improvement, not just scattered executions.

Joe Coleman, CEO of Contently: The concept of a content-first approach that we’re currently seeing in content marketing will spread throughout the entire enterprise brand. Organizations have traditionally oriented themselves around the department that is communicating: HR, internal communications, sales, public relations, or marketing. That will shift in the next few years. Content won’t just be a department within marketing, it will become the source that feeds all departments. Executives will demand the technology to support the creation of high-quality content throughout the company.

Matt Cooper, CEO of Visual.ly: Content marketing will be more about quality than quantity. As content marketing really hits its stride, more companies are going to focus on volume first. Content marketing will start to suffer from the same signal-to-noise ratio issues that we’ve seen in written content for SEO (content farms = spam) and display (banner ads = blocked/ignored). This will put a true premium on the most engaging, original content, and those companies that focus on quality over quantity will see the best results.

What will NOT happen in the next 12–18 months in the content marketing space?

Allen Gannett, CEO of TrackMaven: We’re not going to see significant consolidation of publishing solutions. Marketers want best-in-breed solutions, even if it means having lots of tools.

Yaron Galai, CEO of Outbrain: Consumers aren’t going to continue clicking on clickbaity content marketing links that aren’t authentic and valuable to them. As with any online marketing format of the past, there will be many companies that try to capitalize on consumers’ trust and goodwill with misleading links that are made to look like content, but are actually not genuine content at all. In the short term its easy to get consumers to click on clickbait like that. But unlike most companies in the content marketing space, my bet is always that the consumer is smart. Therefore, I’m going to guess that clicking on misleading content marketing links isn’t going to happen in 12–18 months at the rates it might be happening at today.

Tom Gerace, CEO of Skyword: Creation wins. In the early days, some content marketers thought that curating content might be sufficient to engage their audiences. They hoped that curation might allow them to avoid the investment required to create original stories. In 18 months, it will become clear to the industry that marketers cannot differentiate brands in the minds of consumers, share thought leadership, or prove their brands to be innovators by sharing somebody else’s stuff.

Toby Murdock, CEO of Kapost: Contrary to much of the revolutionary rhetoric, “content marketing” will not become a new way of doing marketing. Rather, the category will embrace and manage all of the content that marketing produces, from the cutting edge thought leadership and native advertising variety to the more traditional product collateral.

Shafqat Islam, CEO of NewsCred: The number of new companies entering this space will not stop nor slow down. The investment in this category is crazy, and despite the saturation, we’ll continue to see new players emerge, some of whom will be innovating on new canvases (IoT, for example).

Chris Bolman, director of integrated marketing at Percolate: It’s not getting any less competitive. An exponentially growing volume of content is competing for a finite amount of human attention that’s increasing at a much slower rate. The result is simple economics: Supply has outpaced demand, so the tactics that got you here probably aren’t the system that will give your best ideas a competitive advantage tomorrow.

Matt Cooper, CEO of Visual.ly: Data will not kill creativity. There’s a lot of talk about how data is increasingly driving decision-making in marketing. But I believe that armed with more data, marketers will be in an even better place to make creative decisions by getting better at knowing what works.

Joe Coleman, CEO of Contently: Brands won’t simply give up on content marketing because it’s too hard, as some critics of the industry have suggested. Instead, companies will increasingly look to organizations that have figured out content—like Amex, GE, Marriott, and others—and emulate the way they work to find a pathway to success.

(Full disclosure: Amex, GE, and Marriott are Contently clients.)

Building the future

It’s a pleasure to participate in building an industry (and often: go head to head) with such smart people. As I said when I reached out to each of the above: At the end of the day, we all care a lot about this industry, and our different approaches to the space yield valuable perspectives.

Today, we capture a snapshot of a wild time in ad industry history. Tomorrow, we’ll keep writing its story.

The post 9 Top MarTech Execs Predict the Future of Content Marketing appeared first on Contently.

1. An infographic guide to hashtag jacking

If you’re anything like me, you have some friends who don’t take social media very seriously. (Let’s just say that there are more dad bod pictures in my newsfeed than I would like.) As a result, it can be hard to tell the difference between the hashtags on Instagram that my friends use a lot and what’s most popular on Instagram in general.

This chart will help you see the broader picture and understand which terms will get your company the most attention from the largest audience, whether it’s #picoftheday or #swag. ‘Gram on.

The post Top 10 Social Media Tips From Buffer appeared first on Contently.

Late last year, the Ontario-based company launched Promoted Chats, its core ad product and answer to Promoted Tweets. Since August, more than 80 brands have signed on—BuzzFeed, Racked and Burger King among them—and over 350 million total messages have been exchanged.

“A big part of our vision is empowering America’s youth and providing great content experiences,” said Paul Gray, director of platform services at Kik. “We wanted to build a way for brands and publishers to connect with audiences one on one and at scale.”

To accomplish these goals, Kik turned to artificial intelligence. The company’s creative team works with brands to determine their objectives and start fleshing out conversation ideas. When a Kik user sends a message to a brand—anything from a simple greeting to a specific question—Kik’s AI system detects keywords and sends back contextually relevant brand content. It could look like push messaging promoting a photo gallery, as when photo app Pixable writes, “Hey! Remember to reply with ANIMALS, LOL, CELEBS to see things worth sharing!” or it might be more of a dialogue. It all depends on the nature of the campaign.

If this all sounds too bizarre, consider that Kik’s audience is very young. According to the company, 40 percent of Americans ages 13 to 25 years are using the app (Kik has 200 million registered users overall). For digital natives, texting with a robot isn’t any stranger than conducting a Google search.

“Our users are used to chatting with Siri on their parents’ iPhones. They know that you can talk to bots and bots will answer back,” Gray said.

A study commissioned by Kik last year showed its users spend 35 minutes per session within the app, beating out both Facebook Messenger (27 minutes) and Snapchat (21 minutes). It’s this high level of engagement coupled with a unique product offering that’s attracting major brands. MTV, for example, uses Kik to promote high-profile events like series launches and concerts. Leading up to MTV’s Woodie Awards, it customized conversations to boost interest in lesser-known performers. Adopting a concierge-style approach, the network asked fans which artists they liked and made music recommendations. The effort demonstrates Kik’s potential to aid in content discovery.

MTV also recently chatted about the new season of its series Teen Wolf, and even invited users to play trivia games in order to built anticipation. It shared video clips that are viewable in Kik’s custom mobile browser, which keeps consumers inside the app.

Other companies are banking on humor to entertain their followers. Funny or Die tells jokes and shares animated GIFs based on its videos. This approach has attracted 1.5 million chatters in 3 months, and generated conversion rates on chat messages linking to videos and GIFs as high as 10 percent. Through chat campaigns like one promoting a new themed product line that offered the chance to win tickets to the premiere of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, headphone manufacturer Skullcandy has racked up more than 30,000 chat users, a follower based 3 times as large as what it has on Twitter.

Credit for devising one of the most creative campaigns thus far must go to Focus Features and marketing technology company Massively. In March, to promote the June release of the horror movie Insidious: Chapter 3, Focus launched a Kik bot based on the movie’s protagonist, Quinn Brenner. Quinn is stuck in bed after an accident and experiencing a disturbing haunting, and he’s eager to tell you all about it. Details about her life provided an extra layer of context for viewers of the film (you can still experience the story on Massively’s mobile app.) As the campaign went on, the experience kept getting spookier. Gray said that Quinn would sometimes text users pictures of demon footprints in the middle of the night.

“It was about fear, but also fun and comedy, and people really enjoyed it,” Gray added.

Those who engaged with the Quinn character bot sent an average of 35 to 40 messages to the INSID3 brand account.

Unlike other forms of content marketing—say, native ads—the brand activity in Kik is unique because it’s the consumer who initiates the conversation. As Gray put it, “The user is always in control.” That said, triggering a brand conversation is tantamount to opting-in to all future messaging, so users receive an ongoing stream of content delivered via individual messages to each user’s Kik account.

An added benefit of Kik Promoted Chats, to both users and brands, is the intimacy of a direct conversation. “There’s a move toward more semiprivate messaging,” Gray said, noting that many young consumers have had bad experiences with posting publicly on social sites.

At the same time, consumer expectations for brand communications are higher than ever. Studies have shown that 72 percent of those who complain to a brand on Twitter expect a response within an hour. “How does a brand do that with two million followers?” Gray asked. An airline brand immobilized by a series of cancelled flights has little choice but to try to appease every passenger. “Other consumers look at that and think, all this brand ever talks about is its negative feedback.”

In contrast, Kik is a place where brand interactions can be personal, despite the fact that responses are generated by a bot. Brands become like buddies, there for you at the tap of a key, always ready to send relevant content. Seventeen magazine keeps its followers interested with celebrity news, photos, and videos. The apparel brand Vans shares links to new episodes of its documentary series #LIVINGOFFTHEWALL.

Brand success on Kik is measured by video views, mobile store purchases—whatever the advertiser considers the most crucial consumer response. While the Promoted Chat program is still in its infancy, Kik sees big potential for CPG and beauty brands promoting products that are better suited to private communication.

As Gray said, “We’re not about shouting at consumers, but starting a conversation.”

The post Chat App-vertising Is Basically the Movie ‘Her,’ but With Brands appeared first on Contently.

In other words, GIFs are going to be a big part of the future of marketing.

While these looping clips are ostensibly silly, some brands have had the marketing acumen to see that they have some amazing potential. After all, we all love images, and we all love videos—and GIFs are like their perfect, shareable love child.

As Michael Peggs, CEO of Marccx Media, says, “So many studies have shown that captivating imagery leads to better engagement. If you can interact with those images, even better. Branded GIFs are the perfect combination of content marketing and interactive communication.”

Here are five brands that have turned GIFs into an artform.

1. Paramount

Get your Schwarzeneger impression ready. With a new Terminator movie, Terminator Genisys, out, the marketing blitz is on. And there’s a new tool the previous Terminator ad teams never had: GIFs. According to Adweek, Paramount, the studio behind the film, asked artists to create six different GIFs based on famous moments from the original film. As you can see from this page on Giphy, it did a pretty bang-up job.

Because of these GIFs, younger folks who might not have seen the original Schwarzeneger flick get an artistic introduction to the series’ aesthetic, while old fans get a nostalgia trip down memory lane. Mission complete.

2. DiGiorno Pizza

DiGiorno doesn’t just have a hunch that GIFs make for great marketing—it has solid proof. “We were happily surprised that when we started to do GIFs, they got even higher engagement,” said Luke Oppliger, director of social content at Resource/Ammirati, in an interview with Adweek. “We typically get a few hundred retweets and favorites, but we are seeing GIFs in the thousands.”

This upswing in social sharing makes sense. Really, would you rather have a static post or this:

Hungry? Here’s my GIF to you. pic.twitter.com/Jebpub14R1

— DiGiorno (@DiGiorno) May 6, 2015

The difference in shares says it all.

3. Adult Swim

Adult Swim, the notoriously weird late-night TV channel, capitalized on Twitter’s new GIF feature by creating a trippy animation that features many of the most popular characters in its line-up.

They say we can gif about it pic.twitter.com/zVA8I1oKTD

— adult swim (@adultswim) June 18, 2014

If you following Adult Swim on Twitter, then you’re definitely familiar with the cartoons that are warped in this GIF—seeing them all together is a treat for the channel’s fans. That’s why it makes sense that, according to Social Bro, this Tweet got more retweets than seven of Adult Swim’s eight previous tweets combined. Adult Swim didn’t end there. Take, for example, this tweet featuring surrealist comedians Tim and Eric.

Reaction Gif 2 #BedtimeStories pic.twitter.com/lAX5Miwaw7

— adult swim (@adultswim) October 31, 2014

Sorry for the nightmares. It might not be my style, but you can’t deny Adult Swim makes some damn good GIFs.

4. Starbucks

If you’ve ever seen a group of preteens, there’s a good chance that they’re all clutching a Frappucino in one hand and an iPhone in the other. Starbucks combined these two loves by creating 21—count ’em, 21—GIFs about its blended beverage. Without a doubt, these GIFs scream “hipster youth.” I feel cooler just looking at them.

According to Adweek, these GIFs are available on the mobile app Popkey and on Starbucks’ social media channels. Of course, just as the company intended, they’ve already spread like wildfire across the Internet.

As Deacon Webster, chief creative officer and founder of Walrus, told me, “When there’s a GIF somewhere on your screen, it’s hard not to look at it. And because GIFs have a certain lo-fi and hand-made feeling, they’re less off-putting than more slick corporate messaging, which engenders more positivity with audiences who don’t love seeing ads in their social streams.”

5. GE

It can be hard to make something like the human body or sustainable energy interesting for a general audience. Thankfully, General Electric knows how to make the important stuff seem cool. How? With GIFs, of course.

GE has a Tumblr that’s chock full of educational content. Its popular tags are along the lines of #SpringBreakIt, #6secondscience, and #BadAssMachines.

The image above showcases the company’s LEAP jet engine, which improves fuel efficiency by reducing the weight of the aircraft. At the end of the post there is a link to get more information about the invention on GE’s excellent blog, GE Reports.

GE has even created an entire website that is dedicated to helping millenials learn more about science in the only way that they know how—through emojis and GIFs. Surprise: It’s called emojiscience.

Of course, GIFs aren’t always the answer for brands desperate to drum up some social engagement. Webster feels that they’re a great tool, but only in certain circumstances: “If done well, and directed to the right audience, sure, they can absolutely be effective—but they’re not appropriate for everyone. If brands are jumping on the bandwagon, saying ‘What can we do with these GIFs the kids are raving about?’ they’re probably going to be in trouble.”

That’s an important point: It wouldn’t make much sense for, say, a major bank to start posting emoji-laden GIFs of bankers drawing up mortgages. Actually, that sounds kind of amazing. Where you at, Goldman Sachs?

The post 5 Brands That Know How to Use GIFs appeared first on Contently.

My first real paying editorial job was as the social media editor at a fast-growing parenting site for hip Park Slope moms. It was 2010, a terrible time to get an editorial job, but a great time for bullshitting if you were young and knew how to use Twitter. I had little idea what I was doing as a social media editor, but after years of being raised by a team of women in my mom’s animal hospital, I was adept enough at mimicking the cool mom voice in tweets and Facebook updates to get by.

Like all digital sites back then, we were very reliant on Google. On the day of the Royal Engagement, for instance, we sacrificed 50 bloggers to the Google gods, going as far as to post three separate stories speculating what appetizers would be served at the Royal Wedding. Social, on the other hand, drove a small sliver of our traffic, so my job performance was mostly meaningless. Until one day, our Google rankings plummeted, and all hell broke loose.

“We need to make this back on social,” my boss decreed.

At the time, the big four social networks were Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and Tumblr. We were already on Facebook and Twitter, and no one was going to check into our content on Foursquare. So Tumblr, our editorial director reasoned, would be our salvation in these dark days. It was hot! It was bloggy! There was that one article about how Newsweek used it with moderate success!

The only problem was our Park Slope mom-style readers weren’t using Tumblr. I found a bunch of pregnant Canadian teenagers posting about Bright Eyes and sharing Mean Girls GIFs, but that was about it. When I tried to explain to my boss that our audience simply wasn’t on the platform and we couldn’t drive any meaningful traffic from it, she didn’t want to hear it. She had read about Tumblr everywhere. I simply wasn’t trying hard enough. So I kept plugging away and failing, only escaping the chopping block when I was able to quit after the editorial startup I was working on by night miraculously got funded.

I think about that job a lot. My boss had shiny-new-object syndrome, and it’s something that constantly infects the media and marketing worlds. Anyone crazy enough to get a soft arts degree and go into the media/marketing world is inherently optimistic, and as such, we’re always hopeful that the next big platform will be our magic carpet shortcut to kickass success.

There’s also sexiness and coolness in the new, and the inescapable desire to be a part of it. That’s why brands agreed to Snapchat’s initial demands to pay $750,000 on the platform, even though no brand (other than lingerie companies) had a very good idea of how to use it. That’s why when Ello came out, everyone clamored to join, and when Meerkat got hot, every marketer in my Twitter feed started livestreaming meetings, seemingly eager to share the boring mundanity of their office lives with the rest of the world, but in an innovative way as an early adopter. Plus, there was potential! The potential that every hot new platform makes to fast-track us up the Content King leaderboard.

I talked about this trap the other day in an interview with LinkedIn’s Jason Miller. Among content marketers, Jason is pretty out-there; he somehow convinced Marketo to release a marketing activities coloring book as a piece of lead gen, and it worked like gangbusters. And he had some advice for marketers in pursuit of their manic pixie dream platform.

“I see a lot of egos hijacking content strategies,” he said. “I see a lot of people doing Meerkat sessions that have no business value. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. In order to be a successful content marketer, you have to do a tremendous amount of trial and error, but you have to have a foundation to support your trial and error.”

That’s great advice. Always be on the lookout for the next big thing—I’m sure every retail company that didn’t experiment with Pinterest early is kicking itself—but don’t let looking for the next big thing be your only content strategy.

As Miller added: “You certainly shouldn’t be trying to do anything unless you have some sort of foundation driving the results while you are trying to figure out what to do next.”

Create a foundation that works for you—that drives solid results and delivers value to people—and then experiment with the extra 5-10 percent of your time. Go ahead and make your brand a Snapchat. Just be sure to keep the camera pointed above the waist.

The post Contently Comic: Snapchat Syndrome appeared first on Contently.

I’m not going to lie—I contributed a bit to the hysteria when I broke down the 7 things you need to know about Facebook Instant Articles. I believe my exact words were “This isn’t just a Trojan horse; this is a Trojan horse draped in gold chains and being ridden by Beyoncé.” And if that sounds kind of awesome to you, well, that’s because it is. This is a great deal for publishers (for the moment): The early Facebook Instant Articles are gorgeous, interactive pieces of mobile content, and Facebook is handing over all the ad revenue if publishers sell their own ads.

But what’s less clear is what this means for brands. Facebook has only opened up this technology to nine publishers in the world so far; there’s little chance marketers will get access to the technology this year. But that doesn’t mean Instant Articles are irrelevant for brands. Nothing about Facebook is irrelevant for brands, especially when it’s a powerful mobile technology like this.

Now, I don’t like to wildly speculate but… who are we kidding, I love to wildly speculate! Let’s look at three ways Instant Articles will impact the marketing world.

Imminent: Instant Article ad units

Instant Article display ad units are far from sexy, but they could prove important. While publishers can sell their own ads on Instant Articles and keep 100 percent of the revenue, they can also let Facebook sell the ads for them and still take home a 70 percent cut.

But as Jack Marshall detailed in The Wall Street Journal, publishers are notoriously terrible at selling mobile ads; meanwhile, Facebook has an unparalleled (and mildly frightening) prowess in tracking user behavior and interest across devices, as well as ultimately serving the right message to the right people.

“It’s possible Facebook could generate a whole lot more revenue by selling the ads,” writes Marshall, “and 70% of that larger number may wind up the better outcome for publishers.”

If Instant Articles take off and publishers opt to start selling ad space through Facebook, advertisers will find themselves able to not only target Times readers, but a very specific type of Times reader—say, a 35-year-old executive who likes ad tech and kayaking. If that sounds appealing, check out MarketingLand’s great breakdown on the nitty-gritty of the ad units.

Very soon: Native advertising

Facebook had to hustle for darn-near a year to quell publishers’ doubts about publishing on Facebook, and I believe a big selling point was native advertising. Right now, the nine publishers with access to Instant Articles can offer advertisers a powerful mobile branded content experience that no one else can.

If National Geographic, BuzzFeed, and the Times are already charging six figures for native articles, what will they be able to charge for an interactive, gorgeous piece of sponsored content that’s sure to generate tons of press?

In Re/code’s report, BuzzFeed sure sounded pumped about the possibilities:

“Facebook really understood what would be important to us,” said BuzzFeed president Greg Coleman. “So instead of acting like someone who would dictate, they came to us and asked us what would be great for BuzzFeed.” For example, Coleman said, Facebook will allow BuzzFeed to upload its “sponsored posts”—BuzzFeed stories it creates on behalf of advertisers—into its “Instant Articles” format, and treat it just like any other story from any other publisher.

Great for BuzzFeed indeed. And great for brands, too—potentially. Even if the price tag for a Sponsored Instant Article is hefty, a supremely strong story on the level of what T Brand Studio has been producing could be worth it when combined with the Instant Articles experience.

2016? Facebook opens the gates

I have a hard time seeing Facebook jeopardize their relationships with publishers in the near future by giving brands access to Instant Articles. But in the longer term, it’s not hard to see Zuckerberg and co. embracing a deep-pocketed brand that doubles as a serious publisher—such as Red Bull, GE, or Marriott—and giving them access to Instant Articles. Of course, this kind of deal would probably require a massive distribution deal, or perhaps a straight tech-licensing arrangement.

(Full disclosure: GE and Marriott are Contently clients.)

Alternatively, if publishers eschew Instant Articles or merely give it a lukewarm response, Facebook could turn Instant Articles into a brand-focused product fairly quickly. But I have a hard time seeing that happening—especially when you consider how much publishers are clamoring to get access to the technology.

Ultimately, it’s the Facebook masses that’ll determine what the future holds. As the timeless wisdom of The Rock tells us: “You’ve got to keep your finger on the pulse of what your audience is thinking, and know what they’ll accept from you.”

Update: GE—or, at least, GE Reports Managing Editor Tomas Kellner—is really into the idea of publishing on Facebook:

@JoeLazauskas @facebook We're definitely clamoring for access! @GE_Reports on Instant Articles, can you imagine!

— Tomas Kellner (@tomkellner) May 28, 2015

The post 3 Ways Facebook Instant Articles Will Be Big for Brands appeared first on Contently.

According to an infographic we highlighted a few weeks ago, it only takes one tenth of a second for your brain to make sense of a visual scene. Also worth noting: People remember 80 percent of what they see and do, compared to only 10 percent of what they hear and 20 percent of what they read.

So it’s no wonder that images also make us more likely to hit the “like” and “share” buttons when we’re engaging with content via social media. According to an infographic from StoryBox, which you can see below, visually compelling is one of the surest ways to increase engagement online.

For instance, Oreo was able to gain 1 million Facebook fans by posting creative images each day for 100 days as a part of a campaign for its 100 year anniversary. On Instagram, Heineken got customers to drink up its content by having users search for a certain individual in a crowd photo from the US Open for its “Crack the US Open” contest. And after Chegg targeted college students with promoted tweets featuring memes, the brand drove 13,000 purchases from Twitter users.

For more awesome examples and statistics about how brands are benefiting from good visual content, check out the rest of the infographic:

The post Infographic: How Images Make Social Content More Shareable appeared first on Contently.

Financial firms are willing to spend a lot to reach people where they are. That’s because over time, those people can be worth a lot.

But if there’s one thing finance managers don’t want to do, it’s waste money.

Making sure marketing efforts pay off can be a challenge, given the competing metrics, an array of screens to consider, shifting consumption patterns, generational gaps, and new digital channels constantly arising.

At LinkedIn’s FinanceConnect conference in New York this month, executives from the likes of Oppenheimer, JP Morgan Chase, and AXA—as well as marketing and media companies—gave a hard look into ways they drive ROI by tying their content to specific results.

(Full Disclosure: JP Morgan Chase is a Contently client.)

Define goals and map to them

Marketers unabashedly love generating pageviews, social shares, likes, and other indicators of attention. It takes some work, though, to figure out whether being popular also contributes to the bottom line.

“It’s a long game … building that relationship with your consumers,” financial services media strategist Rod Kurtz said.

Before getting overly excited about the simple metrics such as inbound traffic, session times, or newsletter signups, institutions are taking steps to understand how those metrics can indicate that more revenue is on the way.

A financial firm may have to study, for example, whether a higher proportion of people who sign up for newsletters become customers than other folks, or whether those who sign up use more of the firms’ financial products.

If the answer is “yes,” then it makes sense to try to cost-effectively generate as many newsletter signups as possible in target communities.

A sophisticated marketer will also test different designs, language, and layouts, and run them against a control group. They can dig deeper to see if clickthroughs and newsletter-generated phone calls lead not only to inquiries, but also additional sales.

Done well, and iterated over time, the effort will pay off. The expense—the cost of creating and managing social and digital media efforts—will remain relatively stable, but as effectiveness increases, so will revenue.

David Edelman, a partner at the consulting firm McKinsey & Co., said that by evaluating “the steps somebody takes to give a crappy evaluation,” a client was able to “create a map” of touch points—website, emails, branch visits—and improve customer satisfaction.

Track, dammit

A surprising number of efforts in social media, blogs, and elsewhere are measured crudely—or not at all.

Yes, web analytics can say how many referrals came from Twitter or Facebook, but how much more can be learned? Experts at the conference advocated adding tracking codes on social posts to measure what works for specific customer segments. Looking more deeply at session times, pages or videos viewed per visit, repeat visits, and other loyalty measures also help, especially if they can be mapped to goals, as noted above.

It’s also crucial to create taxonomies and tag content so that it can not only be accessed and elevated quickly for people trying to find it, but also parsed and categorized in measurement tools to create more full pictures of who is consuming content, and how.

One executive told me how his bank provides content to other financial institutions in geographies where they don’t operate. His bank then gets a percentage of the presumed value of new customers, if their signup can be traced back in some way to that content.

The executive’s team puts pixels (images or code that are invisible to the human eye) in their articles so the bank can then track people who access them. That way, when readers do take an action, his bank is more likely to know.

Facebook recently introduced tracking pixels to help companies understand whether a clickthrough they’re getting from a post on the platform leads to a conversation event like filling out a form, signing up for a newsletter, or clicking to receive a call.

While this kind of categorization helps any content manager, it’s especially crucial for financial firms, which often offer a multiplicity of complex financial products addressing very different needs—and whose content requires careful vetting and organization before being presented to customers.

And sometimes, the data individuals share can provide great clues for financial institutions.

“Train advisors to focus on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter,” said Frédéric Tardy, chief marketing and distribution officer at AXA. When someone updates their profile and shows that they’ve “moved from company A to company B” that alone can indicate they’re ready for some financial help, he said.

Not just numbers

Not every media effort of course leads to a direct sale, or has to. Sometimes the goal is simply to create brand awareness or impart a sense that a bank shares values, or is “cool” or fun.

Transamerica hired an artists’ collective named Mr. GIF to travel throughout the U.S. and tell visual stories on the bank’s Tumblr about positive community efforts in promoting diversity.

The bank was happy to see increased traffic and positive comments and show that it stood by values it promotes, executive Allan Gungormez told me. Sometimes that’s the simple return on investment you’re looking for. You just have to know your goals.

The post How Finance Execs Measure the ROI of Content Marketing appeared first on Contently.

There’s a good reason money managers and marketers were avidly discussing this burgeoning group of teens to 30-somethings: It’s where the money is, and it’s where it will be in the future.

Millennials represent 22 percent of the world’s affluent, one exec from Citi said, and hold even bigger potential over their lifetimes if for no other reason than because of coming inheritances.

“There is going to be a massive intergenerational wealth transfer, and millennials are going to be the beneficiary,” Marty Willis, Chief Marketing Officer, OppenheimerFunds, added.

Millennials also have new behaviors that present special challenges for financial marketers. Luckily for finance content marketers, LinkedIn’s conference provided plenty of tips for engaging this valuable audience.

1. Be social

Saying a company needs a presence in social media might sound like saying they need phones and electricity. D’uh.

But financial firms are conservative and cautious by nature, and have only recently started to aggressively staff departments so they can quickly answer questions and join in the social stream, ending a frustrated era when it took days to approve and send a tweet.

In many finance companies, social responsiveness is now being championed by the c-suite. Bank of New York Mellon CEO Gerald Hassell and John Thiel, Head of Merrill Lynch Wealth Management, both discussed deeply involved in crafting messages through social and digital channels.

“The instantaneous feedback is fantastic,” Hassel said.

A few firms, including Wells Fargo, Transamerica and TD Bank have moved beyond Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, posting on Tumblr, Vine, Snapchat and Pinterest to capture the interest of young potential customers.

2. Don’t be afraid to be traditional

While moving to digital channels, banks, investment and insurance companies still need face-to-face communication.

One fifth of millennials believe “all their financial information will come from social networks in the future,” according to Donna Sabino, SVP, Ipsos, who was quoting a study. That means four-fifths do not.

And while 25 percent of millennials never go into a branch, 50 percent regularly do, said Leslie Gillin, Managing Director and Chief Marketing Officer, Citi Global. “It’s important not to think that because someone is a certain age, they want it all [via] technology,” she said.

3. Educate and empower

“Millennials are highly empowered to make decisions, but skeptical and less attached,” Richard Kirshenbaum, CEO, NSG/SWAT, said.

Sabino added that 49 percent want to “make decisions on their own” after doing their own research.

LinkedIn News Editor, Maya Pope-Chappell, meanwhile, quoted another survey that found 85 percent “are financially illiterate.”

Those data points indicate a great opportunity to educate and empower millennials through content.

Someone may be starting a job with their first opportunity to sign up for a 401(k) but “really have no idea why they would want to do this,” Ann Glover, CMO, Voya Financial, explained. She suggested firms give advice in “today’s language” that makes the process “painless and better” then congratulate them for signing up.

“If you’re going to talk to them, listen to them first, and deliver,” Sabino said. “You will establish brand loyalty, introduce them and be in control of your own narrative with these customers, and that is a really long lifetime value.”

4. Be authentic

Banks can have a personality in their media. They can appeal to consumers in younger age ranges without seeming artificial, the experts said.

TD Bank marketing officer Theresa McLaughlin gave the example of how TD not only talked about customer rewards but actually dolled out cash and gifts through ATM machines, launching a viral phenomenon.

“We looked through all the comments, and millennials said, ‘This is a brand I want to associated with,'” McLaughlin said. “We’re not going to be cool, we’re not GoPro, but [they said] this is a brand I want to be associated with.”

The post 4 Ways Banks Can Reach Millennials appeared first on Contently.

But short of creeping over strangers’ shoulders at coffee shops or dosing yourself in toxic waste in hopes of acquiring mind-reading superpowers, how are you supposed to get that key insight? Well, no need to fear, because we’ve got your back—or rather, the people over at Global Web Index do, because they made these three infographics to help all of us figure out the mysterious world of Facebook users.

First up is a big question: How frequently do users visit social media platforms? This infographic shows that more than half of Facebook users visit the platform more than once per day, more often than other social media platforms.

Second, an infographic that tracks the number of social networks Facebook users have used over time. Nowadays, Facebookers are using and average of 4.15 social networks—that adds up to a lot of time and energy being devoted to social media platforms.

And finally, we have an analysis of which social media accounts people are networking across. Turns out, 9 in 10 twitter users are on Facebook, and the same is true of YouTube users. Pinterest comes in last place for social media cross-pollination, with just over 40 percent of Twitter and Youtube users using Pinterest.

So, for the sake of everyone, stay away from those coffee shop strangers and check out the infographics below instead.

The post Everything You Wanted to Know About Facebook User Behavior, in 3 Infographics appeared first on Contently.

The popular online community is known for being completely controlled by what its users want— free of corporate influence. In fact, the site is called “the front page of the Internet” because it’s constantly being updated by redditors with the most popular content across the web.

As an incentive for not shilling self-promotional, low-quality spam, reddit users get “karma,” or points for their comments and links that are upvoted. As a result, it’s pretty hard for a company to promote itself on reddit without sparking a huge backlash from the online community.

However, some brands have been savvy enough to promote themselves on reddit without invoking the wrath of the Interwebs. How? By giving audiences good content. Since most of the content on reddit is generated by users rather than brands, it begs the question: How can a company get noticed on the site? Here, we look at how five companies have managed to rule reddit.

1. Adam & Eve

Warning: This Live Q&A from April of last year on reddit is not safe for work. Yet if you know what kind of company Adam & Eve is—a purveyor of sex toys and everything that comes along with them—you shouldn’t be surprised.

The marketers at Adam & Eve thought of a truly genius way to get reddit users talking without pushing their brand too heavily. The company’s sexologist, Dr. Kat, logged in and candidly answered reddit user’s questions about sex. The Q&A was so popular the doctor even went back on the platform to give more advice a few months later.

Adam & Eve’s company name is barely noticeable throughout the Q&A, save for the “[sponsored link]” tag that appears next to Dr. Kat’s username in the transcript, and the title of the event itself: Q&A here TODAY with Dr. Kat, Staff Sexologist at AdamandEve.com.

Instead of promoting toys, Adam & Eve made the wise decision to give reddit users the valuable resource of a sex health professional. This kind of marketing shows how companies can be sensitive to their users’ needs and tailor the content accordingly.

2. Ikea

Sometimes your company doesn’t have to do anything in order to get on reddit. If you create funny content, the Internet can do the work for you. For example, Ikea once published a print ad offering a free crib to any babies born exactly nine months after February 14, 2013:

Image via Adweek

The ad has over 1,000 comments and almost 2 million views on reddit, proving that the key to reddit success is encouraging users to fornicate. Unless, of course, you’re posted up in the Oval Office.

3. President Obama

Reddit’s AMA (Ask Me Anything) feature might be the perfect option for your company if you have a famous figurehead. But regardless of who that figurehead is, that person can’t compete with the President of the United States. In 2012, the POTUS used reddit to host a half hour virtual Q&A. According to The Washington Post, the traffic was so heavy that reddit had to shut down temporarily.

However, other people who are less famous than the leader of the free world have still hosted successful AMAs on reddit. As Fortune noted, tech leaders like Brian Krzanich from Intel, Emmet Shear from Twitch, and Jeremy Stoppleman from Yelp have all held very popular AMAs. While opening yourself up to questions from the Internet can obviously be risky, it also proves that you are willing to confront sensitive topics without hiding behind the walls of the press release.

4. Glamour Magazine

To promote Anna Kendrick being on its cover, Glamour Magazine recently had the star recite some gems of water-induced wisdom from the subreddit “Shower Thoughts.” For example: “They should announce a sequel to Groundhog Day, and then just re-release the original.” Hard-hitting stuff, I know.

Kendrick even threw some philosophical musings of her own into the mix: “Does a frozen yogurt headache burn less calories than an ice cream headache?” Check out the full video below:

As Adweek notes, this kind of quirky, Internet-friendly video is out of character for Glamour. Yet it’s fast becoming one of the publication’s most popular videos. The lesson? Brands should try and take themselves a little less seriously. Everyone loves a good laugh— and viewers will be more likely to share a video they think is funny.

5. Nissan

Nissan hosted a thread on reddit in 2014 which asked users, “If you could have one thing from Amazon, what would it be?” According to Digiday, the company then proceeded to actually buy some of the items that users listed, from 4,500 lady bugs to 30 months of reddit gold, the company’s premium membership. All of this gift-buying was done to promote Nissan’s new car, the Versa Note.

Then, things escalated quickly. Amazon drove around a large package until it was spotted by a redditor who created the thread “What’s the largest item you can have shipped from Amazon? Because I think my neighbor just got it.”

Image via Digiday

Yep, Amazon had just delivered an actual Nissan to someone’s front door. According to Digiday, other subreddits about Nissan and Amazon popped up after the image above became popular on the site. All of this content was created by reddit users, not by advertisers from either company. As Kyle Luhr, a senior digital strategist at TBWA\Chiat\Day who worked on the Nissan campaign, said in an interview with Digiday, “We had a plan for it, but were honestly surprised by how big it got.”

While companies can plan for months to create the “perfect” reddit campaign, it’s clear that the online community holds the ultimate power. And that’s how they want it. Yet if your company makes it onto the front page of the Internet, you will be known as a brand that can leverage very entertaining content to connect with consumers.

Still not convinced that reddit can be a great tool to promote yourself? Don’t take my word for it. Listen to Barack: “By the way, if you want to know what I think about this whole reddit experience – NOT BAD!”

The post 5 Brands That Rock Reddit (And What You Can Learn From Them) appeared first on Contently.

Over the years, the company has done some pretty out-there stuff, like the time it made a song out of noises found in its research labs. It’s also been an early adopter of experimental video platforms like Instagram and Vine.

Recently, GE has been bringing its scientific and creative approach to YouTube viewers with a series of videos created by the company’s new “Creator-in-Residence,” Oxford biology PhD candidate Sally Le Page. The series has explored the science behind popular films like Chappie all the way to the molecular gastronomy of Texas barbecue. It represents just one of several recent efforts by GE to bring high-quality science and technology video to its audience—regardless of where they happen to be watching.

“Video is consumed by such an increasingly large number of people, and it’s such a good vehicle for storytelling that we’re certainly doing a great deal there,” said Linda Boff, GE’s executive director of global brand marketing. “We want to make the video content that we do accessible wherever people might run into it or have the opportunity to see it.”

To be fair, GE has been invested in video content for some time now, having been on YouTube since September of 2005. In that time, the company has worked with various influencers to craft content that merges its expertise in science and technology with the sense of whimsical fun endemic to the YouTube creator community. One video, featuring an experiment with popular creators The Slow Mo Guys, netted more than 8 million views.

For its three-month Creator-in-Residence program—the brainchild of director of global content and programming Katrina Craigwell—GE wanted to find someone from outside the company to provide a fresh perspective on the work its scientists are doing. So far, Le Page has interviewed Bill Nye and Neil DeGrasse Tyson about the probability that we will experience a post-apocalyptic future similar to the one portrayed in the latest Mad Max movie, and took a deep dive into the science of the Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator.

The company worked with the muti-channel network Fullscreen to find Le Page, whom they liked for her Oxford bonafides, her enthusiastic curiosity, and her ability to serve as an example to young people as a successful woman in the traditionally male-dominated science field.

“I think unfortunately it’s still unexpected to see women featured in some of the [marketing] communications, and as a result, I think if we have the opportunity to do it, and it’s real, and we can help sort of show a little girl—or a little boy—what that looks like, then that’s the kind of thing we should do,” Boff said.

The brand is also pumping up its video efforts on television, announcing last month that it was partnering with Brian Grazer and Ron Howard’s Imagine Entertainment as well as “30 For 30” production company Asylum Entertainment to create a six-episode documentary series on National Geographic Channel, starting this November.

The series, entitled “Breakthrough,” will feature stories about innovation, science, and technology that will each be directed by a different Hollywood luminary (so far, Ron Howard, Paul Giamatti, and Angela Bassett are all signed on for the project). GE is responsible for helping determine which stories will be included in the series and developing the themes that run throughout the different episodes.

Boff said that the GE brand’s integration into the series will be “very organic” and will occur only when there is a logical connection like when an episodes discusses a discovery made by the company’s scientists.

The series has taken nearly three years to come together, a time period GE has spent developing the concept and lining up the right partners. Though the company is not expecting “Breakthrough” to drive product sales, it hopes to provide people with compelling, uplifting stories that will inspire them to solve big problems.

“Our brand has been about science, invention, engineering and discovery since day one. It’s important for us to make that clear in our marketing and communications,” Boff said. “It’s important to make sure people understand who GE is, and that’s a big part of why we want to do something like this.”

As for the rest of the company’s video efforts, it tries to make sure that it has something for every channel on which a person might consume content, regardless of whether that’s a social media network like Tumblr or one of its own platforms like the tech publication “GE Reports.”

While GE sometimes will run the same video on different channels, each piece of content is created with a specific platform in mind. For instance, a recent video celebrating mothers in science and engineering was designed for the Facebook audience, but it was also posted on YouTube. Depending on whether its videos go viral organically, GE will sometimes pay for distribution beyond its owned channels.

Once the videos have been published, GE measures their success based on shares, engagement time, and completion rate, metrics it will often compare against benchmark data covering the rest of the marketing industry.

“There are times when we’ve put something up, and it’s taken off organically and we’ve held back on paid. And then there are times when we’ve sprinkled a little bit of paid and that’s sort of the jet fuel that something needs,” Boff said. “It is so dependent upon the timing of when something goes out, the topicality, and whether it catches fire organically. Even if it does catch fire organically, there are times when we’ll want to pump a little more paid into it just to give it a second wave.”

And, just like the rest of GE’s marketing strategy, these decisions around which channels to use are all about keeping up with how society—and the technology it runs on—is evolving. With a fragmented media environment, the firm sees it as extremely important to go to consumers wherever they’re spending time.

In this sense, content marketing is just one more way that GE is working to stay ahead of the curve.

“Today, it’s all about being in the places with the right content, at the right time, in the right context,” Boff said. “For us, leaning into content is really leaning into today’s behavior.”

The post If GE’s Video Strategy Doesn’t Inspire You as a Marketer, You’re Probably Dead appeared first on Contently.

Capital One is on a mission to “ignite your inner entrepreneur.” And the fuse comes in the form of branded content.

Since last summer, Capital One’s Spark Business IQ site has been producing rich and functional business content for small-business owners across the U.S., while also promoting a range of Capital One financial products and services expressly designed for small businesses. The content hub is split into three sections: Ignite, Improve, and Inspire. Articles, white papers, listicles, and checklists on such subjects as cash flow, mobile payments, and achieving a career–life balance all work in tandem to inform and energize Capital One’s target audience.

Brands of all kinds are upping their investments in utility editorial content that adds tangible value to their customer’s lives—and B2B is a particularly hot space. Long-running destinations like American Express OPEN Forum (a Contently client), and IQ by Intel have proven that customers will happily engage with quality branded content. Spark Business IQ is a relatively new entrant into the space, but with the help of Contently it has been able to rapidly scale up an editorial team and is now putting out upwards of 25 stories a month. These include blog posts, videos, infographics, and more.

Spark doesn’t rely on a single source for its content, though. Features are written by a combination of internal staff members and finance journalists provided by Contently, with the overall goal being to produce a publication that demystifies complicated financial issues and helps Capital One customers navigate the complexities of owning and operating a small business. The company is using Contently’s analytics tools to measure everything from reader attention time to which social channels are driving the most traffic.

One example of the high-quality storytelling Spark is pulling off is “The Resilience Series,” launched in January to celebrate the strength and perseverance of select small-business owners while encouraging others in need of guidance. The five-part multimedia storytelling series combines articles with three original videos spotlighting businesses in New Orleans, Detroit, and New York.

Among the entrepreneurs featured is Frank Carfaro, president and creative director of Desiron. In one video, the New York-based furniture maker discusses how he survived the “tough” post-9/11 business climate and the importance of being open to change. Capital One’s storytelling prowess is evident not only in its selection of businesses to feature—the New Orleans and Detroit installments are compelling in the context of Hurricane Katrina and Detroit’s dismal economy—but in the ability of the videos to present valuable insights into the unique small-business experience.

The Resilience Series comes on the heels of “I Am Small Business Proud,” a content marketing effort that saw filmmakers Trisha Dalton and John Sears travel across the country to showcase “the true fabric of America’s economy—small businesses.” They met with some 200 businesses and interviewed owners about their challenges and successes. Because the filmmakers are small-business owners themselves—Dalton and Sears both own media production companies that cater to small businesses in need of promotional videos and commercials—their trip also afforded Capital One a secondary opportunity to showcase its financial products, including the amount the pair spent using their Spark credit card and the rewards they earned by doing so.

The videos were made available on YouTube and the Spark Business social accounts, which includeTwitter, Instagram, and Facebook. A campaign-specific Tumblr page was used to share behind-the-scenes anecdotes and photographs of the journey, and all of it was tied together with the #SmallBizProud hashtag.

To further assist small-business owners, Capital One Spark Business maintains a Forbes BrandVoice page that it updates with branded content. Here too, the brand shares business stories that epitomize the tenacity of American entrepreneurs.

(Full disclosure: Forbes BrandVoice is also a Contently client.)

Across the board, Spark Business IQ articles and videos are a nice balance of thought leadership and branding. Stories are actionable and inspiring, even as they serve the underlying goal of generating interest in Capital One’s financial services. By promoting customer successes and saluting the high standards that business owners aspire to maintain, Capital One comes off as a devout small-business defender. And there’s nothing small about that.

The post Contently Case Story: Capital One’s New Mag Gives Entrepreneurs a Spark appeared first on Contently.

Let’s cut through the hot takes and break it all down. Here are seven things you need to know about Instant Articles:

1. Nine major American and British publishers are the first guinea pigs, meaning that we have a ready made title for when this story when it gets made into a bad movie: The Facebook 9.

Here they are, organized in a handy graphic, courtesy of Facebook. Americans on top, Europeans on bottom, like in an especially crass cartoon in a 4th of July issue of The New Yorker.

What stands out is the diversity of these brands—the Times, BuzzFeed, and National Geographic have been mentioned in the same sentence more often the past three days than in the previous decade. Nonetheless, it’s easy to see why taking advantage of this opportunity appealed to each one.

2. Facebook made an offer that publishers couldn’t refuse.

This sounds like a cliché, but Facebook made it pretty impossible to say no by making concessions that assuaged just about every concern a publisher could have.

Ad revenue? Facebook is giving publishers 100 percent of the ad revenue if the publisher sells the ads, and is taking only a 30 percent cut if the ads are sold through the Facebook network.

Content exclusivity? Publishers are in complete control of Instant Articles they post, which can also run on the publisher’s own site without issue. In essence, publishers can use Facebook Instant Articles as an alternative platform to deliver a superior experience for their readers coming from Facebook—all without sacrificing ad revenue.

Visibility? C’mon. If you saw how Facebook juiced autoplay videos when they first rolled out, you know that the network will give Instant Articles the royal treatment in the EdgeRank algorithm.

Technical glitches? While article links to publishers’ mobile sites take an average of eight seconds to load, Instant Articles reportedly load much quicker. And the hype videos for Instant Articles make the medium look absolutely gorgeous.

In world where the average attention span is down to eight seconds, faster loading times (up to 10x as fast, according to Facebook) are huge. The agreement probably won’t stay so peachy forever, but it’s easy to see why these publishers jumped on board.

3. Seriously, Instant Articles are freaking gorgeous, and potentially a game-changing mobile reading experience.

Yesterday, Facebook released its hype video for Instant Articles, filled with dramatic music straight out of a Silicon Valley spoof. But wow—they look amazing. Instant Articles come with a suite of easy-to-use multimedia features that we’ve come to associate with premium, expensive longform projects: cinemagraph covers that are like something out of Harry Potter, autoplay videos that load seamlessly with the text, interactive maps that give you a helicopter view of key points in a story, rich photos that you can explore deeper with a tilt or pinch of the phone, the ability to share or comment specific parts of the article, and audio captions that let you hear the voice of the author as you read.

“This is a living page. This is a living, breathing article that is beyond just words,” said Shezad Morani, creative director for NBCNews.com and aspiring mad scientist.

“Being able to watch a video seamlessly—I think it’s actually really refined here and a beautiful experience,” added Summer Anne Burton, editorial director for BuzzFeed Distributed, as the music crescendos.

“It’s really going to solve the problem we’ve had with bringing pictures that work really well in the magazine environment to the phone,” explained John Bennett, editor-in-chief and co-president of The Atlantic.

4. The first Instant Articles are only available on mobile, but they live up to the hype.

Consider me impressed. The first Instant Articles—which you can find on the publishers’ individual pages or on the “Instant Articles” page in the Facebook app—all use Facebook’s technology in inventive ways that suit each publisher’s specific needs:

BuzzFeed’s cover art for “13 Steps to Instantly Improve Your Day” features a sloth climbing on a jungle gym and the goofiest cat you’ve ever seen while instructing you to swipe, scroll, and tilt to interact with videos and pictures of cute animals and newlyweds that’ll put you in a good mood.

The Atlantic‘s first piece, “For the Execution of Clayton Locket,” features a terrifying cinemagraph of a dripping syringe, priming you for a terrifying report on the complications of lethal injection.

National Geographic‘s inaugural effort, “Quest for a Superbee,” is filled with immersive cinemagraphs, videos, photos, and audio narration, creating possibly the most stunning mobile reading experience I’ve ever experienced.

And lastly, leveraging its excellent video team, The New York Times makes great use of autoplay videos to break “A Life in Motion, Stopped Cold,” into five parts.

These first articles are sick and crush everyone’s expectations.

5. Instant Articles will roll out slowly, at least at first.

While the group of publishers with access to Instant Articles is expected to expand quickly, according to the Times, don’t expect the floodgates to open completely. There’s a reason Facebook began the partnership with major news orgs that’ll take advantage of the technology in smart ways–they want the initial rollout to impress. And publishers seem to be keen to publish just a few pieces per week at first.

6. And brands looking to get involved will likely have to start with native advertising.

I don’t see Facebook opening up Instant Articles to brands anytime soon. After all, one of the big selling points here for publishers has to be the ease in creating premium native ad experiences for brands with a built-in distribution mechanism. Instant Article native ads double as an exclusive ad product for these publishers right now, and Facebook wants to keep them happy. They’re likely not going to turn around and give this technology to Uniliver or Virgin Atlantic tomorrow.

“Facebook really understood what would be important to us,” said BuzzFeed president Greg Coleman. “So instead of acting like someone who would dictate, they came to us and asked us what would be great for BuzzFeed.” For example, Coleman said, Facebook will allow BuzzFeed to upload its “sponsored posts” — BuzzFeed stories it creates on behalf of advertisers — into its “Instant Articles” format, and treat it just like any other story from any other publisher.

Also, click here to read 3 ways Facebook Instant Articles will be big for brands in the times to come.

7. But the Trojan Horse potential here is still huge.

Right now, Facebook is playing the part of the good Samaritan as much as possible. “We’re starting with something that we think is going to work for some publishers for some articles and for some business models,” Chris Cox, Facebook’s chief product officer, told the Times. “We’re not trying to go, like, suck in and devour everything.”

But consider this: The Times now receives 14 to 16 percent of its traffic from Facebook, which has doubled from a year ago. If Instant Articles live up to their potential, that figure could skyrocket—eviscerating the Times‘ leverage as it becomes more dependent on the social giant. Very quickly, the terms of engagement could change.

But as of right now, this looks like a great deal for publishers. This isn’t just a Trojan horse; this is a Trojan horse draped in gold chains and being ridden by Beyoncé. Even if you can see the outline of the hatch on the wooden belly, it’s hard not to open the gates.

Comic by Martin Kozlowski

The post 7 Things You Need to Know About Facebook Instant Articles appeared first on Contently.

(Full disclosure: GE is a Contently client.)

So for the NFL Draft, GE handed over the reigns of their Twitter account to John Urschel, a man who inspired the Deadspin headline “Ravens Lineman John Urschel Loves Math More Than You Love Anything.” He has an undergrad and masters degree in Math, and even teaches an off-season math course in Integral Vector Calculus. He published a paper called “A Cascadic Multigrid Algorithm for Computing the Fiedler Vector of Graph Laplacians” in the Journal of Computational Mathematics.

This tweet pretty much sums him up:

Merry Christmas! I hope Santa brought everyone all the math books they wished for!

— John Urschel (@MathMeetsFball) December 25, 2013

This weekend, he applied his math skills to some creative draft analysis.

E Flowers is one of the strongest in the draft. Is he strong enough to lift a baby ? We checked. #DraftScience pic.twitter.com/m42en1eXj2

— General Electric (@generalelectric) May 1, 2015

Does Mel Kiper know whether Ereck Flowers, the 9th overall pick by the New York Giants, could lift a baby elephant? I think not.

Melvin Gordon through the hole with an avg acceleration of 7 m/s^2, faster than a gazelle. #DraftScience pic.twitter.com/kthpH4D8Zg

— General Electric (@generalelectric) May 1, 2015

Does your average brand social media editor have those emoji skills? Not even close.

“I want to have fun … give some perspective. This is not meant to be the draft war room,” Urschel told The Sports Post, even though strange comparisons to wild animals are definitely a part of every draft war room. (I’m going to assume integral vector calculus is not).

This was a smart, fun move by GE, but not every brand needs to be so smart. Personally, I can’t wait until Johnny Manziel takes over Papa John’s account to tell us what shape a pizza is.

The post GE Let an NFL Lineman Take Over Their Twitter Account During the NFL Draft to Talk About Math. It Was Awesome appeared first on Contently.

This past Christmas, a hero emerged that would shed light on the dark underbelly of the marketing world, exposing a cancer that threatens the entirety of modern advertising at its core. That hero, of course, was The Brands Saying Bae Twitter account, and it showed us just how ridiculous brands’ Twitter accounts have become.

The evolution of a brand. Inspiring. pic.twitter.com/3yocN23LY6

— Brands Saying Bae (@BrandsSayingBae) December 28, 2014

When a brand tweets “bae” it makes me want to purchase their product. pic.twitter.com/8TSO4VJkln

— Brands Saying Bae (@BrandsSayingBae) December 28, 2014

Breathtaking. This is what it’s all about. pic.twitter.com/C57bQjEPih

— Brands Saying Bae (@BrandsSayingBae) December 30, 2014

Our latest comic by Martin Kozlowski contemplates the root origin of this phenomenon; indeed, what was the origin of all this bae-ness, the on fleek brand revolution? Was it the rogue work of a few brave social media managers who dared to tweet like a caricature of a 14-year-old boy? Or was it, more likely, the fruits of the most depressing brand attribute brainstorm meeting ever?

If you’ve been in one of these meetings and know, tweet me (@joelazauskas) or email me (lazer@contently.com). Thanks, bae—I promise our exchange will be positively epic.

The post Contently Comic: Brands Saying Bae appeared first on Contently.

The Internet loves beauty tips and tricks, and increasingly, the best beauty content is coming straight from the source. While fashion brands like ASOS and Net-a-Porter have been leading the commerce / content publishing revolution, beauty brands are now beginning to roll out impressive efforts of their own.

Beauty brands know that nobody is born knowing how to flawlessly contour—and they’re chomping at the bit to be the first one to teach you. Here are five who have been strutting their stuff.

Sephora

Sephora goes big with its content marketing. The upscale French brand pushes beauty tutorials through videos, blog posts, and social media updates. There’s even a recently launched app all about how to contour, which lets users upload a photo of themselves in order to determine how best to emphasize their face shape. The beauty board on the Sephora website, set up like a shoppable Pinterest page, gives makeup addicts the chance to post their own photos and show off their favorite looks, getting the users invested in the brand. For Sephora, it’s all about creating a personalized experience.

Contouring works on every skin tone. Learn how to contour on deeper skin tones in our video how-to. Just follow the link in our bio! #ContouringMagic

A photo posted by Sephora (@sephora) on Mar 30, 2015 at 2:48pm PDT

Birchbox

Birchbox, a monthly beauty sample subscription service, has a magazine that’s been a crucial part of its business plan since its early days. Content director Mollie Chen explained the magazine’s importance to Contently co-founder Shane Snow in 2011: “Content is the best way to differentiate your business and to create value,” she said.

There are even some box-specific posts, which offer sneak peeks into the upcoming month’s box and help subscribers personalize the products they’re about to receive.

5 pretty organizing hacks for all your Birchbox samples: http://t.co/uqxU3UIo5Y pic.twitter.com/YBYYWQKzsJ

— birchbox (@birchbox) April 21, 2015

Maybelline New York

Content marketing isn’t just for high-end brands. Maybelline New York, a drugstore cosmetics brand, is doing a great job engaging its customers, judging by its 912,000 followers on Instagram. Over on Maybelline.com, the video section stands out; it’s mostly commercials and behind-the-scenes clips, but there’s also some innovative partner videos. The drugstore brand gets its name out there by partnering with popular beauty vloggers and having them post makeup tutorials. For many, such as MakeupbyAmarie, the partnership is a “dream come true.” Considering that YouTube stars are more influential among teens than celebrities, it’s a savvy move by Maybelline.

You glow girl! @makeupbyamarie looks gorgeous in her #RebelBloom makeup look. Visit makeuptrends.maybelline.com/ to get the look.

A photo posted by Maybelline New York (@maybelline) on Apr 14, 2015 at 7:29am PDT

L’Oréal

L’Oréal is another drugstore cosmetics brand that is killing it with content. Makeup.com, the brand’s content website, is a full-fledged beauty mag. To L’Oréal’s credit, it doesn’t just push the brand’s products, with posts generally featuring a diverse selection of high-end and drugstore hair and makeup brands. Similarly, its Instagram account could belong to any number of beauty bloggers, and the Pinterest account for the site, packed with tutorials, has 129,000 followers.

We ship lipstick.

A photo posted by @makeupdotcom on Apr 5, 2015 at 6:50pm PDT

Smashbox

Smashbox, a beauty brand born from Smashbox photo studios, is all about the social experience. In fact, its website has a Social Shop that allows customers to connect to their social media profiles and see the Smashbox products their friends like. Even without connecting social accounts, users can see popular comments and leave comments about their favorites.

The site also ties to Facebook and Instagram, where 200,000 followers can keep tabs on the Studio Pic of the Day.

(Full disclosure: Smashbox is a Contently client.)

 

A few #smashbox pics for weekend inspo: @itsmyrayeraye in Fireball Matte Lipstick | @tesschristinexo in Plum Gel Liner | @destinygodley in Fireball Matte Lipstick | @makeup_by_missycolleen in Contour Stick Trio | @gms.makeup in Infrared Matte Lipstick

A video posted by Smashbox Cosmetics (@smashboxcosmetics) on Apr 17, 2015 at 5:01pm PDT

While all of these brands have different strategies, they all emphasize great content for their readers, which, in the world of beauty, means tutorials, inspirational photos, and visually enticing social content. Now, customers aren’t just buying products from brands—they get the added bonus of learning how to use them.

Editor’s note: For a deep look at the content strategy behind maybe the best beauty brand publisher at all, check out last month’s profile of Bevel.

The post 5 Beauty Brands Publishing Content That Looks So Damn Good appeared first on Contently.

On Monday, they revealed they’ve gotten their hands on the Batmobile.

In a BuzzFeed Tech blog post, publisher Dao Nguyen and data-genius twins Adam and Andrew Kelleher introduced Pound, a new proprietary technology that promises to drastically change the way everyone understands how content spreads through the web. Pound stands for Process for Optimizing and Understanding Network Diffusion, which sounds terrifyingly complex. (And it is.) But in layman’s terms, it simply shows how content spreads “from one sharer to another, through all the downstream visits, even across social networks and one-to-one sharing platforms like Gchat and email.”

So instead of just seeing your shares in buckets (100 Facebook, 50 Twitter, 30 LinkedIn, etc.) you see exactly how that content spread in a tangled web from its original sharer to other channels.

For instance, BuzzFeed analyzed how its six tweets about #TheDress diffused and spread across the social landscape. Those six tweets resulted in nearly a million views but also drove hundreds of thousands of views via other social networks. You can see the clusters of shares in the graph below—dark blue for Facebook, light blue for Twitter, and white for other publishers that picked up the story.

^{Image via BuzzFeed, by Adam Kelleher}

The GIF below provides a look inside one of those share clusters; it’s fairly difficult to understand without reading BuzzFeed’s explanation two or three times, but essentially, you’re seeing how even though Twitter is the source of the share diffusion, the story actually spreads to many other social networks as it heads downstream.

As the explanation pointed out: “In fact, clicks from Twitter represent only a quarter of the total downstream visits rooted in the BuzzFeed Twitter account!”

^{Gif via BuzzFeed, by Adam Kelleher}

But enough dorking out on data—what does this all mean?

Tens of millions of people share BuzzFeed’s content every month, and they’re social-first in every sense of the buzzword; 75 percent of the site’s 200 million monthly visitors come from social sources. BuzzFeed is already excellent at creating content that will thrive on social, and it tests the hell out of every element of its stories, from the headline to the order of points in a listicle, and optimizes accordingly.

If BuzzFeed can figure out how to optimize its content even further for social networks based on a deep understanding of how content spreads, the potential benefits are huge. Even just a 10 percent boost in the social performance of BuzzFeed’s stories would mean 15 million new visitors a month. (And likely more, since the benefits of social are inherently exponential.)

Lucky for us, BuzzFeed included its own list of possibilities for how it could use Pound:

• Can we propose stories that will appeal not only to you, but also to your friends and followers?
• Can we use Pound data to power A/B tests? Can we make the site and apps better not just for readers, but for their friends — and thereby increase the impact of our site?
• How effective are specific promotions, not just based on first-order traffic, but on all of the downstream sharing and traffic that results?
• Can we predict the potential reach of a story based on its content or other features about it?
• Can we filter out the effect of big sites or celebrities promoting our content, learn what average people actually like, and produce more of the right content for everyone?

These are fascinating and exciting possibilities—particularly the ability to predict the reach of a story based on its features and content, which would allow BuzzFeed to eliminate duds and maximize hits. But the biggest implication could ultimately be in what it means for the company’s bottom line.

What this means for BuzzFeed’s business—and work for brands

In BuzzFeed’s blog post, the authors made clear Pound confirmed something they’d always assumed: Sponsored content spreads the same way as editorial content. They used a post from Target—“I Tried The Fanny Basket And It Saved My Life“—as an example. This is important because it allows BuzzFeed to use Pound to sell its sponsored content offering. Salespeople can say, “No one understands social like us; we know how to create viral content for your brand better than anyone else.” Then they show brand execs this image of Target’s viral diffusion and wait for $100 bills to fall from the ceiling.

^{Image via BuzzFeed, by Adam Kelleher}

It’s clear that BuzzFeed is thinking about Pound largely in relation to sponsored content. After listing all the possibilities of how Pound could improve BuzzFeed editorial, the authors ask: “Finally, can we do all of the above for sponsored content? In fact, we are currently seeking beta partners to help us think about how Pound data can benefit advertisers and their audiences. “Since then, they’ve added a note announcing that they’re looking for beta partners to create data-driven content using Pound.

But in addition to sponsored content, there’s another way BuzzFeed could monetize Pound: by licensing it as a software product. If Pound truly lives up to the hype, most publishers will want to get their hands on it. BuzzFeed may not want to give away its secret sauce, but at the right price point, it could be worth it. And by the time the company does that, it’ll already be working on its next technological weapon anyway. All we can do is wait for Jonah Peretti’s LOL Signal to light up the Gotham night sky.

The post BuzzFeed Just Cracked the Code on How Social Content Spreads, and It’s a Big Deal appeared first on Contently.