With platforms constantly tweaking their algorithms, understanding the best days and times to post on social media has become both an art and a science. Algorithms decide which content gets prime real estate on users’ feeds, and users’ behavior determines when they’re online and ready to engage. It’s an evolving dance where timing is everything.

Why does posting time matter so much? Simple: to maximize reach and engagement. Posting at the right time can mean the difference between your content being seen by thousands or being lost in the void. And in today’s crowded social media space, you want every advantage you can get.

Wondering when to post on social media? Here’s new data on the best posting times

Lucky for us, the folks at CoSchedule have done the heavy lifting. They analyzed a staggering 37,219,512 social media messages from over 30,000 organizations to pinpoint the best times to post on each major social network. That’s not just a sample size; that’s a veritable treasure trove of data.

What they found is nothing short of essential for any social media strategy. CoSchedule’s exhaustive analysis offers us insights that can help fine-tune our posting schedules to align with when our audiences are most active and engaged. So, without further ado, let’s dive into the golden hours of social media posting and how you can leverage this data to enhance your social media strategy.

A growing shift from mornings to evenings

One of the most intriguing insights from CoSchedule’s latest analysis is the shift in prime posting times from mornings to evenings. If you’re accustomed to thinking that early birds always catch the social media worm, it’s time to rethink your strategy. The best overall times to post are now Mondays at 8:41 a.m., Wednesdays at 3:15 p.m., and Fridays at 7:00 p.m., all in your target audience’s time zone.

And it’s not just about the time of day. The top-performing days have also shifted, with Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays emerging as the new champions of engagement. This marks a significant change from the morning and midweek peaks that dominated CoSchedule’s earlier research from 2013, 2014, 2016, and 2019. In 2024, it appears that late-day engagement is where the action is.

While research from other industry heavyweights like Hootsuite and Sprout Social presents slightly different findings, it’s important to note that CoSchedule’s data is particularly comprehensive, especially in the context of both B2B and B2C social media posts. Their analysis provides a more nuanced picture, suggesting that evening engagement has taken the spotlight.

So, why the shift? Customer behavior can be notoriously difficult to analyze, but it’s likely a combination of changing work patterns, the rise of remote work, and the way people are blending their personal and professional lives. As the lines between these spheres blur, people are increasingly engaging with social media later in the day, once their work responsibilities have tapered off.

Armed with this knowledge, it’s time to adjust your posting schedule to align with these new patterns. By posting during these peak times, you’ll maximize your chances of capturing your audience’s attention and boosting engagement.

The best times to post on social media by platform

Tailoring your posts to each platform’s unique audience and content style is essential for maximizing engagement and reach. Each social media platform has its own rhythm, audience behavior, and preferred content types, which means your strategy should be as dynamic and varied as the platforms themselves. Let’s dive into the specifics of the best times to post and platform-specific best practices to ensure your content resonates with the right audience at the right time.

The best times to post on Facebook

• Monday mornings at 7:00 AM
• Wednesday afternoons at 3:15 PM
• Friday evenings at 7:00 PM

The best times to post on Instagram

• Tuesday mornings at 9:00 AM
• Wednesday mornings at 9:00 AM
• Friday evenings at 8:00 PM

The best time to post on LinkedIn

• Tuesday mornings at 10:00 AM
• Wednesday mornings at 10:00 AM
• Thursdays around 12:00 PM

The best time to post on X, formerly Twitter

• Wednesday mornings at 8:30 AM
• Thursdays mornings at 9:30 AM
• Friday mornings at 10:00 AM

The best time to post on Pinterest

• Tuesdays around 12:00 PM
• Thursdays around 6:15 PM
• Friday evenings at 8:00 PM

The best times to post on TikTok

• Wednesdays and Thursdays from 9:00 to 11:00 AM
• Wednesdays and Thursdays from 2:00 to 6:00 PM

The best time to post on Threads

• Thursdays between 8:00 AM and 10: 00 AM

Key takeaways for posting on social media

Timing is everything when it comes to social media success. Understanding and leveraging your target audience’s active hours can significantly boost your engagement and reach. Here are the critical takeaways from the data above:

• Post during active hours: The prime times to post vary by platform but consistently align with when users are most active. For instance, evenings and late afternoons have emerged as peak times across many platforms, a notable shift from earlier recommendations for morning engagement.
• Avoid the worst times: Overnight hours are generally the worst times to post, as user activity plummets. Posting during these times can result in your content being overlooked as users catch up on sleep rather than their social feeds.
• Shifts in engagement patterns: There has been a marked shift towards evening engagement compared to previous years. This change reflects evolving user behaviors and the blurring lines between work and personal life, especially with the rise of remote work.

Maximize your social media impact

Understanding and adapting to the best times to post on social media can dramatically enhance your engagement and reach. The findings provided here highlight the importance of late-day and evening engagement, which is a departure from past trends favoring morning posts. However, it’s crucial to remember that these times are guidelines rather than hard and fast rules.

Encourage yourself to experiment with different posting times and meticulously track your engagement metrics. What works for one brand might not work for another, so tailor your strategy to your unique audience. Remember, while optimal posting times can give you an edge, they are just one piece of the puzzle.

The quality of your content, the way you interact with your audience, and platform-specific strategies play equally vital roles in your social media success. High-quality, engaging content that resonates with your audience will always triumph over simply posting at the “right” time. So, keep creating, experimenting, and optimizing to find the perfect balance for your brand’s social media strategy.

Ask the Content Strategist: FAQs

How can I determine the best times to post on social media for my specific audience?

A: Use platform analytics to identify when your followers are most active and experiment with different posting times, adjusting based on engagement patterns.

What are some strategies for determining the best days and times to post on social media?

A: Conduct A/B testing with different time slots, consistently track engagement, and iteratively refine your schedule based on performance data.

How do cultural and regional differences impact what the best times to post on social media are?

Consider time zones, cultural norms, local events, and daily routines to tailor your posting schedule to the habits of your diverse audience.

The Content Strategist is your go-to resource for developing your next content marketing strategy. Subscribe today to get the latest insights delivered directly to your inbox!

The post What Are the Best Days and Times to Post on Social Media? 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.

Why? Because the answer is obvious: Repost. Always. Or almost always, at least.

Today, we’re talking about the advantages of reposting an article that runs on your blog or digital publication in its entirety on another platform—like Medium, LinkedIn, or even email.

If your goal is to get as many people to read your content as possible, it just makes sense—whether your goal is to build your brand, attract new customers, or a combination of both.

Let’s look at some of the most fruitful places to repost your content.

1. Email

As social algorithms send less and less referral traffic to publisher sites, it’s worth remembering: email continues to beat social media in terms of engagement and accessibility.

Not convinced? Consider these fun facts:

• Email newsletter click-through rates average 2.14 percent across industries, compared to Facebook’s 0.07 percent.
• Only about 5.2 percent of your Facebook followers are likely to even see your post, while email reaches roughly 85 percent of recipients, with open rates that average 22.86 percent.

The best way to build an owned audience is by getting people to subscribe to your newsletter. Most brands and bloggers simply include teasers of new posts in their newsletters, prompting readers to click through for the rest. There are certain advantages to the teaser method. Most notably, it drives people to your site where they may buy or sign up for something you’re promoting.

The problem with this method is that a lot of people won’t end up clicking through. It requires effort on their part, and they’re more likely to say, “eh, forget it”—or tell themselves they’ll save the post for later, never to return—than take action.

This is why including the entire post in the body of your email might actually be a better strategy if your primary goal is to engage your audience. Substack, for instance, has taken off in large part because audiences seem to enjoy the experience of reading entire pieces of content in their email—so much so that they’re willing to pay for it.

Here’s a pro tip: If you really want to encourage click-throughs to your site, include links to related blogs or other content at the bottom of your email. You should always emphasize any action you want your subscribers to take in the “P.S. section” anyway, so use that space to inspire them to keep reading.

2. Medium

There are a lot of advantages to posting on Medium, but the most important one is that it has the potential to get your piece in front of people who’ve never heard of you.

One reason for this is that Medium posts rank really high in search engine results (in fact, nearly 50 percent of Medium’s traffic comes from search). If you optimize your posts for specific Google searches, you’ve got a good chance at some major views.

Medium’s robust, user-friendly interface is a dream. You don’t have to design anything, worry about how a piece will look or behave on mobile, or consider an image’s impact on loading times. You just paste your writing, add whatever images you like, slap on some tags, and presto. You can even import your original post from your site (I’ve experienced some glitches with this tool, but it’s still a good starting point).

Once it’s live, if enough people “clap” for your piece, the algorithm will recommend it to more readers. If you think the piece has the potential to really spread, it might even be worth linking to your Medium post rather than your site on social and in emails, and asking your subscribers to “give it a hand,” if you will.

3. LinkedIn

Depending on your industry or niche, LinkedIn can be the ideal place to repost your blog content. If your company is business-to-consumer, you can still see great engagement on the platform, but if you’re business-to-business, your content can excel, in part because you can track the demographics of your audience (including industries, job titles, locations, and traffic sources).

Basically, you can slingshot your message into the heart of your target market. What’s not to love?

In fact, LinkedIn is responsible for driving 46 percent of social traffic to B2B sites, with about 98 percent of content marketers taking advantage of the platform. Plus, in an era of exceptionally low trust in news found on social media (as well as some pretty meager trust in user privacy), LinkedIn’s ranking as the most trusted social media platform makes it a wise content marketing choice for any business.

You only get 1,300 characters in a post (LinkedIn is in the process of increasing the limit to 3,000 characters, but it hasn’t been rolled out to all users yet), but with articles (also known as LinkedIn Pulse), you get 110,000, which makes it easy to repost a blog.

To publish an article, simply click on the “Write article” button in the “Start a post” section at the top of the platform:

This will open a more Medium-like editor:

Unlike posts, which have a relatively short shelf life, articles stick around for awhile. They appear in Google search results, as well as on your profile page. They also have more sharing options than posts—in addition to sharing them in messages and via their feeds, users can also share articles directly to Facebook and Twitter.

In the past year, LinkedIn has added a key feature —allowing users to post stories from company accounts as well as personal ones. Assuming you have admin privileges, you can hit “Write article” and you’ll be asked which page you want to publish a story from. Select your company page and you’ll be pushing longform posts out to your company followers. The benefits of this are numerous and it gives you the flexiblity to either build your own brand or engage with your company’s loyal following.

The platform is also rolling out its newsletter feature to everyone, giving you the chance to deliver a full article direct to follower’s inbox and build an audience of subscribers.

If you want to rock engagement on your LinkedIn articles, here are a few quick tips, courtesy of a study by OkDork on what successful LinkedIn articles have in common:

• Go long-form—articles with about 2,000 words get the highest likes, views, comments, and shares. (Perfect for blog posts.)
• Use headings—ideally, five of them.
• Publish how-tos and lists—people love them (look no further than this very article).
• Use images—apparently, eight is the magic number.
• Publish on Thursdays—this is when your posts are likely to get the highest number of views (Sunday is the second-best day).

4. Facebook

Recent controversy aside, Facebook remains the largest social media platform, with more than 2.8 billion monthly active users.

I think of posting on Facebook as a bit like playing the lottery—if lottery tickets were free. The chances of getting much of a return in terms of engagement are low, but you just might hit it big.

I experienced the rush of the win firsthand in 2016, when a blog I linked to on Facebook went viral, leading to more than 500k unique visitors landing on my then-very-new website over the course of two weeks.

The post, which was prompted by Donald Trump’s Access Hollywood scandal in which he bragged about sexually assaulting a woman, was about my own experience of sexual harassment and assault—a story that’s sadly familiar to most, if not all, women.

The initial Facebook post only received 64 comments and just under 200 likes, but it was shared 2.2K times. And then other people posted it, and those posts were shared, and so it went.

My main takeaway from that experience is this: Don’t overly analyze what you post. And when you allow yourself to get vulnerable with your audience, they usually respond.

While a link post took off in this case, there are even more advantages to reposting blogs via Facebook’s native publishing platform, Instant Articles. There are one or two more hoops to jump through, but the rewards can be worth it. According to Facebook, Instant Articles load 4.9x faster than mobile browsers across regions, and Facebook users open 52 percent more articles when published on the native platform, as opposed to shared via a web link.

Buy a lottery ticket (or, you know, just raise your hand for one of the billions of free ones Facebook hands out every day), and repost. You never know what might happen.

The post Want to Double Your Views? Repost Content in Full on These 4 Channels appeared first on Contently.

On June 30, Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, posted a video to Twitter that included a bold statement about Instagram’s priorities moving forward: It was “no longer a photo-sharing app.”

Mosseri explained that people came to Instagram to be entertained by video, so it was time for the company to fully embrace that—especially considering the competition the app was facing from other social apps. He also said users should expect to see more algorithmically recommended vertical videos, from people and topics they don’t follow, over the next 6-12 months.

If that sounds a lot like TikTok … that’s because it is. Or as the Verge put it: “Instagram is focusing on becoming TikTok.”

And if there was any doubt that was true, it was erased for me on Monday when Wired published an expose about Facebook’s obsession over turning Instagram—its most prized subsidiary—into a TikTok clone.

“Instagram is focusing on becoming TikTok.”

As a result, it looks like we’re barreling towards a new era of social media. But to really understand what the next era of social media will look like, we first need to understand how we got here.

The First Era of Social: The News Feed

Internet OGs will argue that social media started with Friendster or Myspace. But while my high school punk band’s very active Myspace page will tell you that’s technically true, social media didn’t really take off on a broad cultural level until September 2006.

Two very important things happened that month. First, Facebook announced you’d no longer need a college email address to join the platform. Second, Facebook introduced the News Feed.

It’s hard to remember Facebook before the News Feed, but it was chaotic. You had to manually navigate to individual profiles to find new updates. It was basically a directory. Group pages were the only way around this because everyone could post on the same “wall.” My “Sarah Lawrence College Class of 2010!!!” group, for instance, was filled with thirsty art school nerds trying to prearrange their orientation-week hookups and maybe also find a roommate who was also a Capricorn.

It’s hard to remember Facebook before the News Feed, but it was chaotic.

The News Feed made Facebook an actual social network. In turn, the News Feed became synonymous with social media. Twitter took off at SXSW in 2007 as literally just a feed of updates. Myspace—still then the world’s largest social network—hastily launched a feed in November 2007 to keep up with Facebook. (Narrator: They would not.) LinkedIn launched a feed to become the social network for your weird work persona. Instagram launched as a feed of square photos overlayed with lo-fi or sepia filters.

The News Feed era lasted a decade, and for a few years, it was kind of dope if you worked in digital media or marketing. (Until, you know, the journalism world started burning.) Twitter’s feed was chronological, so you could tweet out a ton of links to content and get consistent clicks from your followers. Facebook’s algorithm was incredibly friendly to “link posts” that sent users to news or blog articles. For a long stretch of 2015-2016, Facebook was sending more people to publisher sites than Google. Sure, publishers didn’t really know how to monetize those readers, but if your job was to build an audience, the News Feed era made that easier.

Though feeds still live on today, they gradually became less important as a new type of social content took over.

The Second Era of Social: Stories

In October 2013, a hot social media startup, started by a trio of Stanford students, released a feature that would alter the course of social media: Stories.

Stories let Snapchat users post a series of snaps that would last for 24 hours, and it was an immediate hit. Stories made it much easier to … well, tell stories. Instead of just sharing an ephemeral moment, users could string their snaps into a narrative.

This wasn’t just big for amateur content creators; it also allowed media companies to take full advantage of the platform. With the launch of Discover—a hub of stories from major media partners like ESPN, National Geographic, and Vice—Snapchat became a major media destination.

The Stories era didn’t supplant the News Feed era of social, however, until 2016, when Instagram straight-up copied Snapchat with the launch of Instagram stories. I wrote at the time that “Instagram copying Snapchat is about one thing: insecurity.” I was right about that—as well as my prediction that it’d be appealing to brands and teens alike—but I had no idea how popular the move would be. It was a hit and slowed Snapchat’s growth by 82 percent.

As with the News Feed, every other major social network followed suit. First Facebook. Then Twitter. Then LinkedIn (although Stories were so absurd on LinkedIn that the company is shutting it down by the end of this month).

You may be sensing a pattern here. Which brings us back to the third era of social.

The Third Era of Social: The Video Feed

TikTok’s explosive growth was unlike anything we’ve seen. It launched in the U.S. in September 2017. A year later, it was #1 in the app store. By early 2019, it had reached a billion users.

TikTok’s genius came from being:

• The best tool we’ve ever had for creating and editing short-form video on your phone.
• The most addictive way to consume video on your phone.

TikTok’s success has often been attributed to its algorithm, which is very good at predicting the type of video you’ll like. But TikTok is also so successful because it plays on the same part of our brain that makes gambling so addictive. You won’t love every video, but you’ll like a lot of them. When that happens, your brain gets a sweet hit of dopamine and wants to keep scrolling.

“In psychological terms [it’s] called random reinforcement,” Dr. Julia Albright told Forbes. “It means sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. And that’s how these platforms are designed … they’re exactly like a slot machine.”

Of course, social networks have been playing on this part of our brain for a long time. This is what made the News Feed so successful in the first place. TikTok is tailor-made to deliver the type of highly relatable and novel video content that neuroscience has shown our brains crave.

This is why Instagram copied TikTok with its Reels feature last August, and why it’s planning to make a video feed the app’s central experience in the future.

I think we all know where this is going. Within the next few years, we’ll have Tik-Tok-style video feeds on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, whether they make sense or not.

I’m skeptical on whether this kind of feed will work outside of TikTok or Instagram—Video Feeds would likely be as out of place on LinkedIn as Stories were—but it doesn’t really matter. Every social network (included Reels) is already flooded with TikTok videos that people repost. TikTok’s brilliance is that being such an incredible video creation tool allows it to penetrate other networks and spread.

For those of us in media and marketing, that means we can’t afford to ignore TikTok any longer. People will only spend more time watching vertical video streams, and they’ll be drawn to it in other environments. Creating TikTok-style video will just be table-stakes when it comes to generating organic engagement and effective social advertising.

No one is exempt from getting in on the action. As my colleague Jolie Giacona wrote in her piece about how B2B brands can use TikTok without ruining it, there are far more possibilities to TikTok than just dance memes and the crate challenge. Educational content is already huge. So is funny, relatable content that makes your audience go, “Damn, yeah, that’s me.”

Those of us in media and marketing can’t afford to ignore TikTok any longer.

Does this mean we should throw our entire content strategy out the window and go all in on TikTok? Hell no. It’s still only one piece of the pie. As our research showed earlier this year, people will continue to consume content in an array of different formats—from blog posts to YouTube to podcasts to good old-fashioned memes.

But it does mean that we owe it to ourselves to experiment—to ditch the mindset that we can’t use TikTok because we were born before 1995. The third era of social is on its way. Do you really want to be the person who didn’t see it coming?

The post The 3rd Era of Social Is Coming. Are You Ready? appeared first on Contently.

To start, he comes from an ad operations and customer success background. Less than four years ago, he was leading the account management team at LiveIntent. He’s also not afraid to speak his mind. In 2018, he and his good friend Erik Requidan started The Minority Report Podcast to create a platform where people of color, women, and LGBTQ individuals in marketing could tell their stories and have candid conversations.

Along the way, he’s also helped make LiveIntent one of the hottest companies in ad-tech. The company has raised over $65 million to help brands personalize their marketing and thrive in the pending cookie apocalypse. (Disclosure: LiveIntent is a Contently customer.)

In July, Cooper and I connected over Zoom to talk content strategy, Facebook boycotts, first-party data, and why brands need to take a stand and back up their words with action.

How have the last few months and this amazing movement for racial and social justice impacted the podcast?

When Erik and I started the podcast, we made it a point to say that we wanted quality over quantity. We weren’t sitting there thinking like, “Okay, we need to get a million downloads or a million subscribers in the first year.” It was like, “Let’s figure out how to have quality people on the podcast to tell great stories. And if we do that, the traffic, the plays, the downloads, all that will come.”

What’s been interesting is that we’ve already had more downloads and plays in 2020 than we had all of 2019. We’ve seen 103 percent growth year over year. It’s also opened up the door for Erik and me to have people give us a call and to ask our thoughts on what’s going on or certain things that individuals may be trying to do within their own organization. All in an effort to make sure we are using this moment in time to further DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) initiatives.

What role has content marketing played for you at LiveIntent?

It’s huge for us and plays a key role in our marketing strategy. It’s a lot of what we do on the marketing side. When we look at what’s important to us from a solutions perspective—monetization, advertising, identity—all of our content is based off of those three pillars.

We have a webinar series that we do right now called Real Time Banter. It was weekly, but we’re moving to bi-weekly for the summer. It gives us an opportunity to talk to publishers and brands, and connect with them on topics that are most relevant for them.

Are there any other formats that you’ve been experimenting with that have been really effective for you?

Video. Our VP of marketing, Nick Dujnic, does an awesome video series called LiveIntentional where he takes a topic in the industry and does some lighthearted content around it. So yeah, video and then written content as well. We leverage our weekly marketing and product marketing newsletters as the main vehicles to distribute the content.

Awesome. I think that ad tech has always been one of the early adopters of content marketing because it had to create a lot of content to just explain the industry to people. In the early days, it was just blog posts and whitepapers. It’s great to hear how you guys are developing real shows and series around it, and taking that to the next level.

One thing that’s important to note, especially as a B2B marketer, is that some of these tactics are good externally and internally.

Internally, our number one customer is our sales team and the account management team. We create these destination pages where our sales and account management teams can get updated on our different solutions as well as being able to take them through courses so they know how to speak about our solutions properly in the marketplace.

Then there’s the external content marketing and product marketing piece of it, where it’s a combination of thought leadership and educating our clients on how to get the best out of our platform and solutions set, which I think is just as important.

Amen. I agree with that so much. We’re putting our team through all of the different content strategy courses we’ve built because it’s a great way to get immediate feedback on what you created. “What’d you find interesting? What’d you find boring?” People who work with you are more likely to give you that honest feedback than a random reader.

I want to zoom out a little bit and talk about some of the broader conversations and trends in our industry. It seems this year every CMO is talking about the importance of empathy, authenticity, transparency, that sense of brand purpose in their marketing. But sometimes it feels a little bit hollow. So I wonder what you think those words and practices really mean in marketing?

A couple of years ago, I created a presentation on diversity in marketing. One point that I definitely hit on is this point around authenticity, and making sure that marketing messages feel real and they’re genuine and they’re not just sort of manufactured, or feel their culture jacking in any way, shape, or form.

As marketers, it’s part of our responsibility to make sure the values and beliefs that the organization has come through in the messaging, but are also backed with real action.

But I think what you’re seeing more and more now than you’ve ever seen before is that people not only want to buy quality products, but also want to buy products and services from companies that share similar values and beliefs. Those values and beliefs can be a number of different things. They can be social, they can be environmental, they can be racial, they can be political, etc. But I think you’re seeing that more now than ever before.

As marketers, it’s part of our responsibility to make sure the values and beliefs that the organization has come through in the messaging, but are also backed with real action.

The biggest story that connects to this in ad-tech right now is the Facebook boycott. A lot of large companies are saying, “Hey, we’re taking some action to back up some of what we’re saying around what we think is right and what we think is wrong.” Do you think it can last? Can brands actually keep themselves out of Facebook’s ecosystem over the long-term?

Well first, I think it’s great to see brands taking a stand because, as an organization, if you have certain values and beliefs, you should not only hold your employees up to those standards, but you should also hold companies that you partner with to those same standards. And if those standards aren’t being met, then you should address that. That’s part of what we’re seeing going on here today.

We’re not a huge brand, but we’ve actually made the same decision and we’ve pulled our budget from Facebook as well. With that said, it will be interesting to see what the long-term effect or impact is, and what major brands decide to do.

Because let’s not forget the reason why brands spend so much money on Facebook, their audience is there, the frequency and reach is there. You’ve got a massive, massive, massive logged-in environment too. Which lends itself to great performance.

One of the things that more and more brands and publishers need to do—and we’re starting to see this, especially with Google’s Chrome announcement and the death of the third-party cookie coming—is focus on your owned and operated. Focus on building up your own first-party data. Focus on your first-party strategy so that you can begin to take back and control your own destiny a bit more.

For a lot of brands, the idea of really taking control of that level of first-party data just feels like a huge, daunting task. A lot of marketers just feel like they’re swimming in the sea of data that they have compiled over the last decade.

They’ve been promised from damn near every tech vendor in one of those horrifying Scott Brinker Lumascapes that “this is going to be the data that unlocks everything for you.” Now we’re sitting here with all this data from disparate sources and no idea what to make of what.

You touched on something interesting there, and I don’t think that there’s going to be a magic bullet. No one company or solution is going to solve it for a brand.

The clock is ticking on the death of the third party cookie. Whether publishers and brands want to face up to that or not, I don’t think they’re really going to have a choice.

One of the first steps as an organization is: How do you start to wrap your arms around just what you have and answer the question, how do you get to a point where the data that you do have is actionable? Actionable can mean a number of different things, right? Monetization, utilizing it for selling your own products and services, and even utilizing it for personalization of content too.

The clock is ticking on the death of the third party cookie. Whether publishers and brands want to face up to that or not, I don’t think they’re really going to have a choice.

The clock is ticking on the death of the third party cookie. Whether publishers and brands want to face up to that or not, I don’t think they’re really going to have a choice.

You’ve talked about how your investment in content is ramping up, especially this year. We can’t do trade shows, can’t do in person events. Do you see that accelerating?

In full transparency, we work together, our two companies, LiveIntent and Contently. So we leverage the staff at Contently to help us with the content we produce because we can’t handle it all in-house. And I think that that’s going to continue to ramp up.

Going back to those pillars that I talked about earlier around advertising, monetization, and identity solutions, we’re going to continue to pump out content in those areas, whether it be written blogs, whether it be video content that we produce, or other forms of content like e-books and white papers. And we’re certainly going to leverage the great writing resources that we have at Contently to help us with that.

Last question—the hot seat question. What’s one piece of advice you’d give young marketing leaders who are looking to make a real impact?

Diversify your knowledge within marketing. Marketing is such a wide range of different topics, expertise, and positions.

The more you can grow your knowledge—whether that be in product marketing, content marketing, PR, demand gen, creative, and branding—the more well rounded you are as a marketer, the more doors that open up for you as you continue on in your career. It gives you more flexibility to move between consumer marketing and B2B marketing and other positions as well.

Don’t pigeonhole yourself into just one track of marketing. Try to learn and be as knowledgeable as possible in many different areas as you can.

The post LiveIntent SVP of Marketing Kerel Cooper on How Brands Can Take a Stand and Back Up Their Words With Action appeared first on Contently.

Money affects everyone. Finances can dictate what we do, where we live, and how we make decisions. It’s a wide umbrella, spanning everything from consumer banking, investment banking, credit cards, fintech, insurance, and more. The fact that many finance organizations try to reach B2C and B2B audiences simultaneously adds another factor to the equation.

Financial services content is also incredibly complicated. Understanding how to pick the right insurance or save for a mortgage can literally change someone’s life. Companies in this space have a unique opportunity to build meaningful relationships with consumers.

To capitalize on that opportunity, finserv companies allocated an average of $23.3 million for their content marketing budgets in 2019, per Contently research. This number includes content creation, distribution, technology, and talent.

Finserv companies are doing a decent job getting a bang for their buck. However, there’s still room for improvement.

To help marketers be more efficient and effective, Contently created this new report that examines the state of financial services content marketing. The first part compares finance against other industries and highlights content benchmarks. The second part explores tips and strategies marketers can use to stand out from their biggest competitors and create content that performs.

Brands spend large sums of money on content marketing. It’s time they made the most of their investments.

[If you prefer to view a PDF version of the report that’s easier to print, we’ve got you covered here.]

Report Methodology

Data for this report was compiled in November 2019. The industry benchmark statistics in the first part of the report came from an internal dataset of 86,270 pieces of content across all industries, measured by Contently’s content marketing platform. Of that sample, 25,544 pieces of content came from financial services companies.

Data in the second part of the report came from StoryBook, Contently’s content strategy tool, which measured top-performing topics, formats, social shares, and more for 2,292 pieces of content from financial services companies.

Key Findings

For visual learners, here’s a high-level breakdown of what we found:

Part I: Financial Services Benchmarks

Competition for attention has never been higher in content marketing. Legacy firms are battling against each other while trying to hold off a surge of new fintech competitors and startups. Consumers, meanwhile, want financial guidance; they’re just not sure who to get it from.

According to the 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer, financial services ranked last out of 15 industries. On a positive note, trust in the industry is on the rise, increasing 8 percentage points since 2014. This means there’s an opportunity for finserv companies to step up and support their customers. Content is a key tool in those efforts.

Financial services vs. all other industries

Recently, finserv companies have made noticeable progress with content performance. In 2018, audiences spent an average of 1:26 seconds with financial services content. A year later, average attention time jumped to 1:51 seconds, which marks a 29 percent increase

Over that same stretch, though, average engagement rate (the percentage of people who spend at least 15 seconds with a piece of content) and finish rate held stagnant. On one hand, the average finish rate in our data set is impressive in comparison to Chartbeat’s scroll depth benchmarks for all content. Brands are creating longer content, but there’s still room to improve the finish rate.

Financial services companies also took strides compared to brands from other industries. Average attention time for all other industries in our data set only moved from 1:32 seconds in 2018 to 1:34 seconds in 2019. However, the other industries like travel, technology, and healthcare boasted a better average engagement rate (70 percent) and finish rate (60 percent) in 2019. Finish rates in fields like travel and tech may be higher because their topics aren’t as technical as those found in finance.

Consumer Finance vs. Institutional Finance vs. Wealth Management

Next, we examined engagement benchmarks for the three of the biggest subcategories in financial services content: consumer finance, institutional finance, and wealth management.

Consumer finance covers personal money tips and financial literacy, like this Bank of America article about getting the most out of your checking account.

Institutional finance content spans B2B coverage about investment banking and global markets, like this Goldman Sachs report on geopolitical risk.

Wealth management concerns individual portfolios and investing, like this Morgan Stanley profile of a female financial advisor’s philosophy.

To compare the effectiveness of the three subcategories, we looked at average attention time, average finish rate, and average social shares.

Consumer finance, unsurprisingly, dominated the social metrics with an average of 2,046 shares per story. When done right, helpful budgeting and saving tips can go semi-viral because they’re more universal than content from the other subcategories.

However, personal finance advice is also a saturated space. It’s harder to stand out with unique advice since many companies recycle the same topics, headlines, and themes. That may explain why average attention time registers at just 1:18 seconds, almost a minute shorter than the average benchmark for institutional finance.

The success of institutional finance content goes to show that B2B marketing doesn’t have to be dry or boring. There’s a real need for that expertise. And generating 190 shares, on average, is very respectable for B2B content of any kind. These numbers suggest that companies cornering the institutional finance beat are finding creative ways to tie their analysis to relevant news and trending topics people care about.

Lastly, we see that wealth management has room for improvement, particularly the 38 percent finish rate. Marketers creating content about wealth management may not need to drive a lot of social shares, since it’s tailored for a niche audience. Yet there’s still an opportunity to create more fluent and accessible content that holds people’s attention and builds trust.

With that in mind, let’s move to the second part of the report and explore ways financial services companies can build better trust and drive more engagement.

Part II: 5 Keys to High-Performing Financial Services Content

The benchmark data raised a few big questions. First, what are the most valuable financial services companies doing to differentiate themselves? Second, what tactics can financial services marketing pick up from them, regardless of budget? And third, what recommendations could we offer to help finance marketers improve in areas they weren’t doing so well?

To answer those questions, we used Contently’s Storybook technology to analyze 2,292 pieces of financial services content from Fortune 500 brands. Here are our biggest takeaways.

1. Create social videos and infographics
2. Invest in paid distribution on Facebook
3. Develop buyer enablement content to drive conversions
4. Focus on employee education and advocacy
5. Get creative with compliance

1. Create social-friendly videos and infographics

Marketers default to creating written content because it’s easier and cheaper. But brands that rely on churning out generic blog posts are failing to give people what they want: visual content.

Our industry analysis found that videos and infographics outclassed other content formats in terms of average social shares. In fact, video drove eight times as many shares as articles. Infographics, meanwhile, saw twice as many shares as articles. (We’ll get to social distribution trends in the next section.)

(Note: Our dataset excludes LinkedIn shares, because LinkedIn has closed off their API from all third-party analytics tools.)

Most people working in marketing today understand there’s value in video, but many are hesitant to invest in the medium.

When done well, it’s worth it. Visual content is the most effective way to simplify complex technical information, especially for visual learners. One of the most budget-friendly tactics is to produce short explainer videos optimized for social channels. Mint, for example, launched the WTFinance series a few years ago, breaking down major personal finance concepts in 45-second clips that are easy to digest.

If you get the green light for video, the last thing you want to do is stock your YouTube page with clips of two people talking on stage for an hour. To produce videos that resonate with your audience, pay attention to these three areas.

2. Invest in paid distribution on Facebook

Reports are Facebook’s demise are largely overblown. It still attracts over 2 billion people every month, and remains the most effective social distribution channel for both B2C and B2B content.

According to Instapage, the average CPC on Facebook for financial services ads is $3.72—more than double the average ($1.72).

However, this pales in comparison to the CPC on Google for top finserv keywords.

Using SEMRush, we found the average CPC for 10 of the most popular content-adjacent search keywords in financial services for comparison:

Here, we see an average CPC of $16.39 for paid search, meaning Facebook is almost five times cheaper. Not only does referral traffic from social posts help organic search rankings, but you’re also likely to drive additional traffic from the “social lift” of people resharing that content on Facebook.

3. Develop buyer enablement content to drive conversions

When done right, content marketing impacts the entire customer journey. To tie content to revenue, your stories should eventually spark an action—filling out a form, opening an account, signing up for a credit card. In other words, your work assists the customer until they’re ready to make a smart decision related to your company.

We used StoryBook to analyze the most shared content by topic. The most engaging topics—such as reducing risk, insurance 101, and tax planning—tie back to buying decisions. Some news content related to mortgages and insurance also finished near the top of the list.

It’s fitting that content about risk and planning resonated enough for people to share. This kind of advice tends to be practical and applicable to a large audience. State Farm, for instance, drove thousands of shares by packaging together “a collection of articles to help your teen be a safe driver.” The series includes insurance advice for students, info on the costs of certain driving violations, and tips for driving in different conditions. State Farm also includes a calculator tool at the bottom of every article to get a quote, creating a clear path to purchase.

Focusing on enablement content helps brands invest in evergreen financial tools like calculators. These tools empower buyers, letting people navigate a complex decision without explicitly selling to them.

For example, Bank of America built a dedicated page to hold 25 user-friendly tools and calculators that cover retirement, investing, college planning, and personal finance. Creating this kind of content typically doesn’t require a lot of money or time. Take a look at the after-tax return calculator above, which only asks users to fill out two fields before giving them a personalized report.

4. Focus on employee education and advocacy

The success of financial content depends on trust. A blog post full of uniquely insightful 401(k) tips can miss the mark if it doesn’t come from the right source.

The National Foundation for Credit Counseling found that only 25 percent of U.S adults would turn to a bank or credit union if they needed financial guidance, a number on the decline in recent years. However, 35 percent of adults would have no problem trusting a financial planner or accountant.

The same study revealed that 76 percent of U.S. adults said they could “benefit from advice and answers to everyday financial questions from a professional.” The data highlights a sizable gap of people who may not receive the answers they need simply because they don’t trust big financial organizations.

When looking at share of voice results from our research, a related trend caught our eye.

State Farm was dominating in terms of social shares, driving 70 percent of all social shares among 10 companies including Goldman Sachs, Fannie Mae, and Wells Fargo. Did State Farm have some incredible content marketing secret weapon?

It turns out the answer is yes—although when we started to look around, we saw it wasn’t much of a secret. A lot of their social activity was seeded by company’s insurance agents. For most of the last decade, State Farm has used a tool called Hearsay Social to make it easy for thousands of agents to find and post relevant content on Facebook. This system led to a snowball effect for social sharing.

Marketers love to talk about personalization, but their plans fall flat because of logistics. It’s hard to justify spending a lot of money to create content for a specific audience. That’s how finserv companies end up with general listicles meant for a general audience.

State Farm, meanwhile, incentivized agents to share content by arming them with specific stories that could subtly remind people of the benefits of being insured. According to our research, a short interactive article titled “Frozen Pipe Losses Up in 2018” has generated almost 13,000 Facebook shares.

The article offers clear tips for avoiding frozen pipes and calls out the states with the most frozen pipe water insurance claims. It’s not going to win a Pulitzer, but it’s a helpful piece of content ideal for increasing share of voice.

5. Get creative with compliance

Marketers find few things as grim as compliance. So before we get to the keys of compliance, let’s talk a little bit about death. (Trust me.)

When a famous person passes away, The New York Times can publish a detailed, reported obituary immediately. When Steve Jobs died in 2011, the Times had a 3,500-word article up within an hour. The obituary writers don’t possess other-worldly typing speed; they’re just well prepared. While covering Jobs’s death, for instance, the writing started in 2007. When the time came to let the story go live, all they had to do was give the article a final check.

Mastering the content approval process isn’t as fulfilling as writing an important longform article, but it’s important nonetheless. And with some creative thinking, it doesn’t have to be a headache that gets in the way of your job. You can still publish content at the speed of news.

In highly regulated industries like finance and insurance, you can’t just publish whatever you want, whenever you feel like it. Brands have to deal with oversight groups like the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). You can, however, work with your compliance team to find reasonable solutions instead of always treating them like a nuisance.

In financial services, savvy companies tweak their workflows to avoid approval timelines that can last upwards of three months. If you meet with compliance at the start of the project, they’ll at least be aware of what you’re working on and can flag potential issues ahead of time.

An adjusted workflow might look something like this:

Marketers have started to figure out how to build better relationships with compliance teams. If you’re looking for more efficiency, here are a handful of help exercises that can help you increase productivity.

As a final piece of advice, it helps to use some sort technology platform when figuring out compliance. Given that compliance issues often result from a lack of transparency or communication, relying on manual processes doesn’t always work. Technology can handle the logistics, freeing up marketers to focus more on the creative parts of their job. Additionally, it’ll automate certain things like record-keeping, version control, and workflows if you need to review anything down the road.

Conclusion

In 2020, capturing attention is only going to get more competitive in the financial services industry.

The good news is there’s still an opportunity for companies of all sizes to create meaningful content and build long-term relationships with customers. People need financial advice. They crave that expertise. They’re just looking for it to be delivered in a thoughtful way.

The companies that want to stand out and lead the industry need to concentrate on the entire content lifecycle. They have to put as much energy into content distribution, compliance, and sales enablement as they do the creative process. It takes time to build a high-performing content program, but if they put in the work now, their investment will pay off.

If you’re interested in creating high-performing content, click here to set up a free consultation with one of our content experts.

The post Financial Services Content Report: Industry Benchmarks & 5 Keys to Success appeared first on Contently.

Videos shorter than 14 seconds can often feel irreverent, disturbing, or evocative, simply because they don’t offer any context. One of my favorites is this clip of a Greek Orthodox baptism ceremony (which looks pretty intense for the baby), cut with audio from The Big Lebowski.

Why is this such a great video haiku? It begins with action (baby being dunked in holy water), and within just a few seconds, the conceit of the joke is obvious. The baby is Lebowski, and the priest is interrogating him. By the time you’ve realized what’s happening and you begin to laugh, the video’s over. This short runtime encourages a replay, and it’s exactly the kind of weird dissonance that would inspire me to share in a group text.

Now, I’m not telling marketers to start putting Coen brothers audio on weird clips they find online, but I am asking you to borrow a few tactics. Video, whether from Reddit meme-lords or media companies, is the backbone of the internet. You shouldn’t forge ahead into video production without analyzing what the greats have done before you.

Here are 10 tips for video marketers, straight from movie studios, pop stars, mainstream publishers, and media companies.

1. Create video you’d actually want to see

We often counsel brands to value customer experience over intuition. However, before you start creating a video strategy, you should still take some time to prioritize yourself and your team. When you’re brainstorming, try to think of videos you would actually watch if they came from somewhere else.

Allow yourself to get a little weird too. This is the internet, after all. If you’re into something, odds are you’re not alone. W Magazine took a chance with its ASMR Interview series, and by challenging celebrity guests to create beloved cult content, the video team found a few unexpected gems. Rapper Cardi B, it turns out, is a fantastic ASMRtist, as evidence by her W ASMR video, which has almost 25 million views. If someone on W’s team hadn’t already been an ASMR fan, they wouldn’t have known to pitch the series.

2. Make different cuts for different social platforms

It’s a good rule of thumb to avoid uploading long videos to social channels. People scrolling through feeds aren’t likely to stop and watch something 10 minutes long. If it looks good, they’ll either click through to your site or save it for later.

Use social to drive readers to your site. Post flashy images or “sizzle reels” from your video product and encourage those curious to hit the “link in bio,” if you’re on Instagram. You can put the link right in the post on Twitter or Facebook.

Chopping up video in different forms for social distribution is a strategy used by modern pop stars and movie studios alike. You can see how Taylor Swift’s social media team prepped for the release of her 2019 single “You Need to Calm Down.” Before dropping her music video, Swift posted eight still shots, one short clip, and one GIF from the video to her Instagram. Her team also evidently distributed this text-based clip to all the guest stars in the music video, and they each posted it to their feeds in the hours leading up to the release.

My friend @TaylorSwift13 asked me to be in her new music video, “You Need To Calm Down.” It premieres tomorrow! Now I need to calm down. pic.twitter.com/NQFMY0e12q

— The Ellen Show (@TheEllenShow) June 16, 2019

If you’re launching a video campaign that your team is especially proud of, borrow a page out of Taylor Swift’s book (as bedazzled as it is) and get your stakeholders involved in promotion. Hand them the assets they’ll need, and produce these assets by chopping up your primary video.

3. Action and dialogue in the first three seconds

Although you should make video with your target audience in mind, you can’t create video hoping that every viewer gives you undivided attention. Your target audience won’t be settling into a home theater with a beer and no extra devices, ready to focus solely on what you’ve made. Realistically, they’re watching on their phone on the subway, or they’re scrolling on their office desktop while picking at a salad.

For this reason, you don’t want to start off with a company logo or some unnecessary filler. Viewers are supposed to care about the story in the video more than the source. You can simply drag that logo to the end of the video and leave it there.

The first few seconds of any video are prime real estate. Just look at how all movie studios now place five seconds of flashy action before every trailer on YouTube. It’s like a mini trailer for a trailer, which is a condemnation of our shrinking attention spans, but don’t think about it too long. It’s just the reality of the internet now, and your brand needs to create accordingly.

4. Give your video series time to take off

There’s an understanding among publishers of comic books and serialized novels that stories with several installments can take time to ramp up. That’s especially true in TV, where shows, even ones with significant hype, build up a viewership over time thanks to word of mouth.

You can see the lasting effect in this graph depicting Game of Thrones viewership:

When you’re creating episodic video in a series, you want to wait until the third installment to figure out your ROI. Then you can decide whether you want to axe the project or green-light more episodes. In short, give people a chance to get on board.

5. Cultivate an audience by listening to what they have to say

One great example of a video campaign that addresses the audience’s desires directly is Wired’s Autocorrect Series. The conceit is simple: Celebrities answer the most popular questions about themselves that people type into Google. That’s it.

It’s a genius formula: Beloved celebrity + exclusive on-camera interview + only the questions average people want answered. It works because Wired values search data over editorial opinion.

When you’re in the drawing board stage, be conscious of digital habits. Make note of the angles and styles that give you pause. Keep in mind, even if you’re working for a B2B brand, your target audience is ultimately people. They may be watching your videos about software or business solutions, but they still need to be entertained.

6. Showcase your best on-camera talent, not your execs

Although GQ certainly has a robust team of editorial strategists, writers, and hosts, the men’s lifestyle publication often outsources its video content to hosts who can explain things with optimum charisma and insight.

GQ could have had its film editor or pop culture reporters break down actor Jon Hamm’s career on camera, but that video would never have gotten as much traction as the alternative. In GQ’s popular video series, actors and creators comment on their own resumes and portfolios, which makes for a far more interesting trip down memory lane than a critic’s round-up.

7. Figure out what your competitors are doing and do it better

It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there, and every dog knows how to use Final Cut Pro. To get ahead, check out the multimedia offerings of your competitors and one-up them.

them, a queer publication from Conde Nast, nabbed the drag makeover series idea from Logo, the queer television network. When the drag queen reality competition series RuPaul’s Drag Race was originally airing on Logo (it later moved to Vh1 for Season 6), Logo had a complementary web series called “Drag Makeup Tutorial.” In that series, contestants from Drag Race take viewers step by step through their face-painting process. The videos were loosely based on YouTube’s popular make-up tutorial trend.

Conde Nast did Logo one better when it launched “Drag Me,” a video series in which Drag Race contestants make-over other celebrities using their signature styles. This way, viewers get to see their favorite contestants in drag as they show off their make-up skills. They get the bonus of seeing more celebrities undergo the drag transformation. It’s a pretty clear improvement on the original.

8. Optimize for mobile and use closed captions

NowThis, one of the most successful social video production companies, understands the value of catering to mobile viewers. Most of the company’s snippet-long videos are set to stock music, and they loop original footage alongside stock and archival clips.

Ideally, you’d watch the videos with the volume on to digest all the info. However, they’re designed to be accessible even if you’re scrolling on your phone with no headphones too. Every brand that distributes content on social media should take note.

Thousands of Swiss women walked out of their jobs and into the streets to demand equal pay (In partnership with @TIMESUPNOW #TIMESUP) pic.twitter.com/MAV3KBGe8l

— NowThis Impact (@nowthisimpact) June 17, 2019

9. Stick to ideas that inspire strong emotions

The Dodo, owned by Group Nine Media, is another video production company that specializes in social feeds. The Dodo team produces videos about animals, including wildlife, domesticated farm animals, animal rights, and everything related to pets.

https://www.instagram.com/p/By0tqR0FzXb/

Their content is optimized to be as emotionally resonant as possible. Most videos feel like someone chemically engineered them to make you feel giddy or furious. When it comes to The Dodo and emotional stories, there is no in-between.

10. Carve out a space for exclusivity

In addition to on-camera interviews and music explainers, Pitchfork sends reporters to sold-out concerts and posts the stylized footage on its YouTube channel. The publisher knows its audience. If you’re a regular Pitchfork reader, you’re probably into under-appreciated bands who aren’t playing arenas yet, which means you’re a great candidate to watch concert footage.

By securing the rights to concert footage and uploading it, Pitchfork makes itself into an exclusive destination for visuals that would otherwise require travel, ticket money, and the strain of standing in a crowded mosh-pit for four hours. In this way, they’re providing viewers with new value that’s difficult to access, which builds trust and commands authority.

The post 10 Video Tactics That Marketers Should Borrow From Media Companies appeared first on Contently.

All the possible pitfalls that social media marketers face are laid out below, in this handy infographic from Red Website Design. From refusing to discuss issues with your followers to forgetting to attach visuals to most posts, there are so many ways to do social badly.

The simple way to avoid them is to set a strategy before you start posting. A detailed content strategy can and should include social. You may not be able to sidestep every bad habit, but building that plan will force you to justify decisions.

Overall, succeeding on social media hinges on how social you are. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, and Reddit aren’t just RSS feeds for blasting out every single piece of content you create. Each platform is a unique place that attracts a slightly different demographic, and most of them have local vernacular and their own set of values. Of course, some things can change—Instagram captions are getting longer, young consumers are no longer rushing to Facebook, brands are performing mental health services on Twitter, and all platforms are experimenting with ephemeral “stories.” But it’s your job as a content marketer to keep tabs on these shifting tides and update your strategy accordingly.

What’s at risk? Your audience’s attention. When it comes to optimizing content for social media marketing, we all have a lot to lose, and a lot more to gain.

The post Infographic: 15 Mistakes That Could Tank Your Social Media Strategy appeared first on Contently.

I’ve been told that at the end of the Q&A, I promised I’d answer some of the outstanding questions in my first Ask a Content Strategist column for 2019. So I’m going to do just that.

Before I get to the questions, though, I have to make a programming note. I’m leaving on my 2-month Contently sabbatical in January. So if you want any content strategy advice before March, you’ll have to track me down in South America. Just look for the boat with a giant New York Knicks flag blasting Robyn.

What are the most effective way you’ve seen companies getting departments on board with this concept of a centralized content strategy? So many different departments are stuck in their old ways and want to continue on.

-June, Illinois

Complacency is the enemy of good content. So many marketing departments are happy churning out the same four crappy white papers year after year, even if they perform about as well as Donald Trump at a spelling bee.

I’d recommend reaching out to the individual lines of business first and ask them to collaborate. If that doesn’t work, you’ll need to get an executive on board to drive the effort from up high. Here’s how to make that happen:

1. Conduct a content audit to reveal wasted content.

If the other LOBs inside your company are operating without a content strategy, chances are their content isn’t performing. A study by Beckon found that the top 5 percent of branded content garners 95 percent of all engagement. SiriusDecisions estimates that 65 percent of B2B content receives no engagement at all. Conduct a content audit to pinpoint content that’s been published but not seen.

The message: No Content Strategy = Wasted Resources.

2. Show the exec what a good content strategy looks like—even if you have to talk up your competitors.

In an ideal situation, you can come at this from a position of strength. You’ve implemented a successful content strategy within your individual LOB, and you want to spread that model to the rest of the team. If so, create a compelling case study about your own work. Show how your content strategy transformed your marketing, improved efficiency, and delivered superior results.

If not, come handy with case studies from competitors. The fear of falling behind is a fantastic motivator. Here’s a handy flipbook of over 30 case studies to get you started.

3. Present a clear game plan for implementing a centralized content strategy.

Our content maturity model and content strategy playbooks can help.

What are your thoughts about user-generated content? For example, emojis and the use of emojis for targeted marketing. How can I, as a marketer, identify such hidden layers of content marketing?

—Jagjit, Location Unknown

It’s impossible to have a user-generated emoji. Emoji creation is controlled by a powerful consortium of tech bros. (I wrote about it for the Observer. It’s wild.)

The best user-generated content comes from campaigns where you give people a good reason to share something with you. For instance, four years ago, we created a public freelance rates database where freelancers could anonymously submit what they’d been paid by various companies. The idea was to create transparency across the industry and help freelance creatives negotiate.

Recently, we combined that user-generated data with internal data to create a badass freelance rates calculator so you can easily see what to charge for future projects. People contributed to this database because we gave them value back. That’s the only situation in which UGC works.

What would you say are the absolute essential components of a content marketing strategy going into 2019?

—Amanda, Phoenix

Our editor-in-chief, Jordan Teicher, did an excellent job mapping this out in detail a few weeks ago in his first content marketing playbook. I highly recommend you check it out.

The seven key components are:

1. Set goals and KPIs and measurement framework

2. Understand your audience and the challenges they face

3. Perform an SEO analysis and craft an SEO strategy

4. Conduct a gap analysis

5. Map content to the buyer’s journey

6. Develop a distribution strategy

7. Create a content calendar

Oh, and buy whoever controls your budget a really expensive bottle of their favorite liquor.

Neil Patel recently said content marketing will be over next year (at least written text). What are your opinions about that?

—Alexandre

Disclaimer: I can’t find any evidence online of Neil Patel saying this. Given that he emails me 20 different 5,000-word articles every week, I doubt he believes such a thing.

For years, people have predicted that text content was about to die. A few years ago, publishers were so tricked by Facebook’s BS video metrics and promises that they fired half their writing staff in the great “pivot to video” tragedy of 2016. Now they’re firing all of their video people and hiring writers back. Because much like boot cut jeans, text will never die.

It’s not terribly exciting or tweet-worthy, but content isn’t going to change dramatically in just one year. The content that performs well in 2019 will look a lot like the content that performed well in 2018.

Content will remain an important part of every touchpoint with your customers and prospects. The format will change depending on the channel and purpose. Sometimes it’ll be an article with an interactive graphic on your blog. Sometimes it’ll be a Facebook video with overlay text. Sometimes it’ll be an email newsletter with text and images. Sometimes it’ll be a pitch deck that tells the story of your company. The important thing is that it’s content your audience will enjoy and find helpful.

Sure, we’ll probably start using Facebook a little less because we’re seven days away from learning that they’ve been selling our data to Amazon because of some crazy bet Mark Zuckerberg lost at Burning Man. And older people might start using Instagram more, mostly to horrify their kids. But as Mark Ritson wrote in this incredible Marketing Week piece, the marketing landscape isn’t going to just up and change all of a sudden.

So don’t go chasing some new fad. There are no secret shortcuts to good marketing. Just try to help people. Listen to their problems. Find out what they’re searching and asking. Pay attention to where they spend time online. And then reach them there with helpful material that’s actually fun to watch, read, and listen to.

There are no magical marketing tricks. But if you spend every day genuinely trying to help your audience, you can never really fail.

Joe Lazauskas is Contently’s head of content strategy and co-author of The Storytelling Edge. Ask him your most pressing content strategy questions here or email him at lazer@contently.com.

The post Ask a Content Strategist: Will Written Content Be Obsolete By Next Year? appeared first on Contently.

Yes, Tom Hanks—and not just because of his calming presence. Hanks has enjoyed an illustrious film career precisely because he is not a character actor. Audiences feel comforted and engaged when they spot his face (or even just hear his voice) onscreen. He makes small adjustments to his beloved persona depending on the film in which he’s appearing, but at the core, he’s still recognizable. His characters are likable in the same way, whether he’s playing a cowboy doll, a WWII soldier, or a man who just discovered a mermaid. Remember that.

The trouble with defining a company’s voice is that rigid guidelines can stifle you. Like the personality of a human, your brand has to retain some elasticity to appeal to different people in different places. Your brand may have a central personality, but it needs to be able to convey different tones.

For instance, your blog posts may read as professional and enthusiastic, but your Facebook copy promoting each blog post can’t sound exactly like what you post on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Instagram. You might want to dial down the enthusiasm on Twitter and LinkedIn, and dial it up a notch on Instagram and Pinterest.

To explain how brands should communicate across social channels, I spoke to a handful of audience development managers and social media strategists. Here’s what they had to say about the way brand voice changes on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram.

Your brand voice on Facebook

As the largest social network in the world, Facebook presents an interesting opportunity for brands. With billions of users, there’s potential for incredible reach, but it’s hard to have a distinct identity or voice.

According to Brooklynn Kramer, client success manager at Qnary, an agency that manages social media presences for executives, Facebook is the platform that most values a sense of nostalgia. Effective facebook copy tends to be “slightly informal, familiar, and accessible.” The user base is far more intergenerational than say, Instagram or Twitter, which means it’s prime real estate for content that recalls the reader’s “golden years,” whether you’re trying to connect with retirees over 65 or millennials recalling the ’90s.

Facebook’s algorithm changes in recent years have attempted to strengthen the site’s focus on community connection and shared memories. Kramer advises clients to make the reader feel as if they’re relating to others through a common experience. Even a B2B brand can address that desire by using phrases like “Remember when” or “Everyone knows the feeling.”

If you can’t lead with nostalgia, another option is to have your social copy suggest that a larger conversation is happening without your audience. This kind of call to action—inform yourself, develop an opinion, and join the debate—works well. You want to create the sensation that you’ve beaten the reader to a story and you’re cluing them in.

Elly Belle, a freelance social media manager and engagement strategist, said brands should post content on Facebook as long as they’re challenging the status quo. “Facebook is a place where arguments are born,” she told, but it’s also where “everyone goes to browse Delish videos. You want to work to catch someone’s eye as they scroll through their feed at the end of the day.”

Facebook audiences want to be entertained and distracted. So lead with your most punchy, human content and save the jargon for other platforms.

Your brand voice on LinkedIn

The social strategists we spoke to called LinkedIn “underrated,” “under-explored,” and “weird,” and most of them were unsure if B2C content worked there at all.

“LinkedIn is like that guy at the office who’s nice enough to ask you how your weekend was, but he seems kind of boring and plain,” Belle said. “You recognize it’s good to have some relationship with him, but you’d never go out for drinks after work.”

Take IBM, for instance. To frame a blog post about the company’s chief human resources officer on LinkedIn, the social media team wrote: “IBM CHRO Diane Gherson shares her insights on how artificial intelligence is fundamentally changing the HR function.”

On Twitter, they posted a similar post about a researcher on staff but described her dramatic story a little more:

Then: Lisa Amini age 2, dreaming of becoming an astronaut. Now: She is a Distinguished Engineer & Lab Director of IBM Research Cambridge, exploring and creating next-gen AI/ML capabilities, and chairing the first AI Research Week. #MITIBM #SheCanSTEM #WIML pic.twitter.com/F1GQW2RRTR

— IBM Research (@IBMResearch) October 3, 2018

According to 2017 statistics from Pew Research Institute, most LinkedIn users are between 30 and 49 years old, and most are college graduates living in urban areas. The site’s users increased dramatically to half a billion between 2016 and 2017, but it’s not clear how often LinkedIn users actually visit the site other than when they need to look for jobs or job candidates. Still, dismissing the platform outright is a misguided mindset, according to AdWeek’s Dan Tynan, who declared it “the Facebook of B2B marketing” in 2017.

One could argue that LinkedIn is the social platform best suited to for brands because users are either hoping to find hirable talent or they’re hoping to become hirable talent. So if your company’s content is related to their searches, users will be grateful to find it.

What does this mean for your brand’s tone? Take LinkedIn’s ultra-specific purpose as permission to get straight to the point when writing social copy. You still need a fresh angle to attract users, but the competition is far less fierce than on Facebook.

Your brand on Twitter

#TipTuesday stinky gym clothes? Give them the smell test before transferring from the washer to the dryer. If the smell remains, re-wash. https://t.co/XahTr46UDv pic.twitter.com/2khUF4gNJI

— Whirlpool Corporation (@WhirlpoolCorp) September 24, 2018

No other platform excites and beguiles social media editors as much as Twitter. One strategist called it ‘the ‘id’ of the whole ecosystem.”

Kristen Gaerlan, a senior copywriter at Publicis who has worked on social for brands like Wal-Mart and Merck, emphasized the importance of speed and wit in Twitter copy. Brands often feel “they just can’t move fast enough to keep up with the conversation,” she said. “People want to know what you’re doing at this very second. Don’t tell them about something that happened past tense; it’s old news.”

This means Twitter is the perfect place to experiment with your brand’s tone—your audience there may work in media, so they’ll appreciate a more experimental or daring voice. Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean a B2B company should start trafficking in memes, but Twitter is the first place you might try out some jokes about your industry. If you’ve written any humorous content poking fun at the status quo, you’ll want to share it here first. It’s also the best place to trade gentle barbs with competitors to show everyone in the industry that you’re all playing in the same sandbox.

According to Belle, Twitter is ” a great place to try to cut through the noise of the world. Either you have something valuable to add to a conversation or something funny and uplifting.” Though professionals might follow your brand on Instagram to get HR updates and watch your progress, they won’t follow your CEO on Twitter if all he does is share press releases.

Your brand voice on Instagram

https://www.instagram.com/p/BjC22RAADy6/?utm_source=ig_embed

Instagram is primarily known as a place for B2C products and B2B culture. You can drive brand awareness and engagement via Instagram with copy and visuals that are overtly positive. For that reason, the classic marketing tone, devoid of any irony, works best, making the platform a safer space for brands than a place like Twitter.

However, the line between user-generated content and branded content is very blurry on Instagram, more so than any other platform. Ads are becoming harder to spot, particularly from influencers who don’t always disclose their relationships with brands.

Although Instagram is still working out the kinks of paid promotion, the platform is arguably the most friendly to hashtagging. Sprout Social found that seven out of 10 hashtags used on Instagram are branded, and 80 percent of all users follow at least one brand. What’s more, 65 percent of the top performing posts on the platform involve products in some way.

These statistics mean your brand’s tone on Instagram doesn’t have to shroud a CTA in clever copy. In fact, the clearer you are about what you want your users to do, the better. Have them swipe up for a free trial, tag a friend to enter a sweepstakes, or click the “link in bio.” Though branded content can ruffle feathers on Facebook or Twitter, it appears most users on Instagram consider it par for the course.

The post Should Your Brand Voice Stay the Same Across Social Channels? appeared first on Contently.

Facebook’s relationship with some of its users has gone downhill since the 2016 presidential election. In March of 2018, Facebook messed up again. The social network is still recovering from its data scandal, after which it lost the trust of many of its users. Some people have opted to give Facebook a second chance after it promised to increase security and ensure nothing like this will happen again, but for many others, this breach was too grave of an impasse after all that’s happened the last few years.

A recent Pew Research study found that 54 percent of all Facebook users over 18 have increased their privacy settings, while 42 percent have taken a break from the platform for several weeks or longer.

These percentages increase in younger users, who are more likely to be over Facebook altogether. Forty-four percent of users between 18 and 29 have deleted the app from their phone, compared to 12 percent of users age 65 and above. Additionally, 64 percent of younger users have tightened their security, while only a third of the 65-and-up group felt the same need. Half of all users that downloaded the data Cambridge Analytica collected then proceeded to delete the app from their phone, and 79 percent promptly upped their security.

I know plenty of people who were becoming disillusioned with Facebook after its latest algorithm update, and others who felt too much time on the site was negatively impacting their mental health. For users like them, the data breach was the final straw in a partnership that was already deteriorating.

While a number of Facebook users remain loyal to the platform and haven’t severed ties, it’s clear that the social network will have to take some measures to earn back the public’s trust. In this case, apology flowers probably won’t cut it.

The post Attention Brands: Young Americans Are Breaking Up With Facebook appeared first on Contently.

On September 24, Google unveiled plans for new search features. The centerpiece of the revamped search will be Google Discover, which offers users a customized content feed regardless of whether they type in a search query. It’s unclear if Discover will also draw on past searches, but people can pick topics that interest them to fill the feed. The recommendations won’t just be breaking news, either. According to Karen Corby, Google’s group product manager for search, the move will still serve up evergreen pieces of content that “aren’t new to the web, but are new to you.”

Sound familiar? This version of Google starts to look a lot like parts of Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, and Pinterest. As we’ve pointed out on this site in the past, tech companies like to copy each other. Instagram copied Snapchat’s Stories feature. Google is morphing search into a Facebook-esque newsfeed. And word’s out that Instagram is testing a repost feature that’ll function just like Twitter retweets. We’re not that far away from a world where all major platforms have slightly different versions of the same features.

Google Discover does have an important distinction, though: It’s still not social. You can’t like or retweet or upvote (for now). If you work for a publisher or a brand, that has its pros and cons. You won’t be able to build a community or interact with your audience, but I’d argue Google is making a smart play. Social media platforms have gotten hammered for facilitating filter bubbles and digital mobs. A curated content feed—without loud commentary from obnoxious high school acquaintances—sounds appealing, especially coming from a go-to destination like Google. It’s like the quiet night you need at home while everyone else is out raging recklessly.

The announcement could also signal a new approach to SEO. Anyone who creates content for a digital audience has had to appease search algorithms. That often leads to forcing keywords into titles, subheads, meta descriptions, and more. Google has definitely improved its SEO requirements over the last few years to favor high-quality content, but most marketers and publishers I talk to still feel like they have to play a game they don’t totally understand. By giving users a chance to find stories without entering a search, some of that awkwardness disappears.

In a blog post about the release, Nick Fox, Google’s VP of product & design for search and assistant, said, “All of this marks a fundamental transformation in the way Search understands interests and longer journeys to help you find information.”

It’s no accident that Fox used the word “journeys” multiple times in his article. As brands and publishers continue to focus on the customer experience and loyal audiences, search engines and social media platforms have the technology to power those long-term relationships. Google will likely continue to prioritize ad sales from paid search, but these updates suggest the search giant is taking a more nuanced approach to content discovery.

The post Google’s New Search Could Significantly Change Content Discovery appeared first on Contently.

Facebook noticeably updated its algorithm earlier this year to prioritize content from friends and family over publishers. For the millions of Americans who rely on the social network as their source of worldly information, this inevitably means they’re already going to agree with a lot of what they’re seeing online. Facebook has already come under fire for perpetuating the spread of fake news, a problem the algorithm changes were supposed to fix. Instead, it’s ensured that users can stay safely in their existing filter bubbles.

To get a sense of just what my world would look like without any other social media influences, I decided to do an experiment: For one day, I could only get my news from Facebook.

A bubble unpopped

As a social media editor, this wasn’t the easiest task. Fortunately, we have tools like Buffer and Tweetdeck, so I can take care of my job without needing to see everything coming across Twitter, Snapchat, Reddit, and the like.

On Facebook, my feed is typically dominated by dogs. I follow groups like Dogspotting and Cool Dog Group because with so much insanity floating around the world on a daily basis, it does feel comforting when 80 percent of my newsfeed consists of animal photos and videos. (This is also a good time to remind everyone that Facebook groups are still an effective way to reach your audience.) As hard as the news can be to digest, however, I have found myself missing some of the timely, tougher stories that Facebook has deemed “less friendly.”

I do follow a fair amount of publishers, such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, Vice, and the Guardian. But as expected, I had to scroll through all of the friend statuses, shared photos, and requests for recommendations before I came across a single news article. Even then, it was a New York Times clip my father had shared about the effect of the recession and housing crisis on the middle class—not a post from the Times directly. So before I could even register the title of the piece, I saw his commentary about it, which I happened to agree with. The bubble remained un-popped.

I embarked on this quest after the New York primary elections and in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence, so after this link, I did start to see a fair amount of posts from my friends about those current events. However, it was always accompanied by their commentary. Going back to the bubble effect: Most of my Facebook friends still share my political and social beliefs, so I usually agreed with their comments, but it did take pages of scrolling until I found a post without any personal biases attached.

After a few more dog photos, event announcements, and advertisements, I came across my first post from an actual publisher.

The article turned out to be a two-year-old personal essay by a woman who worked as a housekeeper and discovered some very personal things about her clients. Was it a fascinating and entertaining insight into a facet of New York that I don’t know much about? Yes. Would I count it as news? Not exactly.

Video reigns supreme

Next up was a video from Vice teasing a new documentary about knife crime in London. Vice’s content is often some of the most interesting and entertaining on my feed, and this effective video was no exception. I paused my scrolling to watch the entire preview, which ran four minutes and 29 seconds.

During my experiment, I noticed that most of the publishers I follow—aside from The Guardian—were more likely to post videos than text articles. Every company talks about investing in more video, even if that increasingly means firing other teams to “pivot.” Additionally, organic reach for brands and publishers has dropped and stayed low over the last few years. But if there’s one area that can still bring in strong reach, it’s video.

Even as I scrolled through Facebook hoping to come across news stories, I found myself more likely to stick with videos than to click on an article if the excerpt didn’t immediately grab me.

What did grab me as I kept scrolling was a video about the rise of Korean beauty masks in America, courtesy of Travel Insider, an off-shoot of Business Insider that pops up on my feed a lot. The clip takes viewers through the benefits of the masks and where to get them.

Travel Insider’s appeal comes from posts that are quick, flashy, and non-controversial. Unusual trend stories like this are catnip for Facebook’s algorithm because they tend to spark conversations and positive reactions. As users grow fatigued from all of the political polemics, that widespread appeal on a safer topic may have more of a chance to stand out.

Breaking news

Just when I thought I’d scrolled through every publisher post, my notifications blew up as I got three breaking news alerts from followed publishers about Rod Rosenstein’s resignation. This feature does set Facebook apart from other social networks.

When scrolling through social media channels, I assume that I’ll find out more about the world on Twitter. That’s where media members seem to hang out the most. Twitter was the original platform to include a “trending” section, and you can search #BreakingNews for latest updates, but Facebook has a much more direct notification system when news breaks.

But while endlessly scrolling through Facebook, I did come across more news than I expected, even if most of it was shared by my friends. (I suppose it also depends what you classify as “news.” Do I think hurricane updates count more than videos about face masks? Yes, but trend stories do have their place.)

Despite the biases of its algorithm that edges out certain publishers, I still think of Facebook as a place to find out what’s going on in the world. Its homepage is still the original News Feed, after all. But you have to put in effort to balance out what you’re going to see. I’ve tried to follow more news outlets and publishers that may not share the exact same political views as me.

So what’s my takeaway from the experiment? It’s not the worst place to start if you want to find out interesting information … as long as you know what to expect and have a willingness to do more research on whatever you come across.

The post The News, According to Facebook appeared first on Contently.

Jannelle, Halifax, Nova Scotia

In our weekly editorial meetings, we go around the room pitching stories. The vibe is fairly professional and even-keeled … until it comes to me. I might start out measured, but inevitably, I’ll launch into a PG-13 tirade about some content marketing topic. Editorial meetings are my safe space, and my creative process (unfortunately and unintentionally) involves channeling Gary Vaynerchuk.

Jordan, our editor-in-chief, will nod along with a smirk on his face and then say, “That’s actually a good idea.”

[Ed. note: This is true.]

Two weeks ago, my weekly rant was about content marketing design—specifically, the many Fortune 2000 brands with content hubs that look like they were designed by a half-blind fisherman in 1998… and haven’t been updated since.

Design is incredibly important in content marketing. If the design of a content site is terrible, people won’t give the words a chance—they’ll perceive it all as low quality.

According to a Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab study, 46.1 percent of people say that “design look” is the top criteria for perceiving the credibility of a brand. Design and UX impact read time, bounce rate, conversion rate, etc. Just imagine if Contently looked like it was a forum built in 2000. This isn’t surprising. According to a 2012 Forrester CSO study, 90 percent of information transmitted to the brain is visual, and the brain processes visuals 60,000x faster in the brain than text.

In other words, hubs that look like the image below don’t exactly scream “trustworthy” and “innovative.”

Finance brands tend to publish higher quality and more sophisticated content than other industries. But going from HBR or the Wall Street Journal to most finance brand blogs is like going from streaming Hulu to popping in a faded VCR tape you found under your dad’s couch.

Guess dad was really into Billy Banks workout videos in the ’80s

I’ve seen plenty of marketers baffled when readers don’t convert to customers. Sometimes it’s because the content isn’t very good. But more often, it’s because the site design makes it extremely difficult to convert in any way. People won’t sign up for your newsletter unless you prompt them to do so. They won’t check out products related to the topics you’re covering unless you make it easy.

One brand that does this extremely well is Marriott, with Marriott Traveler magazine. Traveler has over 40 editions around the globe, all run by Marc Graser, a former staffer at Variety and Entertainment Weekly, who refuses to publish any stories that feel like hotel ads. Instead, Traveler operates with the integrity of a high-quality travel magazine, publishing fun stories about little-known travel gems.

(Disclosure: Marriott is a Contently client. But read Traveler. It’s good.)

Even though Marriott Traveler doesn’t push product, it drives millions of dollars in direct revenue for the hotel giant. How? The site does a really good job of recommending related products and experiences to the story that you’re reading.

Take this article from Marriott about lesser-known, kind of weird things to do in Midtown Manhattan. It’s a smart addition to Traveler because it solves a common problem for tourists in New York City: Most of the hotels are in midtown, which gets boring after you’ve done the standard tourist activities. Everything seems like one giant M&M megastore—an artificial tourist trap designed to steal your money and give you diabetes. Most people figure that if you want to find anything classically “New York,” you need to head to the Village, Harlem, or the outer boroughs. This piece, however, details old-school New York attractions that fell under the radar, like a Houdini museum. Hell, I’ve lived in Manhattan for a decade and have never heard of that.

The article doesn’t plug Marriott at all, but it makes you think that maybe staying in midtown—where Marriott happens to have several hotels—isn’t so bad after all. And once you finish reading, Traveler makes it very easy to book a room or a Marriott Rewards experience with a module at the bottom of the page. Marriott essentially acts as the advertiser of its own high-quality editorial content.

And it works! Marriott Traveler would drive a fraction of the revenue for the company if the site didn’t make it so easy to book a hotel. Without that hard ROI, there’s little chance Marriott would have invested so heavily in Traveler, launching new editions around the globe every few months. Since the ad exists in a place where consumers are used to seeing advertising, it doesn’t corrupt the editorial experience. Everyone wins.

How do you create content that drives customer engagement while delivering ROI for the business?

-KL, London

This overlaps with what I wrote above about Marriott Traveler, but I’ll repeat it here with a twist of different analysis. Also, I may be a little conceited, but I’m not conceited enough to assume that you read everything that I wrote. (But if you do, thank you, I love you, and please scroll down to the next question.)

Marriott executes a strategy that I wrote about a couple of weeks ago on this blog. The best brand blogs follow the law of Poliakov’s Pyramid, which illustrates the narrow band of content that people actually want from brands—stories related to their interests and passions, and content that helps them do their job better.

In short, B2C brands should ask, “How can I help people live their lives better?”

B2B brands should ask, “How can I help people do their jobs better?”

Both groups should slap themselves with a fish if the primary answer to that question is just “our product!”

If adhere to Poliakov’s Pyramid—and if your answers are different than what’s already readily available on the web—you have a damn good chance to succeed. If you don’t, you’ll come across as the brand equivalent of the boring, self-absorbed jock villain in every ’80s teen movie.

Which tactics can be used to figure out the questions your target group is asking about a specific (read: technical) topic?

-Griselda, Stockholm

Let’s finish with a bulleted list, shall we? I promise there’s a kicker in here somewhere.

• Search data: It’s the holy grail of user questions. I love this simple overview by Moz on how to integrate search queries into your creative process.
• Internal search: What are people looking for on your site?
• Reddit/forum data: BuzzSumo recently integrated a lot of this really useful information.
• Persona interviews: Actually talking to the people you’re trying to reach might seem old school, but it’s super valuable.
• Surveys: We survey newsletter subscribers all the time to learn about their challenges and needs, which drives a lot of our story ideas.
• Help desk, accounts, sales, and other client-facing teams. These groups are a source of anecdotal data that can complement quantifiable research.
• Customer councils: Get your top prospects and clients in a room together and listen to what they’re struggling with. It’s a worthwhile way to get a bounty of valuable data. Facebook does this very well with its major agency and brand clients. In a few years, this will be mandatory when Mark Zuckerberg is named Dark Lord of the Connected Realm.

Joe Lazauskas is Contently’s head of content strategy and co-author of The Storytelling Edge. Ask him your most pressing content strategy questions here, or email him at lazer@contently.com.

The post Ask a Content Strategist: Why Are Brand Blogs So Ugly and Outdated? appeared first on Contently.

Even the savviest social users make common mistakes when managing a brand account. Plenty of brand accounts gain attention for their sass and engaging content, but the number of likes and retweets you get may not be a perfect representation of your true social impact. So before you delete that tweet that only got one like from a super-fan, here are four social media misconceptions that could affect your engagement.

1. Overvaluing vanity metrics

It’s easy to see likes as the currency for social media value and popularity. On my personal social accounts, I certainly get excited when my tweets and photos rack up likes, and I’m far from alone. Research has shown that dopamine, the same chemical boost we get after a victory or a good workout, is released when we receive likes and shares on social media. However, these vanity metrics aren’t always the best indicator of social success.

When evaluating the performance of Contently’s posts, the first thing I look at is the number of clicks a post receives. Most of our social content links to an article or report we want our audience to read, so if they follow through to our site, that’s a better win for us. Sure, it looks nice when 21 people like a post, but I’m much more exited about the 80 clicks, even though the public can’t see that.

Instead of getting discouraged when a promising tweet doesn’t rack up the likes and retweets, pay attention to the clicks and check how long people stay on the page after coming from social. If your post is generating strong engagement, don’t worry so much about the superficial stats.

2. Ignoring dark social shares

Last year, we wrote about the challenges marketers face with dark social shares. Dark social refers to the massive amount of links copied and pasted into emails and messenger apps, rather than shared on traditional distribution platforms via the share button. These links are tough to track, but their circulation can’t be ignored.

Brands and publishers may feel the impulse to produce different types of stories or cut back based solely on the number of easily calculated open shares, but they’d be missing a much bigger picture. According to a study by ShareThis, the content categories most conducive to dark shares are business education, counseling services, self-help, religion, and medical conditions. If your content surrounds any of these topics, it’s especially important not to discount the darker caverns of social shares.

3. Posting the wrong content at the right times

Yes, timing matters. Plenty of studies have reported when, exactly, social posts gain the most attention. But simply posting at the “right” time won’t dramatically alter your social engagement. Just as paying to distribute mediocre content won’t help in the long run, posting poor content at the optimal times isn’t good for business.

Ultimately, even if you catch your audience exactly as they’re checking Twitter on a coffee break or commute, they’ll be less likely to click on your perfectly timed post tomorrow if what you post today is irrelevant or ill-conceived.

Fewer posts is not necessarily a bad thing. At Contently, I schedule seven tweets, four Facebook posts, and two LinkedIn updates per day. Over the years, we’ve worked our way up to those numbers, and have tweaked here and there based on how our audience responds. If you have a small archive of content, maybe one or two posts per day satisfies your audience.

4. Experimenting with the wrong sites

When building your brand’s social presence, it’s tempting to set up profiles on every site. But does your company need a Pinterest, YouTube, and Reddit page? Maybe. B2C clothing and lifestyle companies certainly benefit from a strong Instagram and Pinterest presence, while Reddit can help thought leaders prove their expertise (without being too self-promotional).

But I still see too many brands missing the mark by curating social accounts that don’t actually serve them. Yes, Gen Zers watch two hours of YouTube daily. But if your business doesn’t have the equipment, talent, or budget to make high-quality YouTube videos, then it’s not worth spreading your social media manager too thin. Brands should at least have a Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook page. Finance brands probably don’t need a YouTube page, but hotels that can make quality travel videos will benefit from one.

Just keep in mind it’s all about fit. And if you feel like something isn’t working, stop and adapt. With so much competition for attention, there’s no use going through the motions.

The post 4 Social Media Misconceptions Hurting Your Company appeared first on Contently.

You heard me. Rat groups. After I adopted my first pet rat, Ripley, in 2015, I took her home and realized I had no idea how to take care of her. While researching online, I stumbled into a thriving community of Facebook groups for rat parents. There are groups for sharing toys and cage decor, for matching rat foster parents with “forever home” adoptive parents, and for sharing related memes. (The best meme group is called Ratto Bamboozlin’, and it is a joy.)

Although Facebook’s algorithm changes slowly cleared my feed of posts from publications I follow, all that sweet, sweet rat content has remained. Mark Zuckerberg says he wants Facebook users to primarily interact with posts shared by friends, which means I now get updates from second cousins going on vacation, former coworkers having babies, and fellow rat moms.

Facebook groups have been a hot topic of discussion since last June, when Zuck rolled out updates to “give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.” Whether or not that’s true, the new emphasis disrupted the connection between publications and their audience. For many media companies, especially ones that don’t value SEO, the hit to their Facebook traffic is enough to threaten their existence.

To hold off extinction, some companies have turned to the Facebook group. Publications have started groups that function like a comment section for their readers. Others have used branded Facebook groups to crowdsource ideas for the publication. It’s similar to the Kinja community, a lively group of dedicated readers swapping jabs with staff writers, which Gizmodo Media Group has used on its CMS since Gawker existed (R.I.P.). By inviting loyal followers to a Facebook group, you’re implying that their voices are just as important as their clicks.

How are companies adapting?

Facebook was originally known for organic distribution. Then it became an empire for paid distribution. While brands and publishers may not be able to get referral traffic to their sites like they could a few years ago, they can still support meaningful engagement and loyalty with a Facebook group. The groups foster conversations with a Reddit-style approach, which audiences should appreciate compared to the transactional nature of most social posts.

In March 2017, Condé Nast released an editorial package called Women Who Travel for International Women’s Day. The stories, which varied from a personal essay by Ava Duvernay to e-commerce articles about airline-friendly beauty products, resulted in a spike of engagement. Thinking quickly, Condé Nast created a Facebook group aimed at women who travel a lot, promoting the discussion group within its existing (relevant) content. The group now has about 70,000 members, all with the ability to ask questions of each other or the editorial staff. Most discussions in the group don’t even focus on content or the Conde Nast Traveler brand. But you can bet group members now associate Condé Nast with open discussion and proactive, helpful messaging.

The media company continued the trend over the last year, launching Facebook groups for more of its publications, including Vanity Fair’s Reel Women and The New Yorker Movie Club, effectively changing the way audiences communicate with their favorite magazines.

If your brand starts a Facebook group, think of yourself as a facilitator rather than a marketer or blogger. You’ll lose the group if you only promote your own work. Based on the groups I’ve been a part of, though, the group owners seem to hit a sweet spot when 70 percent of the posts come from directly the members. Eventually, when you prove that you care enough about what they have to say, members will start sharing content because it genuinely interests them. And once that happens, the rat race for vanity metrics like pageviews doesn’t seem so important anymore.

The post Why Your Company Needs a Facebook Group appeared first on Contently.

This is a slide you’d normally see at a demand generation session—except there’d normally be 27 more completely unnecessary arrows and boxes, and the terms “synergy,” “value-based,” and “co-creation” thrown in at random.

The slide was presented by Mary Brown, CEO and founder of The Hub, an initiative that helps news orgs productize their content and drive memberships. The Hub is riding the wave of a larger paradigm shift in the media industry, moving away from the perception that content is a pageview vessel for delivering advertising. Instead, it’s trying to be a “top-of-funnel” marketing tool for building relationships with people and getting them to pay directly for subscription content, events, advertising services, or some other product.

If that sounds a lot like content marketing, that’s because it is. Funny enough, marketers and media companies are now arriving at an eerily similar marketing model.

The Facebook effect

Hot take: Facebook tanking publishers in its algorithm earlier this year may be the best thing to ever happen to media companies. Why? Because it made them realize something important: the page view rat race isn’t winnable.

“Most publishers abandoned reader revenue and thought they’d build revenue on scale, and thought things would be great,” Raju Narisetti, CEO of Gizmodo Media Group, explained on an IJF panel. “But it hasn’t been great.”

The first half of this decade, VC money flowed into digital media companies like BuzzFeed, Mashable, and Vice. To satisfy investors, those companies chased traffic at any cost, with the assumption that if you had the most unique visitors, you could build the strongest business—eventually.

But over the past few years, as knockoff competitors battled for reader attention and Facebook’s algorithm changes gradually shut off the flow of clicks, publishers have struggled to grow—or even maintain—their raw traffic numbers. As a result, those publishers came to a realization: The best way to make money is to build relationships with a smaller group of readers, who are then willing to buy something.

There’s no “right” revenue stream.

For publishers like the ones in The Hub, that “something” people buy is a membership that grants access paywalled content. Clicks and free content are merely a way to get people into the marketing funnel until they’re hooked and convert. This model is working out well for legacy publishers like The New York Times and The Financial Times. Subscriptions surpassed $1 billion at The Times late last year, making up 60 percent of all revenue.

According to Renee Kaplan, head of audience engagement at the Financial Times, subscription revenue now makes up 60 percent of its revenue as well. For FT, the focus isn’t on growing its traffic—it’s deepening those relationships with readers. “The model was about how to reach more people at the top of the funnel,” Kaplan said. “We’re now moving toward getting readers who are already paying for content to continue paying for content and pay more for content.”

In turn, FT treats its content like a product. It created a paywalled hub about deal-making called Due Diligence, for instance, because research indicated it was something people would pay for. Events for members let them monetize even further.

More than paywalls

Gizmodo Media Group—the Univision subsidiary that owns the castoff Gawker sites, as well as The AV Club and The Onion—doesn’t use a paywall. But it still follows a similar model of monetizing readers.

According to Narisetti, Gizmodo’s CEO, half of the company’s revenue comes outside of traditional digital advertising like display and programmatic. The biggest “non-advertising” channel is e-commerce.

Subscriptions don’t make as much sense for Gizmodo Media Group, because there are “ten other publishers” that cover the same stories as its tech, sports, and lifestyle sites. The edge comes from the irreverent, funny voices that attract a loyal following.

E-commerce revenue comes via affiliate links packaged into article and newsletter products like Kinja Deals, which runs across Gizmodo sites. Trust here is key, according to Narisetti. If a someone only has $100 to buy an exercise bike, we’ll say, ‘These two suck, but this one’s okay,’ and people think, ‘I like these guys, I trust them.'”

Leaders like Kaplan and Narisetti agree that there’s no “right” revenue stream for media companies. You need multiple income sources across content, advertising, events, and e-commerce. But to survive and thrive, you need to adopt the age-old marketing model: Build strong relationships with people, and then get them to keep spending money with you.

The post Marketers and Media Companies Are Arriving at an Eerily Similar Business Model appeared first on Contently.

-Susan, New York

When you read headlines like “The Washington Post’s Robot Reporter Has Published 850 Articles in the Past Year,” it’s bound to give you nightmares. Hell, I just had a nightmare that Contently fired me and replaced me with robot Will Smith, which is probably a sign I need to stop watching I, Robot every time I fly Delta.

While automation is destined to disrupt our professional lives to an epic degree over the next decade, I don’t think most writers should be worried. They just need to hone their skills to do the things robots cannot.

Algorithms like Heliograph, the Washington Post’s AI technology that spits out short articles, have gotten pretty damn good at relaying objective information backed by data, such as recaps of sporting events and analysis of financial reports. These are boring, formulaic assignments usually given to cub reporters in newsrooms as a form of hazing before they move up the ranks. It’s such a brainless activity that many reporters simply use a Mad Libs-style template to produce them.

What the robots aren’t very good at, however, is telling stories that build an emotional connection with an audience. They can’t connect with a reader by sharing a personal anecdote or describing the protagonist of a story with a vivid description. Robot writers can’t use the first person—at least not until we reach the singularity.

Neuroscience tells us these are the exact stories that build human connection. Our brains are wired to light up when we can relate to a narrative. That’s why a story in a far-out world like Star Wars works; Luke is the archetype of the working-class underdog called to great adventure, riding around in spaceships that look like 1950s hot rods. Even though the Star Wars universe is foreign on the surface, we can still connect to Luke and the world he inhabits.

This dynamic can also apply to B2B blog posts. I was the editor-in-chief of Contently’s blog, The Content Strategist, for years. The worst performing posts were the ones that began with bland stats or facts. The best stories began with a personal anecdote or a vivid scene that marketers could relate to—like this confessional about my biggest shortcomings or this profile of Marriott’s newsroom.

I often speak to college students who want to become professional writers. A lot of professors still preach the old-school route—cutting your teeth as an entry-level reporter writing straightforward news stories. While these assignments can make you a more concise writer, those jobs are going away. If you want to make it in 2018, you need to be able to find unique, human stories, and tell them with an engaging voice. And you need to be able to tell those stories across mediums—text, video, audio, graphics, and everything in between.

Should content strategists make an investment to learn to program Hadoop (on top of other data analysis tools), and would that help make us more marketable to work at Contently?

—Kate, New York, NY

This is a question that Shane Snow and I didn’t get to answer during the Facebook Live Q&A we did to promote our new book. So Kate, sorry for the delay.

The answer to your question: One hundred percent yes! Data skills are at the top of our job requirements for content strategists. It’s incredibly important to be able to analyze first- and third-party data to figure out what your target audience craves. We just hired a new content strategists (sup, Kema!) and she’s in the middle of a month-long crash course on data analysis. But one of the things that impressed us the most was how she used data strategically to optimize content programs at her previous jobs.

As I wrote in this Ask a Content Strategist column about creating data-driven content, data analysis is just the first step in coming up with a breakthrough strategy. It provides the creative constraints to unleash your best ideas. Plus, it ensures that you’re covering topics that interest your audience in the formats and channels they care about.

I have had reasonable success with Twitter about a year in with 1,100 followers. However, I don’t know how to handle my Facebook. I never really paid attention to it, but would like to retool it to be a way to promote content marketing towards a content marketing audience. Is there a way to do this? As it stands I have 240 followers, but they’re mostly unengaged, and I’m lucky to get more than 20 likes for my most popular content.

—Jason, Detroit

At the end of 2017, aspiring Black Mirror villain Mark Zuckerberg made a New Year’s resolution to crush the hopes and dreams of any marketer or media company hoping to generate organic engagement on Facebook. And boy, did he deliver.

The traditional Facebook game plan—posting links to interesting stories and videos with a compelling teaser—just doesn’t work anymore. However, there are a few tactics that still do:

Post from your personal account: Facebook is now prioritizing posts from individuals instead of media and brand pages. So content you post from your personal account will now get a boost.

This only works, of course, if you are friends with a lot of people in your target audience. I don’t know about you, but I’m friends with very few people in the content marketing community on Facebook. I relegate those relationships to Twitter and LinkedIn. I only use Facebook for big work announcements, like when my book came out or when I won the Contently company photo for a third straight year.

Really nailed the @contently company photo this year pic.twitter.com/GE6r3aAe4K

— Joe Lazauskas (@JoeLazauskas) January 18, 2018

Facebook groups: Search out active Facebook groups that align with your target audience. Since you’re a content marketer trying to reach content marketers (so meta!), I’d suggest the Content Strategists group on Facebook. It’s private, but pretty easy to get in.

Then, be a good community member. Don’t just promote your own crap. Like and comment on other people’s posts. Share interesting things you’ve read that aren’t from your own blog. Facebook still promotes content from groups, although that could change at any time.

Facebook Live: Facebook isn’t as hot on Live video as it was two years ago, but it still juices live video much more than any other medium in its feed. You can set up a serviceable Facebook Live studio in your living room for about $60. Just get a $30 iPhone tripod off Amazon, a decent bluetooth lapel mic that connects to your iPhone, and have at it. Just be sure to teach people something interesting, and keep it short.

Facebook ads: Facebook may be a black hole for organic engagement, but it’s still the best paid content distribution platform on earth—even for B2B. We used Facebook ads to triple our email list in a few months, optimizing for posts that led to a higher newsletter conversion rate.

That’s how I’d recommend using Facebook ads—drive folks to blog content that compels them to sign up for your newsletter. Then you can have a direct relationship with them instead of relying on Facebook’s fickle algorithm.

Focus on LinkedIn instead: After substantially improving the way content appears in the feed, LinkedIn is having a moment. Native LinkedIn videos and LinkedIn Pulse articles get incredible reach. Among the four big social networks, LinkedIn was by far the biggest driver of sales for our book. Hundreds of marketers liked every excerpt we published.

I’d still exercise the same caution with LinkedIn as with Facebook: Don’t build your audience on rented land. But it’s a pretty great place to get out your story right now.

If you want a master class in using LinkedIn to reach content marketers with content marketing, just follow Trackmaven CEO Allen Gannett. That man has it figured out. And he’s one hell of a dresser.

Wool vs polyester @Allen @JoeLazauskas pic.twitter.com/W7rBH9u8W3

— Katrina Neal (@katrina_neal) September 8, 2017

I think my shoes worked better, but it’s up for debate.

Joe Lazauskas is Contently’s head of content strategy and co-author of The Storytelling Edge. Ask him your most pressing content strategy questions here, or email him at lazer@contently.com.

The post Ask a Content Strategist: When Will the Robot Writers Take Over? appeared first on Contently.

Chatbots are not a new invention, and in 2018, they’re everywhere. There are chatbot boyfriends, therapists, and a even a chatbot politician running for office in New Zealand, hoping to represent the country in 2020.

For businesses, chatbots open up a world of customer service possibilities. They help customers leave feedback, schedule appointments, and order products quicker. Some bots already live in messaging apps like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, and while they might not offer as much conversation as SmarterChild, they can help you book a cab or order your favorite Starbucks drink. Evocreative predicts that 85 percent of customer interactions will be managed by chatbots by 2020. This stat strikes me as a little high, but I don’t discount the larger implication here: The way we experience customer service is changing rapidly.

What’s spurred the branded chatbot takeover? Mutual benefits for brands and customers. Retale recently surveyed U.S. millennial adult consumers, and 70 percent said they had a positive experience with chatbots in the past. And almost half of all U.S. consumers said they’d prefer to handle customer service interactions via some sort of messenger.

In many cases, companies will implement partial chatbot experiences. Sephora, for example, rolled out a chatbot last summer that can handle the beginning of a customer interaction on its own. People can schedule appointments or leave feedback through the bot, but it has to connect users to a human representative if it can’t address a customer’s questions.

Personally, I’m embracing the rise of the bots. Email and phone-based customer service interactions are often frustrating and full of terrible elevator music. I’m at least curious to see if bots can actually offer streamlined solutions to these woes. I also secretly hope that one day I’ll come across SmarterChild again, just to see another philosophical musing at the end of our interaction.

The post The Chatbot Revolution is Here appeared first on Contently.

Snapchat is not normally a place for heartbreak, but given its current identity crisis, it could be headed for a messy split from brands and publishers. First, Snapchat launched as a photo-sharing app. Then, as video rose in popularity, the company adapted. Next, strange as this seems, it began calling itself a camera company. In trying to keep up with Instagram and Facebook, Snapchat has tried to do so many different things that it’s hard to pinpoint what kind of company it wants to be.

Last week, The Daily Beast released internal data that shows the mixed success of Snapchat’s features. The hyped geolocating Maps feature tanked in popularity in 2017, while daily message activity rose among teenagers. Snapchat would like to think of itself as an interactive multi-media platform, but its users disagree. A new update in the works could change these dynamics even more.

Then there’s the matter of Discover, Snapchat’s daily magazine-like channel full of content from major news and entertainment publications that disappears after 24 hours. The channel has a lot of potential to be a primary news source for younger generations, but progress stalled because Snapchat could never figure out how to integrate it the way Facebook integrated paid distribution into the News Feed. The proposed update could exacerbate these issues. Once the update is live, Discover content will live a lot further away from the main hub of activity.

Snapchat believes this change will make the interface more user-friendly. But advertisers will balk if the 20 percent of users who regularly swipe over to the Discover feature dwindle.

If we’ve learned anything from Snapchat’s history, the company still has a lot of self-exploration to do. That could be good or it could be bad. But until the company lands on an identity and offers a solid distribution product, brands and publishers should hold off on making a commitment.

The post Snapchat’s Identity Crisis Will Force Brands and Publishers to Play the Waiting Game appeared first on Contently.

If you think that’s hyperbolic, well… just look at Digiday’s homepage right now.

A handful of publishers contacted by Facebook told Digiday that the social giant plans to “favor content that’s shared by users or otherwise actively engaged with.” That implies content from brands and publishers will be deprioritized.

To be clear, this change isn’t just going to hurt publishers and marketers trying to reach audiences on Facebook. It could be apocalyptic for Facebook.

A Bizarre Bet on Banality

Until this point, Facebook has largely done whatever it took to increase engagement on its platform. But this is an incredibly foolish move by the social giant, a knee-jerk reaction to the fake news controversies of the last year.

Facebook’s reasoning boils down to the fact that news articles get fewer comments and likes than user-generated posts. Of course they do. When you see a news story on Facebook, you click, take a few minutes to read it, and go about your day, instead of going back to the original post on Facebook to leave a comment or like it.

Essentially, Facebook is arguing that reading an article for several minutes is less valuable than taking five seconds to comment “so cute!” on your old college roommate’s baby pictures to be nice. (Even though, let’s be honest, you never really liked Becky.)

Facebook is the biggest news source in the U.S. According to a 2017 Pew research report, nearly half of Americans get their news from Facebook. It’s a huge reason people use Facebook. Take that away, and Facebook becomes less sticky in user’s lives—a worse version of Instagram, where you’re fed pictures from a giant network of people, most of whom you don’t really care about.

This is a bizarre bet on banality. Per Mike Isaac of The New York Times, Facebook hopes minimizing content that could upset people will result in a better experience, even if it causes users to spend less time on the site. However, that mindset is going to cost Facebook.

Big consequences

As the Times coverage notes, there’s a good chance this change will lead to increased political polarization:

Thursday’s changes raise questions of whether people may end up seeing more content that reinforces their own ideologies if they end up frequently interacting with posts and videos that reflect the similar views of their friends or family. And bogus news may still spread — if a relative or friend posts a link with an inaccurate news article that is widely commented on, that post will be prominently displayed.

With over 2 billion users, Facebook is arguably the most dominant platform on earth. And if this reading of the situation proves to be true, then Facebook will just replace legitimate news sources with crazy uncles posting about Hilary Clinton’s secret child sex ring.

The effects are going to be wide-ranging, but for those in the industry, these three takeaways stand out:

1. Facebook will become less important

I always balked at past predictions of Facebook’s demise, but this will seriously hurt the company. People will spend less time on Facebook, which will make it less important to marketers who pay for content distribution. Start adjusting your strategy accordingly: prioritize owned media and transfer as much of your audience as you can to your email lists. That way, you’ll have a direct line to them.

Trackmaven founder Allen Gannett has another alternative worth considering: Get your audience into groups, where they’ll be more immune to the Facebook algorithm crunch.

The big Facebook News means every brand marketer needs to get working to build their own Facebook GROUP right now. If Facebook is going to be more community oriented, than get your community on there asap (fans, customers, donors, etc.)

— Allen Gannett (@Allen) January 12, 2018

2. Facebook ads are going to get more expensive in the short term

Publishers are addicted to Facebook traffic. They still get 35 percent of their traffic from the network, second only to Google. If they can’t get it for free, they’ll pay for it, at least in the short term. When it comes to paid content distribution, Facebook is still the most cost-effective platform on earth.

3. Consumers will be more polarized and close-minded, yet less informed and empathetic

As Shane Snow and I write in our upcoming book, The Storytelling Edge, great stories release a drug called oxytocin into our brains that makes us more empathetic. Facebook has taken a lot of heat over the years for certain decisions, but the platform has still helped spread inspiring stories from people all over the world via publishers like Upworthy and NowThis. In many cases, those stories made people more empathetic.

Instead, Facebook will now prioritize stories that circulate around our own tribes. Filter bubbles could worsen, which might lead to a significant increase in xenophobia on a global scale. There’s no real upside here, unless you’re evil enough to make an ad like this.

The post Facebook’s Algorithm Is Apocalyptic for Brands, Publishers, Users, and Facebook Itself appeared first on Contently.

There are two main ways for readers to share content online: use a share button or copy and paste the link. The first one is easy to track; the second isn’t. In 2012, Atlantic deputy editor Alexis Madrigal came up with the term “dark social” to describe the “vast trove of social traffic is essentially invisible to most analytics programs.” Per RadiumOne, 84 percent of sharing from publisher and marketing websites now takes place via private dark social channels such as email and instant messaging.

Here’s where it gets a little tricky. The rise of chat apps has led to more social sharing between individuals and small groups. There are different types of dark data, which has made engagement even harder to track.

At ShareThis, we decided to address this metrics challenge. Through our javascript code, embedded on millions of websites, we are able to track dark social shares. We recently dug into 113 million shares—across open, closed, and dark channels—to better understand how user behavior varies.

Here’s a preview of what we found.

The personal vs. the persona

We’d like to think that what we choose to share is a reflection of who we are, but it’s not that simple. The data suggests there’s a discrepancy between the persona we present to the world on open social versus our deeper desires and interests reserved for private sharing.

Over dark social, the most popular content categories included business education, counseling services, self-help, religion, and medical conditions. In fact, content with intimate words such as “God,” “Lord,” and “love” were often shared via dark social.

When dark shares expressed positive sentiment, they often dealt with aspirational content. Users were linking to high-end luxury goods, party and holiday supplies, flowers, gifts, spas and beauty services, and gyms and health clubs.

Publishers and marketers in these fields could cut back on content if they only see a few shares per story. But according to the data, they may want to rethink that strategy. It could help to make sharing as easy as possible so readers don’t have to go dark. For example, you could create and customize private sharing buttons on your websites for email, SMS, and chat platforms like WhatsApp.

On open channels, however, the top categories emphasized entertainment and group activities. Popular topics from our research included rock music, left-wing politics, gaming, bars and nightclubs, and local news. Positive sentiment was reserved for social topics like bars and clubs, politics, and continued education.

We’d like to think that what we choose to share is a reflection of who we are, but it’s not that simple.

On closed social channels, people shared professional and self-improvement topics related to work, finance, troubled relationships, and bankruptcy. Closed social channels showed the highest positive sentiment towards fashion modeling, vehicle specs, baked goods, charities, and government grants.

As for specific brands, readers tend to use closed social channels to share finance content related to companies like Wells Fargo, Dow Jones, and JPMorgan Chase. This type of sharing tells us more about what consumers really want and need. Meanwhile, on open sharing platforms, discussion centered on brands such as Volkswagen, AMC, and ESPN, likely fueling the water-cooler discussions safe to talk about without fear of embarrassment.

Dark devices

People love to say we live in a mobile-first world, but most dark sharing happens on desktop devices. In fact, 58 percent of desktop sharing takes place through dark social because of email.

Even though copying and pasting is a bit more difficult on a mobile device than a desktop, dark social still accounts for more than a quarter of all mobile sharing. But the majority of mobile users primarily use open social channels like Facebook and Twitter, where they like to share content on politics, news, and entertainment.

Location seems to play an important role in how we share. People may use dark social on desktops because they’re at work. In this environment, using open channels like Facebook and Twitter could be frowned up, but employees still have the opportunity to share content via email.

Still, those who do share on closed social mobile channels (like SMS text and WhatsApp) copy and paste their links rather than clicking on trackable sharing buttons. Implementing these buttons will empower users to share privately, but in a way that can still track activity. Because as it stands now, the gap is wide with 26 percent of shares coming from dark social compared to 2 percent from closed social.

As chat apps pull in more people around the globe, publishers who deploy mobile-friendly share buttons for the WhatsApps of the world will likely bring more of that darkness to light.

Out of the dark

Dark social is too big to ignore. These shares may have once eluded publishers, but with the right tools, they can unearth insights to study how audiences spread their favorite content.

Still, this data is only the beginning of what we found. In our new report, we uncover how people use open, closed, and dark social sharing for major events, across countries, and on different days of the week.

Click here to download the full report on the world of dark social.

Paul Lentz is the SVP of publisher & business operations at ShareThis, a technology company that provides free sharing and content optimization tools to more than three million publishers.

The post Studying the Hidden World of Dark Social Engagement appeared first on Contently.

Both of them are wrong.

Over time, social networks start to develop their own reputations based on generalizations about who uses each network and what they tend to share. LinkedIn is tailored for the wealthy professional. Twitter serves witty media figures. Even if these interpretations have some truth to them, it’s hard to back them up or refute them. Look no further than Facebook, which has become a homebase for conspiracy theorists, great aunts, politically active friends from college, and over 2 billion people in between. At this point, users can portray Facebook any way that suits them.

But are these stereotypes really accurate?

Using Newswhip, a new social media monitoring platform, I was able to analyze the top-performing links since September 1 across four major social networks: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. My goal was to dig deep and examine if our general preconceptions about social media networks were correct.

Does one political party dominate Facebook? Is Twitter a media echo chamber? Has LinkedIn become the best place for thought leadership? And is Pinterest really free of any controversial content? Read on to find out.

Facebook: Do liberal or conservative outlets reign supreme?

Plenty of people get their news from social media. According to Pew research, 45 percent of all U.S. adults do so via Facebook. The issue, though, is how one defines “news.” While both sides of the aisle continue to be upset about bias and favoritism, Newswhip data suggests content from conservative media outlets is more popular on Facebook than content from liberal outfits.

Since September 1, thirteen stories generated at least 1 million Facebook interactions; five came from conservative sites, one came from a liberal site, and the remainder lacked any overt political affiliation.

Facebook has no systemic bias against Trump or conservative content. It’s also clear that Facebook isn’t surfacing all ideas with equal weight, contrary to what Zuckerberg implied in his post last month. This may not be intentional, but the platform’s algorithm and user demographics have allowed fringe right-wing sites like Conservative Tribune and American Military News to go viral over established news outlets.

As TechCrunch writer Natasha Lomas points out, “Facebook’s business benefits from increased user engagement, and made-up stories that play to people’s prejudices and/or contain wild, socially divisive claims have been shown to be able to clock up far more Facebook views than factual reports of actual news.”

Takeaway: All users should be wary of filter bubbles. But judging by this data, the biggest filter bubbles are shaded red.

Twitter: Is it really a media echo chamber?

Until I looked in Newswhip to see which stories generated the most tweets, I had never heard of the Korean boy band BTS. Secretly, though, they’re the biggest thing on Twitter right now. Of the top eight links with the most shares on Twitter, five are about BTS. The top result, which has received almost 400,000 tweets, is just a link to the group’s album on Apple Music. I’m no K-pop scholar, so I’ll leave the BTS analysis to someone more qualified. But from a social media lens, the unusual results can tell us a lot about Twitter: The platform has a deep identity crisis.

Twitter has always struggled to find its niche. While all other major social networks constantly grow, Twitter actually lost 2 million active users earlier this summer. After the announcement, Pivotal Research analyst Brian Wieser wrote, “We’re not overly concerned by this trend, as we have always believed Twitter to be a niche platform.”

Niche is the key word there. Twitter is definitely a place where media professionals can pat themselves on the back while complaining about the death of journalism. It’s where high-quality stories from major publications like The Atlantic, the BBC, and The New York Times regularly take off. But the platform has also been co-opted by trolls, bots, propaganda machines, and the guy in the Oval Office.

These forces are all competing for a finite amount of attention among the 150 million or so daily active users. As a result, a number of different communities have emerged. If you have something interesting to say to a particular community, then there’s potential here. It’s just hard to pinpoint which niches are primed to grow, which is why there’s room for K-pop sensations to thrive. And GoFundMe pages. And a GIF of a Google Doodle.

Takeaway: Twitter has become a niche platform, which limits the ability of brands and publishers to go viral if their content doesn’t fall under certain categories or focus on certain topics.

LinkedIn: The true home for thought leadership?

LinkedIn has always had the potential to be a powerful content-sharing platform, but it’s never been able to compete with Facebook. It’s currently the social platform best known for thought leadership, which still counts for something. As the go-to center for professional advice and commentary, LinkedIn has reserves of evergreen content that attract a high-earning audience.

Per Newswhip, the top-performing stories have close to 50,000 shares. Some offer a lot of tips and tricks for the workplace. You can get insights about job interviews and life goals. There’s also an emphasis on hearing from executives, which presumably can give you a roadmap for how to be a successful leader. (There’s a little news mixed in, like this Forbes piece about Michael Dell’s hurricane Harvey relief fund, which was shared over 43,000 times.)

This level of engagement puts LinkedIn well below Facebook and somewhat behind Twitter and Pinterest. The way the platform functions has led to an unusual dilemma. All users have the option of publishing content natively, which could cannibalize the impact of an external article or video link. Richard Branson, for instance, posts some of his musings directly to LinkedIn but links to others published on the Virgin website. Bill Gates does the same thing, alternating between LinkedIn and his personal blog. You get the sense that influencers aren’t sure when to share natively and when to link to an external website.

All social networks want to prioritize native content since it keeps users engaged inside their walls. But when Facebook ramped up Instant Articles, it did so with a monetization model. In addition to selling ads, Facebook made it clear that news publishers were the intended users of Instant Articles. On LinkedIn, individuals just publish native blog posts.

For now, there’s arguably more upside for influencer posts than articles from media companies. Publications like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and CNN use LinkedIn to distribute their content, but they mostly include links related to business news, the economy, and personal finance. Compare that to Facebook or Twitter, where the same publications can post everything they create and generate higher engagement. Until that dynamic changes, LinkedIn will continue to be a more powerful tool for thought leadership than for typical content distribution.

Takeaway: LinkedIn is a great platform for established influencers to communicate with an audience. But media companies and brands may have better luck elsewhere if traffic and engagement are their top goals.

Pinterest: Is it the only social network free of controversy?

In September, Pinterest officially crossed the 200 million monthly users mark–a nice milestone for a social platform that has seen consistent growth in mobile searches and international users. Pinterest now boasts a bigger user base than Twitter and LinkedIn. What’s really remarkable about these upward trends is Pinterest has been able to drive increased engagement while avoiding almost all controversial content.

The top pins of September and early October include links to student awards, tips on painting your kitchen, and lots of recipes for everything from red velvet cheesecake to cinnamon sugar pumpkin bread. Eleven pieces of content had at least 40,000 pins, and 27 links had at least 25,000 pins.

If there’s any nit to pick here, it’s that Pinterest is a home for content that looks and sounds the same. It’s confined to a few main categories without much variance. For example, a lot of the successful food bloggers use a similar tone to introduce their recipes. Same goes for the high-quality photography and short videos of their food. So it’s hard to tell what makes one recipe get more engagement over another. As a result, it might be harder for a newcomer to thrive on Pinterest over the sites that already have a loyal audience.

But in a polarized social media landscape, Pinterest has emerged as a safe space, where recipes for pumpkin bread and apple pie doughnuts can overpower any slanted coverage of the NFL’s national anthem protests.

Takeaway: Even if you know what you’re going to get, it’s nice that there’s a place you can go online to look at hot cakes instead of hot takes.

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According to a Parse.ly data analysis of over 2,500 sites, Facebook referral traffic now sits at 35.1 percent, while Google referrals are hovering just above 40 percent. Combined, the two tech giants own 85 percent of the mobile ad market and make up nearly 80 percent of all referral traffic to publisher and branded content sites.

Longtime readers of The Content Strategist know we have always kept tabs on the impact of Facebook’s algorithm since it’s such a dominant force in media and marketing. This latest update is huge news for two crucial reasons.

1. Link posts are on the decline

Facebook recently cracked down on clickbait posts that display a fake “play” button to trick people into clicking on a URL, which may explain part of the dip. But in my view, that isn’t the whole story. Facebook has long been transparent about its desire to prioritize native content that keeps you there over links that take you to an external site. It’s time to prepare for another drop in organic traffic to blog posts and other “owned” website content.

2. Paid distribution is more important than ever

For content marketers, Facebook’s biggest value is as a paid distribution network. It has the greatest combination of targeting, reach, and cost efficiency of any distribution platform. And that’s not just for B2C companies. Professional and B2B content performs much better than most marketers realize, even for niche topics such as “Logistics.”

More than ever, paid distribution on Facebook is a crucial tool for driving top-of-funnel engagement and building an audience with the right personas. We used this approach to grow the audience that reads The Content Strategist by 10x. (For a more tactical breakdown of how paid social outperforms organic social, check out this helpful piece written by our cofounder Shane Snow.)

In a recent episode of Pod Save America, HuffPost editor-in-chief Lydia Polgreen had one of the greatest and darkest quotes I’ve heard about the social giant: “We are all unpaid workers toiling in the data mines of Facebook.”

It captures what makes Facebook such a powerful yet precarious tool for marketers. Regardless of your stance on privacy, all of the user data Facebook collects makes it arguably the most powerful ad platform the world has known. You can reach granular audiences at scale in a way that’s never been possible before.

But Facebook is just that—an ad platform. It’s not a benevolent benefactor of free traffic and audiences. That ship sailed around 2011. So Facebook can still take you where you want to go, but you just won’t be able to get there on your own terms.

The post 2 Reasons Facebook’s Latest Algorithm Change Will Impact Marketers appeared first on Contently.