Stay where you are. We have everything you could ever want right here. That’s the promise social networks are working to fulfill now more than ever. They were once gateways to the rest of the Internet, but social networks like Facebook and Snapchat are doubling down on creating Internet islands or all-inclusive resorts where users can go and find everything they need. Marketers should be paying attention.
Read MoreIt’s rare to find a marketer who would say, “We’re all set on content. No more content needed. We have plenty.” That’s just not the case for most brands out there. And if creating content isn’t a challenge, creating content people care about and want to engage with probably is.
There is an untapped resource when it comes to content, and for many brands it requires little effort to create and obtain. That content is being created day in and day out by customers. They’re tweeting, sharing on Instagram and posting about their experiences across their social networks. Better yet, much of that content includes a brand mention and even a hashtag.
Read MoreThere was a time when a picture was everything on Facebook, and the rest of the social web followed with Instagram getting started, Twitter pushing photos more than ever and the rise of Pinterest. A photo was the price of entry for a Facebook post to be seen. Text-based updates from brands weren’t enough. People wouldn’t interact with them, and Facebook’s algorithm would make sure they received the lowest in organic reach.
All of that may be changing, according to Socialbakers, which found after looking at more than 670,000 posts from 4,445 brand pages that photo posts had the lowest organic reach of all post types. The most successful type of content in the analysis is video, followed by text-only statuses and link posts.
Read MoreAlgorithms seem to be taking over (as if they haven’t already). Marketers are constantly following and making updates to their content based on Facebook’s algorithm updates. Then there’s Google, of course. Well, now Twitter is joining the scene as CFO Anthony Noto hinted at in 2014.
The first sign of an algorithm-driven Twitter is its new ‘While You Were Away’ feature that curates the best content you missed while not checking Twitter and packages it up for you the next time you log in. This includes the content you most likely want to see based on how engaging it was among other Twitter users and how you’ve interacted with this kind of content in the past. It’s not everything, but it’s the best stuff for you… as chosen by an algorithm.
Read MoreSocial platforms are almost at parity when it comes to features. The major social networks all allow for photography, some kind of text updates and now, even video. Feature-for-feature, they all look nearly identical, but when you look at the nuances of each platform, the differences are stark.
Read MoreSnapchat is working to do a couple pretty interesting things, at least for brands. It’s starting to place ads within the ‘Our Story’ feature on the platform. Our Story aggregates snaps from multiple users related to an event or a place in an updated feed of content. Some brands are now able able to sponsor different ‘Our Stories’ and pay to have their content displayed within those collections.
Samsung has already partnered with Snapchat for The American Music Awards when it placed branded content in the Our Story feed related to the social TV event. The content sponsored by Samsung included behind-the-scenes looks at the event, which one could argue Snapchat’s users would be less than interested in compared to content shared by celebrities, but it was an experiment. This sponsored content joins Snapchat’s first foray into advertising, which was a 20-second video marked as “Sponsored” to promote a movie.
Snapchat is not stopping there, however. It is in the process of courting publishers like CNN, BuzzFeed, ESPN and others to create content exclusively for the Snapchat audience. Snapchat isn’t interested in being just a messaging service. It wants to be a news and information destination.
Read More