TTT Tips - Content Marketing - Part 1

We’re regularly being asked about content marketing and how businesses should use social media to engage their audiences. On this note, we thought it would be a good idea to offer a few hints and tips that readers may find useful. Here is part 1 of 2.  

1.    Fear of missing out 
Deliver content that is unique, inspiring, useful and about something new; no one wants to miss out on the next big thing and content that is interesting and communicates something to the reader that they have not seen before will encourage engagement and sharing. Look for the wow factor or the unusual.

2.    Make your content easy to skim
Only around 20% of online content is read so try to break down what you are saying into lists or shorter paragraphs that allow readers to skim through and find the information they need quickly and without effort.

3.    Make it informative
We all want to feel like we’ve learnt something; if your content offers to educate the reader then link to other websites that substantiate your information or reference to other sources.

4.    Allow the content to be shared easily
Add sharing buttons for as many social networks as possible and offer the ability to email the content. The easier it is for people to share, the more likely they are to share it.

5.    Length is related to sharing
Make content substantial but not too long. There are direct correlations between the number of words and how viral content may become.

6.    Show consistency and authority in posts
Regularly posting content that is informative and accurate boosts your online reputation. Ensure that your content is written well, grammatically correct and offers insightful information.

7. Don’t make content all about you
People don’t like self-promoters, the most interesting person at a party is not the one who constantly talks about themselves. Talk about interesting topics that other people can relate to and that are relevant to your business and the products and services you offer.

Part 2 coming soon.....

Social marketing without give aways

A lot of people feel that the best way to gain exposure on social media for a new product is to spend lots of money advertising it, either directly or through competitions or give-aways. Not so for Nars Cosmetics, they decided to utilise the power of social marketing in a different way - by creating an app.

Their Warhol App would would take a snapshot of you via a web cam, or you could upload a pic, and then add an Andy Warhol look to it. This would produce a new cover image and/or profile photo for you to use, although the image does have the Nars Warhol branding included (a very subtle but great way to raise awareness). 

The idea was to promote their new Warhol Collection, and it worked, as every time someone updates their cover photo a unique update goes out to their friends, unlike when a profile image is updated.

The app attracted a relatively small number of users on Facebook — 3,143 — but an impressive amount of engagement: Together, those users made more than 5,300 images and spent an average of seven minutes and nine seconds using the app, generating an estimated 823,000 impressions on Facebook.

The app is no longer on their Facebook page, although they were smart enough to provide the app off Facebook as well, which had an even higher number of users and traffic, thanks to tech and beauty blogs talking about it. However the app still requires you to login via Facebook to use it.

Take a look at the video of the app below, and try it out for yourself.

Fancy running over your pretentious friends?

Ever wanted to get your own back on your pretentious friends on Facebook - well this is the app for you.

"Mitsubishi Unpretentious" analyses the content from your friends' Facebook pages to see which are your most pretentious friends and then runs them over with a speeding 2013 Outlander Sport.

It does not always get it right but it does most of the time.

Combining marketing with interactive online apps has become a great extension to consumer product launches, getting people to engage with products in a fun and interesting way.

Whether encouraging people to run down people they don't like is questionable but fun anyway.

Click here to get the app.

Research says that 80% of US brands respond to online customer feedback

In a recent article in Corporate Comms a survey by software company 'Get Satisfaction' measured how US brands monitor online converstaions and feedback.

Nearly 90 per cent of US brands say that they monitor online conversations and feedback while 80 per cent also respond to feedback. More than three quarters of those polled also distribute customer feedback internally and nearly two thirds thought that listening and engaging on social media has raised brand awareness.

The article also highlights that more than two fifths cited availability of budget as the greatest internal challenge to listening and engagement, while more than a third said the same about their difficulty in managing programmes across multiple platforms.

'Almost a fifth cited privacy issues as the greatest challenge, while 30 per cent said the same about availability of talent. The top five departments that create strategies to listen to consumers are, in order, the social media team, marketing or public relations, web-interactive marketing, product marketing and marketing operations.

Half of businesses say that listening to their customers on social media is not a core function of their business. Just six per cent of companies said that listening and digital engagement initiatives are integral to their organisation,' the article says.

It seems that brands in the US are taking social media engagement seriously. It would be interesting to carry out similar research in the UK.

Article by Emily Nicholls for Corp Comms Magazine.