#mkt 389

[shelmins]

8 different Content Types for your Social Media Page!

There are many different types of content. If you have a lack of ideas this post will help you. Otherwise if you are planning your content strategy with your editorial calendar, this post can bring more variety in your content strategy. This list (here we have the first type of content..) shows you 8 different types of content for your social media page:

 1. Infographics

This is the combination of information and graphics. It shows data in an attracting, visual way. The name speaks for itself: info + graphic. This type of content is perfect, when you want to show information in a compelling way, which has the potential to get viral. Infographics are up to three times more shared than other types of content! You can use it when you want to show ideas, research, statistics or findings.

A good way to create these infographics is e.g. Piktochart, which I mentioned one post before!

2. Meme

Meme’s are these mostly funny pictures that include one liner or short texts related to the picture. I don’t know meme’s, which are informative, but the aim of a meme is humor. People want to be entertained on social media and meme’s are perfect to make them laugh.

You can create meme’s by yourself with any picture-editing program (yes its that’s easy) or with online programs like “Meme Generator” or “Quick Meme”.

3. Videos

Besides pictures one of the most used content types on social media platforms. There are different types of videos, funny, informative, teaching, helpful, sadly, impressive and so on…

To create your own video you should have a plan (like a script) and care about their visual and audio content. Youtube or Vimeo are great platform to spread them!

 4. Guides

A Guide, like its name says, is a mostly written content with additional pictures to explain in detail different content. A Guide cannot made from everyone. You need experts for them to make the writing style and presentation for the user attractive and usable.

You will need the skills of a capable designer and writer. An interesting idea that is related to your audience is a must.

 5. Reviews

Whether it’s a book, product or experience review, they are all most likely the same.

They all need an introduction of the reviewer and the object, which is reviewed. Followed by a description, the likes and don’t likes, the recommendation and lastly a call to action.

6. How-to

A how-to is especially interesting for companies and their products, but also for any other object that is in need of explanation. A how-to can be made of pictures, written texts or videos. Visual content should include text or audios, when it’s difficult to show the function.

A simple method to create a How-to is this way: Introduce problem and the solution, show each step of the solution, summarize it and provide a conclusion.

 7. Lists

As you can see, I like lists. Lists can break up long text into more readable and easy to understandable content. A list doesn’t exist only of bullet points. To create an appealing list it should be detailed, “there is no too long” and include numbers. By the way, it’s a little bit satisfying to read a list and process all the numbers, isn’t it?

A good list includes a short introduction, listing of the points (numbers) and a conclusion.

 8. Link pages

It’s just as easy as it sound. Just link another page. It can be your own homepage, interesting articles or any other website. It should fit to your target group (audience) you are aiming with your social media page.

To shorten your link (no one likes these endless, cryptic links in a post) you can use free online software like www.bitly.com.

  What part is missing of the content type “list”? Yes, the conclusion. You can use all types (there are more than these 8) of content, but be sure you use it for the right platform. For example infographics are not very effective when you use it on Instagram, but are very compelling for your Tumblr or Facebook audience! Moreover Meme’s are very effective on Instagram and can create ripples on your Facebook page, too. You have to bring into line with your audience. Present them their favorite types of content, be compelling and get viral. By the way: you can mix these types of content. Create a how-to with a video or make an infographic and link it to your website. Be creative.

Source -> click here.

[shelmins]

Content Marketing in Germany – Status Quo

Many Marketing- and Communication-experts are unanimous: entertaining content and relevant content count. As a new and integrated operated communication strategy is Content Marketing traded and lays the focus on relevant content. While theorists keep saying for a long time, that Content Marketing is the new way to operate the Marketing of a brand in the right way, are the most of the companies after the event. So what is the status quo in the marketing department of international orientated companies in Germany? And has Content Marketing the potential, what the theorists dedicates it?

A statistic from „Statista“, from late 2014, shows the results of a survey, which includes the presence of a Content Marketing-Strategy of international orientated, German and Swiss companies. They are all B2B- or B2C-orientated. 59 companies were interviewed.

About one third of them said, they have a clear Content Marketing strategy. 23% of them had no strategy at all. 17% of the companies have purposes to create a Content Marketing Strategy in the next time and nearly a third of them are in the beginning of creating a Content Marketing Strategy. Only one third of the interviewed companies has a Content Marketing strategy and nearly two thirds have no strategy or they plan it respectively they are in the beginning of creating their own Content Marketing strategy. So all in all Content Marketing is at the ready and waits to get off the starting blocks. Although this statistic is about one and a half year old, you can see from where the companies are starting.

  Furthermore it is interesting to analyze the targets of German companies with their Content Marketing strategy. Another statistic from “Statista”, which is published in March 2015, gathered the the targets from clients of PR Agencies in Germany. The question is: “What want your clients achieve with Content Marketing?” 213 employees of PR Agencies were interviewed. The answers are bunched into ten different targets.

10% said, that they want to set commercials with Content Marketing. I think this is a “standard” answer and you shouldn’t pay attention to it.

To increase the user improvement said 16% of the sample. That’s Content Marketing: To get user to interact and communicate with your brand-story.

About 19% want to improve their Social Media and with a good Content Strategy, Social Media is the best way to spread out your content.

28% of the employees said, that companies want to generate leads with Content Marketing. So they want to make Leads out of strangers, but they shouldn’t forget to make them customers and promoters!

Nearly a third stated that they want to increase their turnover. With the right Content Strategy is this possible. (See the point before) Make strangers to customers and let the customers promote your brand!

One third care about the image of their brand. They want to improve it with Content Marketing. A good idea, but nevertheless to tell a story can be risky and you should be able to control the situation.

31% intend that their target is to retain customer stronger to the brand. When people engage with your content, you have to communicate with them and show them the social side of your brand.

“Deduce new target groups” is with a rate of 35% one of the most mentioned answers. Especially if your company isn’t on Social Media right now, spread you content with Social Media will deduce a big new target group!

The second most mentioned answer is, that they want to produce relevance. It’s not easy to tell a relevant story, but by following some rules is this possible and can be very entertaining for the potential target group.

With 46% most mentioned answer is “Conquer the thematic leadership”. So the companies in Germany are really aware of telling a story, that will anchor the brand in peoples head and let them forget the competitor of the brand!

 ·      Conquer the thematic leadership 46%

·      Produce relevance 44%

·      Deduce new target groups 35%

·      To retain customer stronger to the brand 31%

·      Improve image 30%

·      Increase turnover 29%

·      Generate leads 28%

·      Improve social media 19%

·      Increase user improvement 16%

·      Set commercials 10%

 The targets of German companies really fit to the main points of Content Marketing. Now the one third of the companies, which are in early stages with their strategy, should prepare a good strategy, prevent the Don’ts, master the Do’s and climb to the zenith of fame.

 Source statistic 1

Source statistic 2

[jsteenk2]

Influencer Content

By: Jennifer Steenken (Marketing Expert)

We live in a world where everyday we are bombarded with thousands of advertisements. No matter were we go, your either seeing billboards while driving to work or online when you visit your favorite webpage and so on. Most of the time most of these advertisements are over looked. That’s why many marketers have changed their strategy and decided to make valuable content that is more memorable and shareable by using influencer content rather than just in your face advertisements.

According to Admin who wrote the short article Content Marketing Tactics: Influencer Content Pros, Cons, Examples and Best Practices says, “Influencer marketing often refers to celebrities or brandividuals advocating for a brand. Influencer content goes beyond advocacy to focus on the actual content being produced for marketing”. Influencer content marketing consists of both a subject matter expert and influencers (industry authorities) working together. By using the expert’s credible social following, influencer’s content is able to reach a larger audience.

 There are different ways to collaborate with influencers in content marketing:

Influencers can help co-create your content.

The brand can create the content but us the influencer’s quotes or actual contribution.

The brand can create the content and post the content on the influencer’s websites, blogs or other publications they have.

Influencer content has been around for a long time but it’s just recently that it started gaining popularity again. According to Tomoson a popular marketing platform preformed a study that showed that, “businesses are making $6.50 for every dollar spent on influencer marketing. In addition, 51 percent of businesses reported acquiring better customers through influencer marketing efforts”.

Influencer content is known to work really closely with earned media. For all those who don’t know what earned media is, earned media is unpaid publicity that is given by a third party from either a customer review, a news article or a social media posting.

 There are many pros and cons when it comes to influencer content.

Pros:

Influencer content programs have been one of the most successful marketing tactics of all time. There are many benefits influencer content has on content marketing:

Influencers have many loyal and trusted followers, making them credible to brand/ business.

Influencer’s content allows you to reach out to a trusted authorities audience and attract more people.

Sometime influencers will market your content for free, if your content is good quality and is meaningful to their audience (fans/ followers).

 Cons:

Even though the influencer programs are very successful there are many downsides to using it for your content marketing. Here are a couple downsides of using influencer content programs:

Influencer programs are very time consuming because it’s all about building relationships and staying connected to keep those relationship’s alive.

 Even though influencers have a very active following its doesn’t mean your message will agree with those followers.

Here are some examples of influencer Content:

 LinkedIn

 The Sophisticated Marketer’s Guide on LinkedIn is a very good example of influencer content. This content was created by many influencers and was spread through many social channels. Since there was collaboration with the influencers and its content, it has made this content more visible and more valuable as a marketing solution on LinkedIn and has resulted as a big money break through for them.

 Ray N. Welter Heating Company

This company Ray N. Welter Heating Company (aka HVAC) wanted to build brand awareness and increase engagement with its community by using influencers. Since this company is in a very specific type of industry most of the time influencers tend to be their competitors, so they were somewhat hesitant to use influencer content. There first influencer content was “Thermostat Wars! Local Celebrities Tell Us What They Set Their Thermostat To”. The celebrities that were involved in this campaign were famous local meteorologists, a famous local news anchor, and a famous local rapper. All of them (influencers) having their own social following and bring attention to Ray N. Welter Heating Company. It didn’t take long until this campaign took the number two spot on their webpage, (their homepage being number one) which was great for them because it gave them the brand awareness they wanted and it definitely started community engagement.

 Genealogy Research Firm

The Genealogy Research Firm goal is to get their audience who attends these annual industry events to interact with one another. That’s why their Influencers created a page on their website so people can post blogs on how to create the best genealogy projects and so on. Since they have created this page they have received 5,509 views on their general website and 8,000 on their blog post page, which is double the views they had last year.

[lodegrezia]

Because It’s #WorthSaying

The anticipation is running high for the 73rd Annual Golden Globes airing tomorrow January 10th at 5pm/8c on the NBC network. L’Oréal has been advertising a new side of their brand with their campaign #WorthSaying that will launch tomorrow for the ceremony. L’Oréal’s audience turns to this trustworthy brand to tell us the scoop on all the beauty tricks of each Covergirl that sets foot on the red carpet. But this year, L’Oréal won’t just be sharing the celebrities’ go-to L’Oréal product.

The hashtag #WorthSaying was inspired by L’Oréal’s tagline, “Because You’re Worth It.” This phrase was first written in 1973 by Ilon Specht when she was 23 working as a copywriter at McCann-Erickson advertising agency in New York. Specht produced the now famous phrase at the end of a women’s perspective piece for L’Oréal in the midst of the feminist movement. Now it has become the signature tagline for L’Oréal’s Covergirl brand.

President of L’Oréal Paris, Karen Fondu, states why this #WorthSaying campaign message is worth it:

“We are fueling the powerful words of women everywhere, so their most-worthy conversations reach, affect and inspire as many other women as possible.”

This campaign #WorthSaying is inspiring women everywhere to openly express something that is important to them and worth saying. This campaign is providing real life perspectives of Covergirls and what they value in their life. Whether it may be the meaningfulness in their profession, personal values, or a message they want to be shared. This campaign is inspired by L’Oréal’s core belief that each individual within their target market of women is unique and should embrace their individuality.

| Youtube | L’Oréal Paris launches #WorthSaying |

Why the Golden Globes?

So why is the Golden Globes a perfect event to promote this campaign? It is because L’Oréal has been a broadcast sponsor for the Golden Globes for 13 years and a number of their influential celebrity spokespersons will be attending this event. Julianne Moore, Eva Longoria, and Frieda Pinto will be the sole promoters of the #WorthSaying campaign throughout the day and night of the Golden Globes using social media and through their interviews.

L’Oréal hopes to redirect the red carpet conversation points to matters that women hold close to their hearts instead of the usual topics of conversation on the red carpet pertaining to cosmetic products, shoes, and fashion designers. Reminding the audience that “its about their work, not their looks.”

Marie Claire reported in their article, L’Oréal To Empower Women On The Red Carpet With #WorthSaying Campaign, women walking the red carpet have grown tiresome of the usual materialistic questions journalists bombard them with. Such as; “Who are you wearing?” “What makeup products did you use?” “Where is your jewelry from?” A number of red carpet status female celebrities have even gone as far as saying the repetitiveness of these questions are sexist and that they would like to be asked questions that have more depth in regards to their career and personal views.  

This clip is from the Red Carpet Show on E! at the SAG Awards in 2014. The interviewer, Giuliana Rancic, led an interview with actress Cate Blanchett. Rancic, an E! News reporter, asks the actress about her clothing to kick off the interview instead of leading with creative questions pertaining to Blanchett’s nomination for Best Actress for her leading role in the Blue Jasmine. Blanchett interrupts the cameras vertical fanning motion examining her dress by asking, “Do you do that to the guys?” L’Oréal wants to alter the traditional interview script on the red carpet by asking the celebrities to talk about topics important to them, how they feel about their work, and the message they would like to deliver to their fans.

| YouTube | Cate Blanchett Calls Out E!'s Glam Cam E! | 

Yes ladies, we all drool over the star’s dazzling dresses and those cascading earrings we wish we had… but let’s not forget the real reason those amazing women are on that red carpet! These women have worked tirelessly at something they love before getting the opportunity to strut down the red carpet. So let’s applaud their accomplishments, drive, and perseverance as well as their sense of style.

You Can Participate!

L’Oreal is encouraging women everywhere to partake in the campaign’s conversation and share your stories on Twitter the day of the Golden Globes. Just tag @LorealParisUSA and the hashtag #WorthSaying. Giving every woman the chance to express what they believe is worth saying. L’Oréal will select a number of posts to be featured on their @LorealParisUSA account. L’Oréal is listening!

The content driven by L’Oréal’s hashtag #WorthSaying will further encourage women to share and participate in this feminist empowered campaign. The positive energy from this campaign also reminds L’Oréal’s consumers that this brand represents more than just your lip color or mascara preference. It is a brand the truly believes every woman has a meaningful story to tell and each of us is WORTH IT!

[marketingmichael]

Product Placement is obvious, so why don't Advertisers take advantage?

Product Placement is obvious on screen and it's intrusive. So why don't Marketers take advantage of this? Some TV shows promote products in such a way that ties into the story line, for example using a cellphone to show off its unique features, shows like "Teen Wolf". But shows like, "Days of Our Lives" have obvious product placement ads. Literally! (Check out 0:56 in the video). With the popularity of online streaming like  Netflix, users are able to watch their favorite shows, with the notion of seeing less promotional ads, however they still may see promos in the shows themselves, so why not create an easy way to purchase these items. A group of students from UC Riverside came up with S.E.V.H., which stands for Smart Embedded Video Hyperlinking. Its purpose is to transform online video into an advertising platform. By simply hovering over a product, they can click on the desired product they like and it would take them to an ecommerce site where they would be able to purchase the product.

Now how can content marketing and advertising play into this? Using 'obvious' product placement, Advertisers could display products within the shows. First off they should make it ultra cheesy and obvious, such as in Days of Our Lives (DOOL). With enough brand power-backing (money talks/financial support for the show to continue), brands could make the debut of their products so hilariously cheesy that it will become so obvious. With this, it will be talked about and criticized — buzz worthy. The actors could mention that this is their favorite product and it will reoccur through the shows series. To the watchers and for brand directors, this could be an interactive game within the show, "Watch out for the product in this show." The show and brand can create a Brand Awareness campaign off this: Find the product in the show and use the hashtag #IfounditDOOL. This fun game could be brand awareness for the product and also eyes and viewership for the show. Clicking on the product within the show, it could take them to the brands website, and from there, more content marketing strategies and ecommerce. Product placement using SEVH is a smart system to connect viewers with brands they love with just a click away.

[marketingmichael]

There is a connection with Flappy Birds and Cal State L.A.

  Working for public affairs at a university, one has to think twice when posting content. Fearful of everything we publish, we have to make sure we don't offend anyone or fall under copyright infringement.

But I had to post about this because it was relatable to the Midterms coming up the following week. Our tagline was 'With midterms coming up, don't get "Flappy Bird" frustrated. Head over to the library and go study!'

Flappy Bird is a mobile device game that has become popular over the last week, trending on Twitter with over 1 Million conversations, and leaving a social dent onto social media. It is most popular with the millennials. Ask most college students and they would know a bit or two about the latest craze of The Flappy Bird.  

Now how does this relate to the university, Cal State L.A. or any school in particular? ...We all have Exams! Studying for exams is such a drag and you might even feel overwhelmed, stressed, and frustrated. Users who play Flappy Bird could easily get frustrated with the game because they can't even make it past the next level after a few tries. People are going crazy about this game! So crazy that some have said they wanted to break their tablets or throw their phone across the room. Now relating the game back to Exams, we see the connection with the frustration of the two.

In the picture above I posted onto @CalStateLA Instagram, i am using a gamification technique comparing a game to a real life situation. Gabe Zichermann, founder and chief executive at Dopamine Inc., a consulting agency focused on gamified campaigns for employees and consumers, says "If employers [universities] can find a way to make work [exams] feel like a fun game, they can increase their employees [students] ability to learn new skills by 40%." That being said, if you center taking something so serious such as taking a test into something that is more relaxed, fun, and comical such as Flappy Bird, you might feel more at ease when taking your test. Don't get Flappy Bird frustrated.