Edelman Digital 2013 Social Media Trends
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More people are using social media than ever before – and for longer, on an increasingly diverse array of devices. As a result, newsfeeds are cluttered, and fans are more distracted and discerning. In order to succeed, brands will increasingly turn to real-time creative, analytics and paid media to ensure that high-performing content reaches as many people as possible, at the moment they are most interested, to spark conversations and deepen customer relationships. As media converges, brands will invest in ways to complement original, visual content with fan-sourced creative. Promoting high-performing content that aligns with new “real content” search drivers will become essential. Brands will host epic social events to excite the base and invest in tools that help them target and engage one-on-one more efficiently. And brands will have a little fun in the process, remembering that brandplay can go a long way to telling their story. There are 10 social media essentials that can help guide brands to achieve success in 2013. We explore these essentials and case studies of brands in action.
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Edelman Digital 2013 Social Media Trends
- 1. 10 SOCIAL MEDIA ESSENTIALS FOR 2013 Monte Lutz EVP, Social Strategy and Programming @montelutz
- 2. ESSENTIALS FOR 2013 MOBILE CONVERGED AMPLIFYING VISUAL CREATIVE FIRST! MEDIA SOURCED STORYTELLING NEWSROOM CONTENT COMES INTO FOCUS MANY SOCIAL ONE-TO-ONE THE SEARCH BRANDPLAY LIGHTWEIGHT EVENTS SOCIAL GAME JUST INTERACTIONS DRIVE ENGAGEMENT CHANGED – OVER TIME EXCITEMENT AGAIN 2
- 3. MOBILE FIRST! 3
- 4. MOBILE FIRST! 61 All new Facebook % features designed for mobile first. of smartphone users access social media Instagram buy was on their mobile billion dollar investment device. in its rapidly-growing mobile base. 4
- 5. SOCIAL ON MOBILE LEADS GROWTH 180 Social Mobile use of social Networks 160 US social network users media is Facebook (8.2% growth) surging, combined 140 YouTube US YouTube Monthly with smartphone Visitors (15.1% growth) 120 Smart adoption. phones US Facebook Users 100 (7.6% growth) MILLIONS The number of 80 Mobile US smartphone users Social (36.2% growth) people accessing 60 US mobile social users social channels via Console (42.8% growth) Gamers* mobile increased by 40 US Console Gamers 43%. 20 Twitter (19.7% growth) US Twitter Users 0 (24.5% growth) 2012 2013 2014 Source: eMarketer: US Online Gaming Forecast June 2012 5
- 6. MOBILE IN THE MIDDLE Mobile technology and behavior is at the center of the current digital Social Websites ecosystem, including Networks SEARCH ENGINES SOCIAL SHARING web, social and search activities Paid Media 6
- 7. APP-BASED MARKETING Tell stories through apps that embody a brand‟s character 7
- 8. OPTIMIZE CONTENT ACROSS CHANNELS 90% of people use multiple screens sequentially Source: Google 17 43 39 43 MINUTES MINUTES MINUTES MINUTES 8
- 9. SMARTPHONES KICKSTART ACTIVITIES Source: Google Start on Smartphone 65% 63% 65% 47% 59% 66% 56% SHOP PLAN A MANAGE SOCIAL WATCH SEARCH BROWSE ONLINE TRIP FINANCES NETWORK VIDEO Continue on PC 60% 58% 61% 45% 56% 58% 48% Continue 4% 5% 4% 3% 3% 8% 8% on tablet 9
- 10. CONVERGED MEDIA 10
- 11. 50 years ago, David Ogilvy asked: “Are your ads looking more like magazine spreads yet?” 11
- 12. The convergence of paid, owned and earned media has blurred the distinction between each. You don‟t need to design ads that look like editorial content. Great content is your ad. Richard Edelman, President & CEO 12
- 13. CONVERGED MEDIA The convergence of paid, owned and earned media provides the PAID MEDIA Promoted OWNED MEDIA opportunity Traditional Ads Brand Corporate Content Content to achieve earned media at scale. CONVERGED MEDIA Sponsored Branded content Customer that is shared Visual Reference: Altimeter Group EARNED MEDIA Organic 13
- 14. CONVERGENCE AD MODEL Convergence ad model recognizes that the content is the ad. SPONSORED 46x higher CTR for sponsored page post in news feed vs. ads in the right rail MARKETPLACE FRIENDS 14
- 15. CONVERGED CONTENT STRATEGY CREATE COMPELLING MEASURE PROMOTE HIGH- CONTENT PERFORMANCE PERFORMING CONTENT Relevant Promoted Post Visual Engagement Promoted Tweet Tailored Sentiment Featured Video Actionable OWNED EARNED PAID 15
- 16. MAXIMIZE CONTENT EXPOSURE IN REAL TIME DEVELOP MEDIA STRATEGY CREATE AND CURATE CONTENT AMPLIFY AND EXTEND CONVERSATIONS ENGAGE COMMUNITY REAL TIME CONCEPT AND SOCIAL MONITORING CREATE VISUALS INSIGHTS AND ANALYSIS COPYWRITING TRACK TOWARDS BRAND KPIS 16
- 17. AMPLIFY IT Identify high-performing content, boost with paid media Details What is our Yes budget? Has the content hit an Is the sentiment Is the content aligned Who will engagement threshold? positive? to our Social goals we target? No DON‟T PROMOTE For how long? 17
- 18. AMPLIFYING SOURCED CONTENT 18
- 19. AMPLIFYING SOURCED CONTENT Source content from fans, blogs and creative channels Fans and enthusiasts who love the brand are sharing amazing photos and stories about the brand every day. 19
- 20. AMPLIFYING SOURCED CONTENT Establishing a process for curation and amplification CREATE/PUBLISH LISTEN CURATE PROMOTE TARGET MEASURE HP runs HP finds post about HP posts the piece Promote the Add Apt Astorian to Track conversion #makeitmatter #makeitmatter on to its Facebook page Facebook post as Contact List in value from paid vs. program on social Apt Astorian Tumblr using social media Promoted Post or influencer earned vs. owned. channels. using social media publication tools. Sponsored Story management tools monitoring tools. using social and tag them as an advertising suite. advocate. Compare Can target to right against other data rail, newsfeed or sources to de- mobile. duplicate. 20
- 22. VISUAL STORYTELLING COMES INTO FOCUS 25 20 + Tumblr 15 MILLIONS 10 5 Pinterest 300 million photos Instagram uploaded to 0 UNIQUE MONTHLY VISITORS OVER THE YEAR Facebook EACH day Visual sites surging in traffic and attention 22
- 23. VISUAL STORYTELLING COMES INTO FOCUS 1 5x higher engagement on visual content on Facebook 23
- 24. VISUAL STORYTELLING EVOLVING TO MOBILE VIDEO Mobile share of online 5.0% video time watched Combined Source: Ooyala Global Video Index Report, Q2 2012 3.8% 2.5% Tablet Smart Phone 1.3% MONTHLY 2012 24
- 25. VINE SPURS SOCIAL VIDEO EXPERIMENTS 25
- 26. CREATIVE NEWSROOM 26
- 27. MORE CONTENT THAN EVER IN SOCIAL Every minute, there are: 200 MILLION 2.8 MILLION EMAILS YOUTUBE VIEWS 2.1 MILLION5.6 MILLION GOOGLE SEARCHES 200K TEXTS 275K TWEETS FACEBOOK PICTURES 1.7 MILLION FACEBOOK POSTS 27
- 28. PEOPLE HAVE TO FIND WAYS TO FILTER 28
- 29. PEOPLE FILTER BASED ON TIME Content decay happens fast. If people don‟t see it in the first three hours, they‟ll never see it 90% 92 % of Facebook retweets within the engagement in first 3 first hour hours of post 29
- 30. AND VISUAL CONTENT Pictures are easier to identify and digest in the newsfeed. 30
- 31. FACEBOOK IS FILTERING TOO 100% MYTH: 100% organic reach 16% FEBRUARY 2012: Facebook announces average of 16% reach for brand content 8% SEPTEMBER 2012: Facebook reduces reach to 8% average 31
- 32. A NEW APPROACH DESIGNED TO REAL TIME OFFER REAL TIME, BREAKTHR OUGH CONTENT 32
- 33. SO YOU CAN TRANSFORM FROM THIS… VW is excited to celebrate the final journey of the Shuttle Endeavour. What an adventure it has been. 33
- 34. …TO THIS 34
- 35. CREATIVE NEWSROOM IN ACTION Shuttle Newsroom Community Endeavour teams Managers trends spot the develop real- nationally trend time creative 35
- 36. TAILORED TO BRAND & AUDIENCE The newsroom posts generated 400-600% more engagement Adobe Lightroom Photo Album: Microsoft Clippie: Stunning Pictures Classic Microsoft, Techie Humor 36
- 37. AN OFFERING UNLIKE ANY OTHER PEOPLE PROCESS TOOLS Multi Discipline teams 3 steps to get you up and Proprietary mix of resources to with diverse backgrounds running effectively mine pop culture, consumer to serve your brand and community insights 37
- 38. THE MODELS Different models available depending on the needs of a brand TRENDSPOTTER CAMPAIGN DAILY DESK 38
- 39. THE BLACKOUT BOWL Creative Newsroom‟s shining moment When the Superdome went dark, social media teams scrambled to make light of the situation. 39
- 41. YOU HAVE 50 CHANCES TO MAKE AN IMPRESSION You don‟t have to try to win the game in one swing Total Content Attention Consumption Per Channel Rate Per Person 500 posts 50 posts 10% per year per person CAPTURE DEEPEN INTEREST ENGAGEMENT 1,500 tweets 50 tweets 3% per year per person 41
- 42. DON‟T PROPOSE ON THE FIRST DATE WAIT FOR YOUR 51ST DATE 42
- 43. AS ENGAGEMENT INCREASES, REVENUE LIFTS ADVOCACY Size of Group Depth of Emotional Engagement AWARENESS ENGAGEMENT CONSIDERATION PURCHASE MASS MEDIA SOCIAL MEDIA SEO, CRM, WOM 43
- 45. EPIC EVENTS DRIVE BREAKTHROUGH ATTENTION Epic events transcend space, time and media. The combination of breaking news, exclusive access and competition was a winning formula for excitement, attention and conversation. 45
- 46. EXTEND EPIC When a dad launched his son‟s Skylander‟s Tree Rex figure into CONVERSATIONS space, @RedBullStratos congratulated Tree Rex on THROUGH TIMELY Twitter, creating an additional ENGAGEMENT spike in conversation online. 46 46
- 47. GIVE For the launch of Call of Duty: Black Ops LIVE TV II, Activision partnered with Spike TV for a live A SOCIAL midnight show, featuring tweets, photos and LIFE stories from fans around the world. 47
- 48. SYNC SOCIAL EVENTS IRL Syncing social and IRL events more closely Axe Music has used social broadcasts of music events to attract and excite fans. 48
- 49. ONE-TO-ONE SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT 49
- 50. ONE-TO-ONE SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT People are PEOPLE, not just an email address or a phone number 50
- 51. AUDIENCE STANDARDS: BUILD A PROFILE DEMOGRAPHIC DATA $ PSYCHOGRAPHIC DATA 51
- 52. ONE-TO-ONE SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT Segment based on interests and engagement INTEREST GEOGRAPHY ACTIVITY 52
- 53. THE SEARCH GAME HAS CHANGED AGAIN 53
- 54. THE RISE OF REAL CONTENT Google‟s Penguin release means quality content is the paramount route for SEO and discoverability 54
- 55. EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL CONTEXT Bing Social Search 55
- 56. INTERSECTION OF SEARCH & SOCIAL SOCIAL Social to drive Engagement & SOCIAL sharing drives Robust and rich MEDIA initial search scale, engageme content strategy to FOR drive search SEARCH nt, sharing and Content for search to recommendation support social CLICKTHROUGH CLICKTHROUGH FORENSIC TRACKING & MEASUREMENT 56
- 57. DEVELOP A SPECTRUM OF CONTENT SEARCH SOCIAL Shortform content „Spike‟ campaign „Social poster‟ Longform Visual content Video content calendar for social content content content General content Visual content Video calendar based drives scale and content e.g. on tone of voice WOM through product network at 2x demos rate of non-visual primed to feed search Content optimized Periodic fan General for enthusiasts acquisition at imagery and and search scale product info 57
- 58. BRANDPLAY 58
- 59. BRANDPLAY Letting your personality shine through @TacoBell Why is it that “fire” sauce isn‟t made with any real fire? Seems like false advertising. @OldSpice Is your deodorant made with really old spices? @OldSpice @TacoBell @TacoBell Depends. Do you consider volcanos, tanks and freedom to be spices? 59
- 60. BRANDPLAY Letting your personality shine through Ever bring your own Oreo cookies to the movie theatre? #slicksnacker NOT COOL, COOKIE. @Oreo RT @AMCTheatres 60
- 61. NOT JUST FOR CONSUMER BRANDS B2B eCards Valentine embedded in code 61
- 62. Copyright ©2012 Daniel J. Edelman, Inc. All rights reserved. All information contained herein is confidential and proprietary to Daniel J. Edelman, Inc. (“Edelman”).
Notas del editor
- 10 Social Media Essentials for 2013 :: Edelman DigitalAuthor: Monte Lutz, EVP Social Strategy and Programming, @montelutz
- More friends, more fans, more brands, more stories. More people are using social media than ever before – and for longer, on an increasingly diverse array of devices. As a result, newsfeeds are cluttered, and fans are more distracted and discerning. In order to succeed, brands will increasingly turn to real-time creative, analytics and paid media to ensure that high-performing content reaches as many people as possible, at the moment they are most interested, to spark conversations and deepen customer relationships. As media converges, brands will invest in ways to complement original, visual content with fan-sourced creative. Promoting high-performing content that aligns with new “real content” search drivers will become essential. Brands will host epic social events to excite the base and invest in tools that help them target and engage one-on-one more efficiently. And brands will have a little fun in the process, remembering that brandplay can go a long way to telling their story.There are 10 social media essentials that can help guide brands to achieve success in2013. We explore these essentials and case studies of brands in action. We see 10 trends bubbling up in 2013: (1) mobile first, (2) converged media, (3) sourced content, (4) visual storytelling, (5) creative newsroom, (6) many lightweight interactions over time, (7) social events drive excitement, (8) one-to-one engagement (9) search game changed again, and (10) brandplay.
- The first trend is Converged Media.
- A September 2012 Insit survey of 6,000 consumers in 19 markets found that 51% of internet users have a smartphone. These smartphone users are heavy users of social media. According to Google, 61% of smartphone users already access social on their mobile. These people aren’t just using mobile social a little. According to Nielsen, nearly one-third (30%) of all time spent on mobile devices is spent on social networks, compared with 20% of all time spent on PCs. (Nielsen, July 2012). Social media platforms are quickly adjusting. Facebook bought Instagram for its mobile community as much as its feature set. On the phone, the visual experience is even more pronounced than on a PC, where people, thumb, scroll, like through their experience. This is why Zuckerberg has directed that all new Facebook features should be designed for mobile first.
- Compilation of eMarketer data from the previous six months helps to tell the story – visually. While the number of US social network users will increase by 8% in 2013, US smartphone users will increase by 36%, and mobile social users will grow by an astounding 43%. Get your apps ready. Growth is in mobile social.
- The growth is driven by the convergence of mobile at the center of online, social and search activities. Mobile technology is increasingly driving paid, owned and earned media.
- Brands such as Starbucks have purposefully placed mobile at the heart of their experience, telling stories through the apps that embody the brands character. Whether it’s paying with your digital wallet, redeeming your Starbucks Rewards or accessing the Starbucks network to download a song or read the latest news, the content, payment and social experience delivered by Starbucks embodies the spirit of Starbucks as a connected place. As brands continue to focus on stories and experiences, not just ads and messaging, they will continue to create opportunities for customers and fans to engage wit them intuitively through mobile. Disclosure: Starbucks is an Edelman client.
- We our spending our time online divided (or overlapping between) four primary devices:Smartphone: 17 minutesTablet: 30 minutesPC/Laptop: 39 MinutesTV: 43 minutesBut people aren’t just using a single device. 90% of people use multiple screens sequentially.Brands must therefore develop content so that it is optimized across channels. Second screen behaviors are becoming normal for many consumers. 85% of consumers use a second screen device while watching TV. Extending the entertainment, community or advertising experience beyond the primary screen will drive deeper engagement with the original content and the brand. Source: The New Multi-screen World: Understanding Cross-Platform Consumer Behavior
- Smartphones provide the initial kickstart for many primary online activities. People start on their smartphone and then continue on other platforms. Search, social networking and web browsing are the most common activities to start on the smartphone. More than half of people continue to search, browse, shop, manage finances and engage on social networks on a PC. Source: The New Multi-screen World: Understanding Cross-Platform Consumer Behavior
- The next trend is Converged Media.
- Fifty years ago, David Ogilvy asked: “Are your ads looking more like magazine spreads yet?” The advertising and communications worlds listened, introducing infomercials, advertorials, product placement, sponsored programming and brand journalism.
- Today, the conversation has evolved from content branding to converged media. The convergence of paid, owned and earned media has blurred the distinction between each. You don’t need to design ads that look like editorial content. Great content is your ad.
- The convergence of paid, owned and earned media provides the opportunity to achieve earned media at scale. Content developed by the brand is shared organically by friends and fans to their own networks, extending the reach of the story to additional circles. The content can also be promoted through paid media to boost the reach further. Visual reference: http://www.slideshare.net/Altimeter/the-converged-media-imperative
- The classic ad model believes that the ad is the content. Advertisers still believe that people “like” ads. Reality Check: whether on TV or social media, people don’t “like” ads. They watch TV for the shows. They visit Facebook to connect with their friends. The convergence ad model recognizes that the content is the ad. Instead of buying an ad in the right rail, Sponsored content boosts the reach of editorial content within the newsfeed itself. The “ad” isn’t distinct, pre-fabricated creative. It is the content. According to a February 2013 eMarketer report, sponsored content displayed in the newsfeed has 46 times the click-through rate of ads in the right-hand column. Since the mobile Facebook experience is ONLY the newsfeed, sponsored content is even more important in mobile. Engagement on mobile newsfeed ads is twice that of newsfeed on PC.
- It all starts with compelling content that is relevant, visual, tailored and actionable. Relevance is the effective balance of editorial focus across the (1) brand, (2) industry and (3) community. Visual content has 5x higher engagement. The ability to tailor the voice and tone of content to audiences and platforms, while effectively representing the overarching brand narrative in social, is essential for building a base of support and extending engagement, which is amplified when a brand drives engagement through the use of distinct calls to action. With content in play, real-time analytics measure the performance of the content to understand what is resonating, and what is failing to connect with the audience. Even the best-conceived content fails to connect because of timing or attention. Measuring the engagement and sentiment about the content determines how well it is performing, and whether you should extend the reach of the content to more people. The best content generates the most engagement, which in turn drives it into the newsfeeds of friends, fans and followers. However, with Facebook reducing the organic reach of content, and the increasing density of tweets, it is harder for any content to reach a significant share of your followers organically. Sponsored stories, promoted posts, promoted tweets and featured videos extend the reach of your content. But you don’t want to boost content that is not working. Focusing on extending the reach of content that is already performing well, will ensure that your best content reaches the most people.
- All of these changes are leading to a real-time content revolution for brands. Brands must capitalize on these changed by better integrating community management, real-time analytics and paid media. Effective community management balances content creation and community engagement, that is enhanced through compelling visuals and text. Aligning analytics with community management delivers real-time actionable insights based on performance of content and behaviors of communities. These insights can be employed to drive a lift in engagement through promoted content.
- Edelman Digital has developed an approach for evaluating which content to boost through paid media in real time, identifying “high-performing content” based on the level of engagement, quality of sentiment, relevance of content to company priorities and geographic priority (where appropriate). Additionally, we consider who we should target the promoted content to, based on the topical relevance to specific audiences. Recognizing the half-life of social content – even high-performing social content – is limited, we apply a factor of content decay to determine whether content should continue to be promoted or whether promotion should be focused on a different piece of content.
- Telling your brand’s story day-in and day-out isn’t easy. Community managers and creative teams generate hundreds of stories per year. However, brands have learned that not all great ideas come from within the walls of the company or its agency. In fact, many of the best pictures come from fans and enthusiasts who love the brand and are sharing great stories about the brand each and every day. Disclosure: Volkswagen is an Edelman client.
- Brands are focusing on creating original content and curating great content from fans, bloggers and influencers. Curation is an important part of brands’ content strategy. Brands generate original content through their owned channels. When fans, bloggers and influencers create content along similar themes or specifically using the same hashtags, the brand is able to find them and amplify this content on its owned channels as well, striking a balance between original and sourced content created by the community. High-performing posts that resonate with the community can then be boosted through promoted posts. Seeing the success of such efforts, the brand adds the author to its contact list to further develop the relationship. Each element is tracked for ROI from the paid, owned and earned efforts. Disclosure: HP is an Edelman client.
- Visual storytelling has come into focus. 300 million photos are uploaded to Facebook each day. Highly visual platforms such as Pinterest, Tumblr and Instagram are surging in traffic and attention. Tumblr is moving up the list of the most popular social networks in the world. Tumblr’s monthly unique visitor count increased by 100% to 26.9 million between July 2011 and 2012, according to Marketing Land reports.This puts Tumblr, the five-year-old microblog founded in New York, neck and neck with Pinterest which collects more than 23 million uniques a month, according to statistics from Site Analytics which tracks how many visitors sites collect in the U.S. Instagram has more than 100 million users. According to TechCrunch, over 5 billion photos have been shared on the platform. After the release of the Android app and acquisition by Facebook, Instagram downloads surged to eight times higher than inthe previous year. GE Instagram127,708 followersBehind the scenes of GEJohnnie Walker Instagram CampaignOverview: Johnnie Walker wanted to be a top-20 brand on Instagram to complement their 4 million strong Facebook presence. They asked their fans for help, partnering with leading Instagrammers to take over the @JOHNNIEWALKER Instagram feed and each tell a brand related story. The month-long campaign launched in late August. Recognizing the good work, Instagram is featuring the new Johnnie Walker page as a suggested page.Insight: Influencers and/or paid media are the quickest way to build a base of fans quickly for a new property. There is also great power in Suggested Pages.
- When Facebook switched to a more visually-oriented Timeline in early 2012, engagement with visual content increased significantly. According to a Simply Measured analysis, visual content generates 5x more engagement than non-visual content on Facebook. Since the launch of Timeline, engagement with visual content has increased 52%. Johnnie Walker is a great example of a brand turning to more visual content to engage with fans. Johnnie Walker wanted to be a top-20 brand on Instagram to complement its4 million strong Facebook presence. They asked their fans for help, partnering with leading Instagrammers to take over the @JOHNNIEWALKER Instagram feed and each tell a brand related story. They also prominently featured fan-generated Instagram photos on its popular Facebook page, leveraging existing fan love to launch in a new platform. The month-long campaign launched in late August. Recognizing the good work, Instagram featured the new Johnnie Walker page as a suggested page. As with the Johnnie Walker example, brands who build relationships with established influencers on a platform can build a base of fans quickly and effectively. Disclosure: Johnnie Walker is an Edelman client.
- Visual storytelling is also driving a surge in consumption of mobile video, with significant increases in mobile video views. Over the last two years, the audience for mobile video in the US has increased by 77% to 36 million people. This will continue to increase as the smartphone revolution expands and tablet sales explode. We are already seeing some client video campaigns generate 25-50% of all video views on mobile devices.
- Twitter’s purchase of social video service Vine is driving a renewed interest in bite-sized video that is deeply integrated into social platforms. Look for brands, social platforms, and startups to focus increasing attention on social video in the coming year. Lessons from brand experiments with Tout, and early experiments with Vine, will continue to draw attention.McDonald’s.Skylanders and Toyota have each jumped in with games, fans and a stop motion ad to start. Disclaimer: Skylanders is an Activision client.
- There is more content than ever in social and digital media. Each minute, there are 1.7 million Facebook posts, 2.8 million YouTube views, and 275,000 tweets. We comb through 200 million email and 5.6 million texts per minute. In an attempt to find the information we are looking for, there are 2.1 million Google searches per minute as well.
- People have to find a way to filter through all this information.
- First and foremost, people filter content based on time. They are either online or not. They are either on Facebook and Twitter or they are not. This is critically important for brands to consider, because the half-life of social content can be measured in hours. 90% of Facebook engagement happens in the first three hours of a post. Similarly, 92% of retweets occur within the first hour. If you post when people are paying attention, nobody will see it.
- People also filter content based on the medium. Visual content is far more engaging than simple text content. Pictures are easier to identify and digest in the newsfeed. They stand out and call for attention. As a result, Facebook posts that contain photos have 5x more engagement than those that do not.
- The platforms themselves – particularly Facebook – are also filtering the content that you see. Over the last year, as the number of people actively using Facebook has surpassed one billion, and as the number of brands who are actively posting on Facebook continues to increase, Facebook has continued to update its algorithm to better filter the exponential increase in content on the platform. As a result, brands are seeing their content reaching only 8 percent of their audience members on average. This is not an absolute number. Brands with higher engagement are rewarded with greater organic reach. Conversely, brands that post content that doesn’t resonate with their fan base are seeing their reach continue to shrink.
- All of these changes are leading to a real-time, creative content revolution for brands. In order to compete, brands must be able to create engaging, visual content that connects with consumers about the things they are thinking and talking about in near real-time.Brands must capitalize on these changes by better integrating community management, real-time analytics creative, and paid media. Aligning analytics with community management delivers real-time actionable insights based on behaviors of communities and the social conversation at large. Teaming up community management with creative balances allows us to tell stories that are more compelling and more likely to break through. Analytics is back on the case to monitor performance of content and these insights can be employed to drive a lift in engagement through promoted content.
- Brands have the opportunity – and increasingly, the requirement – to create compelling real-time content that is conversation aware and creative. For example, when the Space Shuttle Endeavour was on its final voyage across the US, the topic surged in attention, becoming the #2 trend on Twitter. Millions of people on Twitter, Facebook and other social channels were talking about it. Consumer-friendly brands such as Volkswagen took note and decided to join the conversation. It would have been perfectly acceptable to write a simple, congratulatory note and post it to Facebook. For example, “VW is excited to celebrate the final journey of the Shuttle Endeavour. What an adventure it has been.”
- Instead, the Volskwagen social media team put its own visual VW spin on the story. With discussion about the new VW Beetle convertible starting to bubble up about the same time, the VW social team took an image of the Shuttle Endeavour being transported on the back of a 747 and updated it with an image of a “VW Shuttlebug.” The post simply said: “SPOTTED: Shuttlebug.” The community went wild for it, sharing the image nearly 2,000 times. In fact, the post generated 6 times the engagement of the typical visual post on the VW Facebook page. Combining a popular conversation with a compelling image works.
- A number of brands also capitalized on the popularity of the Shuttle Endeavour’s final flight to tell their own stories. As the Space Shuttle Endeavour criss-crossed the state of California atop a massive jumbo jet, the Endeavour started trending nationally. Monitoring Twitter and other social channels in real time, social newsroom teams spotted that the trend and alerted community managers, who developed real-time creative responses within an hour.
- While the Shuttle Endeavour trend was the same, different brands joined the conversation in their own unique ways. The Adobe Lightroom team chose to tell its story though stunning, original photography taken by the team as the Endeavour flew near its offices in the Bay Area. Microsoft’s social team channeled the classic Clippie helper to ask if the 747 pilot needed a helping hand to guide the Shuttle home. Each channel approached the same story in a unique manner, befitting its brand and community. As a result, each saw a 400-600% increase in engagement, compared to other visual content on the pages. Disclosure: Volkswagen, Adobe and Microsoft are Edelman clients.
- These successes don’t happen by accident. They require a combination of people, processes and tools to turn an insight into the conversation into engaging creative in real-time. Community managers and trendspotters actively monitor the conversation for opportunities. Using a mix of proprietary resources and social trending tools, they sort through potential opportunities to identify the ones that would resonate the most with the particular community based on demographic, psychographic and behavioral insights about the community. Teams coordinate with a newsroom editor and studio designers to turn the idea into creative reality within a few hours.
- There are a number of models for how the Creative Newsroom can work for a brand. Trendspottercampaigns are designed to help brands be more interesting and more relevant in the newsfeed. The Creative Newsroom team actively monitors the online conversation for stories and trends that have reached a tipping point and are relevant to the brand’s audience. We pick the best and create original, real-time content to keep your community engaged. Newsroom Campaign is your opportunity to turn a launch into a cultural milestone. The Campaign approach helps to ensure that conversation about launches and milestones don’t end with your announcement. The Newsroom Campaign extends the conversation about you by demonstrating relevance to the trends and topics that people are already talking about. For example, OREOs Daily Twist turned the 100th anniversary of the brand into a 100-day celebration made newly relevant to the news of the day. The Daily Desk is the most ambitious offering. The Daily Desk is designed to ensure that a brand isn’t just catching trends, but defining them, as a trendmaker. While the conversation changes every day, with new stories, new trends and new ideas, the Daily Desk helps companies spot and jump on them quickly – every day. Each morning, the Newsroom team meets to debate the stories of the day and pick the surging conversations that are most relevant to the brand. Within hours, the team has developed a creative response that helps to demonstrate that you are the most relevant brand in the feed by connecting with your audience about the things they’re talking about today, or the fascinating things they have yet to discover. It is designed to help you spot a trend, create a meme, and become the next cultural guidepost.
- Brands were put to the test recently when the Superdome power outage caused half the stadium to go dark and the world’s most watched TV event come to a grinding halt. Oreo, Audi, Volkswagen and Tide rose to the occasion, developing timely, engaging, visual content that capturing audience attention and changed the storyline about which marketers won the Super Bowl. Edelman had 7 real-time command centers active for clients during the Super Bowl, compared to only one in the previous year. This will continue to evolve in increase, not just for the Super Bowl, but for other major events, and for some brands, the every day.
- Last summer, Paul Adams, the Global Head of Brand Design for Facebook, talked about Facebook’s philosophy for how brands should engage on the platform. It is the idea that brands should focus on having many lightweight interactions over time, rather than trying to invite fans to have a deep experience with the brand right out of the gate. Analyzing the average posting frequency and engagement rates for brands on Facebook and Twitter, Adams’ perspective is strongly supported. For brands that post 1-2x per day (totaling 500 posts per year), an average attention rate of 10% would mean that a fan would see 50 posts per year. Similarly, for brands that tweet 4-5 times per day (totaling 1,500 tweets per year), an average attention rate of 3% would mean each follower would see 50 tweets on average per year. In other words, brands have 50 chances to make an impression with each fan each year. If the first five times you talk to a fan, you ask them to BUY, BUY, BUY or DOWNLOAD, INSTALL, MARRY ME, fans will be turned off and turned away. You need to earn their trust over time, by mixing lightweight content about the issues they care about with brand and product-specific information making a more direct pitch.
- Don’t propose on the first date. Invest in the relationship. Wait for your 51st date to pop the question.
- As engagement with the brand increases over time and attention, the depth of the emotional engagement increases as well. As you take fans through the social sales funnel, from awareness through mass media to engagement in social media, through consideration and to purchase, this approach will help to ensure that more people stay engaged, becoming not just customers, but advocates for the brand.
- Epic events transcend space, time and media. The combination of breaking news, exclusive access and competition was a winning formula for excitement, attention and conversation.Few brands have been able to build their own epic memes better than Red Bull, because they dive into them head first. Red Bull doesn't just put up a banner at the X Games, they build a snow ramp for Shaun White. They don't just sponsor a music festival, they launch a record label. And when that’s not enough, they break a world record by helping someone sky dive from space. RedBullStratos was an epic marketing win. 8 million people watched the Livestream; seven million people engaged in social. And Red Bull was everywhere.
- After Red Bull Stratos, if anyone could own the conversation on space it was Red Bull. For the month following the space jump, anytime someone talked about space, the conversation invariably included a mention of the Red Bull space jump. They jumped on the association, engaging people and brands that were doing cool things that were space-related. When a Skylanders dad launched his son’s Tree Rex figure into space onboard a high altitude balloon, @SkylandersGame celebrated the epic achievement by a Skylanders fan. @RedBullStratos spotted the conversation on Twitter and joined in the celebration, tweeting that “Tree Rex needs his wings too,” creating a second spike in conversation. Disclosure: Activision/Skylanders is an Edelman client.
- The launch of Call of Duty: Black Ops II was an epic gaming, TV and social media event, with 2 million tweets, posts and photos posted during the launch. Spike TV hosted a live TV broadcast from Times Square. The broadcast featured stories about Call of Duty fans, highlights from live events around the country, interviews with Treyarch studio head Mark Lamia, and gameplay between New York Giants football players and US troops abroad. The show was fueled by live tweets, photos and videos from fans around the world, demonstrating the power of social media to drive entertainment. Disclosure: Activision/Call of Duty is an Edelman client.
- Syncing social and in-real-life events more closely can also amplify the impact of each. Axe Music uses social broadcasts of music events to attract and excite fans understanding that sometimes you need to give a little jolt to what’s in the newsfeed by introducing a big event – whether streamed or IRL – geared for your fans. Disclosure: Axe is an Edelman client.
- One of the stories being written in the analysis of digital and social media in the 2012 presidential campaign is the supremacy of Big Data to help the Obama campaign be able to segment, target and mobilize supporters more effectively than the Romney campaign. But the most important part of the Big Data story isn’t about data, it’s about people. By combining databases and overlaying social profiles against such data, brands (and campaigns) are able to see that the names they see in their databases aren’t just an email address or a phone numbers, but actual people. Knowing who they really are enables brands to turn the data into prescriptive actions, syncing online with people in the real world. The campaigns used this to create prescriptive asks for individual people, rather than just generic models for broad categorizations. As service providers such as Salesforce and Adobe help brands better merge, align and act based on data drawn from all of their available digital, CRM, social, psychographic, behavioral, partner and customer databases, they will be able to better target offers, service and engagement to individual people rather than clusters of people.
- Brands are moving beyond simple demographic and psychographic data to ever-more sophisticated ways to understand, target and engage customers.
- Platforms are providing additional opportunities for brands to target subsets of their current and prospective fans. Facebook has enabled advertisers to target based on interest, geography and activity for a while. Tools offered by Micro Strategy and other providers allow you to develop significantly more sophisticated clusters based on brand affinities drawn from millions of data profile inputs. Targeting tools allow you to create clusters that can be matched against or filtered with exclusions based on data pulled from your other sources, such as email lists. Facebook Groups are also providing brands with opportunities for fans with similar interests to convene, such as CNN’s issue- and geography-specific groups. Apps such as Super Fans can also provide information about and rewards for individual fans based on their engagement with the page. Brands can even create sub-groups for their most active fans only, inviting them to participate in unique programs with the brand. The advent of Graph Search will enable every Facebook user to be able to search and segment by interest more easily. Twitter’s Targeted Tweets programs allows you to serve tweets to people based on specific interests. You can even promote tweets to individuals who fit the customer profiles of your competitors, helping to fuel conquesting on the platform.
- Since the release of ‘penguin’ Google has made it clear that traditional SEO methods will decline in efficacy, giving way to quality content as the paramount route to discoverability. The Rise of Real Content means that brands can no longer seek quick SEO fixes to drive organic traffic to their owned properties. They must create real content that drives actual engagement in order to earn the Google juice. Google is also using social signals and context from content and engagement on Google+ to determine quality of content and AuthorRank as signals for which content to display.
- Search is evolving to include social context. Bing Social Search is now deeply integrated with Facebook. When you are logged into Facebook, your searches will also generate social context – displaying content, context and information from your Facebook friends in the right rail, next to organic search results. Bing’s partnership with Facebook provides access to Facebook’s walled garden in a way that Google cannot replicate in depth or engagement. Disclosure: Microsoft is an Edelman client.
- As a result of these changes, social media and social for search are now mutually beneficial and essential elements of any integrated campaign. Social media content drives initial scale and engagement. Engagement triggers serve as a signal that boosts organic search results. Additionally, a robust and rich content strategy drives search results. If developed correctly, the content designed for search optimization also integrates with and amplifies social. Each drives click-throughs that can be tracked and optimized. Both content and search strategies should adjust accordingly.
- The dynamic between social and search is realized by developing a spectrum of content, from short-form content optimized for social, to long-form content optimized for search. Visual content and social poster content that combines visuals overlaid with text, straddle the line between social and search.
- People may start following a brand because they like the product; but they continue to follow because they enjoy the conversation. For all of the serious insights and recommendations in this report, we cannot forget to have a little fun. After all, according to Edelman’s 8095 survey, 8 in 10 Millennials expect brands to entertain them. In fact, the 2012 Edelman Trust in Entertainment Barometer found that people think social networking sites have the highest value as an entertainment source; higher than films, music and even TV. Social media is serious business. But it’s also personal and engaging.
- Brands such as Taco Bell and Old Spice have learned the value of have a little fun with the brand in social. This has played out in terms of popular campaigns such as the Old Spice Man. But the same attitude is also displayed in their daily interactions with fans and other brands. Fans follow brands because they like the brand, but also because they are interested in learning what the brand has to say. Saying it in character can lead to some entertaining opportunities. When @OldSpice asked @TacoBell “Why is it that “fire” sauce isn’t made with any real fire? Seems like false advertising,” @TacoBell responded with a quick retort, tweeting: “@OldSpiceIs your deodorant made with really old spices?” Not to be outdone, @OldSpice came back with a tweet of its own: “@TacoBellDepends. Do you consider volcanos, tanks and freedom to be spices?”The exchange generated hundreds of retweets and even some good ole fashioned media coverage. It’s not every day that a deodorant and a restaurant have a conversation. But it is becoming more common.
- Not to be outdone by Taco Bell and Old Spice, OREO wanted to have a little fun by tweeting “Ever bring your own Oreo cookies to the movie theatre? #slicksnacker”. But the social media manager at @AMCTheatres was none too amused. He replied “NOT COOL, COOKIE.” Four hundred retweets later, @AMCTheatres had the last laugh, and a fair amount of respect.
- Brandplay isn’t just for consumer brands.Juniper, a B2B networking solutions provider, isn’t afraid to have a little fun with its Facebook fans. From IT-friendly ecards, to valentines and haikus embedded in lines of code, the brand is engaging its fans using the language, devices and humor that they enjoy. Sure, there are plenty of pictures of servers and certificiation quizzes, but there’s also good old fashioned, audience-specific fun. It works. The engagement rate on Juniper’s Facebook page is higher than Intel, Citrix, Zappos, Old Spice, Lady Gaga and Starbucks. Disclosure: Juniper is an Edelman client.