Apple & AR:
Augmented Reality Set To Penetrate Life As We Know It

“In the near future, it very well can too see common use in everyday societal life. We only have one question…. Are you ready?”

Adobe Project Aero – bridging the gap between the physical and digital.

Ending Note:

With eyes open to the future, the capabilities of technology we’ll see is endless. Science fiction movies may not have been too far off. What we understand as cell phones today will be an archaic device to the world of “tomorrow”. Our form of communication could very well enter augmented reality allowing us to be face to face while being oceans apart.
Looking towards the digital plane and immersive media experiences, all we have to say is – “we’re ready”.

Discussion

AR – Augmented Reality On Mobile

If it wasn’t clear enough that apple was serious about AR, their presentation on the topic at WWDC 2018 on June 4th should’ve definitely made that a clear fact.

The topic of AR starts at 15:08

iOS 12 & ARKit 2

As you can see with the introduction of iOS 12 and ARKit 2 – Apple is definitely revolutionizing AR as we know it. Making it readily accessible to everyone as a new integration in mobile phones. Of course AR on iPhones has been around since iPhone 8 & X, but this evolution of the AR system brings it to a new level (which we speak more about below). Pushing mobile capabilities and augmented reality to a new height, the second iteration of ARKit (ARKit 2) holds promising aspects for what’s to come when iOS 12 is released.

.usdz Files

The new file format, created in a collaboration between Apple and Pixar, allowing virtual 3D objects to “enter” our world through the use of AR technology for apple devices.

For instance, you can turn a physical object into a 3D object to be used for AR through the use of the .usdz file format. Being able to turn anything (digital or physical) into 3D objects to be used for AR experience opens up a myriad of capabilities for companies, user experience, and AR marketing… or should we just say it opens up new capabilities for the world?

Adobe has announced support for .usdz file creation and is rolling it out across their whole creative cloud suit for apps you know and love like photoshop and illustrator. To achieve this, Adobe is launching Project Aero for more AR control – which is the integration of immersive media creation in the adobe creative cloud. In addition, creatives can easily transfer Ar content into Xcode for more refinement as it allows ARKit integration and AR coding.

Discussion

Stemming from our last post on the topic (effectively pt.1), we’ll actually take you through a process to generate meaningful insights on your target audience and consumers and come to a solid conclusion on how to market to them – effectively understanding and connecting with them.

1. Draft Insights From Proposed Conclusions

Now with consumer experience as the focal point of your strategy and your collected first party data ready for use (now that you understand this is far better than any generalized data), you can begin to imagine your target audience and consumers as buyer personas (high level personifications of your data, target audience, and current consumers) who can sit in on strategy meetings and give input on your future development and products from their own perspective.

Format

You can actually fill each one of these out directly on the webpage to help you get a hands-on experience.
Think of this like a workshop

*Viewable if used on desktop*
*Therefore the lines are added below*

Sentence 1) Current situation of market and consumer behavior towards it

Sentence 2) Consumer’s current desires from your market or problems and why that problem is a challenge

Sentence 3) Consumer’s desired end-result

2) Consumers desire beautiful views, experiences, food, and photography but have trouble accommodating all.

3) Consumers want to find way to incorporate all into the same moment.

For instance, utilize your buyer personas as if they were real people face to face with you. Using all you know about them and their character create responses from their points of view during their times of content or facing their problems. Make this language as passionate as possible – the same language your actual consumers and target audience would be using.
form it into one complete thought (I, because, but) explaining what they do, why they do it and oppositions to it.

Example: 1 buyer persona for the same business mentioned above can be that of the flashy social media obsessed person who wants to keep his / her fanbase engulfed in the life that person lives.

*Viewable if used on desktop*
*Therefore the lines are added below*

(I) love showing off what I do on IG and that’s why I take pictures of my food at high class restaurants before I eat it

(because) that’s what people like and I know they want to live my life so I have to keep that appearance up

(but) I always do the same thing – go to restaurants and party – I want something new to do that no one’s done yet.

3. Wrap Up Your Presentation: Giving Your Closing Statement

*Viewable if used on desktop*
*Therefore the lines are added below*

Turn your responses from above into an actionable insight. A hard hitting closing statement.

For the same buyer persona from above:

“Consumers want an experience that can make others jealous and shows why their life needs to be sought after.”

As you can imagine, with an open mind – just this statement alone can lead to some fantastic creative work being done.
As well as being the bases for the experiences you’ll want to create to engage your target audience and consumers. Which then leads into being able to collect more targeted first party data.

Ending Note:

Discussion

“It’s all about the journey and not the destination”

As we’ve said before

“What consumers want from brands is a personalized experience, one that mirrors the way they interact with peers, family and friends.”

But most brands and marketers fail to deliver. They’re TOO focused on the end goal and not enough on how they’ll get there. Then, when they don’t achieve those goals they’re left wondering why.

It’s because they focused on the final metrics, and not enough on all the small scale metrics that lead up to the end goals – inevitably treating their consumers as just a means for an end (money, sales, viewership). Ultimately they fail to look at their consumers as what they are – people. The very people who will carry your company / brand and get you to where you want to go.

Marketing Is All About Connecting With Your Audience

And Should Always Start With Brand Awareness  

This is your introduction to your audience (outreach). As stated, people will almost never buy from a brand they don’t know.
So those “buy from me” type of ads will never work straight out the gate….save them for later… You’re thinking too small….

Look at the bigger companies, the ones leading the industry. You almost never see a “buy from me” type of ad, instead they focus on informing the public. Introducing them to the product, showing it off and it’s capabilities, putting it in front of their face, and giving you a chance to experience it.

Start with brand awareness. Show people who you are, don’t tell them. People are already hard wired to think companies will lie to them and make themselves sound better than what they are. That’s why telling them about yourself will never work. Instead, showing them exactly what you are is giving them all the information they need while also allowing them to form their own opinions on you that will stick for life (brand equity – the public’s perceived opinion on you).

Present them with what you are and allow them put together the pieces of the master puzzle. This can be accomplished through events, appearances, sponsorships, strategic brand placement, aligning yourself with relevant causes to your audience, and of course digital marketing – advertisements, promos, videos, your imagery, how you use your social channels, etc. It all boils down to how you engage with your audience. Go down this road first and converting your loyal audience into consumers will be an easy task.

Let’s look at it in terms of a specific industry

For real estate agents looking for new houses to list: formulate your social media pages and posts around information that people  trying to sell their house will be interested in. Such as “how to sell your house fast”, “how to raise market value” etc.

Show them your expertise and they’ll eventually trust you to sell their house.

The one thing about engaging with your audience is – you have to keep them engaged. This means you have attain and hold onto their interest. You have many forms of content in your arsenal to keep your target audience engaged: blog posts, videos, check lists, pdfs, e-books, images, infographics, podcasts, Q&As, discussions, presentations, webinars, etc. Going a step further, utilize all the features allocated to you (such as live videos). The point is to always retain your audience’s attention.

It’s not even as hard as you think, just formulate an editorial schedule and stick to it (calendar planning).
For example, sticking to the real estate agent field, I’m sure you get asked the same 20 questions every day. Day in and day out you hear the same questions –  they might just be worded differently but always require the same answer. 

This is how you give your audience an experience!

1. They find your company
2. You give them needed information while keeping them entertained
3. You lead them back to your website (if your aim was to grow web traffic)
4. Provide them with more content
5. Present them with information and an experience they don’t want to miss (growing your email list)
6. Hold conversations with them and get to know them.
7. Then once you’ve finally gained their trust – you go for a sale.

This is why you need to worry more on the how (how to get there) and not the what (where you want to go). This is exactly what marketing and content marketing is all about – giving your audience an experience. Giving them value rather than shouting a marketing message at them.

Ending Note:

Get Your Consumers To Love You

It’s more than just finding your refined target audience, it’s keeping them engaged time after time to where they look forward for what you have to put out.

That’s what social media is suppose to be, a platform to keep in-touch with your audience. The same way we as humans use it to keep in touch with family and friends. Use social media as a means to connect with your audience and become a “friend” to them. Don’t ignore them and use it as a mens to make a sell. Instead use social media as a way to keep in touch with your audience so they don’t forget you, keep them engaged, and keep them in conversation to the point where your name is always at the tip of their lips.

Discussion

Well it’s a little bit of an understatement to say “It’s time to stop relying on third party data” as that is an inevitable truth.
Come Oct 1st Facebook will discontinue all use of third party data, otherwise known as partner categories.

Here’s an official statement from facebook in the ads manager

click to open in Lightbox

You know, the detailed targeting you’re all too familiar with like income level, home owners vs non home owners, etc.
All of these and more will be no more come oct 1, 2018.

So What Can You Do Now That Third Party Data Is Discontinued? 

Rely on first party data,
Your data.
We know that’s a little easier said then done so let us explain.

How To Still Market With The Discontinuation Of Partner Categories (Third Party Data)

Collect first party data
First party data is data that only you have. It’s your audience; your customers, your fans.

Third Party data is non-exclusive, it’s not data about who is already your consumer, but instead its generalized data.
More over, it’s anonymous profile data that anyone can use as it’s collected and sold by government entities, large data mining corporations, and the like.

We’re not saying not to use it if you choose to – as many businesses use it. We are however saying you shouldn’t rely on it. You should understand your consumers to the point where you know the exact outside data you need to aid in targeting those who will be most receptive to your brand – that aren’t already your consumers.

How To Work Around Facebook Shutting Down Third Party Data (Partner Categories)
How To Collect First Party Data

To collect first party data and truly understand your audience and their buying intent you need to have a solid web infrastructure in place. It can either be self developed by your team or an outside IT team, or you can easily implement Facebook Pixel, and Google Analytics with the extra additives and configurations needed to fully understanding your web traffic. Taking another step further, you can run a simple survey-esque post across social media – having your audience chime-in and giving you better insights into who they are. This doesn’t necessarily have to be a survey in the traditional sense, but can be an engaging post that gets your audience talking about themselves, what your brand means to them, and why they purchase from you.

Taking this to online advertising now, you can simply upload the data from your Facebook Tracking Pixel to facebook (since we’re talking about how to effectively run ads on facebook now that facebook is canceling third party data) and target ads towards people who visited your website. Then, overlap it with the data you acquired from your audience itself to hone in on exactly who you should be targeting with the ads. From there you can make a look-alike audience from your consumer list / web traffic and target people who fall in line with those who already frequent your website / purchase your products – depending on the aim of the campaign you are running (awareness & traffic VS sale conversions, etc.)

How To Reach Your Consumers Now

What consumers want from brands is a personalized experience, one that mirrors the way they interact with peers, family and friends. But one after another, brands fail to deliver.

Although, it’s good to be focused on individualized metrics, data analysis, and the like. We can’t forget that at the heart of it, marketing is about CONNECTING with your desired consumers and the public. We need to create experiences and connect on deeper level, than just number crunching and “buy now” ads, with our audiences.

It’s the brands that are able to connect who have steadily seen growth, have stayed relevant, have risen to the top of their industries, and can adapt to any market change as they know their consumers on a personal level and listen to their needs, wants, and problems; then develop methods to answer these needs.

The New Era Of Digital Marketing

With the days of easy use third party data in facebook targeting being dead, a new era in digital marketing is to take reign. One that we’ve steadily talked about on this site.

The world as a whole is having a market shift with a heavy focus on Content-based Marketing.
Where first-party data and content is king.

Use this post to show you how to reach your target audience and grow sales.
Use that post to learn how to create a bigger fb pixel / custom audience. Which coincides with this post on:

How to effectively target ads on facebook now that third party data is discontinued 

Ending Note
It’s time to focus on user experience and your own data sets. Look at who is already buying from you then use that to expand your marketing reach and tell you how to target. Draw in your old and newly desired consumers with content. Build trust then go for a sale.

Discussion

Because your competitors have already adapted to video content.
You’re competitors are already planning to jump on video advertisement – as 60% of marketers and business owners said they plan on increasing funding for video marketing in 2018. As of right now 87% of marketers are already using video content in their marketing strategies.

How To Actually Use Video Content To Benefit Your Company & Overcome Your Competitors

As we said last week we’re going to actually run through a scenario to help get your gears in motion.

Let’s first start off with bringing this topic a little closer to home.

When you, yourself, come across products online do you just go based of what you read on the website (talking about high ticketed products)? No, of course not. Although it might sound all good and fine on the website, we all try to dig a bit deeper. For example, a service based product like a web host that claims to be the fastest yet. What would you do? Find reviews right? Multiple reviews on top of that to be correct. But what if you ran across a video of someone actually putting a website hosted by that web host to the test against other websites – where you get to actually see the results of speed tests, load times, and the like with your own eyes. Now would that sway your opinion even more? If you saw that website load within half the time of all the others, with all the same content and backend environment, just the actual hosts being the only difference – would that make you more inclined to buy?

Lets put that in terms of your consumers now.

We already know video is the fastest growing content form in the world right now and for good reasons. Think about it, in the past what did people usually do at home? Consume video for hours on end glued to their TVs. Now in this new digital era where we all have the internet at our fingertips people have switched from watching TV for hours to being glued to their phones for hours. It started out with simple social media – scrolling forever on end. But now as our consumers have become bored with simple pictures and text, marketers and business have learned to evolve and create the same quality video content people would normally see on TV – now on their phones. Giving them a reason to stay glued in.

Ok? But How Does This Help You?

Well it has been stated that 4 times as many consumers would rather watch a video about a product than read about it, and on terms of B2B – 59% of company decision makers would rather watch a video than read an article or blog post.

So give them what they want! Bringing it back to the consumer’s perspective, let’s put it in terms of you selling a water purifier. The consumer is looking online for the best purifier on the market right now, they stumble across your website and read your statistics. Ok? Almost every other purifier claims to be the best. So how can you PROVE it?

Lets say you create a video proving the facts. You show the purifier in action, explain how it works, and show all the parts. Once the water comes out you put it to the test for impurities and PH level. Now they’ve seen with their own eyes that your water is definitely the cleanest, most alkaline, and purified. Free of any added metals and such. Or, they go on YouTube and find videos of people testing out your purifier against other industry standards and you still win. Either way they see the results for themselves.

But,

How do you actually use this content?

You promote it across every social channel to people in your target audience. Since your product is a water purifier part of your target audience (a buyer persona) could consist of people who are body conscious and watch everything that goes into their system – people who only eat organic and non-GMO products. Thus, these people would only want to drink alkaline water or would be more receptive towards the idea of alkaline / pure water.
By creating your content / video content (since video is what we’re focusing on in this post) around this audience and their interests, and then promoting it across all the social channels you just provided them with something that 1) they’ll be interested in seeing 2) introduced them to your product in a visual way and 3) secured future sales as now you have the opportunity of continually drawing in this audience and keeping them interacted with your brand. Eventually growing a bond with them and building trust to where they feel comfortable buying your products because you’ve actually shown that you’ve taken the time to learn about their interests and cater to their needs.

The most successful businesses are those that are able to connect with their audience, learn from them, and listen to their needs.

But Don’t Just Stop There

Think about it, people use video content online the same way they’ve used TV in the past. For entertainment purposes and to pass time. The most content people consume is something they can regularly be entertained by – they watch comedy videos, video skits, web shows, web episodes, talk shows, and the like.

To bring the point home even further, think of YouTube.
People subscribe to channels based around a certain topic they’re interested in. Whether it’s a movie review channel, conspiracy theory channel, or vlog channel, etc. – people tune in day after day to watch the latest video uploaded by their favorite channels in the same manner people watch (or have watched) TV on a daily bases to catch new episodes of their favorite shows.
The idea is the same, just the mediums have changed.

So why stop at reviews of your product? Use video to draw in your target audience – changing a cold audience (people who’ve never heard of you) to warm audience (people who are familiar with your brand) and keeping this new audience entertained. In this instance don’t just mean target audience, but your actual overall audience – as in the people who are now familiar with your brand. These are the people who will drive your brand and eventually spread the word of your company. Tapping into psychology to drive this point home, think of social proofs – the more followers your brand has, the more believable it seems, and the more inclined people are to buy your products.

Now going back into videos, you need to create great content to satisfy your audience’s needs of having entertainment on the fly. To find content ideas look at your target’s search habits and what they talk about. Create QUALITY content around what that they already search for online and you’ll become one of their regularly watched content creators. But, to do this you have to actually know your target audience, study them, and create your buyer personas. You have to know what drives your target audience, what their interests are, their fears, their problems, and know how you can solve said problems and dispel their fears.

So if your audience is into health, is body conscious, watch what they put into their bodies, fear toxins, and face a problem of finding all organic products / alkaline water then create content on that to draw them in. You can do videos on how to stay healthy, videos on physical health as well as mental health, exercise videos, yoga, foods to eat (of course mentioning your pure water), provide all organic non-GMO recipes, organic recipes with a bang of taste, the benefits of alkaline water, how your purifier creates the best alkaline water, and the like. The list goes on and on once you really understand your audience and provide them with the exact content they need that relates to their lives. You then become that “go to” source of information they live by and rely on. Bringing them back day after day to where they become, not only familiar with your brand, but a fan.

And who would throw money at an unfamiliar company VS a company they fully trust? Would you? of course not.
By gaining their trust – turning them from cold to warm – you effectively put yourself into the perfect position where they’ll buy your products time after time as opposed to anyone else’s. 

Ending Note
Like we’ve said before:
You can’t catch a fish without bait. Let your content be your bait.

Discussion

As we all know, having a successful business heavily correlates to great marketing and being able to stay relevant.

If your business can’t stay up with the current trends of your industry, market, and overall world – then you are doomed to fail. It’s every part of your marketing agency’s job to keep you up on the evolving technologies, new developments, industry standards, and in-tune with your target audience. Being straightforward, you need to understand your audience and develop ways to capitalize on the shifts in market trends you see happening – before they happen. If not, you might as well pass on the torch to your competitors who are better suited to adapt – because they are the ones who will become victorious.

We’re here to tell you that the market has already shifted towards the favor of video content. With video now being the most valuable content type there is – content marketing wise and advertising wise. Before we jump in let this settle in, adults on average already spend 5.5 hours a day viewing video content, so why not hit them with the exact thing they are already viewing? You see where we’re going with this? You have to adapt to consumer trends in order to win.

Video Marketing – Now The Biggest Ad Format And Most Consumed Content Type

Numerous studies and research has shown that video is what your consumers are CRAVING. In fact, it’s already what they spend most of their time watching and what their memory recalls the most. Consumers absorb 95% of the information conveyed in a video and have stated to remember more of what they saw in a video last month compared to just the 10% they remember reading from last week.

With this being said, video is able to visually demonstrate how a new product or service functions. What makes video so effective? We as humans trust what we can see, more so than what someone can tell us or what we have read.

Video’s Rise To The Top Of The Content Food Chain

Just throwing some stats out there to aid in video’s testament:
In this new digital era with the internet readily at our fingertips, 57% of the time spent online is spent on mobile. Most of which, your consumers spend watching on-the-go entertainment – content they can absorb while on the move. Which all leads to the increase in video consumption.

Why? Simply put, people are drawn to videos for the ability to visually understand specific topics and products. Additionally, people gravitate towards online video as a form of entertainment used to pass the time. Where TV once reigned, online video content has now usurped the thrown as it is more versatile – being able to go with us when on the move.

On the company side of things, video allows your consumers to engage with your product and receive a better understanding of it similar to how they would if they were face to face with your product – viewing it from all angles and understanding its inner workings. Consumers who view a video in the consideration stages are 1.81 times more likely to make a purchase than “non-viewers”. As 90% of consumers reported that product videos helped them make final purchasing decisions. Video also allows you draw in and keep hold of your audience. Where as they would be spending time watching entertainment from another content creator, they can now spend it with your company, getting to know you and what your product or service is all about (if done right. Thats where marketing tactics, and strategy planning come into play).

Video’s Rise To The Top Ad Format

Video’s grasp on the industry has developed to the point where it has become the primary ad format for the display network. Beating out the very embodiment of the display network, banner ads.

In terms of mediums, digital ad spend has drastically overcome TV ad placement.
Current forecasts project digital advertising to reach $107 Billion during 2018 in the U.S, while TV dwindles down to $69.87 Billion in the U.S – which is TV’s biggest market by revenue .

Tv advertisement expectations for 2018  vs Digital advertisement expectations for 2018 – Source: Forbes

Digital’s growth can be attested to the blooming of it’s leading force – social media. Although relevance of platforms vary by age group (Generation Z – Instagram, millennials and baby boomers – Twitter, and Generation X – Facebook) it still stands that 2.8 Billion of adults have social media accounts and 80% of adults, when online, spend their time on social channels.

As a testament to video’s expedited growth alone:
Within the last year video (up 46%) along with content and native ads (up 14% collectively) have driven all of the display network’s growth while other ad format investment has either remained stagnant or diminished.
On terms of digital ad spend, over the last year video and native / in-feed (not be confused with in-stream) video ads have steadily grown accounting for over 77% (83 Billion) of all U.S digital ad spend (on contrast, global digital ad spend is expected to hit $273.29 Billion).

Mobile ad spend growth:
Mobile ad spend is expected reach $121.1 Billion globally by the end of 2018. Nearly half of the total digital ad spend ($273.29) and for good reasons as previously mentioned – 57% of time spent online is done through mobile.

Let’s Put This In Terms Of Your Business…

You’re competitors are already planning to jump on video advertisement as 60% of marketers and business owners said they plan on increasing funding for video marketing. As of right now 87% of marketers are already using video content in their marketing strategies. So if you’re not on it yet then you’re late to the game and could possibly be handing over your audience wrapped in a golden sheet to your competitors.

Back On Terms Of Advertising

The rise of social media and consumption of video content / on-the-go content has directly given rise to the adoption of video ads. Which marketers have turned to in order to fill the need of this consumer trend – which is watching more videos and consuming on-the-go content.

With the birth of any new market trend there also comes new obstacles to face.
In this case, it is the clear opposition that consumers have for ads that disrupt their normal viewing habits and put a block on the desired content; which is exactly what in-stream videos do.

As a method to overcoming this hurdle, here at Scyterra, we have steadily used video ad formats for our clients that are better suited for success in this new era – only using in-stream when data shows it is beneficial for a specific campaign and only after-which tailored content for the format has been created and of course coupled with highly detailed targeting.

Such formats are:
Media buys and native ads – which easily mesh with the publisher’s normal content (or web page) as if the “advertisement” was a part of the regularly scheduled and expected content from the consumer’s favorite content creator.

Out-of-stream (out-stream) videos – which easily align with the topic of the pages being viewed, in-turn adding value and more clarity to the discussed topic.

and Self published social media video ads – which exposes your brand to your exact target audience and filling the gap that consumers desire for on-the-go content. All while seamlessly integrating with their newsfeeds, capturing the attention of cold audiences, making them familiar with your brand, and turning that cold audience into a warm audience. As well as, securing sales and creating a loyal fanbase.

Here are the results of a social media brand awareness campaign we recently ran for one our clients showing the success of these non disruptive formats and giving reason for the fact that over the last year video and native / in-feed (not be confused with in-stream) video ads have grown accounting for over 28% of all digital ad spend. Coupled with our detailed targeting capabilities we’re able to achieve cost effective ad spend every time; in this case being $0.005 per result. Allowing us to use our client’s allocated marketing budget efficiently, no matter how large or small.

Ending Note
You can’t catch a fish without bait. Let your content be your bait.

Follow up with this post where we use a scenario to show you how to actually use video content to help your business succeed

Discussion

When most people hear content marketing they think blogging…. blogging, blogging, blogging…

Although there’s nothing wrong with blogging; we’re here to tell you, you’re wrong!
Blogging was fine back in the day before we reached this new technological era, but now people aren’t only stimulated by just reading. The 21st century gave rise to many new forms of stimuli and thus many more ways for you to be able catch a person’s attention.

As the vast majority of entertainment outlets increased – attention spans shortened. So you must be able to catch people’s attention right from the start, hold it through out, and bring it on home in the end.

As we said, blogging is fine, nothing’s wrong with it. It’s carried many brands for years, but not everyone is into reading text after text from the bright lights of their screens. Think back to your school days. You were either the student who learned by reading, taking notes, doing manual work, who learned visually, or by listening to your teacher. You could have also been one of many combinations of the 5. All that is to say, not everyone is the same. Not everyone learns the same and not everyone is entertained in the same manner. For example, 80% of people can remember more of what they watched in a video last month than what they’ve read in a post last week.

The content that you create along with your content marketing strategy should aim to inform the consumer (we’re not going to say “reader”), but just not inform – it should also aim to entertain and speak to who that person is as a “student”. You need to create all forms of content in order to engage 100% of your target audience or else you could be missing out on a big chunk of the pie. Just talking about video for a second, it was found back in 2011 that adults on average spent  5.5 hours daily consuming video content. So just imagine how that has grown now; it is projected that by 2021 video content will account for over 82% of all web traffic.

So we’ve explained how you should be creating your content with an end goal that has the viewer in mind. But, now you may be asking

What Are The Different Forms Of Content?

To answer this question simply – the overarching umbrella forms are: photographs, video, written content, interactive experiences, and audio.

As we said those were the umbrella forms. Within Each there are a myriad of different methods at your disposal. It just takes some creativity / imagination and a thorough planning process. For example some content types derived from the above are: a web series (video), e-book (written), attention grabbing imagery (photographs), social games to be played out over social media as well as your own website (interactive experiences), and a podcast or radio show (audio).

So How Does Content Help Improve Your Business?
And How Do You Actually Create It?

Well, In every way possible. It aids in SEO (Search Engine Optimization), marketing, advertising, and in just all around brand awareness and promotion.

How? Think about it. How are you posting any billboards, creating any signage, running any promotions, effectively getting your return on investment on any sponsorships, creating any commercials or social media ads without the content? With no content how are you even running these advertisements? Going back to the forms of content we mentioned above, your content is one of the core aspects of any form of promotion you could run. Giving life to all your marketing efforts.

To Start Off Lets Take A Look From Different Media Aspects

1) In the form of media companies:

They created content around a specific genre and proceeded to grow their audience around this content type. Then, after growing a significant amount of consumers they leveraged their audience and “sold” it to outside businesses in the form of media buys. Such as, creating sponsored content in the form of videos, episodes, or any form of content they were hired for or decide on creating. The content would then be centered on the buyer’s company or revolve around a current promotion the buyer is running.

For example, a movie studio is promoting their new horror film “Mountain’s Edge” set to release next month. They reach out to a media company and purchase x amount of sponsored content over a specified period of time to promote this movie. After which, the media company will come together and brainstorm ideas to fulfill the task. One of which could simply be a video where the content creators spend a night in a well known haunted house. In the beginning of the video they can do a “shout-out”; something along the lines of “well… there’s a new horror film coming out June 16th, “Mountain’s Edge” *inserts movie trailer*, and yea…. that’s why we’re here… Now if you don’t see me in any more videos from here on out you know why… and who to blame”.

It’s as simple as that, the horror film just became exposed to the media company’s entire audience through a video. This is one way content helps your company grow and attract a bigger audience. But of course, you have to do your research and understand exactly who each publisher’s audience is – or else it’s just like flushing money down the drain.

1) You have to understand your target audience: who they are, what they like, their interests, what time they usually wake up, get to work, check their phones, what coffee they like etc.

The more you intimately know your target audience the better. This is what we call buyer personas; a detailed overall example of your highest converting consumers and desired target audience. To understand who’s buying your product and why. To find this information conduct surveys, do research, and analyze statistics and data.

Your aim is to make your buyer personas as real as possible. So much so that they each have their own personalities and if they were to sit in on board meetings they could critique your product or service and tell you exactly how to make it appealing to them from their perspective.

2) Don’t be afraid to mix marketing disciplines. What we mean is, with you content creation you should still incorporate marketing strategies.

3) Looking at your buyer personas you need to understand the interests of each. If one of your buyer personas are interested in music you need to make sure your brand is present at all the most known music events that cater to that genre within your target market. For example, if one of your target markets is California then you need to be at Coachella. Whether people from your company are just attending, running an event there, interviewing attendees, or your company is a sponsor of Coachella and is highly represented within the event – you. need. to. be. there! Right where your target audience is.

4) Why?
Because. Why would you give up the chance to be face to face with the exact people in your target audience? The exact people you’re trying to target? Why even give up the chance for them to receive a first hand experience of your company, what you offer, and understand exactly who you are? This allows you to leave a lasting impression on your audience, and as they say “first impression is everything”. Why not show them you’re invested into their culture just as much as they are.

Besides being there and interacting with your target audience face to face, this allows you to have the chance of creating some great content that will attract the rest of your target audience who wasn’t there. Since your target audience is interested in music, you can create a video of the “10 best performances at Coachella”, an overall video of the Coachella experience for this year, and many other forms of content. Then, promote this heavily across all social channels, your website, and youtube. From here you now have a magnet that continually draws in your target audience, allows them to interact with your other content, explore your website, and hit specific pages where they learn about your business or product / service. Going back to #3, if you did the correct research and fully understand your buyer personas then your product or service should coincide with a want or need of your target audience, or solve a problem they have. By them exploring your website and coming across your product or service they’ll instantly be attracted to it and know it’s something they need.

But of course it is not always this easy, not everyone is willing to just throw money at a company they just discovered. This is why you create your content, so they can continually come in contact with your brand, recognize your name, shift from a cold to warm audience, and then finally make a purchase.

You can’t catch a fish without bait. Let your content be your bait.

Discussion

For branded pages: you might see a drop in reach for one significant reason… Facebook is making the playing field more even – “taking from the rich & giving to the poor”. Now, instead of only a few brands having active business pages, in order to stand out everyone must play by a definite set of rules.
Why?
For one reason.
Facebook is drastically overcrowded. Every minute 300 new accounts are created, 293k posts are published, 136k photos are uploaded, & 510k comments are left. In layman’s terms… We’re creating more content than people can consume. Making it harder for businesses to gain organic exposure.

The Drop Of Organic Reach

In a study from Edgerank Checker (now acquired by Socialbaker) it was found that the organic reach for the average Facebook page has dropped from 16% to 6.5% dating back from February 2012 to March 2014. Meanwhile, for pages holding over 500,000 likes, the chances of posts appearing in the news feed could be as low as 2%.

The New Facebook News feed Algorithm of 2017

If you aren’t considered a friend or family member by facebook’s standards then expect a decline in your organic reach. Facebook prioritizes relevant content & designs its news feed algorithms based on individual user experience in accordance with this set of News Feed core values, as stated by the social media platform.

“Our success is built on getting people the stories that matter to them most. If you could look through thousands of stories every day and choose the 10 that were most important to you, which would they be? The answer should be your News Feed. It is subjective, personal, and unique — and defines the spirit of what we hope to achieve”.

 For regular users of the social platform, this means that they will continue to see content posted by those listed as family members on their profile, and users they regularly interact with. Pushing a decline on content posted by users they rarely interact with. Allowing for posts from relevant users that matter the most to be seen.

What Does The News Feed Algorithm Mean For Your Business page?

On the business side of things this just means you have to work for what you want. As stated, facebook is showing relevant content to each user as defined by their actions. Those who show an interest in your page after the algorithm push will continue to see the content you put out. Simply put: through varying levels of interaction facebook will deem your business page as relevant to the user that interacts with it – retaining your presence in their news feed.

Below are the governing rules of the new facebook algorithm change.

The Basics

 As Stated 

• Friends and family come first:Posts from users’ friends and family appear higher in your feed.
• Your news feed should inform:Content that is interesting, timely relevant, and informative to users appear higher in their feed.
• Your news feed should entertain:Content that Facebook finds entertaining to users appear higher in their feed.
• Facebook is a platform for all ideas:Facebook doesn’t favor any one source or idea. instead, it delivers content that is meaningful.
• Authentic communication:Facebook will only show content that is genuine, not “misleading, sensational and spammy.”
• You control your experience:Post features such as “see first,” “unfollow” and “hide” let users choose what they want to see.
• Constant iteration:Facebook is dedicated to continued improvement.
• Links in posts:Facebook prioritizes content that holds a link, deeming it as more informative
• Native video content reigns:Compared to both text & image content combined facebook video content acquires 1,200% more shares. In terms of uploading, instead of sharing videos from other platforms (such as youtube) upload them to both. Native videos hold 10x more reach than videos shared from YouTube.

Diving Deeper: How Interaction Is Ranked

• Video Content: longer videos with higher completion rates will be ranked higher on the news feed algorithm.
  Facebook evaluates varying factors to determine a videos ranking such as, live video status, engagement vs. length of time spent watching, and avg. percentage of video watched. A video that is watched halfway through on avg. will be considered as a “compelling” piece of content. Facebook’s comments on the topic.
• Authenticity: authentic posts rank higher on the news feed.
  Authenticity is based on user behavior. Negative feedback such as, dislikes, unsubscribes, hiding your posts, etc., show that your page is less authentic.
• Stop Asking For Engagement: encourage engagement in unique ways.
  You can’t ask your followers to like, share, or comment on your posts. Facebook identifies these phrases as spam and will likely penalize you based on whether or not your content is authentic.
  Try new methods for engagement. For example, a hotel could post a video or image of a gorgeous beach front with a caption that reads, “Who would you want to enjoy this view with?”. Initiating an ongoing flow of comments and increasing overall reach. Similarly, you could say ”What are your top travel destinations for this year?” – boosting engagement and giving you the chance to connect directly with consumers and inform them of your locations in their desired destinations.
• Timing: Facebook Prioritizes Time Relevant Posts.
  Putting a higher rank on posts that hold immediate interest at a given moment – Facebook will temporarily upgrade content relating to trending topics, content receiving an influx of likes & comments over posts that received high engagement a couple hours ago. People expect to see posts reflecting what’s going on that very moment. Know Your Audience – stay up to date on the trending stories, events and holidays your audience is most interested in and create content on those topics. Here are the new signals to identify time relevant content as stated by Facebook.
• Make Them Stop: grab their attention.
  Therefore, Share content your audience cares about — content that makes them stop scrolling and delivers on the catch in its headline. One highly relevant, shareable and visually appealing piece of content is worth more than a couple of ordinary posts. Don’t just post more, post smart.