Content Marketing Archives - Page 24 of 27

Content Marketing Trends That Will Dominate 2016

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An amazing year comes to an end, complete with videos going viral, algorithms throwing us curve balls and news-feeds getting chaotic. If content marketing is your game, 2016 would be the year it gets crazy competitive, and a lot more exciting! This is my list of trends and focus areas for 2016, something I’ll be pasting on the wall, and if I forget by the end of it.. Happy New Year :)

1. Videos will continue to dominate

It’s raining videos everywhere, from Facebook news-feeds to family groups on WhatsApp. 2016 will be the year of videos, more than 50% mobile traffic is already dominated by videos. Also, with 4G expected to become mainstream in ’16, Facebook will start injecting more videos in news-feeds (as it does in other countries). Videos are easy to digest, engages users, and is more likely to be shared.

I’ll be experimenting a lot with videos which engage users in 3-6 seconds, and get over within 30 seconds.

Also experiment with what I call ‘square’ videos (remember vine?). They are native to mobiles, no tilting, expectation is short and have been shared crazy. If you’re eager to get in the game: Start experimenting with video, hire a filmmaker, get better at telling stories in motion. Think story-telling not high production value. Startups have been doing zero-budget videos and killing it.

2. User attention span will continue to fall

Human attention span is at the all time lowest of 8 seconds, Gold fish is 9 seconds. Gold Fish! Heck I have twenty apps in my phone which shout for my attention all day. With millions getting on the smartphone bandwagon in India, and millions already consuming content on it, the real challenge would be to pierce through the content density and stay remarkable with your content.

Create content which gets to the point quickly and engages. If it is videos: engage in the first few seconds, keep everything front and centre (like a selfie); if it’s images: drop the collages (Facebook doesn’t like them either), make them crisp and clean, and for text: make it easy to consume.. listicles :)

3. Quality will beat quantity, hands down

News-feeds are already chaotic, organic reach on social platforms is non-existent, so the focus must be on share-worthy content and beat Facebook at its game. Competition is growing with low barriers to entry (everyone and their brother can create a meme today). Quality content rises to the top eventually, even Facebook now loves to bring back old ‘good quality’ content in News-feeds. Instead of creating a lot of content, focus on the kick-ass ones, which engage and deliver value to users. Remember the 80-20 rule?

4. Rise of Instagram + WhatsApp for content distribution

I’m placing my bets on Instagram and WhatsApp for video/visual content distribution. A lot of your content may already be going viral on WhatsApp, those annoying alumni, extended family and friends groups, hopefully we get analytics for WhatsApp in 2016. I’ll be experimenting a lot with creating native content for Instagram and WhatsApp and build them as an alternate content distribution platforms.

5. Rise of branded content

No one likes Ads, ads have been shoved into our experiences everywhere. Ads by nature are self promotional, and users today can smell the BS miles away. 2016 will see rise of branded content, not ads masquerading as content but genuine content which is useful, relevant and adds value to users’ lives. Also, with Ad blockers becoming popular, content must earn the eye-balls. And the best way to earn eye-balls is to focus on the heart, not the eye-balls ;) That’s where ‘shares’ come from. Brands must become a conduit for change.

6. Not visual, but virtual content

With Facebook and Google experimenting with 360 degrees videos and Virtual technologies, this could be an area to experiment with. Get a 360 degree camera, and shoot some fun behind the scene content. The second half of 2016 should see the rise of virtual content and with Facebook acquiring Oculus Rift, virtual reality could eventually become mainstream.

7. Think big but execute for tiny screens

When you’re reviewing any creative or video, the first questions to ask before any creative or story-telling logic: How would it work on that tiny screen? Mobile numbers are skyrocketing, desktop traffic has been on the decline, 2016 will see the mobile curve go way north. Think big, but execute for small screen size. For example.. Infographics won’t work, break them into easy to consume slide-decks, for small screens.

8. Multi-skilled storytellers in every team

The content marketing teams will need skilled story-tellers on the teams in 2016. With rapidly evolving platforms and to experiment in the untested areas, we’d need filmmakers to double up as designer, writers to pickup design skills, and filmmakers to learn how to write headlines. Above all, brainstorming must become a culture.

9. Keep Experimenting

I’ve always believed in operating like a movie studio, make ten movies hoping two become crazy successful. Let 2016 be the year of crazy experiments: try new formats, new features, get obsessed with your users’ lives and add value in every content piece.

Happy Content Marketing in 2016 :)

Published first here

The Meme That Smashed Benchmarks And Was Shamelessly Plagiarised

Sometimes, just sometimes a content piece comes along which gets into the sweet spot: with the users and with Facebook’s ongoing experiments. A meme which was born out of the collective frustration of the team in planning a group trip, went crazy viral smashing all our previous image post benchmarks.

The Results – First Week

The meme was part of our experiment on Facebook, an innocent little 3pm post on a Tuesday, had gathered more than 110,000 comments by Friday.

Reached 20 million News-feeds
(that’s like reaching the entire population of Netherlands, and then some!)
Received more than 120,000 comments
Added 16,000 new fans to our Facebook page
Shared by more than 100,000 users
Smashed the previous benchmark of image post virality
Featured by 9gag! with 200+ comments
All organic and with-in the first week!

Learnings

Content Marketing to me is like operating a movie studio, make ten movies hoping that two would be crazy successful. Some stuff works, some just dies a quick death, and what works becomes a best practice :)

The following four buckets help in planning topics for virality

Useful: Is it providing a solution or solving a pain point?
Inspirational: Does it inspire users to take action?
Topical: Good old News-jacking: Breaking News + Brand DNA. Example, and another example :)
Celebrate nuances: The little things, the stuff we don’t say, tiny part of our users’ lives

Easy to guess which bucket this meme fell into :)

“Do ten experiments, two may work, just like movie studios”

Shamelessly Plagiarised

Got update from friends about the same meme being shamelessly copied and passed on as their own, on Facebook and Instagram. Re-posting the content is cool, give credit and I’ll understand, but when you erase our logo and put yours shamelessly, that is downright cheap. Our videos have been copy pasted before but not like this.

Facebook: On Laughing Colors Facebook Page: Take a look, conveniently removed our logo and added their own, got 90k likes and 14k shares at the time of writing this.
Instagram: On some ‘Realshit.Gyan’ account, take a look. Same shit, different account. This one had received 10k likes and 1600 comments at the time of this post

UPDATE: The said posts were removed on request :)

Video Marketing – Q & A

One hour of crazy typing, awesome questions and a vibrant group. Prateek Shah organised a Video Marketing chat on Facebook recently, and the rapid fire questions made for a very energetic afternoon :) The event link is now an archive of sorts with questions and answers about video marketing. From review of a video, to best practices to ROI, we covered it all. Check it out

Few questions asked in the chat

Q: Are there platforms other than YouTube and Facebook, that brands should seriously focus on for promoting video content?

Q: What is the difference between video marketing and video blogging? Are they same? How can they be used in b2b business/lead generation?

Q: Can you share some key case studies which gives a great perspective on how a growing brand leaped ahead just by following a strong video marketing strategy.

Q: So I started this ecom startup and am on a very tight budget. How do I go start with DM to let the people know about everything. Get some sales and create awareness!

Q: We build multi author blog, we are trying to promote multi host video channel. What no of volumes we must aim at to promote the Expert?? (I mean how often videos should be released and total no of videos)

Q: How can we generate website traffic with the help of video content?
(It is for marketing of events not for a product)

Q: How do you measure the success of a video marketing campaign? What do you measure?

Q: Does having product videos on product page help more than exclusive videos on Youtube page for an e-commerce company?

Q: What are the best practices to control cost while promoting a brand through videos and to engage audience?

Q: I’ve made a video for my app marketing, according to all the rules and guru research. I made it very short, crispy, informative and what not. I still am struggling to understand why is my video not getting good response? Can you throw some light on it by quickly taking a look at it?

Q: At what stage one should focus on Video marketing in a startup. Should it be done parallel or keeping in view the kind of engagement it demands, done at a later stage. Sounds basic, but just in case your experience can throw some light on this.

Q: How to do marketing in youtube?

Q: Which is the best platform for video marketing? Facebook or Youtube?

Q: Does Instagram video marketing work in India?

Check out the answers :)

How to make a viral video? Quick Interview

Few weeks back I met Rajeev Suri, who’s super energetic and vibrantly spirited about digital marketing. If you want to be in the know of the latest insights from the industry, hit subscribe on his video blog on YouTube, he interviews the game changers in the Indian digital landscape and provides a lot of learnings and insights.

It was an honour to be interviewed by him, and talk about something which has shaped my journey over last few years: Viral Videos. In quick 10 minutes, we discussed the best practices behind making viral videos, from coming up with topics to distribution. One memory from my visit to Mumbai, neatly captured in a video :)

Highlights from the video and his blog post..

Replace your obsession with the video going viral with your focus on the content and story you are going to tell. And for God’s sake, don’t make an ad. Social media is about activism. People are trying to make a change, and impact. focus on that.

Use the right medium to propagate. sharing or share ability is in the DNA of Facebook, not so much on youtube, which is traditionally the source of video distribution. And don’t link a youtube video on Facebook, upload directly on Facebook.

Happy Content Marketing :)

Best Practices in Viral Video Marketing

Few months back I did a webinar on the best practices in viral video marketing, the method to the madness in producing and distributing video content. Here’s a quick 5 minute video with highlights from the webinar, the longer version you can find below. Happy Content Marketing to you :)

Category: Content Marketing