Social media engagement … or is it disengagement?

September 7, 2014 Phillip Nones Advertising, Branding, Business, Content Creation and Content Management, Marketing Communications, Media, Media Consumption, Social Commentary 90-9-1, 90-9-1 Rule, Advertising, Audience Engagement, marketing, Social Behavior, Social Engagement, Social Media, SocialFlow

Here’s an interesting finding about social media: The overwhelming majority of posts on the major social media sites engender no engagement.

As in “none at all.”

And this goes for posts uploaded by marketers and publishers as well as one from “ordinary” users.

This finding comes from SocialFlow, a social media software and content dissemination firm which analyzed ~1.6 million organic posts on Twitter, Facebook and Google+ that reached a total of ~361 million people.

What the SocialFlow research found was that ~95% of those posts results in no engagement at all.

By contrast, only ~1% of the posts produced really strong engagement — defined as 20,000 interactions or higher per post. Many of those posts are uploaded by big entertainment and media companies and dealt with — you guessed it — celebrity gossip and so forth.

Other findings from the SocialFlow research show that higher engagement rates tend to happen for “data-driven” posts — ones that are targeted to certain audience segments based on predictive algorithms pertaining to those segments’ behaviors.

Not surprisingly, posts that tend to attract higher engagement are more likely to be on “trending” topics. But high-engagement posts about breaking news or celebrity reporting deliver little benefit for marketer of brands beyond the ones involved in entertainment and media companies.

Technology, healthcare and not-for-profits, by contrast, aren’t very good fits for such news, even if the posts themselves attract more engagement and interaction.

The SocialFlow research underscores yet again that, despite the continuing evolution of “interactivity” in marketing, the 90-9-1 rule still generally applies.

That’s the notion that for every piece of content seen, 90 people “look and lurk” only … 9 people may choose to engage with the content … and only 1 person is responsible for creating the content to begin with.

They’re all important factors to keep in mind when considering social revolution and its implications.

Pinterest: Will it ever become a male hangout?

August 20, 2014August 20, 2014 Phillip Nones Advertising, Branding, Business, Content Creation and Content Management, Marketing Communications, Media, Social Media comScore, David Rubin, DigitasLBi, Gender Differences, Jill Sherman, Marcomm, marketing, Pinterest, Social Media, Social Media Platforms, Social Platforms

Here’s a statistic about social media platform Pinterest that will probably surprise few people: As of June 2014 statistics reported by digital analytics firm comScore, its user base is more than 70% female.

… Which means that Pinterest remains the most “gender imbalanced” of all the major social media platforms.

For the record, other social platforms have far more gender balance among their user bases – with at least 45% being male:

SnapChat: 52% male
Tumblr: 52%
Twitter: 48%
Facebook: 47%
Instagram: 45%
Pinterest: 28%

But here’s the thing: Pinterest has been trying mightily hard to attract more male participants, but the proportional figures have yet to budge.

This points to a fundamental challenge. It’s very difficult to change the image and atmospherics of a social platform once they’ve become so firmly entrenched.

And it’s not just a question of image. The platform’s content says it all.

Jill Sherman, vice president of social and content strategy at marketing communications firm DigitasLBi, puts it this way:

“If you pull up Pinterest and go into any content section, you will see purses, dresses and women’s shoes — because women are the user base. When 70% of the users are female, then 70% of the content is going to be female-oriented.”

Hope springs eternal, however. Pinterest is continuing its effort to attract more men.

Or at least … to make the site more “guy friendly” when a new member goes there signs up. This means making sure to show items more stereotypically catering to men’s interests rather than things like women’s fashion items.

But how to get men to the stage of even signing up? That challenge falls to Pinterest’s new “head of brand” – who just happens to be a man.

He’s David Rubin, erstwhile senior vice president of marketing at Unilever, where he worked on marketing the Axe brand of men’s body care products.

Mr. Rubin might wish to start his tenure by asking himself what would bring him to engage with Pinterest more … because according to news reports, Rubin had posted only 22 items on Pinterest prior to joining the company.

DigitasLBi’s Jill Sherman sees a challenge for Pinterest that is fundamentally basic. “They haven’t cracked the motivation code: How to attract men and keep them using the platform beyond saving things that pique their interest.”

I agree – and I’d go a step further. Convincing people to visit Pinterest to find or view something of interest “feels” like a function a search engine such as Google Images is doing quite well already. Who needs “yet another place” to tap into that functionality? Especially if one is a male of the species?

In order for Pinterest to evolve beyond where it is today, perhaps it needs to look at what Facebook and others have been doing to create communities and interaction beyond just pretty pictures and videos.

It could be a tall order.

Media properties’ new formula: Publish … re-publish … and publish yet again.

August 17, 2014August 17, 2014 Phillip Nones Advertising, Business, Content Creation and Content Management, Media Business Insider, Cosmopolitan Magazine, digital media property, Magazines, Media, media properties, Publishers, Publishing

As media properties have moved away from finite schedules of daily, weekly or monthly publication to something more akin to 24/7 content dissemination, it’s becoming quite a challenge to deliver new content.

The reality is, building a digital media property in today’s “always on” world that can successfully deliver new, original content on an ongoing basis is quite costly.

In fact, it’s economically unfeasible for many if not most publishing enterprises.

This explains why readers have started to see a parade of news items that have been reused, recycled or repurposed in an effort to present the items as “fresh” news multiple times over.

This is happening with greater regularly, and it’s seemingly getting more prevalent with every passing day.

Here’s a representative case: Business Insider. This finance and news site has doubled its traffic over the past several years. Business Insider now attracts more than 12 million unique visitors each month – each of them presumably interested in consuming “fresh news.”

But for content that is fairly “evergreen” in nature, Business Insider is perfectly content to serve up the same (or nearly similar) stories two … three … four times or more.

For example, one of its stories, “Facts About McDonald’s That Will Blow Your Mind,” has been published no fewer than six times over a span of three years.

The various iterations of that article varied very little each time. Sometimes there were a different number of facts presented (usually 15 or 16). Business Insider even published the identical list twice in the same year, using the exact same headline while revising only the introductory paragraph.

Beyond the fact that publishing essentially the same article six times within three years took some of the burden off the news-gathering and writing team, it turns out that topics such as this one really do engage readers — time and again.

Business Insider’s first iteration of the McDonald’s article attracted more than 2.5 million views. And overall, the story has been clicked on more than 8 million times.

(Of course, the final time the article ran, the story generated only around 400,000 views, so at some point the law of diminishing returns had to come into play.)

I like another example, too: Cosmopolitan Magazine. In April of this year, it published an article titled “25 Life-Changing Ways to Use Q-tips.” That story generated only 44 shares — hardly earth-shattering results for a media property with over 3 million subscribers.

But then Cosmopolitan promoted the article on Pinterest in May … and also on Twitter in May and again in June … and on Facebook in early May and again there in early June.

Whereas Cosmopolitan’s original posting of the article on its own website didn’t result in much engagement to speak of, just the two Facebook posts resulted in nearly 1,500 shares.

With these kinds of results being generated, it’s no wonder publishers have decided to “publish … re-publish … and then publish again.”

So the next time you have a sensation of déjà vu about reading an article, chances are, you’re not dreaming.

“Surprise & Delight” vs. “Tried & True” Branding

August 13, 2014August 13, 2014 Phillip Nones Advertising, Branding, Business, Content Creation and Content Management, Creative and Production, Marketing Communications American Consumers, brand loyalty, Branding, Brands, Business, Consumer Advertising, Consumer Branding, Consumer Marketing, IntelliResponse

All the emphasis on having consumer-facing brands “surprise and delight” their customers isn’t what many people are looking for at all.

In the interactive age, what we hear often is that companies and brands need to go beyond simply offering a high-quality product.

Many companies and brands have the notion that they should strive to engender a kind of “personal” relationship with customers – so that consumers will develop the same kinds of feelings for brands as they have with their close friends.

How true is this?

One marketing company decided to find out. Toronto-based virtual agent technology firm IntelliResponse surveyed ~1,000 online consumers in the United States earlier this year.

When asked what sort of relationship they would prefer to have with the companies whose products and services they purchase, here’s how the percentages broke for these respondents:

Prefer a “friendship” where they get personalized service: ~24%
Prefer a “transactional” relationship where they receive efficient service and that’s all: ~59%
Prefer both equally: ~17%

Evidently, “boringly consistently good” beats “surprisingly delightful” far more often – assuming the company is minding its Ps and Qs when it comes to product quality.

Here’s what else consumers are seeking: They want to be able to get the same information and answers from a company’s desktop or mobile website … online portal … or social media sites as they do from speaking with company representatives over the phone.

The IntelliResponse survey found that two-thirds of the respondents will go to a company’s website first when seeking out information regarding a product or service – so the answers better be there or the brand risks consumer disappointment.

The takeaway is this: No matter how much breathless reporting there is about this “surprising” social media campaign or that “delightful” interactive contest … the majority of consumers continue to view companies and brands the way they have for 100 years: Companies are merely the vehicle by which they can acquire the goods they need.

Rather than spending undue energy trying to make the interactive world “fun” or “sticky” for customers, companies should focus on the basic work of delivering products, information and answers that are easy to find, easy to understand, and easy to act on.

And related to that — make sure support systems (and support people) are in place so that customers can get any problems or issues solved with a minimum of time or hassle.

Do those things well, and companies will naturally please the vast majority of their current and future customers.

Everything else is just window-dressing.

Internet Properties: No Longer an American Monopoly

August 10, 2014August 11, 2014 Phillip Nones Advertising, Branding, Business, Content Creation and Content Management, Marketing Communications Business, Business Communications, Communications, Content Management, Facebook, International Business, International Marketing, Internet, Internet properties, Internet usage, Languages, Marcomm, marketing, Mary Meeker

The amount of translated content is also showing big-time growth.

According to an analysis by venture capitalist and Internet industry specialist Mary Meeker, in 2013 nine of the ten top global Internet properties were U.S.-based.

For the record, they were as follows (in order of ranking):

Google
Microsoft
Facebook
Yahoo
Wikipedia
Amazon
Ask
Glam Media
Apple

Only China-based Tencent cracked the Top Ten from outside the United States — and it just barely made it in as #10 in the rankings.

And yet … the same Top 10 Internet properties had nearly 80% of their users located outside America.

With such a disparity between broad-based Internet usage and concentrated Internet ownership, the picture was bound to change.

And boy, has it changed quickly: Barely a year later — as of March 2014 — the Top 10 listing now contains just six American-based companies.

Ask, Glam Media and Apple have all fallen off the list, replaced by three more China-based properties: Alibaba, Baidu and Sohu.

Paralleling this trend is another one: a sharp increase in the degree to which businesses are providing content in multiple languages.

For websites that offer some form of translated content, half of them are offering it in at least six languages. That’s double the number of languages that were being offered a year earlier.

And for a quarter of these firms, translated content is available in 15 or more languages.

What are the most popular languages besides English? Spanish, French, Italian and German are popular — not a great surprise there. But other languages that are becoming more prevalent include Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

In fact, the average volume of translated content has ballooned nearly 90% within just the past year.

The growing accuracy of computer-based translation modules — including surprisingly good performance in “idiomatic” language — is certainly helping the process along.

Moreover, when a major site like Facebook reports that its user base in France grew from 1.4 million to 2.4 million within just three months of offering its French-language site, it’s just more proof that the world may be getting smaller … but native language still remains a key to maximizing business success.

It’s one more reminder that for any company which hopes to compete in a transnational world, offering content in other languages isn’t just an option, but a necessity in order to build and maintain a strategic advantage.