CMOs: 3 Tips on Improving Your Brand’s Social Media Strategy

As a CMO, you know that mastering your brand’s presence on social media is like trying to solve a Rubik’s Cube. Despite your confusion, you’re still responsible for building and revising a social strategy daily. As an IMC grad student and marketing professional, I’m fascinated with how a brand is supposed to know their place within the constantly evolving world of social. I’ve come across two articles that provide basic yet important principles for guiding your brand to a strong social strategy. In the article Marketing Tips for Awkward Brands in a Social Media Era” by James Jorner, he gave the reader strong but simple suggestions such as "Infuse Humor” or “Be Interactive." Published in Adweek, the article took a macro-level approach in offering easy-to-remember tips to build or maintain a strategy around. Jorner also provided a relevant analogy on how a brand should view their place within the social media landscape: being at a party, and figuring out who to mingle with. You can approach the guests however you’d like, just make sure you don’t pass up the opportunity.

Source: AOK Marketing

In the article “See How These Brands Pranked Their Fans on April Fools’ Day” by Mary Sollosi, she allowed the social media content of 22 unique brands to speak for itself. After reviewing Entertainment Weekly's published pranks, two points became clear: each brand created their social content well before April Fools’ Day, and they followed the tips from the article posted above (i.e. Infuse Humor, Create Interesting Content). The concept of a brand injecting itself into the day’s news is called Newsjacking, and it can be an extremely relevant way to use social media. Each brand took a constructive approach to their holiday-themed content, and made sure their material was fun and inoffensive.

Based on the articles’ insight, and my own professional experiences, I’ve listed three action items to help your brand get started (or maintain) a social media strategy:

• Don’t Abandon Social - No matter what your brand does, maintaining a social presence within platform/s you feel comfortable with is key for long-term success.

• Be More Entertaining – Your brand’s content should preserve a balance between promotion and engaging followers with fun/interactive materials.

• Think Newsjacking – Producing social content directly related to real-time news can be a great way for your brand to stand out.

Remember CMOs: social media trends will evolve, and new platforms will emerge. But utilizing these three tips will always be helpful to begin your strategy.

Ryan McDonough is currently a Master of Science Candidate in Integrated Marketing Communications program at Medill-Northwestern University. He is also a Chicago marketing professional with 10 years’ experience in brand communication and marketing strategy. He is graduating in June 2017, and can be reached via email (rmcdonough32@gmail.com) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-mcdonough-60a10235/) 

CMOs: 3 Ways to Utilize Online Video to Maximize Your Brand’s Social Strategy

As a CMO, you know that online video possesses tremendous potential to boost a brand’s social presence. According to Dr. James McQuivey of Forrester Research, the value of one minute of video is equivalent 1.8 million words. As a Northwestern University student in Medill's Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) program, I have come to realize that successful brands today are constantly inventing new ways to improve their video content to better engage with their consumers. Below are two articles that really capture the essence of these brands' efforts. 

One example of a successful video strategy was featured in a Digiday article: InsideToday.com’s original digital video strategy by Eric Blattberg. The Today show is setting itself apart from other morning television shows in the digital space with its original video series on their website, Today.com. They create one or two new videos every weekday and post it on their website as well as on their YouTube channel and Facebook page. The content is informal yet authentic, and offers viewers practical takeaways in a variety of topics. Furthermore, they optimize their video content to best fit each media platform by making Facebook videos text and graphic-heavy (since Facebook autoplays videos on mute while users are scrolling down the newsfeed) and partnering with other celebrity channels on YouTube. In addition, they are starting to see conversations about their content on Twitter, fostering a cross-channel digital presence for the brand. As a result, viewers have come to trust Today.com as a safe and attractive venue to engage with content, providing a great opportunity for family-friendly brands to reach their potential consumers.

Just as the Today show is uploading text graphic heavy videos for Facebook, agencies such as Genuine Interactive and RB are also creating soundless videos that can appeal to audiences by tugging at their emotions. The article Are Silent Movies the Future of Advertising? featured on Adage and written by Jack Neff presents the shifting trend of creating online video content. The new strategy based on soundless and emotional content stems from the fact that Facebook and other mobile sites play videos on mute until the user turns on the sound. Mr. Pape, the creative director at Genuine Interactive says videos must create a visceral reaction to the image or movement for people to stop and watch. Such strategy is now being experimented on TV creative, integrating the digital and TV advertising. Brands are also able to use real-time feedback from the engagement of their videos to continuously improve their strategy.

From my studies as a student in the IMC certificate program and with interest in digital and social marketing strategies, I have found these articles to be representative of what brands are doing today to increase the effectiveness of their video content. There are three main insights I have gained from the above articles:

1.  Focus on visuals. Your video content should provide compelling visuals that capture people’s attentions in a short span of time.
2.  Optimize by channel. Videos need to be optimized depending on the channel, to seamlessly aid the user experience on whichever app or website people are viewing your content on.
3.  Listen to your audience. It is important for marketers to constantly measure the engagement levels and activities around their videos and quickly respond to feedback.

By focusing on these three items, you can strengthen your brand’s social strategy and drive greater audience engagement. You should strive to stay relevant with your target audience by offering them the content and experience that they want. With more engagement, you will see your brand appearing through the social chatter by viewers who want to bring you into their conversations.

Kristin Chung is an undergraduate student at Northwestern University, pursuing an Integrated Marketing Communication certificate at the Medill School of Journalism. Please share your feedback and connect with her on Twitter @chung_kristin or on LinkedIn.

Content Marketers: 3 Ways to Maximize Your Content Shareability

As a content marketer, whether you want to create your Facebook page, Twitter handle, or a website that features interesting articles to attract attention and increase the visibility of your brand, you need to start by learning how to create engaging content that is incredibly sharable. In a world where everyone’s time is fragmented, you only have a split of a second of catch someone’s attention. As an IMC graduate student whose focus is in content marketing and building brand-consumer relationships, I have found two articles that will give you important insights into ways to maximize your content shareability.

In Facebook Media’s article “12 Best Practices For Media Companies Using Facebook Pages”, Scott Hershkowitz and Vadim Lavrusik provide a number of useful tips to media companies and other content producers alike to promote their Facebook pages. Posts include pictures, graphics, and analyses can drive conversations. A personal tone sparks interest because audiences like to know there’s a real person behind posts. The page-targeting tool enables more specific targeting and content crowdsourcing, making it easier to reach the target audience. If you have Facebook Page, do not forget to use Facebook Insights to get page metrics and improve your page.

The second article, titled “How BuzzFeed Mastered Social Sharing to become a Media Giant for a New Era” by David Rowan of Wired.co.uk, discusses the success of BezzFeed and its guild to shareability. Rowan points out that to increase click through rate and the number of shares, Buzzfeed relies on data measurement results, as well as content articles that serve emotional needs. Because the way people consume content has changed, Buzzfeed’s CEO&founder Jonah Peretti tries to stay away from anything that requires adopting a legacy business model. His team aims to create news and entertainment content that can tell people’s stories in this social, mobile age. John Steinberg, former president of Buzzfeed, shares his tips to get ideas spread: the headline must be persuasive and direct; it must feel authentic; people mustn’t feel awkward sharing it; ensure the story has a human aspect; images and lists work; give people the change to react and let them engage; be positive.

  

Based on the insights in these two articles and what I have learned from the Northwestern Medill IMC program, here are the three action items you can do to drive audience engagement and increase the number of content shares.

1.  Include photos, graphics and videos – humans are visual learners and our brains process images much faster than text. Including visuals in your posts to tell compelling stories will attract more eyeballs!

2.  Use a conversational tone to send positive messages – people love to receive uplifting messages with a personality. Let your audience know that there’s a real person behind the posts by using a conversational tone and your audience will be more likely to engage with your posts.

3.  Use web analytical tools – pick one or more web analytical tools to best serve your needs. You can better tailor your marketing strategy based on insights from existing data; such as the piece of content your audience likes the most and where the most web traffic comes from. 

Every brand and every person that wants to be famous is eager to create visual content nowadays. We need to keep in mind that viral marketing needs both analytical thinking as well as a creative mind. Remember to make emotional connections with your audiences and talk like a real person!

Naomi Cao | Twitter @n_cao6  | LinkedIn
I received my B.A in Communication Arts-radio, TV and film and Gender & Women’s Studies from the University of Wisconsin – Madison. I have lived and worked in Los Angeles for two years, with professional experience in entertainment marketing, script development and talent representation. I am now focusing on entertainment & content marketing and consumer insights in Medill’s Integrated Marketing Communications program.