Why are some brands doing podcasts?  And why are the brands who aren’t, aren’t?  Little up and comers like Netflix, GE, State Farm and eBay, see it as a great lean-in, engagement play.  Lauren Johnson writes that listening to a podcast requires attention.  eBay just finished one with Gimlet Media, “Open for Business,” that hit #1 for business podcasts on iTunes.  eBay’s Annie Lupardus said, “We wanted to use a light touch with the eBay integration to ensure people didn’t feel they were listening to an ad, but stipulated there be one connection to the brand per episode.”  Companies like Gimlet can offer cross promote on their existing hit podcasts, which is nice.  Now on to why brands won’t talk about podcasting.  They’re expensive to do consistently…at least if you’re having a big podcast company do it.  Sometimes it runs 6 figures.  Zowie, you should email me at Brand Content Studios if you think that’s wildly too pricey.  And, the metrics aren’t as thorough yet as they are for awesome tactics like pop-up interruptive display ads.

 

If your social media strategy is aimed at pissing people off and getting everyone to unfollow you, I’m about to tell you how to get that done.  You’re welcome.  Sprout Social asked users what they think about how you brands are doing your posting.  The thing that annoys them most is when you post too much promotional content.  You’re probably calling that content but they’re ads and the public knows it.  Kimberlee Morrison reports 40% don’t like it when you use slang or jargon, they know you’re not that cool.  However, 34% don’t like it if your brand has no personality.  And if you use humor, you better actually be funny.  32% don’t like forced humor.  Oh, too many promo messages was also the top reason users unfollow a brand.  And you know, sometimes life’s not fair.  Utility brands were ranked 3rd worst for responding to social contacts, but they actually performed the best.

 

How about some actual actionable info in the ol’ Content Marketing Quickie?  Mohammad Farooq shared 5 ways to beef up your YouTube videos.  1: Add a watermark that keeps your brand visible and whose clicks can be tracked in YouTube Analytics.  2: Use cues to point to your call to action; arrows, people pointing, whatever.  3: Add keywords to titles, tags, and descriptions.  In the title, tell me the benefits of watching the video.  4: Add annotations that might urge viewers to watch more or subscribe.  And 5: Add subtitles and closed captions to reach a wider audience.  YouTube’s got auto-subtitles or closed captioning, but you can make your own inside of YouTube.

 

You’re going to get this whole SEO thing figured out for content marketing, again, and you know what’s going to happen, again?  Google’s going to change the way it determines search results and you’re oh-so-clever SEO strategy gets greased.  Meet Google’s RankBrain, which as of October 2015 was already using artificial intelligence to handle 15% of searches.  What should you be doing about that?  Chris Flores passes on Google’s advice that the more you focus your content on actually answering people’s needs and questions and quit trying to game the search system, the better off you’ll be.  Didit.com’s Steve Baldwin says Rank Brain uses co-occurrence to deliver the most relevant results.  That means insert keywords naturally – no stuffing, use synonyms, and have the content answer questions because content that reads naturally will get more Google love.

 

Julia McCoy has some stats for us, stats that remove any shadows of any doubts we’re in the right field with this content marketing thing.  200M people use ad blockers, so great content is the way.  The people doing content marketing right have 7.8x more site traffic than others, proving that if that’s your metric, it works.  The IBM Digital Experience Survey says 56% of marketers think personalized content gets higher engagement rates and higher recall.  People spend an average 37 seconds on articles, so yes they do read past the headlines.  Content marketing costs 62% less than outbound marketing but creates over 3x as many leads.  That one doesn’t even need expounding.  And CampaignMonitor says for every dollar spent, email gives back $38 in ROI and gives you the broadest reach…a fine channel for great content.

 

You know that song “People, people who need people”?  Barbra Streisand sang it.  She was a singer that came before Sia.  Anyway Facebook doesn’t need people.  At least not to write the descriptions and summaries for Trending topics.  From now on you’ll get a list, and the summary, if any, you get when you hover will come from algorithms pulling in excerpts from the stories.  SocialTimes says the list of trends will be different for everybody, depending on things like pages you’ve liked, where you are, what trends you clicked before, and what topics are doing well overall.  Trends like just how much longer is Kanye going to talk on the VMA’s?  But don’t worry, it’s people that will continue to make sure trends make a reasonable amount of sense.

 

If people want to run your video ad before their videos are shown, why shouldn’t they be able to?  You’ll be happy to know Twitter feels the same way.  Venturebeat tells us their Amplify Publisher program now supports pre-roll ads in videos.  People upload their video, then before they tweet, they can check a box saying they’re okay with pre-roll ads.  The financial split will be a fairly industry standard 70/30, 70 going to the video creator.  They also have a non-exclusivity arrangement, which means if someone uploads a video to Twitter, they can also upload and make money off it on other platforms.  Advertisers like being able to tightly target their video ads.  So really the only people left unhappy are those viewers that absolutely despise pre-roll video ads, like me.  Very few people care if I’m happy.

 

GoPro, those cameras are so cool.  I know I always use them when I’m balancing my BMX bike on a surfboard as I go over waterfalls and land on the wing of a plane in flight.  But CEO Nick Woodman is looking beyond the hardware of the cameras and thinking, like the rest of us, about content.  They’ve got plenty of it.  They’ve got branded content partnerships with brands like Ford.  They license content to customers like Royal Caribbean and Airbnb.  And their YouTube channel has an envious 1.25B views.  What else could they want?  Janko Roettgers writes they plan to debut 32 short-form shows.  GoPro’s 200-person entertainment unit is producing them, led by Ocean MacAdams, who’s been at MTV and Warner Music.  Want to be famous and work for them?  They’re going to use their content pool to discover the best GoPro’ers who will then be used to make more shows.

 

That’s it.  Follows are like Christmas @mikestiles.