Are you happy with social media?  No you’re not.  At least not as happy as you were last year, especially with Facebook and Twitter.  The American Customer Satisfaction Index says overall customer satisfaction with social media is down 1.4% from last year.  But happiness with Facebook plunged 9 and Twitter fell 8%.  Why?  What upset you so much?  The study suggests it’s because Facebook was hit with suspicions it suppressed content, and people didn’t so much like Twitter ditching its reverse-chronological Timeline.  SocialTimes goes on to report only 3 social nets actually went up in satisfaction over 2015; Wikipedia, YouTube and Google+ all were up 1%.  ACSI Managing Director David VanAmburg says global brands with tons of users on Facebook and Twitter are trying to do a lot, while YouTube and Wikipedia specialize.

 

In this corner, branded content.  And in this corner, pre-roll advertising.  Time to find out who’s toughest when it comes to recall.  The decision is in from Nielsen and branded content gets an average 86% brand recall from viewers as opposed to pre-roll’s 65%.  Wayne Friedman reports in the Television News Daily that as if that weren’t enough, branded content also has the advantage in brand perception.  In affinity it wins 28-18%.  For purchase intent it’s 14-11.  And it wins in recommendation intent 20-16%.  Poor pre-roll.  I know I love a good “Skip This Ad” button.  Now, do you think you can do as good a job distributing content as publishers?  Marketers who work with publishers got a 50% higher brand lift on average than do it yourselfers.

 

Look at you, you’re sick!  Sick with envy!  You think everyone else is doing content marketing better than you.  Or do you?  Ascend2 did a little survey to find out how you guys think you’re doing compared to all the other people out there like you.  Most, about half, think their content strategy is somewhat successful compared to competitors.  Next at 29% comes somewhat unsuccessful.  Ayaz Nanji goes on to report 54% think their content marketing’s effectiveness is increasing marginally, 35% say it is increasing significantly.  Then they break down the biggest barriers they have.  We have a tie at 48%, lack of an effective content strategy and lack of content creation resources.  One point behind at 47% is budget constraints.  Then comes inability to measure effectiveness, lack of cross channel integration, and lack of compelling content ideas.

 

Who doesn’t love to have people saying nice things about them?  For instance, you’re the greatest podcast audience in the world, and I mean that.  But does it mean as much if you pay people to say nice things about you?  Your answer might actually be yes, because there are brands that  pay for positive reviews or reward them in some way.  Well Douglas Karr reminds us why that’s a truly bad idea.  You, and even the reviewer, could get in trouble with the FTC.  You could get in trouble with the platform too.  If you get caught, all that paid content will be stricken from internetland.  And then there’s your reputation.  Oh yeah, that.  If you have to pay or reward people to get them to say something nice, the assumption is, no one does that authentically, no one likes you.

 

Hope you’ve got a podcast going because Pandora needs you.  COO Sarah Clements says it wants more of that non-music programming because it will grow overall listening hours, and half of their users are listening to podcasty content every week…but somewhere else.  They want those ears back.  Janko Roettgers says they’re already streaming “This American Life” and “Serial.”  Their listening hours are up 7% year-over-year, but monthly active listeners went down 1.3M.  They need something else interesting to listen to, and joy oh joy, podcasts are actually cheaper for Pandora than music.  No music royalty payments, which eat up a ton of Pandora’s revenue.  Elton John wants to get paid!

 

Many of you do a lot of eye rolling while you’re listening to the Content Marketing Quickie.  That’s alright.  You don’t know what I’m doing with my eyes either.  But one day we might be interacting in virtual reality and every facial expression will be reflected in our avatars.  This company called Veeso has a Kickstarter going to be one of the first to capture all that subtlety.  Actually what they’ve got is a face-tracking developer kit, no content, you have to make that being the hot VR developer you are.  Lucas Matney writes that in addition to being able to show emotions, eye-tracking sensors capture your line of sight.  It turns out, and this was news to me, eye contact is important to social interactions.  All this has some interesting angles when you think about virtual customer service.

 

Boy, knowing why people share stuff on Facebook would make life easier if you’re tasked with getting engagement metrics up wouldn’t it.  Your new best friend is Fractl, because check out what they learned.  Ashley Carlisle reports women share more than men, and of the women who share at least one time a day, 7 out of 10 of them share several times a day.  Men and women share for one main reason, to entertain their friends.  But women are a little more diverse in their motivations.  22% more likely to do it to express themselves about things they care about.  37% more likely to do it to get an emotional reaction.  For men and women, the older they are, the more likely they are to share stuff and do it more often.  Millennial men, or dudes, are the least likely to share.

 

If you’ve got a hot blog on Tumblr with lots of readers, Tumblr thanks you because they’re about to sell ads on it.  Calm down, simmer down now…you’d get some money for it, and if you don’t want ads you can change the settings to make sure there aren’t any.  You can even stop ads from running just on one post.  But ads on blogs will be the default so you have to take action if you don’t want them.  Tumblr’s funny in that they want to make money, so it’s time to better monetize their 65M users and their content.  TechCrunch says there aren’t that many details but basically, the way Tumblr’s Creatrs program connected brands to influencers, the same can now happen for you and your blog.  Founder David Karp wrote, “It’s been a busy summer—next up: getting you paid for your work.”  Tumblr, of course, is owned by Yahoo, which means it’s now owned by Verizon.

 

Likewise, Reddit wants to also make money and monetize, except their dance is a little trickier because that user base tends to be pretty snarky and jump on marketers who are less than authentically trying to connect with the youngsters.  But founders Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian are working to make that brand-user connection more honest…at least more honest than on Facebook.  Huffman says, “When advertisers come with honest intentions we see higher engagement.  We don’t see hostility.”  So George Slefo reports that on August 4, here comes Promoted User Posts, a new ad product where you can sponsor user’s posts.  The post’s creator will be asked their permission and if they say yes, they get Reddit Gold which gives them platform benefits.  Reddit strategists will keep watch and tip brands off to any organic posts they see that might be sponsor-worthy.

 

That’s it.  I’m asking for the follow @mikestiles.