Mike Stiles

Content Marketing News for the Week of May 11

May 12, 2016 Uncategorized No comments

Podcasters would love to know if Apple is into podcasting or not. John Herrman of the New York Times writes that even though podcasting is an industry now, Edison says 57M Americans will listen monthly this year, Apple doesn’t seem that interested. And there’s a reason. Apple gets nothing from podcasts. Matt Lieber of Gimlet says ad spending on podcasts will hit hundreds of millions this year, but Apple doesn’t get a slice of that, and downloads are free, and Apple doesn’t let podcasters charge for downloads or subscriptions. What do podcasters want from Apple? Gina Delvac of “Call Your Girlfriend” says the lack of podcast data is shocking. Apple gives it to app developers, but not podcasters. And they’d like clarity on the iTunes “Top Podcast” list, a nearly do or die list run by an incredibly small team and a mysterious “Mr. Wilson.”

Look out YouTube, Facebook video and Vimeo. Amazon’s ready to rumble. They launched Amazon Video Direct, and anybody who makes videos can tap into all those ecommerce shoppers Amazon has. Todd Spangler writes what Amazon is doing a little different is giving all those Spielbergs 4 choices in how to distribute their epics. They can make it available to Prime Video subscribers and get a 6 or 15 cents-per-hour royalty. They can sell it as an add-on subscription through the Streaming Partners Program. They can offer it for rental or purchase and get half the retail price. Or they can make it available to all Amazon customers for free with ads and get 55% of the ad revenue, which is what YouTube gives you. Launch partners include Mattel, Baby Einstein and StyleHaul, whose Chief Content Officer Mia Goldwyn says is bringing some of its original shows, like Denise Richards’ fashion drama “Vanity”.

Clarabridge’s Elizabeth Clor knows most CEO’s couldn’t possibly care less about your vanity content marketing metrics. So she gives us 4 that…well to tell you the truth, there are some CEO’s that won’t care about these either, but they put you in a better position to tell a story in which your content marketing is bringing real value to the company. So getting on with it; number of sales-accepted leads, which is a lead the sales team has deemed worthy because they were at least able to get a meeting. Share of voice, or how much of the conversation about your area of interest you’re capturing vs. your competitors. Bosses loves being shown that competitors are being beaten at anything. Branded search; which is people searching your company by name. No, you can’t prove your content made that happen but if your share of voice is growing, a correlation can be made. And customer sentiment, CEOs like to hear about happy customers and text analytics of comments can do that.

Say it with me, I am better than a robot. If you’re a content writer, that statement is probably true. In fact, Kerry Creaswood reassures us that with so many jobs at risk from technology and AI and robots, yours might not be one of them and gives 4 reasons why. 1: a robot can research, but it can’t be inspired, and only stuff that’s inspired can inspire people. 2: excitement about the topic shows up in the writing, and robots aren’t that excitable. You know there’s a difference in writing stuff you have to and writing stuff you’re really into. 3: robots aren’t risk takers and thus, can’t think outside the box. Some risk is required to make anything truly impactful. And 4: human writers can use emotional “draws” because they’ve actually felt those emotions before. Robots have no emotional experiences to draw on. Apologies to those of you currently dating robots.

SocialTimes is telling us when people watch video, they’re likely doing it on Facebook, the preferred video source for 37%. The Philo Media study says in fact, the whole online video thing is still in flux. The Millennials though, still prefer YouTube over Facebook for video. And get this, 6.8% of Gen X’ers actually prefer Twitter for their online viewing. Twitter’s got to love to hear that #needsallthegoodnewsitcanget. For video sharing, again Facebook comes out on top with 63%. The study points out that if you want your video to get shared, emotional targeting is what gets it done. Positive emotions work better than negative, and 55% say humor is the biggest motivating factor for sharing.

Do you Like this podcast? Do you love it? Do you Haha, Wow, Sad or Angry this podcast? Those are the many faces of Facebook Reactions which was all the buzz when the 5 new options showed up at the end of February. After 2 months, a Quintly study shows hardly anybody is using them. They account for about 3% of interactions. Maybe 2 months just isn’t long enough and users haven’t realized they can have other emotions now. Or maybe people don’t want to express themselves as much as previously thought. Of the new interactions, Mark Wilson of Betanews says Love is the most popular. Over 76% of interactions were good ol’ Likes, 14% were shares, and a little over 7% were comments. One kind of content gets 40% more reactions than other kinds, it’s video. Quintly’s Alexander Peiniger says if they catch on, the new reactions can show brands how their posts are being received.

If you desperately want to please millennials, and I know I do, that’s why I’m growing a man bun, you get advice from the people who are doing an amazing job of it. That would be theSkimm. Things are going really well for them. It’s an email newsletter that tells you what’s going on with its own distinct personality. Sarah Buhr reports in just one and a half years they’ve hit 3.5M subscribers around the world. If that sounds like a lot, it’s because the New York Times wishes they had that. It’s more digital subscribers than they have. And thousands of “Skimm’bassadors” are out there trying to win stuff by getting other people on it. So back to how to appeal to millennials. theSkimm founders Danielle Weisberg and Carly Zakin told Disrupt NYC you serve up digestible news that matters to that age group and be completely honest about how you advertise to them. Weisberg says, “Looking at your phone is the new definition of ‘me time’”.

When you think of Spotify you probably think of music; playlists and playlists of music and video ads you can watch to get 30 minutes of commercial free music. But now Spotify is thinking hey, let’s make videos that are content, not ads that interrupt content. Look for 12 original series, most centered around music. And that shouldn’t come as a surprise since they’re coming from content partnerships chief Tom Calderone, who did plenty of music based shows while he was at Viacom. He jokes that there are videos on Spotify, but they’re buried at the bottom of the app with how to unsubscribe and the privacy policy. Lucas Shaw reports shows will be a few minutes to 15 minutes and include things like “Landmark” about big moments in music history, Russell Simmons’ “Rush Hour” where 2 hip-hop acts must collaborate and perform, and a Tim Robbins mockumentary about a competition to be the next dance music phenom.

If I knew you and you were always doing awesome things, guess what I would do. I’d want to do those same awesome things myself. And social networks are no different. LinkedIn has been keeping an eye on what Facebook’s been doing with Instant Articles and is acting like the droid R2MeToo. That makes no sense, I hope I have time to edit it out. Anyway, BuzzFeed News has reported talks are going on at LinkedIn to get a similar thing out for publishers. Why? Maybe it’s because Instant Articles has been working, posts with rich media that load and play so quick brands don’t seem to care the content isn’t on any of their properties. Whiz bang like that could enhance LinkedIn’s influencer blog posts.

I got a $500 loan against next month’s paycheck and all I have to do is pay it back almost immediately at 36%! Thank YOU Pay Day Loan Company! You might keep seeing those kinds of ads on late night cable but you’re not going to see it on Google anymore. They’re updating their AdWords terms to put in a total ban on lending products like that. If it’s got to be paid back in 60 days or have high APR’s, Google says no AdWords for you as of July 13. Paul Sawers reports it may be because Google just loves and wants to protect consumers, or because regulators were on their backs, because the old terms were “AdWords will only serve payday loan ads if the phrase “payday loan” or similar terms are included in the user’s query. On the Google Display Network, they’ll be shown only on sites related to payday loans.” Now the kibosh has been put on. Did you know Google blocked 780M ads in 2015, up 50% from 2014 for various nefarious reasons?

That’s it. Would a follow of @mikestiles kill ya?

Content Marketing News for Week Ending May 5

May 5, 2016 Uncategorized No comments

Proof you need to be thinking more about mobile and less about desktop just keeps coming in. This time it’s Polar’s State of Branded Content Benchmarks and Insights report. They get paid more for long titles. What do you want to talk about, click through rate for branded content? It’s significantly better on smartphones than on desktop or tablet. How about Average Time Spent? Tobi Elkin writes on smartphones it’s 63% higher than desktop at an average of 119 seconds. Financial publishers had the highest time spent at 323 seconds while lifestyle, news and travel had the weakest. Polar CEO Kunal Gupta says this shows publishers should focus on mobile-first in design and experience, as well as native advertising. Fun fact! Australians spend the most time reading branded content, then comes the British with Americans 3^rd.

Can you imagine a world in which advertising is not needed to support the creation of content? The hairs on the back of your neck just went up either because you love or dread that idea. But Adblock Plus and Flattr are trying to figure it out with Flattr Plus. Emil Protalinski tell us it’s a way users can automatically financially reward the content they consume most. The “Plus” in Flattr plus is that unlike now, users don’t have to manually hit a button on content to contribute. You set a monthly budget and Flattr Plus divvies it up based on what you engage with. Two caveats; publishers only get rewarded if they’ve signed up for the program, though it’s free to sign up. And Flattr Plus is still trying to figure out exactly how to define “engagement.” It will eventually be integrated into Adblock Plus at which time, the ad industry would be eliminated from the equation.

User generated content. Ooo just hearing those words gets brands so excited. Not only to have people give enough of a damn about your brand so much that they’ll talk about you, but to have other people doing content for you…for free! What could go wrong? Well as it turns out, a lot. Never mind that not all user content is good, a lot of it is just wrong. Vivoom says 6.6% of user-made videos were found by the brand being mentioned to be “problematic.” What’s that mean? How about profanity, hate speech and nudity? People who are mostly 25-54 are doing that and more women are doing it than men, 56 to 44%. A lot is rejected because it’s just way too off brand. That mostly happens in the CPG sector. Many others are playing fast and loose with copyright violations, especially in the finance vertical. And 8% get rejected because oopsie, didn’t get permission from the people in the video to be in it. That happens a lot in fashion for some reason.

Are you still doing banner ads? It’s okay if you are, it’s a basic international human right to run banner ads. But one publisher, The Daily Beast, is telling the marketing world they moved away from banners and toward content marketing and they aren’t sorry one least little bit. President Mike Dyer…yes I know Obama’s still President, Mike’s the Daily Beast President…says, “When you put your monetization needs above your readers, you risk driving them away. Banner ads are designed to interrupt the consumption of content the reader was there for.” He adds that pop ups are a horrid frustration and Facebook Instant Articles is right there to welcome turned-off readers. Bill Carmody writes content marketing though, is a different animal for the Beast that ads real value. Dyer says, “Our stories by and for brands perform as well as our editorial.”

Well, what’s Pandora going to do now? John Paul Titlow has a very in-depth article out about some changes they’re making and why. Pandora put personalized Internet radio on the map but hasn’t been too profitable thanks largely to the music industry licenses they have to pay. The Spotifys of the world don’t have to pay that since their core business is on demand music. So here CEO Tim Westergren sits with over 80M users thinking about what to make of it so big revenue is possible. It bought Rdio to get into on-demand, Pandora’s chief product officer says that’s coming late this year. But it also bought concert ticket seller Ticketfly. And they bought analytics company Next Big Sound. That adds up, maybe, if all goes as planned, to Pandora being a one stop shop for music listening, using data to offer sales of music you’ll probably like, selling and buying show tickets, maybe even selling merch via ecommerce. Or they may sell the whole company, they haven’t ruled that out.

Hannah Chapple saw an article in AdAge about how companies are investing big time in content marketing, despite some challenges they’re having, particularly the challenge of how to produce content that engages the people they want to engage. Hannah lays out two reasons that might be happening. First, and you know this just as much as I do, there’s a tanker full of content coming at you every day. The only way content gets your attention is if it timely, relevant, and is about what you’re interested in at the moment. Well the problem is a lot marketers don’t even know what their customers are interested in. They know demographics, but when it comes to tapping into their customers’ passions, they largely guessing. Problem two is measurement. Vanity metrics can easily be manipulated, and Hannah says the new standard should be measuring the value of your audience and who’s in it, preferably ideal buyers.

In my day we sat down with the JCPenney catalogue and circled the toys we wanted for Christmas. Today, which is still my day even though I sometimes say boy, this just wasn’t my day, Shop Your Way launched an iOS photo-sharing and shopping app called Fount. Brandy Shaul writes that you can look at photos and videos and buy products you see in them, right in the app. Talk about impulse purchases. Okay, I’ll talk about them. It works because if there’s something available for sale in the photo, users can tag it and it’ll search for that product or one like it. From then on it’ll be beside the photo when people view it. They can then in turn tap it to learn more about it or buy it…all in the app. But wait there’s more! Buy an item and it earns you points in the Shop Your Way rewards program. And if somebody buys something you tagged, you get points if they buy that too.

I’m young, I’m hip, I’m cool and I’m an independent video maker. Well one of those 4 things is true anyway. Indy filmmakers want to make money too, and they’ve been using things like VHX, a little NY startup, to sell content to the fans they’ve gathered up. That’s fine but, did you know about VHX? Have you heard of Vimeo? Good because Vimeo just bought VHX and now these indy content makers can get access to the Vimeo crowd. Vimeo CEO Kerry Trainor says, “Online video is expanding from a few, mainstream subscription services into a flourishing world of interest-based streaming channels, much like the evolution from broadcast to cable television.” Ben Popper writes in The Verge VHX has been busy, making mobile apps and getting clients on the new Apple TV. Vimeo plans to let creators keep more of the money, and it’ll give them info on the people who buy their stuff.

What does the phrase “watch TV” even mean anymore? Watch cable? Watch dish? Watch the Internet on the TV? Don’t turn the TV on at all and just stare at a black screen? Leichtman Research Group found that there are now more connected TV devices in US households than pay TV set-top boxes. The mean number is 2.1 to 1.8, so not really sure cable and dish is the future. 65% of homes have at least one Internet connected TV, whether that’s through a smart TV, game system, Blu-ray player or something like Roku. It was 44% in 2013. The news isn’t all bad for the old school guys, 83% of households with a connected TV get a pay TV service anyway, so they haven’t cut the cord. Now, guess how many TV sets in the US are HDTV. 79%. 21% are getting the picture cut off on either side of the screen or the picture is stretched like Silly Putty.

Many of you use Adobe AEM, which is redundant because the A in AEM stands for Adobe, as your Content Management System. So the more powerful it gets, the bigger cheesy grin you probably get. So I’m happy to tell you they bought Livefyre, which will now be a part of AEM and spread across the whole Adobe Marketing Cloud. Livefyre lets you look all over social media for mentions of your brand. This helps you make sure people aren’t bashing the daylights out of you without you even knowing about it, and it lets you include user generated content in your content efforts. Stephanie Condon reports Adobe and Livefyre have actually been working together since September.

That’s it. I live on Twitter @mikestiles.

Content Marketing News for Week of Apr 28

April 28, 2016 Uncategorized No comments

Have you ever done a content marketing campaign and then had to go explain to the big guy or big lady why it didn’t work? Awkward. Patricio Robles has 6 reasons your content effort may have tanked. You didn’t do the market research to learn what the target audience really wanted. The content didn’t match up to the objective; maybe you put conversion content out to a lead gen target. The content wasn’t compelling; it’s really, really crowded out there and your content can’t afford to just be meh. The presentation could have been wrong; wrong delivery format, typography, graphics, video, etc. Your distribution strategy could have been wrong which means you didn’t reach the right people. And, maybe you took pride in quantity of content instead of quality of content. The c-suite might not be impressed you were able to make a lot of lame stuff.

If I’ve said it once I’ve said it at least once, content marketing is so much about having the trust of your audience. Well never mind content, the Internet itself is having extreme trust problems. The Centre for International Governance Innovation and Ipsos asked users all over the world how they’re feeling and 83% think there should be new rules about how their data is used. 57% are more worried about their online privacy now than they were a year ago. But this is funny, 38% actually trust that what they do on the Internet isn’t monitored. Bless their hearts. Who do most people trust? Nobody! Only a third thinks their government’s keeping personal data safe from private companies, and a third thinks private companies are keeping the info safe from governments. It’s a conspiracy! 83% have changed what they do online to try to control their info. That includes not opening emails from unknown addresses and doing fewer financial transactions online. But 11% even said screw it and reduced their overall usage of the Internet.

Jim Burns comes up with an interesting proposition, what if you brand content marketers stopped and evaluated your own content in the same way that the general public evaluates content? What would happen then? Would you go ahead and distribute content when you know for a fact it’ll likely land with a thud? And do you even care if your target audience thinks your content is good? Jim says these are the questions that run through any content consumer’s mind when presented with a blog, video, infographic or whatever. Is this for me? Is it about something I care about right now? Will I get something new, important, worthwhile, I don’t already know for my time investment? How much time will this take? And do I trust this source? And the questions keep coming even after they’ve started with the content. Is this any good? Should I keep putting time into this? And am I getting what I expected?

One way to get good is to follow the examples of the best, and congratulations to Samsung for being named the best when it comes to branded content, at least in one award committee’s judgment. But it’s the Tribeca Film Festival so this one has a lot of cred behind it. Kristina Monllos reports it’s the first time the festival has given out an award celebrating who’s getting the fusion of advertising and entertainment right. Samsung won for its 5 minute short, Hearing Colors. It’s about Neil Harbisson, a colorblind fellow that talked doctors into implanting an antenna in the back of his head so he could “hear” colors. Tribeca Enterprise’s CEO Andrew Essex said, “This film exemplifies the kind of work we applaud in which a brand is telling a genuinely compelling story in a way that adds value to people’s lives.” It was part of Samsung’s Vimeo partnership to show how today’s tech is changing communication.

There are some things that are just sacred, that you keep clear of branded content. If you’re a child of the 70’s and 80’s and think Saturday Night Live is such a sacred institution, think again. Next season, season 42, will have NBC removing 2 commercial breaks per show. That means 30% fewer commercials, which sounds like a good thing, right? Megh Wright reports in Splitsider the payback is that marketers will be able to partner with SNL to make branded content. In other words, commercials in the form of sketches. The combo of ads and sketches, which I suppose you’d call skads or commetches, are very exciting to NBCUniversal’s ad sales chair Linda Yaccarino. She says, “By partnering, advertisers can capture an audience only SNL can deliver.” Surely producer Lorne Michaels would never allow this. Nah. He says, “This will give time back to the show and make it easier to watch the show live.”

Are you a senior marketer whose forehead vein is usually prominently protruding, signifying the oncoming aneurism your job was destined to give you? You probably want to know if it’s just you or if your peers feel equally as stressed. Well relax. Relaaaax, and I’ll tell you. The Creative Group did a survey of 400 US marketing and ad executives and as it turns out, 63% say their job is somewhat stressful and 7% say it’s very stressful. 27% say their job’s not too stressful, and 3% of clearly Xanax-taking individuals say there’s no stress at all. But Ayaz Nanji goes on to report that even for those who are stressed, not everybody thinks that’s a bad thing. Nearly two thirds said the more stress there is, the more productive they are. SO obvious this was a survey of Americans. Only 8% think their productivity goes down if there’s any stress at all.

What do you advertisers think about Snapchat? Well apparently whatever it is, its VP of Content Nick Bell says you’re wrong! He calls out two big Snapchat misconceptions you might be walking around with. One, that Snapchat is just for the kiddies. He says 2/3 of the audience is older than 18 and half of new users are really big boys and girls, over 25. Misconception number 2 is that ca-ching, Snapchat is a really, really expensive ad platform. Lara O’Reilly reports in Business Insider that okay when Snapchat first went after ads, they weren’t really a big ad platform and the minimum ask was for 3/4 of a million dollars a day for a “Stories” ad to get the reach needed to move needles. That kind of cost isn’t quickly forgotten so the belief is it’s still that much. But now they can target so you can pay less to reach a smaller, more accurate audience. The new entry-level…tens of thousands.

Likes sands through the hourglass, so are the days in the relationship between PR professionals and brand content makers. A sordid story against the backdrop of a desperate desire to just be loved and accepted. Collective Content and ResponseSource asked 266 UK PR people how they’re feeling about this whole brand content thing and found they’re slowly accepting its legitimacy, but I underline slowly. Overall they still say there’s a big difference between traditional journalism and brand content and that’s the way it’ll always be. Collective Content’s Tony Hallett says, “Our research shows the long-term trend is positive, with PRs already citing examples like the WSJ’s Cocainenomics native feature for Netflix.” Still, PR peeps who remember being contacted by someone making content for a brand went down from 67% in 2015 to 58.1% this year. There’s also some disagreement about what the terms “content marketing,” “native advertising” and “brand journalism” exactly mean.

YouTube’s got bumper cars now! Oh wait, I read that wrong. They have Bumper Ads now! 6-second ads sold using Google AdWords, and they can’t wait to see how creative you’re going to be with your 6 seconds. David Cohen reports early adopters include Audi Germany and Atlantic Records, maybe they can market their ringtones. But Google Product Manager for Video ads Zach Lupei would tell me not to scoff because snackable videos are great for mobile, and good things happen when you team Bumper Ads with TrueView and Google Preferred. They did some testing and have seen Bumpers improve top of the funnel metrics like recall, awareness and consideration pretty impressively. Adding TrueView gives it incremental reach and frequency. Anyway, your Google sales rep is staring at their phone right now waiting for you to call.

How can such pretty pictures lead to so much tension and legal fighting? Getty Images says Google is scraping images from 3rd party sites and encouraging piracy and they don’t like it. Olivier Laurent reports they told the EU’s antitrust commission Google Images shows full-screen slideshows of high-res copyrighted images, and has been doing that since January of 2013. They tried talking to Google but the response was, hey, you can always opt-out of image search if you don’t like how we do things. Getty says if you can see the high res image on Google, why would anyone go to the source site to look at it? And because they can be downloaded, Getty thinks Google is turning people into “accidental pirates” ha-harrr. Getty’s general counsel, that means lawyer, says, “Google’s behavior is adversely affecting not only our contributors, but the lives and livelihoods of artists around the world, present and future.”

That’s it. Join the happy followers @mikestiles.

Content Marketing News for the Week Ending Apr 21

April 21, 2016 Uncategorized No comments

You’re probably pushing a good bit of your content over email. Okay well, email’s not always going to be what it is today and 20 experts recently gave their take on where it will be by 2020. 1. You won’t create email “campaigns” because machine learning and automation will make the scale so huge and complex, you can’t manage it like a campaign. 2. Subscribers will be able to opt out of tracking. Andrew Bonar of Deliverability Ltd. says, “Open tracking, device tracking, location tracking, click-through behavior, and other data may all be subject to subscriber opt-ins and opt-outs.” 3. You’ll have to learn to email a new audience: machines. Len Shneyder, VP of SparkPost, says, “The IoT has the potential to generate trillions of messages a day.” And 4, Chad White reports that with 55% of emails in March opened on mobile, email messages get shorter, with just one CTA.

Video ads work. Oh man, aren’t you glad you listen to this podcast to learn things like that? I better tell you more than that. The length of your video ad matters if you want people to watch as much of it as possible. Think With Google, Mondelez International and Droga5, tested 3 cereal ads, one was over 2 minutes, one was 30 seconds and the 3rd was 15 seconds. Same message, same relative brand presence. Kimberlee Morrison reports the shortie 15 second one was skipped the most! Nor did the viewer remember the brand as well. The 30-second got skipped the least and more people watched the whole thing. Many of you brands think you’re being cool, or sneaky, not showing your brand ‘til the end of videos. But just 15% of people watch long ads all the way through so…what have you accomplished? Then again, hard sell the brand too much and they’ll also leave the video. Video viewers are so fragile.

Consider this a warning. If you’re dragging your feet shifting your company more toward a mobile-first mentality, you are getting comfy cozy right behind the 8-ball. comScore reports that for 4 months straight, overall time spent online in the US on desktop and laptop, has dropped. That’s measured against the same months the previous year. The new numbers even insinuate they know when desktop Internet usage peaked, and it was March of 2015. Jack Marshall writes as recently as May of 2015, mobile and desktop were both growing. Now that’s not the case; one is dropping while the other continues to grow. Internet on mobile was up 13% last month compared to March of last year, and the number of minutes on mobile nearly doubled that of desktops at over 1T minutes.

More and more people are discovering podcasts they like and getting into the regular habit of listening to podcasting. But one thing has sort of been holding back the floodwaters of podcast consumption. No podcasts on Google Play for Android users. Well all that changed Monday. NPR kind of accidentally blew the whistle a little early but that’s okay. We’d heard from Google itself back in October podcasts would be added to the platform. And like music, you’ll see podcasts based on your mood, your activity, or your interest. Lauren Keating reports for Tech Times that if you have a podcast, you can submit the RSS feed for approval, and if approved, you can join podcasters already aboard like Earwolf, Radiotopia, HBO and Tim Ferriss.

So does Twitter hold up its end of the bargain when it comes to driving social traffic to media sites? That’s what Parse.ly wanted to know, so they put on their study hats and found at least where their own network of publisher’s is concerned, Twitter drives a median 8.5% of total social traffic. But that’s not enough to learn. You have to see what kind of tweets successfully drove that traffic. Well there’s typical content, like ongoing tweets about a long lasting story – say the Zika virus (don’t worry, I feel fine). That drives about 1.5% of traffic from Twitter. But then there’s “most active” content, which is breaking news that has immediate but short impact. That drives 11% of traffic from Twitter. Parse.ly concluded Twitter’s good at both kinds but breaking real information about your brand will win out over long, contrived campaigns.

Look around you, because you can now. YouTube’s rolling out 360-degree livestreaming video support as well as spatial audio. The first is important so you can experience live cool events (they’re starting with Coachella) and see everything around you. The second is important because if the audio isn’t as realistic as the video, complete with intensity, depth and distance, the disconnect makes for a lame VR experience. Deafheaven just won’t sound right. YouTube’s Chief Product Officer Neal Mohan tells Ken Yeung he’s stoked about VR moving beyond pre-recorded stuff, and they’re working with peepers like Two Big Ears and VideoStitch on compatibility with YouTube’s platform. The API will be open to you developers.

You’ve got to feel pretty good about yourself when Verizon Wireless and Hearst team up to buy you, but that’s what happened to Complex Media. What’s the attraction and estimated $250-$300M valuation? The mostly video pop culture lifestyle site gets over 50M unique visitors a month and more than 300M page views. Verizon likes that because as SVP Consumer Product and Marketing Brian Angiolet says, “The decision is a continuation of our media strategy, focused on disruption in digital media and content distribution, and building a portfolio of the emerging digital brands of the future for the Millennial and Gen-Z audience.” Lucas Matney writes Complex CEO Rich Antoniello is staying aboard and in charge and the brand will be left alone to operate independently. Well…as independently as you can when you’re owned by Verizon Wireless and Hearst.

It’s the old “eating your own dog food” argument. You’d think no one would be better at content marketing than content marketers. Well NewsCred took a look at how well articles about content marketing have been performing and sure enough, they’re getting more attention and engagement than social feed ads or display ads do. But Benjy Boxer reports there are lessons to be learned in the data. If you want to grow your audience, you’re no different than anybody else. You’re going to have to do paid distribution so get over it. And you’d be wise to use email to push your articles, cause that really works. When email’s the main traffic source, the average article totally outdoes other articles. And interestingly, licensed articles outperform original content on some channels for engagement. The thought is it takes high quality journalism to at least initially capture attention.

Did you know that Bob Marley was black? Well Snapchat sure does. Alex Heath reports they did a fun little thing that they’ve done in the past, made a lens that lets you take a selfie and overlay a filter that makes you look like Bob Marley. They did this Wednesday to commemorate some big weed day, I’m a muscle relaxer guy myself. Well if you are hyper tuned in to political correctness and looking for reasons to be outraged at the drop of the hat, you can already imagine what I’m going to report. Users immediately claimed it was the digital equivalent of blackface. You can’t portray a black person if you aren’t black, even if you love that person and are paying tribute to him. I don’t know if portraying Bob Marley as white would have resulted in less backlash but there you go. Snapchat worked with the Bob Marley Estate to create the lens but what do they know? The important thing is to get mad and stay mad, as if that’s what Bob would have wanted.

Content Marketing Institute’s rolled out their B2B enterprise content marketing report and we get some of the numbers from Amy Gesenhues. There’s not a lot of faith in their content marketing strategies. 74% of the content marketers have one, but only 22% think their efforts are particularly effective. Only 35% of those that have a strategy document it, I guess the rest just kind of have it in their heads. The most used tactics were events, videos and social. And speaking of social, LinkedIn was the most popular social platform for B2B, with YouTube 2nd and Twitter a close 3rd. B2B likes paid distribution and search engine marketing is their fave method of it. 58% rank it as their most effective paid distribution tactic too, then comes content discovery tools, promoted posts and social ads. But even though they aren’t sure it’s effective, 73% of respondents said creating more engaging content is a top priority, and also understanding more what content works and what doesn’t.

That’s it. You could do worse than following @mikestiles.

Content Marketing News for Week of Apr 14

April 14, 2016 Uncategorized No comments

Let’s talk about something you care about deeply, you and how much you can earn in your career. McKinley Marketing Partners did a survey to see who’s getting hired in marketing, and what skill sets are most in demand right now. Ayaz Nanji reports the biggest lesson, you better know and be comfortable with marketing technology. The biggest jump in expertise that hirers are looking for was in digital marketing, 27% more than last year. As for skills with the most planned hires this year, it’s a tie between general marketing and content management. Then comes communications. If you’re just getting started or are still a junior-level type, the most jobs for you are going to be in digital marketing, analytics, and content management. But you can’t ignore those mysterious soft skills either. Most, 64%, say problem-solving is essential. Then comes elegant thought articulation, analytical thinking, company culture fit, and personality. And here you thought you were going to get by just on your sparkling personality.

We all think marketing technology is cool but there is that line that has “creepy” written on it. Steve O’Hear tells us that a new ad unit from Vyking called ReactivAds, is able to watch you right back when you’re watching it using your device’s camera, see what facial expressions you’re making using emotion, face and gesture recognition, and have the ad react to how you’re reacting to it. You’ve got to opt in of course because some people like to be watched and others, you know, call the police. They say they don’t store pictures of you, everything’s done in real-time. CEO Matthew Klimpke says something interesting, that it offers up a whole new metric. He says, “Any effective advertising evokes an emotional response; this technology will enable advertisers to hone in on the raw, unfiltered emotions from their campaigns. Advertisers need more KPIs to measure engagement beyond clicks. Emotional engagement will become the new KPI of advertising effectiveness.”

Are you still trying to game Google? C’mon, join us in 2016, because a lot has changed and even more is in the process of changing. If you don’t already, you should know about RankBrain. That’s Google’s artificial intelligence they’re using to decipher vague, long-tail type queries and deliver relevant results. 15% of searches are getting RankBrain applied to it and Google’s Greg Corrado says it’s the 3rd-biggest contributing signal. If you’re ever playing Google trivia with friends, a) God help you, and b) there are over 200 search signals Google uses. Al Gomez @alseoblog tells us how content marketers should start dealing with RankBrain. Narrow that audience and answer problems they may search; I mean really narrow. Make your content sound human and natural, like you’re talking to a person. Steve Baldwin of Didit.com says think long-form cause RankBrain uses co-occurrence, how often similar terms are in the content. We’re not talking keyword stuffing, we’re talking similar or synonymous terms. Lastly, refer to authoritative sources cause it helps the algorithm figure out the intent of your post.

If you start seeing more Facebook posts with marketing stuff like end cards, brand logos and product placement, don’t be surprised. What, my warning isn’t enough for you? Okay I’ll explain further. Facebook is now letting publishers and marketers share brand content on the platform. AJT Santos reports that it’s not like a free for all, there are still a few guidelines in place like you still can’t do branded or sponsored cover photos or profile pictures, you can’t watermark and you can’t do pre-roll ads. But trust me, the brand content is gonna flow. A new tool from Facebook even lets publishers tag the brand being promoted in the content. Facebook’s VP of Partnerships Nick Grudin said, “We know many of our partners have existing partnership deals with marketers, and this gives them the ability to extend their branded content business onto Facebook.”

Can I ask you a question and have you answer it honestly? No? Well here’s what I was going to ask. Do you want people to engage with your content or not? Because if you’re gating your content and making people fill out a form to get it, you have a wildly inflated sense of how great and valuable your content is. You’re lucky they found it, you’re even luckier they’re clicking on it, but then you want to withhold it unless they sacrifice themselves to you as a lead? Anna Talerico reports that gating is taking a back seat to quality interactive content. When Demand Metric tested a gated interactive white paper against an un-gated version, the un-gated drove 33% more leads than the gated version. How? The un-gated version had an optional form to get a PDF version. Plus, Anna points out most people are smart enough to find the info they need somewhere else without coming through your gate.

It’s been decided by others that you have too many choices. For instance, you have a choice as to whether or not to watch a video ad in your messaging apps. Well you did. Brielle Jaekel reports Snapchat’s 2.0 update lets marketing content get right in your face and roll without a click. Mark Cluett, who’s a Marketing Manager at Polar, Toronto, says, “Before, even if a user chose to follow a brand on Snapchat, they had to manually interact with the brand to see what they shared. Now, videos from brands will see more views and engagement as users stumble upon them naturally.” But with great power comes, that’s right, great responsibility. Cluett goes on to say, “If a user is inundated with stories from only brands when they’re expecting a stream of content from celebs, friends, and news sources they’ll unfollow very quickly.” The warning, brands better share less content that’s more valuable.

It’s not like Snapchat is the only one in the in-your-face video business. Twitter’s had First View since February, letting you get your paid video content to the top of users’ feeds for 24 hours. When that happened, there was some wondering going on; wondering if users would rebel. They haven’t. In fact they’ve hardly noticed them at all. Does that surprise you? David Neuman, Director of Social Media Services for Prime Visibility says, “Users are so accustomed to seeing native ads across all of their social feeds the rollout of First View isn’t going to be met with much backlash.” And as John Montesi writes, Twitter’s an easy place to quickly get those native ads in barely noticed…as opposed to pre-roll ads before YouTube videos. And since they only run for 24 hours, users don’t see it often enough for it to sink in that it’s an ad.

We don’t do a lot of stories about gaming but hey, it’s a very valid channel on which to do content marketing. And a Unity Technologies report tells us whether or not gamers are turned off by in-game video ads. Brandy Shaul reports that it depends. If it’s a run of the mill full-screen picture ad, 39% of developers say their players left the game “either a little faster, or even a lot quicker than usual.” But if the players get rewarded for watching a video ad, that’s a whole different ballgame app. 78% are open to watching reward video ads and 71% prefer that as a way to “pay” for in-game content. Well okay, but such video ads would hurt other in-app purchases right? Nopers. 86% of developers say they weren’t affected or even went up after reward video ads were introduced.

You’ve put together some dynamite downloadable content. Maybe it’s even about dynamite. So learn now what device people are most likely to download your stuff onto. Limelight Networks knows, cause their State of Digital Downloads report found overall, 45% of people are more likely to download all kinds of digital content than last year. But here’s the big news, the smartphone just now passed PC’s as the device most downloading is done on, specifically Android smartphones. The iPad and Android tablets were almost tied at 2nd and 3rd. As for what’s downloaded, EContent reports other than OS updates, it’s new apps at 33%, video games at 18%, and movies & TV content at 13%. Most downloading happens from 6pm-midnight. But whenever it’s done, that download needs to be fast. Especially Millennials have no patience for slowness or hangups.

Are you ready to chat with Facebook Messenger’s 900M users? Among the many announcements at their big F8 shindig to-do, they said there will now be a Messenger chatbot platform, and you, Mr. or Ms. Brand, can pay to bot message those poor souls who connected with you at one time on Messenger. “Sponsored Messages” are being tested and one of the things they’re really trying to figure out is how to keep this experience from being, you know, hated. Facebook’s VP of product David Marcus says, “These will definitely be limited…we’re very paranoid about that.” Josh Constine writes what we all know is true, when Messenger buzzes right now, you know it’s a friend. That assurance could go away. In addition to Sponsored Messages, Facebook also announced “Click to Message” which can be put into News Feed ads.