CONTENT CREATION CHECKLISTS 2013

Presentation Contents

Facebook Today Motives for Facebook Usage Engagement Rate Facebook Post Components Text Components Image Components Content Planning Content Planning & Creation Checklists

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14 17 20 27 33 41

Research Data

The research is based on publicly available data which were collected from Facebook company

fan pages of four major IT companies in Poland from a period of three months (April, 1 to June, 30 2013). The components within each post were analyzed and classified as well as engagement rate was calculated individually per each post testing each component’s influence on engagement rate. 474 posts in total were analyzed. The conclusions of this research do not limit only to the IT sector. Though it is possible that analysis of Facebook content from a different industry or country can produce slightly different results.

Nevertheless checklists created as a result of this analysis are universal and can be used

by Social Media Marketing Managers and Facebook Administrators for

Facebook Content Creation for any industry and in any country.

Facebook Today

Facebook Today

Facebook is the world’s biggest social media platform and an

industry leader with 1.11 billion monthly active users worldwide as of March 2013 .

Era of Social Media Marketing

“A brand is no longer what we tell the consumer it is – it is what consumers tell each other it is.”

Scott Cook Co-Founder of Intuit

Facebook as an advertising medium

From an advertising point of view Facebook is a unified platform which represents a combination of TV (videos), Radio (voice for ex. music from Spotify) and printed media options (text and image posts).

Facebook Content Must Be …

Relevant to fans Sharable Likable Commentable Clickable Memorable Aligned with company’s marketing goals and activities

…PLANNED!

Motives for Facebook Usage

People

Keep in touch with friends

Social searching and social browsing

Share and create content

Belong to a group of people who share same interest

Express themselves

Information exchange with others about brands

Researching products to buy Learn more about products Stay up to date with brand ‘s promotional campaigns

People use Facebook for both personal and practical reasons: from browsing through their friends’ vacation photos to commenting on an article about features of a new iPhone. Conversations are created as a course of people’s interaction with a brand or with each other.

For marketers those conversations contain a wealth of information on consumer insights and market in general.

Social Media Conversations

Interesting Fact: At Samsung there are 4,000 conversations every day. In contrast, Dell monitors 25,000 conversations daily and keeps tabs on online chatter with a Social Media Listening Command Centre that operates out of Austin, Texas. A similar centre is now in the pipeline for Samsung.

Brands and Companies

For companies Facebook is a place where they can not only market their products,

but also sell products by linking their posts directly to their online store.

Brand is fans’ new “friend” with whom they can talk to whenever they have a problem or a question, a sort of Customer Service Dept. : a place to file complaints, ask questions about a product etc.

Both negative and positive conversations contain data for further analysis from a point of view of future product / service modifications and innovations: Research &Development.

BRAND

Marketing

Sales

R&D

Customer Service

Social Media Center

Interesting Fact: In 2012 Samsung set up a social media centre, with one community manager and one account manager per country, and two social media directors and an analytics team per regional headquarters. It was supported by an outsourced headcount of 200 on the agency side. That same year, Samsung was named as one of the top 10 top global companies with the most online mentions.

Engagement Rate

Why Engagement Rate is important?

Engagement Rate is a measurement of popularity of a company fan page or an individual post. The higher the better.

On a daily basis Facebook on average shows in your News Feed only 20% of all posts published by a user’s friends and “liked” fan pages. Explained in laymen’s terms, Facebook looks at several criteria at the same time: your activity with this person / fan page posts (your likes, shares, comments etc.) and history of your engagement. Only posts of friends and fan pages that you actively interacted for quite some time will

fall into these 20 %. Since most of people view their content in the News Feed, if content fails to attract fan’s attention, it will most likely be hidden in preference of a more relevant content.

Engagement Rate Formula

Each post’s popularity can be measured or its Engagement Rate (ER) calculated using available data from Facebook itself. It expresses how engaged fans were with the post: a total sum of their likes, comments and shares per post divided by a total amount of fans on a given day. Formula below has several versions, but more or less is an industry’s standard.

Likes + Comments + Shares

Total fans on a given day ER =

Facebook Post Components

Facebook Post: Text & Image

Facebook Posts is comprised of text and image components. Image can be either a photo or an image from the preview generated from a video or other link.

93% of posts have additional textual description to an image or a link. For companies texts give an opportunity to say more about products, its features etc.

It is a form of a traditional advertising message just in a social media setting.

Facebook Post Type

Facebook started as a site where college students voted on photos. Not surprisingly,

years after visual elements are present

in 96% of posts. Only 4 % of all

posts are plain text posts without an image accompanying it. Most popular is a photo image, with 9 % of photo albums. Links to articles and other pages which also contain an image preview stand for 4 %.

In 2012 Facebook was second place after YouTube to watch videos, but videos are only 9% of all posts.

Facebook Post Components: Text

Text Syntax: Questions

Textual part of a post carries additional information for the image it accompanies. As in a real life conversation, a dialogue is comprised of questions and answers.

Texts which contain questions (20% of

all posts) showed to generate more comments, because they show that a brand is interested in fans’ opinion/

response by starting a two-way conversation.

Emoticons were invented to mimic a real life facial expression in texts. Brands sometimes are afraid to use them in their

posts (only 28 % of all posts).

Fans expect “human conversation” with a brand. Emoticons add emotional element to the conversation. Posts containing emoticons

have higher Engagement Rates per posts than posts without emoticons. .

Text Components: Emoticons

Facebook has several additional features which enhance post text with extra functionality or information:

Hashtags are a new tool for marketers, but truth is that most of brand fans still don’t know

how to use them. Only 3% of posts contained hashtags.

Additional Links are usually links to company’s own pages, partner’s web pages, articles on other websites, videos, and tags to other social media platforms (Pintrest, Twitter, Instagram etc.).

Tags are “links” to other pages of partners, companies or people on Facebook (32% of posts) .

Check-in is an option to indicate a place for an event or location . Companies seldom use

them (1% of posts).

Text:Facebook Features

Text: Additional Links

28% of posts have additional links. 52% of those are links to other company related pages (Official webpage, Facebook page etc.). The rest are links to other URLs: partners’ Facebook pages or webpage, articles or videos on YouTube or Vimeo (mainly) . Since texts have to be short, links are a good

way to give more information to those interested and not bore those who are happy with just a few lines of text.

Text: Own Company Pages Links

Now almost every company has a wide array of own media to start with: Internet websites, applications, social media accounts etc. with each of them having different functionality and certain limitations. While planning an advertising campaign, it is a social media manager’s job to wisely use features of each of them in order to enhance campaign’s message.

55% of all posts mention partners or other businesses who have Facebook pages. It is a shop, a newspaper or a famous person. But

only 32% of them

use tags to their Facebook pages.

Texts: Other Businesses Tags

Not in all cases Facebook allows you to use this feature, but brands which use it increase their Facebook reach dramatically by making posts visible for both fan groups.

Facebook Post Components: Image

Image

Though fans “liked” a company or a brand to see more of its products, it turns out that they

want a product “to live a life”. Images which show a product in a context or surrounded by other objects, people, backgrounds have

higher Engagement Rates than those which just show a product against white background.

Image

Contains product

Only product Not only product

Does not contain product

Image Contains Product

67% of posts contain images of products (both only product(s) and product in the context).

Image Contains Product

Posts which contain images of products have

higher fans’ Engagement Rate almost by 30%. Fans like to see products in posts by company. Facebook has recently become one of the first places

for product launches. For companies it gives immediate view of market reaction.

Image Contains Only Product

Additional Text provides options for further description of the image and enhancement of posts

with extra information.

80% of posts show product “living a life”: practical application, solution to an existing problem, against different background and with other objects .

Image Contains Only Product

Fans engage almost 3 times more with images which show a product “living a life”. Images which show a product in a context or surrounded by other objects, people, backgrounds

have higher Engagement Rates than those which just show a product against white background.

Content Planning: Focus, Type and Affective Component

45%

21%

16%

8%

4% 4% 2%

Product Contest Unrelated Company News Events Sponshorship Sales (promotion, shop) Social Resposibility

Content Planning: Post Focus

Post Focus is a central theme of an individual post. Same as in traditional advertising, most of Facebook posts are focused on marketing of

a product and its features(45%). Second

category are contests (21%) because social media gives an opportunity to moderate them

almost in real time making it interesting for fans to participate.

Content Planning: Post Focus ER

Social nature of Facebook predetermines which types of posts will be more popular than the

others. Posts with a focus on products and their

features have the highest engagement rate with the audience because this is why fans became fans in the first place. Though fans like to be informed, they still like to be entertained. Second most engaging content is

“unrelated” category or posts which have jokes or funny images usually related to the industry in general but do not feature neither company nor its products or services.

Content Planning: Post Type

Social media managers can choose from wide variety of Facebook features while

creating content. Photos are absolute

winners representing 74% of all posts.

Videos and Photo albums rank

second with 9% each. Links usually also contain photos as part of the article/ other

website preview stand for 4 %. Text posts stand for 4% of all posts.

Content Planning: Post Type

Photos have significantly higher Engagement Rate compared to other post types. Texts and videos have almost the same.

Interesting Fact: Though Facebook was second place for watching online videos, fans engagement is still quite low. This can be explained by Facebook usage patterns. Facebook’s prime time is from 9 to 11 and this is the time when people are at work. Videos require sound and it is not possible for most of people to view them at work.

Affective Component in advertising

Advertising messages can roughly be described as functional (features and application

of the product) or experiential (appeals to your feelings, emotions about the product). Social Media platforms are places where people mainly entertain and the same is expected from the content. Even features of the product have to be shown in an adventurous way. This created a new

type of advertising messages functional-experiential..

Experiential Functional

Affective Component

Each company chooses its own tone of voice and way to promote its products. Some of the choices marketers have to make are influenced by the

industry’s standard, some by company’s

marketing strategy goals.

Different industries will have different types of affective components prevailing in their social media content.

Affective Component

Marketer’s dilemma: How to communicate technical features of a new memory card and make it fun and engaging for it fans?

The answer is not easy. Fans obviously prefer to be entertained rather than lectured. Social media marketers just have to plan that

some content will be in the “FYI” category meaning that it has to be seen by fans (for ex. company news) but it will not generate high engagement.

Content Creation & Planning Checklists

Content Planning Checklist

Content Type Photo / Photo Album / Video / Text / Link

Focus Product / Social Responsibility / Company News / Sales / Sponsoring / Contest / Unrelated

Tone of voice Functional / Experiential / Functional-experiential

Content Planning Checklist in social media is nothing more but a revised version of regular advertising campaign planning checklist. Marketers have to keep the right proportion of everything and learn what is relevant and interesting for their target audience. Combination of several types of content to express the same idea helps bring dimensions to the

advertising campaign. Fans appreciate this constant innovation and an element of surprise. Social media gives feedback in real time on successes and failures for marketers to adjust accordingly.

Content Creation Checklist

From planning to execution. After the alignment comes a stage of actual planning of posts publishing which involves decisions on how to use all Facebook features and advertising content to their fullest potential.

Same idea can be expressed in a variety of ways using words, images, video etc. Advertising message’s idea can be further enhanced using loads of available Facebook features which had previously been discussed.

The Content Creation Checklist structures this decision making process and helps align content and Facebook features with the marketing objectives.

Content Creation Checklist

Content

Text

Syntax

Question Not Question

Extra Features

Facebook Native

Hashtags Check-in Tags Emoticons

Links

Image

Product

Only In context

Unrelated

Time and Day

Day of the week

Time

Picture Credits

http://www.flickr.com/photos/96156600@N02/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kl918/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/luvkung/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mcguiresphotos/

http://allfacebook.com/files/2011/08/TagNotifier.jpg

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151741816654332&set=a.385756349331.168373.339574914331&type=1&theater

http://www.hangthebankers.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Facebook1.jpg

https://www.facebook.com/DellPoland

https://www.facebook.com/SamsungPolska?ref=br_tf

https://www.facebook.com/ASUS.Polska

Questions: j.jakubiec@yahoo.com