A Tennessee television station has declined to air an ad that shares the story of a gay Republican U.S. soldier who wants the right to marry his partner.
Though Chattanooga-based WRCB had no previous policy on airing same-sex marriage commercials, the station has decided not to air the Freedom to Marry ad due to the topic’s controversial nature, Buzzfeed reports
“It’s just a very controversial and personal issue, and we just choose to not air a commercial on either side of that debate,” Tom Tolar, president and general manager of WRCB told Buzzfeed. He added that “people probably have really strong opinions on one side or other of the debate. It’s just an emotional debate for many people.” Read more…
One angel investor wants an investment portfolio full of women.
Jonathan Sposato, a Seattle-based entrepreneur and the CEO of photo editing software PicMonkey, made a bold announcement last week at the Seattle Angel Conference that he’d only fund companies with one or more female founders.
Women often have a more difficult time securing funding—numbers from CrunchBase show that companies with female founders only make up about 19% of seed and angel investments, and that number dwindles down as companies progress to each funding stage.
But the good news is the number of female founders are on the upswing. According to that CrunchBase data, the percentage of startups with at least one female founder rose from 9.5% in 2009 to 18% in 2014 Read more…
For this young couple, growing old together is as beautiful as they imagined.
Just a little weirder.
Nerdistparodies the Cut.com‘s “100 Years of Beauty: Aging” video by tasking a team of makeup artists to show the 20-something lovebirds what they will look like in later stages of life, including the post-apocalyptic era.
If you read the headlines in the tech press, you might reasonably assume that every 20-something in America is somehow launching an Uber or Snapchat-inspired startup — and magically receiving billions in venture financing
Not so.
Entrepreneurship is finally on the upswing again in the U.S. — but it still has a long way to go to reach pre-recession levels.
Last year, 310 adults out of every 100,000 launched a new business on average each month in the U.S., compared to an average of 280 entrepreneurs per month in the year prior, according to new data from the Kauffman Foundation, which tracks entrepreneurship by city. Read more…
Then it’s about turning that into engagement and converting that into leads and customers. The ultimate goal is to create such loyal fans and advocates that they rave about you online and offline. That’s when the real magic happens. You only have to look at Apple that has its customers waiting in lines for 48 hours to get their latest phones to understand that fan power.
But that goal of attracting traffic and attention is getting harder.
What has made the challenge of getting noticed in a noisy world so much harder? Why is it that a 200 word blog post just doesn’t cut it anymore?
Why is it getting harder?
When I started creating content I could write 300-400 words without any visuals and we were all happy. Today it’s a 1,000 plus words and needs a bunch of visuals.
There are a few elements that led us to this explosion in data.
The content standard has been dialled up. People expect more for free. The volume of information created has exploded due to everyone becoming publishers. We all have smart phones and the growth and access to hundreds of social networks.
We have also seen the dramatic increase in the number people having internet access.
Noise has accelerated.
The growth in web content
To put some perspective on this explosion of content and web traffic here are the facts on the growth of content and the internet.
Since 2008 when I started using social networks this is what has happened:
So that is your challenge. It is your competition. Daunting isn’t it.
So how do you win?
To win you have to do two things first. Create the best content you can and grow your online distribution for that content.
Content needs to achieve a few things to get shared. Inform, entertain, educate and inspire.
The specific tactics and media preferences also vary between platforms. Blogs require a variety of content types. On Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram it is all about images.
The type of content that people love to share is not just about going viral but content that keeps getting shared when it is discovered on Twitter or in an email.
Here are some content marketing tips that will help in getting your content shared..
1. How to’s
Showing people how to do something in a blog post is an oldie but a goodie. It might not go viral but adding that value to your readers gets them to share with colleagues, bosses and peers.
2. Large listicles
These can be fun or serious. They can be positive, negative and sometimes just plain silly. But I discovered the power of using a large negative list to drive sharing with this headline in 2010, “30 Things You Should Not Share in on Social Media“.
3. Statistics and facts
This has worked for me for years and has led to this post ranking #1 on Google for “social media facts“. If you look hard enough in almost any industry you will find amazing facts and figures that people,will love to know about.
Let’s look at an industry like events or conferences.
I was in Las Vegas recently and I heard some facts about how many conventions are held every year and the number of delegates.
The facts.
22,103 conventions were held in 2014 and the number of attendees? 5,169,054. Those numbers I find fascinating.
4. Infographics
Infographics were really hot and now they are just hot as a shareable piece of content. Here is an example from the Bufferapp blog. Using multiple infographics in one post can also work really well
Social media has moved the dial between what used to be treated as private and what is now considered safe for public viewing.
It is different for everyone.
But reveal something personal and willing to share and both they and their friends will share.
7. Tweets with images
This type of content wasn’t available just 18 months ago. But with Twitter changing its platform to be more visual at the end of 2013 the rules of engagement changed. I have found that mini-infographics (or snapshots of a larger infographic) can be one of the most effective.
Here is the top media tweet for April from my Twitter account
8. Curiosity gap headlines
The headlines that work and don’t work has been challenged by experimentation and data on a social web. Longer headlines that tease your curiosity gene can work very well. This headline has 13 words.
The data tells us that. So do some experimenting of your own.
9. Long form content
Blog articles that are 1,500 words will not be a viral piece of content. But if done well they will become a resource for your niche, be printed off and put senior managers desk or even the CEO.
This article is nearly 3,000 words and continues to be shared.
10. Articles with multiple images
Buzzfeed has perfected the art of stacking images in articles. Here is one of their most popular articles of all time with over 15 million views. This tactic is very effective because you are giving your article the best chance to resonate with your audience so it “has” to be shared. They also make it easy for the reader to share by using technology that enables share buttons to pop up as you mouse over each image.
If it was just one or two images it would not have received that level of viral traffic.
11. Quotes as an image
With Twitter becoming more visual you need to mix up the text tweets with visual tweets. Using a tool like Canva to turn quotes into images can increase sharing by 200-300%.
Kim Garst does this on her Twitter account on a regular basis to great effect.
Optimizing the content
So you have created the content people love to share and now you just publish it. Take a deep breath. You need to optimize your content for a variety of factors.
You need to consider some of these factors: But these will vary according to content types and platforms.
Short attention spans. So use a mix of punchy catchy text mixed with visuals
Readability. Use simple language, rhythm in your writing and sub-titles
Sharing: These include social sharing buttons and plugins that enable image sharing (use a technology like Snip.ly)
Search engines: Many don’t spend that last bit of effort to ensure your content is optimized for search engines.
Mobile: Many websites are seeing 50% of their traffic coming from mobile. This should be a priority
This fine tuning and optimization can produce big benefits when combined.
A final and strange tip.
Use odd numbers in your list headlines. If you check out Buzzfeed’s headlines they are almost always an odd number.
Why?
They work better than even numbers.
Over to you
What content works for you? Any results that have surprised you? Look forward to reading your insights and stories in the comments below.
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It’s hard to believe YouTube is turning 10-years-old.
The video juggernaut celebrates its 10th year of being open to the public this month and, in honor of the anniversary, its spotlight channel has compiled some of the most memorable and must-see moments from the last decade and mixed them perfectly to Blackalicious’ Alphabet Aerobics. Along with all the viral videos, the montage also uses various themes that have made the site special such as beauty, gaming and dance.
Happy birthday, YouTube. Here’s to another 10 amazing years.
South Korean messaging company Daum Kakao has acquired social networking apps Path and Path Talk for an undisclosed amount. Path announced the deal Thursday evening
“We have reached a tipping point on our journey and for Path to truly grow we need more resources and a larger local team that deeply understands Southeast Asian markets,” Path CEO Dave Morin said in a statement
Junco’s Pub in St. John’s, Newfoundland, is catering to the town’s underserved avian population as the first bar in the area specifically designed for birds.
Elling Lien, who built the teeny bar in his backyard, created a space that features all the trappings of a standard bar, from miniature bar stools to a tiny Coca-Cola machine. Birds can come and go as they please, eating, drinking and violently knocking over bar stools in the process.
Copycat. It’s a word that has almost become synonymous with China’s tech scene over the past decade. And while the days of China’s most blatant copying — remember when Renren was called Xiaonei and it looked exactly like Facebook? — are long gone, the so-called “Copy to China” model is still pretty prevalent in the country’s startup scene. And of course, plenty of Chinese internet companies are also engaged in copying each other!
So what gives? Why do so many Chinese internet companies copy? It’s all about risk aversion.
It’s not who does it first, but who does it best
This is true in almost every tech market but it might be even more true in China: winning the race to execute some new idea first often gets you nothing. In China’s highly-crowded tech startup scene, being first is rarely a significant competitive advantage. If another company working on the same idea launches a few months later with better execution, they’re often going to win out. Read more…
Summer: the season of laziness. While the sun is slowly baking our brains, the last thing you want to do is think too intensely.
These four summer style hacks will make what you already own look even better. Learn how to perfectly (imperfectly) taper your trousers, properly roll your sleeves, casually untuck your t-shirt, and fold your pocket square. We’ve laid it all out so you can still look fresh in the heat.
Tip: Fold them up imperfectly.
Long gone are the days when it’s acceptable for a man to sport trousers or denim from their dad’s closetsIt’s all about the tapered look, even (especially!) when it comes to jeans. If you have jeans that are too long, do the instant hem by rolling up your trousers in a manner that seems like an afterthought. Read more…
Most of us make an assumption that this makes it much harder to standout, or that to standout you have to spend thousands of dollars.
Our natural tendency is to pay for attention, because that is how we are programmed to think thanks to traditional advertising.
For a minute, let’s imagine that the more noise there is on social media, the EASIER it is to standout – and the cheaper it can be to do so.
That’s crazy right?
Well maybe not.
The more noise there is, the more mediocrity we accept as being normal. If we set ourselves higher standards than everyone else, there is an opportunity to cut through the clutter.
This simple mindset shift, sprinkled with a little creativity and some elbow grease, can help you earn trust and awareness on social media that everyone else only dreams of. And it’s all free
Lets look at 5 ways you can standout on social media that won’t break your budget.
1. Do the unexpected
Be bold!
Brands who claim authority as the top social content producers often earn that title by taking risks that simultaneously resonate with their core values.
For instance, take Taco Bell’s social media blackout campaign. This campaign came unannounced and shocked fans when all social channels went dark alongside the launch of its new mobile app. This not only created a buzz for the brand, but also resulted in 75 percent of stores seeing mobile payments in the first 24 hours alone.
The takeaway is that doing the unexpected can help bring excitement to your brand that will increase exposure, get users talking, and create real ROI. Take the time to weigh the risk vs. reward of a situation and develop a deep understanding of audience behavior so you can surprise fans with confidence and strategic direction.
The best brands standout on social media by building strong connections with their fans through human qualities and relatable messaging.
In today’s social age, there has been a shift in how companies connect with their fans. No longer is it just about strong calls to action, clear benefits, and quality service; instead, consumers now look for deeper connections and content that offers value through entertainment and education.
To be competitive your brand must focus on developing a personality that reflects its core values and delivers content in a relatable and engaging voice.
The key is to make social fun – for you and for your audience.
Here is an example of a back and forth on Twitter between Kit Kat and Oreo.
Oreo’s response…
3. Let customers define your brand
Another way to standout on social media is to let your customers define your brand for you.
Identify why customers use your brand today and analyze similar brands in your industry.
Ask your fans to share stories about your products or service to get a real-world understanding of your value.
Leverage user-generated content to build strong connections and develop brand advocacy.
Encourage customers to share their ideas, and don’t be afraid to be direct when asking about their expectations.
Communication is key for developing an engaging brand that is built for your audience, by your audience.
Content is more than just written articles and blog posts – it is an all-encompassing mix of website copy, blogs, white papers, webinars, pictures, infographics, videos, advertisements, and almost any material you create for audience engagement.
To be seen as brand to watch, and standout on social media, you must make the most of a variety of content mediums that generate high engagement across different channels. Test your delivery, calls to action, and value proposition across different content mediums and channels to identify trends in engagement. Leverage the data you collect to shape your content strategy and bring character to your social presence.
5. Create a seamless experience
Bring social elements to all of your digital content through your website, blog, and sales.
By keeping your social presence top of mind you can keep your audience more engaged. Do this by embedding social elements into your content, including social links on your site, and encouraging fans to engage on different mediums.
Each social space should maintain a unique personality but continue a consistent theme and brand message that elevates your overall user experience.
Conclusion
The social landscape is filled with competitors of all shapes and sizes looking for a piece of the action.
To earn your position as a brand that demands authority and generates quality engagement, align your voice and core values to resonate with what drew your customers to you in the first place.
Create an experience for your customers, not just more noise for the already crowded social channels.
This mindset and a little creativity will help you standout on social media.
Guest author: Chris Moreno is the Director of Social Media at Zog Media.
