Video marketing is a powerful way to connect with existing customers, improve brand awareness with new prospects and improve sales. You can also use video to grow your email list, build social proof and much more. Here are a few video-related statistics worth considering:
• 55% (download required) of adults in the U.S. between 18-34 watch online videos daily.
• 80% of small business owners say that YouTube helped them grow their customer base.
• 54% of consumers want to see more videos from brands they love
It’s easy to see that video marketing is here to stay. If you want to learn how to boost the ROI of your content, keep reading. Today, I’m going to share four ways you can get started.
Create content with your audience in mind.
The key to boosting video conversions is to make sure your content resonates with your target audience. It doesn’t matter how many videos you upload; if your subscribers don’t care about the content, you will lose out on a lot of potential traffic and sales.
I recommend using your customer personas to create high-quality content that touches on your subscribers’ goals, interests and pain points. You can also learn more about the people watching your videos through feedback forms.
Social media, email and your website are all excellent ways to connect with your audience and learn more about what types of content they would like to see. As you develop more relevant videos, you’ll see more users engage with your content and your online store.
Optimize for search.
Another way to see better results from your videos is to optimize your content for searchability. If users can’t find your content organically, you’re going to have a difficult time seeing noticeable results.
The good news is there are a few quick ways to easily improve the odds of appearing for your chosen keywords on YouTube or through Google search.
First, choose long-tail keywords and use them strategically throughout your video. Not only should you say it a few times, but make sure it’s included in the description and title.
You’ll also want to transcribe your videos manually. Captions can help the hearing impaired understand your video, which is crucial for building a welcoming and accessible platform. The keywords you picked for your videos will also appear in the transcript, which will make it easier for Google and YouTube to rank your video accurately.
If you’re adding videos to your website, don’t forget to include them in your sitemap. Google uses your sitemap to rank and determine the intent of your content. Adding videos with relevant copy can help draw more traffic to your site, which is a surefire way to boost your ROI.
Use a clear call to action.
Each video you create should have a clear purpose. Your goal is to direct visitors to take action in one way or another after watching your video. For example, you may want to ask your audience to join your email list. Alternatively, you might upload a product demonstration video and include a coupon code at the end.
Whatever your marketing goals are, make sure it’s clear to the viewer at the end of your video. A compelling call to action can help you clarify your message and drive people to take the next step.
Before you ask users to take action, explain the benefits in a way that makes sense to them. So, if you want to talk people into joining your email list, tell them how it will benefit them and add value to their lives. You have to sell the idea of your call to action if you want to maximize your conversions.
Harness the power of user-generated content.
Finally, let’s talk about user-generated content. UGC is any content created by a customer in an attempt to engage with your brand. This type of content can vary across different industries, but the benefits are usually the same.
UGC is an excellent way to build social proof for your business. Social proof in marketing is the idea that people are more likely to trust your company if they see that other people also trust you.
Despite UGC being video content not created in-house, I still consider it a factor in terms of ROI. Social proof, such as video reviews, can be incredibly compelling for new visitors who have never heard of your brand. Research shows that 70% of people check one to six reviews before buying something online. Visitors who see positive video reviews on your website and social media from real customers are more likely to engage with your brand.
As you can see, video is a great way to grow your audience and improve sales. But it takes some time to truly unlock the potential of your campaigns. The tips I outlined today can give you the framework you need to add to your existing video marketing strategy and increase your ROI.
Feature Image Credit: Getty
By Chris Christoff
Co-founder of MonsterInsights, a leading WordPress plug-in for Google Analytics.
Start producing industry content now and watch everything else get easier.
How important is content as part of your overall marketing strategy? The answer is that if done well, content is the foundation for the entire building that is marketing.
To be clear, when I say content, I don’t mean PR as in a journalist writing about you. I also don’t mean the copy that’s on your website. When I say content, I am referring to you producing industry content on the company blog, podcast, YouTube channel, or elsewhere.
Once you jump into the content game, the rest of your marketing efforts are made increasingly simpler.
Here are five parts of your marketing that become easier once you start producing content.
Your social media accounts finally offer some value.
By now, if your company is not on social media, you should fire your marketing team. Everyone knows how potentially powerful social media is, but not many companies really think about what they are doing on social media.
Too many people and companies use platforms like Twitter as a broadcast platform. They think of these platforms as a megaphone. Instead of focusing on the media, they should try focusing on social.
That means they need to start thinking of how to provide real value instead of obsessing over how many followers they have. Well, if a company produces content regularly, now they have what to share on social media.
If you’re an AI company and you produce content about AI, all of a sudden, people interested in AI have a reason to follow you on social.
The foundation of all search engine optimization is content.
Anyone who knows how search engine optimization(SEO) works will tell you that content is the foundation. To simplify it, the goal of offsite SEO is to get as many incoming links as possible. When Google sees a site with thousands of incoming links, they understand that that site must be an authority in its space.
The question is how do you get links. Some SEO people go and buy links thinking they’re going to trick Google. Instead, focus on organically getting people to link to you and encouraging people to talk about you on the internet. How do you do that? Content. The more you write, the more people talk about you. The more people talk about you, the more they link to you. Period.
All of a sudden, your PR isn’t PR.
What is the first thing a journalist will do after receiving a pitch from you? That’s right, they’ll Google you.
When they Google you and come across all your industry content, all of a sudden, you’re not just another company pitching that journalist. Now you’re a content creator just like they are. Content changes the whole dynamic and shortens the road to getting press coverage.
Your business development benefits from a head start.
Think about your business development efforts. Whether you’re a start-up or a larger company, surely you are looking for strategic partners to help grow your business.
Now think of the other side. What is that potential partner looking for? They’re looking to partner with leaders, not followers. They’re looking to collaborate with brands, not companies.
Well, when that potential partner Googles you and they see no footprint on the internet, that is a huge red flag. Alternatively, if they Google you and see you are producing a ton of industry content, suddenly you are the leader and the brand they are looking for.
Investors are looking to invest in good people so make sure you are what they’re looking for.
Every tech investor I’ve ever met says the same thing. “We are looking to invest in people.” That’s very nice but before that first meeting, how do they determine if a company has good people when evaluating whether to take that first meeting?
The answer is that they do their due diligence. Part of that process involves them looking at your site, your web presence, and of course, they look to see your thoughts on your specific space.
So to answer the question, your content becomes your company’s business card and if an investor wants to learn more about you before that first meeting, give them that opportunity by showing them how much of a thought leader you are in your space.
To summarize, content isn’t just a part of your marketing strategy, it is the foundation of it all and if done right, every other aspect of your marketing will be exponentially more successful.
The founder and CEO of VSC says the supporting employees’ work styles is the foundation of a brand they will want to work for. Everything else—the logos, swag, perks, website—is all window dressing.
When Apple’s director of machine learning Ian Goodfellow resigned from the company last month over its return to office mandate, it should have been a wake-up call for executives everywhere. In the post-COVID-19 world, the job feature that employees care most about is the flexibility to work from anywhere. There is an overwhelming amount of data to back this up. Yet, many executives would rather put their blinders on and pretend that things will go back to how they were before March 2020. Instead of giving their employees what they really want, they double down on elevated swag, pandering mission statements, and open bars to lure employees back to their fancy new offices.
These executives believe that their efforts are building a brand that will draw employees. But what they don’t realize is that things have changed. Today, a company’s office policy is its brand—full stop.
This was explicitly acknowledged by a group of Apple employees last year in an open letter to CEO Tim Cook about the company’s return to office policies. These Apple employees spoke for knowledge workers everywhere when they wrote:
Without the inclusivity that flexibility brings, many of us feel we have to choose between either a combination of our families, our well-being, and being empowered to do our best work, or being a part of Apple. This is a decision none of us take lightly, and a decision many would prefer not to have to make.
If a company like Apple—which has one of the strongest brands ever created and is among those with the largest market caps in the world—can’t retain talent due to its return-to-office policy, do you really think other businesses will fare much better? I doubt it. Executives who don’t acknowledge that all the branding tricks in the world won’t work without a flexible work policy are going to haemorrhage talent until their business bleeds out. On the flip side, companies that embrace flexible work arrangements as a core element of their brand identity will enjoy a once-in-a-generation hiring opportunity by attracting talent away from businesses that ignore their employees’ needs.
A company’s decision about its work arrangements is above every other business function. For example, high employee satisfaction is directly correlated with high productivity, which often hinges on whether they are granted a flexible work arrangement. Moreover, dissatisfied employees will reflect negatively on the company itself, which can have a negative impact on sales, given the increasing importance that consumers place on the working conditions at their favourite brands. While external and internal branding efforts may once have been disconnected, they are now intimately linked. This means the choice of working arrangements will not just affect hiring, but productivity and revenue as well.
To be clear, implementing a flexible work policy does not necessarily preclude having an office or building an amazing culture. It’s fundamentally about giving employees options and the support they need regardless of the choices they make. This is the foundation of a brand that employees will want to work for. Everything else—the logos, swag, perks, website—is all window dressing.
This can be tough to swallow for companies who have spent so much time, money, and effort building their brand around “nice-to-haves” rather than the one thing employees actually care about. But changing course and building a brand around flexible work doesn’t have to be difficult. Here are a few changes that companies can make right away.
Reallocating resources from offices to events
A work-from-anywhere policy needn’t come at the expense of a great company culture. The key is to shift resources that would have otherwise gone to office leases and facilities management into experiences that bring employees together on a semi-regular basis. There are many forms this could take, ranging from an annual retreat to a quarterly get-together. The important thing is to strengthen bonds throughout the company by giving employees the opportunity to hang out together in a fun and relaxing environment.
Ditching perks for supplies
Many companies spend an enormous amount of money on perks that are rarely used. Instead, they should shift this spending to purchasing supplies for employees that will enable them to work from anywhere. This could be a mobile WiFi subscription, an upgraded laptop, a better desk for their home office, or a pass to a local coworking space. Better yet, just give the employees money to spend on upgrading their work from anywhere arrangement and let them decide how to use it.
Picking a policy and stick to it
Over the past few years, a number of Fortune 500 companies have switched positions on their return to office policy, which creates uncertainty and stress for their employees. The best way for a business to show they care about their employees is by being dependable. Regardless of whether a business decides to adopt a work-from-anywhere policy or wants their employees to return to the office five days a week, they must clearly communicate their expectations and stick to them. The rules should apply to everyone equally—an organization where leadership is allowed to work remotely and employees must come into the office will only stoke resentment.
There is a real opportunity in the Great Resignation for companies that build a brand based on a work-from-anywhere policy. Some companies like 3M, Twitter, and Dropbox recognized this early and proactively gave their employees the option to work-from-anywhere in perpetuity, and I’ve seen the incredible effects of embracing a work-from-anywhere lifestyle first hand at my own company. Public relations, like many industries, is facing a labour shortage. Yet since we’ve transitioned to being a work-from-anywhere company, our quality of our applicants has soared. When we polled new hires on what brought them to our organization, they consistently named our flexible work policies as a major factor in their decision.
So, before you spend money on your brand, start with your policies of work.
From hard-to-read fonts to colours that hurt the eyes of your audience, here are some best practices to keep in mind for your next PowerPoint slideshow.
Choose the fonts wisely
Using a fancy, dramatic, or even whimsical font can be tempting. But you must consider the readability of the font. You want your audience to easily see your headings and bullet points. Consider the two basic font styles: serif and sans serif.
Serif fonts are more decorative, have a classic appearance, and are frequently used in print publications. Each letter has a stroke that extends from a point in the letter. Popular serif styles include Times New Roman, Garamond, Georgia, and Baskerville.
Sans serif fonts are more precise, have a clean appearance, and are frequently used in digital publications. Each letter is clear-cut without wings or curves at its points. Popular sans serif styles include Arial, Verdana, Tahoma, and Calibri.
Because of the extended strokes, serif fonts can appear a bit blurry on a screen. This makes a sans serif font the favoured choice. The bottom line is that you should remain consistent and use the same type, serif or sans serif, for all fonts in the slideshow.
Select pleasing colours
The colours you use in your PowerPoint presentation can be just as important as the content. You want to use those that enhance the appearance of the slideshow, not distract or give your audience a headache.
As Robert Lane explains in his article about combining colors in PowerPoint, mixing red and blue or red and green can cause eye strain. Plus, red and green mixtures are difficult to see for those with colour blindness.
The article mentions that warm colours like reds, oranges, and yellows are eye-catching, whereas cool colours like blues, greens, and purples draw less attention. Additionally, lighter colours are more noticeable than dark.
One of the easiest ways to choose the colours for your presentation is to use a built-in theme. Select the Design tab and you’ll see a collection of Themes in the ribbon.
Once you select a theme, you can then use the Variants section to choose a different colour scheme. Each scheme includes eight complementing colours. You can also pick the font style you want to use in the Variants drop-down menu.
Animations can be attention-grabbing additions to a slideshow. But if you overuse or misuse them, they can be detrimental to your presentation and actually turn off viewers. The best thing to do is consider your audience and slideshow’s purpose.
For instance, if you are presenting the slideshow to a classroom of 8-year-old students, animations can grab and hold their attention more than simple images or words. However, if you’re presenting to your company’s executive team or board of directors, animations can come across as unprofessional.
If you really want to include animations, make them subtle or purposeful. As an example, you may want to expand on each bullet point in your list. You can create an animation to display the bullet points one by one and only when you click.
To do this, select the first bullet point, go to the Animations tab, and choose the Appear effect. Then, in the Timing section of the ribbon, choose On click in the Start drop-down list. Do the same for each bullet point in your list.
This creates a simple animation that benefits your presentation. It doesn’t distract but instead keeps your audience focused on your current talking point.
Use a standard presentation rule
What is the 10/20/30 rule of PowerPoint? What is the five-by-five rule? What about the 5/5/5 and seven-by-seven rules? Rules, rules, rules. These are different standards that many recommend using when it comes to creating PowerPoint presentations.
The 10/20/30 rule: Have no more than 10 slides, a presentation no longer than 20 minutes, and a font size no smaller than 30 points.
The five-by-five rule: Have no more than five words per line and five lines per slide.
The 5/5/5 rule: Have no more than five words per line, five lines per slide, and five text-heavy slides in a row.
The seven-by-seven rule: Have no more than seven words per line and seven lines per slide.
What each of these rules basically means is: Keep it simple.
The first rule, 10/20/30, is a good rule to follow for your overall presentation. While it may not always be possible, the more succinct a presentation, the more successful it will be.
The last three rules are helpful ones to follow when you’re adding text to your slides. As you know, presentations are visual. Using too much text means your audience is reading more than watching.
Hopefully, these best practices will help you create a memorable and effective slideshow. For other ways to enhance your presentation, look at how to add audio to the slides or how to include music in PowerPoint.
People like to be entertained. But despite the global growth of the advertising market, the level of fun in advertising – that thing which amuses people so much – has steadily declined over the past 20 years. Its new resurgence has been strongly influenced by the disastrous events of the last few months and even years: elections, the pandemic, and wars.
It’s time for more businesses to upgrade their sales efforts and start taking fun more seriously, because, the truth is, if users are having fun, they’re also buying.
Before we get into how this works, it’s worth asking one fundamental question.
What makes content “fun”?
Perhaps it’s all about a sense of pleasure, expression, and fellowship – or is it literally funny? Or all of this at once. Let’s identify “fun” as high-virality content that causes strong emotions (predominantly positive) and great user engagement.
We’ll also discuss the power of humour in a marketing strategy, so let’s figure out how the fun works and why brand communication should be more diverse and entertaining.
1. The anchor of user attention
Technologies are on the rise, and businesses are implementing new approaches to creative advertising, as marketers have just three seconds to convince a user and grab their attention. These seconds before scrolling or skipping are the most valuable, so you should be 100% confident in the catchiness of your message.
Social media and information websites suffer the most from banner blindness because, while advertising makes up part of their income, users tend to skip the ads to get to the content. The average click-through rate for display ads is around 0.46%. But fun has become a unique feature that makes an ad noticeable and memorable.
According to research by HubSpot, 35% of Americans surveyed in 2021 remembered an ad because it contained elements of fun. And if you remember the Super Bowl, it’s more likely because of its creative and fun ads or the Halftime Show, and not because of the champion teams. This year, humour made a big comeback in Super Bowl LVI, like in the BMW commercial starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Salma Hayek as ancient gods retiring from Mount Olympus to Palm Springs.
Global brands and even small, young, and creatively savvy companies have learned to sell emotions and make it a part of their strategy. In recent years, fun has become one of these key emotions.
2. The level of engagement
Humour is the second most popular type of content that people share on social media, and its appeal is stable. Savvy marketers are aware of this and often slip a hint of fun into advertisements: contests, short videos, games, pranks, etc.
Humour doesn’t just overtake the old-school, rational, message-based ad formats. It also surpasses other methods for selling emotions methods, such as “televisual senses” in food advertising.
The dating app Schmooze allows users to “swipe memes, not people”, matching each other based on their sense of humour. This meme-centric approach has gained over 300,000 users since it was launched on a college campus in 2020.
People share content for various reasons: to communicate or be helpful, to raise their self-esteem or reputation, etc. However, according to psychological theory, novelty-seeking is another solid digital drug. Anything that seems new or fills in information gaps can trigger dopamine release.
Humour has long been used as a tool of communication and public diplomacy – even during wars. And still, humour is at the top of social media content because it generates virality.
The Reddit experiment “Place” (2017) caused an epic war of pixels on a collaborative digital art canvas, where users from all over the world could place a pixel every five minutes. It went viral in just 72 hours and involved more than 200,000 participants. The reasons are – novelty, fun, and unpredictability.
Is synthetically generated content the new fun?
Content consumption is on the rise. Emerging technologies and their applications, such as NFT, ML mechanics, and AR/VR tools create stronger emotional ties with users through new types of content. Synthetic media creation has become yet another endless source of enjoyment.
Try not to overcook fries in the virtual IKEA kitchen, swap your face into the trailer of an upcoming movie, or join Justin Bieber for an immersive live show in the metaverse. Campaigns using synthetic media and immersive ads can take an integrated approach and facilitate an emotional response from viewers, because people enjoy humorous images and sharing unusual content.
In 2018, McDonald’s designed an AR effect to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Big Mac. The next year, the company took its business to the next level by purchasing an artificial intelligence marketing startup for over $300 million, one of its most significant acquisitions to date.
3. The tool for social influence
Among the obvious reasons for implementing fun into your advertising campaigns, there is one more that many creatives don’t usually take into account. Fun is a powerful tool for influencing public opinion that can be used to launch social campaigns. Humour allows you to pack a strong message into a simple shape that is easily understandable to many.
The Silicon Valley FoodTech unicorn JUST Egg knows how this works. To draw attention to the problem of global warming during Earth Month, the eco-friendly brand JUST Egg elegantly trolled American legislators on their own territory in Washington. JUST Egg has captured a 98% market share in egg substitutes in the US, which can be considered a huge product influencer.
During the last two months, social media has also added another ingredient, bringing immediacy into strategic communication as a new kind of fun. Joining the war against Russian propaganda, the Ukrainian government’s Twitter account uses humour as a tool of information warfare.
Whether you own a brand of corn flakes or represent a major government organization, implementing and packing fun into your creative commercial is another way to cultivate and engage a community.
There’s no need to turn every business marketing strategy into a humour-centric one, especially if the entertainment industry is not related to your project. However, in general, brand communication and marketing are moving toward giving emotions and a sense of unity. The easier it is to make your customers laugh, the more gladly they will interact with your product.
Anton Volovyk holds an MBA degree from Harvard Business School and a Master in Finance degree from IE Business School. Anton is an expert in app-monetization, business development, and leadership. Before Reface, he worked at the Boston Consulting Group, a global strategy consulting company working with clients across consumer, tech, and media. Prior to BCG, Anton worked in investment banking in the M&A department and Private Equity as a tech and consumer investor.
Or how I learned to stop worrying and love the algorithm.
You know how your Instagram feed starts sending you ads for khakis the minute you think about how you need a new pair of pants? Well, spirits giant Diageo is further immersing itself in the world of tech that knows what you want before you know what you want with the acquisition of flavour matching company Vivanda.
While not quite as nefarious sounding as the real life blocking or memory recall of a Black Mirror episode, this is indeed a look at what the future may hold for whisky consumers. Diageo has actually been using Vivanda’s technology since 2019 in several markets, including the “Journey of Flavour” experience at Johnnie Walker Princes Street in Edinburgh, as well as stores, ecommerce channels and the website Malts.com. It’s also the foundation of the “What’s Your Whisky” website, which works like this: Vivanda’s “FlavorPrint” system is powered by artificial intelligence, and by asking you a series of questions it’s able to map out your individual flavour preferences and suggest which whisky you should try based on your specific “Flavour Print.” Once you get your results, you are able to click to purchase a bottle of Talisker or Lagavulin or Oban, depending on your results.
Diageo plans to expand the use of Vivanda’s technology to other categories within its sizable portfolio, as well as using it to support “the continued development of our advanced analytics and digital marketing capabilities” to provide better understanding of just exactly what it is you like to drink, according to a press release. “We know consumers are looking for more personalized, interactive experiences and that they are increasingly engaging with our brands digitally as well as in person,” said Diageo chief marketing officer Cristina Diezhandino in a prepared statement. “We’re delighted to welcome Vivanda to Diageo and we are looking forward to working together to connect with consumers in more innovative ways that help shape the future of how we socialize in person and virtually.” So far the whisky has not become sentient and experienced its first sensation of love, but we are still in early days.
Apple intros “extreme” optional protection against the scourge of mercenary spyware.
Mercenary spyware is one of the hardest threats to combat. It targets an infinitesimally small percentage of the world, making it statistically unlikely for most of us to ever see. And yet, because the sophisticated malware only selects the most influential individuals (think diplomats, political dissidents, and lawyers), it has a devastating effect that’s far out of proportion to the small number of people infected.
This puts device and software makers in a bind. How do you build something to protect what’s likely well below 1 percent of your user base against malware built by companies like NSO Group, maker of clickless exploits that instantly convert fully updated iOS and Android devices into sophisticated bugging devices.
No security snake oil here
On Wednesday, Apple previewed an ingenious option it plans to add to its flagship OSes in the coming months to counter the mercenary spyware menace. The company is upfront—almost in your face—that Lockdown mode is an option that will degrade the user experience and is intended for only a small number of users.
“Lockdown Mode offers an extreme, optional level of security for the very few users who, because of who they are or what they do, may be personally targeted by some of the most sophisticated digital threats, such as those from NSO Group and other private companies developing state-sponsored mercenary spyware,” the company said. “Turning on Lockdown Mode in iOS 16, iPadOS 16, and macOS Ventura further hardens device defences and strictly limits certain functionalities, sharply reducing the attack surface that potentially could be exploited by highly targeted mercenary spyware.”
As Apple says, Lockdown mode disables all kinds of protocols and services that run normally. Just-in-time JavaScript—an innovation that speeds performance by compiling code on the device during runtime—won’t run at all. That’s likely a defence against the use of JiT-spraying, a common technique used in malware exploitation. While in Lockdown mode devices also can’t enrol in what’s known as mobile device management used for installing special organization-specific software.
The full list of restrictions are:
Messages: Most message attachment types other than images are blocked. Some features, like link previews, are disabled.
Web browsing: Certain complex web technologies, like just-in-time (JIT) JavaScript compilation, are disabled unless the user excludes a trusted site from Lockdown Mode.
Apple services: Incoming invitations and service requests, including FaceTime calls, are blocked if the user has not previously sent the initiator a call or request.
Wired connections with a computer or accessory are blocked when iPhone is locked.
Configuration profiles cannot be installed, and the device cannot enrol into mobile device management (MDM), while Lockdown Mode is turned on.
It’s useful that Apple is upfront about the extra friction Lockdown adds to the user experience because it underscores what every security professional or hobbyist knows: Security always results in a trade-off with usability. It’s also encouraging to hear Apple plans to allow users to allow-list the sites that are allowed to serve JIT JavaScript while in Lockdown mode. Fingers crossed Apple might enable similar allow-listing of trusted contacts.
Lockdown mode is a big deal for lots of reasons, not the least of which is that it comes from Apple, a company that’s hyper-sensitive about customer perception. Officially acknowledging that its customers are vulnerable to the scourge of mercenary spyware is a big step.
But the move is big because of its simplicity and concreteness. No security snake oil here. If you want better security, learn to do without the services that pose the biggest threat. John Scott-Railton, a Citizen Lab researcher who knows a thing or two about counselling victims of NSO spyware, said Lockdown mode provides one of the first effective courses for vulnerable individuals to follow short of turning off their devices altogether.
“When you notify users that they’ve been targeted with sophisticated threats, they inevitably ask ‘How can I make my phone safer?” he wrote.’ “We haven’t had many great, honest answers that really make an impact. Hardening a consumer handset is really out of reach.”
Now that Apple has opened the door, it’s inevitable that Google will follow suit with its Android OS and it wouldn’t be surprising for other companies to also fall in line. It may also begin a useful discussion in the industry about broadening the approach. If Apple will allow users to disable unsolicited messages from unknown people, why can’t it provide an option to disable built-in microphone, camera, GPS, or cellular capabilities?
One thing everyone should know about Lockdown mode, at least as described on Wednesday by Apple, is that it doesn’t stop your device from connecting to cellular networks and broadcasting unique identifiers like IMEI and ICCID. That’s not a criticism, just a natural limitation. And trade-offs are a core part of security.
So if you’re like most people, you’re never going to need Lockdown mode. But it’s great that Apple will be offering it because it’s going to make all of us safer.
Dan is the Security Editor at Ars Technica, which he joined in 2012 after working for The Register, the Associated Press, Bloomberg News, and other publications.Email[email protected]//Twitter@dangoodin001
Use these three ways to help your business leverage audio-based communication events for better buyer engagement.
Technology enables brands to connect with consumers like never before, and changing strategies to best utilize tech is a necessity. Bynder’s 2021 State of Branding Report found more than one-quarter of those surveyed were most concerned with how to successfully reach their audiences in increasingly crowded digital channels.
This worry drives innovation, but just because a marketing strategy is new doesn’t mean it’s effective. Think of Google+ accounts. Keyword-stuffed blog posts. The marketing department junk drawer is filled to the brim with marketing trends that never stuck. Now, it’s time to add static, one-way content to the mix.
What’s the problem with this content? For one, it’s more of the same. How can marketers expect to rise above the noise if they’re only adding more of the same airwaves? There’s no pizzazz. Everything’s controlled. Consumers want magic and excitement, not a carefully planned brand marketing strategy parading as something more off-the-cuff — 80% of viewers prefer to engage with live content rather than pre-recorded pieces, after all.
Certainly, forums such as Instagram and Facebook Live are more interactive. Socialinsider analysed almost 4 million Facebook videos and found that audiences engaged much more readily with live videos: One successful broadcast can crush the engagement metrics of a social media video post. Yet the method is underutilized, as 88% of videos on the platform are pre-recorded. Marketers are already behind the curve on audience engagement, and consumers are moving on to a different kind of interaction: audio events.
Audio events to the rescue
Audio-based mediums such as Clubhouse have been having a heyday over the past few years. According to Influencer Marketing Hub research, about 700,000 Clubhouse rooms pop up every day and become part of the organically developing community. And this is Clubhouse on a bad day — at its height, the platform had almost 10 million monthly downloads.
While Clubhouse’s popularity has waned, other tech giants have risen up with their own iterations of audio spaces, such as Twitter’s Spaces. Launched in late 2020, Spaces claims to enhance the concept of tweeting via the inclusion of live voices. By mid-2021, Spotify had followed suit when its Greenroom hit center stage. Even LinkedIn is testing the waters of the audio scene.
This method is successful because audio streams still carry the weight of “presence” found at a live, in-person event. Users can jump into conversations or just take a backseat and listen in for the scoop. Usually structured freeform rather than with a set agenda, theseaudio events take on a serendipitous tone.
This isn’t just a trend. With the global health crisis, people have increasingly turned to audio to pass the time. A survey by Sortlist found more than three-quarters of people have increased their consumption of audio content over the past couple of years.
Audio is a new brand marketing strategy that can build thriving communities with everyone from hesitant prospects to raving fans, and companies would be amiss to let this opportunity pass them by.
Below are three ways for businesses to leverage audio-based communication events and get on the bandwagon before it gets anywhere near its zenith.
1. Host exclusive audio rooms
Everyone likes to be the first to know. Depending on what platform you use, audio rooms can limit admittance to select participants. Therefore, they can serve as invite-only experiences to nourish brand loyalty. Even without a video component, participants can get a sense that they’ve been given special access to information not yet available to others.
Community-driven exclusivity has seen huge success with some big brands. Nike brings engagement up by rewarding members using its SNKRS app with drops outside of scheduled releases. Even when using the app, exclusive access isn’t guaranteed, which adds to the thrill of getting a pop-up notification that there is a pair of Jordans with your name on it.
Translate this magic to the audio space with live launch announcements and chatroom giveaways, and you’ve got a formula for marketing success.
2. Promote user-generated audio events
Customers treat reviews from other customers as more valid than company-constructed content. Knowing this, you may want to encourage existing happy customers to moderate or co-organize audio discussions. Don’t assume that this will happen without your input. Tint’s 2022 State of User-Generated Content report found that 6 in 10 people willing to pull together user-generated content want brands to be specific in terms of type and related parameters.
User-generated events have multiple benefits for branding. For one, bringing others into the content creation process allows for greater output and scalability. Furthermore, it can make audiences feel a part of the process. Allowing more people to engage in the brand, especially in creative ways, gives them a sense of belonging. This practice of social brand engagement will increase your number of brand ambassadors — from influencers and hired content partners down through their fanbase (who will eventually become a fan of your brand as well).
3. Conduct Q&A research in audio chatrooms
A final way to get on this marketing trend is by using audio apps as a gathering ground for first-party information and research. Pop-up audio events can be effective environments for conducting focus groups. Customers don’t just want personalization; they expect it. Talking directly to your audience can be quicker and more effective than guessing why a certain tactic hasn’t met the expected ROI. Bringing target audience members into audio events can be a source of innovation.
HubSpot recommends targeting existing audiences for focus groups, as those are often the people already invested in the brand. They may be the first to test new products and initiatives, so why not capitalize on that? Including them in the conversation grows their emotional bond with a brand and allows marketers easy access to a valuable trove of feedback. Going the route of audio rooms can help speakers feel more comfortable. After all, no one knows you’re lounging in your favourite pair of sweatpants in an audio-only call.
But there’s a bigger benefit to audio-only focus groups than not worrying about fixing your hair: Recent research found that groups with only-audio cues communicate and problem-solve more effectively than those streaming video as well. Eliminating the distraction will lead to fewer interruptions and better insights for your brand.
No doubt about it: Audio-based events are having a moment. Just make sure you don’t come late to this party that’s showing so much promise.
Public relations is changing. The media landscape looks very different than it did just two years ago, and savvy PR leaders should be adapting to the modern world.
PR professionals know how to generate interest in a brand and develop trust. Part of this is achieved through writing excellent content that resonates with an audience and placing it on relevant websites.
Search engine optimization (SEO) professionals understand how good content helps a website shoot up the SERPs (search engine results pages) by using carefully planned keywords. Good research means good content that can secure quality backlinks from external outlets.
Combining PR and SEO achieves great and, most importantly, measurable results. Even Google’s John Mueller backs the power of digital PR.
We’ve seen the results for ourselves. We boosted our PR with SEO and have seen the change in the quality of sales leads coming through. So, how did we do it? Here are some of our lessons learned:
First, look at your website. While this is your shop window, it’s also so much more than that. It’s how you attract people to find out more about you, how to establish yourself as a thought leader and how to create trust.
It’s also what Google analyses and decides to place you in search results for keywords. This is where combining PR and SEO can really work. Content is one of the main links between PR and SEO. It is an essential part of SEO to ensure you are found on Google. The higher up the search results you are, the more likely you are to get in front of your target audience.
Well-written content is highly valued by Google. And so are backlinks to your website.
Deliver what your audience wants.
Find out what works for your target audiences by tracking their behavior. Then, create more of the content that is doing well. Some of our metrics include:
• Number of visits to a blog post or service page.
• Bounce rate.
• Time on page.
• Next page that visitors go.
Use Google Analytics to understand how your content is performing as well as the behaviors of your audiences. This is where your SEO team can help. The PR team can take the information and rework the content on-site to ensure it appeals to the audience.
Create copy that resonates.
Boosting the amount of content on-site will help bring in traffic. Google wants to see plenty of fresh content and defined fresh content as:
• Recent events or hot topics.
• Regularly recurring events.
• Frequent updates.
New blog posts are helpful but so are updates to previous blog posts. SEO professionals can review blog posts, analyze backlinks and make suggestions for updating keywords. Savvy PR writers can ensure blog posts are high-quality written content.
This can be done for clients’ websites and also with media outlets. Identify the keywords that drive traffic, review articles to see their traction, and then work with your PR team to create even stronger content.
Turn your website into an important source.
This is another area where the SEO and PR combination can make a real difference. Backlinks are a crucial part of improving the domain authority of a website and, therefore, increasing visibility in search results.
Backlinks come in two forms: dofollow and nofollow. SEO values dofollow links, as these tell Google that the website is happy to share its domain authority with the origin of the link. Nofollow links tell Google that the websites aren’t sharing domain authority. It doesn’t mean that websites with nofollow links should be ignored, however, as they often come from high DA media outlets. Use them to build brand awareness and trust in the brand and website.
Together, they are powerful. Your PR team can be strategic in securing backlinks in the right places for the right audiences.
Research effective content.
PR professionals have close relationships with journalists and editors and know what their contacts are looking for. Many outlets have their own engagement and reach/view targets to hit. PR professionals work with them to produce content that resonates with their audiences.
SEO teams can help research keywords and topics that have value to target audiences. The crossover between the two is the sweet spot and can enhance relationships with media outlets. Your content will bring them the hits and reach they need.
Get techy with your content.
PR can support SEO work on the wider website as well. Meta descriptions are such an important part of SEO. These are the descriptions under the URLs that appear on search engine results pages. They’re important because they can sway someone to click on your link over another one.
Getting the tone of voice right and choosing the right language to communicate key messages is where your PR professionals will excel.
Choosing the right image to illustrate the blog post is also something that PR professionals can help with. PR people are well versed in sourcing images, arranging photoshoots and more. Journalists and editors often expect images, videos, links, etc. from PR professionals as part of a pitch.
Choose a powerful combination that gets you results.
A combined PR and SEO strategy is a long-term strategy that can increase brand awareness and improve the number and quality of leads as a result. They complement each other perfectly and help boost the quality and success of each other’s work. While there is crossover in skills—used in different ways for different ends— they can absolutely support each other.
Lis Anderson is founder and director at PR consultancy AMBITIOUS and an agency MD with over 20 years in the communications industry. Read Lis Anderson’s full executive profile here.
Brands and creators want customers to be active, engaged fans — and to spend more money.
I can’t pinpoint when I first realized that “community” was morphing into a marketing buzzword. The phrase “building community,” it seemed, was being deployed more frequently by startup founders and their respective brands, rather than by actual members of one. For example, I am currently a member of four Discord “communities,” as they’re called, through paid subscriptions via Patreon and Substack. I contribute absolutely nothing to any of these groups, aside from lurking. I am still considered a member, though, simply because I paid the access fee.
Within such virtual spaces, “community” is a shorthand for interaction — not necessarily belonging. From a business standpoint, community is a means to harness customer loyalty. From fitness companies like Peloton to beauty and fashion brands like Glossier and Victoria’s Secret PINK, brand communities have become essential marketing mechanisms, especially in the direct-to-consumer world where companies rely on social media buzz or personal recommendations to reach new customers. Communities naturally drum up hype for a brand and its products; in some instances, members might even provide feedback for product development and are the first to test new samples.
Being a “Glossier girl,” as its brand ambassadors (and anyone who uses the hashtag) are called, connotes a sense of cool, low-maintenance beauty that can be achieved via a handful of cult products. Into the Gloss, Glossier’s beauty blog, used to function as a sort of community forum, where the team solicited opinions about customers’ ideal facial cleanser and general product feedback.
For a fitness membership service like Peloton, members become informal spokespeople for its lifestyle and slogan (“Motivation that moves you”). In addition to formal Peloton-run member pages and forums, there are hundreds of fan-run Facebook groups, Instagram pages, TikTok accounts, and even Etsy stores devoted to Peloton merch. Many members develop parasocial ties with their favourite instructors and cultivate relationships with members they frequently ride with.
Historically, the relationship between consumers and companies was more transactional and direct. You would seek out an item you needed in a store. You might be put on a mailing list and sent promotional catalogues or coupons every few months, but communication remained relatively sparse. Today, the age of passive consumerism seems to be over. The expectation is to keep patrons active, enthusiastic, and engaged beyond the parameters of the product that they’re offering. Brands want consumers to be fans and follow them on social media, tag them in posts, contribute to private chat channels, and attend in-person events.
In a saturated market where new direct-to-consumer start ups are popping up left and right, customers “want to feel that they’re getting something superior,” said Krystal Melissa Wu, who has worked as a community manager for various tech companies. “Community is not something you can replicate or cultivate overnight.” Digital ad prices are also on the rise, which might incentivize businesses to double down on their existing community of buyers, rather than seek out new ones.
Consumers, too, have become more aware of the mechanics of brand-building. As a result, companies are under pressure to simulate authenticity by leaning into more personalized forms of communication. Fast fashion retailers casually refer to me, a customer, as “babe.” A kitchenware brand texts me when its bestsellers are back in stock. At-home fitness services want me to attend in-person classes and other Manhattan-based community events.
The community model is currently being touted as “the golden child of marketing,” according to Wu. Thanks to social media, “community” has become a definable business metric. Before, marketers were still doing this work, Wu said, through less-publicized in-person events, forums, and chat groups. “It’s always been a way for businesses to reach new and old audiences,” she said. “If we took the spotlight away, communities would still exist. It’s just one of those things that seem more apparent now because of social media.”
We seem especially primed for it now. Once Covid-era restrictions began to be loosened and people started hosting gatherings again, many were restless after extended periods of isolation. Many wanted to socialize, meet new people, and be in community with others. The fervor toward branded community has yet to subside and is only ramping up, especially in spaces like Web3. The Walt Disney Company wants to take it one step further by building residential communities for superfans to reside in.
Still, it’s unrealistic for every brand or online influencer to expect community from customers. People have a limited amount of attention and time. The promise of community begins to feel disingenuous when what’s described is little more than a euphemism for a targeted demographic of interested consumers. Is there any other reason to facilitate community if not for a business to sell more products and accrue more members? Is it possible to find real community beyond the parameters of one’s consumerist interests?
Community, according to the clinical and community psychologist David McMillan, can be defined by four conditions: membership, influence, integration and fulfilment of needs, and shared emotional connection. In Vox reporter Allie Volpe’s piece on finding community, she writes that community members should “feel a sense of belonging (membership), feel like you make a difference to the group and that the group makes a difference to you (influence), feel like your needs will be met by other group members (integration and fulfilment of needs), and feel that you share history, similar experiences, time, and space together (shared emotional connection).”
This list of criteria isn’t always fulfilled in most branded communities, where members might not be invested in the needs of others or share any significant history or life experiences. So why do consumers still gravitate toward and participate in them?
Hugo Amsellem, vice president of community at Jellysmack, a company that works with video creators, believes that this is due to a pervasive lack of community in modern society. “We’re confused about what community should look like,” Amsellem told me. “The only places we find community are at work or at home.”
Over the past few decades, traditional institutions, like organized religion, neighbourhood associations, unions, or service organizations, have diminished in social relevance. Americans are working too much to devote time to community causes and activities beyond the realm of family and work. As a result, people are seeking out products and influencers to fill in this dwindling social gap. Brands, of course, welcome this interest, and many have positioned themselves as a sort of privatized third space to facilitate a sense of community.
Amsellem argues that virtual interactions are only a Band-Aid solution to our community-deficient lives. “Consumers are stuck on this fast loop of content consumption and creation, but they ultimately never find that sense of belonging,” he said. “I do believe that some people find comfort in online communities, but usually, those who are really online are those who feel the loneliest offline. It’s a self-selecting demographic. Being online does not necessarily solve their loneliness or make them feel like part of a group.”
On the internet, users are often driven to form micro-identities based on content or products they consume. As a result, a vague sense of camaraderie can be grown out of online fandoms, even though there’s often no formalized structure to ensure that members’ needs are being met.
“People want to attach themselves to something,” Wu said. “But there has to be an intention for community, rather than it just be a space for people to communicate.” Most fandoms don’t always develop into a community, according to Wu, although having an engaged fan base is a good foundation for brands or influencers. The grocery store Trader Joe’s, for example, has a large online fan base, but the company doesn’t seem interested in leveraging customer interest into a corporate-led community. “With fandoms, it’s more of a self-led space that might be more grassroots where anyone who’s expressed interest can join,” she added. “For community, there needs to be more of a purpose behind interactions or events.”
Wu’s philosophy is in line with the notion of “building community” that many founders and marketing experts emphasize. Still, intentionality doesn’t disguise the transactional nature of belonging that’s central to the existence of many branded communities. This is, in some ways, antithetical to the experience of community; there must be an element of reciprocity among members and an investment in their collective well-being. In some cases, consumers might have enough of an affinity for the brand that they’re unbothered by the economic basis of their belonging. The transaction — or the experience of owning, say, a Glossier product or a Peloton bike — leads them to feel like part of a specialized in-group. However, the conditions of membership remain contingent on the individual’s relationship with the brand, rather than other members.
When Anna Gát founded InterIntellect, a platform that hosts virtual salon-style conversations, she was determined to not focus on community just for the sake of accumulating more members.
“We started hosting events and salons first before we saw a community of interested members grow around these gatherings,” she told me. “I think it’s really important for every community, even if it’s led by a brand or platform, to have a telos or raison d’être. InterIntellect is a community because the people there want to share in cultural abundance, learning, pleasure with others without it being super expensive, inaccessible, or bound to geography.”
Most InterIntellect events (both in-person and virtual) are open to the public for a small fee; attendees don’t have to stay in touch or participate in the community any further than the event. For those who remain interested or keep showing up to events, they have the opportunity to pay a monthly or annual membership fee to join the InterIntellect Discord and receive discounted or free access to salons.
The fee, Gát said, ensures a base level of engagement among community members: “I believe in thoughtful monetization, so that people can check themselves and their commitments before signing up for something.” The money also goes toward staffing and future events, she added, so it feels less like a patronage model where money goes toward “talent” and more like a pooling of resources to benefit the collective.
Communities can naturally form in all sorts of social circumstances, but they often need a formalized structure to expand and sustain. This is where the guidance of community managers might come in, according to Wu. Ten Little, for example, is a kids shoe retailer that also operates a private community forum where parents can connect with childcare experts and other parents. The forum provides added value to Ten Little and has become the basis for its community, with a mission of providing a “safe, judgment-free space for all things parenting.”
Meanwhile, Victoria’s Secret PINK recruits college-aged students to serve as campus reps, encouraging them to build an empowering campus community while promoting the brand’s apparel. Most of these students likely would not have been in community with one another, if not for their affinity for the brand. Still, the presence of campus reps, aided by PINK, allows them to establish a community-like structure through branded events, giveaways, and occasional community service.
More businesses have now recognized the benefits of community. It’s a worthwhile investment that can help maintain customer loyalty and interest. However, most people have limited bandwidth; many likely aren’t a part of more than one community while attending to work and family life. Amsellem, who oversees community at Jellysmack, warns of the potential for “community fatigue” with the proliferation of branded micro-groups, which aren’t always invested in members’ well-being.
“This is not just happening online,” he said. “If you think of the workplace as a community, the employment churn is a form of community fatigue. If you look at the rate of Americans moving to different cities or neighborhoods, that’s also community fatigue.”
Branded groups and fandoms might fulfill the social function of community, but they satisfy a fleeting need. Investment and time are required to establish a foundation for lasting community; members need to feel as if they have a shared emotional connection, not just an affinity toward a product or brand, but with each other. It’s rare to come across this collective third space that blends together the public and private, Gát said.
“You can’t think of community as a zero-sum game, even if people are paying for it,” she said. “I see a world where online and offline communities can coexist in a person’s life. We should encourage people to negotiate their time with the things they love, while also giving them space to explore in a healthy way.”
