Paying for plays: Using paid social to promote video
Are you looking for opportunities to increase views for your brand’s online videos? Try allocating your budget to establish a strong presence on social media. According to a study by Telly, social media recommendations actually trump search engines when it comes to video discovery, specifically on mobile devices. To start promoting your videos now on mobile and desktop, check out these three paid social media services: YouTube TrueView: YouTube TrueView ads offer a couple different ad formats, though we typically see the most engagement from pre-roll In-Stream ads. With video ads, you only pay when someone chooses to watch the ad. Additionally, you can target users based on who they are, where they’re located, and what they’re interested in – ensuring that your videos are reaching the most qualified viewers. Video ads can be easily created using Google AdWords and feature a YouTube Analytics tool, making it easy to pull reports and track performance to make optimizations. Facebook Promoted Posts: Boosting page posts is an easy, effective way to reach more users with your posts in News Feeds and encourage likes, comments, and shares. Facebook advertising offers a vast array of targeting options and can be integrated to use remarketing lists and custom audiences. When promoting video content on Facebook, you can either post a link to a YouTube video or upload a video directly to Facebook. When a user selects a video hosted on Facebook, a large screen pops up and they can watch the video in that new window. In this instance, comments are more visible to the right of the video, making a user more likely to engage with the video. We’ve even tested video posts in both formats here at iProspect with a Tools/Lawn and Garden client. The average CTR increased from 1.6% on the YouTube video post to 6.13% on the Facebook video post Twitter Promoted Tweets: Much like Promoted Posts on Facebook, Promoted Tweets are a great way to expand the reach of your tweets and encourage engagement through retweets, replies, favorites and follows. Targeting options include interests, keywords, handles, and tailored audiences. As Twitter is strongly focused on fast pace, real-time updates, it’s not the most ideal platform for hosting long-form video content. As an alternative, many brands utilize Vine in unique and creative ways to create short and entertaining video clips to grab viewers’ attention. While search is certainly an integral piece to making sure your video content gets discovered, social media cannot be ignored. Using paid media efforts to build a presence on channels like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter will help increase your reach and encourage social sharing of your content. 0
3 min read
Instagram Announces New Personalized Feed
Instagram recently announced plans to move from a reverse chronological feed to one that is personalized via a Facebook-like algorithm. The change is intended to improve the overall user experience. According to Instagram, users currently miss about 70 percent of the content they follow. The goal of the upcoming change is to make sure that the 30 percent users actually see is the best 30 percent possible. In the new user experience, posts in the photo feed will be prioritized based on what Instagram believes each user cares about the most, similar to the current Discover section of Instagram. The algorithm for the personalized feed will take many signals into account including “the relationship between poster and user, timeliness of posts, and how likely it is that the content will be interesting to the user.” The announcement of this change does not come as a surprise. With the overwhelming amount of content being posted every single day, social media platforms must constantly evolve and mature in order to ensure that users see the most relevant content first. After Facebook introduced algorithmic ordering to its News Feed back in 2009, and Twitter did the same earlier this year, it seemed like a logical progression for Instagram to follow suit. What does this mean for Brands and Marketers? Since Instagram does not currently differentiate brand profiles from personal profiles, all content will be given equal treatment. Additionally, the feed change will not directly affect Instagram’s advertising products. However, Instagram believes the new algorithm will deliver a better user experience, which will translate into more time spent on the platform, making it a more valuable place for businesses to invest. For this reason, iProspect believes that the algorithm announcement is good news. Much like Google, Facebook and Instagram strive to maintain the availability and value of ad inventory by creating a positive experience for the end user. The upcoming algorithm change will improve the user experience, thus keeping this highly qualified and valuable ad inventory intact. Our recommendations Marketers looking to succeed with social media need to focus on how each platform can help drive actual business outcomes. In that respect, Instagram, like the other platforms, has been and continues to be a pay-to-play space. Our recommendation is to start with a strong paid strategy, targeting a highly qualified audience to achieve reach and frequency, website traffic, video views, or even – when relevant – conversions. When it comes to organic reach and presence on Instagram, it is important to assess effort over impact. Brands can leverage the paid power of Instagram without an Instagram account (as long as there is a Facebook page) and thus it may not be necessary to also have an organic Instagram presence. If there is a need or desire to develop and maintain an organic presence, it will be critical to create content that garners engagement so that those posts continue to be served at the top of followers’ feeds. To make sure your brand content maintains visibility after the algorithm is implemented, follow these best practices: Post high-quality, in-focus pictures with lots of natural lighting. Utilize hashtags to contribute to wider topics and conversations (no more than to 3-5 per post). Ensure posts are fresh (post at least three times per week) and relevant to your audience’s interests. Connect and engage with people who share similar interests. Track posts with the most interaction and engagement to determine what resonates, and create additional content based on your findings. When is this happening? Instagram seems to be quite mindful of how users might react to the changes. In a recent statement on their blog, they reassured users, saying, “We’re going to take time to get this right and listen to your feedback along the way.” According to Instagram, they will start by testing the change with a small subset of users in the coming months with plans to eventually roll out globally. 0
4 min read
