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Pedro Gonçalves

Customers remember experiences, not content | Media Network | Guardian Professional - 0 views

  • Justin Pearse recently wrote a nice article on the state of digital content. He argues that content needs to be thoughtful, meaningful and well executed for it to be effective – it should be less about the brand, and more about the audience.
  • While his argument is absolutely correct, it pivots on the idea that engagement often begins and ends with a piece of content. The reality is that the failure of content marketing is in the belief that content exists in a vacuum.If you create a piece of content and don't support it, you're probably going to be disappointed. In other words, if we define experience as the beginning-to-end engagement with a brand, then content is simply part of the spectrum.
  • Digital content needs to be supported by great user experience (UX), solid digital strategy, attentive channel management and smart technology. To reiterate – it must be part of a system.
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  • Under this model, content strategists realise digital strategies and UX requirements as the things our users read, watch and play with. In other words, we are really the architects of experiences.
  • Content works best when you define it as anything that occupies your brand's space. Content strategy therefore works best when it's the conduit between user experience, strategy, creative and technology.
  • Most agencies look at content strategists as the guys who audit content, test its effectiveness and generally specialise in its strategic and editorial underpinnings.This needs to change.
  • I recently worked with a bank that wanted branded content to help bolster waning sales of a low-rate credit card. But when we looked closely at the entire experience, we realised that content would do little for card sales. The application process was complex, dated and unfriendly.My recommendation as a content strategist was "fix your website then look at content". We built out a strategy, but it focused more on constructing an ecosystem for content than content itself. Put differently, it laid out scaffolding for good, hard-working content.
  • users remember fun, exciting or informative experiences that go well beyond any single piece of content.
Pedro Gonçalves

Sweden's Advertisers Warm to Content Marketing - eMarketer - 0 views

  • A majority of Sweden’s advertisers now use some form of content marketing to enhance their brands
  • While 69% of those polled said they knew what content marketing was, nearly one-quarter (23%) said they had heard of it but didn’t know about it.
  • Among marketers who had content strategies, 80% said that form of marketing was at least somewhat effective at strengthening their brand, and a similar number said it nurtured existing customer relationships. More than half said it was effective for finding new customers. It was less good at generating direct sales, according to this sample.
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  • Nearly all the advertisers polled (92%) said they aimed content marketing at their customers, and 54% targeted prospects. Six in 10 also created content designed for journalists or others in the media. The most popular approach—mentioned by 65%— involved placing content on both print and digital platforms, while 43% used only digital channels.
  • Facebook was the runaway winner when it came to distributing branded content; 84% of advertisers said they had used it, and a further 11% planned to do so in the future.
  • More than three-quarters (78%) of those polled said they had produced newsletters, and 12% intended to do so, while 74% had posted content on properties such as partner websites. Pinterest was one of the least compelling propositions for these advertisers. Just 8% said they had used it to post content, and 3% planned to do so; 73% said they weren’t even considering it at the moment. Despite the growing enthusiasm for content marketing, content-related budgets remain rather low, judging by this research. More than two in five respondents (42%) reported that their company spent less than SEK1 million ($147,711) on these initiatives, and 24% spent between SEK1 million and SEK5 million ($738,552). Yet only 6% said they had no funds at all for content marketing. In another vote of confidence for content, 53% of advertisers said their content budgets would increase in 2014.
Pedro Gonçalves

The 3 Keys To Agile Content Development | Co.Create: Creativity \ Culture \ Commerce - 0 views

  • When brands come to agencies for agile content development, the main criteria is usually that the content must be high quality, compelling, low-cost, high frequency, and quick-turnaround. But often their internal structure and processes aren’t yet optimized to embrace this type of approach. In agile content development, timing and efficiency is everything. Without it, there is no liftoff.
  • Brands can optimize themselves for agile content development by making internal adjustments that improve communication, the first of which should be to empower a small team to manage the process. This team should have the authority to secure and approve budgets, as well as weigh in creatively and strategically on content as it goes to market. Creating a nimble group that has real ownership of the process will make things more efficient and reduce the chances of unnecessary stress being put on your brand marketing team as a whole.
  • When strategy, creative, and production teams can sit side by side and collaborate fluidly, agile content is the by-product.
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  • Agile content development is best executed by a partner that has strategy, production, and analytics under one roof, combining what agencies traditionally do best with what production companies traditionally do best.
  • This exercise will also help your brand get into the right mind-set. Think of your brand marketing team as the police force, and your agile content group as the SWAT team.
  • A perfect example of this is Red Bull, which has even gone a step further to combine brand, agency, and production company into one. No one would argue that they are not one of the most successful agile content marketers on the planet.
  • The most important part of setting your brand’s agile content strategy is having a clear idea of why your brand is creating content to begin with.
  • Next, your responsibility is to make sure that the content you’re creating is meeting your brand’s overall objectives. Your selected content partner should be responsible for making sure the content you create is something that your target consumer actually wants to see.
  • Once your brand’s content strategy is set, it should be seen as a living framework that should evolve over time. Recognize that your brand and content both live in a dynamic world that changes constantly.
Pedro Gonçalves

Channeling Anna Wintour: When Creating Branded Content, Think Like An Editor-In-Chief |... - 0 views

  • These days, developing a successful online presence requires approaching traditional digital efforts like link-building, web traffic, lead generation, and sales from a decidedly more editorial, content-rich approach: a hybrid marketing and storytelling strategy that drives customer actions by creating, documenting, distributing, and optimizing content. Some companies have created their own internal content development departments or are working with agencies to create everything from infographics to documentaries that highlight where the values, interests, and personality of brand and customer overlap. Coca Cola believes so strongly in the power of content that they are relying on this approach to help them double the size of their business by 2020.
  • While your office probably looks a lot different than a newsroom, approaching content strategy by thinking like a magazine publisher or a television producer is an effective way to approach content development and promotion. Utilizing influential voices to develop and promote content can help ensure that you meet the first requirement of securing readership and viewers--be interesting.
  • The people who already create for you: We often hear “write about what you know” because it comes easiest. Identify the talented storytellers within your own walls. Those with an intimate knowledge of company activities are primed to create impactful content, even on a tight deadline. Identify employees who are weekend filmmakers, amateur photographers, poets, and guitar players and invite them to bring these talents to the table.
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  • The people who use your product or service: The voice of the customer is the most influential of all. Provide loyal consumers with an opportunity to get involved by sharing their stories. Identify digital influencers that fit your brand aesthetic and explore partnership opportunities. This approach is heavily evident in the fashion industry, where brands routinely work with fashion bloggers on everything from Twitter chats to advertising campaigns.
  • The people who support you: Why not collaborate on content development with partners or vendors? By working together, budgets become more manageable and both parties can benefit from the potential PR story. By working together, you can deliver deeper impact and cast a wider net. 
  • With more brands developing more and more content, we will naturally reach a point of over-saturation where only the very best stories will make an impact. As such, it is absolutely crucial to begin to refine and optimize current content marketing practices. Also, with the line blurring between marketing or brand managers and content developers, it’s worth noting that those best suited for positions in content marketing have a rare combination of business and marketing acumen, digital savvy, as well as journalism, public relations, film, and even creative writing. For those with this mega-mix, employment opportunities abound.
Pedro Gonçalves

Content Marketing is More Important than Ever | Experts' Corner | Big Think - 0 views

  • The major takeaways from Google Panda and update (in no particular order) are as follows: Focus on original content – you will get hammered for “stealing” or repurposing on too high a scale (for example, lifting content from Wikipedia) Over-optimization kills – Google can sniff out sites that are designed solely to exploit certain key words (for example, repeating the same keyword, or variations thereof to drive traffic) Link to high quality/authoritative sites – while Panda focused more on a more systematic sweep of SEO, Penguin is focused on the processes around linking. Don’t over-link, and when you do create links, link to high quality sources Excessive Ads are Bad – If it looks like you are running too many ads against your content, you will face the consequences SEO is a “Bad Word” – The rise of the term “content marketing” effectively means that high quality content trumps low quality link bait.
  • Write Guest Blog Posts for Authoritative SitesContent marketing does not just refer to content you write for your own site, but content you write for other sites.
  • content marketing also improves SEO rankings and traffic.  Link building is a common SEO strategy that is always difficult to grow through a paid channel.  The best way to get organic and quality links is by creating interesting content that drives people to link and share your content.  Whether or not it’s directly related to your line of business, driving free traffic is always a victory.
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  • The whole purpose of your own blog is to drive the highest quality, most targeted traffic to your conversion funnel – if you are not doing that, you might as well not have a blog.
Pedro Gonçalves

Gartner Finds Corporate Websites Still A Higher Digital Marketing Priority For U.S. Mar... - 0 views

  • According to a new poll of U.S. marketers conducted by Gartner, corporate websites are ranked as the top digital activity for marketing “success” — beating marketing on social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Social media marketing, however, ranked as the next most important activity, equal in importance to online advertising.
  • The survey, conducted in November and December of 2012, polled a relatively small sample of 250+ marketers from U.S.-based companies with more than $500 million in annual revenue
  • Design, development and maintenance of the corporate website was cited by 45% of survey respondents as contributing to marketing success, with marketing on social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter cited by 43%. Digital/online advertising was also cited by 43%
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  • Corporate websites perhaps have a key reputational role to play in the marketing mix, supplementing and underpining social media marketing spending — by providing reassurance of a brand’s professionalism where a Facebook page can provide evidence of user engagement/approval (or otherwise).
  • The results indicate that corporate websites still have a key role to play when it comes to marketing a company’s offerings, despite the big role also played by social media. It’s also notable that mobile marketing is still relatively low down the priorities list, with an aggregated percentage of 24%. It’s still far better than the poor unloved (and doubtless rarely updated) company blog, though, with just 6%.
  • The survey asked respondents to rank different marketing activities first, second and third in importance, collating all three preferences to get the overall percentage. On first place preference, corporate websites came out joint top with online advertising, cited by 18% apiece as the most important activity. Social media slumped in importance on this measure — cited by just six per cent of respondents as the most important activity (and second only to the company blog):
  • The top priorities for increased budgets in 2013 are commerce experiences, social and mobile marketing, and content creation and management
Pedro Gonçalves

Content & SEO Alignment: 3 Steps To Create The Perfect Win-Win - 0 views

  • brands invest $44 billion in content every year.
  • The modern-day marketer balances left- and right-brain thinking. They use SEO and technology as an enabler and distributor, using content marketing creativity to build holistic content and SEO programs that result in measurable business outcomes.
  • SEO and content strategies need to be aligned for optimal marketing performance, yet the costs and time associated with training and development can negatively impact productivity, scale and revenue. This catch 22 makes it difficult to achieve such levels of collaboration, and divergence remains.
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  • According to the yet-to-be-released BrightEdge 2014 Search Marketers survey across a customer base of 8500 brands, over 83% of marketers are placing a greater strategic importance on content performance by optimizing for organic search.
Pedro Gonçalves

Content Marketing: Start With Your Story - 0 views

  • Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute and one of the first evangelists for content marketing, describes content marketing as: //Zone: 300x250 googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-1336852434508-3'); … a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience — with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”
  • In the past, editors and reporters held companies captive, and we vied for their attention to cover our products, services or insights on trends. But no longer.Today, communities and influencers have overtaken the importance of media outlets, and the responsibility of reporting has shifted to the marketing department. In fact, many organizations now consider themselves publishers rather than marketers. And that’s smart
  • A good story entices someone to want to know more, and they transition to the next step: engagement.
Pedro Gonçalves

Why Insourcing is the Next Social Media and Content Marketing Trend - 0 views

  • social media is becoming a skill, not a job. Companies like Intel and Dell and IBM are leading the way in broadly distributed social participation, giving thousands of employees the opportunity to win hearts and mind in social and with smart content.
  • This decentralization of social communication has widespread ramifications for social media management software vendors, as it puts additional emphasis on triage and workflow tools.
  • The days of one social media manager handling Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and the rest is coming to a close (as is the era of the one or two person content marketing team) and the same way all of us have a corporate email address and phone number, we’ll all (or nearly all) have a role to play on behalf of the company in social and content marketing, eventually.
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  • Where does this ultimately lead? We’re not there yet, but I suspect it’s predictive modeling, with internal social and content opportunity routing based on artificial intelligence and enterprise knowledge mapping. If we know the specific areas of expertise of each employee and can store that in a relational database, and we can also know via presence detection who is online and/or what their historical response times have been, we can use natural language processing (a la Netbase) to proactively triage and assign social interactions to the best possible resource in the organization.
Pedro Gonçalves

Before Big Data Comes Big Content | Fast Company | Business + Innovation - 0 views

  • Big data isn’t just a function of better data-tracking technology; it simply wouldn’t exist without the ever-expanding catalyst that is big content.
  • marketing content refers to any artifact with which a consumer interacts that relates to a brand. Content gets “big” via its amplification, iteration and dissemination across multiple channels, devices and platforms. When content “jumps the tracks” and is no longer controlled solely by the brand, but can be summoned and even manipulated on demand by consumers themselves, then it’s “big."
  • Based on a 2012 survey by Content Wise, marketers increased their total spending on content development by 45% from 2005 to 2012, when the percentage of marketers’ budgets allocated to content creation increased from 31% to 39%
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  • story-centric rather than channel-centric approach
Pedro Gonçalves

With Online Video, You Have 20 Seconds To Capture Your Viewer. Go. | Fast Company - 0 views

  • The social media generation puts accessibility above almost all else, and nothing is more accessible than the world wide web. As a result, a new type of viewing experience has emerged--quick views over your breakfast cereal or during your lunch break. But video producers often fail to cater to this type of viewing experience, instead focusing on what has been successful over the past half-century.
  • the current online environment calls for video and content that is made specifically for online audiences. Meaning short-form video with a quality that matches the production level of offline content. Not spinoffs or originally discarded footage, but shows and content made specifically for online viewers
  • Now the online market is over-saturated with tons of low-quality, unpredictable content. As a result, the next stage the web's evolution lies in curation and original content.
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  • But for curators to surface awesome content, there has to be awesome content to begin with. Original content, from inspirational marketing videos (like Nike's below) to an online-specific show, will continue to rise in popularity. While user-generated content will exist as long as users exist, and can often be very successful, the next five years will see viewers putting curated quality over random quantity.
  • Online video doesn't have the luxury of longer-form shows that a viewer schedules time to watch. More likely, they stumbled upon your video by chance on their Twitter or Facebook feed. They haven't committed to watching their video, but their interest is piqued and they've pushed play. Don't waste that chance. The video must grab and engage them nearly instantaneously--if not, you'll lose potential longterm fans. Unengaging, ported-over content won't survive in our ADD environment.
  • in an attempt to push the brand, marketing videos often forego authenticity in favor of an over-markety tone. This disengages the viewer and separates them from the brand. Online users don't wanted to be sold to, they want to be engaged.
  • Brand loyalty stems first from producing the best product possible, but once you've captured a user's attention, it's about engaging that user and making them feel special. Because of their loyalty (whether that's liking a brand on Facebook or signing up for their newsletter), they want to feel as if they are in on a secret that non-followers don't have access to.
  • Brands should create a movement they believe in--and match their videos to it--rather than slamming their brand down their viewers’ throats. Be authentic and engaging and the viewers will come.
  • Like Pinterest did for online photography, a new startup will emerge for curated video content.
Pedro Gonçalves

Which Tactics Work Best for Email Marketers? - eMarketer - 0 views

  • Email remains a workhorse for marketers: It’s cheap and reasonably effective
  • According to an April 2013 Economist Intelligence Unit survey of US and UK web users, email ranked as among the top outreach channel at each stage of the purchase process, from introduction, to final prepurchase assessment to post-purchase follow-up.
  • The greatest percentage of marketers still felt challenged to create relevant and compelling content that will really draw in recipients. This ranked as the No. 1 challenge among B2B and B2C respondents to achieving their marketing objectives, but it was also considered the most effective tactic, cited by 71% of B2B marketers and 65% of B2C marketers. If marketers can create strong content, they believe it really does work at converting consumers.
Pedro Gonçalves

26 Ways to Create Social Media Engagement With Content Marketing | Social Media Examiner - 0 views

  • you need writers and team members who can think strategically about the content that will resonate most with your audience.
  • Search for people asking questions about your keyword or phrase on Twitter.
  • “Content curation is not about collecting links or being an information packrat, it is more about putting them into a context with organization, annotation and presentation.  Content curators provide a customized, vetted selection of the best and most relevant resources on a very specific topic or theme.”
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  • Post curated content 50%, original content 30% and promotional material 20% of the time.
  • The data in a piece of content posted on Google+ is immediately indexed for Google search. On Twitter or Facebook, Google has restricted access to the data and indexing can take a few days. AuthorRank, the digital signature for Google+ users, is also set to affect the ranking order for search results.”
  • Take time to comment
  • Place your keywords:In the Bio or About Us section of all of your social networks
  • Post status updates often (especially every morning).
  • In survey after survey, smartphone users want to know if a close physical location is open. Content for these types of searches should include basic contact information—address, phone number and operating hours—as well as a short description of the location highlighting why a visitor should choose that location.
  • replying to the comments on media can be as important as the creation of the content itself. When someone comments, you must reply.”
Pedro Gonçalves

A Top LinkedIn Exec On Why Content Marketing Matters More Than Ever | Fast Company | Bu... - 0 views

  • Today the brand “voice” takes a front seat, while the hard sell takes a step back, and artfully communicating to your audience is critical in a feed-based advertising landscape that is here to stay.
  • Don’t Just Sell, Add Value Offer useful content that will earn you credibility with your desired audience
  • In 2012, content marketing was the leading tactic for 18.9% of marketers worldwide. In 2013, that percentage has grown to 34.8%.
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  • Ask Them What They Want to Hear
  • Be Human Find ways to incentivize without blatant self-promotion and don’t shy away from humor.
Pedro Gonçalves

6 Smart and Effective Email Marketing Tactics - 0 views

  • There’s no denying that email is showing signs of decline — the number of visitors to web-based email sites fell 6% in 2010 compared to the previous year, and email engagement declined at an even greater rate, according to a report from digital analysis company comScore.
  • In response to these changes, brands are quickly adapting by combining email, social media and even mobile marketing tactics.
  • successful brands are doing just that — cross-pollinating email marketing strategies via email clients, social platforms and mobile devices. Ultimately, brands still find email effective because it’s inexpensive and universally accepted by people all over the world.
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  • The key to creating hyper-timely emails is planning and being nimble, says Christopher Stemborowski, associate communication strategist for marketing agency Oxford Communications. “Seeming timely can be the result of preparing multiple emails or just one email and waiting for the right time to send it.”
  • Build multiple versions ahead of key events: In the same way that shirts are made ahead of the Super Bowl declaring each team the champion, you can design two versions of an email to respond quickly to the outcome of major events.Plan an email for an event that has an unspecified date: Snowstorms will happen each winter. Will you have an email ready to go out the moment it happens? With a little planning, you can.Track trending online memes: In 2011, we have seen a #winning Charlie Sheen and a really excited Rebecca Black ready to have fun, fun, fun. Smart brands can tap into these memes in email blasts. You can keep track of these popular memes by viewing the trending topics section on Twitter.
  • Blasting irrelevant content to your email subscribers is one of the biggest email marketing mistakes you can commit.“For example, if a salon sends an email to men that highlights services solely for women, it shouldn’t be a shock when the men unsubscribe,” Stemborowski says. “To avoid this, the salon needs to know who in its database are males and who are females and then avoid sending irrelevant messages.”
  • “Self-selection means subscribers willingly receive emails that are in the categories they asked to get,” Stemborowski said, adding that it’s vital to keep the screening short so users don’t abandon the process.
  • More than ever, people are reading emails on their mobile devices. Mobile email usage increased 36% in 2010, according to comScore.
  • The first line of your email should never read, “If you are having trouble reading this email click here,” he adds. “Remember, the first line of the email is what shows up as the preview on smartphones. For this reason, the first line is premium real estate and, with this in mind, you should put your most important message first for a well-crafted call to action.”
Pedro Gonçalves

Chinese Viewers Flocking to Brands' Online Mini-Movies - 0 views

  • In China, he said, online branded content is "the only thing that makes sense in advertising." 
  • DiIanni said Chinese audiences want stories and "want to engage with content and social media." But he cautioned that "brands need to be flexible and open to new ideas" in content. Too often in his experience, he said, brands do not see the opportunity in some roles offered in content. 
  • Sirena Liu, founder and president of Filmworks China, an agency that also specializes in assembling content for brands, doesn't think the branded content in its most recent form will necessarily last forever. "The trend of mini-movies will continue to be popular for a while, but probably not for too long," Liu told brandchannel.
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  • Liu reasons that the high costs of production and promotion make branded content one of the riskier propositions. "The brands will soon realize that it makes more sense to do placement in a high-profile film," she said. "Less cost, more exposure."
Pedro Gonçalves

Branded Content Is A Winning Part Of The New Marketing In Europe | Forrester Blogs - 0 views

  • Connect to consumers in context. Having great content is not enough. Consider the context in which it will be consumed. Are your consumers looking for quick-hit information on their smartphones, snackable content on Facebook, or in-depth information on your website?  Create visible value. What topics can you credibly provide value on, through information, education, or entertainment? Don't just create it; make it clear where the value is provided. Continuously measure and optimize results. Go beyond tracking data to measuring impact. Tie results like brand lift, content shares, and unaided recognition of the content to metrics that run the business like leads or sales.
Pedro Gonçalves

Facebook Insider Offers A Hint For Brands Looking To Increase Reach - 0 views

  • the typical page had reach of 26%  prior to the Sept. 20, meaning that, on average, 26% of a page's subscribers would see messages posted on the page. That reach has dropped to 19.5% since Sept. 20.
  • In short, according to the Facebook source, if brands are seeing less engagement and reach on their Facebook pages, it’s because they’re not creating engaging content. “If a brand is continually putting up low-quality content that no one is engaging with, that content is going to be optimized out of the Newsfeed,” the source said. 
  • Facebook measures the quality of content through engagement: number of likes, clicks, shares and comments. Typically, a post’s reach is between 15% and 20%.
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  • Facebook charges brands less to promote content with high engagement rates than it does for sub-par content. “Content that doesn’t get any play and is optimized out of Newsfeeds is more expensive to promote to more people,” he said. “That’s good for [people] because they are seeing relevant content, and it’s good for brands because we’re encouraging them to create engaging content.”
Pedro Gonçalves

Studies show more than 40 percent decreased organic reach on Facebook - Inside Facebook - 0 views

  • Earlier this month, Facebook noted that pages could see a decrease in organic reach as a result of News Feed algorithm tweaks that favor newsworthy posts. However, many marketers and Facebook page admins are reporting that they’re seeing an extreme drop in organic reach — as much as 44 percent in some cases — and it has been going on for months.
  • Komfo, a social marketing firm, studied fan penetration among 5,000 Facebook pages of various sizes from August through November with the following findings: 42% decrease in fan penetration 31% increase in viral amplification 28% increase in clickthrough rate (CTR)
  • In Komfo we do not doubt that the survey shows that there is no “free lunch” on Facebook anymore, and companies have to start investing in Facebook advertising if they want to reach the right audience with their content. However, it also shows that the Facebook’s algorithms, that control what we see in our newsfeed, have been improved. Facebook has become better at showing a page’s content to the most engaged users. Jim Tobin, President of Ignite Social Media, also saw significant drops in organic reach. In a study of 689 posts of 21 large brand pages found that in the week of Facebook’s announcement, organic reach dipped an average of 44 percent. Tobin pointed out that the previously accepted reach percentage of 16 percent can now be as low as 3 percent.
Pedro Gonçalves

5 Brands That Understand Marketing on Instagram - 0 views

  • As you begin to create or amplify your presence on Instagram, focus on creating compelling day-to-day content. As with all of your social media platforms, make sure you’re posting often and with content that speaks to your audience.
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