SUPERCHARGE YOUR CONTENT

Transcription

1 A TOMORROWISM REPORT SUPERCHARGE YOUR CONTENT 2017 TREND REPORT thedesignlab.net

2 INTRODUCTION We all know that the online world is an ever-changing beast. But as the twist on the saying goes; familiarity breeds complacency. To keep you ahead of the game, here are the three key trends that will ensure your content is supercharged in ABOUT THE DESIGNLAB The Designlab is an independent, experienced and ambitious team based just outside of London. Our approach combines a balanced mix of creative strategy, brand communications and technology. We make ideas to deliver your business objectives. hello@thedesignlab.net

3 UK Style & Fashion Category Global Style & Fashion Category 6% 8% Dark Social Facebook All Other Social 12% Dark Social Facebook All Other Social 15% 86% 73% DARK SOCIAL Dark Social emerged way back in 2012, but has largely been ignored because marketers don t understand it, and/or are afraid of what it might mean for their metrics. Simply put, Dark Social is when users share links to content via private messaging. Which doesn t sound that impressive until you realise Dark Social represents three times the sharing power of Facebook. Buzzfeed recently included a WhatsApp share button to articles on their ios app, and has seen that button generate twice the shares of the Twitter button. WHAT IS DARK SOCIAL? Coined by Alexis C. Madrigal, tech editor at Atlantic.com, in 2012, the term refers to web traffic that originates from outside sources that web analytics are not able to track. By nature, Dark Social gives an increased security to social sharing, which intensifies the value of the recommendation. A one-on-one recommendation via WhatsApp from a close friend will be of higher value to you than a post broadcasted on your Facebook feed from a former classmate. It s this increased trust, familiarity and frequency that is so crucial to marketing activities. Creating brand advocates is a core feature of most strategies, and yet you might be unaware of your most active fans because they whisper in the ears of their friends, rather than shout at the noisy crowd. This is even more necessary for Fashion & Beauty brands as the UK Style & Fashion market s percentage of dark social sharing is 13% higher than the global average for that category. CASE STUDY: DARK SOCIAL AND ONLINE PUBLICATIONS In order to not lose these powerful insights, a short url strategy is crucial. Using a url shortener, marketers can record otherwise lost data on user behaviours and purchasing decisions. In 2014, Time Inc. discovered the impact Dark Social sharing had on its Marie Claire website. The publishing house found that people are more likely to choose a small group of friends to share content with, rather than broadcast it on social media. In a typical month, there were 18,908 instances of readers copying and pasting the url into an . Facebook and Twitter only generated 1,747 instances during the same time period. On another Time Inc. publication, NME.com, there were 44,850 shares via compared with 5,674 shares via Facebook and Twitter. Collating the data across Marie Claire and NME. com, reveals that 90% of sharing happens in Dark Social. This analysis demonstrates that consumers want to share content in a personal way with a specific audience who it is directly relevant to, says Andrew Sanders, Digital Brand Partnerships Director at Time Inc. If content partnerships are done well, people become advocates of a brand among their peers and this is incredibly valuable for advertisers.

4 LIVE VIDEO Live video officially became a thing in 2016, and many marketers are predicting it to explode in With the introduction of Facebook Live and Instagram Stories, content creators have two very compelling options for engaging with their consumers. Live video understandably makes marketers nervous. Being on screen with no chance of edit is not for the faint hearted. But as influencer marketing continues to dominate, live video aligns itself with that demand for authentic selling and is generating results. From initial data released by Facebook, it is evident that live video is delivering high engagement with fans. Early data revealed that users comment over 10 times more on live broadcasts than prerecorded videos. More time is spent, per user, watching online videos, than on social media. In an era of Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, users expect to be served original video content via their smartphones, and brands are beginning to use live video as the coolest way to tap into this trend. CASE STUDY: ASOS LIVE VIDEO Fashion retailer ASOS has been experimenting with live videos, including a What s in the bag competition, where viewers guessed mystery items (that were on sale on the website at the time) for a chance to win. The video scored over 63,000 views, and generated over 20,000 comments. Another video 100 Layers of Asos profiled items and brands listed on the website whilst a model tried to put on a hundred layers of clothing in 30 minutes. Another use of Live Video has been profiled by beauty brand Benefit Cosmetics. Using their makeup teams, the brand has been demonstrating their products in live makeup tutorials every Thursday afternoon. In this clever marketing move, not only are their products being showcased, but the brand are providing value to their customers by teaching makeup artistry skills. Viewers are also invited to engage with the content by suggesting looks or products they d like to see used in the video.

5 SOCIAL COMMERCE AND CONVERSATIONAL COMMERCE Social Commerce, and more recently Conversational Commerce, have revolutionised the online shopping experience and expectations from customers. As we all grow in digital confidence and ability, technology is becoming increasingly woven into our daily lives. As a result, the entire ecosystem is benefitting from the improvements and availability of increasingly sophisticated APIs. Be where your customer is is the old golden rule of business, and in 2017 that means just being on social media platforms isn t going to cut it. Being able to support your social commerce offering with a messaging assistant is 2017s perfect partnership. For brands this offers an enhanced opportunity to be seamlessly integrated with your customers daily lives and behaviours. Social commerce is defined as the ability to make a product purchase from a third-party company within the native social media experience. Whilst Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat all give marketers a deeper insight and better access to their target audience, messaging apps and chatbots allow brand-to-user interaction on a human-to-human-like medium. Conversational commerce largely pertains to utilizing chat, messaging, or other natural language interfaces (i.e. voice) to interact with people, brands, or services and bots that heretofore have had no real place in the bidirectional, asynchronous messaging context. CASE STUDIES: COACH AND BURBERRY Despite it s name, WeChat is way more that just a chat app. Many brands have used the app to engage and generate sales with the Chinese market. Coach has pioneered a WeChat based loyalty programme for their customers. Once a user follows the official Coach WeChat account, they are sent an in-app message (because don t forget this is a messaging app) to become a member of their loyalty programme. In exchange for their mobile number, each user is entered into a competition to win a Coach handbag. Users can then manage their membership cards and offers from within WeChat. Always found leading the way in digital, Burberry used its Facebook messenger bot to interact with customers during their February Fashion Week show. Users had the opportunity to pre-order items from the collection through the Burberry bot, a new addition to the brand s see-now-buy -now strategy. For accurate pricing and shipping information, Messenger users were prompted to share their location through the app.

6 CONCLUSION There will always be fads that come and go, but these three content trends will have a long lasting impact on the online space, even after the buzz around them fades. At The Designlab we don t view trends in isolation, but as a product of past behaviours, and an indicator of future developments. Keeping your content supercharged requires a holistic view of digital media, allowing marketers to make slight adjustments and new pilots which keep their brand level with user behaviour and expectations. As technology continues to develop and take over more of our lives, brands need to recognise which new products will enhance their value to customers, and which, like Dark Social, will require a new way of working to benefit from. SOURCES

7 thedesignlab.net