Ltap Research: April 2015

Thursday, April 30, 2015

Four Reasons Video Marketing on Instagram Is So Much Better Than on Vine

by Dane Atkinson |

April 30, 2015

| 271 views

Kindle

Top

How much time do you get to tell your story in a video? How long until a viewer loses interest and clicks over to another link? Those are big questions for video marketers who compile content with timestamps in mind, the same way content writers typically compose with word count in mind.

Most marketers will agree that short-form video has become a great way to build awareness and drive people to the very top of your sales and marketing funnel. In fact, millions of videos are posted on Vine and Instagram daily. The short, concise video lengths help retain viewer engagement, as they require less time commitment.

However, some marketers are conflicted as to which platform ultimately has more impact with a brand's consumers and fans.

Should You Use Instagram or Vine?

To figure this out, let's first take a look at the history...

When Vine first arrived on the scene a few years ago, it initially prompted brands to experiment with short, looped video to showcase products and reinforce brand identity.

Similarly, since being bought by Facebook a few years ago, Instagram added the ability to share video clips on its wildly popular social media platform. And as its large user base continues to grow, Instagram is proving that brands can have more reach and engagement by using its platform.

Now, let's look at size (which does matter in this case). Instagram is definitely the bigger of the two, offering a 15-second limit for its videos, which is two and one-half times longer than the six-second limit Vine imposes on its users. Because 15 seconds is comparable to the length of an average TV commercial, marketers and brands can use Instagram to showcase much more visually compelling and content-rich videos.

Instagram can be used in myriad ways for creative advertising that users love. For example, a how-to video can be useful for answering consumer questions before they even contact customer service, providing immediate value. Or a narrative can be used by enabling audio on a video, giving a marketer the chance to retell the brand's story in innovative ways.

Additionally, there are millions of active users on Instagram, which makes for a very robust community for sharing content. For example, there is a section in the Instagram app where the Likes of the people you follow appear. That can create a new method of promoting your content, as having one follower can potentially open doors to many followers, creating a chain effect that grows exponentially over time.

The following are other key advantages for video marketing on Instagram vs. Vine.

1. Instagram has more users

As of March 2014, Instagram’s audience was 200 million; Vine's was 40 million. More importantly, Vine's growth slowed after Instagram introduced video capabilities.

2. Instagram is owned by Facebook, Vine by Twitter

Not only does Instagram have a larger audience, it is also owned by Facebook, which has a much larger audience than Vine's owner, Twitter. As of February 2015, Facebook had 1.23 billion active users, five times more than Twitter's 232 million. In terms of these numbers, marketers can potentially reach many more customers through Instagram than Vine. Instagram users can quickly and more easily tell the story about their product and share the content within Facebook's large user base, driving further engagement.

3. You can do a lot more in 15 seconds than six

Although it's easy to fall on your butt in a six-second Vine video, it's pretty challenging to create a meaningful marketing message in that amount of time. Instagram's 15-second maximum is much more generous, and it allows you to more effectively show extra details and content, as well as convey the overall story of a brand.

4. Instagram has filters

Beautiful filters are what really set Instagram apart from other networks. Not only can you share content on Instagram, but you also can create stunning video and images. Add to this other improved tools that Instagram offers over Vine, such as editing, integration, and cover image selection, and it's easy to see why brands may choose to use it over Vine.

Keep in mind that the customer base that typically uses and responds to Instagram videos are very social media-savvy and wise to marketing ploys. If a brand pushes out content that's too dry or appears too "advertisement-driven" (obviously aiming to boost sales), your videos will most likely be ignored and gain little-to-no traction.

* * *

Posting videos on Instagram is a chance for brands to communicate with their audience, rather than at them. Sharing compelling videos can give brands the opportunity to engage and delight users, connecting with them in a much deeper way across multiple social media platforms. And it's also a fun, creative way to stand out from the competition.

4 Things Strategists Can Learn From UX Designers

THE RUNDOWN

Smart planning and audience insights have always been essential ingredients of successful marketing campaigns. But that's not enough; a flawless user experience is now a must, too. For the SXSW edition of Firestarters, top thinkers discussed how UX design and strategic planning can work together.

If there was one takeaway from SXSW this year, it's that brands are accelerating the expansion of their digital footprint, charting new territory, and inching ever-closer to their audiences. This means the demand for user experience (UX) designers is expanding both within agencies and within a client's own walls. So what does this mean for strategic planners? How can planners and UX designers work together, and what can they learn from each other? What might this collaboration mean for the future of planning?

During the SXSW edition of our Firestarters event series, we gathered at the Google Fiber Space in downtown Austin in hopes of starting to answer some of these questions. We wanted to explore the intersection and overlap between UX design and strategy, specifically touching on how they come together at agencies and within companies. With Neil Perkin of Only Dead Fishacting as moderator, we welcomed several top thinkers from the agency world and beyond.

Oonie Chase - Director of Experience, Wieden + Kennedy
Russell Davies - Creative Director, UK Government Digital Service
Chloe Gottlieb - SVP Executive Creative Director, R/GA
Ian Spalter - UX Lead, YouTube

Their ten-minute presentations covered the usual wide swath of territories, yet there were a number of unifying threads to their thinking that deserve highlighting.

UX DESIGNERS AND PLANNERS ARE BETTER TOGETHER

The best results come when planners and UX designers embrace that there's no "I" in "team." Regardless of their backgrounds, the speakers used similar language when detailing the prescribed roles of the UX designer and the strategic planner. The UX designers are the makers while the planners are the storytellers.

"Planners are really thinking about people, and looking for things that will be interesting and things that will stand out," suggested Chloe Gottlieb. "Experience designers are obsessed with people as well but are looking for how we can make things that are useful and add value over time for our audience."

She went on to suggest that, because of their different perspectives, the best results for UX designers come from working closely with planners instead of in parallel to them. That might mean designers, strategists, planners, and technologists coming together at the very onset of a project. By having "diverse and contradictory thoughts on the problem," the team can identify patterns and collisions that might otherwise be overlooked.

Having systematic thinkers and storytellers dive headfirst into a problem together has reinvigorated the discovery phase for R/GA. The agency has turned the process on its head by reworking the concept and timing of a traditional brief. In "two by four meetings" (four people brainstorming in a room for two hours), a mix of people with different skillsets hash out ideas before a brief has even been created.

"The two minds—the experience designer and the planner—are so important because as I look for pain points and things that will add value over time, the planners look for dissonance and interesting elements that will stand out. By combining these two mind-sets, we're looking for patterns and dissonance together. It gets really juicy and really interesting."

UX CAN BRING STRATEGIC PLANNING TO LIFE

The dramatic shift in how people interact with brands has acted as a catalyst for these planner/UX designer partnerships. Gottlieb notes that one change that's led to this collision between planning and UX is that brands can no longer be separated from the experience consumers have with them through media or technology. Brands have become interfaces, so design is now as important as the brand story being told. This change has accelerated the need for planners and UX designers to partner, and ideally early in the process.

Like any new relationship, particularly one precipitated at pace by industry upheavals, this collaboration is not without its challenges. Typically, planners are surrounded by creatives, work to parse out stories and insights, and help unlock the big creative ideas. UX designers, on the other hand, might be surrounded by software engineers who are focused more on systems. So how can storytellers and systematic thinkers find the common ground they need to collaborate?

Ian Spalter of YouTube believes that planners and UX designers can see eye to eye when they move "from an inspirational insight to an actionable insight—things that set a brand up for impact rather than just creating something new and shiny."

For instance, UX designers can take the "inspirational insights" from planners and follow them in multiple directions. Do they lead to creating an ad campaign? An editorial program? A mobile experience? Development of a whole new product offering? Which of those directions will provide the most utility to the user and value to the brand? That's where inspiration becomes action as people select from what might be to what should be, based on potential impact.

"We make lots of innovative promises—awesome promises; delightful, magical promises—and it gets us all excited," he said. "We all do this, whether we're in the agency world or the software world. But any promises we make are complete falsehoods until we actually deliver on it, and that's where the UX designer can help the planner."

STRATEGIC PLANNERS CAN BRING LOVABILITY TO UX

By moving from inspirational insights to actionable insights, Spalter believes systematic thinkers can gain a greater understanding of how to create a "lovable" product that actually fits into people's lives.

The speakers agreed that the UX designer isn't just a systematic thinker, she's also a maker. And as with any hyperfocused maker, an obsession with creating the best user experience can be both a blessing and a curse.

"I think UX bends its knee too much to what is usable and what is viable,” said Oonie Chase. By focusing solely on the user experience and ignoring the promises Spalter spoke of, designers run the risk of "engineering out all of the mess and all of the magic with it."

As an example, Chase told the story of a team's rapid product development process, in which they were heads down, creating a digital experience that they could launch as soon as possible, only to realize as they completed their assignment that they'd lost sight of the overall vision: a magical, delightful experience for the user.

"We had focused on creating a minimum viable product, when what we should have been focused on was creating a minimum lovable product," she said, citing Matt Johnson from GoKart Labs.

Lovability was a recurring theme during the Firestarter session, and creating lovable experiences is where planners might be able to help UX designers, because of planners' understanding of and proximity to the user—or really, to people.

DELIVERY BEATS STRATEGY

Russell Davies' mission as creative director of the UK Government Digital Service (GDS) is to focus all energy and resources on addressing user's needs, at scale.

The UK Government Digital's Creative Director Russell Davies speaking at Firestarters

Russell Davies, Creative Director, UK Government Digital Service

And what the users need from the British government are sites and services that work easily, quickly, and reliably. "Delivery beats strategy, and usability beats persuasion," he argued.

In fact, GDS's mantra is "No new ideas," and his team comes together to improve existing services and iron out the kinks instead of constantly launching new projects and apps.

For Davies, it's the most important and overlooked job advertisers can do for brands. "The answer is a relentless focus on user needs, and it's dead simple," said Davies. "It's not complicated; it's just hard."

He cited cases of ridiculous complexity in government services, online banks, and consumer electronics. In many cases, even basic web and UX fixes would catapult brands ahead of their competition, and doing so would be quicker and more efficient than developing new offerings that also don't work as well as they should.

"The problem with a lot of strategic stuff is that we try and find complex, elegant, nuanced strategies," he said. "There aren't any."

A visual recap of the conversation

What was clear from listening to the four speakers, and from the heated debate that took place during the Q&A, is that both strategists and UX designers have key roles to play in developing relevant, usable, and ideally, "loveable" digital services, platforms, and campaigns. The more these disciplines can work together, and the earlier they can work together, the better the experiences will be for the end users.

Firestarters is a continuing series for the strategic planning community to debate the challenges facing agencies, brands, and planners in particular. To learn more, check out our recaps of past events and conversations.

Facebook's Latest News Feed Update: Time to Move On?

April 29, 2015 Andrew Hutchinson

Earlier this week, Facebook updated their News Feed algorithm again, in what many are seeing as the next move towards ‘Facebook Zero’ – i.e. 0% organic reach for pages. Facebook announced three updates – the first is around users who don’t have a lot of content to see. Previously, the algorithm ensured people were not shown multiple posts from the same source in a row - they’ve opted to relax this measure for people who run out of content to view and are seeking more. Nothing major there, the impacts should be minimal.

The second update has a bit more to it – as noted in Facebook’s announcement, this update:

...tries to ensure that content posted directly by the friends you care about, such as photos, videos, status updates or links, will be higher up in News Feed so you are less likely to miss it. If you like to read news or interact with posts from pages you care about, you will still see that content in News Feed. This update tries to make the balance of content the right one for each individual person.”

So the focus of this one is on friends who you regularly interact with, on showing you more content from those users and ensuring their posts appear more prominently in your feeds. This is based on your interaction history – Facebook will use past behaviour as a guide to add weight to the prominence of friends’ posts and ensure they appear higher in your results. This will impact page posts because it will be adding increased preference metrics to content posted from certain profiles – most probably, the impact of this will be minimal, but if a person is more likely to be shown content from friends, they’re conversely less likely to see posts from pages in their daily News Feed allocation.

The third update relates to posts that friends have liked or commented on:

...many people have told us they don’t enjoy seeing stories about their friends liking or commenting on a post. This update will make these stories appear lower down in News Feed or not at all, so you are more likely to see the stuff you care about directly from friends and the pages you have liked.”

Again, the precise impact of this change is hard to predict, but it underlines the fact that ‘likes’, in themselves, are becoming little more than an aesthetic measure - and worse, that even interactions like comments aren't necessarily going to increase your post reach. This change inadvertently puts more emphasis on shares and on prompting users to take direct action to explicitly promote their support of your page.

So what’s that mean for Facebook marketing? This change further underlines the need for brands to move from a broadcast focus to making themselves part of the conversation. With this update, Facebook is essentially saying that their users want to use the platform to interact with friends and the content they’re individually interested in, and the only way to effectively promote your pages without moving to paid ads is to generate conversation amongst people independent of your properties. That’s obviously easier said than done, but the principle for Facebook marketing remains that you need to create great content, you need to listen to what your audience wants and is responding to, and you need to become part of those conversations in order to attract more direct interactions with individuals and ensure your brand is part of any relevant conversations.

This also underlines the need to work with individual advocates – I’ve already seen it suggested by some that maybe brands should create personal profiles to help get better reach amongst their communities, but that won’t work, as it’s in violation of Facebook’s terms. Having people speak on your brand’s behalf is the best way to ensure you’re maximising Facebook reach – this is why employee advocacy is becoming a big focus, because who better to speak on behalf of your brand than those who live it everyday? Happy, engaged, socially-empowered employees can play a big part in brand awareness, and this update only reinforces the need to consider ways to facilitate authentic conversations across Facebook’s social graph.

This also sets the stage for updates to Facebook’s own search capabilities – Facebook recently announced changes to their API, effective April 30, which will reduce the capabilities for third party apps, particularly in relation to personal profiles, groups and search functionality. These changes seem relatively small, but for Facebook to be restricting them, my guess is that they’re close to releasing improved search functionality within their own walls, hence, these changes are designed to keep people on Facebook, as opposed to managing their Facebook presence via other platforms. This News Feed update somewhat supports this, in that it puts more emphasis on search to find content, as opposed to tangential organic reach.

Whatever the outcome, it’s clear that this update doesn’t help Facebook marketers and further supports the looming dawn of Facebook Zero. So should you just move on and forget about Facebook marketing? Depends on your audience, depends on how this changes your engagement levels - depends on many individual factors that can’t be answered in a generic sense. The fact is that Facebook has 1.44 billion active users, and many of them are likely interested in your products and services. Reaching them might not be as easy as it once was, but it's still possible, and still totally viable when done in a considered way.