Digital Marketing Innovations: Videos on Social and a Content Marketing Trick

It’s easy to get stuck in routine when you’re up to your elbows in work all day, it’s true in all fields. But in digital marketing, becoming static risks falling behind. With algorithms and user preferences changing almost daily, you have to stay on top of the news and quickly apply it to your work.

Many of us in digital marketing positions are nerds at heart and love learning about trends on our own time. But us Lightbugs like to go the extra mile– every Monday we share our favorite piece of recent news and chat about how we, as a team, can use them to do better work for our clients.

Here’s a summary of my 3 favorite digital marketing innovations for the week of July 6, 2015. Hint: They’re about videos on Instagram and Facebook! Oh, and sneaky content marketing.

Instagram Videos – Best Time to Post

According to a report by L2, Instagram videos posted during off hours (9pm to 8am) had 50% more interactions. The obvious gut reaction: people are on their phones during the work day (sorry) but don’t have the volume on, so there’s nothing to grab or keep their attention.

We wanted to dig in further. During weeknights after 9, people are in their beds, on the couch or otherwise enjoying leisure time that allows them to watch mobile videos. The same goes for the morning: most smartphone users (at least 80%, since this study is a couple years old) check their phones right after waking up. Besides, when else will you post your #OOTD selfie? Those are no-brainers. But how does that affect our clients? We asked these questions, among others:

• Surely 2am on a Wednesday isn’t as effective as 9pm or 7:30am, right?
• What will users like before coffee? Will that content be as effective competing against Netflix?
• If they’re not using headphones at work, are they during their commute?
• Does this hold true for other autoplay-enabled platforms (hello Twitter!)?
• Which clients’ communities might differ from the norm?
• Who is going to post brand videos so late/early? C’mon Instagram API, open up for schedulers please!

The answers will come with testing.

Facebook Video Analytics

[RAISING BOTH HANDS EMOJI]

Facebook, amidst the neverending stream of complaints against it, released Insights for videos with much needed improvements. Its ever changing algorithm has already been known to prioritize natively-posted videos so we’ve been forced to do it. But, until recently, digital marketers had a hard time evaluating the effectiveness of their hard work because Insights were so lacking. Say no more, Facebook’s team to the rescue!

The new Videos tab allows you to set date ranges and, among other things, compare viewing stats for paid vs organic, autoplay vs click-to-play and unique vs repeat viewers. After poking around a couple of my clients’ Insights, I noticed two things:

• The percentage of paid vs organic held steady between 3 second views and 30 seconds+ (implies appropriate targeting)
• People who click to play are slightly more likely to view longer than those who saw it through autoplay (has implications about video quality or interest in the brand)

Content Marketing Mind Trick: Give More Away to Get that Click

I imagine everything in Ana’s apartment to look perfect because of the brands she follows. I’m probably far off from reality, but girl definitely has good taste. See this section of an email she forwarded us from Cupcakes and Cashmere:

How is this email marketing strategy innovative? It gives a lot away. Typical best practices for content marketing dictate teasing your community and telling them what’s in it for them if they click, but only if they click! Cupcakes and Cashmere’s email, following that rule, would have had a much shorter text column. It may have only read “Elevate your weekends with these 4 spruced-up classic toast combinations.”

Instead, they elected to not only show viewers the end results of the recipes (that mouthwatering image), but also include the actual shopping lists! No Rich Pin or blog post needed– just unlock your phone at the store and it’s all there for you.

But you know what, they probably still got plenty of click throughs (except for the fact the only link in that section is the image). Why? Because they’re delivering exactly what their community expects from them: simple recipe ideas and pretty pictures. People will click through not because they want or need the recipes, but because they want the brand and the story.

So let’s try it! Whether it’s an email or a social post, give away a little bit more of your content, even if it’s not so simple. For example, instead of telling them that you have x number of ways to improve their lives, list the ways! They’ll know to get your expertise and details by clicking through.

Of course there were many other digital marketing innovations during the last week. It’s one thing to read about them and move on, but another to learn and do. These 3 in particular aren’t hard to execute or use, so let’s get going!