It’s a big undertaking, but with the right resources and team members, you can conduct a content audit in house.
In this #HigherEdVoices podcast, I visit with Joan Benson, our Associate Vice President, Digital & Creative Strategy, to discuss how to get started—and when to ask for expert help. Listen now.
Want to learn more? Email us today.
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Now, over 500 million accounts use Instagram Stories every day—and 80% of them follow businesses.
IG Stories present a huge opportunity for marketers to creatively communicate with users in a simple, on-the-go format that humanizes your brand. People across multiple demographics actively use Instagram to discover, research, and sometimes purchase products or services, according to a recent Facebook study.
If your organization isn’t on Instagram yet, it should be. Here are five easy ways to drive engagement and raise brand awareness through Instagram Stories.
Millennials and Gen-Z—a huge swath of Instagram’s users—value brand authenticity. This means pulling back the curtain on your brand’s day-to-day.
Posting photos or videos on Instagram Stories is an easy way to do this.
For example, Stamats brand Meetings Today posts videos and photos from hard-hat tours of venues being constructed and hotel grand openings.
Other examples of “behind-the-scenes” content can include:
Additionally, marketers can use the “Instagram Live” feature to stream video in real time. Use this feature for the behind-the-scenes content, interviews and more.
To use the Instagram Live feature, go to the screen where you upload stories. On the bottom bar, scroll left from “normal” to “live.” You can then start streaming. You can go live for up to 60 minutes at a time.
When the Instagram Live is finished, you can share a replay of it in Instagram Stories for followers who didn’t tune in to see.
Bring the audience into your brand’s world to show (not tell) how your products and services come to life. This insider perspective shows audiences that real people from your organization are on the ground in real time covering content that matters.
Keep your audience engaged through multiple Instagram Stories with quick animation tricks. Make videos and images fun and interesting by taking multiple screenshots of stories, adding text with each image, and uploading them in a sequence to your stories.
You can now include GIFs in your stories, too, to keep stories light and fun.
Click the sticker icon in the upper right corner of your Instagram Story screen and select “GIF” to search relevant options.
You can easily gauge your audience’s interests and opinions by using Instagram’s polling feature.
Simply click the sticker in the upper-right corner of your screen and select the “poll” sticker. You can then type a custom question and two answer options.
Ask your audience simple questions about:
You can monitor the poll results in real-time. When the polling period is over, take a screenshot of the final results and share it in your stories to engage your audience in their own responses.
Similarly, you can select the “Ask Me Anything” option, which can be found in the same place as the poll sticker. Ask your audience a question, and they can type in a custom answer that’s sent directly back to you.
Related: Live Social Media Checklist
Consider posting top user answers to your story to show the audience what their peers are thinking, or as testimonials to the brand.
Too many hashtags can clutter up an Instagram Story photo, but strategically adding hashtags can attract more relevant views. Find a smart balance to get more eyes on your stories without spamming users who don’t find your content relevant.
Adding hashtags connects your story to that particular hashtag’s story. Essentially, it becomes part of an aggregated story of all the public Instagram posts that use the hashtag.
Users follow hashtags in addition to Instagram profiles. Anyone who follows the hashtag potentially will see your story, even if they don’t follow your organization’s account.
The key for marketers is to use hashtags that are relevant to your audience and your posts.
Stamats brand interiors + sources, for example, uses relevant design trends hashtags in its stories when on site for industry expos.
This “behind-the-scene” content gets posts in front of followers of specific design trends hashtags like #MillenialPink.
Content marketers who are held to aggressive site traffic goals sometimes dismiss Instagram, since it’s not typically known as a traffic-driving platform like Facebook or Twitter. But it can be.
For verified accounts, you automatically have access to the “Swipe Up” feature of Instagram Stories. If a user swipes up on a photo, they will be directed to a URL you preselected.
If your account is not verified, you need to reach the 10,000-follower threshold to unlock the “Swipe Up” feature. But you still have a linking option.
You can post a URL you want to promote in your bio, which is the only place you can currently hyperlink on Instagram. Prompt users to click on it by telling them “link in bio” in your stories.
Are you ready to launch your Instagram strategy? Schedule a free consultation with Mariah Obiedzinski Tang, AVP of Content Marketing, today. Book now.
Reach out to us to talk about your strategy and goals.
I’ll let you in on a secret: It is possible to have your print and digital data in one database.
We’ve done it for almost 20 years.
It’s essential that you do, too.
Publishing by definition has a print component. For most publishers their brand began as a printed magazine and their core audience is made up of print subscribers.
The rise of digital products left publishers with a lot of disconnected data, struggling to integrate with a print database. Some of the digital content saw crossover from print subscribers, but what if it wasn’t? How can you know? It’s almost impossible to understand where your traffic is coming from if you can’t see everything in one place.
Several workarounds by publishers and audience development managers involve pulling data from separate data silos for reporting purposes. Even databases that purport to be ‘unified’ aren’t unifying the actual data. Their data ‘unifies’ when passed through a dashboard for reporting and query purposes.
Your audience is made up of individuals; not data files, not products. The real solution is to begin at that individual level and attach their print and digital activities to a personal data record. Integrated data presents a clear picture of your audience.
All of your data in a unified database allows you to:
1. Capitalize on trends in audience interaction. A rapid response to changes in product engagement, whether growth or decline, means all the difference in the world.
2. Detect gaps in engagement. How efficiently can you identify people who have attended a live event but aren’t a subscriber? How many of them have registered for your next event? It’s a cumbersome and time-consuming project to pull the data from separate places.
3. Accurately report numbers for each product and for cross product engagement.
4. Produce a brand audit without duplication.
5. Grow beyond your audited audience with accurate tracking and understanding. A larger audience is more appealing to advertisers, which also makes your sales people happy.
Stamats Data Management provides award-winning audience management for print and digital fulfillment. We use a fully integrated data management system, which means Everything in One Place. If you’re tired of patchwork and workarounds that don’t work, we can help.
Find out how we utilize a full suite of audience/data strategies and experts to help you enhance your customer’s journey, engagement, opportunities and threats, improve efficiency, and gain a competitive advantage. Email Us.
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In Simmond’s session on artificial intelligence (AI) the founder of Foundation Marketing laid out AI’s future and some tools marketers can introduce into the workplace.
“The dismissal of innovation could be your own disruption,” Simmonds said, cautioning the audience to not ignore artificial intelligence.
Citing a few examples, Simmonds illustrated how AI has evolved. He walked through the evolution of farming tractors—from being operated by horses and people to some of today’s self-driving tractors, which could eliminate the need for the farmer to be in the field completely.
AI has the potential to change how people work, which should be of concern for workers in all professions. It’s already had a huge impact on the manufacturing industry, replacing many once-human jobs.
For marketers, it’s already changing how we communicate to our customers, and it’s primed to change the marketing process—who we reach out to, how we work with them, what next steps should be. Rather than be wary of these changes, Simmonds suggested embracing some of these advancements in AI.
For example, unload some routine duties to AI tools like scheduling, for example, and redirect your energy to more creative tasks.
Although AI in the workplace is still new to most people, Simmonds believes it’s the future. Some tools are already available that marketers can experiment with. These include:
“We’re still very much in the early stages—but the people who are using AI are the people who will reap the benefits,” Simmonds said. “The time to sign up for some of these tools is now.”
“The work that is non-routine will sustain itself in the long term,” Simmonds explained. Routine tasks, however, will continue to be easier for AI to perform, and workers should accept that fact.
“Challenge yourself to walk away from the routine tasks and really focus on the non-routine,” Simmonds said.
The Future of Jobs Report from the World Economic Forum predicts that top skills in 2020 will include, among others:
These are all skills that are increasingly expected of marketers as the digital age continues to shape the industry. Simmonds recommended leveraging AI to help with mundane tasks so you can focus on developing these critical skills instead.
“The future is going to look like this,” he said, revealing a picture of Ironman. “Well, not exactly like this, but we will be working with AI in a similar way,” explaining that embracing new technologies and using it to enhance your work, rather than fearing it, is how people should view AI.
Reach out to us to talk about your strategy and goals.
Mariah Obiedzinski: I’m Mariah Obiedzinski, director of content services at Stamats. Joining me today is Sandra Fancher, chief innovation officer, and Joan Benson, associate vice president for digital and creative strategy.
Today, we’re talking about keywords. Every client always asks us for keywords, which got us to thinking, ‘Are keywords even relevant anymore? How have keywords changed? How has the use of them changed in website content and content marketing?’
So, Joan and Sandra, what are your thoughts on the history of keywords? Maybe going about 10 years back?
Joan Benson: Well, keywords used to be where it was at, right? This is what search engines looked for. They couldn’t really process language, so they would scan copy on a website or in something else and look for those hook words, those keywords.
But that is so old school now. It’s not really how the search engines work anymore. In part because, of course, then people who produce content started to stuff keywords into their content to try to game the system.
And the search engines then tried to get ahead of that. But eventually what happened is that the search engines became very good at natural language processing. So, they can understand what the sentences are. So, they don’t have to look for the keywords, which were just sort of these hooks in the content otherwise. They can actually process it.
And this is good both for people who produce content and for those of us who search for content because we can just type in our questions now. That’s how most people are. They’re asking questions of the search engines. And as we were talking the other day, now they’re actually simply asking them out loud.
I said, “type in the questions” and that’s the way I do most of my searching, is I type it in. But people who use Alexa or other voice-activated search devices, they just speak it out loud. They just say the question; they ask the question.
And because the search engine can process that question, they can then look for answers in content. And instead of looking for keywords, now the search engines are looking for answers.
Sandra Fancher: We have always, as humans, thought in questions and had problems, but because the search engines weren’t there, we changed our thought process to work with technology. Actually, like you said, dumbed ourselves down to keywords. And now the search engines have caught up.
There’s the proposals we see still are asking for the keywords. So, we need to jump back up, as humans, to how we use our search engines because they can handle our natural language and our natural thought.
So, when we see proposals that say, “How many keywords do we have,” that’s really not the proper type of question of scope that you want. It’s more around the type of content, the questions, the longtail—what are the problems we’re trying to solve? Not, “Give me a list of 50 keywords.”
Joan: Right. And you can use keywords as this sort of concept for the way people phrase their questions. You can translate this idea from being a specific set of words that we’re trying to get in there to the way people actually phrase their questions, and the words they use for that.
When I work in higher education, I often have to remind them that the 16-year-old searching for a college is not necessarily going to put in “undergraduate programs,” right? They’re going to say, “major, what can I major in?” They’re going to look for “dorms” not “residence halls.”
Sandra: So, you can still look at popularity of words, but more in context to the problem they’re trying to solve, like whether they’re looking to evaluate if there’s a fridge or there’s bathrooms in their individual rooms, or the pricing, or do they have dorms on campus?
Joan: Right. So, the keyword research can be helpful because it shows you what people are actually searching on and maybe what your competitors, what content they’re serving up that is responding to actual searches.
So, I think it’s still helpful to think about keywords as long as you think of that as the words that people are using when they’re searching for the content that you’re trying to deliver to them.
Because ultimately, that’s what you want. You want the content that you’re creating to connect with the users you’re trying to connect with. And so, you want it to work with the search engine.
Mariah: How do you respond, then, to clients who ask you, “Well, what is the search volume of this term? Or what’s our possibility of ranking for this term?” How do you reconcile that with what you just said, Joan, what people are searching for?
Joan: You, of course, do want to appear on the right search pages and you want to appear close enough to the top because nobody has the attention to keep scrolling for you. They’re not looking for you, they’re looking for the content.
My favorite infographic from the web, which is the periodic table of SEO success factors from Search Engine Land, which is a great blog on search factors. But anyway, one of the takeaways of this is that there are many factors that go into actually having search success, which is what you want. You want to show up in searches. And you want to show up near the top of searches.
And a single term is not going to do that. And ranking on a term is not going to do that.
Sandra: And what ranks for you might not rank the same for me because of all the algorithms of my history and your history and where I am sitting location-wise, so I think when I see a client say, “I went from position three to position one,” you might have done that for a specific set of audience, but not across the board.
So, you can’t just take that report as gold like you could in the past and report back. You have to kind of understand the whole universe.
And then also with Google snippets, when we talk about the need to show up, sometimes you’re not even going for the ranking, for the position, you’re going for that Google snippet. You want to be the answer in Google. And again, it comes back to questions. And if you’re only thinking about your ranking, you might be 10 down before it even gets to your first organic result because all the snippet pieces outrank even the Google rankings.
Joan: Right. And so, if you can actually answer their questions, you’re much more likely to be the Google snippet because you’re answering the questions that people come to their search box with.
In this periodic table, the most important single factor is content quality. And but also along there are “Have you looked at the words people are using? Have you done your research on that? And are you answering their questions?”
So, those are the key things; if you’re doing those things, and there’s so many other factors that go into search results. I think I know that as a user, as a search engine user, that where I am, that I get different results when I’m searching at an airport in New York or some place else, geolocation affects that.
My past searches affect that. When you look at this periodic table, you’ll also see there are a whole bunch of factors that are personal, that are off the page, that are out of your control. So, there are very many things that for ranking on one term…
Sandra: But it still comes back to good content that answers the user’s questions, not the institution’s questions. And we see that a lot. ‘Well, I’m answering this question, or that content is focused on internal users.’ This is not an intranet; this is the internet. But again, if you’re answering the user’s question, that’s really the best way to have an SEO strategy.
And years ago, YouTube started ranking really high. And now, Mariah, we’re seeing podcasts, which obviously we’re on one. Podcast is now a new way to rank high in Google Analytics. So, not only writing good content, but using the format that people want to consume the content.
Joan: Right. And providing content in multiple formats actually raises your ranking as well because they know that people want to consume in different media and in different venues. Sometimes you’ll want to watch the video, sometimes you’ll want to read the story.
Sandra: Right. And having the transcript on the video, because what is it, like 50 percent of the people watch video on Facebook with no sound. So, we have to have that transcript, again, all the different pieces. So, again, it comes down to the basics: good content, answering the question, and delivering it in the format that the user wants to consume it in multiple ways.
Joan: I often think of it as it’s almost a virtuous—it forces a virtuous approach to content. You want to actually serve your users. You create content that serves the users instead of your own institutional, self-serving ends. In the end, you want to serve the institution, absolutely. But you do that by serving the users.
Sandra: Serving the users. But that makes it hard. That means you have fresh content and you have to write content. You can’t necessarily pull over content from several years ago on your site.
Joan: Right. Yes.
Mariah: And I think it’s important, we’ve talked a lot about how to get people to your page, how to get people to the information they’re looking for. I think it’s always important for these content conversations to include a call-to-action strategy too. Because once you get them there, one of the ranking factors is, “How can you get through this page? Is this delivering what I want?”
And a way to tell that is whether they convert in some way. Did they look at the form you wanted them to look at? Did they click on the link? Did they watch the video?
Joan: Did they turn on the sound to watch the video?
Sandra: It’s always good when someone comes to you and says, “I want to put this content up.” Say, “What question would the user have in their mind that would get them to this page”’ And then, “What do you want them do once they get to this page?”
So, if you think of a page as just one step in a journey instead of the piece, that is really key to success of the conversion and SEO.
Joan: And as consumers, we need more content the bigger the question is. Right? So, if you’re trying to buy a pair of socks, you don’t need a lot of content. If you’re buying a car, you need more. If you’re buying a house, you need a whole lot more.
If you’re buying a college education, you need a lot of content. The next conversion is probably not, “Get them to apply and enroll in higher education.” It is to get them to look at the next piece of content.
Sandra: Consume more.
Joan: Consume more. Because that’s how they get to the conversion that you really want to count, is by getting them to consume more content, when you’re talking about complex decisions.
Sandra: Right.
Mariah: So, if you have an organization or if one of your clients is interested in really digging deep and working on their SEO strategy, what should be their next natural step to get some help from you?
Joan: It really depends what their challenges have been up to this point. Do they have trouble producing fresh content? We can help with that. Do they have trouble optimizing? Do they have trouble getting out of institution-speak and getting a voice that really speaks to users? We can help with that as well.
Sandra: Or as the marketing team, they understand where it needs to go, but they have a lot of change management issues, a lot of politics, a lot of pushback.
Sometimes we are that group that helps translate that and kind of takes the burden of telling the story of, “This is not written for you. This is not about your department. This is about the user.” So, we can really help on that, even when it’s change management. By audits, showing them a little bit of a before and after. Sometimes they’re like, “Oh, now I see it. Now I get why this sounds so much better. This would have a better outcome for the user.”
Joan: I’ve found in higher education, again, this is where I do most of my content work, actually doing readability scores on content helps higher education people understand…
Sandra: “But they’re all in higher education, so we should be writing to the 15th grade level.” Just kidding.
Joan: I have assessed copy that was at the 26th grade level and I had to explain, “Now, I know you’re trying to recruit graduate students, but nobody is at the 26th grade level.”
Sandra: Right. And it’s hard…
Joan: It’s hard to read.
Sandra: It just makes it hard. And it’s simple. You wouldn’t talk that way to someone.
Joan: And people don’t use search engines at their highest education level, right? We use search engines, we still use them fairly simply, we ask simple questions, or we ask exactly what we want. “How different is pecorino from parmesan? Can I use them in the same recipe?”
Mariah: “Tacos near me. Also, MBA programs.”
Joan: “MBA programs with good taco trucks.”
Mariah: Well, if you’re interested in getting some help with your content, with your SEO strategy, or with your CTA strategy, you can email Sandra at [email protected]. You can email Joan at [email protected]. And my last name is horrible, so you can email one of them and they can give you to me ([email protected]).
Also, we’ll have those links in our transcript, because that’s good SEO best practices. Thanks for joining us today on the Higher Ed Voices podcast.
Reach out to us to talk about your strategy and goals.
Shannon NIcholson X (formerly Twitter)
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Simon kicked off day two of the 2019 ContentTECH Summit in San Diego with a presentation about how marketers can create unforgettable content in today’s busy digital world.
When audiences are overloaded with content, how do we make our voices and messages not just heard, but also remembered?
According to Simon, marketers should alter these three features of highly forgettable content to strengthen their messaging and drive business results.
Creating content that does not attract attention will obviously result in forgettable messages. According to Simon, attention paves the way to memory. Knowing how people pay attention is the first step to creating memorable content.
Generally, people pay attention in four ways:
At ContentTECH, Simon shared that “working memory” is “attention plus memory.”
If you can get a user’s attention with an active, directed, rewarding message, the content will stay top-of-mind longer than more passive messaging. Adding familiarity, such as simple wording and descriptions are ways to do this.
Too much of the content out there today isn’t original and it starts to all look the same. For example: “_____ is the first choice of doctors for their own pain relief.” Is it Bayer? Motrin? Tylenol?
This kind of similar content can create gist memory, where your message can be skewed, or source confusion, where your message is attributed to another organization or brand.
To avoid unoriginal messaging, deviate from the pattern that the brain has learned to expect.
For example, our content marketing team at Stamats rarely asks subject matter experts to share basic information about the topic at hand.
Rather, we know our clients want unique and interesting content, so we discuss differentiators with clients instead. This approach spares readers from boring, same old information and improves the “standoutability” of the content.
According to Simon, it’s a myth that some people are more visual that others. She says we are all visual beings. That said, people can experience concrete concepts using the five senses, whereas using “abstract content” is something that gets people thinking outside the box.
The more concrete the visual is, the more likely we are to remember it, so abusing abstracts will not lead to memorable content. However, there is a balance to using both elements to build mental pictures in the minds of your audiences. According to Simon, using too much concrete messaging can make your content too generalized.
Knowing the ways people pay attention to your messaging and understanding the neuroscience behind what makes content memorable can give you leverage to produce content that will have a lasting impact on your audience.
Ready to discuss your goals and opportunities? Email our digital strategy team today.
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Included is the Social Media Live Checklist to download to make sure you don’t miss any steps.
Listen to the podcast:
[Start transcript]
Mariah Obiedzinski: I’m Mariah Obiedzinski, director of content services at Stamats. Joining me today is Jared Johnson, a Top 100 Digital Health Influencer, podcaster and keynote speaker, with more than a decade of experience in health care higher education.
Today, we’re discussing how schools of medicine can use live media to grow the school’s brand and encourage relevant authentic engagements with students, prospects, and the community.
Jared, in higher education, many markets avoid live media because of an overarching desire to produce perfect content. But that’s not the world their perspective students live in. Today’s medical students are social media native, so they grew up using that user-submitted live video, live audio, webinars, and chats.
So, as a social media influencer and video aficionado, what are your thoughts on the perfect media versus live media conflux?
Jared Johnson: Yeah, it’s a great question, kind of a great way to kick off this topic. You’re going to find that opinions on this keep varying. And, if you ask, a marketer’s answer is going to be different than somebody who’s in the target audience. Meaning marketers, we still do tend to be focused on that perfect—we’re used to a TV spot, or a radio spot, or a perfectly executed commercial of one kind or another. And we’ve kind of grown up in our careers with that mindset of “everything’s got to be perfect.” We have to have that controlled message and positioning statement involved in everything that we’re creating. So, all creative that we have going on, it’s gotta be perfect.
So, this doesn’t take away from that at all—the fact that you’re adding a live component to a strategy—at all. It just has to be recognized that you’re not going to have all of those elements. You know, probably if you’re talking 3 to 5 years ago, when a lot of live elements—when podcasts were really starting to make, kind of, they were coming back into the mainstream, when people realized that they could start listening to podcasts on their phone on their commute—they’ve come back into the mainstream, when live video was just getting going, when Facebook Live was just coming out, when Periscope and Meerkat and when you had all these new things kind of coming out.
A few years ago, I’d say it was more acceptable to just put anything out there live. And now it is that, I say, that the desire to have the next step of quality, so a little bit closer to perfection in your live video, that’s significant, that’s important. But don’t let that keep you from doing a live piece.
I’ve spoken to so many internal stakeholders as well as other fellow marketers who let the desire to be perfect just completely stop them from doing any live media because they said, “You know, what happens when I flub?” You know what I’m saying? “When I… when it doesn’t all come out right?” And we’re like, “Yeah, that’s kind of the idea.”
One of the reasons that live video and live streaming and live media, podcasting and audio, why these media channels have taken off is because they give a perception of authenticity. They give a recognition that these are not perfect people, these are people who are trying their best to convey a message or a status or some information. But we’re not always doing it perfectly.
And if all you see is that person behind the camera, you know, like we’re used to in a commercial where everything is worded perfectly, then we’ve actually learned that doesn’t convey the exact amount of trust that you’d expect.
It doesn’t help you trust an organization or brand is probably better way to say that. Here I am right now, trying to get—to put this idea out there, and I’m not perfectly expressing this in the same way either, and that’s okay. That’s the thought—it’s this recognition of what conveys trust at the end of the day. It’s not just this perfect message that we’re putting out there.
So, in terms of how that comes into play with a strategy, it really has to do with a mixture of both. I’d say if an organization has not attempted any kind of live media at all, then there’s the first step. Find one of these, latch on to one of these, and we’ll dig into this I think a little bit as we go on in terms of which of these channels might make more sense at particular times and what objectives you’re trying to achieve.
But if that hasn’t happened yet, then there’s your first step. Find one of these channels that is ‘dipping your toe in the water’ and learn from it. And then grow from it and be able to recognize that it’s not always going to be perfect.
Mariah: So, on the one hand, we have that really humanizing your organization, humanizing your university or college. And on the other hand, we have that, “Oh my gosh. What if something goes wrong and we look silly?” So, we always recommend creating a checklist to prepare for a live media event, you know, like a podcast, video, and so forth. Is that something that you usually recommend with the organizations you work with as well?
Jared: Oh, yes. Absolutely.
Mariah: So, if you are creating one of these “go live checklists” with one of your clients, what do you usually recommended that they include?
Jared: Well, you want to think about ways to reduce the margin for error while preserving a live nature of the media that you’re doing. So, in other words, some of the things we just described, there are things that are going to happen. Someone might tip over the tripod.
There are things you can’t control. But you want to reduce the number of those things that you can’t control. So, that might include things like preparing where to start and end the conversation. Simple things as addressing the logistics of it because, thinking behind the audio or behind the camera, essentially is somebody going to be addressing comments?
The idea is, hopefully, you’re getting some engagement, you’re getting people commenting during—if you’re talking live videos. So Facebook Live or an Instagram story or a live video on any other medium. Now, we’ve got them on LinkedIn, we’ve got them on Twitter. So, being able to prepare who’s going to do that.
Oftentimes it’s not the same person. It’s challenging if you try to have the same person keeping an eye on the shot and making sure all the technical aspects are still in line, that the audio didn’t just kick off or that kind of thing. And having that same person answering comments that are happening at the same time and then maybe showing those comments to whoever is on the camera or whoever is being interviewed, whoever is going to be answering those. So that can be a process.
And it’s a great idea to do a practice. So, we definitely recommend that on the checklist. We would sometimes, at least on Facebook. For instance, we found we needed a practice, like a closed or hidden Facebook group to practice the whole process. We would basically kick off, and we would do it before every single Facebook Live. We would try it and go live in this practice, hidden group first just moments before, you know, about 10 minutes before the actual live broadcast, just to make sure. Because just because the audio and video and everything worked last time doesn’t mean it’s going to work this time. So, you’re gonna have to do it every time. So, that’s one.
Framing the shot, if we’re talking about live video, absolutely. Are you talking horizontal or vertical? There’s still this tendency of people to just kind of go on mobile, and not thinking through it too much. Just a normal, run-of-the-mill person is going to think, just hold my phone up vertically and hit record because that’s kind of naturally how they’re set up. That’s literally where the button is or where the area is on your screen. Well, that’s doesn’t always necessarily lend itself to the best viewing experience. And so, yet, you have to think through that. Are you targeting something mobile versus desktop? So, framing the shot, what’s going to be behind the people? And what’s going to be in the shot.
There are other technical specifications. It’s as simple as is there a connection where you’re going to be? I’ve been involved in planning live streams, Facebook Lives, that turned out they were outdoors, and thankfully our team made the connection that there was no connection. It might not be the best place to try a live stream event! And in that case, there were a couple times where that happened. And we just ended up not doing them live, but then just posted them as a native Facebook video. Just wasn’t live. So, that’s important thing, though it and it didn’t occur to us at first on a couple of those.
So, literally testing the Wi-Fi connection where you are to make sure, so using the exact device you’re going to be using, using the exact connection you’re going to be using and just testing it. Don’t assume everything is going to work just because you’ve used it with a different device, or you used it, like I said, the previous week.
So, also knowing how long the shoot’s going to be. What our team found is, more often than not, the format that I’ve done the most is interviewing a health care provider about a disease state of some kind or a program at their institution. And that can go on really long sometimes. What we found, it typically took about 12 to 15 minutes to get the maximum audience on there before people really start noticing.
So, that’s the great thing and the challenge of live video is that you’re trying to capture people watching when and where they are. So, they’re not expecting it, which that actually leads to one of the other pieces on the checklist, which is to promote it.
Mariah: You can’t expect people to just tune in just because you have a live video going, for instance. Even if they like your organization, if they like your brand.
Jared: Yeah, they’re probably doing something else. And so, to expect them to just hop on because it’s you, well it depends. There’s a lot of factors in that. So, do some promotions. Throw some images out there. Maybe even have the subject matter expert out there, but on your LinkedIn, on your Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, wherever you’re going to be doing this, let people know maybe a week in advance, a couple days in advance, and then the day of. “Hey guys. Just reminding you, this is starting in an hour.” That kind of thing. That doesn’t reduce the spontaneous nature of the live media itself, but it gives you the opportunity to maximize who’s watching while it’s happening.
Mariah: To generate some excitement, too. Like the Twitter chat kind of methodology there. “Hey, it’s coming. It’s coming, it’s coming. Giving you advanced warning that you can clear your schedule, or you can be in a place where you can watch if you want to.”
Jared: Yeah. And I don’t think we can overstate that enough. Despite the fact that it’s spontaneous, you’ll find that you gotta give people enough warning to clear their calendar, like you said. That’s a great example. We’ve seen a lot of tweet chats that do that exact thing, and that’s one reason they’re successful. Doesn’t matter who’s on it, a live event doesn’t help as much if you don’t have people watching it live. And that’s really where the power of it can be.
So, yeah. All the pieces would be on the checklist, as well as preparing the subjects who are you going to be on camera or being interviewed on audio. Whoever is actually going to be talking, or presenting or being involved in it, prep them as much as you can. Have talking points available, even if it’s, like I said, it’s not a full script, but give them something to go on. Give them the intro or some cues they’ll be able to recognize. “Okay, here’s where I talk about this again.” Again, it’s a lot of preparation, but it comes off very well when it’s executed right.
Mariah: Yeah. And I think you brought up the good point earlier, too, is regardless of the success of your first live video, a lot of platforms offer the opportunity to save that video down, and then you can use it later as B-roll or as social media snippets here and there. If it was an exceptionally good and clean shot, you can use it for embeds into your blogs or e-newsletters. So, a lot of different modalities there, which we found really can help with stakeholder buy in.
And as you know, you can have the most prepared marketing team. You can have the most prepared subject matter experts, and all it takes is one person higher up in the food chain to just say, “Nope, we’re not doing this.”
A lot of leaders in colleges and universities are really driven by data. So, what are some of those key metrics, Jared, that marketers can think about it and gather for baselines to prove the success of live media, even if they haven’t really done any before?
It was interesting. We would have 5 to 8 times as many people watching it afterwards. So, it just said to us that there was a lot more life to the live event then we realized.
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Mariah: Right. We’ve seen similar numbers here. We just did a live panel discussion event last month, in February 2019. Similar results. We got pretty good engagement during, a good local following, and then afterward, like you said, it kind of exploded.
So, we followed that same “create once, publish everywhere” model that you just mentioned. You post it up once, and you break it out into all of those different, relevant pieces and really keep it going. Stakeholders will tend to be a little bit more, at least in my experience, likely to let you do that or give you their blessing when they know that they’re going to get some life out of it. All of that investment wasn’t just for a 10-minute video spot or a 10-minute podcast.
Jared: Right. Yeah, exactly.
Mariah: You mentioned a couple of different kinds of planned live media things, like scheduled chats, scheduled video panels, scheduled podcasts. What are some of those engaging events or maybe newsworthy topics that teams should consider on campus that could be suited for live media kind of on the fly?
Jared: So, I would think most people would agree with this who have been involved in live media events. The ones that get the most engagement, more often than not, are those that provide you access that you don’t typically have.
So, think of a concert experience, right? So, you bought a ticket to a music concert, rock concert, rap concert, and you don’t typically get access to the artist, you don’t typically get that backstage pass experience unless you upgrade your tickets. There might be a VIP-type experience where you get to go meet the artist beforehand, and they even get to play a song for you. You get a signed poster, you get a picture with them. But it’s that VIP experience that’s sold separately, and only a few people get that for each concert date.
So, what you’re trying to do is kind of provide that same type of VIP experience, which is that backstage access. Think about those within your organization, the typical person who follows you and likes you and has engaged with your brand in one way or another. Think about, what type of access do they want? Who do they wish they could talk to? What kind of questions do they wish they could ask somebody who they typically wouldn’t get to see? And it might be somebody who isn’t normally the person responding on social media.
So, that’s typically going to be someone in a leadership position, somebody who’s in an influential position within the organization. How can you provide that kind of VIP experience to them? So, there’s a starting point for who you would have on camera. “Hey, today we’re with our CEO. Hey today we’re with our founder. Today, we’re with our rock star professor who everyone loves this guy.” Think about who those people are and then the topics—same thing.
But topics people are talking about already. And that’s as simple as going through—you talked about data before. Here’s where data comes in, and it’s not necessarily the numbers part. It’s the qualitative data. If you’re not regularly looking at the comments that are coming in on your social media channels, what messages are coming in, what questions people are asking, and what they’re asking about, then there’s your quickest way to come up with your topics right there.
And it’s going to be different for everybody. But it might not be what you expect. Most of the time, it’s probably not the things that you think people are asking about unless you’re in there constantly, on a weekly or at least a monthly basis, reading through what people are asking you about. A lot of times that might be getting with your digital team if you don’t have that kind of access. And maybe that’s a report that’s hopefully being shared within your organization to begin with. But that’s going to tell you a great deal, better than what I could.
I can give you some suggestions. Again, they have more to do with who you’re speaking with, who is the person being interviewed in your live media event, than what they’re talking about. It could be anything that has to do with, a bit of a somber example, say if a mass shooting happened. “Hey guys, listen. We’re going to do this quick little thing like something really hard, something really horrible just happened. We want to talk to you guys about this.”
And you can almost have like a Town Hall type experience. “Hey guys, we just want to be real, we just want to let everyone know this is a terrible thing that happened. Let’s talk about it, let’s get this out in the open. We’re here. We don’t have all the answers.” That kind of authentic connection really can create an entirely new audience for you. And you’re not doing it for that. You’re doing it to actually show people there are humans behind the brand, that we can see digitally. I think that’s one of the pieces of your live strategy that you want to make sure people understand. You’re trying to create those human connections.
So, when we come back to topics, that might be a good place to start. What’s making the news right then? What are people asking your organization? There are certain parts of higher ed people are always going to be asking about. They’re always going to be asking about how they pay for it. They’re going to be asking about how they can access it. How do they compare one organization to another? Their experience as a student, certain parts of it from enrollment to everything to do with your classes. There are so many questions that your stakeholders have. There’s some quick and easy ways to think through that.
Mariah: And I think that this brings up another good point that we hear often, too, is you can’t discount the value of user-submitted content, too. Especially on things like Instagram and Facebook and Twitter, where college students might be out there videotaping something that happens on campus that maybe your media team didn’t know was happening. Or, you would really like to emphasize—all you have to do is reach out. “Hey, student. Can we use your video? Can we use your audio and share that across our channels?” And really, again, like you said, humanizing and making that human connection with that individual student and with the community at large.
Jared: Yeah. That was a really good way of kind of framing that. At the end of the day, what’s your goal with this live media? If it is part of a series, if it is part of an ongoing show or program, then it’s a little easier to answer this on a one on basis. It’s when you’re looking at one event at a time, that you haven’t ever done an Instagram story before or Facebook Live program before, that you’re going to have to think through this a little bit clearer and recognize that nothing is going to really happen right away.
But you know, like you were just saying, you just think through what’s going to happen as a result. What do you want to happen? There’s always going to be an opportunity to explore topics that you haven’t before.
Mariah: Right. Absolutely. Now, when you’re thinking about Jared and when Jared is not at work, what are some of the channels that you like to go to to engage with live media from some of your favorite organizations and brands?
Jared: What I used to do, I mean I used to be on Twitter a lot. I will tell you, since the beginning of this year, I’ve I focused more on LinkedIn because I’ve seen more live videos on LinkedIn because they just enabled that feature for everybody recently. And I can’t recall. It seemed like it was somewhere last year. But LinkedIn recently made that feature available to everybody.
And it seemed like after the New Year, this year, that I have seen for the first few weeks of the year, I was seeing a new one every week and I love it. I love the authentic nature. There’s a lot of B2B knowledge sharing that’s happening there. And, just overall, like business and career advice that’s happening there. I think it’s cool. I think it’s awesome. I love it. So, I’m actually spending more time there because I’m just seeing what types of things people are talking about there.
And a lot of it has to do with, at the end of the day, LinkedIn might be a recruiting tool, but it’s very much a business and career development opportunity.
Mariah: I would totally agree, and we’ve seen a lot of organizations really jumping in with LinkedIn as well, thinking about that higher ed marketing, where you’re talking about graduate students and master’s programs. These are working professionals who already out there on LinkedIn, probably are already engaged with or are kind of poking around, looking at your brand. So, capturing them in that moment. And I’ll be quite honest, LinkedIn really is the only place that I look at video, because it has really a nice transcription features and, captioning features rather, has those really nice captioning features that just make it easy to engage on your phone when you’re sitting at the bus stop or what have you, without having to necessarily listen.
Jared: Yeah. That’s key. So, I guess that’s one reason why I’ve been spending time there as well. Facebook Live, I think it’s been around long enough. It totally depends on who it is that’s on it. I don’t really spend as much time on it as I used to.
The Instagram stories, why I keep coming back to that is that there’s such a potential there. I think there’s still a stigma for those who have not lived there in Instagram to think that it’s really not a B2B player, maybe not a higher ed player. But I’m telling you, almost everyone that you would target as somebody to be involved with your organization probably is on Instagram. And who are they looking at the most? Where are they spending most of their time is with the stories of those who are publishing on a regular basis. And by regular, I mean, like, daily.
It’s very common for those if they don’t publish almost every day that they almost get lost and it’s crazy. But there are, there’s so many who just excel at it, and it doesn’t have to be totally scripted and doesn’t have to be very long, either. It can be a couple of minutes. But the fact that somebody blogs on Instagram, and they’re like, “Okay, good. Mariah’s on there. Good. She’s got another story today.” It almost doesn’t even matter what it is, it’s crazy the amount of attention spent there.
So, I’m digging in there, and what’s interesting is, I think we even touched on this a little bit in our last interview, was that there are so many med students who are on there—and they’re not talking about med school. Some are, but they’re making it known. “I’m a third-year, I’m a fourth-year med student. I’m a resident. Here’s my status.” But then they’re talking about fashion, they’re talking about their pets, they’re talking about their travel, they’re talking about their relationships. And there are so many out there. So, if anyone wants a great place to start, I would always recommend that. I think that’s only going to keep growing.
Mariah: Really wonderful outlet, too, for university and colleges to engage with those students to show their support, to show that they care about them as a human person and not just as, “Jane Smith, med student.” She is “Jane Smith, avid surfer, or cat mom” or whatever that might be, and really developing that helps to carry them, not only through their career because, as we all know, medical school is incredibly stressful and difficult and time consuming. Knowing that your organization really cares about you personally has just got to bear so much weight with those students.
Jared: Absolutely.
Mariah: Well, thank you so much, Jared, for your time today. And please feel free to connect with us if you ever have any questions about getting started with live media. Just go to stamats.com and get ahold of us there. Thanks for listening today.
[End transcript]
Want more from Jared Johnson? Read this next: How Medical Schools Can Leverage Social Media Influencers
Reach out to us to talk about your strategy and goals.
Hours upon hours are invested into content that we hope people will read. Certainly, the hours invested never translate to the same amount of reading time, but sometimes organizations make it harder than it should be.
That certainly is true when it comes to content that is served on mobile devices. I still see a lot of content out there that isn’t optimized for mobile. That includes:
Let’s talk about how we can easily address readability issues of gated content and infographics from the content creation phase!
Infographics that work on mobile are actually not that difficult to produce. But we have to remember some things:
This of course means that we have to cut words like we are running out of them. Welcome to being an editor! An editor mentor once told me: “The job of editors is to get 10 pounds of content into a 5-pound bag.” Same concept applies.
Gated content is another content type that often doesn’t work on mobile devices. Maybe that’s okay when most of an audience is on desktop, but how common is that? People use their phones for work and personal internet tasks. For example, I write most of my blog posts on mobile devices.
But yet, I still see sign up forms that don’t work on mobile devices. Sometimes they jump around so much there’s no way to fill them out! Ugh. Contact our UX team now to get help with that.
Then, once it’s filled out, you get a well-designed but basically unreadable 3-column PDF. That’s not how it has to be. The following user experience makes the content consumption happen for users on all devices:
Gated content, of course, only works when we drive traffic to it! Step 1 matters. In the above user flow, the reader gets pushed from a high-performing article. That’s one way to do it. Others include directing people from:
The example above is from Buildings.com – where we share content for building owners and facility managers – but this strategy can be used across many industries and as part of content marketing and demand gen programs.
The programs where I’ve seen gated content perform best incorporate a mix of the above tactics. That takes time, resources, and money! Why let it go to waste by serving readers content they can’t access? Make sure consumers can read the content you spend time creating.
Reach out to us to talk about your strategy and goals.
The latest marketing trends are important but search engines can change their algorithms overnight. It can be tough to keep up if you’re not paying attention. If you fail to stay on top of SEO and search changes, you may fall to the second page of search results, banished from all ROI clicks. To stay relevant and competitive use these #10 SEO tips.
Think like a user and search for your programs, admissions department, or even an event. Do the right results come up? This is one of the best ways to determine if you need an SEO strategy. From there, you can identify keywords and phrases to actively monitor and develop strategies for. Remember, since many users search using voice commands, include phrases and questions in your tests.
Your HTML title serves two purposes: First, it can help indicate your physical location, such as Denver, Colorado. If a prospective student searches for a college program without indicating a location, Google will try to serve local classes first. It can also help rankings when looking for programs in Denver. Second, it’s the title shown in search results. Ranking #1 is not the only factor; your title needs to confirm to the user that clicking to the site will be valuable. If you have multiple cities or locations, develop an SEO strategy to manage that.
Without you even knowing it, you could be telling Google you have multiple sites (www.yoururl.com, yoururl.com, with and without https). Remember, you should have one main site with the rest redirecting to it. You can test this by typing in the four combinations previously listed. Do three of them redirect to one master? Now, do you have any other URLs that the site is known as? Does each of those also redirect?
Switching your HTTP to a security protocol can boost your search engine rankings. In 2014, Google announced that HTTPS is a ranking factor in its search algorithm. Perform any type of Google search and you’ll notice that nearly all of the Page 1 results begin with an HTTPS URL. Google has also indicated that a HTTPS site can serve as a tie-breaker between two sites offering similar information.
To give your website a faster load speed, optimize all photos. If you have a content management system, I strongly recommend minimizing the use of plugins. And when possible, code styles into the theme and create other CSS elements to carry out your brand.
Test your website speed by using one of the following free resources:
Google MyBusiness (GMB) is a free listing from Google that business can use to manage their company’s information across Google Search and Google Maps. Keeping your business information—specifically your name, address and phone number (NAP)—accurate and up to date is crucial if you want potential customers to find your company since it provides Google with the correct information to display.
Through an algorithm, Google uses hundreds of factors to determine what sites show up in local search results. Here are a few of the primary ones:
Make sure you’re monitoring your reviews and all user questions and answers. Keep information current and feature enrollment links and texting tools so users can contact you.
Did You Know? According to Google, 97% of consumers search for local products and services, but only 37% of businesses have claimed a Google My Business local business listing on a search engine.
Robot.txt is often overlooked, but it’s the vital link between your website getting indexed and receiving strong traffic. Within your robots.txt file you have the ability to disallow critical information you do not want Google to find and index.
Tip: Robots.txt can be accidently copied from an internal staging server that would unintentionally tell Google not to index your site. Check this frequently and after every major deployment or upgrade. Here’s the basic format:
Learn more about creating your robots.txt from Google.
Google Webmaster Tools is free online software to help you track your web page index results, keyword analytics, sitemaps and more.
The word “sitemap” can be confusing because it’s used to describe several different, yet important elements of a website. On your site, you should have a hidden XML sitemap page. This page, not visible in site search or the navigation, is designed as a tool to help search engines. Once you submit your sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools, Google will crawl your website using its many bots and create a text outline of the site (also known has a sitemap). You can also use free online XML sitemap generators such as XML Sitemaps. Remember, you don’t want to submit utility pages and you can also create sub category sitemap pages.
Meta descriptions provide concise summaries of webpages that are used by the reader to determine which search result to click. The closer the result matches the original user’s intent, the higher the chance of a successful click and engagement. These short descriptions appear underneath the blue clickable links in a search engine results page (SERP). However, depending on a user’s query, Google may pull meta description text from other areas of your page in an attempt to better answer the searcher’s query.
Here are two of the of the most important metadata guidelines:
Did You Know? In 2009, Google announced that neither meta descriptions nor meta keywords factor into its ranking algorithms for web search.
Reach out to us to talk about your strategy and goals.