Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

In 2015, there was a marked increase in the popularity of brand videos on YouTube. In 2016, brands took social video storytelling to another level, not only on YouTube, but on Facebook and Instagram as well, and were rewarded for their efforts.

That’s according to social media analytics company Unmetric, which tracked social campaigns throughout the year as it did in 2015 to determine which ones performed best in terms of engagement.

"Videos have moved from being just reposts of 30-second TV spots to long-form storytelling, with the popular Nike Football post being nearly six minutes long," Unmetric CEO and co-founder Lux Narayan told Adweek. "This year really showed that there's an appetite and attention span for longer branded content if it's authentic and tells a story that resonates well with people, not merely as consumers but universally as humans."

Unmetric studies Twitter, Facebook and Instagram data to determine an engagement score for brand posts of zero to 1,000. The engagement score is a weighted measurement based on the idea that some metrics like shares and retweets have more value for brands than others such as likes and favorites. For YouTube, the company uses a different method for measuring the successfulness of a campaign. There is no engagement score, but likes and how quickly a video accumulates them are important factors. It also uses a combination of its own algorithms and human insights to determine overall engagement....

...Brands are answering the call to create more value for customers by publishing news and content marketing. In fact, 86% of BtoC and 91% of BtoB organizations are now using content marketing tactics. As companies adopt a publisher model of content and media creation, many are beginning to rival the reach and influence of the publications in their industry.

Amex OPEN Forum and General Mills’ Tablespoon are great examples of this. What do these changes mean for Public Relations and Communications professionals? How is PR competitively positioned compared to marketing and advertising in a content centric web? Read on for answers to these questions and more.

By providing news content that traditional sources are not, brands are creating new connections with their communities and customers. While much of content marketing falls under the realm of corporate marketing, the expertise in messaging, content creation and media relations that many Public Relations professionals bring to the table can offer a competitive advantage in 3 key areas...

Delivering a positive user experience online through quality content and quality web assets creates a quality outcome for the brand.

...Google’s on-going quest appears to be to filter out the attempted nonsense by some marketers so that the user search experience produces valuable results. Poor search marketing and editorial practices are disenfranchised to this objective. Audiences are demanding it.

As a marketer, failure to deliver valuable content will ensure that Google and your audience will tune you out or worse, turn you off. Good content delivers a relevant connection that invokes a response through humor, shock, mystery, emotion and/or just plain valuable knowledge. My favorite article on quality content was written by Brad Shore with the Content Marketing Institute. He identifies quality content as being “jargon-free, written in an appropriate voice and style, stimulates a response and is properly structured.”

More importantly, he identifies the business value of quality content by emphasizing that it:

- Elevates the brand Increase brand awareness

- Helps generate leads and referrals Increases customer loyalty

- Differentiates your business in a powerful way...