MARKETING
Time To Get Serious About Its Content Marketing Promise?
TikTok is a player.
With over 1 billion active users who spend about 20 hours a month watching videos on the platform, TikTok has a huge audience hooked on its content.
That audience spent $824 million through the platform in the fourth quarter of 2021 alone. And even a Google executive recognizes the platform’s power, estimating that 40% of Gen Z use TikTok as a search engine to find things like places to eat.
So, the question isn’t whether TikTok is a good platform for content marketing. The question is whether TikTok is a good platform for your brand.
But there’s another question to consider whether you participate on TikTok or not: How does the popularity of TikTok’s short-form videos affect our audience’s content expectations and preferences?
We asked this question of the presenters at Content Marketing World 2022. They shared their thoughts on TikTok’s direct and indirect impact – and they didn’t dance around the question.
Are @tiktok_us’s short-form #videos reshaping #content expectations and preferences? #CMWorld speakers share their thoughts with @AnnGynn via @CMIContent. Click To Tweet
HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:
Take it as a reminder to get real
At its core, TikTok is emblematic of an overarching trend in which audience tastes – including but not limited to Gen Z – are fundamentally changing.
How and what does that mean? Audiences are increasingly rejecting the overly curated, picture-perfect imagery that had dominated platforms like Instagram. Users crave authenticity, creativity, humor, and perspective – characteristics now synonymous with TikTok (and ostensibly rewarded by its algorithm.)
For a real-world example, look no further than Duolingo’s TikTok account, driven by their truly brilliant social media manager Zaria Parvez. By giving her the autonomy to experiment and push boundaries, Duolingo has become one of the most successful brands on the platform. – Michael Bordieri, senior content solutions consultant, LinkedIn
Pick a lane
Use it (if your customers are there) or lose it (if they are primarily elsewhere). Myth: You have to be everywhere. Reality: You only have to be in the right places – and be good when you are in those places. – Kate Bradley Chernis, co-founder and CEO, Lately
Experience the impact
Even if your organization is not on TikTok today, it will be in the near future. Even if you don’t believe me, TikTok is already having a huge impact on content marketing in two different ways.
First, unless you’ve been sleeping under a rock (or don’t have kids), TikTok is becoming the default search engine for Gen Z. While Boomers have Google and millennials have YouTube, Gen Z is further adapting their content consumption trends. With more and more eyeballs going to TikTok searching for solutions, and with the basic tenet of content marketing about being seen everywhere, TikTok simply can’t be ignored anymore.
The other reason is that TikTok is truly impacting social media marketing, the primary place where content marketers distribute content. Even if your organization is not on TikTok, your push towards creating more Instagram Reels and potentially venturing into YouTube Shorts is thanks to TikTok’s emergence and increasing impact on how we consume content. – Neal Schaffer, president, PDCA Social
Adopt a search and repurpose mentality
TikTok – and all social media – can have a great impact on your content marketing. More and more searches for information happen on social platforms, and your content should be optimized to answer those queries. Digital natives (influencers, brand fans, and customers) – if they’re loving your product or service (or hating it) – will post about it on social. User-generated content is massive.
TikTok itself is a great platform for repurposing some of your best content in creative ways, but please, please, make sure someone who knows TikTok and authentic engagement creates the content. – Jenn VandeZande, editor-in-chief, SAP Customer Experience
Welcome the previously inaccessible
TikTok has opened up a whole new creator economy that reaches an audience that isn’t always accessible through more traditional channels. Content marketers should embrace TikTok if their audience spends time there.
But, most importantly – they shouldn’t just be making their own content on their own channel. Harnessing the authenticity and power of TikTok creators to speak genuinely about your brand can do wonders. This means you need to let go of some control. But if you do it right, everyone wins. – Inbar Yagur, director of content and product marketing, Lusha
Don’t just make your own @tiktok_us #content. Harness the authenticity and power of TikTok creators for your brand, says @Content_Fairy via @AnnGynn @CMIContent. #CMWorld Click To Tweet
Say hi to all ages, but don’t force it
The hashtag #TikTokTaughtMe has more than 6 billion views on TikTok. While TikTok is known for dance crazes and viral sounds, more brands find a captive audience for their content marketing on the platform. It is not just for teens and young adults. It’s becoming a go-to place for people to find information that is educational, too.
But brands need to be careful how they implement the trends on TikTok. Videos need to be natural and not forced. Many brands have even assigned or hired specific individuals to be their face on the platform. – Andi Robinson, global digital content marketing, Corteva Agriscience
Experience the best or the worst
It depends on how much of your audience is on TikTok and if it’s an appropriate channel for your brand. Most people will say it is. For them, it’s directly diverting attention and resources away from the more funnel-driven content activities that help produce business results. But the awareness and engagement that can derive from smart TikTok content may also pour gasoline on your content marketing fire. Depending on the business and the savvy of your content team, TikTok could be the best thing affecting your effort. It could also be the worst. – Jason Falls, senior influence strategist, Cornett
Consider the return (or lack thereof)
What’s TikTok? Show me the ROI from any program in TikTok (or Snapchat, for that matter.) – Michael Brenner, CEO, Marketing Insider Group
Get good at short-form stories
TikTok directly affects content marketing because it sets the bar high for short-form content. It puts fans at the center and is all about engagement. I can dissect a five-second TikTok for a half hour in a workshop because it is rich in storytelling. There’s no room for fluff. It’s a beautiful distillation of what we all need to achieve in all our content, even if we’ve been allowed to waffle on with long formats. It’s a joy peddler, and we all need more of that in our content marketing teams. – Jon Burkhart, founder, TBC Global Limited
Spin a sticky web
TikTok is rapidly growing and maybe sticker than Spiderman for multigenerational audiences. Users spend over 50 minutes on the app each day watching and creating new trends, which is taking time and eyeballs away from other channels.
TikTok has overthrown Facebook and Twitter on my phone and even has me trying the silliest trends to see what it’s like. In my view, it’s one of the best user-generated platforms in the market right now and shows no signs of slowing down. Competition is high, and content marketers will have to be more creative to recapture some of their audience’s time if their brand is not Tik Tok compatible. – Karen McFarlane, chief marketing officer, LetterShop
@tiktok_us may be stickier than Spiderman for multigenerational audiences, says @KarenMcFarlane via @AnnGynn @CMIContent. #ContentMarketing #CMWorld Click To Tweet
Get creative
TikTok is forcing everyone to be some kind of creative. This may be as a talking head or an editor. You are forced to learn and adapt in some type of capacity. This also blurs the line of edutainment. – Michelle Ngome, founder and executive director, African American Marketing Association
Speed it up
Have a conversation with someone under 25, and you’ll realize how much TikTok affects content marketing. “I saw it on TikTok” is a common phrase. Listen to the TikTok channel on SiriusXM and notice how many songs are sped-up versions – two to three times the normal speed of the song. Even Saturday Night Live has skits about TikTok.
The TikTok generation wants fast, easily consumable content that helps them do something. As TikTok users increasingly become that employee researching a B2B purchase, think about how they want to consume information. It’s not a 20-page e-book audience. Short, useful information is the new style for early-stage product research. – Penny Gralewski, senior director, product and portfolio marketing, DataRobot
Develop relationships
TikTok has mastered the art of rapid influencer creation. So, if there’s an untapped opportunity, it might be understanding how to build deeper, longer-term relationships with the influencers and micro-influencers you discover on TikTok. – Andrew Davis, author and keynote speaker, Monumental Shift
Be there
You need to have a plan for TikTok. It’s no longer a platform that can be ignored. – Meg Coffey, managing director, Coffey & Tea
Appreciate the potential
TikTok has proven how powerful video content can be and reinforced many best practices when creating video content. Not every brand should be on TikTok – and most brands shouldn’t be on TikTok unless they are in a consumer-facing space with a Gen Z audience.
However, content marketers across industries should spend some time on TikTok to see how to craft engaging short-form videos, examples of how to overlay text and captions, and inspiration to create fun video content. – Erika Heald, founder, lead consultant, Erika Heald Marketing Consulting
Content marketers should spend time on @tiktok_us to see how to craft engaging short-form #videos, says @SFerika via @AnnGynn @CMIContent. #CMWorld Click To Tweet
Go there for big promotion, but don’t expect trust
It’s a place to make very short-form videos visible to big, diverse groups of people. If short videos can convey something meaningful for your brand, and if you want to reach large, diverse groups of people, it could be a promotion channel.
If you need to build trust, you need longer form content. If you want to be efficient, you need smaller, more targeted audiences. You need account-based marketing (ABM). TikTok is the polar opposite of ABM. – Andy Crestodina, co-founder and chief marketing officer, Orbit Media Studios
If you want to be efficient, you need smaller, targeted audiences. @tiktok_us is the opposite of ABM, says @crestodina via @CMIContent. #CMWorld Click To Tweet
Know your content competitors
Anything that alters our expectations for online content affects content marketing. When it comes to the attention of our audience, we’re not competing only with our business competitors. We’re competing with everything they read or look at, or listen to online, including TikTok. People expect brands to respect their time and earn their attention by educating and even entertaining them with our content—even content that has a business purpose. – Monica Norton, head of content marketing, Yelp
Have a plan
TikTok can be a distribution channel for content if the brand’s audience is there and if there is a dedicated strategy. No brand should launch a distribution channel without dedicated management of that channel, though, including a strategy and KPIs to measure its effectiveness over time. – Tracey Wallace, director of content strategy, Klaviyo
Think and think again
Everyone recognizes the power and effectiveness of the TikTok algorithm. Any content marketer that isn’t at least exploring ways to leverage that channel is leaving revenue on the table. I’m not saying that every brand should have a channel on TikTok, but every brand should at least be thinking about how they can leverage TikTok. – Brian Piper, director of content strategy and assessment, University of Rochester
See short-form potential
Without a doubt, TikTok has highlighted the importance of short-form video across the content marketing board. But it doesn’t mean content marketers should go all-in on creating just this type of content for one platform only.
Instead, TikTok is inspiring more creative thought about how short-form video can become part of your overall content strategy and how you can streamline its creation. Perhaps you want to lead with creating short-form videos for multiple channels (e.g., TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube shorts), or maybe you want to create longer-form videos and repurpose them into short-form videos. Video is the most versatile content format, so create with repurposing in mind, and your investment will go far. – Amy Woods, founder and CEO, Content 10x
Is the time right for your brand?
None of these experts can tell you whether your brand should be on TikTok. But their input should better prepare you to answer the question.
And even if the answer is no, don’t disregard the popular platform. Instead, continue to monitor its impact on content creation overall. Authentic, short-form content will be a strong player for years to come.
MORE ADVICE FROM CMWORLD 2022 SPEAKERS:
Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute
MARKETING
YouTube Ad Specs, Sizes, and Examples [2024 Update]
Introduction
With billions of users each month, YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine and top website for video content. This makes it a great place for advertising. To succeed, advertisers need to follow the correct YouTube ad specifications. These rules help your ad reach more viewers, increasing the chance of gaining new customers and boosting brand awareness.
Types of YouTube Ads
Video Ads
- Description: These play before, during, or after a YouTube video on computers or mobile devices.
- Types:
- In-stream ads: Can be skippable or non-skippable.
- Bumper ads: Non-skippable, short ads that play before, during, or after a video.
Display Ads
- Description: These appear in different spots on YouTube and usually use text or static images.
- Note: YouTube does not support display image ads directly on its app, but these can be targeted to YouTube.com through Google Display Network (GDN).
Companion Banners
- Description: Appears to the right of the YouTube player on desktop.
- Requirement: Must be purchased alongside In-stream ads, Bumper ads, or In-feed ads.
In-feed Ads
- Description: Resemble videos with images, headlines, and text. They link to a public or unlisted YouTube video.
Outstream Ads
- Description: Mobile-only video ads that play outside of YouTube, on websites and apps within the Google video partner network.
Masthead Ads
- Description: Premium, high-visibility banner ads displayed at the top of the YouTube homepage for both desktop and mobile users.
YouTube Ad Specs by Type
Skippable In-stream Video Ads
- Placement: Before, during, or after a YouTube video.
- Resolution:
- Horizontal: 1920 x 1080px
- Vertical: 1080 x 1920px
- Square: 1080 x 1080px
- Aspect Ratio:
- Horizontal: 16:9
- Vertical: 9:16
- Square: 1:1
- Length:
- Awareness: 15-20 seconds
- Consideration: 2-3 minutes
- Action: 15-20 seconds
Non-skippable In-stream Video Ads
- Description: Must be watched completely before the main video.
- Length: 15 seconds (or 20 seconds in certain markets).
- Resolution:
- Horizontal: 1920 x 1080px
- Vertical: 1080 x 1920px
- Square: 1080 x 1080px
- Aspect Ratio:
- Horizontal: 16:9
- Vertical: 9:16
- Square: 1:1
Bumper Ads
- Length: Maximum 6 seconds.
- File Format: MP4, Quicktime, AVI, ASF, Windows Media, or MPEG.
- Resolution:
- Horizontal: 640 x 360px
- Vertical: 480 x 360px
In-feed Ads
- Description: Show alongside YouTube content, like search results or the Home feed.
- Resolution:
- Horizontal: 1920 x 1080px
- Vertical: 1080 x 1920px
- Square: 1080 x 1080px
- Aspect Ratio:
- Horizontal: 16:9
- Square: 1:1
- Length:
- Awareness: 15-20 seconds
- Consideration: 2-3 minutes
- Headline/Description:
- Headline: Up to 2 lines, 40 characters per line
- Description: Up to 2 lines, 35 characters per line
Display Ads
- Description: Static images or animated media that appear on YouTube next to video suggestions, in search results, or on the homepage.
- Image Size: 300×60 pixels.
- File Type: GIF, JPG, PNG.
- File Size: Max 150KB.
- Max Animation Length: 30 seconds.
Outstream Ads
- Description: Mobile-only video ads that appear on websites and apps within the Google video partner network, not on YouTube itself.
- Logo Specs:
- Square: 1:1 (200 x 200px).
- File Type: JPG, GIF, PNG.
- Max Size: 200KB.
Masthead Ads
- Description: High-visibility ads at the top of the YouTube homepage.
- Resolution: 1920 x 1080 or higher.
- File Type: JPG or PNG (without transparency).
Conclusion
YouTube offers a variety of ad formats to reach audiences effectively in 2024. Whether you want to build brand awareness, drive conversions, or target specific demographics, YouTube provides a dynamic platform for your advertising needs. Always follow Google’s advertising policies and the technical ad specs to ensure your ads perform their best. Ready to start using YouTube ads? Contact us today to get started!
MARKETING
Why We Are Always ‘Clicking to Buy’, According to Psychologists
Amazon pillows.
MARKETING
A deeper dive into data, personalization and Copilots
Salesforce launched a collection of new, generative AI-related products at Connections in Chicago this week. They included new Einstein Copilots for marketers and merchants and Einstein Personalization.
To better understand, not only the potential impact of the new products, but the evolving Salesforce architecture, we sat down with Bobby Jania, CMO, Marketing Cloud.
Dig deeper: Salesforce piles on the Einstein Copilots
Salesforce’s evolving architecture
It’s hard to deny that Salesforce likes coming up with new names for platforms and products (what happened to Customer 360?) and this can sometimes make the observer wonder if something is brand new, or old but with a brand new name. In particular, what exactly is Einstein 1 and how is it related to Salesforce Data Cloud?
“Data Cloud is built on the Einstein 1 platform,” Jania explained. “The Einstein 1 platform is our entire Salesforce platform and that includes products like Sales Cloud, Service Cloud — that it includes the original idea of Salesforce not just being in the cloud, but being multi-tenancy.”
Data Cloud — not an acquisition, of course — was built natively on that platform. It was the first product built on Hyperforce, Salesforce’s new cloud infrastructure architecture. “Since Data Cloud was on what we now call the Einstein 1 platform from Day One, it has always natively connected to, and been able to read anything in Sales Cloud, Service Cloud [and so on]. On top of that, we can now bring in, not only structured but unstructured data.”
That’s a significant progression from the position, several years ago, when Salesforce had stitched together a platform around various acquisitions (ExactTarget, for example) that didn’t necessarily talk to each other.
“At times, what we would do is have a kind of behind-the-scenes flow where data from one product could be moved into another product,” said Jania, “but in many of those cases the data would then be in both, whereas now the data is in Data Cloud. Tableau will run natively off Data Cloud; Commerce Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud — they’re all going to the same operational customer profile.” They’re not copying the data from Data Cloud, Jania confirmed.
Another thing to know is tit’s possible for Salesforce customers to import their own datasets into Data Cloud. “We wanted to create a federated data model,” said Jania. “If you’re using Snowflake, for example, we more or less virtually sit on your data lake. The value we add is that we will look at all your data and help you form these operational customer profiles.”
Let’s learn more about Einstein Copilot
“Copilot means that I have an assistant with me in the tool where I need to be working that contextually knows what I am trying to do and helps me at every step of the process,” Jania said.
For marketers, this might begin with a campaign brief developed with Copilot’s assistance, the identification of an audience based on the brief, and then the development of email or other content. “What’s really cool is the idea of Einstein Studio where our customers will create actions [for Copilot] that we hadn’t even thought about.”
Here’s a key insight (back to nomenclature). We reported on Copilot for markets, Copilot for merchants, Copilot for shoppers. It turns out, however, that there is just one Copilot, Einstein Copilot, and these are use cases. “There’s just one Copilot, we just add these for a little clarity; we’re going to talk about marketing use cases, about shoppers’ use cases. These are actions for the marketing use cases we built out of the box; you can build your own.”
It’s surely going to take a little time for marketers to learn to work easily with Copilot. “There’s always time for adoption,” Jania agreed. “What is directly connected with this is, this is my ninth Connections and this one has the most hands-on training that I’ve seen since 2014 — and a lot of that is getting people using Data Cloud, using these tools rather than just being given a demo.”
What’s new about Einstein Personalization
Salesforce Einstein has been around since 2016 and many of the use cases seem to have involved personalization in various forms. What’s new?
“Einstein Personalization is a real-time decision engine and it’s going to choose next-best-action, next-best-offer. What is new is that it’s a service now that runs natively on top of Data Cloud.” A lot of real-time decision engines need their own set of data that might actually be a subset of data. “Einstein Personalization is going to look holistically at a customer and recommend a next-best-action that could be natively surfaced in Service Cloud, Sales Cloud or Marketing Cloud.”
Finally, trust
One feature of the presentations at Connections was the reassurance that, although public LLMs like ChatGPT could be selected for application to customer data, none of that data would be retained by the LLMs. Is this just a matter of written agreements? No, not just that, said Jania.
“In the Einstein Trust Layer, all of the data, when it connects to an LLM, runs through our gateway. If there was a prompt that had personally identifiable information — a credit card number, an email address — at a mimum, all that is stripped out. The LLMs do not store the output; we store the output for auditing back in Salesforce. Any output that comes back through our gateway is logged in our system; it runs through a toxicity model; and only at the end do we put PII data back into the answer. There are real pieces beyond a handshake that this data is safe.”
-
WORDPRESS7 days ago
WordPress biz Automattic details WP Engine deal demands • The Register
-
SEARCHENGINES7 days ago
Programming Note: Rosh Hashanah 5785
-
SEARCHENGINES6 days ago
Daily Search Forum Recap: October 3, 2024
-
SEO7 days ago
How To Stop Filter Results From Eating Crawl Budget
-
WORDPRESS6 days ago
How Open Source Collaboration Enhances Studio – WordPress.com News
-
SEO6 days ago
YouTube Extends Shorts To 3 Minutes, Adds New Features
-
WORDPRESS5 days ago
Automattic demanded web host pay $32M annually for using WordPress trademark
-
WORDPRESS5 days ago
WP Engine sues WordPress co-creator Mullenweg and Automattic, alleging abuse of power
You must be logged in to post a comment Login