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Visual Content for Social Media [New Research]

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Visual Content for Social Media [New Research]

We all think we have great taste.

In the movie When Harry Met Sally, Marie (Carrie Fisher) and Jess (Bruno Kirby) move in together and argue over keeping his wagon-wheel coffee table. Jess insists, “I have good taste!” And Marie responds, “Look, everybody thinks they have good taste and a sense of humor, but they couldn’t possibly all have good taste.”

When it comes to marketing, questions about who has the right “taste” for breakthrough visual content and which design will move an audience to action plague the creative side of the business.

Challenge for the creative side of #marketing: Determining who has the right “taste” to determine the visuals, says @Robert_Rose via @CMIContent. #Research Click To Tweet

Every marketer can recall a visually creative design released by a brand that prompted them to say, “What the heck were they thinking?” You can probably look at your own brand and ponder the same question: “What was I thinking?”

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Taste aside, most marketing is ultimately measured not on aesthetics but on how well it motivates an action (what the audience wants to hear). Get enough action, and arguments about aesthetics will subside. It’s the classic argument of “data wins.”

But sometimes it doesn’t. That usually happens when a senior leader wants the design to look a particular way.

Design and performance both have a place

A time and place exist for prioritizing creative tastes over performance. For example, a brand should design a logo or visual representation of what the company stands for without consensus from the buying public. That creative strategy begins and ends with internal decision-makers. The only issue is who makes the final decision. (In When Harry Met Sally, Marie’s taste won, and the table was gone.) The brand’s goal should be to ensure that the person (or team) with the right “taste” makes the ultimate creative decision.

The flip side occurs when the brand designs visuals to convert customers or deepen engagement with audience members. Whether it’s an ad with “buy now” or “subscribe now” or social media image with “please give us feedback” or “comment below,” the brand wants the visuals to help persuade the audience to do something.

In this case, one could argue the brand’s taste doesn’t matter nearly as much as what motivates the audience. The brand’s goal is to make sure its creative decision-maker is someone (or a team) who can balance the company’s taste with what the audience will find most compelling.

Brands need a creative decision-maker who balances the company’s taste with what the audience finds most compelling, says @Robert_Rose via @CMIContent. #Research Click To Tweet

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The need for creative taste tests

Marketers often need to test this tension between brand taste and customer resonance.

My consulting team recently worked with an e-commerce company in the home design space. Much of its content features photos, videos, and images of the work done in homes by contractors and designers. The chief marketing officer adamantly insisted no people appear in any imagery. The format (social media, brochures, website, etc.) didn’t matter – he only wanted pictures of designs. This no-people creative preference became part of the brand guidelines.

One day, a new agency made a mistake. They didn’t review the brand guidelines and published content with images featuring people. The campaign outperformed similar campaigns by almost 1.5 times. Following that happy accident, the marketing team finally convinced the CMO to test social media imagery and found images with people alongside the designs scored exponentially higher in engagement and conversions than the no-people imagery.

That home design company is not unique. I often hear marketing teams say things like, “This creative ship is just so hard to turn. Our CEO/CMO/director (or even agency) wants all our creative visuals to look a very particular way.”

But these decision-makers will do better when they recognize they need to test their assumptions. The creative process must include something that assesses whether these executives’ good taste reflects what moves the audience.

New research on visual social media content

To see how in tune marketers are with their visual content strategy, we partnered with VistaCreate to find out the following:

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  • How they feel about their capabilities to create visual social media content as a repeatable strategic process
  • How they create and use images on social media organically and within paid advertising/content promotion efforts
  • Which types of images and platforms perform best

You can review the findings in the report, Strategic Visual Content for Social Media: Creating a Balance. Here’s my take on the points I found compelling.

Are brand standards impeding excellence?

One-third of marketers rate their social media visual content as average or below average. But interestingly, 88% of marketers say their visual content is consistent with their existing brand standards. These findings indicate that following existing brand standards (the brand’s taste) works against the goal of creating high-quality visual content on social media (to motivate an action).

In other words, many brands’ attempts to enforce their taste in visual creative may prevent their success.

You aren’t your target market

We also tested marketers’ assumptions about visual content versus consumers’ opinions.

Here’s how it worked. First, we asked a set of marketers to rank five social media ads for a cleaning service as if they marketed the brand.

Visual Content for Social Media New Research

Marketers ranked the Easy Cleaning ad No. 1 as the one they would most likely to use.

1676496745 815 Visual Content for Social Media New Research

Marketers ranked the Cleaning Services ad No. 2.

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1676496745 735 Visual Content for Social Media New Research

Marketers ranked the Cleanhug ad No. 3.

1676496745 606 Visual Content for Social Media New Research

Marketers ranked the Fast Cleaning ad No. 4.

1676496745 322 Visual Content for Social Media New Research

Marketers ranked the Wiper Cleaning Services ad No. 5.

In a separate poll, consumers (non-marketers) ranked the same five images based which they’d be most likely if they were interested in the cleaning service.

1676496745 815 Visual Content for Social Media New Research

Consumers ranked this ad No. 1 based on how likely they would click it if they were looking for a cleaning service.

1676496745 606 Visual Content for Social Media New Research

Consumers ranked this ad No. 2.

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1676496745 735 Visual Content for Social Media New Research

Consumers ranked this ad No. 3.

Visual Content for Social Media New Research

Consumers ranked this ad No. 4.

1676496745 322 Visual Content for Social Media New Research

Consumers ranked this ad No. 5.

The (not scientific) results were fascinating. But, given my earlier example of the e-commerce home design company, they weren’t surprising:

  • The ad marketers ranked No. 1 landed (the lime green Easy Cleaning ad) in the No. 4 (next-to-last) slot among consumers.
  • The marketers’ No. 2 ad (the sage green Cleaning Services ad) ranked first among consumers.
  • Both marketers and consumers ranked the same ad (an ad depicting a man with two thumbs up) in the worst slot.

A #SocialMedia ad experiment found the No. 1 visual pick by marketers ranked fourth (out of five) by consumers, says @Robert_Rose via @CMIContent. Click To Tweet

Those results indicate that marketers must move beyond our assumptions when determining the visuals for their social media publishing. That means finding effective ways to iterate creative ideas quickly, then working to validate hunches, assumptions, and guesses by testing the ideas.

Remember, as one of my marketing professors told me at least a hundred times, you are not your target market.

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You are the person to ensure that in-house teams have the necessary skills, align with repeatable processes, and can access the platforms and tools they need to do their work.

That’s the heart of great creativity – a process fueled by tools (yes, maybe even AI) and, most importantly, handled by curious people committed to the best outcome.

That’s the way to design a great design.

I hope this research is helpful in your work.

Get the latest Content Marketing Institute research reports while they’re hot – subscribe to the newsletter. 

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 Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

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A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

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Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

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Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

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“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

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Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

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Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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