Channel Refinement

Digital Marketing - Study Notes:

Managing your channels effectively

Questions to ask

Within channel refinement what we’re talking about is managing these channels effectively.

You need to ask some key questions:

• What we really need to understand here are:
• What roles do each of the team members have upon launch?
• Who is responsible for implementation?
• How does management differ between the channels?
• When will specific activations actually occur?
• What key activities and events will occur during specific moments?

Social WIP

You should try to implement what’s called a social WIP or Work In Progress. This should be a meeting that gathers all the individuals who are responsible for the body of work that you’re about to take out in place. This could be daily, it could be 15 minutes every morning, if you want, a week. It depends on each organization; it depends on how often you can meet up or even how often you should meet up.

Channel-specific management

So within this, you need to understand within the channels the specific requirements of each of them.

• Facebook: When you have a Facebook page there’s a lot of day-to-day work there and you have to pay particular attention to comments and interactions that come in. And then during times when you’re actually spending a lot of media and buying a lot of ads you have to expect that that’s actually going to increase, you might actually have to move resource around.
• Twitter: It is very similar to Facebook in the sense that you can use it as your social listening tools, and you need to have resource for that. During the campaign when you start spend ad budget, the interactions start to increase and it puts a strain on that resource.
• Instagram and Snapchat: Because they’re only really evolving now, they require a lot less management, because you’re probably going to be posting or using them less. But it is important to still make sure that people are checking them, that they’re monitoring them for complaints or any comments. And then it’s actually within that kind of Snapchat or Instagram stories, that micro moment space, is making sure that if you’re going to use it that you actually have simple things like the right device to actually use it, that the person actually implementing it actually knows how to use it. Really simple things, but they’re important questions to ask ahead of actually implementing everything.

Format specs

So now we’ll do is discuss kind of more fundamental kind of format specs that you need to really consider ahead of kind of refining into your channels.

Video

Video is not a new format, but the way we’re engaging with it is massively changing. So we’re consuming more video but less time of each video. We’re becoming goldfish; we’re consuming less of the video content. So we need to actually maintain that view. So it’s important, in addition to making it compelling, but actually looking at the results of the video.

Places like Facebook will allow you to see how many views you’re getting to 95% of the video, which can be consumed through auto-play or click-to-play, so you’ll know actually who’s consuming it.

But what’s a really interesting thing now that we need to pay a lot of attention to is this idea of auto-playing without sound. Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook and Twitter all have formats that you can initially play without sound. Now up to 95% of all video content that’s consumed on Facebook is actually consumed without sound. So if your content is talking heads, you’re getting nothing there! Consider subtitles and consider short or snap your content to make it more visual. Think about how you’re using the formats more effectively.

Micro-moments

With platforms like Snapshot and Instagram stories, this is a huge opportunity to be different. It’s a huge opportunity to reach niche audiences particularly younger audiences, but how you’re communicating through these has to be addressed in how your audience uses them. So you need to utilize emojis, you need to use fun conversation, you need to make it exciting and interesting. Don’t just take pictures of things and post them. Try and use different nuances of each of the platforms to be more effective.

So, if you plan on using multiple platforms, it’s really important to identify what the various nuances are of each of the platforms on offer. You can elaborate on existing creative strategies like capturing micro-moments utilizing carousel formats or for multiple images or utilizing formats specific to each platform. So Twitter has conversational ads, Facebook and YouTube can offer 360. It’s to make sure, identify what’s the thing that’s different about that platform, and how could you use it within your campaign. And make sure that you’re using it well.

So, for example, now when we head into the next couple of years Snapchat is going to offer the ability to buy filters. They won’t be cheap, but that’s a highly engaging, highly creative way to make your audience have an experience with your brand. You need to then apply the creative thinking to it, apply the media budget to actually securing it. But if you can do that, you definitely can use the nuance of that platform effectively.