Content marketing articles from our agency

The recent news in Australia that everything posted on a Facebook brand page legally counts as advertising has put a massive dose of fear in the hearts and minds of social media campaign managers everywhere. On the other hand, if you’re a quality content curator or maker, get ready for your close up.

Put simply, the recent ruling by Australia’s Advertising Standards Bureau (ASB) means social content has to change. It has to get better. And to achieve this, meaningful social content will play a starring role. It’s like reality TV stars being replaced with real actors in the Entertainment Wars.

To work out what kind of content we should publish through social – let’s say Facebook – which in turn, promotes what  kind of conversation we’re hoping to have, it might be worthwhile first answering the question of why we actually click ‘Like’ on a branded Facebook Page in the first place.

Why do we click Like on Facebook?

• It might help me be cool / credible
• I might get free stuff
• Because I actually like that Product/Brand/Company
• Because I’m interested in what that brand has to teach me/show me/tell me/remind me
• Because my friends spam me into liking their small business pages
• I got caught up in the zeitgeist of the moment

The answer is a bit of everything. To be relevant on Facebook, whether you’re a brand or a person, the idea is that you have to keep posting to keep engaging other people on Facebook. And to keep posting you have to keep coming up with something to say – and when that dries up, you look towards other people/brands/companies that have something to say and you share their stuff. This is where the valuable content part of the equation comes into play.

Social Media Community Managers need to understand content that matters, matters.

The ASB ruling will  be the argument many companies and brands reluctant to cross into the Facebook frontier will use to stay that way. But for everyone else, it’s time to lift the game. If your idea of brand engagement on Facebook consists of asking the 20,000 people who liked the brand an open-ended question such as Who would you most like to meet on a desert island wearing our jeans? Well…you either need to employ people to monitor the page 24/7 for inappropriate comments or you need to expect the worst and accept the ultimate brand damage that will of course follow. Alternatively, brands could spend their ‘policing the page’ funds on meaningful content that encourages meaningful engagement  via posts (Remember online forums anybody? They actually worked pretty well.).

Why not  publish social content that is actually useful, educational or engaging?

Imagine publishing content via the brand page that gave something back to the people who liked your page in the first place. Publish content  interesting enough to give your users  a reason to share it on their own page (Win!). Helpful tips, a tip-off on a sale, news of a new store opening, predicted trends, infographics…this is great stuff for brand pages. Curated  articles of interest that are industry related (we call this content curation – the recommendation of existing content that often, isn’t yours, but you’re happy to point someone to it– aggregation of the best on the web) is also a great way to give something of value  back to all those users who coughed up a like in the first place.

Do content marketing well and you’ll actually give social media advertising a good name.