Kim Townend

Social Media Consultant & Strategist

The Blog

2019: The Year That Social Media Comes Full Circle

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I haven’t written a blog post for ages. Years even. I’ve been flat out with client work and haven’t really given myself a break. I’ve started a few but never got as far as publishing them before they feel out of date. And that’s the problem. When you’re writing about social, news expires within weeks. New updates and algorithms and rules mean that what worked last month, probably doesn’t work anymore.

But recently I’ve noticed a trend that I felt compelled to comment on.

It started last year with Facebook prioritising ‘meaningful interaction’ on the Newsfeed. This algorithm update really put a spanner in the works for brands and editorial sites who had put all their eggs in Facebook’s basket. Sure, organic reach had been declining forever but this update explicitly meant that to be in with a chance of your content being seen you either had to pay for it with ads and boosts, or you had to create content that actually resonated with your audience and probably try some actual community management, not the post-and-forget-about-it style of social media management that has become so popular.

Unfortunately, this update may have kick-started the decline of Western democracy, but hey, the engagement was up by 50% year on year.

The same thing is happening with Instagram, organic reach has dropped to less than 10% for most brands, and gaming the algorithm means getting actual engagement on your posts. That’s comments and shares and tags, not the lazy double taps that don’t really mean much of anything. This was the reason more and more small business were turning to Comment Pods, to try and stay relevant.

On Twitter things weren’t quite so dire, (in terms of content, obviously Twitter has other issues it’s busy ignoring) as the algorithm was always opt-out-ish. However a series of updates over the last year focused on making conversations easier to read and engage with.

Then I saw this article being shared across social as the new big thing. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/apr/05/its-genuine-you-know-why-the-online-influencer-industry-is-going-authentic Influencers! With interests! Being authentic!

This was the stage where it all started to feel a bit 2009. Remember, way back when social media was in its infancy and the entire point of using any of the platforms was to find and interact with people with similar interests? Community managers were community building for brands who were genuinely interested in connecting with their online audience and finding out what made them tick? Before social media became a flaming cesspool full of clickbait content, trolls, and badly targeted ads? Back then every deck we presented was heavy on authenticity. Faking it won’t work! We declared. Trust is the most important thing!

It’s all about community.

The way that we can save social media (and quite possibly the internet) is to rewind the last 5 years and go back to caring about what we post. Create content with your audience in mind. Not everything has to appeal to everyone. Chasing reach and vanity metrics is one of the reasons that we’re in this mess. (Also, great content really helps you with organic reach)

Need more evidence that people are thirsty for long-tail content?

Interest-based communities are quietly flourishing while the big 3 try and figure out what to do.

Amino, a mobile app built around fandom and communities, had as of last year over 10 million downloads on the Playstore, and user numbers keep growing.

Amino raises $45M to bring fan communities to smartphones

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You all know how I feel about Tumblr being the undisputed home of fandom. Well according to SimilarWeb, Tumblr still ranks 10th globally in the Internet & Telecom/ Social Network category. (Even after the porn ban, the monthly uniques are on the way up again)

Reddit, another community where people engage around content themes (or subreddits) has been quietly growing and growing and “As of March 2019, Reddit had 542 million monthly visitors (234 million unique users), ranking as the No. 6 most visited website in U.S. and No. 21 in the world”

My point is this.

It’s still totally possible to connect with your fans online. But to do this we need to stop approaching things with a one-size-fits-all mentality. Take the time, do your research. Learn who your potential audience is, what else they like, what they use which platforms for. Then figure out what you can do to get them interested in you. Stop just pushing out content that nobody needs. Think about the user and make sure there’s a clear objective.

Years back, I used to put this simple diagram in every talk I gave

It turns out, a decade on this is still the key.

Let’s make social media in 2019 good again.

If you’ve got a project that you think I could help with please get in touch.

How to really connect with your audience in the age of ‘Peak TV’

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Earlier this year, I gave a quick talk at the TV Connect conference about how you can use social media to get right to the heart of your viewer base, even in the age of peak TV.

Below is an embed of the deck and a shortened version of my speaker notes.

So first a bit of background. What is peak tv? Put simply; it’s just that there are too many shows.

According to Research, 455 original scripted programs aired on American television in 2016, that’s up from 210 shows in 2009. A massive increase. Now I realise we’re in the UK, but with global release dates becoming more common, access to Netflix and on-demand programming, alongside satellite and cable, we’re in a very similar situation. There’s ‘too much’ great stuff out there.

I don’t know how much you guys know about fandom, so I’ll explain a little.Fandom has been around for a long time. It’s not new. Fun fact, loads of the fandom vernacular  (shipping for example) actually originates from the first Star Trek series.

Fandom essentially means anything that fans create around the thing they love, and the fans themselves. E.g Comicon is all about fandom.

Tumblr, a slightly lesser know social/blogging network is the home to all things fandom.

The takeaway here for social TV is that the fandom itself LOVES the show we’re trying to market. They’re overwhelmingly positive about it.

So, how do you find out about what your fandom are into? (click for gif)

Always start with Tumblr.

Fandometrics is a weekly updated part of Tumblr that ranks all the different fandoms on Tumblr by subject. It is an invaluable research tool for Social TV with any kind of millennial/Z fanbase.

My strategies always start with talking to the fandom. Identifying these guys is like finding the biggest built in advocates for your show. So I start with them and then the social influencer and bloggers start to pay attention, and from there you can reach the mainstream.

Back to Doctor who again. While I was writing the strategy for the Mission Dalek campaign, I felt it was really important to understand the implications of the different types of audience who were fans of shows on different platforms. For example, when looking at the best way to connect with Dr Who fans on Instagram I identified a huge community of girls who cosplay as the various female assistants. I decided to leverage this as a way to get the often overlooked younger female Whovians involved in our competition, by allowing them to enter with cosplay images.

The US broadcaster CW knows this better than anyone else. Social TV champions from the get-go, they figured out which shows had the biggest audiences on which platforms and prioritised content there way back in 2014. Reign was all about Pinterest due to the costumes; Supernatural has always ruled Tumblr and the then new ‘The Flash’ was fast becoming a YouTube sensation.

Understanding which of your fans are on which platforms and the content that resonates on that platform will help you more than anything else when it comes to engagement planning.

And so to my final, and most important point.

When social first started, way back a decade ago, building communities was the whole point of Twitter. Then marketing came and suddenly it was a place just to advertise. Community was out of the proverbial window.

Well, the one sure-fire secret to really engaging with your fans in the age of peak TV, is to hire a great community manager.

A community manager is like a social media manager ‘plus’ They are tasked not just with publishing updates and responding to enquiries, but actively being involved in, and growing the community that they’re looking after.

I was writing the social strategy for E4 a couple of years back, and to test my hypothesis I took on community management duties for one week.

During that time e4 were airing Supernatural but weren’t really aware of the huge fandom around it. I created a strategy to truly engage with the fans by doing things like:

  • Creating content that would resonate with them
  • Speaking in their language ‘shipping terms etc.’
  • Live tweeting key moments of the shows

This resulted in not just an outpouring of love for e4 from fans during the week, but also with metrics.

The week leading up to my community management, there had been a paid campaign running, I won’t disclose how much, but it was a not insignificant amount of money. This achieved 572k impressions.

The week I took over, organically, we achieved almost 750 thousand impressions.

Which just goes to show what a combination of a good social strategy and a good community manager who knows your content can do.

What the hell is full stack social anyway?

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Before we start this, I just want to reiterate, that I really, really hate stupid buzzwords. BUT. I have been looking for a way to describe what it is that I do succinctly, and I believe I’ve found it.

A full stack developer is a dev who has an understanding of each part of the process, back end through front end.

A full stack designer is a someone who knows enough front end stuff to be a better designer.

Here’s a great description of what full stack strategy is.

I do full stack social media – which essentially means I’m cross-disciplinary and able to take a project to completion.

Back when social started, it was one job. ‘social media manager’ and then as Twitter and Facebook grew and more platforms were born it stopped being a place for just the internet cool kids, and people began to realise it was a slightly bigger gig than we first thought.

We saw the advent of community managers, and social media copywriters and social strategists and social media analysts.

And then we needed to monetise it somehow, and we started seeing ‘paid social’ experts appear.

That’s where I come in.

I’ve been working in social since the very beginning, so I’ve worked across all the various disciplines at various points in my career.

For me, doing full-stack social manifests like this:

  • I will deep-dive research your audience. Using a bespoke suite of software that I have put together I offer social media audits, competitor reviews and more importantly full social listening capabilities to be able to identify very clear audiences for your project.
  • I can write your social strategy for any or all of the social media platforms that are appropriate for you/your brand (this is most or what I do these days)
  • Does this strategy include a big creative idea? I can make this happen! I lead the creative and use a team of designers and developers to produce the content
  • I can also implement your strategy (My community or social media managers are skilled at writing for and managing all aspects of your social media.)
  • Need paid social advertising? (Probably, it’s 2019 – the best social includes an element of paid!) I write paid strategy that works alongside your organic social. What’s the point of having a media agency who don’t talk to your organic social team? I understand how to get your content in front of the right people, how to get them engage with it, and all importantly how to get people to convert. Across all platforms.
  • Want to know how it all went? I LOVE analytics. KPIS are my thing. What’s the point of doing something if you’re not going to use the learnings to improve?

 

What’s the advantage of having one person see the process through from beginning to end? There are a few.

  1. A strategist who also manages communities from time to time, will have a better grasp of what is possible in terms of execution
  2. Creative ideas work differently on social than other more traditional digital creative. A full stack social person is going to be able to help you understand how and where the content you’re creating is going to be distributed and what you need to consider during this process
  3. You don’t need to hire a separate copywriter to write updates/blog posts. That’s a thing we can all do!
  4. There’s less miscommunication, as one person who understands each element of the process is involved from start to finish.

 

So, that’s it. All it means is that I can work across any part of your digital output, and understand it. This doesn’t mean I want to community manage everything that I work on or be responsible for the creative, but it means I understand how to. And that’s always an advantage.

 

Brands and Tumblr and Social TV. Things you should know.

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This post started out as a bit of a rant about certain brands on Tumblr not using it very well, but on re-reading , I decided it might be more useful to talk about why Tumblr is great, what it’s great for (hint Social TV and fandoms), and why you should be using it.

Tumblr (when used properly) is a brilliant platform for the right brands to reach the right communities.

Tumblr themselves have made it so easy for us as marketing types. They update Fandometrics every single week, so you can always be up-to-date on what’s trending in your field. Imagine Facebook doing something as helpful!

According to a 2015 study by Global Web Index, 48% of Tumblr users say they follow their favourite brands on the platform, and when executed properly, it’s a great place for brands to distribute platform appropriate content to their fans. Take a look at the ‘Sponsored Posts’ Year in Review section for superb examples.

The Tumblr community understands fandom and nerdiness and ‘the internet’ in a way that other platforms of a similar size seem incapable of doing. Look back at Dennys and the advent of ‘foodom.’ If you’re interested in learning more about the platform and its key demographic, Elspeth Reeve just wrote a brilliant article for the New Republic.

Tumblr is – as far as I’m concerned – the undisputed home of social TV, (in the post-show sense, Twitter is still the go-to for real time viewing) Yet few networks/shows take advantage of the massive fandoms that keep the platform ticking over.

This is the place that the fans that ‘get’ the shows live.

Remember the Hannibal Tumblr? It was so great that people would write articles about how great it was. Tumblr was the place that the Fannibal community was born – it exploded onto Twitter and Instagram and the rest of the internet. Same with Supernatural, Doctor Who (the reboot), Sherlock, Teen Wolf – the list goes on and on.

Tumblr is where the things you’ll be reading about in two years time are getting started now.

Tumblr represents a massive (and currently woefully under-used) opportunity if you’re a UK publisher/TV production company/games developer/create anything that people get nerdy about.

One of the problems I have when trying to convince clients/agencies that we should be looking at Tumblr as a platform is ‘reach’ –  the idea that UK Tumblr numbers aren’t worth the investment.

According to 2016 data from Global Web Index –  11% of UK interenet users have used Tumblr in the last month. The number rises to 30% in the 16-24 demographic. But it’s when you look at behaviours, that the numbers become  even more attractive.tumblr

Alongside the 48% of users who follow their favourite brand, 70% of Tumblr users have bought a product online in the last month and an even more incredible 64% of users have reviewed a product online in the same time frame*.

The Tumblr community might not be as big as some of the other networks, but they’re early adopters who review online as a matter of course.

If you’re looking to talk to the ever elusive Snapchat audience, but you’d quite like content you can track, that lasts longer than a day, and you’re also big into metrics, then you should give Tumblr another look.

If you have any kind of an entertainment content and you’re looking to tap into the social TV audience, you should consider this platform.

Tumblr recently published their December 2015 numbers, and they’re impressive.

I’m not saying that Tumblr is for everybody – it’s definitely not. But if it is for you/your brand/tv show and you get your content and tone right, it’s one of the best (and certainly one of the most creative and fun platforms) that there is. Keep it in mind.

*All this data comes from the same GWI report

Snapchat On-Demand Geofilters are a Big Opportunity For Smaller Brands.

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Snapchat.

Just the word is enough to strike fear into the heart of anyone over the age of 35.

But why?

Well. According to the recent Bloomberg profile. On purpose.

But if you can see past all the ‘mystery’ and lack of analytics, then you should take a look at what Snapchat can offer.

One of the reasons that brands were hesitant about Snapchat were the extortionate advertising costs, coupled with the ‘TV style’ reporting which didn’t give you any real metrics to show to your boss.

But things have moved on. Snapchat is still elusive about how much most of their standard advertising costs (although one source cited the prices having dropped to around $400 000 for a custom lens), but earlier this year they made one type of ‘ad’ completely accessible to everyone.

I’m talking about On Demand Geofilters.

The idea is this. Snapchat already allows Geofilters for locations. You’ve probably seen them from friends who are travelling/humble bragging about where they’re spending their holiday time.

Then last year, Snapchat introduced custom Geofilters for brands, you’ve probably seen the McDonald’s filters being shared, and then there was the (not particularly well thought out) time that Hollister targeted 19 0000 US & Canadian high schools with their ‘Friday Vibes’ filter. These filters were only available to select partners and still on the pricey side of ‘give it a go’ advertising.

Roll on 2016 and the advent of On-Demand custom geo filters (not to be confused with  community filters, which are free to create for a landmark/town/university/place of interest.) On Demand custom geofilters were originally designed as a way for you to be able to easily apply a Geofilter to your Wedding/Bar Mitzvah/Premiere/Whatever. But in terms of marketing, they’re a brilliant way to create hyper-shareable content, perfect for sharing outside of Snapchat as well as in platform.

 

Currently, brand presence on Snapchat is on the low side, and there are a number of reasons for this, the biggest of them being Snapchat is perceived as a hard to understand channel just to reach teenagers.
I won’t dispute that Snapchat is still heavy on generation y & z users, but the fastest growing user group is the over 35s. Platform engagement rates (8 billion video views each day) are impressive, as is the sense of creativity lacking from the rest of the ‘big’ social media platforms.

Currently, a starting price of $20 will buy you an 8-hour time slot, the space of a few blocks in a major city. You’ll still need to get someone to design the filter for you, and make sure it passes Snapchat’s requirements. (No mentions of URLS or phone numbers – hashtags and usernames are supposedly fine!)

If you’re a business that hosts events/does anything location specific and you’re looking for a fun way to raise awareness among potential customers. (And you’ve got a bit of design know-how and a few bucks to spare). I would recommend testing out the Snapchat waters.

It’s not yet saturated with brands, there’s very little marketing douchery, and if you’re right for the channel and you understand your audience enough to create content that will resonate with them, then Snapchat custom geofilters might be exactly what you’re looking for. And also, with such a low price point – you can afford to test this one out.

Oh, and if you find the whole idea of Snapchat terrifying, Buffer Blog have written an excellent guide to how it all works.