Marvel is one of the biggest, and hottest, production companies right now. It is an incredible place to seek and gain content marketing inspiration from, too! This company has an excellent approach to content marketing, as we can all see with their ad campaigns for their films, including the latest The Avengers: Age of Ultron.
(If you have yet to see that film, take the chance to go and have a fun, summer movie experience, all while learning from some of the top marketers and writers in the comic industry.)
Just what can you learn from Marvel for your small business and content marketing? This blog is going to look at that and how it can help you create an excellent, effective content marketing strategy that will bring in tremendous success.
7 Tips from a Giant in the Content Marketing World: Marvel
What are the lessons you can expect to learn from Marvel? There are many different ones, but I take a look at a few of the top ones that can really help to impact your business. Get ready to take some notes and learn just how to improve your content strategy, and bring in new clients with a superhero-sized plan!
Marvel Builds Their Brand Through Content, Constantly. When it comes to the content marketing world, Marvel can’t be beat with their epic content strategy. Their main way of survival is to, obviously, create excellent content, and they make sure that they are always doing so while building their brand through it. The Marvel brand isn’t exactly as it was ten or twenty years ago and this is because they’ve taken the chance to build and grow their brand over the decades. Their superheroes have taken on different elements and have had mega life changes throughout the comic books, and when it comes to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, we see even more changes to characters and their stories. Marvel has multiple universes with multiple hero and villain story variations, making their content very strong, which helps to make their brand incredibly powerful.How can you apply this to your content strategy? You can easily use your content whether for web, blogs, social media, or any other type to help build your brand and make it better. You can create an incredibly, strong company that people trust just through content, which is what Marvel has been and is doing with their client base. Start working on your content to help create and improve your brand to bring in more clients, as well as helping you keep your existing ones for many years.
Marvel Provides Multiple Content Formats for Fans. I’ve mentioned this multiple times when it comes to creating content; multiple formats are vital to your content marketing, and Marvel understands this. If you aren’t a big fan of reading comic books, you don’t have to worry because you can easily go to many different Marvel films to watch superheroes battle it out with villains. In addition, if you prefer comic books to movies, then you are perfectly fine there. You can also watch various Marvel television shows ranging from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. to Daredevil, and soon there will be even more Marvel television taking over the TV world. Marvel doesn’t just limit themselves to story-based content, however. They provide access to a variety of things including conventions for their fans and are constantly growing and evolving to meet the demands of the comic fan world.Providing different formats for your clients is a great way to not only give existing customers easier ways to consume content, but also to bring in newer clients. You will be able to reach a wider customer base by doing so, and you will see a significant increase in your views, clicks, and revenue just by providing different formats to your clients. The formats can be anything ranging from YouTube videos to social media content and infographics. Don’t limit yourself; be like Marvel and allow your content to develop in order to grow your client base and business.
They Approach the Entirety of Their Universe. Marvel doesn’t just pick and choose which aspect of their universe they will promote and provide content for – they approach it all. They take a holistic type of approach, which helps make their various universes feel consistent. When you approach the Marvel Cinematic Universe, you will see an overlap of heroes and villains throughout several movies, bringing stories from different films together to create a larger, more impressive story. No matter which Marvel film you see, you will see reference to another and another. This is mighty impressive as they have a huge cinematic universe, but it helps make it an incredible experience for fans. This is a great example of what a holistic approach can provide to your content marketing strategy. You aren’t necessarily keeping stories together to create an impressive universe, but if you approach your marketing holistically, you will notice that you have a higher chance of being incredibly successful with your content. A great way to start approaching the entirety of it is to sit down with people in your business to brainstorm ideas across all content formats and fields, helping create a consistent strategy. Once you do that, you can then implement it and watch as the success starts increasing.
Vision Isn’t Just an Awesome Avenger. The Avengers: Age of Ultron was an epic film that introduced a few new characters to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, including Vision. Vision is a pretty cool character, but his name is also a great example of what Marvel has. When it comes to making films for their cinematic universe, Marvel has an incredible vision and is planning all the way to 2020 and beyond for their releases. If you aren’t sure of just all that Marvel will be releasing, you can take a look at the full calendar. Remember, Marvel does keep releasing news about upcoming films in various phases, and we might just hear of more films soon.What this shows is a great example of planning ahead and preparing for what your clients want. There are many movies listed that involve some of our favorite characters from the MCU such as Thor or Captain America, but we are also seeing some “new” faces. If you’re a fan of Captain Marvel, then you’re in luck! Planning this far ahead and letting everyone know seems like it might be a silly move on Marvel’s part. However, with this whole list, people are beginning to mark their calendars and countdown to the films they are most looking forward to. This shows just how important planning a ways into the future is, as well as how great it can be to involve your clients in the process.
Symbolism is a Vital Aspect to a Marvel Superhero. Marvel places a major importance on symbolism, as does DC and any other comic production company. Symbolism is what helps set their various superheroes and villains apart, making things easily recognizable for fans. We all know what Spider-man’s symbol is, same with Captain America, Black Widow, the Hulk, and more. This symbolism helps to drive a personal connection between fan and character, which helps to promote the brand and provide an epic marketing strategy without doing much sales copy. When you go to buy a shirt based off of a superhero, you look for the logo, not a long description of said hero, right? Marvel knows people like the symbols, and that we connect with them.Why is it important for you to follow this particular aspect of Marvel, or any superhero franchise company? Because people love symbols and they connect with them easier. Having a logo with an ICON can help you bring in more clients and create a brand that people know and trust. We recently rebranded, and if you look at our Twitter page, you’ll see our icon representing our whole brand. Much like the simplicity of superhero logos, it’s easy and fun to recognize. This is going to help immensely to set us apart from other writing agencies, and the same can be said for you and your logo. Create something that is unique to your business, and help yourself stand out in the sea of other businesses. Being recognizable is a great way to bring in new customers.
Everyone Loves a Hero and Marvel Knows It. No matter what, everyone loves a hero, and this is constantly seen in Marvel comics and films. The company knows how important heroes are to people, and they work to create heroes we can all look up to and love. By doing so, the company works to create a personal relationship between the company and the fans, as well as the specific hero, such as Captain America and the hero’s fans. Personal relationships are great for Marvel because this means that more people will be willing to buy comics, toys, and see films if they have that connection. No, Marvel doesn’t know the fans’ favorite color, food, or the names of their pets, but they still create the sense of a relationship with fans. They embrace the idea of emotions, which helps them to establish that relationship with their fan base, creating long-term, happy fans.
Cap has arrived! See Marvel’s Avengers: Age of Ultron,” in theaters May 1.
This is a great model for all sorts of businesses. You can easily achieve this personal connection by embracing what people love, and what they want to see from your business. Don’t hesitate to get a little emotional with your posts to help establish that connection. This will help set your business apart from others as one that can be trusted. A great place to start with developing a relationship with your clients is via social media and engaging with your customers through your customer service. Get personal on social media and promote excellent relationships with every one of your clients.
Iron Man and the Need for Being Social. Another lesson you can learn from Marvel is how to be social with your clients. If you know anything about Iron Man, you know that Tony Stark loves being social and can throw some epic parties. Marvel embraces this Tony Stark spirit by having incredible social media campaigns for all of their films, comics, and more. A great example of an awesome social media campaign is that of Marvel’s Deadpool. If you don’t know much about Deadpool, people refer to him as the “Merc With a Mouth” because he isn’t your classic do-good Marvel superhero. In a way, he is the epitome of anti-hero, and everyone loves him. Due to his sassy, and (be warned) not safe for work (NSFW) ways, the social media campaign has been hilarious. Photos are being released that are perfectly Deadpool, and people are getting more and more excited for the film to be released in 2016.
While you don’t have to, and most likely shouldn’t, go the way of Marvel’s marketing for Deadpool, this does show how to use social media. First of all, Marvel is expertly reflecting the brand of Deadpool and second, they are also connecting with their fans in new, fun ways. Take this as a lesson to use social media and reflect your brand accurately and perfectly through your tweets, posts, and interactions. Don’t be afraid to be a little silly with memes and jokes, either! That will help make the social media experience a fun one for you and your followers.
Copywriters and Content Marketers, Assemble!
What are some of the lessons from Marvel that you plan on implementing into your content marketing strategy? These are all great to use and you will see some pretty great success if you start following Marvel’s amazing examples. If you need help creating awesome content to go with your new content strategy, choose Express Writers! Our team is top notch when it comes to producing expert copy, and we can help get you to Marvel-levels of awesome with our work. Take a look at our web content and copywriting services to see what all we can provide you and your business.
Brand recognition in the twenty-first century is an uphill battle, but with a bit of forethought, any brand can position itself where the users are. The hardest part is engaging the users and getting their feedback. This is something that GE has managed to do successfully.
Using Reddit (one of the most difficult social media platforms for brand recognition) as its base, GE has managed to woo users to their side by providing high quality content consistently, so much so that their e-zine GE Reports is now considered as relevant and important as older publications in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) field. But how exactly did GE manage to do this? How did they place themselves in such a great position compared to their peers? Their strategy is both admirable and inspiring, doing all the things content producers should be doing right.
A Big Secret: Knowing the Audience
When GE set off on the task of making its brand known for something, they first had to figure out the audience they were creating content for. GE is an engineering company at heart and the obvious audience for them would be engineers and other professionals in STEM fields.
The things that interest these types of readers are not what you would consider mainstream content. GE, being a leader in innovation, realized that their audience was made up of people who wanted to know what was going on in science and technology around them.
And so GE’s brand marketing strategy was born.
GE started producing a series of articles that recapped and encapsulated new discoveries in the field of science and technology in a way that was accessible, not only to STEM professionals, but to anyone who had an interest in new discoveries. What they discovered was that although a large percentage of their core audience were STEM professionals, there were as many readers that were laymen tuning into their content since it was so approachable. The key behind this easy entry was the type of writing that was involved to build these articles.
Human Interest Factor: 3 Methods GE Won At Doing
GE Reports doesn’t go the traditional route of science reporting. Rather, they focus on the individuals behind the discoveries. What motivated them? What made them decide to explore this particular field of interest? Dry science writing went out with the 80’s and more science and technology magazines were focusing on a different style of science writing: one that sees the inventors and researchers as people first. Human interest stories always get mileage, but combining it with technological breakthroughs was a master stroke of genius.
Channels of Interaction: Success With Email? Marketing a brand is about marketing its message and for a brand to become recognized, it needs to get its name out there. Paid channels of marketing isn’t usually a major factor for GE Reports. Most of its users know about it from Reddit or from Twitter, thanks to the massive following on the social media sites. Facebook also figures into its equation, but the surprise factor in GE Reports marketing strategy is its use of email subscriptions.GE knows email is old school, but they also know that their impact comes from personal interaction and bringing out the human side of a story. Email allows for far more interaction with an individual on a personal level and goes hand in hand with their article style. Email gives GE Reports personality and that is something a lot of brand marketing seems to lack these days.
Loyalty is a Major Seller. Recently, the thinking behind social media for large marketing companies is to sink a lot of money into a targeted ad campaign. This doesn’t win over an audience, but simply “rents” them. At the end of the campaign it’s unlikely that that same audience would care to purchase from that brand again. It relies heavily on gimmicks and the ability to go for a quick sell. GE’s strategy is the complete opposite. GE Reports focuses on building a community as opposed to simply renting an audience, something that can be very useful to GE in the long run.
Why Are Loyal Users Important?
Going back to the idea of understanding an audience, the more you interact with an audience is the more likely you are to understand them and the more able you are to spot content that would sit well with them. In addition to that, GE serves as a hub for the latest news and opinions on the cutting edge of science. By cultivating a community, they ensure that not only readers are able to get the information they want to read, but that media outlets are clued in to what is the “next big thing”. This makes them as much of an authority site as any other science and technology outlet that has been in existence for years, all because of their dedicated community that shares and adds to the rich tapestry that is their user base.
It’s not about Quantity, It’s About Quality. The thing that sets GE’s brand marketing strategy apart from those of their competitors (and indeed, anyone else in the field of brand marketing) is their dedication to the delivery of quality content. Good content is any entry that enriches the user in some way, either by teaching them something new, informing them of a development or giving them an opinion on something that is worth talking about. GE fulfils this demand admirably, consistently delivering content that appeals to its user base without compromising the usefulness of the content.
Isn’t Brand Marketing about Marketing?
Brand marketing isn’t simply about marketing, and that’s where a lot of brand marketers fall woefully short. GE goes about brand marketing via another more traditional route. They include their marketing into their content, but their content comes first and the marketing aspect comes after. The idea of a marketing blog should be to inform and enrich your readers before you start working on them as potential customers. This is another interesting point when it comes to user loyalty (as mentioned above). A user that is loyal to GE because of GE Reports is more likely to put money on a GE product than any other brand, simply because of the enrichment GE Reports brings to his or her life.
GE’s Impact on the Population
So how do we know that GE is getting through to this mass of users that they claim are reading their posts? Although it may seem as though GE Reports is getting a lot of traffic, the numbers of subscriptions also measure up to scrutiny. GE sends out more than fifteen thousand emails to subscribers every time a new article is posted. As far as reach is concerned, that’s huge in terms of organic numbers. When you factor in how many of those people share, like and tweet those stories and the branching effect of social media relationships the reach is immense in scope.
The other way that GE can measure its population impact is from their newsworthiness. News agencies turn to GE Reports as an authoritative site on the news of the STEM world. By getting the leads from GE Reports, these sites can then go on to research and create their own content (yet another benefit of a community of loyal readers). By seeing their own stories covered in the mainstream STEM news, GE can safely say that it has quite an impact on the world today.
Through the middle of January, GE Reports was seeing three hundred thousand unique visitors. For any type of brand marketing site that is a huge number and although that represents a single month, GE has the potential to do it again, since they have done it before. Their power comes both from the way they build their content and the places they market it. Maybe email marketing isn’t such a thing of the past after all.
What Does GE Do That Others Don’t?
GE has forgotten about the old-style press release that so many larger brand marketing professionals stick to as the gospel. By avoiding this method of interaction with the audience, they are able to reach further and to capture a larger, more attentive readership. Their style of writing is different, more engaging than that of their competitors. The information they present is accurate and timely. All of these contribute to having a loyal readership with thousands of subscriptions and hundreds of thousands of readers on a monthly basis. Whatever they are doing, even though it’s not traditionally brand marketing, is certainly working for them, according to Contently.
4 Things that GE Does You Can Do, Too
If you’re looking to build a better brand marketing image then you should really consider how these have worked for GE so far:
Know your audience and write for them.
Create high quality content.
Don’t confine your marketing aims to social media, but rather branch out.
Build a loyal readership and user base to fall back on.
By building on their success and patterning yourself after them there is no way that you can fail to achieve the same sort of results. All it takes is dedication to the goal and the time to see it through.
Content distribution channels provide a means of connecting with your audience on a number of different levels. These channels can include (but are not limited to) blogs, web page content, eBooks, whitepapers, infographics and email newsletters. They provide a method of communicating with your audience and engaging them with your message. In order for your content distribution strategy to work properly, you need to utilize your channels at maximum efficiency.
But how exactly do you manage content distribution channels (correctly—without over-spamming anyone, or using one channel the wrong way)?
Don’t Put All Your Eggs In One Basket
This old adage works well when evaluating your content distribution channels. Because of the number of available channels that you have, you should utilize at least a handful of them to get your message out to your audience. Channels such as social media networks and guest blogging opportunities are great resources since they allow you to direct your content to focus on your target audience. This ensures that you have the maximum exposure possible for your content and raises the possibility of engagement from your audience.
By delivering your content in multiple channels you allow your company to build a loyal following of customers on a number of different platforms. This gives you leverage when it comes to influencing customer decisions in the long run. Multiple channels increase the overall amount of people who are aware of your brand name and image. Once you product high-quality content consistently, you’ll be able to draw and keep an audience that agrees with your point of view and enjoys the content you create.
Too Much of a Good Thing
There is always the lurking problem of overreaching. Whilst trying to cover as many content channels as you possibly can is a good idea, you should be aware that when you cover more content channels the content quality you produce may drop. The happy balance you’re trying to seek is to produce enough good, high-quality content pieces to fit a measured amount of content channels so that you don’t sacrifice quality in the name of coverage. It’s much better to focus on a handful of channels and deliver high quality content than to try to cover the spectrum and fill all your channels with mediocre or low-quality content.
How Can I Utilize Content Channels to Boost Blog Traffic? 5 Methods
The crux of the matter is that you want to leverage your content production in order to drive traffic to your blog. Content distribution channels provide the most ideal method of directing customers to your blog through measured content that is designed to do this. When you create compelling content that makes a user want to know more, including a handy link to your blog in a call-to-action can encourage the user to visit your blog. But how does it work? Here are a handful of ways you can utilize your content channels in order to distribute content to drive your blog traffic.
Guest Blogging: Guest blogging opportunities may come to you in the form of invitations to write on a topic or you can simply address the owner of the blog and ask them for a chance to guest blog for them. Guest blogging gives you a powerful method to drive traffic to your blog. It gives you ready access to an audience that is already within your niche. With the right type of compelling content and well-placed links you can direct users to read some of your own blog entries, possibly gaining new followers in the process.As a content distribution channel, guest blogging should never be discounted. It gets your message out to the people who would benefit from it the most: people within your target audience. By giving you a focused group that is already interested in your niche, it creates a simple way to distribute content efficiently and effectively to the people who would appreciate and benefit from it the most.
Email Marketing: A number of marketing professionals consider email marketing to be on its last legs as a content distribution channel. I tend to disagree. Email marketing is not for the faint of heart, nor is it for someone who isn’t skilled in the area or dedicated to becoming so. Email marketing contacts your audience directly and gives them the feeling of having a direct connection to you.Email marketing is based around sharing your content through personal email addresses, inclusive of clickable links back to your blog. For many users, emails are the best way for them to keep connected to a blog that they are interested in. Many people don’t have the time to go check a blog every single day to see when updates come around. Strategic email updates to your subscribers gives them the ability to see when you’ve updated and to judge whether the content interests them enough to go read it. It’s a very efficient methodology, but requires compelling copy and high-quality content to succeed.
Utilize Influencers: In any social media setting, there will obviously be a handful of individuals that are more influential than other people in the same niche. What you should be aiming to do is to get in contact with these influencers. But how do you find out which people are the ones worth contacting? Simple tools such as Followerwonk allow you to see the extent of a person’s social media outreach and allows you to target the influencers within your demographic of interest for the highest return.Utilizing influencers can be direct (emailing them or messaging them and asking them to share your content) or indirect (sharing content with them and asking their and their followers’ opinions). Both of these methods are useful in their own ways, but instead of simply leveraging the influencers, you should try to engage them. It’s much easier to get an influencer to share your content if you actually pique their interest. It’s unlikely that they’ll share content of mediocre or a low standard.
Syndication: The best way to think about syndication is like guest blogging but with more added benefits. Bloggers that are adamantly against guest blogging (yes, they do exist) tend to see syndication as the solution to their major problem: The fact that your created content is generating traffic for someone else and you’re not benefiting from it as much as if it were on your own blog. What syndication does is give other sites the ability to post your blog entries as they are released. This increases your coverage whilst at the same time, gives you the initial credit for your post and the SEO/traffic statistics that you’d miss out on a guest post.There is a downside to Syndication, however. In some cases, Google may see the copy that another site has posted as the original and your copy as an imposter. This can be easily rectified by using the “Fetch as Google” feature in your Webmaster Tools. You just have to submit your URL to Google to ensure that it tags you as the original poster. Syndication gives you all the benefits of guest blogging but without the drawbacks of not owning your own content.
Create a Resource Site: There are many niches that require a site that exists as a reference. In order to guarantee traffic for your blog, you can simply seek to become a reference site that everyone in your industry uses. This guarantees you traffic since your site is a valid reference that everyone in the community accepts as a citation. You might find your blog being cited in a number of posts from different blogs and articles, each of them driving content.The downside of this is that becoming an authority site takes time and no small amount of effort. To be a valid resource, your site will have to exist for quite some time and will have to be easily accessible to a number of people who would need to use it. Resource sites need to be constantly updated as new information or statistics come out. Keeping a resource site updated is no small task and can quickly swamp a small company blog. If it’s done right, however, it can be a very useful resource that is guaranteed to drive a lot of traffic to your company’s blog page.
Developing Your Content Distribution Channels For Best Results
In making the most of your content channels, you should be seeking to gain the maximum advantage that any one channel can grant to you. However, these channels do not exist in a vacuum. There is a subtle interplay between the different content channels and each can feed off the traffic from another. For example: a user on social media sees an interesting post, follows it back to your blog and then decides to become an email subscriber. Linking your content distribution channels together provides you with a system where you can keep your company or product in the user’s mind as much as possible. This translates in turn to a higher volume of customer loyalty and possibly higher traffic values. At the end of the day, your content channels are one of the most reliable ways of generating blog traffic, but only if utilized correctly.
There’s an incredible truth when it comes to the written word and ecommerce – a simple piece of content can mean thousands of dollars for your company. That’s right, just a handful of expertly crafted ecommerce web copy pieces will benefit your company with more revenue than you thought possible. You keep reading the 10 Reasons Why Content Is Important blog postings, but now it is time to look at a few case studies showing just how important content is. Nothing can beat a real time example or two.
Introduction to Brafton
Maybe you’ve heard about Brafton; they are a great content marketing resource that we use for many of our blogs. They provide great information and expert tips on how to get your brand out there effectively and awesomely. Their long slogan is, “Brafton fuels your brand with smart strategies and excellent content” and their shorter, easier to remember slogan is simply, “Fuel your brand.” Gives a decent image of what they do, doesn’t it?
The workers at Brafton started out crafting content for major businesses a decade ago and once the Internet search market began to grow, so did their business. Why? Because the sites they wrote for ended up listing high in the results. This made everyone want to use them and made them become a leader in the content marketing realm. They are a priceless resource that can teach you many useful marketing tricks.
Let’s Take A Look At One of Brafton’s Clients
Brafton works with an ecommerce company that sells trendy footwear in New York City. They started crafting short blogs for the company and publishing large images to connect with the company’s client base. Eventually, this company decided to make different landing pages for their most popular shoes: Nike and Jordan shoes. Unfortunately, the landing pages lacked keywords and other written content, meaning the company lacked site visits and orders.
When Colin, a Brafton employee, ran an organic search utilizing the keyword “Jordan Shoes” he realized that the company’s competitors were ranking 3rd and 4th on the SERP, which led to 11 percent and 8 percent total clicks (respectively). That is a lot of clicks and revenue for those companies and Brafton’s client was missing out. Colin pointed this out to his client and showed that even if they ranked 5th, the company would have approximately 15 clicks per month at a conversion rate of .0122. The average order value of $117.52 was calculated showing that the company was missing out on $21,506 a month in revenue. At first, the numbers seemed small, but it totaled up into a significant sum! This company was losing approximately a quarter million a year because of their lack of written content.
After implementing a few keywords, the Jordan shoes landing page is now generating 172 visits from organic search results and moved from ranking at 114th on the Google SERP to 25th. Are you starting to see just how important content is?
Now, Let’s Take A Look At One Of Our Own Clients
One of our clients is another great example of how content will help bring in more revenue amounting to thousands of dollars. Our client has a very niche ecommerce shop that only focuses on one product, getting rid of grey hair. This is definitely a market many people are interested in and there are many different shops out there, making it top priority to get our client noticed. Our client began by requesting three to five posted blogs from us with a wide selection of keywords to use (over 200). We focused on SEO for each blog, attempting to make each one stand out and make our client a leader in their field.
Our client reported to us how much success they had seen since requesting our services in mid-2013 towards late 2013 and the results are incredible. The report helped us to pinpoint the hot button topics for this client’s site, which helped us begin narrowing down the keywords for future blog postings. We also learned that we should adapt one specific voice style for all postings. We are using this information and are now posting weekly blogs using hot button keywords with that specific, consistent voice.
The report also showed that just one of our blogs, just one, brought in over $800 in revenue for our client! Other blogs brought in anywhere from $70 to $200. While those numbers might seem small, over the course of a year that number will be very significant, especially when you combine it with the $800 revenue.
When writing these successful posts, we made sure to write on hot topics within the community and wrote in a manner that spoke to our client’s customers. We always make sure that all of our blog posts end with a very clear call to action. This really helped bring in that revenue for the client.
Our client is very happy with the results and is continuing to see amazing growth in their niche market. The next step we are taking with them to help promote their store further is by having them set up a Google+ account to establish authorship. We are excited to see what the future holds for this company and how much more revenue they will begin to bring in once they switch to utilizing Google authorship.
See, Content Really Is Important
Now you can see that the power of one blog can really impact your revenue and can create a successful business. You no longer have to rely on what you read in blogs – you have actual proof of how content will bring about success. You need to start taking content creation, including ecommerce web copy, seriously and begin crafting content that is both high quality and optimized for the search engines. Once you have done this, you will begin to see your business become incredibly successful and you will be grateful you decided to dedicate time and money into your content marketing. Get ready to see some excellent results and maybe do your own case study!
You might have heard of Facebook’s newest attempt at revamping the newsfeed, or maybe you saw it in the app store on iTunes and wondered exactly what it is. Paper is a standalone app launched by Facebook, their first app with Creative Labs, alongside the tenth anniversary for Facebook itself (according to Informationweek.com). It’s a new way of reading the news, as well as a new way of looking at your Facebook newsfeed.
The Content of the Future
As content writers and marketers, we find all kinds of (both weird and normal) tools online to help us create content—and Facebook’s Paper app may just be a new avenue for pulling great content ideas, if you can use news-based and centered topics as ideas in your content strategy. Let’s delve into how Facebook’s Paper works a bit further.
Just What Is It?
When you download this app, you’ll have your Facebook newsfeed on a new interface. You scroll side to side to go through items instead of up and down and each item is on its own screen. There’s a ton of new ways to look at things, including new multigestures you have to learn as with any new app you download. You can then add other news streams, like you would with other news aggregator apps. The only difference between them and Paper is that this app includes your personal Facebook newsfeed. You then add new streams by category (which looks like tiles). Each stream shows up as you scroll through it in your “queue.”
It looks a little bit like the Windows 8 interface—if you’re a PC geek. And the idea of adding things by category will probably remind you a little bit of Pinterest. Facebook’s preview and information page at Facebook.com/paper can give you a better idea of the look and feel of the app, or you can download it and see for yourself.
Why Should I Download Paper?
According to Forbes.com, the Facebook Paper app is no different from any other newsreader. It looks nice, it gives you what you want, and it adds your Facebook newsfeed where you can also post updates, pictures, and links to Facebook. Forbes makes a good point though, “It turns out your friends are not terribly good photographers, headline writers or even spellers when forced to compete with the professionals.” When you look through your regular Facebook newsfeed on the computer, these things don’t seem to make a difference. The meme reposts and funny e-cards have always been a good distraction during your coffee breaks before, but in this new app these things can look “jarringly out of place.”
The Positives of Creating News Content Using Facebook’s Tool
If you’re a content marketer or involved in any way knee-deep in content strategizing, you might find Facebook’s Paper useful because of a personalized feel. Your Facebook newsfeed is right there in the queue with your other news.
The interface is beautiful. Tilting the screen to pan photos, better view for reading articles and blogs, all easily utilized to make sure that your content is what readers want to see.
You choose what you want to see. As a content marketer, you can streamline your own newsfeed and take this opportunity to gain more followers and put your page at the top of the list for Paper readers.
An opportunity to better learn what your readers want. Find out what posts are best liked with this new interface and create more content like it. Learn what your readers want to see when they use this app and you can come up with a killer content strategy.
And the Negatives
But could this be distracting, or a good thing, for your news-based content ideas? You might find another app that DOESN’T feature your friends’ activities for the day to be a little, well, less distracting.
Pointless content that looks bad and is just annoying. The constant posts from games, the quizzes, and various lists and cartoons could flood out your news-based content.
Pages for small business. You can utilize this app by posting coupons and other promotions but there is the chance your Facebook page could get lost in the other content floating around.
Your content may not work for this app. Perhaps the news-based content that you post relies on lists, surveys, and other text content besides articles and it won’t look right on its own screen the way that Papers shows it.
Limitations of Facebook’s Paper
The biggest limitation is that this app is only available on iPhone. The screen size is small and the market is limited since Android users are missing out. If you have a site or business that is mostly made up of Android users, this app will be of no use to you. Informationweek.com talks about five wishes they have for this app and some of them are definitely needed. One of these wishes is a content search for the entire app. Paper’s search function only searches your Facebook content, the same way as the Facebook app does when you type something in the search bar.
InformationWeek makes a good point that this limitation can be very frustrating. They also talk about Pinterest integration and customizable subtopics. These limitations are not as annoying as the search function only searching Facebook, but they could add a lot more to the app for future updates. The categories that are included work well for a news aggregator, so it’s not so bad, but for an app that says it wants to personalize – it could use some work.
So What Does The Bottom Line & Future Look Like for Paper?
Facebook’s Paper just came out. It might have some similar features to other apps, but it is something new. The interface looks really cool, and when you scroll through each item from side to side the way that it does, you feel much more like you’re reading a book or newspaper instead of a bunch of websites. Whether you’re sitting in bed on a Sunday morning with a cup of coffee or taking a break at the office, this app has a better look than the original Facebook app and more options for content.
You can post pictures and updates from Paper, but it’s not the same as the full Facebook app or the site on the computer. Aside from looking different, you can’t use it unless you have an iPhone, and if your newsfeed is cluttered with posts you never had the time to get rid of – your “Paper” won’t look very appealing at all. As said by the users at Forbes.com, you can push your Facebook newsfeed to the back of your queue and ignore it, but then Paper is just like every other newsreader app that’s already in your phone.
It doesn’t look like there is any news about updates to this app, since it just came out, and if you ask your friends how they like it there’s a good chance that they won’t know and haven’t even heard of it yet.
If you’re hoping for Facebook’s Paper to show up in the Google Play store or suddenly allow you to pin your favorite stories to Pinterest, it’s probably not happening soon. Anything can happen in a day, and developments could be hidden from the eyes of the Internet for now, but there doesn’t appear to be anything in the works. If you have an iPhone, check it out and take the opportunity to streamline your newsfeed and update your content now so that if and when this app does become more popular, you’ll be a pro and your news will look better than ever!
