UNDERSTANDING FROM THE PEOPLE TO THE BIGGER PICTURE

NOVEMBER 2015

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UNDERSTANDING FACEBOOK | FROM THE PEOPLE TO THE BIGGER PICTURE 1 INTRODUCTION BY ERIC HAHN

FIVE YEARS AGO, WHEN FAME HOUSE first got its start as a digital Fortunately for our sanity (and the success of our business), we’ve seen marketing agency in the music industry, we were a bit of a hard sell. firsthand a dramatic shift in the industry’s approach and perception of At the time, there was a sense that what digital people did was smoke digital through the everyday conversations we have with managers, artists, and mirrors, like we had hidden knowledge of secret tactics to blow record labels and many other key stakeholders in the music business that shit up for people. Except for a select few early adopters, the majority we are fortunate to call our clients and peers. In a world where the industry of sales conversations with prospective clients revolved around what has now caught up to an ecosystem where discovery, consumption and stunts or “crazy shit” we could do for people to get them hockey stick engagement happens primarily online, our vision for how digital strategy viral growth overnight. But our vision as a company was to provide should be approached is finally coming of age. a much more practical, effective approach to digital that paralleled the same tried and true marketing fundamentals of telling great and connecting artists to fans.

TO EXPLAIN THIS APPROACH, IT’S EASIEST TO EXPLAIN THE TWO CORE PROMPTS WE ALIGN OUR WORK AROUND.

01. The first challenge is identifying how we transpose an artist, label, or from , etc. Ignoring this results in an ineffective method to event’s brand to a digital engagement strategy that allows for a holistic reach and cultivate a relationship with fans. conversation with their fan base. Often times, the challenge we have is to identify ways our clients can expand the communications to go These tactics all funnel up to one mission we have for our clients: beyond promoting tours, albums, etc. So how do we build a brand- To build and maintain connected audiences for them. This backbone driven content strategy derived from the client’s story? We believe is a driver for branding, exposure, monetization—everything that’s in the need to drive fan relationships before consumer relationships. fundamental to an artist or music brand’s core business objectives. Furthermore, we see this approach as a necessary vehicle to drive year-round engagement, no matter if a client is on or off cycle. Often times, clients ask us why we advise to focus on certain platforms. In this white paper, we wanted to take the time to explore 02. After we define these story threads, part of our expertise is Facebook. Our team does a tremendous amount of research and tailoring the architecture of the content to work specifically for analysis that informs both overarching best practices and individual, individual platforms. That is, how do we get the most out of client-specific insights. To give a better understanding of our the audience a client has on each platform by paying attention methods, but also to open up the conversation to all of you, we had to the unique consumer behavior specific to a channel? For our team put together a collection of deep dives into varying topics example, why and how people use is very different related to the .

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UNDERSTANDING FACEBOOK | FROM THE PEOPLE TO THE BIGGER PICTURE 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS

01. SECTION I Audience

04. SECTION II How to Effectively Reach People on Facebook

08. SECTION III The Dominance of Video

12. SECTION IV The Bigger Picture

16. CLOSING

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UNDERSTANDING FACEBOOK | FROM THE PEOPLE TO THE BIGGER PICTURE 3 SECTION I AUDIENCE

Despite industry rumors, Facebook remains strong with Millennials. Across our clients, we see that well over half of the users who we reach—and more importantly, who engage with our content—are under 25, and the great majority (usually over 80%) are under 35.

While this definitely has something to do with many of our clients attracting a younger, Millennial audience, it is also a clear indication of one very important trend on the platform. Although younger users may prefer platforms like Instagram and for a truly “social” experience, they are very actively consuming and engaging with content from artists, brands, and other Pages on Facebook.

The volume of data that Facebook has on these users is unprecedented in the digital space. Increasingly, Facebook is sharing that data with marketers, enabling us to make better decisions than ever before about what will work best for each audience and objective. Here, we explore some of the ways Facebook is leveraging this vast volume of data— as well as how we, as marketers, can take advantage of that data.

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UNDERSTANDING FACEBOOK | FROM THE PEOPLE TO THE BIGGER PICTURE 1 The Audience Insights tool in Facebook.

AUDIENCE INSIGHTS BRIDGING THE CONSTELLATION Unlocking Psychographic Data Across Your Owned Audiences How Facebook is Perfecting Audience Targeting Katonah Rafter, VP of Marketing Matt Chylak, Digital Strategy Manager

ONE OF OUR FAVORITE TOOLS at Fame House is Facebook’s Audience Insights. AT THIS POINT, IT’S PRETTY MUCH ACCEPTED that Facebook knows everything While initially released to advertisers in 2014, the tool is one we find is still often about us. Whether we’ve locked down our security settings or not, their has overlooked by marketers. Yet it is arguably the most powerful method we have to detailed information about every user in its system, from simple biographical data to understand who our audience is, what their interests are, and how they behave extensive behavioral data to features that essentially trace our every move. across Facebook’s vast universe. While this may be slightly alarming from a privacy standpoint, this consolidation of data is exciting for marketers, as it paints a clearer picture of who is—and who could Audience Insights sits within the Ads Manager section of Facebook. It goes beyond the be—engaging with our products. standard insights you see in your Page admin view to show psychographic data about your audience, such as common job titles, relationship status, education level, income Facebook is banking on finding the most effective ways to monetize these data and home value, device usage, retail and online spending behavior, top interests (both clusters for continued growth, especially as it continues to drive non-paying brands categories and specific pages), and activity on Facebook (e.g. total Pages liked per user, away from the platform. Precise audience targeting is a constellation of stars; the frequency of comments, shares, ad clicks across Facebook in the last 30 days). Across picture is there for us to connect if we look at the between the data points. most of these data points, Audience Insights will show you not just your audience’s To fill this space, the social behemoth is constantly rolling out new features, and nearly data, but also how that compares to the broader Facebook user base. all of them are intended to improve their audience targeting capabilities.

You can drill down deeper to filter the data based on a broad range of factors, such as ethnicity, age, gender, education level, language, and even “behaviors” such as “Expats in Brazil” or “Engaged Gamers - Simulation.” This gives us an unparalleled ability to understand specific segments of our audiences, and how various groups behave differently. “ THE MORE DATA WE SHARE WITH THE PLATFORM TO

Most exciting of all, however, is what this tool can do for your owned data—not just the PERFECT OUR AD TARGETING, OR TO UNDERSTAND data generated by your brand on Facebook. Audience Insights can be used to analyze any Custom Audience that lives within Facebook, enabling us to perform this same OUR AUDIENCE, THE MORE INFORMATION FACEBOOK analysis on groups like your website visitors, app users, or lists, and compare each group against each other. And because Facebook has user data on nearly 1.5 HAS TO FEED ITS OWN BUSINESS OBJECTIVES.” billion people across the world, the sample size we are looking at is significant.

Of course, while providing enormous value to marketers at no cost, this tool plays right into Facebook’s own master plan. The more data we share with the platform to perfect FACEBOOK IS PERFECTING ITS VIEW OF USERS BY our ad targeting, or to understand our audience, the more information Facebook has 1. Timing messaging to historical data, to feed its own business objectives. It’s only a matter of time—if they succeed—before 2. Increasing the relevance of interest targeting, and Facebook is the . 3. Refining its structure towards more of an app-in-app ecosystem.

SECTION I | AUDIENCE UNDERSTANDING FACEBOOK | FROM THE PEOPLE TO THE BIGGER PICTURE 2 data will give the platform’s algorithm an even better idea of what users care about. A similar overhaul of web profiles in 2010 gave Facebook immense amounts of data on where people live, go to school, and work—data that has fueled the platform’s ad targeting functionality ever since.

INCREASED IN-APP ACTIVITY The above updates are certainly interesting, but Facebook’s most exciting moves are the ways it is shifting to become more of an all-encompassing ecosystem, persuading users to spend more and more time within its mobile app.

At its F8 developer conference this March, Facebook’s Director of Product Adam Mosseri admitted that the company tracks which users we’re messaging via its Facebook mobile Messenger app. Other owned apps like Instagram and WhatsApp likely provide similar stats. Linking that cross-platform data together will be key to getting an even stronger picture of each of the nearly 1.5 billion people who inhabit the Facebook universe each month.

This complete picture extends more directly to payment information as well. A major rollout this year was the Messenger Payments function, which allows users to save credit “ FACEBOOK HAS NEVER BEEN SHY ABOUT THEIR card data with Facebook rather than using a dedicated payments app like Venmo. Complementing this service, Facebook announced in mid-October that they’ve DESIRE TO INCREASE THEIR SHARE OF THE $145 BILLION begun testing a new feature that will let users shop directly within its app, as well as rolling out a ‘products page’ ad format that promises to help it become a major GLOBAL ADVERTISING MARKET. ” competitor in the sales space. As technology tries to own larger and larger parts of the advertising spend, we’ll continue to see more moves towards the “app-in-app” model. Facebook has done ENHANCED HISTORICAL DATA an incredible job of monetizing its user base, and this value will only increase as it Facebook has already done a great job orienting users to include YOY dates in gets better at using predictive data. Right now Facebook is the star around which their profiles. Their “On This Day,” “Birthday,” and “Milestone” features seamlessly a large portion of the digital advertising world orbits. It won’t stop until it’s the integrate historical data into users’ news feeds, revealing that the ’s center of the universe. algorithm is paying close attention to how users actually live their lives.

The next clear step here is to become more predictive, extrapolating future COOKIES VS. FACEBOOK AUDIENCE DATA information from historical status data. Most people have a predictable yearly orbit, Adam Rappoport, Account Manager no different from a planet. Segmenting audiences by what they do during certain times of year is the next step toward more precise time-based ads targeting. For PART OF FACEBOOK’S MASTER PLAN centers around the concept of replacing example, a festival can send nostalgic loyalty sales to fans leaving for their next the ‘cookie’ with audience data from their 1.5 billion active users. The flaws of year of college. Bars can advertise their drink specials to local college students who cookie-based advertising, namely relying on third-party cookies, have long been recently finished their midterms. This data is more efficient for marketers who want documented; the inability to track the same person across devices, for example, is a to tell a focused story, and delivers more timely and valuable offers to users. major shortcoming. Cookies become even more difficult to track on mobile devices, and there will likely never be a consensus on their ability to accurately connect IMPROVED INTEREST TARGETING advertisers with interested parties. Interest targeting will always be the core of paid media advertising, but Facebook needs to continue iterating as users become less and less likely to follow a brand’s Facebook has never been shy about their desire to increase their share of the $145 page. New updates to user profiles are Facebook’s attempt to solidify its position billion global advertising market. Their mission includes ensuring that the creative as the center of its users’ web presence, especially on mobile. community starts to learn and understand the power of their data as it pertains to advertising. Within the Facebook ecosystem lives more data on more people than Building off widely adopted features from e-dating profiles, the newest platform any other single platform in existence can offer. With the introduction of advertising updates include a new 100-character Bio field and an option to pin Featured Photos to to Instagram, new demographic segmentation capabilities, an ad-server (Atlas), the top of your profile. While these might seem like innocuous changes, this increased and an audience network that allows brands to extend their Facebook campaigns focus on biographical information has major paid media implications. Scraping this to other mobile apps, they are well on their way to achieving their mission.

SECTION I | AUDIENCE UNDERSTANDING FACEBOOK | FROM THE PEOPLE TO THE BIGGER PICTURE 3 SECTION II HOW TO EFFECTIVELY REACH PEOPLE ON FACEBOOK

The infamous algorithm is always changing. Keeping up with the latest updates can be a challenge, especially when the more nuanced elements of the algorithm’s secret sauce are not shared publicly. Of course, there is one thing we all know for sure: the days of great organic reach on Facebook are over.

But with over a billion users accessing the platform at least once a day, a strong Facebook strategy will remain essential for every artist and brand for quite some time to come. With a solid understanding of the different mechanics at play—namely, how Facebook prioritizes certain content, and how users actually behave on the platform—you can still grow your organic performance to have a meaningful impact for your business. Here, we share some of our go-to tactics for increasing organic reach and engagement on the platform.

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UNDERSTANDING FACEBOOK | FROM THE PEOPLE TO THE BIGGER PICTURE 4 Nearly half of Facebook users only access the platform via mobile phones, while nearly 900 million people access Facebook on their phone daily. Making sure your content looks great on the mobile news feed is critical to capture users’ attention as they scroll through their feed.

03. Keep it short—and relevant. With few exceptions, this age-old best practice remains true. You have only seconds—if even—to capture attention and get that early engagement that’s so critical to the lifetime reach of your post.

When appropriate, leveraging trending topics will also boost your organic reach. If a topic CRACKING THE ALGORITHM CODE is trending and you post something related to it, your existing fans are more likely to be Katonah Rafter, VP of Marketing served that post among others about that topic. Alternately, putting your brand’s spin on trending and cultural moments can delight your fans and earn you a higher AS FACEBOOK EVOLVES FROM a purely social platform to one driven by content share of voice within the conversation. consumption, many things about the way people use it has changed. More than anything else, the news feed has driven these changes. While Facebook strives 04. Make your content visually appealing. to improve their user experience and create more monetization opportunities, Use custom images on Link posts and optimize your content to look great on mobile devices. they’ve made it harder for marketers to permeate the noise. Tricks that used to be standard practice—for example, to include a clear call to action in your posts—can 05. Don’t use keywords that clearly indicate a call to action. now seriously hurt your organic reach, and your engagement. Explicitly asking your audience to do something (without paid support) will hurt your organic reach. Don’t use language like “Check out...” or “Listen to…” or “Buy…” unless you Across our clients, however, we’ve seen that a focus on compelling content and a are planning to support it with some budget. great fan experience can still produce gains on Facebook. While we don’t expect we’ll ever see the volume of reach and engagements we saw just a few years ago, A more effective approach is to get creative with how you entice your fans to click or these tactics are essential for earning value from your Facebook presence: engage. The best approach is to let the quality of the content speak for itself, though you can experiment with different language choices, or even the use of emojis, to indirectly ask 01. Remember that Facebook is still a social network. your fans for support. Users go to Facebook to interact with friends, get news, and to engage with content— not to buy products or to be advertised to. When crafting content for Facebook, you 06. If you’re explicitly promoting something, you’ll have to pay for it. need to remember what the value is for the fan in engaging with you. This is reality of marketing on Facebook, and you need to accept it. Facebook users don’t care about being advertised to, so you will need to pay for the privilege to do so. Why should they care? How are you making their experience better? Whether it’s informing them of something they care about or feel is important to know 07. Whenever possible, use a native video post. (increasing their social currency), or connecting with them on an emotional level Facebook has been aggressively growing its video business for well over a year now. Video about a shared experience (e.g. a concert) or something relevant and funny, you content gets significantly higher organic reach than any other post format on Facebook. need to be able to answer these questions for each and every post you publish. See section III for more on video.

02. Think mobile- and engagement-first. Lastly, don’t forget to think beyond the news feed. There are many other ways Early engagement rate on your post has a big impact on its organic reach. Content to engage your audience on Facebook that can be far more effective at creating that Facebook sees people interacting with is more likely to be served to more meaningful community and connections with your fans. Facebook Groups and, users in the news feed, so it’s critical to position your content to entice users to click, lately, Events have been extremely useful tools for our team in building direct comment, like, or share it. contact for our clients to their fans.

SECTION II | HOW TO EFFECTIVELY REACH PEOPLE ON FACEBOOK UNDERSTANDING FACEBOOK | FROM THE PEOPLE TO THE BIGGER PICTURE 5 DESIGNING FOR FACEBOOK Tips from our Creative Department FACEBOOK EVENTS Dan Conway, Creative Services Director What the “Interested” Button Means for Marketers James Guttman, Account Manager DESIGN IS A PRIMARY COMPONENT of elevating a brand’s strategy on Facebook. Through our experience and observation, we’ve honed in on a few key factors for success: FACEBOOK HAS RECENTLY REMOVED the “Maybe” button on Events and replaced it with an “Interested” button. Choosing “Interested” automatically opts users into 01. Visually engaging content receiving notifications from events, and may become a primary target for event When a user is scrolling through their feed, you only have a few seconds to gain their hosts moving forward. The feature also allows potential attendees to see other attention. The best way to do this is with a visually focused image or video. This typically “Interested” friends. Previously, choosing “Maybe” was rather ambiguous, and means little to no text on the image itself, save that for the description. didn’t provide much value to event promoters or potential attendees. This change represents the next move in a larger push from Facebook to make Events a more You can also maximize your engagement by ensuring that your post is sized to viable way to engage fans, increase visibility, and ultimately sell tickets. Here are a display optimally. We have found square content (1200 x 1200 px) and landscape few potential implications of the change: cropped content (1200 x 628 px) fit best into a standard post space without being cut off. 01. Driving fans to Events could become be more important than ever before. We already see huge increases in engagement as a percentage of audience when 02. Branded content directly messaging Events as opposed to posting on a Page timeline. The main Everything you post across social media should still align with your brand values and issue has been splitting the audience: not everyone who wants to attend an event voice. That being said, content that is more raw and personal tends to perform better. For is aware of the Facebook Event. With improvements and additional features example, a photo taken with your iPhone often performs better than a professionally shot being added to the Events product, driving “Interested” clicks may become more and edited photo shoot. important than ticket link/website clicks in the initial stages of event promotion.

This taps in to the core nature of Facebook, where people are looking to connect 02. Events may see increased weight in the Facebook News Feed. with friends and family, rather than brands. McDonalds (www.facebook.com/ In order to encourage more direct pushes of Events in the News Feed in place of off-site McDonaldsUS) does a great job of this. For the most part, their posts feel organic clicks, Facebook may increase the reach of posts containing an Event link instead of a ticket and not overproduced. link. We’ve already seen anecdotal evidence of this change taking effect.

03. A standalone Events app could be on the way. “ ...WE’VE SEEN THAT A FOCUS ON COMPELLING Similarly to Messenger and the impending Notify app, Facebook could be looking to make Events its own robust discovery platform. Facebook has already reported CONTENT AND A GREAT FAN EXPERIENCE CAN STILL that users will soon be able to invite friends to Events even if they do not have a Facebook account. The recent rollout of additional location-based data for PRODUCE GAINS ON FACEBOOK.” Marketers, specifically that of data around when fans are physically near brands’ stores, may be yet another indication of the likelihood of such a standalone app.

SECTION II | HOW TO EFFECTIVELY REACH PEOPLE ON FACEBOOK UNDERSTANDING FACEBOOK | FROM THE PEOPLE TO THE BIGGER PICTURE 6 DARK SOCIAL Beyond the Measured Share Ryan Hall, Account Manager

WHILE FACEBOOK IS ONE OF the biggest drivers of traffic from social media platforms, particularly to publishers and retail, there is another side of social sharing that is much harder to track. In fact, chances are good that you aren’t tracking 1/3 of your revenue from clicks.

Dark social is a term used to refer to the Sharing of content and links over “dark” platforms, such as email, text, forums, and mobile apps. These platforms are entirely private and can’t be evaluated by our usual measures of success, such as Reach, Likes, Shares, etc. Once someone copy/pastes a link into a text or chat, that social content becomes “dark”—that is, we are unable to identify where traffic is coming from when the recipient clicks on it. This type of engagement is referred to as a 2nd generation engagement. With social sharing being such a valuable way to analyze the success of the content we put out, why should we care so much about dark social in the first place?

Recent survey data published by Prosper Insights and Analytics shows that 44% of Millennials said they use text messaging to communicate about brands (see right). Dark social measurement also becomes more important because websites are becoming more secure, using https, which can mask referral information. Also, “RECENT CASE STUDIES FROM UNIFIED SOCIAL HAVE with the rise of content being consumed via mobile apps, many apps don’t add referrer tags to their links to track referrals. An example of this is using SHOWN HOW OVER 1/3 OF THEIR CLIENTS’ REVENUE CAN “t.co” shortlinks to attribute publisher traffic back to Twitter. COME FROM MULTI-GENERATIONAL CLICKS.” Recent case studies from Unified Social have shown how over 1/3 of their clients’ revenue can come from multi-generational clicks. This means that if you’re not tracking dark social engagements in some way, 1/3 of your ecommerce revenue may be being analyzed incorrectly. In the same case study, Unified showed how So what does Fame House recommend? We recommend analyzing your brand’s multi-generational audiences (those receiving content through shared texts or content from a sharing perspective to see how the acknowledgment of dark social ) can be shown to have twice the conversion rate when compared with first may have an impact throughout your brand. Consider your fan’s motivation to generation audiences. share. If they truly value a piece of content that speaks to a highly niche audience, chances are they may email or text it, rather than share it on Facebook or Twitter, What I find most interesting is that when you look at the big picture movements to make sure it reaches exactly who they want to see it. As a result, it makes sense being made in present social media, you will find examples of major companies to make sure your website has dark social sharing functionalities built into it (email, making an effort to gain insight into dark social. For example, Facebook’s $19 WhatsApp sharing, etc.). By making it easy for fans to share they way they want to, billion purchase of WhatsApp, one of the largest text messaging apps overseas, you will increase the spread of your content and, at the very least, be able track the seems to be an indicator of Facebook making moves to acquire those insights. Not volume of external shares to these “dark” networks. only this, but Facebook, BuzzFeed, and Pinterest are just a few of the brands who have started adding “app identity” tags to links shared through their mobile apps, As more develops on the dark social front, we will continue to provide our clients now allowing traffic to be traced back to those platforms. with relevant information and the tools to track this data appropriately.

SECTION II | HOW TO EFFECTIVELY REACH PEOPLE ON FACEBOOK UNDERSTANDING FACEBOOK | FROM THE PEOPLE TO THE BIGGER PICTURE 7 SECTION III THE DOMINANCE OF VIDEO

Executing a social strategy aimed at reaching your maximum audience is essential for a successful campaign, but content remains king in terms of driving brand engagement and awareness. As Facebook shifts their focus increasingly toward video, daily video views per day have doubled in the past 6 months to 8 billion. In order to cut through the noise, we must be mindful of the type of media we create to better resonate with fans.

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UNDERSTANDING FACEBOOK | FROM THE PEOPLE TO THE BIGGER PICTURE 8 02:00/5:03

THE VALUE OF VIDEO • Opinionated Making the Most of Your Content on Facebook People want to come across as smart and opinionated within their circle—to earn social Dan Conway, Creative Services Director currency—sometimes without doing the research themselves. Being able to watch a short video, agree with it, and share it as your own opinion is a very popular form VIDEO ON FACEBOOK HAS EMERGED as one of the most popular and powerful of posting. platforms for individuals and brands alike. Just a few years ago, Facebook’s original text status was overtaken in popularity by the photo post. In 2015, video These types of videos tend to draw the most engagements as users comment with has emerged as the dominant medium in parallel with the widespread adoption of their own points of view. smartphone technology and the push for higher quality cameras on our phones. 03. Humor In the past year alone, video posts have increased 94%. Even more astounding, The most straightforward and easily executed type of content. If it makes you hit the floor the number of videos appearing in people’s news feeds has increased by 360% laughing, it’s highly sharable. from 2014 to 2015. The key to capitalizing on this trend is to clearly understand what content performs best and to follow a set of simple guidelines for optimizing Videos that include general humor, parody, and general pop culture references tend to each post. outperform all other types of video content in terms of views, retention rates, and clicks to pay vs. auto. The key here is to get your timing right. WHAT TO POST With the data from hundreds of millions of fans at our fingertips, we’ve honed in on 3 core HOW & WHEN TO POST themes to bolster views and engagement: 01. Always upload natively to Facebook. Native videos command 3x higher organic reach on the platform than videos linked 01. A personal or emotional connection. from YouTube. Motion graphics and recycled content can work if executed properly, but personalized content thrives, especially when triggering one of two key emotions: 02. Use bumpers and title slates. • Nostalgia The window to engage an audience has shrunk to the time it takes to scroll a timeline. Bring the audience back to a moment they remember or were a part of. With Facebook’s autoplay feature, you have about a second and half to hook a viewer. Examples: Live performance or this day in history videos. Implementing eye-catching title cards and bumpers with established and recognizable branding can go a long way toward this end. • Intimacy Make fans feel closer to your music or brand. A video will establish a more intimate Highly visual images using bright colors with little text tend to be the most engaging. It connection with your fans when compared to a text or photo post. should also force the user to ask themselves the question, “What is this video about?”. Examples: A day in the life, “selfie style” or backstage videos. Artists such as Dillon Francis, Ellie Goulding, Pentatonix, and Steve Aoki are key 03. Mind your titles and video descriptions. examples of artists using this approach. Fans yearn for a glimpse into the lives of their Even though it’s a video, the title and descriptions are still important to provide context favorite artists, and with the improvement of phone cameras, this can be achieved with for what the user is watching or about to watch. This will become more critical as Facebook minimal budget and effort. Content can then be branded, polished, and published. improves its video search capabilities.

02. Current Events or Opinions. 04. Your video’s length should serve a purpose. Facebook has become a place people go to seek out news, spanning from personal and Overall, shorter is better. At Fame House, we consistently see that videos under local news to large national or international issues 20 seconds have a higher number of views and retention rate. However, with a shorter video, the engagement can only go so deep. Consider using compelling • General news short clips targeting the news feed to drive interest in longer-form video available People follow popular news outlets like CNN or VICE to get a daily download of content. on your website. This content is sometimes relayed in a “news capsule,” which gives a quick overview of a series of popular topics that users can quickly digest. There are, of course, some outliers. Brands and artists with well established fan bases see videos closer to 3 minutes in length perform very well, driving higher volume of fan comments.

SECTION III | THE DOMINANCE OF VIDEO UNDERSTANDING FACEBOOK | FROM THE PEOPLE TO THE BIGGER PICTURE 9 FACEBOOK VIDEO ADVERTISING FACEBOOK VS. YOUTUBE Kate Strollo, Account Manager Platform Advantages Emily Levy, Digital Marketing Associate and Gabe Coffey, Video Content Manager Video ad growth across Facebook has boded well as marketers shift their budgets to online video. Overall spends across digital platforms are continuing to grow rapidly, and WITH THE EMERGENCE OF FACEBOOK as a popular video content platform, many in the are projected to increase by 13% to nearly $15 billion by 2019. As Facebook video views industry are quick to draw parallels between it and longtime dominator YouTube. However, surpass 8 billion views per day, the company has become a fierce contender for your ad it is important to differentiate between the two when determining marketing strategies. dollars. But what exactly makes the platform so enthralling? Though YouTube remains the dominant player in online video, Facebook native video is PLACEMENT growing at an explosive rate. According to a study by SocialBakers, “the Top 1,000 profiles Facebook ads are sold via auctions. This means that advertisers can choose to buy ads on Facebook & YouTube are uploading 4x more videos natively on Facebook” in 2015 than at a specific cost per impression—or they may pay per 10-second video view, addressing they did in 2014, making up over 30% of our news feeds. Volume of content uploaded to concerns that users are not actually viewing the content due to Facebook’s autoplay YouTube from these same profiles has remained flat year over year. Still, major brands are features. YouTube, on the other hand, offers a slew of both pricing and placement options, expanding their investment in YouTube as viewership continues to climb. such as where in a video their ad appears and to pay only if a user views more than 30 seconds of content via YouTube’s TrueView option. YouTube is and will always be a place where people go to search out video content, whereas Facebook is currently a place where people passively absorb video content. TARGETING & AUDIENCE Consider the analogy of the architect (YouTube) vs. the gardener (Facebook) when Thanks to their extensive user data (see Section I), Facebook allows marketers to target determining video strategy. An architect meticulously plans—drawing up blueprints, their specific audience to a degree unmatched by any other platform, in turn driving finding the right plot, getting all of his materials in order—and only when the time is right higher conversion rates at a lower cost per acquisition. Aside from demographic targeting, does he begin to build. A gardener’s strategy is more adaptive and reactive, tending to a Facebook can serve users based on interests, social media behaviors, purchasing habits crop that which has a short, limited lifespan. and custom audiences built from your email lists or website visitors. Video advertising also allows you to create remarketing pools from users who have previously watched your Nonetheless, both Facebook and YouTube are incredibly important to any digital video content. strategy, each harboring their own strengths and weaknesses. Recognize your fans’ behavior on each platform in order to effectively decide which channel (or mixture of As users are not required to have a YouTube account in order to watch any video, the channels) is right for your content. In the era of social video, brands must implement a platform’s narrow targeting capabilities cannot compete with Facebook’s. YouTube does multi-pronged approach across both channels to succeed. allow marketers to cookie their audience and remarket based on past video views, but these don’t tend to work well on mobile (see page 3). CHANNEL APPROACH To determine the appropriate approach per platform, we first need to look at the four BEHAVIOR major differences between YouTube and Facebook videos: discovery method, lifespan, Though YouTube remains the leader in the online video market with over 1 billion optimal length, and channel noise. active users, Facebook has unparalleled global reach as a platform primarily for social audiences vs. only video consumption. Facebook provides a way for more 01. Discovery Method seamless engagement, contributing to increased virality around video content. It’s YouTube allows users to easily search for content based on the video title, creator, channel, worth noting, though, that Facebook isn’t expected to overshadow YouTube any or subject, effectively creating a massive video search engine. The search-to-watch system time soon, as both platforms cater to different behaviors around video consumption. in place on YouTube requires that the user has some prior awareness of the content they’re

SECTION III | THE DOMINANCE OF VIDEO UNDERSTANDING FACEBOOK | FROM THE PEOPLE TO THE BIGGER PICTURE 10 Source: SocialBakers

Meanwhile, Facebook videos compete for attention alongside status updates, photo posts, links to articles, event announcements, etc., all living within the same environment.

MEASURING SUCCESS Source: SocialBakers To accurately assess the performance of your video content, you need to start by defining clear goals. Video is a powerful tool toward many ends, but a million views of a short, funny searching for—keyword, subject, creator, etc.—making YouTube an excellent platform for video on your Facebook page provide a very different, arguably surface-level, quality of well established media outlets, content creators, and brands. However, it does little to engagement than a million views of your event trailer or music video on YouTube. benefit new and emerging content creators. Consider the strengths of each platform and the way audiences use each before deciding By contrast, Facebook curates videos in our news feeds based on its algorithm, offering where your video belongs—and more importantly, where you should be investing little ability to actually search for content. Users flock to this platform to discover rather resources into video content production. than seek out new videos. While they have shifted this approach with the rollout of Universal Search in late October, search results still pale in comparison to what users can Once you have clear objectives defined and you’ve rolled out your video strategy, find on YouTube. make sure to fully understand the available metrics and which is the most accurate indicator of success for you. On YouTube, for example, a video view is counted once 02. Shelf life a user watches at least 6 seconds of a video, where as Facebook will count a view YouTube videos employ a lifespan that tends to peak 6 days from the initial upload. after just 3 seconds of a video beginning to autoplay in a user’s newsfeed. Though However, content that lives on this platform has the potential to go viral at any moment Facebook does offer insight into how many viewers watch beyond this mark, this should they become relevant again. causes inflated view counts, making it difficult to compare performance across the two platforms based purely on total views. On Facebook, the lifespan of a video is the amount of time it takes a user to scroll to the said video from the bottom of their screen to the top. Although Facebook videos are Facebook is continuing to enhance its reporting on video consumption, and we expect the permanently stored on the ‘Videos’ tab, the lack of a strong search algorithm completely platform to make rapid gains on this front in the coming year, as video on the platform diminishes the chance of rediscovery. We anticipate that Facebook will continue to tweak matures. Given the unrivaled volume of user and behavioral data that Facebook has on its its new search features to try to compete directly with YouTube on this front. users, it could easily surpass YouTube on this front in the near future.

03. Length LOOKING AHEAD YouTube’s search-to-watch video discovery method is more beneficial to longer-form Video has experienced rapid growth within the content marketing industry. As video is video content than Facebook video. YouTube videos can be longer form without risking a expected to account for 69% of all consumer traffic by 2017, video has become a means for dramatic drop in retention rate given the active role users play in seeking out video content. survival across all social media networks. With Facebook and YouTube seeing millions of views per day, other social networks have been working to increase their video products As we see across most platforms built primarily for social engagement, Facebook users and ad offerings. Most notable among them is Snapchat, whose immersive vertical favor content that they can absorb quickly and move on. video format and interactive Discover channels are pushing the boundaries of how we consume video and interact with brands. 04. Channel Noise On YouTube, videos only compete for users’ attention with other videos, expanding to take With video growing in every which direction, it is vital to not only integrate it into up a majority of the webpage’s real estate, particularly on mobile where the video fills the any upcoming campaign, but also to understand the psychology across the digital user’s screen. ecosystem and where this may pivot in the coming years.

SECTION III | THE DOMINANCE OF VIDEO UNDERSTANDING FACEBOOK | FROM THE PEOPLE TO THE BIGGER PICTURE 11 SECTION IV THE BIGGER PICTURE

While Facebook is clearly a critical component of any digital marketing strategy, and will remain so for quite some time to come, it should not be your primary tool to engage with your audience. As with any social media platform, your relationship with your fans on Facebook is ultimately defined by the platform’s business objectives, rather than your own.

So where should Facebook fit into your larger digital strategy?

CONTINUED....

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UNDERSTANDING FACEBOOK | FROM THE PEOPLE TO THE BIGGER PICTURE 12 WHERE DOES FACEBOOK FIT INTO YOUR SOCIAL STRATEGY? Deb Keller, Marketing and Client Services Manager, Brian Aranda, Account Manager, Alex Hines, Digital Marketing Associate, and Ali Samadpour, Digital Marketing Associate

“IS THIS THE FACEBOOK KILLER?” The question permeates headlines whenever new platforms launch, ready to agitate the algorithmically-calculated social waters. As we’ve explored in this white paper, Facebook is anything but dead, but it is time to adapt.

Facebook continues to be a gold mine of user data that should be used to its full potential, but with publishers out-reaching most brands in the space, the days of relying on Facebook to reach your brand objectives are behind us. This raises more relevant questions: How do business objectives translate across channel strategy? What audience segments are we trying to reach by investing in other platforms? How do platforms differ in their abilities to reach set objectives? How do we measure success on other platforms with less scale?

Let’s take Facebook as an example. Even if you’ve coyly suggested it’s time to “see other people” to your long-term relationship with Facebook, understanding her value proposition will help you understand how to nurture your platform relationships holistically. Yes, relationships: your brand strategy should never be a monogamous investment. If that does describe your strategy, consider the following a sort of impromptu social marketing speed dating.

While demographics are shifting older, Facebook still reaches the younger crowd. Twitter has a unique ability to connect users with the larger conversation happening As users, we’ve already invested so much into building our vast network across all around trending topics. We can participate and have major implications in social touchpoints in life. Facebook allows us to connect with others we wouldn’t typically movements, simply by unifying behind a . As a brand, leveraging trending have reason to. For brands, it’s easy to fall prey to this sunk cost fallacy. Keeping can increase visibility with prompt (and relevant) participation to drive this platform in the mix will continue to have its pros, from Facebook’s investments share of voice around cultural moments. Twitter lacks the reach-cutting algorithm in video strategy and user data on large audience segments, to deep integration of Facebook, but maintaining an active strategy here is key to avoid being a drop in across websites and 3rd-party tools. Yet reach-cutting algorithms encourage a the bucket. Twitter’s content shelf-life is short, yet its fast-paced style can be your “pay-to-play” mentality. While fans trust content created by a brand on Facebook biggest asset. Consumers expect timely responses. Catering to these expectations most, building trusting and meaningful relationships can be particularly difficult if through customer service and personalized interactions fosters a more intimate your content goes unseen. Let’s consider alternatives for reaching objectives. connection to your audience and can cement brand loyalty.

Having taken the lead as teen’s “most important” social network in 2014, Instagram drives Placing a strong foothold in the younger demo (the majority of users being under 25), a lot of value for its core 18-29 year old audience. Users love to consume content via visual Snapchat thrives in ephemeral content. Brands, in turn, thrive in the ability to create storytelling and to discover new windows to the world through hashtags, trending places more in-the-moment, personalized 1:1 engagements. Brands are challenged to engage or people. It’s hardly surprising that Instagram consistently sees the highest engagement creatively vs promotionally, to the benefit of consumers. Consumers trust brand-created as an audience percentage given that there is—currently—no algorithm filtering the content on Snapchat least compared to other social networks. It is true: marketers are content each user sees. Brands have creatively-driven opportunities here to foster fan faced with downsides to Snapchat strategy investment. Content creation and community relationships, though the inability to drive web traffic off-platform (excluding advertising) engagement is time consuming, the platform lacks user data and analytics, and it’s means this platform is all about engagement and strengthening relationships with fans. certainly not a web traffic driver. However, for those brands investing in content creation

SECTION IV | THE BIGGER PICTURE UNDERSTANDING FACEBOOK | FROM THE PEOPLE TO THE BIGGER PICTURE 13 Take a look for yourself in their wealth of case studies.

YouTube is known as the major player for video discovery. The platform is rated by Millennials as the top place to watch content, though it’s facing increased competition from Facebook (see page 10). Content creators still lean in YouTube’s favor for monetization while Facebook is in the early stages of developing their response (along with other crucial features for creators, like a comparable equivalent to YouTube’s content ID system). YouTube makes it easy to share and embed content across the web. In fact, YouTube reaches more adults ages 18-34 than any single cable TV network.

Yahoo-owned is rather unique in both its usage and audience. More so than any other social network covered, Tumblr is the platform with the heaviest desktop use. The possibilities for customization are almost endless (and we’ve taken full advantage of that! Head to famehouse.net to see some projects we’ve built for Maroon 5, TomorrowWorld, and Tiësto, to a few.) The creatively-niche user base, consisting primarily of 16-24 year olds, posts content in practically every digital medium, both natively and from 3rd parties. This is an easy-opportunity platform for brands to explore. Content strategy doesn’t require heavily reliance on original content creation. Brands integrate into the community by existing content with added commentary, benefiting from the increased visibility the more that content is distributed.

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Needless to say, the number of social platforms in existence is too extensive to cover in one overview. While we’ve focused on high-level insights for those used in the US market, always consider your strategy first and foremost against your target audience and objectives. Not every social platform will work effectively for your objective, and, as marketers, we often find ourselves carefully considering “OPTIMIZE YOUR CHANNELS FOR CONTINUED what it means to tailor objectives to work for the platforms at hand. Through the use of each platform’s unique functionalities and nuanced features, DISCOVERY AND FLUID CONNECTIVITY FROM CONTENT we can tailor business objectives into optimized digital marketing goals for each platform. Ultimately, this is what dictates social strategy execution from the format TO CONTENT AND PLATFORM TO PLATFORM.” of a social post, to the type of content, or even the medium utilized. Here, we’ll take a look at common objectives and how we can realize their platform execution.

DRIVING LINK CLICKS and perfecting their engagement strategies, audience growth and quality of engagements On Facebook, marketers must resist the urge to push users to interact with their proves well worthwhile. social posts. If Facebook’s algorithm thinks that a page is being salesy, it will restrict the organic reach of the post. When a call to action is necessary, utilize the paid Twitter-owned is known as a network where the top of the top creators, social media media function of the platform and target users that are most likely to want to click celebrities, and influencers rule what trends. These niche users have access to various through to the media, or use the Call to Action button in the cover photo section editing and creation tools native to Vine, as well as the ability to upload pre-produced of a brand’s page. content. The recent introduction of music tools like Snap to Beat and Featured Tracks make it even easier to get creative, with bigger potential for music to go viral. Humorous content Optimize your channels for continued discovery and fluid connectivity from content usually gets the most traction. Vine’s mobile-centric audience, also skewing younger, can to content and platform to platform. In terms of YouTube, adding annotations and seamlessly share content out to Twitter, quickly increasing the virality of top-performing cards to videos streamlines the user experience and can help drive select external content. Unlike Instagram & Snapchat, off-platform shareability of Vines can be a traffic. Along the same lines, including the link in the bio of your Instagram channel huge asset for reach of quality content. will allow users to access more of your brand’s content.

Looking for a social strategy investment more directly tied to sales and conversion Believe in the power of creativity. Compelling visuals will catch more users’ eyes. objectives? The perks of Pinterest, a platform skewing female but with a rapidly Not only will this drive more link clicks, but it will also increase awareness and the growing male user base, have proven successful toward this end, having shown potential for users to recall one brand name over another. Specifically, customize a track record of driving high ROI on content. Rich product pins offer high value the previews of link posts, thumbnails of video posts, and paid media imagery. to consumers, with immediate information on product pricing, where to buy, and availability. App pins include install buttons, allowing users to download an MAXIMIZING ENGAGEMENTS app without ever leaving Pinterest. Place pins offer maps, addresses and phone Joining conversations about trending topics increases the potential reach for a social posts, numbers, while Movie, Recipe, and Article pins all offer their own rich details below especially on Twitter, Instagram, and Vine. Being aware of unique functionalities of these your creative for easy delivery of key information. Pinterest typically has a lower platforms, such as Twitter’s Moments, will increase a post’s potential of engaging more return rate from its users, certainly lower than that of Facebook, Instagram, and users. Moments has added a discovery element to the platform and finding an appropriate others ranked “most important” on the chart above. However, Pinterest’s track way to connect brands with trending topics can be a powerful tool for generating more record of driving high ROIs for brands with strong strategies are hard to ignore. engagements, organic reach, and share of voice.

SECTION IV | THE BIGGER PICTURE UNDERSTANDING FACEBOOK | FROM THE PEOPLE TO THE BIGGER PICTURE 14 On platforms that are not dictated by an algorithm like Facebook’s, explicit calls to action can increase the total number of post engagements as well. Ask users to share, comment, or like to unlock content, join a conversation, enter a contest, etc.—but make sure you use language that is consistent with your brand voice. For an artist like Amanda Palmer, asking fans for support is as authentic as it gets. For others, a more subtle approach is necessary.

Taking advantage of the power of social media influencers increases the pool of users who will see your post, which typically results in more engagements. Making appropriate social partnerships to repost, reblog, or share a brand’s posts will increase post reach dramatically and maximize engagements.

Engaging copy is essential to increasing engagements. Short copy that engages users and offers a brand’s commentary on the content has proven more shareable.

INCREASING VIDEO VIEWS The power of native Facebook video and its autoplay feature makes it an essential tool for generating video views. It’s very important to note that Facebook is far from a video discovery platform, which results in low viewership after the post has run its course. The most effective way to utilize this fact is to post teaser videos to drive users to YouTube or another owned platform. Ideally, brands should drive viewers to a platform that retains data for future marketing strategies.

Increasing video views on YouTube can be obtained by driving views from Facebook users. Brands can also increase views by adding annotations and YouTube cards to their existing videos that link to new videos and visa versa. This streamlined connectivity will guide the user experience, generating more video views for a brand. Read more in Section III.

GENERATING EMAIL LEADS Many users have made Facebook their Internet hub, but your connection to your fans on Facebook will always be controlled by their platform and their objectives. Therefore, brands must incentivize users to acquire email addresses: a direct connection with your fans that only you own.

Facebook’s call to action button offers an easy way to lead users to your email sign up list. If the content on a brand’s page is compelling enough to excite users about exclusive email content, they will want to sign up. Offer additional incentives to drive acquisition, such as FACEBOOK AS A CONTENT OUTLET ticket giveaways, exclusive content, or early access to announcements. Dan Conway, Creative Services Director

THE POWER OF ADVERTISING FACEBOOK IS A GREAT MEDIUM for reaching and connecting with an audience, Taking advantage of each platform’s strengths has the potential to grow a brand but at the end of the day that audience is owned and controlled through Facebook. exponentially. Pairing these strategies with paid media spends can expedite the At Fame House, we emphasize using Facebook as a driver to digital properties growth process. Although Facebook’s algorithm greatly limits the amount of users where we have a larger amount of control over the content, its display, and the data a page can reach organically, they do offer one of the most powerful ad platforms. that is collected with it. Keeping all of the tactics above in mind, a brand’s ads can effectively reach their business objectives much more affordably. The question becomes: “Which platform A website that you own and manage should be the central hub of your online should I advertise on? When? and Why?” presence. Here, you can express the full nature of your brand and aren’t limited to layout, design, or functionality constraints of a social networking platform like The answer is simple: play to the strengths of the platform. Facebook. Driving people to a central point also supports essential monetization opportunities, like the ability to incorporate an e-commerce store, sell tickets, or Most YouTube ads can be skipped after 5 seconds of watching. Therefore, the viewer run display advertising. You can also collect email addresses to correspond directly must know who the brand is, what message they’re sending, and if they want to watch with your fanbase, and display content from across all platforms like audio, video, the rest of the ad within the first five seconds of an ad. Give the audience these answers news updates, etc. immediately to increase campaign KPIs. A properly built and maintained website can be a brand’s greatest asset for The nature of each platform should dictate the type of ads that a brand runs, the content reaching and communicating with its fan base. that they advertise, and when they execute the strategy. In the case of Instagram, the platform is highly visual and dependent on creative imagery. When running ads on highly visual platforms, advertisers must use imagery that is eye-catching and overall reflects the type of visuals that a target audience would like to see on the platform—repurposed “... AT THE END OF THE DAY THAT AUDIENCE IS OWNED banner ads will never work here. Twitter relies on what is happening now in the world. Therefore, a Twitter advertiser should consider advertising when a conversation is trending AND CONTROLLED THROUGH FACEBOOK..” and aligned with a brand.

SECTION IV | THE BIGGER PICTURE UNDERSTANDING FACEBOOK | FROM THE PEOPLE TO THE BIGGER PICTURE 15 IN CLOSING, IT ALL COMES BACK TO YOUR GOALS.

Heading into 2016, we are excited to see a shift in the discussion about the value of social for growing digital businesses. We are returning to a philosophy that dominated the early days of , particularly in the music industry: invest in growing your owned channels—your email list, your website, your merch store, your mobile app—rather than focusing on growth on third party platforms you don’t control.

Facebook and other social platforms are critical tools to grow your owned channels. You must use them—and use them well—in order to reach your audience where they spend their time and in the ways they choose to consume content. Facebook, especially, offers treasures of data and insights about your audience and their behavior to help you make better decisions about how to connect with them. But the importance of owning direct connections to your fans can- not be understated.

Only on your properties do you fully own the relationship with your fan. And only there can you control the user experience, crafting more meaningful and authentic fan journeys with your music, or your event, or your product, that align not just with your business objectives, but also with your art. Facebook is just one small part of this journey.

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UNDERSTANDING FACEBOOK | FROM THE PEOPLE TO THE BIGGER PICTURE 16