Content in 2023: Social, AI-driven, & made by everyone
Everyone knows content is king.
But content types, creators, and technology are changing so rapidly, it’s hard to keep up, let alone integrate the latest into your marketing strategy. That’s why we brought together ten of the brightest minds in content to share how they’re leveraging new-age content to stand out and get results.
The following sessions from April 2023 highlight the versatile power of content and show which steps to take to accelerate your digital strategy.
Check out these topics:
The power of social content
Isaac Diepenhorst, Maarten van Es from bol.com and Luca Mascini from DEPT® talked about winning big on social media. They explain how to engage different audiences on multiple platforms on a consistent basis. And how creativity and humor is the cornerstone of their strategy.
Key takeaways
- Make content, not ads. People in general (but especially Gen Z) dislike advertisements. Establish a meaningful connection by making relatable and not-too-serious content.
- Take co-creation seriously. Client and agency shouldn’t be different islands, but work together as one team. Create and review your content together and keep the lines of communication short so it’s just a few steps from idea to creation and publication.
- Think platform-specific. Every platform needs its own strategy to reach its audiences. Therefore, every social media platform should have its own type of content.
- Engage with your audience. Put in time and effort to respond to comments and accept some weird and funny replies. If you really want to go above and beyond: engage proactively by being the one who comments on other people’s content.
- Follow the news and trends to jump on trending topics. Understanding what topics people talk about makes it easier to engage and connect with your audience.
- Trust your creatives. As a manager, give them the benefit of the doubt, even if you don’t fully understand what they’re doing. Only by trying new things and exploring what’s possible you’ll find the edge of your possibilities needed to make cutting-edge content.
The power of AI and tech-driven content
Richard Burgess tells how Just Eat Takeaway delivers global campaigns aligned with local (on a national and sometimes even city level) strategies within their paid and organic content on their digital channels. This is how AI and tech make a huge difference in their digital strategy for building global solutions for local problems.
Key takeaways
- Using creative automation and creating assets at scale is 400% cheaper than manual asset production. Full visibility of strategy, budget and timings gives you the overview needed to decide on what can be done more quickly and efficiently.
- Move away from siloed creative campaigns and think in terms of integrated campaigns with creative, data, technology and production – all connected to strategy at the heart of the project.
- Creating assets at scale can deliver output of multiple formats in hours instead of days or weeks, apply changes to all deliverables simultaneously, ensure easy and quick roll-out for multiple markets and languages and have interchangeable elements within the creatives to allow for local market selection.
- Utilizing creative automation gives your organization the opportunity to deliver for multiple channels and formats in one process, make instant changes in messages for specific markets, have easy media set-ups and connections, make API connections for third-party tools, nuance and apply flexibility to your messages for local markets, benefit from templated assets that creative freedom.
- Sundae is a creative automation tool built by DEPT® that allows you to show the right messages at the right time and place. It basically brings together tech, paid media and creative content and data teams in one place to create thousands of assets.
The power of the content creation economy
Where content discovery used to be based on the user’s friend network, it’s shifting more towards almost completely algorithmic-driven discovery, creating more and more niche audiences. Janine Kaatee from Hunkemöller and Salomé Rijnders from DEPT® discuss engaging that hard-to-reach niche audience with content creators or influencers.
Key takeaways
- 40% of Gen Z prefer TikTok and Instagram over Google for internet searches. They actively look for content on social platforms instead of passively scrolling through their feed.
- There’s a content revolution happening: content is evolving from something brands push to their customers to a tool that brands can use to influence customers to create content for them.
- Collaborate with influencers that match your brand. They can humanize, personalize and localize your brand in an authentic way. You don’t have control over who posts about your brand, but you do manage who you work with. Make sure their values match yours.
- When working with creators, don’t focus on their numbers of followers, instead focus on their engagement rate and the niche you’re trying to reach. A smaller amount of followers with a high engagement rate is far more interesting than someone with a big following but almost no interaction.
- Let the creator be the creator, but do offer some guidelines. Their content needs to work on their channel for their audience so they’ll create something that reflects their interpretation of your brand. Having a clear brand identity will help your influencer create content that matches your brand.
- Think about the goal of your collaboration and use your content on different channels. Don’t just focus on social media, but use the content for your website, e-mail, etc., to get the most out of your content. The click-through rate of user-generated content is higher than the CTR on campaign content.
- Invest in long-term collabs. It is not only easier to work with parties you already know, but you’ll be extra trustworthy and recognizable when the same ambassadors represent your brand. Keep in mind: not every post performs well. One post might go through the roof, and then the next asset from the same creator doesn’t. Don’t let that stop you from working with a certain influencer.
The power of immersive content and storytelling
Storytelling is at the base of humanity; it goes back straight to the beginning of time. Not only can stories help to remember things, they also help in persuading. That’s why they’re the backbone of advertising – remember those fun commercials from the 90s? But we hardly see storytelling in today’s online advertising, and Franklin Schamhart from DEPT® wonders where the stories, love and magic from back in the day went.
Key takeaways
- Brands should focus on emotion over conversion since 95% of buying decisions are emotional.
- When you have lots of stories to tell – for example, about the purpose, value and product – make sure to tell the brand story at every step in the journey.
- You can create magic when the theme, story, and product seamlessly blend in one immersive experience.
- Every brand has its own story to tell and its own audience. But good storytelling has two things in common for every brand: the content strategy and design work in harmony, and they go beyond what is functionally necessary to make you feel something.
- 97% of people have their buying intent influenced online, stories generate a 61% better recall rate over plain facts, and story-driven pages convert 30% better
Interested in the latest content opportunities for your business? Check out DEPT® Content Trends: The ever-growing importance of content.
Questions?
Head of Strategy