Break Through the Noise

by Tim Staples

  On Instagram, however, there is a much narrower window. People who like esoteric jokes will keep liking esoteric jokes and people who like pictures of cats will continue to like pictures of cats. No one will stop to read an article or watch a long-form video about some completely different subject matter. In other words, they are in the art gallery to see some art, and they are really not interested in anything else.

  As Instagram rose in popularity, the feature set was expanded, moving into direct competition with other platforms. Instagram stories, for example, are a direct attack on Snapchat, as they are exactly the kind of content that Snapchat has. For brands, this has become an opportunity because it allows them to drive people to longer videos and even to digital storefronts. In a push to have brands use their posts for conversion, Instagram shops now allow brands to display prices for their products on the platform.

  Instagram also opened a two-way conversation between brands and consumers. The incorporation of “stickers” into Instagram stories allows consumers to provide direct input to a brand, thus allowing followers to feel more engaged in that brand and the choices they offer.

  Succeeding on Instagram is all about decluttering your message. You need to tell your story in a clear, concise, and visually pleasing way. Any aesthetically pleasing post will draw engagement, just like a beautiful painting in an art gallery. On Instagram, you are asking someone to appreciate that image, and if they really do appreciate it, they might take the next step and comment on it. If the image triggers an emotional response or it makes a real connection with the viewer, then they might dig further into your other content.

  As Instagram has evolved, the platform has allowed users to move beyond a simple act of appreciation to actual engagement, primarily through Instagram stories and swipe-up features that allow users to post comments. In the past, the site offered more of a shallow interaction, but these more recent changes are driving them from a simple appreciation of an image to more detailed storytelling.

  Of course, all of this is rooted in the core premise of keeping people around long enough to show their appreciation, but it all begins with the initial visual. If someone is following an account or a brand, and the posting suddenly stops being visually engaging, they will unfollow the account and never find out the full story the brand wants to tell them.

  Know this: Building followers on Instagram is extremely difficult and time-consuming, so your biggest focus should be on finding a very specific voice and style that potential audiences will find valuable. In other words, people follow accounts on Instagram looking for a very specific value proposition. That could range from X to Y. Just remember that once you’ve found that value proposition, any variance or deviation from that voice will be not well received. I’ve actually experienced an extreme case of this myself when I started working with the great soccer star Ronaldo.

  Although I view Instagram as one of the great marketing platforms for the next ten years, I don’t consider it as the most relevant platform for my personal brand, so I hardly ever post. When Shareability started working with Cristiano Ronaldo, he started following me on Instagram. With one click of his finger, I was inundated with followers who viewed me as someone who was relevant in Ronaldo’s sphere. Ronaldo has over 140 million followers on Instagram, more than anyone in the world, and when he followed me, my phone exploded with follower notifications and it really hasn’t stopped since.

  All of a sudden I had tens of thousands of new followers. But all these followers came with their own agendas and expectations. When I posted some pictures of Ronaldo, or of myself in his inner circle, I received thousands of engagements.

  But when I then posted photos of my kids fishing?

  Crickets.

  Myself at a business conference?

  Radio silence.

  A picture of me with Ronaldo’s manager?

  Thousands of instant Likes.

  The lesson here is that Instagram is a fickle beast. As long as you keep the audience engaged with the precise thing they came to you to see, the engagement can be amazing. But if you stray and start posting things they don’t care about, they will unfollow you in droves.

  Understanding the philosophy of Instagram is essential. And to do that, here are some tactical approaches that can be very useful.

  i. Followers

  For Instagram, start by knowing that building a big following is a high-wire balancing act. You need to post often enough to keep your audience’s attention but not so much that they feel spammed and decide to block you. Generally speaking, we’ve found that you shouldn’t make more than one post a day unless there is something really special to showcase. On average, a posting cadence of 2–3 times a week is the sign of a healthy channel. You can post more, but once you start, be prepared to keep it up. Accounts that abruptly decrease their post frequency lose followers quickly.

  ii. Hashtags

  Hashtags are an extremely important part of the Instagram community. Not only are they used to help creators categorize their content and to define their brand, they also allow users to explore new content. Each hashtag has an ever-changing collection of “top posts.” When a user clicks on a hashtag, these top posts are displayed first and can lead to additional followers and more engagement.

  iii. Instagram Stories

  This is a direct jab at Snapchat, using posts that vanish after 24 hours. It’s the complete opposite of the YouTube library; that is, these are like pop-up art installations, and if you miss them while they’re in town, too bad. They are a once-in-a-lifetime experience, here today, gone tomorrow, and gone forever.

  Much like pop-up experiences in real life, they are also located in a separate location. They don’t show up on your profile grid or in the main Instagram feed. Instead they appear in a bar at the top of your feed. All Instagram accounts can share stories, from your best friend’s birthday party to your favorite celebrity’s movie premiere. When a new story goes live, their profile photo will light up with a colorful ring around it, drawing your eye and attention and almost instinctively making you want to tap it.

  This is great for marketers. At first it might seem that all the effort that goes into creating our content would somehow be wasted on something that will simply vanish in 24 hours. But because of the instant and immediate attention, it often drives traffic in incomparable numbers, and it’s an opportunity to create a Facebook-style sonic boom inside the art gallery of Instagram.

  As a side note, Facebook is of course rolling out Facebook Stories, which is basically the exact same thing, only back out in the town square. We all know the art installations inside the “real” art gallery have more credibility, so I don’t expect the Facebook version to be nearly as popular.

  Once the user taps someone’s story, it appears full screen (meaning all your deliverables need to be full vertical, the 9 x 16 aspect ratio) and all the content posted will play in chronological order. Users can move backward and forward through the story, and they can swipe to another person’s story the very second they become bored with yours.

  Unlike regular posts, there are no Likes or public comments, meaning that there is no feedback activity for the audience, making this highly of-the-moment activity somewhat passive, which reduces attention spans. The trick here is to be brief and entertaining. Usually we find that a total runtime of under 60 seconds is ideal. Give it a try, play around with it, and see what resonates with your audience.

  Direct Messaging Systems: The Post Office

  Last but not least is the post office. Every city or town needs a delivery system for mail, packages, and consumer products. Our internet city has many different services that fit this description, each a little bit different, all offering various add-ons. You should consider the direct messaging service an add-on to their core functionality.

  For the purposes of this exercise, Snapchat, Twitter, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger are all part of the direct messaging ecosystem.

  The medium may vary, but the goal i
s the same: sending messages directly between people. Could be from one person to another, or between a specific group of people. The messages can be text, photos, videos, GIFs, memes, or any type of media, even good old-fashioned attachments.

  The big difference comes in the specific usage. You need to treat these delivery systems differently, the same as you would treat the US Post Office, FedEx, or a local courier differently. If something is more sacred and close to home, and you need it to arrive safely or in a timely fashion, you might hire a local courier to deliver it. If it needs to be across the country by tomorrow morning, you go to Fed-Ex. For all of your regular, basic stuff, you just throw a stamp on it and drop it in the mailbox.

  Now, in this chapter, we’ve gone deep into YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. I emphasize those three because I feel that these are the best platforms for brands and personalities to build their influence and to break through the noise. Conversely, I don’t feel that direct messaging platforms are the right place for you to build your brand. Yes, they can be an amazing tool, but in my experience, they are much more apt for big corporations with lots of resources and lots of workers and AI computing power ready to drive messaging home to customers.

  It’s also inherently difficult to gain traction and to build a loyal following through direct messaging. The core idea is built around one-to-one or one-to-a-few messaging, and that’s really not a forum for mass communication. That’s not to say that it can’t be done, but I wouldn’t recommend that you even try until you’ve mastered the big three platforms that I’ve outlined above.

  I strongly believe that you will get a lot better return for your time and money on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram, so I won’t go into the direct messaging platforms in any great depth.

  All this being said, I’ll leave you with some thoughts regarding Twitter. Though the platform is not a fire-starter to ignite content, it can be a very useful live-engagement platform to check the pulse of the internet. It’s also much more of a two-way street, a very immediate place for the here and now. This makes it an effective place for small brands to build one-on-one relationships and to position themselves in their particular industry.

  Some brands use Twitter as customer service, or to establish a direct dialogue with their customers. Or they communicate via Twitter with their customers who are having issues. For example, if someone is stuck on the tarmac for hours on a flight, they will tweet this news, thereby causing the airline to respond with compensation or with an explanation for the delay.

  Brands that use Twitter most effectively do so in the voice of the platform and talk to people in bite-sized phrases, and never in long sentences. The fast-food chain Wendy’s has been particularly good at this. They used Twitter to change the way they talk to their customers. Instead of being a passive brand, they adopted an edgier, irreverent voice that spoke to their customers who wanted something relatable and different. Here is a classic:

  Customer: “Hey, Wendy’s, my friend wants to go to McDonald’s. What should I tell him?”

  Wendy’s: “Find new friends.”

  That’s how you do Twitter.

  The Other Platforms

  There are other small, yet important platforms that we don’t widely use for branding. LinkedIn, for example, is not a content vehicle, but it may work for you. It has a very specific purpose. LinkedIn is used to market yourself to the business world, to upgrade your career, to build relationships, and to expand your network. LinkedIn is more valuable for individuals than it is for companies. Though there is a way to advertise to specific subsets and target companies, most people use it for interconnectivity and career building.

  And there is Amazon, which was built to sell you stuff. Amazon is the biggest end-user platform in the world, and it is vitally important if you are retailing. However, it is also different because you don’t technically create content for Amazon (other than a brief description and visuals of your product.) After you have established a relationship with a customer on the other platforms, if you are selling a product, you can then drive the customer to Amazon.

  And there is Reddit. This is supposedly an impossible platform to crack (even though we have managed, through our John Cena campaign for Cricket). But even Reddit is opening up and becoming more brand-friendly, so it will certainly be an interesting space to keep an eye on in the near future.

  There are numerous other platforms as well, with some closing or merging and new ones popping up all the time. The internet is a big city, and there’s room for all kinds of services. Based on who you are and what type of business you are running, some will be more valuable than others, but no matter what the platform is, it all comes back to the same basic theme: your messaging and your relationship to your customers.

  You have to find the inherent shareability of your brand in order to make anyone pay attention, on any platform.

  Rule 9

  Test Before You Invest

  Now it’s time to make your content go boom. You understand the science of being shareable. You’ve focused on providing value. You’ve found your voice. You’ve crushed the headline. After listening to the internet, you’ve decided either to ride a wave or flip the script. You’ve taken a tour of internet city, studied the platforms, and decided which ones are right for your message.

  After spending all this time (and likely some money), failure to launch properly is not an option. It would be like an airline building amazing lounges and a luxury check-in service but forgetting to train their pilots—a terrible idea, sure to end in a spectacular crash.

  The groundwork has been laid and you have a solid foundation, but now it’s time to take the most important step. To prevent your content from being that proverbial tree that falls in the forest without anybody hearing it, you will need to test before you invest. Testing is a key step in the process, and one that is traditionally completely overlooked or, at best, mismanaged. Doing this right will allow you to experiment and optimize your content before you go all in. If done correctly, it can not only bring you deep efficiencies, but can also have a massive impact on the overall success of your content.

  This chapter will detail the specifics of testing, but before we get into the nitty-gritty, let’s take a step back and talk about your packaging. Just like any other product, great content deserves great packaging. You wouldn’t ship a luxury steak knife wrapped in an old sock in a cardboard box, so why would you treat your social content any differently?

  Below I’ve outlined three interconnected principles that you need to understand to get your content packaged and ready for testing.

  1. Make a Silent Film

  According to Digiday, up to 85 percent of Facebook videos are viewed with the sound off: 85 percent. Although that sounds like an unbelievable number (some people argue it is closer to 50 percent, but I’m skeptical), it actually makes sense, when you think about it. Most people watching videos on social media are doing so on their phone. Often this happens with other people around or in a public space. Nobody will turn their sound on in any of those situations. Take note of your own habits next time you scroll through your Facebook feed. I’m willing to bet that more often than not, you will do it with the sound off.

  That means that in terms of pulling people into your video, you are essentially making a silent film. That’s right, we are right back to the birth of cinema, where the visual is everything. This is a very important concept to understand when it comes to the packaging of your content, and you have to treat all of the elements of your film accordingly.

  It’s a fascinating concept. For all our technological advancements, and how much our habits of viewing and interacting with content have changed over the past 100 years, they have also stayed very much the same. On the internet, we are now basically back to where we started, in the silent film era of the early 1900s, when projectors were able to showcase the flicker of moving images, but no one had cracked how to add synchronized sound. Sure, there was a pianist on hand who gave you a live sc
ore, but dialogue was all delivered through text cards, exactly the way we now do it on social media. Who knows, maybe we will have an audio revolution as we did in cinemas in the late 1920s, when the “talkies” were created. Maybe aural implants or vibrating eyewear will bypass our biological limitations, and Instagram will be able to launch its own talkies in a few years.

  Enough of the history lesson—what does this mean for your content? It means that you need to take Chapter 5 to heart and really crush the headline, so you draw people in. It means that you need to have an opening image, combined with graphics, that tells a very clear story about what the video is, without relying on sound or narration (more on that in point 2 below). And it means that you need to “give up the goat” and get to your best stuff quickly, so that you lay the hook and give yourself the best possible odds that your viewers will stick around (be sure to see point 3 below).

  Always go through the process of watching your video with the sound off, and see how it feels and if the message and hook are communicated clearly. Once you feel good about it, show it to your friends, family, or coworkers who haven’t yet seen it, and ask them to tell you what it was about. You will always be surprised at their first impression, and it will help you home in on and clarify your concept. Ask if the intro hooked them in and made them want to watch the rest, or if they would just keep scrolling if this popped up in their feed.

  The toughest, and most important part of this process, is to actually take their answers to heart. You need to firmly believe in what the platforms all believe, which is that the gut reaction of the consumer is always king. You then need to keep adjusting your packaging until you’re getting a consistent positive response. Remember that most people won’t be paying attention to your content the way that you will. They will be casually scrolling past, and if your post happens to catch their eye, they might stick around and check it out, but they will never get precious with it. Neither should you. You need to be prepared to “kill your babies,” as all filmmakers are told to do when they get obsessed with some detail that the audience doesn’t care about. Just because you worked really hard at it doesn’t make it any more valuable than the random thing most people seem to love. In fact, it’s the thing people react to that is the most valuable of all.