- My high-quality content definitely factored in, but that might not have mattered had I not also made native content—authentic content perfectly crafted for that particular new platform, YouTube, not thanks to good lighting or smart editing, but because it embraced authenticity and “realness.” And maybe I needed to make sure that my clients and others who turned to me for advice were doing the same. - Emails, banner ads, search engine optimization (SEO)—the power of all these stalwart digital marketing tactics of the Internet era is diminishing, with one exception: when the digital platform has a social media component. In fact, adding a social layer to any platform immediately increases its effectiveness. - Marketers, small businesses, celebrities, I know you’re trying, but with a few exceptions, the content you’re putting out there sucks. You know why? Because even though consumers are now spending 10 percent of their time with mobile (a number that is soon going to be much higher), you’re investing only 1 percent of your ad budget there. You can’t just repurpose old material created for one platform, throw it up on another one, and then be surprised when everyone yawns in your face. - Jabs are the lightweight pieces of content that benefit your customers by making them laugh, snicker, ponder, play a game, feel appreciated, or escape; right hooks are calls to action that benefit your businesses. It’s just like when you’re telling a good story—the punch line or climax has no power without the exposition and action that come before it. There is no sale without the story; no knockout without the setup. - Now, if you truly understand how marketing works today, you know there is no individual six-month campaign; there’s only the 365-day campaign, during which you produce new content daily. - Your story isn’t powerful enough if all it does is lead the horse to water; it has to inspire the horse to drink, too. On social media, the only story that can achieve that goal is one told with native content. - Native content amps up your story’s power. It is crafted to mimic everything that makes a platform attractive and valuable to a consumer—the aesthetics, the design, and the tone. It also offers the same value as the other content that people come to the platform to consume - I’ll behave one way when I’m giving a presentation to a client in Washington, D.C., another way while I’m standing on the train platform waiting to head home, and yet another way when I’m watching football with my friends that night. But I’m always the same guy. Different platforms allow you to highlight different aspects of your brand identity, and each jab you make can tell a different part of your story. Have fun with that. One of the biggest mistakes big brands make is to insist that their tone remain exactly the same no matter what platform they’re using. In clinging to this outdated model, they’re missing out on one of the greatest benefits of social media—always having more than one option. - Today’s perfect right hooks always include three characteristics: They make the call to action simple and easy to understand. They are perfectly crafted for mobile, as well as all digital devices. They respect the nuances of the social network for which you are making the content. - Outstanding content can generally be identified because it adheres to the following six rules: - 1. IT’S NATIVE Though the functions of every platform may sometimes overlap, each one cultivates a unique language, culture, sensibility, and style. Social networking sites light up people’s dopamine pathways and the pleasure centers of their brain. Your content must do the same, and it will if it looks the same, sounds the same, and provides the same value and emotional benefits people are seeking when they come to the platform in the first place. In other words, it will if it is native. - 2. IT DOESN’T INTERRUPT No matter how good the ads were, there was a distinct break between the show people were watching and the ad. But today marketers don’t have to intrude on the consumer’s entertainment. In fact, it’s imperative that we don’t. People have no patience for it anymore, - 3. IT DOESN’T MAKE DEMANDS—OFTEN Make it for your customer or your audience, not for yourself. Be generous. Be informative. Be funny. Be inspiring. Be all the characteristics we enjoy in other human beings. That’s what jabs are all about. Right hooks represent what is valuable to you—getting the sale, getting people in the door. Jabs are about what is valuable to the consumer. How the company can tap into its customers’ desire to interact with people, it just needs to be human. It needs to get in on conversations, find shared interests with consumers, and respond and react to what people are saying, not just about the brand per se, but about related topics, - 4. IT LEVERAGES POP CULTURE Create content that reveals your understanding of the issues and news that matter to them. Just don’t place it in a mobile banner ad. The days of stopping people from what they’re doing to look at your ad are at best diminishing, and more than likely over, and regardless are overpriced for the ROI. Integrate your content into the stream, where people can consume it along with all their other pop culture candy. - 5. IT’S MICRO There is something else you could do as you reevaluate your social media creative: stop thinking about your content as content. Think about it, rather, as micro-content—tiny, unique nuggets of information, humour, commentary, or inspiration that you reimagine every day, even every hour, as you respond to today’s culture, conversations, and current events in real time in a platform’s native language and format. Micro-Content + Community Management = Effective Social Media Marketing - 6. IT’S CONSISTENT AND SELF-AWARE The user who became your fan in 2010 will not be the same fan in 2014. But even though he’s changed, he probably hasn’t thought to go back and remove outdated information about his tastes and preferences on Facebook. - the engagement that marketers most want to see—purchases—is not the engagement that Facebook’s algorithm measures, and therefore not the engagement that ultimately affects visibility. More than anything else, marketers want users to respond to their right hooks. That’s why they put so many out there. What they don’t realize, however, is that on Facebook, it’s the user’s response to a jab that matters most. - On Facebook, the definition of great content is not the content that makes the most sales, but the content that people most want to share with others. - We need to go native. We need to bring value. From now on, the difference between your content and your ads on Facebook will be . . . nothing. Your content, or rather, your micro-content, has to be the ad. - How cool is that? If you make a stupid television commercial, the network is going to run it as many times as you pay it to. No billboard owner is going to look at your art and say, “Dude, I can’t take your money. You won’t get a dime of business with that.” But Facebook will, not because it’s nice enough to protect you from yourself, but because it’s savvy enough to protect itself from you. - <mark style="background: #FFF3A3A6;">discussing Twitter poses a problem for a book dedicated to improving social media content, because on this platform, and this platform alone, content often has far less value than context.</mark> - a brand’s success on Twitter is rarely predicated on the actual content it produces. Rather, it correlates with how much valuable context you add to the content—your own, and that produced by others. - <mark style="background: #FFF3A3A6;">Breaking out on Twitter isn’t about breaking the news or spreading information—it’s about deejaying it.</mark> News has little value on its own, but the marketer who can skillfully spin, interpret, and remix it in his or her own signature style can often tell a story that is more powerful and memorable than the actual news itself. - Unless you sell a product that no woman in a million years would want for herself or any person in her life—and that’s a pretty limited list of products—or your legal department is dragging its feet,* you’re a dope if your brand is not on Pinterest. - We love displays and symbols and stuff that quickly and silently tells the world who we are. Better yet, we love visual reminders of who we want to be. Our homes may be cluttered, our cellulite may be out of control, and when we want to be profound we may only come up with fortune-cookie wisdom, but online, our Pinterest collections reveal that we dream of living in a serene shelter magazine spread, draping beautiful clothes over our slim silhouettes while effortlessly quoting Henry David Thoreau and the Dalai Lama. Aspiration and acquisition are two of the most powerful human drivers that lead people to buy, and Pinterest can satisfy both. - Pinterest users are 79 percent more likely to purchase something they spot on Pinterest than on Facebook. Pinterest produces four times the revenue-per-click of Twitter. Some small businesses that experimented early on with Pinterest saw as much as a 60 percent increase in revenue. - Before posting anything on this platform, ask yourself if your post could pass the Pinterest test: Could it double as an ad or act as an accompanying photo to an article featured in a top-flight magazine? If not, it doesn’t belong here. - Tumblr’s young founder, twenty-six-year-old David Karp, created Tumblr because though he wanted to blog, he found the “big empty text box” of traditional blogging platforms too daunting. His problem was the same as mine: He had tons of ideas to share, but he hated to write. Tumblr’s obstsalat (German for “fruit salad”) format became a perfect platform for the random bits and pieces of content that started getting tossed around as users scrolled through the site. - Unlike on Facebook, where you are locked into a definite Facebook “look,” or even Twitter, where despite some profile page customization options, users are limited to seeing an endless slot-machine blur of plain text, Tumblr gives you complete artistic control. It represents the perfect opportunity for brands to experiment with new creative storytelling forms. - Whereas before, the Internet operated under the 90-9-1 rule—the principle that generally, 90 percent of Internet users consume content, 9 percent edit it, and merely 1 percent create it—apps like Snapchat are going to shift those ratios to reflect something more along the lines of a 75-20-5 rule. Snapchat is not for profound content, nor to produce anything that’s going to be treasured for eternity, or even analyzed as a case study one day. It’s where people will go for a quick laugh before moving on. - There is no logical reason to think that a tire company should be a food critic, but a hundred years ago, Michelin tires started reviewing rural restaurants to encourage people living in the cities to drive farther and wear their tires out more quickly. Guinness created the Guinness Book of World Records to reinforce its brand and give people something to talk about in the pubs. Similarly, I predict that one day a brand like Nike could put out its own sports programming and compete successfully against ESPN, or Amtrak could launch a publication that could stand up to Travel + Leisure.