Welcome to this week’s spin around social media. Last week was information-heavy so we’re changing the focus this week to provide some genuinely realistic tips for better social media. But first, there’s one important piece of news worth mentioning …
“On Thursday, Australia lawmakers ushered through what are perhaps the toughest legal measures to hold social media companies accountable for the content they share. Only a few weeks after the massacre of 50 people at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, Australia’s House of Representatives passed a law requiring social media platforms to ‘expeditiously’ remove content that shows kidnapping, murders, rape, or terrorist attacks. If the platforms fail to get rid of the content in a timely fashion, employees could face prison time in Australia and companies could be subject to fines of up to 10 per cent of their annual profit.” This law, which was conceived and passed in five days, aims to prevent the fast spread of criminal/inappropriate content – but does it really help that? The advocacy group that represents Facebook, Google, and other companies has spoken out against the regulation saying that it does nothing to address hate speech which was the motivation behind the Christchurch attacks. Personally, I believe this sort of regulation is necessary, but I don’t see it solving any major problems.
Now that’s out of the way, let’s get to the good stuff! This week I want to provide some useful tips and insight into how to repurpose one piece of content into 5+ pieces, the Facebook algorithm, and introduce a potentially new wave of technology we’ll see more of in the near future.
How to repurpose 1 piece of content into 5+ smaller pieces
Generating content is the constant struggle for a lot of brands on social. Consumers are demanding and content-hungry, so how do you satisfy that appetite? Repurposing content. Put simply, it’s the process of grabbing one big piece of content and extracting interesting and valuable chunks out of it to post across all your social platforms. Let me give you an example: Imagine you work in the fitness industry; probably run your own fitness business. Let’s do an interview with a well-known personal trainer. This becomes your main piece of content. Throughout the interview you cover a variety of topics:
A workout the trainer uses to set a benchmark in terms of where new clients are in terms of fitness
Advanced workout for clients who’ve made significant progress
A simple diet to consider if a client wants to lose weight
Recommended meal options for clients who don’t have time to cook
What inspires the trainer to keep fit
Now, looking at these five examples, you’ve got the foundation for at least five smaller pieces of content. Here’s how you could repurpose that one interview into over five smaller pieces of content:
Post the interview to YouTube (YouTube is suited to longer-form media)
Transcribe the interview into a long-form blog post (for your website)
Cut out clips of your five topics (mentioned above) and post these across your social channels. Make sure you provide some additional value in the copy you use alongside the video.
Turn each of the workouts (in the five topics above) into an infographic. Send this to clients via email, and post to social.
Create a quote tile based on key mentions in the interview.
Depending on the needs of your client and your creativity, your ability to repurpose content is stronger than you might think.
The Facebook Algorithm
The Facebook algorithm is a tricky one – it’s widely spoken about but never defined. I won’t pretend I know exactly how it works, but just over a year on from when Mark Zuckerberg announced he was changed the newsfeed algorithm to encourage more meaningful connections online, how does it look? Well – it’s performed as intended. Let me explain …
Engagement is up, and that was widely predicted. But before you jump down my throat, Facebook page owners probably haven’t seen any of that improved engagement. That’s because we’re seeing less content from pages in our newsfeed and more content from our friends, and as a result we are sharing our friends’ content that we find meaningful. So, it’s essentially performed as intended. But that’s a double-edged sword because it was also expected that #FakeNews and grossly exaggerated headlines would still plague the social platform, and they did. Looking at the list of most shared Facebook posts in 2019 (so far), the top of the list, from US105fm.com, read: Suspected Human Trafficker, Child Predator May Be In Our Area – 806,051 shares. Astounding numbers. Second on the list: LifeNews.com, reads: You Can’t Give A Lethal Injection to Murderers in New York, But You Can Give One to an Unborn Baby – 484,138 shares.
The point I’m making is that while we are seemingly having more ‘meaningful’ connections on Facebook, the attention-seeking headlines will still break through. Ultimately, it’s up to the users to enforce meaningful connection.
#MAFS
Aren’t you just sick of hearing about it?! I certainly am, but at the same time you couldn’t pull my eyes away from the incredibly dramatic, borderline blockbuster movie trailer, advertisement that is promoting the upcoming #MAFS finale. It’s ironic that this follows the Facebook algorithm topic above because you could argue the rot that’s cycled around social media about this show is absolutely junk. But as humans we are drawn to drama and the fear of missing out on a turbulent final dinner packed with (bogan) drama is just too good to miss. But what’s interesting to note is that the only people benefiting from these shows are the contestants themselves, not the TV networks. For Channel 10, without the #MAFS program, they aren’t competitive in the ratings. This week without the show they fell short to Channel 7 and 9. What this points to is the ongoing struggle for major networks to secure revenue. The contestants however get a massive social media following which often follows in invites to other reality shows, brand deals, don’t forget the pay-check. Regardless, the demand for good reality TV drama will always be there – TV networks simply need to figure out a way to monetise it better.
To close out this week’s blog I wanted to share a really cool new piece of technology which I suspect will become more prevalent in the near future. Meet Hawkeye. Currently Hawkeye offers two apps: one which analyses where your eyes look on a photo or website and provide you with a heat-signatured image at the end, a very useful tool for digital designers. The other is an eye-sight browser. Yes, once you calibrate your eyes and mouth to the app you can control a cursor on the screen and navigate a selected group of apps with simple eye movements, gestures as well as a mouth gesture. Here’s a link to check it out for yourself: https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/hawkeye-access/id1439231627?mt=8
That’s it for this week!
Happy Friday