Content Used to be King – Not Anymore

A voice. Every brand aims to have a voice. Ecommerce websites looks to sell products or services while trying to maintain a constant voice across their platforms. Greenberg, in his post on Content is King of Social Marketing said it best (Greenberg, 2009): 

Have something to say. Say it often. Be interesting. Sound familiar? This is essentially the content publishing model. By incorporating content development into your existing marketing calendar and production process, you can turn social marketing into an asset.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t hold true anymore. Brands can’t continue to push content without knowing what the audience wants to here. These days, what you say and what they say back to you is seen and resonated by millions across all social platforms.

Conversations Matter

At its core, social media has evolved to a world where brands converse with its audience. This is the social perspective.

David Armano of Edelman Digital developed an interesting infographic of how social engagement is about holding conversations with an audience, rather than pushing out content in hopes that it would stick. And all occur within platforms that are a breeding ground for engagement: communities, blogs, social networks and microblogs.

Jonathan Mariano or Triple Pundit wrote an interesting piece on social media being about conversations. He says that if we abstract away technologies from Facebook and Twitter, then all we are left with is a social media conversation ("Social media is," 2011). He adds:

It’s a way for folks to talk about anything in a public, ranging from current events, life’s successes and failures, or even about our passions like sustainability. It’s just another medium to have a conversation.

Social media is about ongoing conversations where content is merely the catalyst. And conversations are not just about words. It’s also about actions through our likes, shares, tweets, pins and more.

The Value of a Conversation

Considering all things marketing are driven by ROI, there is an obvious need to drive some type of ROI from conversations, right? Well BazaarVoice launched the Conversation Index earlier this year. The index has collected over 220 billion pieces of user-generated content (UGC) to calculate some rather “bazaar” stats ("The conversation index," 2012):

• Women contribute more UGC than men, and are generally more positive
• 1/3 of all Facebook reviews are collected on Fridays
• One in five reviews contains the word “love”

Conversations continue to increase, across a multitude of platforms and especially across several mobile devices, year over year. According to the study, keywords resonate among consumers, which directly correlate to where they are in the customer life cycle, specifically in the financial sector:

• We find that newer financial services customers (less than four years) tend to use “easy,” “helpful,” “awesome,” “happy,” and “experience” in their reviews.
• More tenured customers (10+ years with a firm) often use “courteous” and “convenient” in their reviews. Words that reverberate across all review content include “great” (highest, in about 18% of content), “friendly,” “quick,” and “simple.

It goes without saying that measuring conversations leads to the right business decisions in how content is tailored, which can help or hurt a brand’s bottom line.

You can find the full report in the SlideShare below.

The Conversation Index - Q3 Insights

View more presentations from Bazaarvoice

References:

Greenberg. (2009, October 20). Content is king of social marketing. Retrieved from http://multichannelmerchant.com/social-media/1020-content-social-marketing/

The conversation index. (2012). Retrieved from http://www.bazaarvoice.com/resources/research/conversation-index

Social media is a conversation. (2011, October 31). Retrieved from http://www.triplepundit.com/2011/10/social-media-conversation/