As the rapid development of social
networks, content marketing on social platform has evolved from a buzzword into
a rampant industry. Both the social networks and marketing agencies have built
their business model on flooding social feeds with brand-back copy. However, as
a prevailing marketing channel, is content marketing on social media as effective
as we have expected?
To solve this doubt, a research was
designed by Havas Media that examined and recorded the emotions of social media
users when they were confronted with several types of content. Havas also
wanted to find out if the common assertion that Facebook provided little more
than rolling coverage of cats and baby photos, causing users to have even
shorter attention spans on contents.
After initial studies, where several
Facebook users had their emotions recorded, Havas obtained a surprising result
that more than 80% of stories in social media do not generate any emotion
response in consumers.
Although marketers have done quite well in
generating click using social channels thanks to the linkbait tactics adopted by a lot
of media agencies, they fail to take into account the actual emotional response
of consumers. Emotion plays a significant role in terms of content marketing as
it shapes the brand perception along with fueling in engagement and
memorability.
Havas displayed an assortment of Facebook
material to 50 respondents, including sponsored ads, trending articles about a
variety of subjects and authentic, anecdotal stories posted by friends, while
recording the emotional responses of users.
After analyzing the result, Havas found
that it was only when a social headline showed anything outside of the norm did
a respondent choose to pay attention and exhibit an emotion. Not one of the
sponsored ads, however, had this effect, with all of them being ignored. Stories
where the topic was shocking, offensive, amusing or cute evoked the most amount
of emotion in users, and all of those stories were equipped with visual images.
This result clearly indicates the preference of consumers about contents on
social media.
It is even clearer that emotion needs to
make a return to social media if marketers expect their advertising contents have
some value. If social marketing continues in its current guise, where companies
rigidly obey a certain formula, then content will become like “wallpaper” and
users will skip to what might cause surprise or offer a more personalized
experience without doubt.
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