Comments on: Future of Social Advertising: Branded Content and Branded Social Media

By: Real Fresh TV | Future of Social Advertising: Potential Pitfalls of Using Social Media

Tue, 27 Nov 2007 06:12:12 +0000

[...] last post presented the notion of branded content as “the next big thing in social media”. Arguing that brands are better looking at engaging with consumers over branded content on the [...]

By: Chi-chi Ekweozor

Chi-chi Ekweozor — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 04:03:25 +0000

@ Joe Pulizzi:

Thanks for your clear and candid comments.

Once again, we are in agreement.

What is probably really scary for brands already investing in ‘content marketing’, as you put it, is that their ‘groundbreaking initiatives’, designed without any social media input, stand to be overshadowed very soon by relatively simple social media campaigns implemented by smart brand marketers who ‘get’ social media.

Goes to show that the disruptive effect of the web and the unending trend towards ubiquitous digital communications affects everyone, even early adopters.

Any word of advice on how ‘content marketers’ can craft new ‘content marketing campaigns’ that take advantage of the inevitable shift towards content distribution on “significantly more social” controlled microsites and portals. (As you put it…)

That was a mouthful…!

Hope it was clear…

What I mean is, is this something brands should worry about?

Feel free respond here or craft a blog post in response on your site. If you do that, please drop us a comment on this post to say when it’s live and it’ll be put up for public debate ;o)

Same goes for you @ Jason Peck!

I’m feeling generous with my time at the moment ;o)

By: Chi-chi Ekweozor

Chi-chi Ekweozor — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 03:52:57 +0000

@Jason Peck:

Thanks for your astute and well-placed points. I totally agree with your point about brand marketers needing to recognise that ‘Facebook is not the Internet’.

It seems like a lot of people are forgetting this.

Admittedly, all the attention and hype focussed on Facebook is something Facebook cannot control 100%.

Can you give some examples of brands that have created branded content “that lives on multiple sites”? Would be interesting to know what you think. Brands that have online sales to worry about would make fantastic examples… ;o)

By: Joe Pulizzi, Junta42

Joe Pulizzi, Junta42 — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 01:51:06 +0000

Excellent post. The average company today already spends about 25% of their total marketing budget on content creation of some kind, whether that be magazines, web portals, videos, etc. Most of the content portals that are created today just dabble in social media components…possibly comments to blog posts or RSS feeds. It’s only a natural extension for these “controlled” microsites and portals to become more “social” as user expectations continue to change.

Those companies that aren’t investing in these types of branded content (what I call content marketing) activities may become also-rans with particular customer bases.

Keep up the great stuff!
Joe

By: Jason Peck

Jason Peck — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 20:36:28 +0000

This is a great post. I think you’re dead on with the last points about creating a standalone community vs. integrating a brand into existing communities. My feeling is that brands shouldn’t create compelling content that only lives on one site. It should have content that lives on multiple sites. This is why I think it’s not necessarily a good idea for a brand to invest in a Facebook app, and think that is the only solution it needs for social networking.

That said, it really depends on the circumstance and type/size of brand as to whether it should create its own community or put its content on other existing ones. Even i f a brand creates its own site, there’s no reason it should neglect the existing sites. A sale is a sale is a sale–no matter where it comes from.