CHAPTER 8

sWOM on Popular Platforms

In our final chapter, we offer suggestions on how to encourage positive social word of mouth (sWOM) on popular social media platforms. Our coverage of social platforms is not exhaustive. However, you will see that there are similarities in “best practices” between each platform that you can apply to platforms not covered here. The chapter begins by discussing three important components of a company’s social media presence, regardless of the platform you are using: the cover and profile photos and company information. Given that the topic of content is covered in great detail in Chapter 6, in this chapter, we will provide some general comments regarding appropriate content and conclude with some platform-specific recommendations.

Cover Photograph

Where do your eyes first rest when you check out a Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter account? Chances are you are looking at the top left-hand corner of the screen. Our eyes quickly scan across the page (left to right) before moving down the screen (Bradley 2011). The same is true of mobile devices (Tam 2012). This eye-scanning pattern suggests that the first thing visitors see when they visit your page is the cover and profile photo. Therefore, you must make a strong, positive impact by selecting the right photo to represent your brand. A cover photo should be professional but unique. It should showcase your brand personality, so we encourage creativity. Companies that have a history of unique and creative cover photos include Old Spice (@oldpsice), Red Bull (@redbull), and Virgin Atlantic (@virginatlantic). The aim is to inspire and motivate the visitor to connect with the company. The cover photo is not a place where you share company information. It is not the place to blatantly advertise products or services. There should be no information about the price of products, discount available, company information, and certainly, no call-to-action (like, share, and so on). In fact, platforms such as Facebook prohibit this practice (Loren 2012). Instead, use your cover photo to communicate one of the following:

Profile Photograph

Your social media account is not the only place consumers will find you. Their first encounter may be from a posting that appears in their newsfeed. When this occurs, the consumer’s eye will is drawn to the company profile photo (typically found to the left of the message’s content). The goal of the profile picture is similar to the cover photo; a profile picture needs to communicate your brand’spersonality quickly. Consumers should easily recognize your company from the profile image. One popular strategy is to integrate your profile photo with your cover photo. To illustrate, imagine that your cover photo is a jigsaw puzzle, and your profile photo is one piece of that puzzle. It is clear that they two belong together, but independently, they still effectively communicate who you are. The simplest way to achieve this is by using all or part of the company logo for your profile picture. There are plenty of examples of effective cover and profile photos you can use for inspiration. To begin, review some of the social media accounts of B2B companies mentioned throughout this book (e.g., SAP, Maersk) as well as major consumer brands such as Guinness, Oreo, and Virgin Airlines. If possible and appropriate, try to adopt a similar, if not the same, cover and profile photos for each social media platform to maintain a consistent brand identity.

Company Information

As you know, each social media platform should contain a description of your company in the designated section (e.g., Facebook—About, Twitter—bio). But, what some companies do not realize is that the content and tone of the company description should vary depending on the platform. Recall that consumers use different social media platforms for different reasons. Therefore, consumer expectations for content will also be different for each platform. For instance, a company’s presence on LinkedIn should be somewhat formal, sharing the story of the company, mission, and value proposition. In contrast, the informality of Facebook lends itself to an abbreviated and less official sounding description. Twitter only permits a bio of up to 160 characters. On this platform, the company description needs to be not only short and sharp, but also creative. Do not let Twitter’s space limitations discourage you. A short bio can still be highly effective at communicating who you are, the purpose of the account, and displaying your brand personality. Check out these examples:

To better understand how a company’s description is different on each of their platforms, consider the following two examples:

Taco Bell: The fast-food chain’s LinkedIn page includes a 295-word company description that includes the company’s purpose, the size of their workforce, and number of restaurants worldwide. They also include information on their charitable contributions and community outreach. On Facebook, the company overview is only 79 words and communicates their number of customers and major achievements (e.g., 1 billion burritos served each year). In contrast, their Twitter bio is only two words—Live Más (translation: Live More).

SAP: SAP’s 79-word LinkedIn bio describes the company as a market leader and includes their number of customers and the countries where they operate. At 55 words, their Facebook description is an abbreviated version of their LinkedIn description. Their Twitter bio simply communicates that this is their official account and includes the name of the employee responsible for all Twitter postings.

To solidify your authority, you should seek approval to have each of your social media accounts verified. Popular platforms such as Facebook and Twitter will verify social media accounts that are of public interest. A verification symbol, typically in the form of a small icon or badge, will appear on your company’s bio and help establish the authenticity of the account.

Content

Throughout this book, we have stressed the importance of posting content that consumers expect and value, but that also reflects your brand. Chapter 6 discussed the importance of storytelling—how to create story content, the creative strategies that marketers can employ, and the importance of textual and visual content. We also discussed that the type and format of the content you post should vary depending upon the platform on which it is shared. Although it is not uncommon to share the same piece of information across social media platforms, it may not always be the best option. Content needs to be calibrated to each platform. When deciding where and what to post, you must ask yourself the following questions (Figure 8.1):

• What is the objective of this account?

• Which consumers are using this platform?

• What is it that my consumers’ want to see on this particular platform?

• When (at what time of the day and days of the week) are they most likely to be on this platform?

• In what format do they want to receive this information?

Once you have answered these questions, you then need to take into consideration how social media platforms decide what content makes it into a consumer’s news feed and what content becomes digital waste. That is, beyond knowing what it is that your consumers want, you also need to know what content each platform values and will give the greatest visibility. You need to have a basic understanding of newsfeed algorithms.

All social media accounts use algorithms to determine which content receives the highest priority and greatest visibility. Algorithms are particularly important on social platforms that have fast moving newsfeeds, such as Facebook and Twitter. Not surprisingly, these algorithms are proprietary, but that does not stop marketers from trying to crack the code and use the algorithm to their advantage. The algorithm that receives the most attention and the one that marketers (think) they know the most about is Facebook.

Figure 8.1 Creating content for social media

Reports suggest that the variables used in the Facebook algorithm include the type of content, timing of content, interactions, and the relationship between the consumer and the person or company who posted the item (Hutchinson 2016) (Figure 8.2). For the type of content, Facebook appears to give visual posts (photos and videos) higher priority over text posts. This makes complete sense, because as we learned in Chapter 6, consumers are visual learners, we are drawn to and remember visuals more than we do text (Childers and Houston 1984; Paivio, Rogers, and Smythe 1968; Pieters and Wedel 2004). Social posts that include visuals are more engaging and generate higher engagement rates than text posts (Elliott 2015; eMarketer 2014). Engagement refers to the popularity of a post measured by likes, shares, comments, retweets, and so on. Regarding the timing of posts, recency is an important factor. Consumers want to see fresh content whenever they log into their account. So, timing your posts to coincide with the time of day that your consumers are most likely to be checking-in is important. Facebook wants to retain their consumers and the way they encourage repeat visits is by providing them with valuable content. Content popularity is one indicator of value. The more popular a post, measured by the number and type of engagement (e.g., likes, shares, and comments), the greater its perceived value by Facebook. Higher-value posts are more likely to appear in a consumer’s newsfeed than are low-value (unpopular) posts. The final variable, who posted it, refers to the strength of the relationship between the consumer and the company responsible for the post. As we learned in Chapter 1, not all friends are created equal. Facebook gives content posting priority to a consumer’s strong ties, those users or company accounts that consumer engages with the most often. It is not uncommon for consumers to become fans of a company, but never interact with the company page or company postings. Reports suggest that as little as 0.07 percent of consumers will engage with a brand after the initial “Like” (Elliott 2015). Your company may have an amazing Facebook page, but if consumers do not visit the page or engage (like, share, comment) with your posts, then the probability that your latest post will make it into their newsfeed is very low (Brown 2016).

Figure 8.2 Cracking the Facebook algorithm

Twitter’s algorithm is also a carefully guarded secret. However, Twitter does offer some insight stating that the tweets that a user is most interested in will appear first in his or her timeline. Twitter chooses these tweets based on consumer engagement with previous tweets, among other things (Williams 2016). Similar to Facebook, if your followers do not engage with your tweets, then future tweets are given low priority or may not appear in the timeline at all. Even though we do not fully understand how the algorithmic timelines work for other social platforms, it is fair to assume that they use similar variables: type of content, timing of content, interactions, and relationship.

If visual content receives the highest priority on a social media platform, then your posting should incorporate photographs, infographics, and videos. As we discussed in Chapter 6, we know that content that conveys high-arousal emotions increases the likelihood of engagement and more sharing behavior. Therefore, select visual assets that can trigger positive emotions and offer viewers a great story. Even though text postings do not receive the same priority as visuals, they can generate an emotional response, particularly when accompanied by a photograph. When in doubt, use both visual and text in your postings.

As we discussed earlier, there are some strategies you can use to increase content engagement and sharing behavior. Popular tactics include personalizing posts for specific consumers, hosting competitions, consumer polls, distributing coupons only on social media, personalizing content, and asking consumers to create content for your account. It may also include, acknowledging a consumer’s engagement, adding hashtags, or politely encouraging consumers to share your content (i.e., please retweet or PLS RT). Remember that your company does not need to be responsible for creating all of the content that you post on social media. A good social media account incorporates a combination of consumer, company, and collaborative content. Just make sure that you choose content that is valued by your consumers, and when sharing or retweeting content created by others, make the content your own—adopt it, place your virtual stamp on it by adding a comment, and encouraging consumers to comment.

Perhaps, the most important piece of advice for increasing engagement and strengthening ties is to remember that social media is a conversation tool. You should be posting content that encourages conversation among consumers and between your company and consumers. Do not forget to thank your consumers for connecting with your account, answer their questions, share their content on your Facebook page (with their permission), retweet their messages, “like” their LinkedIn posts. You can also use social media to distribute exclusive deals and content. As we discussed earlier, creating a sense of scarcity and urgency can be very powerful at persuading consumers to act.

With the foundation created for a professional, persuasive social media pages, the next step is to identify how to create accounts that consumers want to follow and content that they want to share.

LinkedIn: The Concierge

LinkedIn is the ideal platform for allowing existing and potential customers, vendors, investors, and shareholders to learn about your company and your products. It certainly is important for all companies to have a presence on LinkedIn, but it is particularly important for B2B companies. A 2016 report reveals that 94 percent of B2B marketers have a LinkedIn profile. Sixty-six percent of these B2B companies report that LinkedIn is their most effective social media platform, followed by Twitter (55 percent) and YouTube (51 percent) (Content Marketing Institute 2016). These numbers are not surprising, given the benefits of following an individual or company on LinkedIn: to learn more about a company and their products, gain industry insights, find solutions to problems, connect with peers and colleagues, increase company or brand awareness, create a personal brand, and find prospective employees.

When using LinkedIn, you should adopt the mindset that your company is a concierge—your company’s LinkedIn page exists to provide information and direction, to connect individuals and companies (Kaplan 2012). Create a page that shares the story of your company; that makes you stand out from the competition, and that includes a variety of forms of shareable content.

To build a network of influencers, you should attempt to attract a diverse selection of followers, including employees, senior management, board members, vendors, customers, shareholders, and industry experts. A simple approach to ensure continuous recruitment of followers is to include a link to the LinkedIn company page at the bottom of company e-mail signatures. Another strategy is to join and participate in existing LinkedIn groups. Identify groups where your targeted audiences might be and actively participate in popular conversation threads. Post helpful comments and questions, but leave out the sales pitch (tell, do not sell) (Kaplan 2012). Instead, you should ask questions, listen and provide guidance. The aim here is to build a rapport and position your company has an expert or opinion leader.

The key to engagement is to provide quality content; content that gives followers a reason to engage, respond, and share. Sixty percent of LinkedIn followers are interested in receiving updates on industry insights, 53 percent in company news, and 43 percent in information on new products and services (Lee 2015). This provides you with the opportunity to post all three forms of content—consumer, company, and collaborative. Consumer content includes links to relevant thirdparty material, including industry news, expert news, trending news, and media coverage of your company. Just remember to add a comment or post a question to increase engagement. In the area of company-generated content, LinkedIn provides the opportunity to link to a variety of existing company materials, including blogs, interviews, videos, and white papers. Your company’s materials may need to be reengineered to make them more palatable—less advertising, more educational. Collaborative content may include guest blogs, case studies, and testimonials. Identify industry influencers for you to interview. Share the interview on your page. Alternatively, invite influencers to post a guest blog or a case study. Ask customers to provide testimonials.

When posting content to LinkedIn, avoid the habit of sharing every post with everyone—the “spray and pray” approach. Ask yourself if there is a specific subset of LinkedIn users that will find this particular post especially valuable. Your posts should be targeted to specific groups, job functions, or industries, so that your updates are reaching the appropriate people. Share and empower your employees to share your posts with their network of followers.

Aim to post one update (consumer, company, or collaborative) each weekday (Lee 2015). Where appropriate, include links. Research reveals that updates that include a link generate upwards of 45 percent more engagement (like, comment, share) than updates that do not include a link (Lee 2015). When you link to these items, it is important to include a comment to draw attention and encourage engagement (social proof in action). Ask followers to comment on the item or pose a question that will hopefully elicit a response. When you receive comments or responses from connections, be sure to reply. A response can be as simple as using the “like” feature to acknowledge that you have seen and read their comment, or you can respond with a new message. Posts that include YouTube videos are also reported to be a great source of engagement on LinkedIn. The inclusion of a YouTube video can attract twice as many likes and comments and 75 percent more shares (Lee 2015). In general, morning updates on LinkedIn receive the highest level of engagement, with a slight increase in the evening. However, it is important to experiment to determine the best time for your followers based on their geographical location (Kaplan 2012). Time your postings to reach the majority of your audience. See Figure 8.3 for a summary.

Facebook: The Personal Face of Your Company

LinkedIn maybe the corporate face of your company, but Facebook is the personal face. Facebook is relevant not only for B2C companies, but it can also be important for B2B companies. It provides your company with the opportunity to humanize and communicate your brand’s mission. It is also a great way of reaching potential B2B users and influencers. Forty-four percent of those active social media users surveyed report following brands on Facebook, and 36 percent of Facebook users seek out brand information on social media (Mander 2016). As we discussed in Chapter 2, consumers follow brands on Facebook for many reasons, including as a form of self-expression, to communicate a positive association with a brand, to communicate with the brand, and to receive product information and deals (Lipsman et al. 2012; eMarketer 2015).

Figure 8.3 LinkedIn

When developing content for Facebook, consider two factors, why people love your brand and why people share (Li 2013). The answer to the question of why people love your brand will help you focus on relevant content to post. In Chapter 3, we discussed how Maersk tapped into peoples’ love of ships to help determine what to share. The company shared current and historical photos of their ships on Facebook and encouraged fans to share their photographs of Maersk ships from around the globe (Katona and Sarvary 2014). Maersk is a great example of how a B2B company can use Facebook to humanize a brand.

The answer to the second question, why do people share on Facebook, will help you identify the variety of content that you should post. People share content with their network of Facebook friends for numerous reasons, including to make life easier for others, to educate and inspire friends; to help others, to answer questions, to build relationships through conversations and engagement, to craft their identities, to express themselves (Li 2013). As discussed in Chapter 2 and briefly in Chapter 3, when someone decides to follow a brand on social media. that brand becomes a part of their social identity.

Consumers are 40–150 times more likely to consume a brand’s content in their newsfeed than they are to take time to visit the brand page. Therefore, it is essential to develop content that will make it into a consumer’s newsfeed (Lipsman et al. 2012). Unfortunately, as we discussed earlier, the Facebook algorithm does not favor brands. For this reason, many companies turn to paid advertising on Facebook to reach more consumers. The good news is that Facebook dominates all social media platforms for sharing. Research suggests that approximately 80 percent of the social sharing originates from Facebook, surpassing the number two social sharing platform Pinterest by 10 to 1 (Delzio 2015). The friends of fans audience can be upto 34 times greater than the size of the company’s current Facebook fan base (Lipsman et al. 2012).

To maximize the reach of each post, you need to use a variety of content (photos, videos, and so on) from different sources (consumer, company, and collaborative). Images are the most engaging content on Facebook. One study found that the comment rate for images is higher than it is for text (over 90 percent), and linking to YouTube videos also results in a higher “share” rate (75 percent). If you are posting a text update, then you need to consider the wordcount carefully. Text posts of 80+ words are said to garner almost twice the level of engagement than shorter posts (Hussain 2014). One possible reason for this is that short posts often do not provide enough information for people to comment on and can be quickly skimmed. Longer posts provide more information and require a greater level of attention. Sharing can be enhanced further by using simple words. Facebook is not the place to show off your extensive vocabulary. Early research also suggests that the use of verbs in status updates compel people to share (Solis 2010).

Research also suggests that the best days to post to achieve maximum engagement on Facebook are Thursday’s and Friday’s, with the optimal time to post being early afternoon (1–3 pm) (Bennett 2015). However, you should experiment to identify the best time to reach your audience. Increasing the number of posts per day does not always increase engagement and sharing (Kolowich 2015). It has been suggested that companies should post 5–10 times per week (Hughes 2016). However, companies like the Coca-Cola Company (@TheCocaColaCo), American Red Cross (@redcross), and Maersk (@maerskgroup) all have a history of posting less than once a day and still achieve high levels of engagement. What is more important is the quality of the posts. Well-crafted and strategically timed postings a few times a week can be just as if not more effective than multiple posts each day (Kolowich 2015). See Figure 8.4 for a summary.

Twitter: The New Telephone

The short, concise messaging of Twitter can mimic natural conversations (Dalla Pozza, Wood, and Burkhalter 2015). These conversations can be an effective way of maintaining relationships and spreading positive sWOM. Consumers follow companies on Twitter for entertainment to obtain discounts and deals, hear breaking news, and obtain access to exclusive content and information. Consumers also use Twitter as a customer service channel. When consumers have a problem, concern, or question, they will often reach out to the company on Twitter. Many companies have Twitter accounts dedicated specifically for customer service (e.g., @virgincare, @microsofthelps) (Jackson 2016). Twitter has, in some ways, become the new telephone (Dalla Pozza, Wood, and Burkhalter 2015).

Figure 8.4 Facebook

Twitter can be an effective platform for conveying your brand’s personality. The challenge is creating a shareworthy tweet in 140 characters. When compared with Facebook, LinkedIn, and Pinterest, Twitter generates the smallest amount of sharing (Delzio 2015). To encourage engagement in general and social sharing specifically, consider joining multiple tweets together to tell a story, a strategy made popular by journalists reporting on live events. Each tweet provides a new piece of important information, and when the tweets are read in succession, the whole story unfolds. Engagment is also greatly affected by enjoyment. The more a follower enjoys your tweet, the more likely he or she is to engage (e.g., click on the link contained) and the higher level of engagement (e.g., moves from watching to sharing to commenting). Therefore, tweets should be designed to be entertain and engage and avoid excess company or product information (Kwon and Sung 2011). If you are using Twitter as a customer service channels, be sure to respond to questions and comments promptly. If it truly is the telephone of this generation, then consumers do not want to feel like they have been placed on hold.

Tweets that are successful at attracting a large number of retweets possess similar characteristics. An analysis of 1.4 million randomly selected tweets found that tweets of 110–115 characters were 34 percent more likely to be retweeted than tweets that had a shorter or longer character count (Zarrella 2013). Another study examined the tweets of six companies in the tourism industry and found that the inclusion of pictures had a positive impact on retweeting and favoriting (Alboqami et al. 2015), particularly if the image was humorous (Patel 2014). A final study of 1,000 Twitter user accounts found that those tweets that contained images received 128 percent more retweets than the tweets that contained videos. However, consumers were more likely to “favorite” a tweet that contained a video than they were a tweet that contained a photo (Patel 2014). Tweets that contain hyperlinks also gain more attention than those that do not (Alboqami et al. 2015; Solis 2009). These findings can be explained by the Engagement Pyramid (Chapter 2). If your goal is to move consumers up the pyramid, then you need to be aware of the type and format of content that is likely to encourage higher levels of engagement. Excessive use of hashtags or mentions can act as a distraction, making tweets difficult to read. Hashtags should be limited to one or two, particularly if your aim is to encourage retweeting with a comment (Ayres 2015).

Additional research suggests that to encourage sharing, you should tweet like you would talk to a friend. In other words, you should keep the language simple. Talk like a human. Your tweets should be rich with subject pronouns, (e.g., I, you, he, she, it, they, we, what, and do), object pronouns (e.g., me, you, him, her, it, us, them), and imperative verbs (e.g., stop, listen, share, stay tuned) (Kwon and Sung 2011). Punctuation is also important! (Solis 2009).

To build your network, identify social influencers to follow. Retweet their content but remember to add your own comment. Tagging social influencers in your tweet may help generate social sharing via retweets (Hughes 2016). Companies should be aiming to tweet 3–5 times per day. B2B companies typically tweet more frequently through the work week than they do on weekends. B2C companies tweet through the entire week, with the highest activity often occurring on Wednesday’s and weekends. See Figure 8.5 for a summary.

Figure 8.5 Twitter

Instagram: The New Billboard

Instagram is the popular photograph- and video-sharing platform owned by Facebook. The platform allows users to share photographs and videos ranging in length from 3 to 60 seconds with their friends. A lot of the time these are impromptu photographs and videos that show what consumers are doing at that specific moment in time. Recall from Chapter 6, the most frequent types of content posted on Instagram (consisting of almost half of the dataset of photos combined) were friends and selfies (Hu, Manikonda, and Kambhampati 2014).

Consumers follow brands on Instagram because they love the brand, they use the images and videos posted to learn about new products to purchase and to help pass the time (Mander 2016). Across all social media platforms, Instagram boasts the highest rate of engagement (likes, shares, comments combined) (Delzio 2015). A study of major brands revealed that engagement was 58 times higher on Instagram than on Facebook and 120 times higher than on Twitter (LePage 2015). As we discussed earlier, the reason for Instagram’s success are that visuals are extremely powerful at evoking emotion and motivating social media users to react. But not all pictures are shareworthy. Many photos end up on the cutting room floor or the digital trashcan. Just because Instagram offers you seemingly, unlimited storage does not mean that you post everything. Be selective. When selecting photos to post, ask yourself “Is this image Instagram-worthy?” Or perhaps an even better question to ask yourself “Is it billboard worthy?” If you think of each image as something to use in a billboard campaign, this should help you identify the images that evoke emotion, and therefore, encourage engagement (likes, comments, and sharing). A good strategy is to select visuals that highlight an experience rather than a product. As we learned from the Tourism Australia example in Chapter 7, one of the strategies to persuade others to engage is to select visuals that tell a story and allow for a story to be told. To illustrate, rather than showing a photo or a video of a new pair of running shoes, instead, post a picture or video of someone wearing the shoes while running. Your posts should inspire followers to adopt your product as part of their lifestyle. Make sure you include faces. Researchers have found that engagement and higher likes per follower are greater when Instagram photos contained faces (Bakhsi, Shamma, and Gilber 2014; Zarrella 2014).

If a picture is supposed to be worth a thousand words, does that mean that adding text is unnecessary on Instagram? Not at all. On the contrary, including text can be extremely helpful at boosting engagement levels. Instagram permits up to 2,000 characters per post. If you intend to make use of all 2,000 characters, ensure that the text adds value by telling a story. Also, consider tagging your location, and if appropriate, another user’s handle. The inclusion of a geotag makes it easier for consumers to find your posts when searching. Posts tagged with a location receive 79 percent more engagement, and those posts that contain another user handle in the caption benefit from 56 percent more engagement. Hashtags can also leverage your social reach by approximately 12.6 percent (LePage 2015). As we discussed in Chapter 6, care should be taken not to include too many hashtags as they may distract from the text component of the post. Use a small number of hashtags that your consumers are likely to search for, that are topically relevant, and that contribute to the message (e.g., #Rio2016, #THATSGOLD). Avoid hashtags that fail to add value, particularly when used in abundance (e.g., #Hastags#Used#In#Ridiculous#Way#lol). You should aim to post once a day every day (Hughes 2016), with the best days to post being Monday through Thursday (Kolowich 2016). But as always, you need to experiment with the best time for your audience. See Figure 8.6 for a summary.

Pinterest: The Digital Scrapbook

Pinterest is an inspiration, planning, and visual bookmarking tool. Pictures and videos are the most commonly pinned items, but consumers and companies can also pin articles, places, and even apps as long as they contain an image. In many ways, Pinterest is a digital scrapbook. Perhaps, not surprisingly, Pinterest’s user base skews heavily female. In addition to using Pinterest to discover and pin items that inspire them, women also use Pinterest as a planning tool. For example, before the Internet when planning her wedding, a party, Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner, or preparing to redecorate, women would clip articles, rip pages from magazines, and put them together in a scrapbook or binder. Today, she does this using Pinterest. Some of the most browsed and pinned categories by women include food and drink, home decor, DIY, crafts, holidays, and events. For men, food and drink and DIY are popular categories as are technology, gardening, and humor (Dougherty 2015). Similar to Instagram, when trying to determine what to pin, the aim should be to inspire. Therefore, image quality is important. Once you have motivated a consumer to click through to your website, the last thing you want is to lose them because of a broken link or boring page. Each image should link to a high-quality landing page.

Figure 8.6 Instagram

Pinterest allows 500 characters to accompany each posting. Some research suggests that the character count can impact how frequently your pins will be repinned. The optimal length is reported to be 200–300 characters (Dougherty 2015). Descriptions need to be carefully crafted using keywords that consumers are likely to use to research relevant items. You should create a variety of boards to appeal to a wide selection of consumers. For instance, ideas or inspirations, specific occasions, how-to, videos, exclusive deals, new products, behind the scenes, specific themes, or mood boards. Grouping pinned items into common themes can help consumers locate relevant information and may also motivate them to follow the board. Take, for example, the following two Pinterest pages:

When adding boards to your Pinterest page, placement is important. Place your best boards in the first two rows as these are what consumers will see first when using a computer. If the first two rows of boards are not appealing, consumers may not take time to explore the remainder of your page.

Most consumers use Pinterest during the evenings and on weekends, particularly Saturday (Kolowich 2016). Companies should make an effort to pin all three forms of content—consumer, company, and collaborative. It is important to engage your consumers on Pinterest just as you would on other social platforms. For example, be sure to like and comment on content pinned by your consumers. The majority of clicks (70 percent) are likely to occur within the first day of an item being pinned, so posting every day is important (Hughes 2016). Research offers conflicting results on the optimal number of items a company should be pinning each day. It could be as little five to as many as 30 (Hughes 2016; Kolowich 2016; Dougherty 2015). If you plan to pin a large number of items, it is advisable to spread these pins out throughout the entire day. Dumping a large number of pins in a short period can result in your account being flagged for spamming. This may result in you being temporarily locked out of your account—being put in “Pinterest Jail,” or being banned completely. When you account has been put in “Pinterest Jail,” only you can see your pins. It may be a while before you even realize that your account is suspended. One tell-tale sign is that people have stopped repinning your pins because they cannot see them. If this happens, you will need to wait to be released or contact Pinterest support and politely ask to be released. Frequent offenders can expect lengthy sentences or even “life incarceration”—banned completely (“Don’t Land in Pinterest Jail” 2015). See Figure 8.7 for a summary.

YouTube: The One-Stop Shop for Entertainment, Inspiration, and Education

The most-watched YouTube video of all time, with more than 2.5 billion views, is the music video Gangnam Style by Korean pop star Psy. In fact, the top ten most watched YouTube videos of all time are all music related (Heisler 2016). Obviously, YouTube entertains, but consumers also turn to YouTube to be inspired. Do you remember the video “Achieving Your Childhood Dreams” or as it was more commonly known as, “The Last Lecture” by Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch? Professor Pausch, who was diagnosed with terminal cancer, spoke about finding ways to celebrate and enjoy life. Over 18 million people logged on and tuned in to be inspired. Consumers also readily turn to YouTube to learn and for instruction. For example, millions of teenagers rely on YouTube star Michelle Phan for lessons on how to apply makeup. Finally, YouTube videos help consumers decide what to buy (Jarski 2016).

Video is the perfect platform for generating awareness, creating interest, making an emotional connection, and encouraging consumer advocacy. Given that consumers turn to YouTube for entertainment, inspiration, and education, your videos should offer a combination of emotion and intellect. One of the best ways to make a connection with your consumers via video is to tell a story (see Chapter 6). Like every good novel, or movie, each story has a beginning, middle, and end, or if you prefer, three acts:

Figure 8.7 Pinterest

There is no perfect video length, although the prevailing wisdom is that shorter is better (Smith 2015). To help determine the optimum length, consider where the video will be posted and potentially shared. Short-form videos are more successful on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram, long-form videos are more successful on YouTube (Sahakians 2015; Pedersen 2015; Smith 2015). Keep in mind that 30 seconds into the video, you probably have lost at least a third of your audience and at the two-minute mark over 60 percent have stopped watching (Pedersen 2015). If you find yourself wondering “is this too long?,” then generally speaking, “yes” it is. Your video should be just long enough to achieve its goal. If your video is too long, consider breaking it up into multiple short videos—nonlinear chapters or vignettes. Making them nonlinear allows consumers to watch them out of order, which may help with engagement and sharing (Uganec 2012).

Video creation is a time-consuming activity, so to maximize value, create videos that will have a long lifespan. Unlike other social media platforms, where engagement peaks a short time after the initial post, it can sometimes take months for a YouTube video to attract high viewership numbers. Your company should view YouTube as a medium to long-term strategy for sWOM. To attempt to accelerate the number of views and sWOM, your company should create a YouTube channel that reflects your brand. You may want to consider creating multiple playlists to appeal to a variety of consumers. For example, you could create a playlist of new product videos, another for tutorials, demonstrations, product reviews, and behind the scenes. Take, for example, the following three YouTube channels:

As always, remember that the quality of your video is more important than the number of videos that you post. Top performers on YouTube all have a schedule for posting new videos. Create a manageable schedule for creating and posting new videos and stick to it.

To ensure your video’s high visibility in search engine results, carefully select a title for each video. The title of a video is the main source of information in the YouTube search algorithm. Use keywords that your consumers would use to search. For example, tutorial, review, how-to, what is. Place these keywords once in the title, once or twice in the description, and if appropriate in the tags (Patel 2016).

Companies often create videos hoping that they will go viral—that the video will spread like a virus throughout the social web—attracting downloads, likes, comments, and shares of epic proportion. Do not start out with the goal of making a viral video. Your goal should be to make a good video, post links in the appropriate locations (blogs, website, and so on) at the right time and then use your social network in general and social influencers specifically to help spread the word (Khan and Vong 2014). Remember that who shares and views your video is just as, if not more, important than how many people share and view (Uganec 2012). This may also help at attracting subscribers (Nanji 2013).

Additional strategies for increasing engagement is to promote your videos on other social media platforms (e.g., Facebook and LinkedIn), include video links in your e-mail signature and embed videos in an e-mail. Researchers report that videos embedded in an e-mail have a clickthrough rate of approximately 96 percent (Jarski 2016). You should find other YouTube channels to follow and invite influencers to subscribe to your channel. Time your postings to reach the majority of your audience or alternative post between the hours of 12–5 pm when viewership is greatest on all devices except for TV (Jarski 2016). See Figure 8.8 for a summary.

Figure 8.8 YouTube

Conclusion

When we decided to write this book, it was not our intention to provide a comprehensive guide to sWOM. If that were the case, this book would be titled “The Complete Guide to Social Word of Mouth (sWOM).” The reality is that social media is a moving target. As social media grows and evolves and social consumers change the way in which they use social, so too will your strategies. The fluid nature of social media makes it challenging to write a book that will stand the test of time, at least for a few years. Instead, we wrote this book to provide you an understanding of sWOM and how you can use it within your company. We included examples of how other companies have embraced social media and sWOM to make connections, enhance their relationships with consumers, create their brand voice, and build their brand identity. We provided, guidelines, checklists, and resources to help you apply what you have learned here to your company. Although this is the end of our book, it certainly is not the end of your education on sWOM. Indeed, this is only the start of what is sure to be an interesting, and hopefully, rewarding direction for your company. We hope that this book has provided you with a sound foundation on sWOM and the motivation to begin this important journey. If it has, we encourage you to spread the word. #Share.

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