Category: Articles

For almost a month, wrestling fans have been buzzing over Total Non-Stop Action’s (TNA) online video, ‘The Final Deletion’. For whatever reason, not everyone sees the beauty in suplexes, power bombs, or watching grown men hitting each other in the face with trash cans. Even as an avid wrestling fan, parts of it are hard to get through. However, you need not worry, I watched it for you, several times, and can tell you why this match and its fallout in TNA storytelling is a perfect vehicle for explaining the difference between simply deleting content and actually changing public opinion in an online reputation campaign. In addition to possibly resurrecting Matt and Jeff Hardy’s careers, ‘The Final Deletion’ also brings to light an inherent contradiction in the ‘right to be forgotten’ concept, important to anyone working in online reputation management.

First, some context: This video is sports entertainment. Professional wrestling is an art-form. It has unique conventions or ways of conveying symbolic meaning. For example, in professional wrestling acting is judged like nachos: the cheesier the better. And ‘The Final Deletion’ is cheesy. The premise of the video is that ‘Broken’ Matt Hardy challenges ‘Brother Nero’ Jeff Hardy to a match for the right to the Hardy family legacy, with the loser being deleted from existence forever. Remember this is a professional wrestling storyline—a parallel fantasy universe from which we can draw lessons for the real-world. The threat of ‘deletion’ instead of a simple loss, and the deliberate choice to use digital vernacular and present it as a pre-recorded video instead of a traditional taping in front of a live audience, makes Matt’s attempt to remove Jeff from existence comparable to real-world efforts to displace unflattering articles in search engine results.

Despite winning the ‘Final Deletion’ match, when Matt subsequently goes on a live broadcast, he is greeted by fans cheering wildly for the supposedly deleted Jeff. These fans are much like real-world Internet users who create more content about an event even after the initial post is removed. Many politicians who have been caught deleting controversial tweets know this reality all too well. At this moment Matt realizes he can never truly delete Jeff so long as the audience remembers Jeff. This is a perfect demonstration of how digital content is not completely isolated from the physical world and removing it does not automatically cause the events leading to its creation to disappear from people’s heads. Since the audience will never forget about Jeff as long as Matt is around, Matt must create new content or extend the narrative in order to realize his ultimate goal of controlling the Hardy legacy. He needs to give people a chance to move on and accept the new status quo, instead of wondering where the guy from the last match disappeared to. So how does Matt deal with this reality? He changes the conditions of their match; Jeff will no longer be deleted. Instead, he’ll become Matt’s slave. Yes, it’s ridiculous, but it elegantly completes the metaphor—in the real world, we can’t delete content, but we can use new content to establish different front page results in search engines.

While this blog post gives me a convenient excuse to write about wrestling, the events surrounding this video do a better job of highlighting the difference between deleting content from the Internet and actually removing an issue from public conversation than any white paper could. In fact, ‘The Final Deletion’ deserves credit for three reasons, two of which matter in illustrating this point:

• it’s responsible for the most attention TNA Wrestling has ever received;
• it illustrates how to effectively manipulate search results in a reputational campaign by bringing to light a fundamental paradox in the much debated ‘right to be forgotten’ initiatives that concern anyone managing a brand with unfavourable search history;
• and, of course,
  it features a frog splash from a very tall tree.

Last week, articles discussing ‘The Final Deletion’ were shared over 10,000 times on social media. Articles about ‘TNA Wrestling’ in general struggled to generate that kind of engagement during the entire month of June, and most of the content was about whether or not the company would be sold or file for bankruptcy. It’s hard to compare ‘The Final Deletion’ to other clips in TNA’s catalogue. Reaction segments are a good equalizer. The segment reacting to ‘The Final Deletion’ on TNA’s weekly broadcast was viewed more than 192,000 times since being uploaded on Thursday, while the next highest segment was hovering around 90,000. With one event, the online narrative about the TNA has shifted from one about financial difficulties to how amazingly crazy ‘Broken’ Matt Hardy is, increasing viewers on TNA broadcasts as wrestling fans look to see what sport’s entertainment’s new answer to Tommy Wiseau will do next.

Sure, people are debating whether ‘The Final Deletion’ is a piece of art or even an act of professional wrestling, but there’s no doubt that it is fantastic when considered as a piece of viral content. It’s a backyard wrestling video from a second tier promotion. The fact that it has more than 300,000 views (on just the official link) is incredible. Imagine if a second round playoff series in the QMJHL was generating more buzz than The Stanley Cup. Thanks to ‘The Final Deletion’, TNA was on the same level as WWE for a short time, going by general share of voice among people who care about such things. That really is an amazing achievement.

The match itself incorporates several spots (wrestling term for planned sequences) recalling famous matches in The Hardy Boys’ career going back to their time in WWE, which had never really been acknowledged in TNA storylines before. The audience is reminded of what it means to be a Hardy in the storyline world of professional wrestling as the two brothers symbolically rewrite history by performing new versions of the stunts that made them famous in the first place. Here too, we can draw lessons for online reputation recovery campaigns. Taking professional wrestling seriously for a moment, the fight is a violent and indirect way of redefining one’s past by repositioning key points in its foundational narrative. In terms of digital reputation, you can compare it to disavowing links to unfavourable articles while tweaking public-facing copy to meet the same communications objectives as before, without using words or phrases that might have been used in unflattering coverage.

‘The Final Deletion’s’ aftermath and the fallout on TNA’s weekly broadcast cement it as a definitive metaphor for effective online reputation management. Matt eventually realizes a pinfall victory is like a running a digital reputation campaign without any offline support. Without something to replace whatever you are trying to delete or remove, people will still remember the original, and create more similar content to take its place. As long as other people remember Jeff and create content about him, he is never truly deleted. The crowd remembers Jeff and chant his name until he appears in the ring. In real-world campaigns, these chants are manifested in the form of new content that appears in search results in place of deleted content Removing results from search engine pages, without offline efforts to create equally prominent content in its place, makes those results harder to find, but they still exist. Users looking for information about major brands or high profile individuals will not be satisfied with mediocre placeholder content and will ultimately rediscover scandalous material, bringing it back to the forefront of search engine results. Why? Because as Google and European courts are starting to articulate, being forgotten is not a right. Privacy, within reasonable limits, is a right. But there is a very big difference between the two.

Google’s ‘right to be forgotten’ initiative is a program that, theoretically, allows individuals to remove web pages containing personal information from search engine results. A version is technically live in the US, it has been contested in European courts for years, and was recently rejected by a court in Japan. A version very similar to the American one was recently (and very quietly) made available to Canadians with lawyers already considering the possible implications. For major brands and people regularly in the headlines, the program is essentially meaningless. Google will not, nor is it under any obligation to, delete results that are a matter of public record and interest, regardless of how embarrassing those events may be for the people involved. Results related to crimes, politicians, or public figures are not eligible for deletion under ‘right to be forgotten’. This is not because Google engineers are especially fond of these things. Search engines aggregate information that already exists in some form so that it is easier to find digitally. They do not write negative content, yet they’re often blamed for its continued effect on a subject’s reputation.

When a crime or political scandal stops being covered by broadcast or television news, it is quickly forgotten because watching old news broadcasts is almost as pointless as saving old newspapers. People move on from a story, however, the physical copy of that news report still exists somewhere. Digital content related to a story will linger in search results for its main keyword because those results are not designed to reflect the general news, but an up-to-date understanding of a keyword, which often includes recent news headlines. Even if the general news cycle has moved on, negative results naturally stay relevant longer when eligible news stories are confined to one keyword, as they are in any Google search. Understanding this is part of the game. Successful reputation campaigns prepare clients to accept that negative content will be associated with their name for some time. First, campaigns need to address underlying digital metrics — like traffic — that have a more tangible effect on most businesses, before focussing entirely on removing unflattering content from search results. Though clients often disagree when it’s about them, people have a right to read about things that make the news. So in order to change the digital narrative, you need new content to establish a separate yet equally plausible story.

This is especially true for ‘public figures’. Search engines determine who is a public figure using an algorithm to calculate mentions by frequency and volume within a particular content type. Anyone with enough of a certain type of coverage can be considered a public figure in Google, even if they are far from a celebrity in real life. In a famous case from a few years ago, a Google leak revealed that 95% of “right to be forgotten” requests came from private individuals. Many of those requests were for news articles where victims’ names should never have been printed in the first place, but under the ‘right to be forgotten,’ the articles cannot be removed as they deal with a crime. Many other cases involved an original version of a story being indexed in Google results, despite a correction being issued in the print version. In both cases, the privacy violations were the news publishers’ fault, not the search engine’s. Google simply aggregated the content it was given. It is very rare that a result actually fits the criteria for deletion: roughly 75% of ‘right to be forgotten’ requests are denied. Requests are rejected because content with enough visibility to negatively affect someone’s reputation normally also makes it socially or historically relevant, and its omission in a search would reflect poorly on any search engine’s basic competency. Though legislators have begun to acknowledge the unprecedented power a company like Google has over people’s reputations, it is very unlikely any search engine will ever be asked to remove news articles from its results in a country paying even basic lip service to ideas of free press, speech, and access to information.

The problem is that while forgetting is not a right, we do acknowledge people are entitled to some element of privacy. However, the idea that anyone can remove knowledge or events from the public record because it embarrasses them is more ridiculous than anything in ‘The Final Deletion’ video. ‘Broken’ Matt Hardy comes to a version of this realization. After the crowd cheers for Jeff in his first live appearance since the video aired, Matt decides to redefine the terms of their match, much like we create more content when executing a reputation recovery campaign. In TNA storytelling, Matt quickly redesigns his plan so now Jeff will have to stay and work for him. This makes sense in the broader context of a match to determine the superior Hardy brother: like everything else about ‘The Final Deletion’, Matt’s reframing of the match is an excellent example of how one can change how an individual is perceived online by emphasizing different aspects of their background. Matt creates new content by changing the original narrative from ‘loser is deleted’ to ‘loser stays and lives’ in wrestling’s version of indentured servitude. This allows Matt to restore his desired reputation as the dominant Hardy and remove negative results (represented by his brother as a threat to whatever he plans on doing in TNA).

We need to think on those same terms when conducting digital reputation recovery, especially with major brands and public figures. Instead of trying to ‘delete’ individual pieces of digital content, you need to understand that the content, or some mention of it, is going to be there for some time, and try to leverage that to your advantage instead. The crowd chanting for Jeff Hardy after he was ‘deleted’ is comparable to how in digital terms, stories live on as reposts, shares, or mentions in comments long after the original digital source is removed. Digital reputation recovery is about giving them a reason to forget. You can use the first wave of negative content to understand the exact reason people are upset, then leverage the public figure or brand’s prominence to inject new content into search engine results to address negative content, without mentioning it directly. It is not easy. But, if a backyard wrestling video can go viral, it’s proof that when it comes to the Internet, anything is possible – it just can’t be deleted.

The NBA is technically in it’s downtime now, but some history was made earlier this year: the first team to come back from down three in the NBA finals. The third player to have a triple-double in Game 7 of the NBA finals. The end of a 52-year title drought, and a legacy — hopefully — secured. But fans are fickle, and so are their tweets.

In June, Lebron James led the Cleveland Cavaliers to a historic NBA title against, arguably, the best offense the NBA has ever seen—in a gym with one of the most intimidating, crazy loud, crazy supportive, home-court advantages. Going into playoffs, Cleveland’s opponents, the Golden State Warriors, were 73-9 and the defending champions. Somehow this season, Lebron James, a once-in-a-generation player (apparently passing Michael Jordan as the most valuable NBA player in history) was seen as the underdog in this ridiculous, insane, playoff series. And both because and despite his greatness, Lebron is also one of the most image-conscious players in the NBA. He is completely aware of the narrative surrounding ‘Lebron James’ . At various points he has been the golden child, the abandoner, the most-hated, the undervalued, the arrogant, the vengeful, the journeyman, the prodigal son, the David, and now — perhaps — the untouchable. The best place to read the whole story and find out which particular character we’ve decided Lebron is at the moment (and he was basically all of these at different points during this seven-game series — there were 20 lead changes in Game 7 alone, and at least that many James narrative shifts) is on Twitter.

Basketball — and the NBA in particular — is in many ways the perfect storm of everything you would want (or maybe just everything I want) in story-building, the Internet, and PR. Back when Twitter was still in its infancy, NBA and their fans decided to make it their home. In 2009, ESPN reported on the NBA’s general acceptance of Twitter and the kind of unfiltered interaction occurring between athletes and fans. Today, according the league, 87 per cent of NBA players are on social media of some kind, and an estimated 70 per cent are on Twitter alone.

Now, I don’t want to throw stones or start anything, but if you really like basketball, you’re watching it on Twitter and on TV (or, more likely, a pirated streaming service/your friend’s stolen ESPN account). For whatever reason, the NBA has become an unlikely equalizer on the Internet in that its online community enjoys regular engagement from players, journalists, statisticians, and fans, more than other platforms or any other sport. During the 2014-15 season, the league added the @NBA handle to the official Spalding game ball. True randoms are tweeting at true experts or athletes and fighting over legacies. Vines, gifs, and memes, are alive and well in NBA Twitter, and a well-deployed reference or six-second spin is welcomed from anyone. Stats are shared by the establishment and diehards alike. NBA Twitter is all at once fun, informative, serious, socially conscious, and entertaining. Moreover — and this has always been an argument for Twitter period, and not just NBA Twitter — wittier, quicker, and with a finger on the pulse of the broader context.

For example, if we go back to James — the James/Curry rivalry narrative of the playoffs has sparked discussions on race, America’s easy acceptance of Golden State’s Steph Curry, the two players’ vastly different come-up stories, and their positions within the black community and the league.The discussion played out in real-time on Twitter, particularly during Game 6 and Game 7 of the finals. There is an investment in these storylines, these issues and these people — whether it comes in the form of serious discourse or the perfect vine of the perfect play.

I might be biased — but this is what you want when you’re trying to cultivate an online community: equal parts enjoyment, real talk, boiling down to 100% buy-in. Sure, you could argue that it comes with the territory of being a popular sport, that sports fans are always going to be invested in the associated storylines with their players. But there’s a dialogue between the NBA and its online community that is pretty rare. NBA fans dictate as much as they take from the sport. For example, Twitter somehow managed to turn Michael Jordan into Crying Jordan in the span of only a year. The NBA is made for social media because it and its players embrace elements of pop culture more than any other sport — from the music, to their more fashionably conscious players. The NBA draft lottery is basically a multi-media event spectacular, and the NBA draft is a multi-media event spectacular that also boasts some truly heartwarming stories and clips of sons hugging their mothers. But somehow, the use of Twitter brings it down to a level of community and discussion that makes it seem — as the New Republic pointed out, questioning whether it will supplant the NFL as America’s sport — like family.

Maybe it’s because sometimes it is, literally, a family affair. Last year, Gabrielle Union — who is married to Dwayne Wade (Miami Heat, former teammate and current best friend of Lebron) — took to Twitter to argue that a foul against Lebron from the Rockets should have resulted in a suspension. However, the familial feel can also occasionally go south. Steph Curry’s wife Ayesha Curry has an active Twitter account and started an online flurry when she tweeted about the apparent shadiness of the NBA officiating. She faced the inevitable Twitter backlash and some merciless trolling of her comments.

Like all of Twitter, discussions can be an echo-chamber, insular, and they can be daunting to the uninitiated. But that’s because NBA Twitter is a fantastically dramatic roller-coaster of opinion, fact, and nonsense, but it is in every way a community. Lebron’s a preternaturally gifted athlete, and that will of course, shape his narrative as a player. But for a truly remarkable talent he is polarizing, and his life lives online as much as off of it. But most of the fights and rivalries that take place on NBA Twitter are (with of course, a few truly horrible people, because it’s the Internet) the kind of bickering that happens between relatives.

Often with campaigns we steer away from the anything too insider or too specific for fear of alienated the unawares. This is a valid and relevant concern. Often we steer away from anything too polarizing for the same reason. But what is also valid and relevant is that sometimes all that echo-chambery, insidery, going-over-your-head-ness is a symptom of a community talking to each other in terms they all understand. Sometimes it can come together and work to, on the whole, change and improve the way you experience something.

So if you’re still curious about Twitter (even though it’s now 10 years old), or online community development in general — NBA Twitter is the stuff of gold. Legacies are built, slayed, and rebuilt in a matter of weeks. It’s prone to hyperbole and tantrums. People are insightful and insufferable. You both crave the break and then wish it wasn’t on break when it comes around. It’s a pretty good example of a fully-developed and active online community, and your average visit with your family.

For Canadians, the internet looks different today than it did last week. June 1st marked the release of Accelerated Mobile Pages on Canadian domains. Varied browsing habits and histories mean everyone will notice changes at different times. If you haven’t seen it yet, trust us, it’s real. For a quick example, Wikipedia was one of the first sites in the world to opt in.

Before:

After:

You’ll also start seeing more ‘carousel’ listings on the front page of search results that will link directly to a specific video or article:

So what happened exactly? For more than a year it’s been common knowledge that most internet activity now takes place on mobile devices. Google is leading an initiative to change how the internet is built to accommodate our new browsing habits. It’s called ‘Accelerated Mobile Pages’ or AMP. Google has been encouraging websites all over the world to adopt AMP,rewarding early adopters with more favourable positions in search results. Though technically confined to mobile, AMP is currently impacting desktop searches as well. Popular sites like Wikipedia, as well as major news publishers from around the world, partnered with Google in developing and introducing the technology. The Globe and Mail, Postmedia, and Global News are some of the Canadian outlets involved. The project was announced last fall and launched in ten countries before going live in Canada last week. So far, there are more than 120million AMP pages online from a source of 650,000 partnered publishers.

Accelerated Mobile Pages does exactly what its name suggests. AMP is a new way to code web pages to load faster and better align with mobile browsing habits. It’s a logical development, recognizing the massive shift in web usage away from desktops towards smartphones and tablets. With Google backing the system, AMP will inevitably affect all future search results.. Accommodating the shift towards mobile on such a fundamental level and wide scale, officially ends the era where digital content is primarily designed for stationary browsing on traditional desktops. The so-called mobile revolution has never been a secret. Google partnering with major publishers around the world makes AMP a point of no return: anyone looking to circulate content online without first considering the mobile experience may need to completely alter their strategy.

The best way to introduce something on a massive scale is to make it benefit a lot of different people and to not give others a choice. AMP is no exception. A leaner design is the most obvious takeaway from the Wikipedia example, which will be the same for every participating website. For users, this means AMP-enhanced content will load up to four times faster,using far less data. This should cause people to gravitate towards AMP sites and incentivize more publishers to opt in.

AMP’s leaner format excludes some types of mobile ads, mostly flashed based, that users likely find invasive, yet are still relatively common. While perhaps initially frustrating for advertisers and media planners, there is the potential to create new types of ad units customized to specific devices, integrating ad content more naturally into the new ‘accelerated’ mobile display. There are even rumors AMP will make it easier for publishers to introduce paywalls on their digital content. Though re-coding sites may be costly for smaller publications, AMP acts as a kind of SEO reset. Those that neglected their search footprint now have an obvious place to start in order to reach one aspect of the industry standard.

The partnership between Google and major news outlets is key to AMP’s success. Yes we can already call it a success — at least the launch portion, anyway. The country’s biggest news content creators collaborating with the most popular search engine for news (and everything else) means, strictly from a search visibility perspective, other outlets looking to get their website displayed on the first few pages have no choice but to convert. Until Google says otherwise, Canadian web developers will be forced to get familiar with the new system. Eventually publications not directly involved in the rollout will switch or find a way to replace traffic from Google.

Is all this work really worth it? Yes. AMP is undeniably intended to make mobile search and by extension Google easier to use for both users and publishers. This might be Google’s biggest priority going forward. The smartphone has won out over the traditional computer as the preferred device for consuming media, yet controlling how people access media on mobile platforms is still up for grabs.

Google has enjoyed a practical monopoly on search traffic long enough to become the verb for it. Unfortunately for Google, searching for content is not the only way to access information on mobile devices. In fact, one could argue smartphones and tablets are better designed for apps, where users bypass search to get information right from their favourite publishers. One study found users spend 90 per cent of their mobile device time on apps, leaving only ten per cent for the browser. Google has noticed.. By integrating into Windows 10 and Microsoft Surface devices, Bing recently leveraged user’s preference for mobile to make some dents in Google’s worldwide dominance in total search traffic.

While Bing may be slowly carving out a share of organic search, Facebook is the only company seriously competing with Google in terms of overall Internet traffic. The rise of mobile browsing— where users are accustomed to setting up social media alerts and devices are designed for scrolling through app news feeds than typing search queries—gives Facebook an early advantage in becoming the Google of smartphones. In fact, one study found that Facebook already passed Google in terms of total referral traffic by five per cent. And that was before Facebook rolled out its new Instant Article Service, which allows major publishers—some of the same ones involved in their country’s initial AMP rollouts—to bypass search engines and place articles directly in targeted users’ news feeds. AMP can be seen as Google’s counter measure, intended to ensure its general dominance over how people find content online continues as browsing shifts to phones and tablets.

Internet trends move fast and a lot can change in a short time. AMP is the first of what will likely be many Google-backed initiatives to affect how digital content is created and disseminated, now that mobile browsing is solidified as the preferred way to access the Internet. How users and publishers respond to things like AMP and Instant Article Service will ultimately determine the extent to which either Google or Facebook are able to control how mobile content is circulated. With those two companies currently accounting for 76 per cent of online advertising revenue in the US , the battle between search and apps is very much a two-horse race. Chances are Google and Facebook will be working just as hard to keep it that way as they will at actually winning it.

There’s a reason Snapchat is the fastest growing social media channel. After downloading the app, users soon realize it is the most immersive, unique and simply fun social media platform out there. With the ability to follow your friends, celebrities, brands, media outlets and politicians, it provides a personal glimpse into users’ adventures and observations.

For those unaware of how the platform differentiates itself from the linear nature of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, Snapchat is only available for mobile phones and pushes videos and photos directly to your friends (‘Snaps’) or all your followers (‘Stories’). Users are able to personalize their content with texts and drawings, and string them together to effectively create a highlight reel of their day. However, what makes Snapchat truly unique is that its content expires: Snaps disappear after a maximum ten seconds of viewing and stories are removed 24 hours after they are published. This ‘fleeting’ feature quickly captivated users, enabling them to share content inappropriate for permanent social channels – be it mundane but amusing moments, jokes or even nudity.

Unlike the passive nature of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, Snapchat encourages its users to send photos or videos by automatically turning on your camera when opening the app. Further, Snapchat does not emphasize engagement metrics like followers and interactions, but useage. Snapchat scores its users on how many snaps they send and receive and awards trophies usage and feature. Milestones.

In January 2015, Snapchat began positioning itself as a media platform for brands. With the launch of its ‘Discover’ feature, brands and media outlets could create their own channels and curate daily content accordingly. CNN, The Comedy Network and National Geographic, amongst others, now serve up fresh video and print content alongside advertising. Like individuals’ photos and videos, this content expires and is more immersive than traditional web articles or videos. Ultimately, Discover enables users to experience, more than just consume, content like news or cooking tips.

 

 

Celebrities and politicians have taken to Snapchat too. DJ Khaled has emerged of a Snapchat star of sorts, using the app to broadcast his haircuts, promote merchandise, or showcase his night at the White House Correspondents Dinner. Additionally, politicians like President Obama, Prime Minister Trudeau and interim Conservative leader Rona Ambrose are using Snapchat to broadcast events or provide light or informal glimpses into their days.

Beyond this, Snapchat’s filters are its latest feature captivating users. Introduced in late 2015, these ‘lenses’ scan faces and allow them to, among other features, vomit rainbows, swap faces with a friend or age 50 years. These lenses include on-screen prompts like ‘open your mouth’ or ‘raise eyebrows’ to animate the filter. With these lenses updating frequently, often incorporating holidays or events, users have fresh reasons to engage and share.

Having tested these features with my young niece and nephew, I can attest that they will make you a hit with kids as well.

Combined, these fun and personal features have attracted 200 million to Snapchat since the company was founded in 2011. On average, users post 9,000 photos and videos per second. This totals to over ten billion daily views, on par with Facebook’s video platform. And unlike Facebook’s stagnating engagement, Snapchat claims that nearly two thirds of its daily users create content daily. Additionally, Snapchat users are the demographics advertisers most crave. The platform boasts that more than 60 per cent of mobile phone users between the ages of 18 and 34 use Snapchat.

Snapchat’s immersive content and captive audiences enables brands to engage with their fans in new and creative ways. For example, the latest Alice in Wonderland movie has a sponsored lense where fans can make themselves into the Mad Hatter. Other features that bring brands to Snapchat include work with influencers, product announcements, leverage sponsorship rights with events, contests, coupons and special offers. By creating content designed specifically for Snaphat, brands are approaching consumers in a manner that makes traditional print or television ads seem archaic.

However, Snapchat’s advanced features pose significant challenges for advertisers – without captivating creative content, their message will surely be lost to the wider public. Despite this, Snapchat remains a great way to engage your existing core audience because you do not need the infrastructure or resources of Red Bull to reach and grow your base. While not always appropriate, smaller brands can use Snapchat to promote or leverage their existing events and insert themselves into wider pop culture discussions. Potential content could include a stirring testimonial on the importance of the arts, a story detailing the the struggles of a worker locked in a wage dispute, or a Snap of a company’s charitable efforts in action. No matter the budget, brands of all types can measure the consumption of their content through video views and story completions.

The rise of Snapchat showcases the evolving nature of social media and reinforces the need for brands to continually refine their approach. Experimenting with new platforms, content and targeting provides campaigns with the insight they need to optimize their advertising budgets. In the age of cord cutting and smartphone addiction, marketers must understand the tools and techniques to best tell their story.

From passive to active

Even though it is a behemoth today, YouTube started from humble beginnings. Former PayPal employees Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim launched the service from an office above a pizzeria and Japanese restaurant in San Mateo, California. Originally created from a need to easily find video clips of Janet Jackson’s infamous Super Bowl incident, it is now a household name. In May 2005, 15 months after its pizzeria and Japanese restaurant days, the service launched its beta version. By September of that year, YouTube had its first one-million view video: a Nike advertisement featuring Ronaldinho. And today, YouTube is still huge, but it faces some stiff competition for video advertising.

A low-resolution point-and-shoot camera captured footage of soccer star Ronaldinho pulling spectacular stunts with his new Nike cleats. The video clip met the quality standards of the time. As far as we know (although even this became a point of debate on discussion forums), there was no post-production work. In an era where most online video clips were shaky and grainy at best, it was a perfect fit.

But it signalled something much more important: a major international brand was prepared to experiment with an unknown platform that housed sub-par amateur videos, before the platform even officially launched. It wouldn’t take long before other brands followed suit. And since that pivotal moment (though not because of it), YouTube became the Internet’s number one destination for video and has held that spot ever since.

YouTube remains the perfect place if you’re looking for specific video clips. It’s the main reason we use it and why it’s now the second-largest search engine. It’s where consumers go to actively search and watch videos they want to consume at that specific moment, on a specific topic. It’s a user-controlled process that facilitated the shift from passive to active video viewing. Want to see The Daily Show poke fun at Canadian politics? A quick search will return plenty of content to consume, notably this most recent gem:

From active to passive

While YouTube will continue to serve as the Internet’s number one choice for active viewing, the growth and omnipresence of Facebook video has brought passive viewing back from the brink. What’s old is new again. For half a century, we consumed video content in the form of television (and television ads – usually 30 second spots we were forced to watch between segments of Gilligan’s Island or The Golden Girls). With the world spending 20 minutes per day on Facebook, and mostly on mobile devices, it is the platform of choice for marketers and communicators. But, while you can pay to have your video appear in your audience’s newsfeed, you can’t force people to watch it. A swipe of a thumb, and your video is out of sight and out of mind. And that means you need to write and produce your creative specifically for the platform on which it will air.

For example, take a look at that 2005 Nike video clip and ask yourself whether it would have any chance of gaining traction on Facebook in 2016. The first thing you’ll notice is how long it takes to get to the point. We have to watch a Nike rep walk onto the field, present the cleats to Ronadlinho, then watch the star tie up his cleats before he finally takes the soccer ball and get started with his impressive performance. It’s a slow and boring start. It takes FOREVER. It demands a level of patience people no longer have with the newsfeed experience.

From 30 to three seconds

Let’s be honest, after seeing the first three seconds of the video, you’d scroll down the feed in search of your dopamine hit—it is utterly boring in those first three seconds (which is the length of time Facebook uses to count a view). By Facebook’s own account, people spend 1.7 seconds with a piece of content on mobile. Every second matters. In fact, it takes only 0.25 seconds of exposure for people to recall content they saw on their mobile feed. These initial seconds can make a profound impact. When people watch the first three seconds of a Facebook video, 65% watch the next seven seconds, and 45% make it to the 30-second mark. It’s a rude awakening for those of us used to producing 30 second spots to get our message out. In an environment that allocates a whopping 1.7 seconds to make a lasting impression, we must adapt, meet people’s evolving expectations, and stop the thumb. So, how can we stand out in the news feed?

How to make three seconds count on Facebook

1. Storyboard with mobile in mind

Keep the mobile experience in mind from the moment you begin storyboarding and scripting your video. If you don’t have the luxury of starting from scratch, modify your existing or planned creative to connect more effectively with mobile users. It works. Facebook tested this theory with select brands, putting a TV version of the ad against a mobile-optimized version. The latter moved the brand mention 25 seconds earlier and saw a seven-point increase in ad recall; a 68% increase in the number of three-second views; and 136% increase in 10-second views, compared to the original.

2. Capture attention right away

Use brand colours and imagery in the first frame to help people connect to your brand immediately. If you’re selling a product, start your video with a product shot. If you’re selling a political candidate, put your candidate at the start of the video. If appropriate, use action scenes to capture people’s attention from the get-go.

3. Tell a story

Video is an emotive medium. It evokes emotions and connects people with your brand, your product, or your campaign. If you’re going to promote your video on Facebook, you need to keep the (palm-sized) screen in mind and the reason people are on Facebook to begin with: they want to connect with people and consume content about people.

4. Frame for mobile

As much as I prefer a widescreen format to tell a visual story, it just doesn’t work well inside the boxy dimensions of mobile newsfeed frames. If you are framing the story for mobile feeds, you are giving due consideration to dimensions, crops, zoom and visual composition that work best in that box. Tell your story for the super small screen, not the silver screen. Doing so could give you a three-point increase in ad recall and an eight-point increase in message association.

5. Use visual cues and subtitles

Most people listen to Facebook videos with the sound off. They will only turn their sound on if your video captures their attention. If you can’t achieve that through visual composition and brand imagery at the start of the video, consider adding subtitles so users can see what the video is all about without having to turn on the sound. Facebook found that 76% of videos require sound to be understood. Make your video understandable without sound and you’ll be leading the pack.

6. Test and iterate

All the theory in the word will only take you so far. You’ll never fully understand how your audience consumes video until you put video in front of them. So, get to it! Test your concepts, make some tweaks and test some more.