A Quick Guide To Online Brand Content

Trying to quantify how a brand should socially communicate online is a bit silly; much like any communication, it should be what feels natural. But even though it’s difficult to quantify doesn’t mean that having general guidelines isn’t helpful.

The folks at Social@Oglivy have a nice SlideShare on content and multi-screen storytelling. They break down the content conversation mix into three buckets. Basically, 25% of content should be Feature (strictly related to product features), another 25% should be Brand (related but not directly product focused), and the remaining 50% should be Topical (related to the business in some fashion but not a brand/product message).

Sounds like a fair enough guide.

But then how do we see all of that content as consumers? Neil Perkin put that into three pillars last week:

“1. Algorithmic:- we see stuff because a software, or a technological process interprets, anticipates, or predicts our needs. Examples of this include Google’s personalised search, Amazon’s recommendation engine, LastFM’s scrobbling, Facebook Edgerank, aggregator apps such as Zite, Flipboard and Currents.

2. Professional:- we see stuff because skilled editors and commisioners use their insight and knowledge of audiences to determine what might interest them – magazine, newspaper and website editors, radio DJs and so on

3. Social:- we see stuff because we, our friends, or a wider audience think it’s good and/or relevant. Examples of this have been around for a long-time (links shared via social networks, social bookmarking tagging and voting, Twitter lists, most-shared etc) but this is word of mouth writ large and digital.”

For organizations, algorithmic would be the data that brands have which allow them to perfect CRM efforts with things that are relevant for each customer. For professional this is the editor of a brand’s social channels and the better they know the audience the more lively the channel becomes. For social, this is the full community and the interesting things the brand is doing that’s worthy of spreading.