By Andrew Yeo
Back in January 1996, Bill Gates wrote an interesting and thought-provoking article, Content is King. He declared, “If people are to be expected to put up with turning on a computer to read a screen, they must be rewarded with deep and extremely up-to-date information that they can explore at will.
“They need to have audio, and possibly video. They need an opportunity for personal involvement that goes far beyond that offered through the letters-to-the-editor pages of print magazines.
“A question on many minds is how often the same company that serves an interest group in print will succeed in serving it online.
“Even the very future of certain printed magazines is called into question by the Internet.”
Gates predicted, “Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet, just as it was in broadcasting.
“The television revolution that began half a century ago spawned a number of industries, including the manufacturing of TV sets, but the long-term winners are those who used the medium to deliver information and entertainment.
“When it comes to an interactive network such as the Internet, the definition of “content” becomes very wide. For example, computer software is a form of content — an extremely important one, and the one that for Microsoft will remain by far the most important.
“But the broad opportunities for most companies involve supplying information or entertainment. No company is too small to participate.”
His words ring true to this day, more so as the convergence of technologies has spawned many media platforms on the Internet.
For APB+ (Asia-Pacific Broadcasting) that started as a print media in 1983 and went digital in 2019, the Internet allowed us to distribute news and thought-leadership articles worldwide at marginal cost.
However, some of our subscribers who kept track of changing trends and technologies impacting the broadcast industry over the last three decades found reading APB’s news, views and interviews in digital format tiring … and some still yen for print.
Thus, APB+ has decided to keep its weekly articles short. Every Thursday morning, it publishes just one long topical thought-provoking article and six short newsbytes. White papers, trending reports and other long articles can be found on www.apb-news.com.
While we changed to cater to the new reading habits of our readers, we found going Digital is not enough …we need to go Social.
On top of providing our weekly News You Can Use newsbytes, we are now leveraging social media, especially LinkedIn, to provide our readers and advertisers extra channels of engagement. We like to jointly develop interactive business news with you.
We have now a social media marketing guru, Ms Jo-Ann Siregar, to help nurture our new initiative. Some of you may have met her last month at IBC in Amsterdam. She will assist APB+ to plug the missing link as she has helped many companies to go viral with their carefully crafted content on LinkedIn.
Gates advised that “to be successful online, a magazine can’t just take what it has in print and move it to the electronic realm as there isn’t enough depth or interactivity in print content to overcome the drawbacks of the online medium”; therefore, APB+ with the marketing savvy of Siregar plans to harness social media marketing techniques to enable our advertisers to get extra reach quick.
It must be noted that social media marketing, on a strategic level, will have to include the proper management of a marketing campaign, social norms, and carefully crafted content to reflect a firm's desired social media ‘culture’ and ‘tone’.
Indeed, social media can influence client’s purchase decisions through reviews, marketing tactics and advertising. Essentially, social media vastly impacts our ability to communicate, form trade relationships, access and spread information as well as to strengthen a company’s brand equity.
With the advances in social media, virtually anyone can now deem himself or herself a “journalist” and produce news that he or she feels is accurate and credible. But there are some very bad actors and scammers out there, dispensing misleading and fake news.
Social media tools have become the new must-have tools in the marketing world. Digital and internet marketing are rising and those with no presence on social media will slowly become extinct like the Dodo.
Indeed, the future of the marketing world will be shaped by social media. It’s not a question whether your business should be leveraging social, it’s a matter of how, when and where.
Social media, as you know, is ubiquitous; today, about 4.5 billion people worldwide are hooked on social media, up from 3.8 billion in 2020; it is still growing.
And according to a HubSpot survey, about 75% of B2B buyers and 84% of C-Suite executives are using social media in their buying process.
This being the case, which social media platforms do you plan to utilise — Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok or Facebook?
They are all mainly consumer-oriented sites, but more and more B2Bs are paying attention to them.
Should LinkedIn be ignored?
No, LinkedIn is the de facto networking platform for professionals and it attracts 800 million users a month.
According to Statista, Facebook was the top global social media app in 2021.
Average monthly users in 2021:
- Facebook – 2.89 billion
- YouTube – 2.29 billion
- Instagram – 1.39 billion
- TikTok – 1 billion
- LinkedIn – 800 million
- Twitter – 463 million
Numbers aside, how does one bring content to life on B2B social media platforms?
The biggest challenge is said to be creating content that engages users. Without it, one will never have a strong social media presence.
Companies need to develop persona-focused content that resonates and drives intended value — and suits the platform.
One must remember that certain kinds of content will do great on one platform and a dud on another. One cannot just use the same content, the same way, across every platform.
To avoid common missteps when embarking on B2B social media marketing campaigns — and to extend your ads in APB+ NewsBytes and/or its website, we are here to help you develop content that will resonate with your target audience in LinkedIn and/or other platforms.
Just get Social and contact zikun.qing@editecintl.com