Archive for 2017
2017: Decimal Agency’s Year In Review
January – March
The year started with a bang. We were on the hunt for new team members, new accounts, and a new space to call home.
We found the new team members – two new community managers, a copywriter, and an account manager. And we landed one of our most important accounts to date: international doughnut brand Krispy Kreme. As for a new home, you’ll have to read on to find out more.
April – June
By the time summer was setting sail for the northern hemisphere, we landed our biggest retainer yet with international shipping and logistics giant Röhlig-Grindrod. In other accounts news, we also secured the account for Lee Cooper jeans and their grand launch in South Africa, which had us all saying 'Ello gov'na!
Our creative highlight for the month of May was definitely the Cocoon 60 launch booklet, created for Antalis. We used various printing techniques such as die cuts and sport varnish to bring the booklet to life.
July – September
Winter was the season of campaigns and though the days were short we burned the midnight oil with new work for Bosch.
For Bosch we created the #CleanLikeaBosch campaign to promote their new dishwasher, which has an impressively low water consumption of 6.5 litres per wash, across almost every media channel available.
October – December
The year ended on a high note. Not only did we move into our brand new, and much bigger, office space, we also landed some new accounts.
One of our most exciting new accounts to date is Toughees – the most iconic South African school shoe. Our team accomplished a huge feat recording a brand new television commercial for them, even though the weather wasn’t playing ball the day of the shoot.
Amid the move and shooting the TVC, we also landed our most stylish account: Tommy Hilfiger.
The Future
2017 has been a year of wins for Decimal Agency. We can’t wait to see what new heights we attain in 2018.
Twitter doubles tweet length
In the biggest change ever to the social network, Twitter started testing a 280 character maximum length for tweets last week; that’s twice as many as before (in case you didn’t know). At this stage, the test has been described as “open ended” and only open to a small group of users, which may explain why you haven’t seen the change on your own Twitter yet.
The change will be available for all languages with the exception of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean as characters in these languages can communicate twice as much or more information as a single character in other languages.
Twitter Needs New Users
As we know from previous years statistics, Japan has the fourth highest number of Twitter users globally. We also know from previous statistics that user uptake in the USA has mostly stagnated over the past few months. Which leads us to believe that this change may be an attempt to attract more English-speaking users who may have been frustrated by the 140 character limit.
Earlier in the year it was reported that Twitter had made some other changes to their character limit – namely by excluding usernames, photos, videos, GIFs, polls and quoted Tweets from the character limit. But it seems that these changes weren’t enough to make Twitter seem enticing to new users, or to attract old users back to the platform.
The 140 Character Limit Explained
The 140 character limit on tweets is explained by a memorandum to employees from co-founder Jack Dorsey, published in the 2007 book ‘Hatching Twitter’. The note stated “Everyone gets the same amount of space to Twitter, no more confusion or guessing as you are typing”.
However, Twitter users have managed to find loopholes in the character limit since day one. Users are often seen posting images with text or screenshots from their phone’s memo pad, and stringing together multiple tweets in a thread.
Time will only tell what this change to tweet length will spell for the social media platform. Will it spell the second wave of Twitter’s success, or will it alienate their core of loyal users? Only time will tell.
Is Point Of View Advertising The Future?
Advertising today is a far-cry from the 50s when misogyny ran as rampant in real life as it does in an episode of Mad Men. Today, brands need to be increasingly socially aware in order to not offend audiences, while still creating effective ads that sell product. But how is this achieved?
Point Of View Advertising
Point of view advertising is the answer. Ads with a point of view convey a brand’s feelings and attitudes towards a subject and show how their values correlate to that of their audience. Ads that convey a brand’s values relatably are proving to be more effective. Your point of view is the difference between people talking about your brand and forgetting it.
64% of consumers with an existing brand relationship say that they shared values with the brand, which was the reason they engaged with the brand. At the same time, 87% of Millennials say they appreciate it when companies make it clear what values they stand for, and 81 percent say companies that invest in their communities deserve loyalty. This could be due to the fact that Millennials highly value being true to themselves and expect others to have the same quality. Another important trait of Millennials is that they have the ability to see through hype and expect honesty and integrity in communication.
Shareability
Point of view ads are perfect for the digital sphere due to the fact that people are very willing to share who they are and what they care about.
Creating an emotional response with your audience is the most important box that any ad should tick. The fact is, we buy things based on how they make us feel, or how others will perceive us once we’ve bought that thing. They are an extension of our identities; we buy and share in order to show the rest of the world who we are and what we care about.
How Point Of View Advertising is Achieved
Well the first step is to define your point of view. If you already have a set of company values drawn up, you can use those. If you don’t have defined values, it’s time to start writing.
Make sure that your company values are relevant and true for you. You will need to back them up and live them every day in your business. For example, if gender equality is one of your values, merely adding some pink to your ad isn’t enough. It would be more effective to produce an ad that shows how your product supports empowerment of women.
Having a point of view and expressing it places you in a vulnerable position. Not everybody will like it, some will say you went to far, others will say you feel short, and it may start some heated debate. Have the courage to spark a public debate, great brands polarise people and the more talk about your ad, the more exposure for your brand.
A Word Of Warning From Pepsi
By now most of us are familiar with the Pepsi ad featuring Kendall Jenner. The ad featured young people of several ethnicities involved in a protest. This was likely to show Pepsi’s support of the current youth protest movement in America under the Trump administration, as well as send a message about racial equality. These are great values for a brand to have, and would have got them a fair amount of support if everything weren’t ruined by the appearance of a privileged member of the Kardashian clan. As the inexorable march of youth meets a line of police, Kendall Jenner breaks forward and offers one of the officers a Pepsi, which he accepts, followed by much cheering and hugging in the crowd. Though Pepsi was attempting to send a message of unity, peace, and understanding but were criticised for appearing to belittle social justice causes.
The warning here is to stay true to your values when creating a point of view advertisement. If you’re just jumping on a hot topic, your audience will read the insincerity.
3 Simple Tips To Get The Best From Google Analytics
People don’t arrive at a site, navigate to the right page and complete a goal. Usually they come back a few times before completing that goal.
Google Analytics is an extremely powerful tool that every site owner should be using. We use Analytics on all out websites because it gives meaningful insights such as how many people are viewing your site, how long they stay on pages, where the traffic is coming from and where users are exiting your site. This information can give us perspective on what’s performing well and what needs attention.
It’s quite easy to get basic information from Analytics such as page views, session time, and traffic source, but the software does so much more than just give fast figures. Used properly, Google Analytics is the only tool you need to streamline your website and online marketing efforts.
1 - Browser Report
Quite frankly, you’d be surprised at how many people out there are using outdated technology. It’s all well and good to build a beautiful website with parralax display and video content, but what if users can’t access this content because they’re still running Internet Explorer version 8.
To find out what technology your visitors are utilising, go to Audience, select Technology from the submenu, and click on Broswer & OS. This will show you what browser people are using to view your site. Ensure that your site is compatible with all the browsers listed so that all uses can view your site correctly.
2 - Mobile Performance
Mobile is the future of the internet, according to Google. The search engine has even started ranking mobile friendly sites higher than those that don’t perform well on mobile.
To get more insights on what devices people are using to access your site go to Audience and select Mobile.
Mobile Overview will give you information regarding conversion rates on mobile vs web, and Devices will tell you what handsets visitors use to access your site.
If you notice that your conversion rate on mobile is much lower than on desktop it may be time to take a look how your site responds to various mobile screen sizes and optimise.
3 - Annotations
Annotations are there to help you with good housekeeping within Analytics. Any time you change something on your website you should add an annotation so that you can link that change with a rise or fall in your Analytics reporting graph.
To add annotations, go to your Analytics reporting graph and click the dropdown arrow immediately below the graph. Here you will see previous annotations, click Create New Annotation to add new ones. Annotations can be set as public or private so they can either be viewed by anybody with access to that Analytics profile, or only by you.
Analytics can be a daunting tool to use if you don’t know the basics, but once you have an understanding of how to use it the information that you can glean is hugely important to optimising your site for better conversions.
Catching Up With Marketing Predictions For 2017
In the period between December 2016 and January 2017 we saw a barrage of articles posted online declaring “The 5 Digital Trends That Will Die in 2017” or “This Is What Advertising Will Look Like In 2017”. Now that we’re halfway through 2017, we thought it would be a good time to go back and review those predictions and see how many were accurate.
1 - Influencers Will Continue To Be Kings
Influencers have become essential to marketing campaigns over the past few years, and in 2017 they’re more important than ever. Getting an influencer to promote your brand or product is nothing new. Brands have been creating relationships with celebrities and sports stars for years, or sending their products to popular bloggers for a boost.
Influencer marketing is a little different. It involves identifying a person on social media that may not necessarily be a celebrity, but who is seen as an authority in their community and has a great personality. These people have become one of the most effective ways to reach customers.
What makes influencer marketing so attractive is that it gives brands the opportunity to create word-of-mouth buzz about their products. When used effectively, influencers create natural ways to entice your target audience, which is honestly almost priceless in marketing.
2 - Pop-up Ads Will Stop Annoying Website Users
In August 2016 Google declared that it would start penalising websites that feature large pop-up ads that obscure content by boosting the rankings of sites that don’t feature them.
But these pop-ups and interstitials seem to be as abundant as ever, and the copy on them seems to have become more pushy. Even top ranking sites like Wired.com still bombard users with large pop-ups.
Google started penalising only mobile sites in January this year, but there’s no word on when it will start affecting desktop versions of websites. There’s not much data yet on how many sites this has affected, if any. We’ll just have to wait for the reports.
3 - Live Video Content
Live content has become the internet’s new favourite, but is it a fad or is it here to stay? The ability to watch something happen live is appealing, whether it’s your favourite celebrity going about their mundane lives, or footage from protests. It’s the type of immediate content users have been waiting for.
Live video is now available through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. And people are utilising this technology more every day. At the moment the content seems to be mainly personal, with users sharing their own experiences in creative ways. As the technology becomes more common we hope to see more brands use it to reach consumers in creative ways.
You can never really tell what the future holds, especially when it comes to marketing, and even more so in the realm of digital marketing. We’ll keep our eyes out for new trends as the year progresses.
Chatbots - The Future of CRM
What a time to be alive. Every day we look around and see ever-improving technology that would have been thought only possible in science fiction a mere few decades ago. The promises of virtual reality and artificial intelligence are finally coming to fruition, and who knows what’s next; actual walking, talking robots or flying cars perhaps. Okay, I’ll reign in my inner sci-fi nerd now.
The latest advance in AI technology are smart chatbots that can help out customers with simple questions and tasks, thus possibly alleviating the need for large customer care centres in the near future.
Back in April 2016, Facebook released an open version if its Messenger app and invited developers to artificial intelligence chatbots that would interact with Facebook users. In these early days of chatbots, it was predicted that we would no longer need to make phone calls or write emails to companies in order to get essential information. We haven’t quite got there yet, but there are more and more chatbots appearing, ready to (at least attempt to) help consumers who need answers fast. Though the advancement of this new technology will no doubt be fraught with errors (and the inevitable memes that come with them), they do have the potential to be very useful.
Quick Communication
Looking for important info about a company’s offering? Usually you would need to scour their site and social pages in order to find the answer yourself, or if you can’t find the answer you would need to submit a support ticket and wait the 24-48 hours for them to get back to you, even worse - you may have to make a lengthy call to a customer service centre. Chatbots can easily disseminate simple information immediately, creating a quicker, positive experience with your brand.
They Will Only Get Better Over Time
As with all other technology-based innovations, as the technology improves, so the experience becomes better and costs are reduced. The more opportunities a bot has to chat with real people the more it will learn how about the nuances of language and give useful advice.
E-Commerce With Ease
Chatbots can help consumers make orders online. If you have a rough idea of what you want to buy, instead of browsing through pages and pages of products, you can ask a chatbot to show you all the products that match your criteria (such as colour, style and brand) as well as suggest related items. Retailer H&M’s chatbot helps you choose outfits by suggesting complementary garments and accessories, which adds to a better retail customer experience.
Poncho: A Popular Chatbot
One of the most popular chatbots today is Poncho, the weather cat. He’s available to chat on Facebook messenger at facebook.com/hiponcho/ and provides weather data including current conditions, 5 day forecasts, and specialised forecasts for runners. Though you can get weather details with one tap on your phone, Poncho adds a personal touch with his character and fun GIFs.
Chatbots are still in their infancy, but we’re looking forward to finding out what the future holds with this advance in AI technology. As we use chatbots more, they will learn more and be better equipped to give correct and relevant answers to our needs.
Practical Tips For Perfect Presentations
As marketers we spend a lot of time presenting our creative ideas in meetings. A great presentation can clinch that big new client, but a bad one can send them running a mile. Structuring your creative ideas into a presentation can be a daunting task, but using a few simple tricks you can create robust presentations that get the client excited about what you have to offer.
Use Less Words
It’s a presentation, so you need to present! It may seem like a basic tip, but so many people get this wrong. There’s more to a presentation than just your slideshow; you also need to speak and convey your ideas in a persuasive manner.
Presentations often get bogged down by large amounts of text, and when the speaker is simply regurgitating the content on the screen behind them, the audience tends to lose interest. If you’re going to say exactly what’s on the screen, you may as well hand out a typed document to your audience. Rather, place key phrases on the presentation slides and show your knowledge by presenting the ideas around them. Let the information breathe and let your audience listen to you.
Be Graphic
This one goes hand-in-hand with the point above and goes to show that effective presentations have fewer words on them. Use images, graphs, charts, maps, and video to get your point across. Your ability to explain the meaning behind these visual aids will give your audience the sense that you are an authority on the subject.
Avoid Templates
While PowerPoint templates may have helped you out when you needed to complete that project at the last minute in high school, using an obvious template in a professional setting will actually make you look like a high school student.
Templates are boring, they’ve been seen a thousand times before, and they just aren’t inspiring. Give your presentations a professional flare by adding custom design. If you’re not a designer, then outsource the work - just make it different. Try out alternative presentation software too: PowerPoint is not the be-all and end-all.
Make Every Slide An Event
Every single one of your slides should have a big impact. There should be no throwaway slides, no slides you intend on skipping over quickly, and nothing boring in your presentation. Treat each slide like an ad. Consider:
Is the headline eye-catching?
Does it have impact?
Does it make the audience want to find out more?
Speak With Your Body Language
While your slides are important, your body language when you present is vital. Even if you use all the tips above to make your presentation exciting, simply standing in front of the screen and talking will still be boring. You’re a presenter, not a tree; so don’t grow roots and stay in place. Use the space around you to move, gesture with your hands and use facial expressions to animate your speech. This ensures that the audience’s eyes are always drawn back to you and therefore they will listen to what you have to say.
Mobilegeddon
Google Prefers Mobile Friendly Sites
Smartphones are becoming more ubiquitous in South Africa and across the African continent. Obviously, the major benefit of having a smartphone is the gateway that it provides to access the internet. Due to the prohibitive price of laptops and desktop computers, and the dropping price of smartphones, mobile has become the Internet access method of choice for many South Africans. According to We Are Social’s yearly report on internet usage statistics, mobile accounts for at least 78% of internet usage in the country.
With so many people using mobile devices to access the internet, it only makes sense to ensure that your website is mobile friendly. If your site isn’t responsive on mobile, you could be shutting 78% of your visitors out.
Mobile Friendly - What Does It Mean?
Mobile versions of sites can come in 3 categories: responsive, adaptive, or separate.
Responsive design responds to the user’s screen size and scales the website accordingly. This is achieved using portion-based grids (that are assigned a percentage rather than a pixel width) and varying CSS style rules. The same URL structure and HTML are maintained on desktops, tablets, and mobile.
Adaptive design is sometimes referred to as dynamic serving. This method detects the user’s device and generates a different version of the site HTML to suit that device. URL structure remains the same, however there are multiple versions of the site based on device.
Separate mobile sites are easily identified by their top level domain; rather than seeing a “www.” at the beginning of the URL, you will see an “m.”. This method will show users different HTML on separate URLs according to their device.
Which is the best for SEO?
You may be familiar with what is now referred to as “mobilegeddon”. This was a name given by webmasters and SEOs to Google’s algorithm update from April 21 2015. The update gave preference to mobile friendly sites for searches made from mobile devices. Desktop searches were not affected. This was done by Google to improve user experience, as desktop versions of websites are not easy to navigate on smaller screens.
Google has explicitly stated on their Developers website that their preference is responsively designed websites. This is most likely due to the fact that the site HTML remains the same with this method, and URLs do not change, so link sharing is easy.
Is your site mobile responsive? If not, it’s time to sort that out.
Is Facebook Using Emotional Data To Target Ads?
Facebook has denied the allegations, but let’s delve a little deeper into the issue at hand.
Back in 2014 Facebook came under some serious fire for what is now known as their emotional manipulation study. The study was conducted by Facebook without notifying or obtaining consent from users and aimed to find out if a user’s emotional state could be manipulated according to what content they saw in their timeline. People were understandably quite annoyed by this due to the fact that they were not informed and that the research was then published in a paper titled “Experimental Evidence Of Massive-Scale Emotional Contagion Through Social Networks”.
The experiment aimed to confirm whether emotional contagion can in fact be passed from person to person, even if there is no physical contact involved (ie, over the internet). And to determine whether when people were shown more negative posts, they produced fewer ‘happy’ posts, and when shown more ‘happy’ posts, they produced fewer negative posts.
Now the social network is back in the line of fire over allegations that they claimed they could detect when teen users as young as 14 were feeling emotionally vulnerable, particularly the emotions of “stressed”, “defeated”, “overwhelmed”, “anxious”, “nervous”, “stupid”, “silly”, “useless”, and a “failure”. This came to light after a presentation intended for advertisers was leaked.
The issue was originally reported on by the news network The Australian at the beginning of May, and Facebook has denied the allegations on all fronts. A Facebook spokesperson described The Australian’s report as misleading and denied that Facebook has any tools for advertisers to target users based on their emotional state.
But How Could Facebook Know What I’m Feeling?
One method that came to light in 2014 was analysis of the words in post content. Each word in your posts could have an emotional score attached to them, allowing the social network to determine your emotional state.
The other method that they could possibly use is information gathered from the reaction icons available on all posts. With these reaction buttons we are actually telling Facebook exactly how we feel about a post, which gives them more data on our personalities.
So What Do We Believe?
It’s hard to say which side of the story we should trust. On the one hand Facebook has been known to engage in this type of manipulative research before, but on the other hand it could all be a case of wrong accusations. At the same time, Facebook has not denied that they collected data along these lines, but rather that the data, which it claims is anonymous, was never used to target ads.
After the initial denial, Facebook did apologise and said studying users’ emotions broke internal rules on how it conducts research, promising an investigation into the matter.
The jury is still out on this one. Stay tuned for any further developments and updates.
Burger King’s Voice Control Ad: Clever or Conniving?
Advances in technology have created new opportunities in advertising. With advances in augmented and virtual reality or highly targeted digital ads, the possibilities for coming up with creative ads has grown exponentially.
Last week in their home territory of the USA, Burger King launched their latest (and most short-lived) ad campaign. With just 7 simple words, Burger King has divided the advertising community. The ad features a Burger King employee saying “OK, Google: what is the Whopper burger?” which in turn activated the voice-control feature on phones running the Android OS and caused phones to read aloud the first line from the Wikipedia page for the burger.
Was it advantageous or annoying?
This is one of the questions that has divided the advertising community. On the one hand I would commend Burger King for taking advantage of a simple piece of technology that’s widely available in an unexpected way. On the other hand I would condemn the company for breaching my privacy and taking control of my phone.
Could it be considered unethical?
Google voice search is a pretty nifty piece of technology. It’s just one component of Google’s growing collection of voice control features and devices, which includes Google Home - a home assistant that can provide information, handle your schedule, or do things like change songs on your music playlist. Ironically, the ads for Google Home caused some user’s devices to activate.
One user commented online that the ad was tantamount to hacking as it took control of their personal device in order to convey a marketing message.
Wikipedia was also not pleased with Burger King and demanded a formal apology. Wikipedia is famously ad-free, so it’s understandable that they would be unhappy that their platform was used for the purposes of advertising.
And, as we all know, Wikipedia can be edited by anybody. However, Burger King didn’t anticipate this. Though the ad only lasted about 3 hours before Google shut it down and disavowed the phrase from activating its software, users were quick to jump on Wikipedia and start adding their own ingredients to the Whopper page. Some of these included “rat”, “toenail clippings” and “causes cancer”. These have now also been removed.
Burger King’s campaign was short-lived, but it definitely had an impact. Whether it was clever or conniving - the jury is still out.
5 Things That Ruin Billboards
That being said, there is definitely a right way and a wrong way to make billboard ads. A good billboard will be easy to understand, memorable, and encapsulates your brand with one punchy message. And you need to make sure it’s noticeable to drivers passing by at speed.
1 - Colours need to contrast
While white text on a yellow background may look great on print, it doesn’t really look great at speed when you’re zipping by the billboard on the highway.
You need to ensure that the text and the background contrast so that your message doesn’t get lost in the noise. This goes especially for billboards with text on top of a background image. For example, white text on a floral background will be entirely illegible at a glance.
Rather opt for a high contrast colour scheme so that your message will stand out.
2 - Font needs to be readable
While that fancy script font may perfectly encapsulate your brand, it’s probably not the best to use on a billboard.
Stick to plain, simple and bold fonts for your billboards. A cursive script can be difficult to read at a glance, and if your ad can’t be read at a glance it’s a wasted ad.
3 - Please proofread
Spelling errors can totally be avoided. Proofreading may seem like a tedious process, but it definitely pays off in the end. One proofreader is never enough. Get at least three people to check all copy before it goes to print.
You will look unprofessional if you forget to correct your text. The internet is full of posts about hilariously misspelled billboards; don’t become a laughing stock.
4 - Make your message clear and on-brand
Is your billboard too high level? A clever message is essential to creating an effective billboard, but it also needs to be easy to understand. People will remember a clever message, but if they don’t understand it immediately, there’s not much of a point.
Also take care that your message is aligned with your brand. In order to ensure this, you can create a short list of brand values and then compare all your copy against those values.
5 - Bad images
Billboards come in a range of sizes and shapes, so it’s imperative that your designer is aware of the dimensions and orientation of the billboard so that the images fit.
Try to avoid busy images with loads of detail - just like your text, the image should be simple, to the point, and stir up an emotional response. Because getting an emotional response from an image is so important, it’s best to take your own photos or create your own illustrations - that way your billboard will be unique and memorable.
Social Media Insights By Generation
Sprout Social is a company that monitors trends on social media. Every quarter they release a report called the Sprout Social Index that includes analytical information on how we use social media. For the first quarter of 2017 their report focused on how the different generations use various social media platforms.
Gathering information on how people of different age groups use social media can give marketers insight on how to communicate to these audiences to meet their specific expectations. Sprout Social interviewed 1,000 Millennials (ages 18-34), Gen Xers (ages 34-54) and Baby Boomers (ages 55+).
Facebook came out on top in this survey, obviously. It was identified as the favourite social media platform by Millennials, Gen-Xers, and Baby Boomers - proving that every generation is the Facebook Generation. But this isn’t surprising - everybody is on Facebook, from your younger cousin, to your older sibling, your parents, and even your gran.
Sprout even included a subset for younger Millennials aged 18-24 who have a stronger preference for Instagram with 25% of respondents naming it their favourite. Baby Boomers don’t seem to like spending time on Snapchat or Instagram, but this is hardly surprising. The content posted on these platforms is image based and disposable, and judging by the fact that Google+ is the second most popular with this generation, Baby Boomers want lengthier content that they can sink their teeth into. That being said, only 14% of Boomers interact with the content that brands post on social media, making them largely silent observers.
While Millennials are more interested in the entertainment value of brand posts, Gen-Xers are more interested in promotions and competitions. Doing a bit of research into your followers will give you more insight on the type of content that you should be posting.
Gathering information on how people of different age groups use social media can give marketers insight on how to communicate to these audiences to meet their specific expectations. Sprout Social interviewed 1,000 Millennials (ages 18-34), Gen Xers (ages 34-54) and Baby Boomers (ages 55+).
Facebook Comes Out On Top
Ever since it was founded in 2004, Facebook has been the juggernaut of social media platforms - the one we keep going back to when Twitter becomes an information overload or when our Instagram feeds get boring. They’ve achieved this by continually improving user experience on the site and diversifying their offering by buying up other companies.
Let’s Compare
What is interesting is that a lower percentage of Millennials listed Facebook as their go-to social media network of choice, while Gen-Xers and Baby Boomers’ preference for Facebook was much more pronounced. Rather, Millennials spread their social preference between Facebook (33%), Instagram (22.2%) and Snapchat (15.8%).Sprout even included a subset for younger Millennials aged 18-24 who have a stronger preference for Instagram with 25% of respondents naming it their favourite. Baby Boomers don’t seem to like spending time on Snapchat or Instagram, but this is hardly surprising. The content posted on these platforms is image based and disposable, and judging by the fact that Google+ is the second most popular with this generation, Baby Boomers want lengthier content that they can sink their teeth into. That being said, only 14% of Boomers interact with the content that brands post on social media, making them largely silent observers.
Getting Those Follows
We can get better insights when we start analysing user engagement on these platforms. Sprout’s survey found that both Millennials and Gen-Xers are twice as likely to follow a brand on social media than Baby Boomers are. Sprout also found that more than half of the respondents (58.9% of Millennials, 50.4% of Gen-Xers, and 55% of Baby Boomers) will follow a brand on social media before buying from them. Managing your social presence gets tricky when it comes to serving content that your followers will be interested in.While Millennials are more interested in the entertainment value of brand posts, Gen-Xers are more interested in promotions and competitions. Doing a bit of research into your followers will give you more insight on the type of content that you should be posting.
What Makes Them Unfollow
With each generation showing interest in different content, it only makes sense that they would unfollow for different reasons. Surprisingly (because you would have expected this statistic to apply to “Social Justice Warrior” generation Millennials,) Gen-Xers are the most likely generation to unfollow a brand because it posted something offensive or that was in opposition to their personal beliefs. For Millennials, they unfollow brands for two main reasons: bad experience (21% of respondents) or because they found the posts annoying (22%). 29% of Baby Boomers listed spam as the main reason to unfollow.
