Social First Short-Form Content
When it comes to creating social media content, there is a content formula that applies across all of marketing — it’s called the Three E’s, which are The 3 E’s Educate, Entertain and Engage. But there’s a fourth secret option — Evoke Emotion. Technically that’s five E’s, but who’s counting, right?
Every piece of content should have a purpose tied to one of those pillars. Sometimes it’s educational. Sometimes it’s entertaining. Sometimes it’s designed to create conversation, and sometimes the entire point is to make someone feel something strong enough that they remember your brand later. (I’ll get to a recent and rather unhinged example a little later.)
All that said, the best content is a blend of all the E’s:
A behind-the-scenes video can entertain while also building trust
A tutorial can educate while subtly or overtly selling a product
A founder story can evoke emotion while increasing engagement
A customer reaction video can do all four at once
The formula, again, is to have one of these lead the direction of your content. Use one, use two, use a blend of all 4. It’s up to you and your team’s brand strategy to determine what is best for your brand. As marketing has been redefined over the last decade, we have seen almost a full-scale shift to social short-form content across all social channels. The key to this is making your content not feel like an ad. It seems counterintuitive to not brand your content because “how will my business have brand recall or recognition if my brand isn’t front and center?”
Over the last decade, marketing has fundamentally shifted toward short-form social content across nearly every platform. But the brands still approaching social media like traditional advertising are usually the ones struggling the most with engagement because people don’t want to feel marketed to. They want to be shown something they need, but not by the brand, which is why influencer engagement has grown exponentially.
And it’s not because influencers are magical marketers, but it’s because people would rather hear about a brand from a trusted friend than the brand itself. They truly would rather feel like they discovered a product organically than feel like they were sold something directly through a polished campaign.
Now, that being said, just two days ago I saw a great branded social video that caught my attention — it was the Kacey Lee x Lee Jeans x Walmart campaign. And honestly, I didn’t know what Kacey Musgraves looked like until that video. I saw it, thought it was interesting enough, saw it was with Lee Jeans and Walmart and wondered who Kacey Lee was. It sent me down a rabbit hole. It’s not the music I personally listen to, or my style of clothes, but because the ad was so well executed, I looked at everything and then went to Kacey Musgraves’ socials to learn more about her. I think it’s a success if a brand can get a marketer who hates being marketed to, to stop and dig in. It would be better if I made a purchase, but that’s what IG ads are for. ;) Also, the branding - yeah, it was at the end!
People (consumers) are no longer passively consuming advertising — hence the removal of ads as an option on almost all streaming services. People don’t want to be marketed to, which is why utilizing the Three E’s is vitally important. Just today, I saw an insane ad with 2D sharks dancing around and talking about the current dating climate. In this, the sharks mentioned drinking water out of a Brita — “it’s a filter, baby!”
At first, I thought it was just someone being silly, but there was a second reference to Brita from these sharks and I went straight to the comments where one of the top comments said “I hate when I like brand content'.” This to me is hugely successful with 162k likes and 2.3M views and now I have this insane song about Brita filters in my head. You can watch it here if you want to see this insanity. I digress.
The brands winning right now are the ones creating content people would willingly watch even if there wasn’t a product attached to it. That’s what every brand, founder, and marketer should take into account — attention first, conversions — yeah, that should come last.
Controversial? Maybe. True? Absolutely.
