Social media can be real crap shoot for brands and business. What content will resonate most with your audience? Which platforms will work best for your brands? All those questions will likely lead you to one solution: trial and error. Experimenting. Testing.

Along the way, you’re bound to make some mistakes, and that’s okay. Even certified leaders in the marketing world have their hits and misses. Below we have a few from HubSpot.

They documented 5 things they learned from their past year of experimentation (which primarily focuses on Facebook). If you want to shift your own social media strategy, we suggest taking a look at these to avoid any setbacks.

1. The most important factor on Facebook is still your audience. Facebook is a discovery model platform. Its primary goal is to make the audience happy. So you’ll only get ROI if you create quality content for your audience.

2. Live or die by the first three seconds. Focus on telling your entire story in three seconds, and then retelling it with more detail throughout the rest of the video. “The better we became at optimizing the first three seconds, the more our average watch time increased.”

3. People just want to be seen and included. Naturally, people are vocal in communities they find relatable. They want to feel included and seen in content that relates to them.

4. Topical is key. Facebook and its viewers want to see content that is most relevant in that time and place. Make sure you understand that news, cultural events, and holidays can have an impact on whether or not your video performs well. When evaluating your video’s performance, keep this in mind.

5. Native is better than non-native. Facebook as a platform, and its audience clearly favors native video content. A native video from HubSpot was viewed almost 160x more than the non-native link.

The biggest lesson here? Dig deeeeeep to understand your audience. Where they live, which cultural events do they follow, which content format they prefer, etc. Check out more insights below.

Content marketing is dead! Just kidding. That’s not true at all. But it is becoming more difficult and more ineffective by the day. The reason? Many marketers out there are still following the same playbook from 5 years ago, but things have changed.

Like what?

Aside from the fact that every company ever is publishing content, there’s also the fact that two companies run the internet now. Look at the most popular websites/apps right now. The top 8 are owned by Google or Facebook. Those two want users to stay on their websites, and not go to yours. They actively take steps to keep users from visiting your website.

Don’t believe us? Just look at Facebook’s new algo and Google’s increased use of featured snippets.

So what can you do?

• Diversify. Content isn’t just blogging! It’s videos, podcasts, data reports, free tools, etc. It’s all of those, but that doesn’t mean you need all of those. Find what your audience likes and use that.
• Get over “owning” all your content. Remember when we said, “find what your audience likes and use that”? Live by that rule. If your audience likes LinkedIn, play by LinkedIn’s rules. Create posts that keep your audience on LinkedIn. They can still grow to love you, even if they don’t visit your website all the time.
• Re-calibrate your strategy between compounding, recurring, and experimental content channels. Compounding content is something like organic search, recurring is social media, and experimental is…well…experimental. Focus more on that recurring and experimental than you have in the past.
• Use content to go deep instead of wide. Forget trying to be Hubspot and controlling everything related to one industry. Instead, create the most in-depth about whatever you do.
• Look to the past. Print ads, billboards, direct mail are all seeing a resurgence. Maybe it’s time to revisit those.

There’s still a TON to read in this article…

The director of Her is bringing life to another virtual assistant, the Apple HomePod. Directed by Spike Jonze and starring FKA twigs, the short film explores freedom through movement—with mesmerizing results.

Like his infamous 2016 Kenzo ad before it, this spot is brimming with contagious energy and a captivating soundtrack. But FKA twigs doesn’t start out so vibrant.

It isn’t until she gets home, after trudging home through dreary metropolitan streets, that she finds relief. “Hey, Siri, play me something I like.” And thus begins the star’s dance around her apartment. The music and movement begin to open up walls and lift her spirit.

Funny what a little fun can do to your funk.