All posts in “content strategy”

Adding animated GIFs to your content toolbox

May 4, 2012 / Comments Off on Adding animated GIFs to your content toolbox / Posted in: Blog

Brandon Oliver Smith is Research and Insights Analyst at Social Media Group.

Last July, I reviewed a new iOS app called Loopcam. Loopcam made it easy for users to capture GIF images and publish them to a variety of social networks including Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr. Since then, the animated image space has seemingly exploded with a handful of new apps like GifBoom and Gifture, format spin-offs called Cinemagrams and a couple kick-butt examples of how the animated GIF format can be a valuable addition to a brand’s content toolbox.

Opening Ceremony - Pixel Geometry

Opening Ceremony – Pixel Geometry

Not surprisingly, fashion brands have been some of the first to adopt the alternative image format. Movement within images allow shoppers to get a more realistic sense of how wearable items are. Traditionally, this sense of realism is communicated using video which while becoming increasingly commonplace, still suffers from some accessibility, portability and sharability challenges.

Burberry - London Fashion Week 2012

Burberry – London Fashion Week 2012

The small footprint of the GIF format allows it to circumvent some of the challenges encountered with video. GIF files are typically small in size and like standard images, theyß can be saved to the desktop with a simple right click save as.

The popularity of GIF blogs have already shown a strong demand for the cheeky format on sites like Tumblr. Taking the audience demographics of Tumblr into consideration, it only makes sense that brands should showcase products using a content format that’s already popular with the target audience.

General Electric Innovation

General Electric Innovation

Animated GIFs are also proving to be valuable content assets for industries far removed from the fashion world. The iconic General Electric recently showed off the epic scale of their manufacturing and design process with GIFs, doing so also cast a light on the company’s ingenuity and dedication to push the boundaries of technology.

The 25-year-old image format is now in the midst of a renaissance. Its endearing qualities are catching the eye of a totally new generation of web user and exploration of it’s applications as a branded content asset are just beginning.


Social Media Roundup for March 11, 2011

March 12, 2011 / Comments Off on Social Media Roundup for March 11, 2011 / Posted in: Blog, Social Media Roundup

Today, our thoughts are with the people in Japan. We expresses sympathies and condolences to those who have been devastated by the earthquake and tsunami.


Earthquake rocks Japan – photos on CNN.


Here are some things that caught our attention from around the ‘net this week:

Updates for apps we love

From SMG analyst Brandon comes news that a few popular apps were updated this week. All of which included major social/sharing related features and improvements.

  1. Flipboard now supports Instagram: http://wp.me/pZtZH-Z0
  2. Linkedin launches LinkedinToday and updates iOS app to include functionality: http://www.linkedin.com/today/
  3. Instapaper updates to 3.0 includes native article sharing to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinboard and a whole whack of other social features: http://blog.instapaper.com/

Music aficionado Brandon adds, “Oh and SoundCloud’s “local focus” was Toronto yesterday.”

Paula Deen embraces her eponymous meme

[Paula Deen Rides Bambi]

Speaking of fans, it was very cool to see celebrity chef Paula Deen respond in such an enthusiastic way to the ‘Paula Deen Riding Things’ meme.

Via The Daily What:

As if you needed another reason to be madly in love with Paula Deen, it seems the Butter Queen is not only aware of her Internet meme, Paula Deen Riding Things, but is actually quite fond of it.

“I think its great to see how creative my fans are!,” she recently told Bites on Today. “I feel like I’m the new ‘Where’s Waldo.”

Not a Viral Video

Michelle’s submission this week comes from AV Club with a critique of a recent “not-a-viral-video” campaign featuring Jennifer Aniston. Given the focus we’ve got on content strategy with our clients, this resonates with us big time.

Genevieve Koski writes:

vi•ral vid|e|o (vi´rel vid´ē ō) n. a video that becomes popular through the process of Internet sharing, typically through internet media sharing websites.

not a vi•ral vid|e|o (not a vi´rel vid´ē ō) n. a video that’s been brainstormed and test-marketed by a well-paid ad agency, which stars one of the biggest, beigest celebrities in the world slumming with a bunch of viral-video shorthand, released to a bunch of media outlets via a press release titled “Jennifer Aniston sex tape” that urges them to help make it the next “Internet sensation” along with a gentle reminder to mention Smartwater.

Read the rest of the column and watch the video at AV Club.

True blue Fan sites rule.

The cult following of Disney’s Haunted Mansion caught Maggie’s interest this week.  Chef Mayhem, the creator of  DoomBuggies.com explains the site “…is a celebration of imagination — it’s as simple (and as complex) as that.”

SMG-ers at SXSWi

Steve, Jeff and I (Leona) are enroute to Austin. We are all looking forward to catching up with friends and making new connections. See you there!

Are you captivating your audience with story?

November 30, 2010 / Comments Off on Are you captivating your audience with story? / Posted in: Blog

The audience will not tune in to watch information. You wouldn’t, I wouldn’t. No one would or will. The audience will only tune in and stay tuned in to watch drama. ~ David Mamet

Robert Bruce over at Copyblogger writes about the importance of story telling as core to effective communication using advice from a memo playwright David Mamet sent to a team of writers on The Unit.

Story telling is important in all channels, but this is resonating for me in the context of social media marketing. Are conversational calendars judged for their daily engagement metrics to the detriment of story telling? Frequently, I think we miss the potential in social channels to use stories to engage our audience and instead settle for the easy push of “information”.

As Bruce writes:

Information is simultaneously too much and not enough.
Information is impotent to reach the hearts and minds of those who can use your idea, product, or service.

David Bruce at Copyblogger: How to Captivate Your Audience with Story (From America’s Greatest Living Playwright)

Worth a read is the text of the original memo available at Movieline: David Mamet’s Master Class Memo to Writers of The Unit