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mICRO-CONTEN
T
The Marketer’s
Guide To
1
Less is more.
As consumer attention fragments and content consumption moves to mobile
devices, content creators – including marketers – are finding that the best way
to engage audiences is with shorter, bite-sized chunks of content.
Making it crisp and keeping it short is essential: the majority of internet users
now spend fewer than 10 seconds on a page1
and the average digital native
switches screens 27 times an hour2
.
Even on short-form platforms, brevity wins: click-through rates on Twitter peak
between 120 and 130 characters3
, while Facebook posts with fewer than 70
characters receive the most likes4
.
“We have a long history of technology influencing the content that’s created,”
Scott Cohen, founder of digital music distribution service The Orchard, told
The Guardian in December5
. “Now instead of making longer form content, we
are seeing a trend for shorter form. Technology facilitates it and the consumer
demands it. Because of the limited amount of time they have, the device they
are on, and the location they are at, consuming long-form just doesn’t make sense.”
2
Enter “micro-content.”
The opposite of longform content, micro-content is optimized for social media
channels and distribution. Micro-content comes in myriad forms, from posts on
Facebook and LinkedIn to Vine videos, Tweets and Instagram photos. Blogger
Anil Dash, who is often credited with coining the term in its modern usage,
wrote in 2002 that even email subject headings, instant messages, and URLs
can be considered forms of micro-content6
.
But micro-content has been around since long before the digital age. Coffee
sleeve marketing, “Snapple Real Facts” under bottle tops, cereal box trivia,
and even fortune cookies all delivered bite-sized content to consumers. Brand
taglines and jingles are themselves forms of micro-content, building brand
equity in just a few words or notes.
What’s new is micro-content’s accelerated growth and importance in the digital
and social realms. Over the past 18 months, both Twitter and Instagram rolled
out short-form video sharing services, and Twitter’s Vine has registered more
than 40 million users to date.
For brands, micro-content represents a new tool in the content marketing
arsenal that can break through the clutter, while generating efficient
engagement and leads. “Micro-content is designed to be digested in seconds,
not minutes,” says Visually Creative Director Jess Bachman.
Micro-content doesn’t replace long-form content. Rather, it is a key component
in any larger content marketing strategy. Specifically, micro-content helps
promote longer-form content, driving shares on social networks and traffic
3
back to a marketer’s site. As digital publishing expert Denise Wakeman advises
on her The Future of Ink blog, use micro-content to “spark curiosity and drive
traffic.”7
When produced in conjunction with long-form pieces, micro-content also helps
brands extract greater value from existing content. Turning a video into a series
of six-second Vine clips, or the assets from an infographic into a set of images
optimized for Instagram and Twitter, puts a brand’s content in front of new
audiences, and can spur a second wave of interest and brand engagement.
Honda, for example, created a series of six-second Vine videos to promote its
Summer Clearance Sales Event, driving users to engage with existing brand-
related content on its site and, ultimately, to sign up for a test drive. The results
were impressive. The first day of its #WantNewCar campaign brought Honda
1,020 new followers (compared to its six-month daily average of 242) and
2,292 mentions8
.
Home Depot recently produced short-form videos highlighting easy DIY spring
projects (e.g., “How to build a hanging garden”) to drive RSVPs for in-market
DIY workshops at nearby retail locations. The easy distribution of these videos
through platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter is key to their success:
branded Vine videos are four times more likely to be seen than branded videos
outside the platform9
.
With micro-content, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. As you’ll
read in the pages that follow, Visually has helped many brands execute effective
content marketing campaigns that use micro-content to their advantage. From
tips for creating successful Vine videos to best practices for extending content
shelf life, you’ll learn how micro-content can fit into your overall content
marketing efforts and help you achieve your business goals.
4
Lessons from the
History of Micro-content
Micro-content is by nature promotional, meant to encourage an action or elicit an
emotion from a consumer. But it isn’t an outright advertisement. Rather, it serves
as the reason to act, showing the audience with a few words, a picture or a video
why investing their attention in more of your content is worth their time.
While micro-content now mainly refers to bites of content that can be shared
over social media, companies have long been using small bits of their product to
create memorable moments and impressions to hook consumers to keep them
coming back. Let’s travel back in time and take a look at how brands have been
using micro-content through the years.
Trade cards
Collecting trade cards — the early predecessors of trading cards and business
cards — became a popular pastime in the U.S. in the 19th century, though early
trade card examples date back as early as the 17th century:
5
Businesses distributed these cards as a form of advertising, and often featured
colorful illustrations, cartoons and sayings as a way to capture the attention
of potential consumers. Businesses valued them as “a cheap and effective way
to reach consumers,” who would often then keep the card, or distribute it to
someone else 10
.
Baseball cards
As technology became more sophisticated, photographs became a feature
of trade cards, and the advertising component became more subtle. Baseball
players, whose sport was reaching popularity about the same time as
photography, became a popular portrait subject. In 1886, the first baseball
tobacco cards were printed and used as protective liners to packs of cigarettes.
Later, baseball cards began to
make their way into more kid-
friendly products like candy
and gum as a way to cater to
young consumers.
The Topps company, one
of the most prolific sports
cards producers, began as a
tobacco distribution company,
then became a chewing
gum company that used jokes and card freebies in their products as a form of
advertising. Eventually they turned to producing the cards full-time as the core
of their business.
Baseball cards from the Benjamin K. Edwards Collection at the Library of Congress
Series T3: (American Tobacco Company, 1911); Tim Jordan — first base.
6
Gum wrappers and Bazooka Joe
While the Topps company primarily sold gum, it created the Bazooka Joe comic
strip, a long-running comic that began in 1953 and was printed on individual
gum wrappers that were included in every package of Bazooka bubble gum. The
wrappers would also include special offers or other extras.
The comic strip was discontinued in 2012
after Bazooka reported flagging sales. In its
place, Bazooka decided to use brain teasers
and activities on the inside of their new
gum wrappers as part of a comprehensive
rebrand. With its sixty-year run, the marketing
campaign can hardly be called unsuccessful.
Other businesses that implemented similar strategies in advertising include
popsicle makers, who include jokes on the popsicle sticks, Cracker Jacks,
which includes a variety of prizes in its packaging, and cereal companies, which
sometimes include children’s toys in the cereal boxes of those brands that are
targeted towards kids.
7
McDonald’s Happy Meal toys
Since McDonald’s first introduced the Happy Meal in 1979, the Happy Meal toy
has been a key part of the company’s strategy of marketing to children.
While encouraging kids to get their parents to take them to McDonald’s, most
of the toys don’t feature the company’s characters or logos. Rather, they use
brands and characters that are popular with kids at the moment, capitalizing
off of the success of brands like Disney by providing a captive and powerful
demographic.
Who, after all, can forget the McDonald’s Teenie Beanies tie-in with TY’s
Beanie Babies? The 1996-2000 campaign, which sparked fights and long lines
in franchise locations, sold the miniature plush dolls for $2 each along with
the purchase of a Happy Meal, though many sold on the aftermarket for much
higher prices.
Headlines
Newspaper headlines may be the most basic type of micro-content, and have
been a part of print publications for hundreds of years. However, it was only
in the late 19th century that increased competition between newspapers
led them to create the now-familiar front page headline aimed at grabbing
attention.
As the news business has evolved over time, the need for a short, descriptive
and catchy headline to pull potential readers into investing their time in the
next 500 words has only become more important.
8
As articles have been shortened to lists and news packages have been cut down
to minute-long news summaries in an attempt to ease consumption for viewers,
the headline remains the most digestible and sharable way to frame a story.
In recent years, headlines have lent themselves perfectly to Twitter and
reinvented themselves to drive traffic on Google and Facebook, inviting what is
now known as “the Upworthy headline.”11
As the Nielsen Norman Group pointed out more than a decade ago, online
headlines are different from printed ones because, “Online headlines are often
displayed out of context…so users don’t get the benefit of applying background
understanding to the interpretation of the headline.”12
Therefore headlines today must stand on their own, a “pearl of clarity” that
NN/g says should use only 40-60 characters to explain the long-form content.
RSS feeds
Since the first version of RSS feeds was released in 1999, the condensed web
format has led to a permanent change in how newspapers interacted with the
web. Perhaps the most stark development in the “micro-contentification” of
the news industries, RSS feeds allowed users to scroll through hundreds of
headlines and excerpts from a variety of news sources in record time.
Any issues with how the web decontextualizes words in a headline are
exacerbated in this space. Headline writers have to pay special attention to how
each headline will appear in a cramped space next to other typically unrelated
headlines. Often this means web producers will create different headlines
for use within the article and use within the metadata, so as to maximize the
different spaces.
9
Enter social media
The rise of social media has challenged marketers to meet customers in their
online social spaces, and develop an entirely new vocabulary to speak to online
audiences that are eager to share the most interesting content they find online.
Almost three-quarters of online adults uses social websites, and the average
social media user spends 27 percent of their time on a social networking site.13
The best social content marketers don’t just advertise to audiences, but inspire
members of the audience to advertise to each other.
Twitter
When Twitter debuted
in 2006, commentators
wondered how anything
meaningful could possibly
be said in only 140 charac-
ters. Eight years later, the
most common tweet length
is only 28 characters, falling
well below the limit. The
instantaneous nature of
Twitter allows brands and
users to create and distrib-
ute micro-content in re-
cord time, allowing them to
react to events in real time.
10
This famous tweet from Oreos during the blackout at the Super Bowl
earned more than 22,000 interactions on Twitter; a result of quick thinking
and good execution.
Instagram
When Instagram was first released in 2010, it soon became the domain of people’s
vacation, baby and pet photos. Since then, the photo sharing site — now part of
Facebook — has become one of the fastest growing online social networks.
While social interactions take center stage on platforms like Facebook, Instagram
is content-first, emphasizing the photo over conversations and comments. This
makes it a perfect medium to showcase single images and short videos.
However, unlike Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, Instagram doesn’t allow the
audience to continue the sharing chain - no “share” or “re-Instagram this” option
is available yet.
Visualizations:
upping the social game
Small visualizations of data or illustrations of ideas can be used as micro-
content by many industries. Online newspapers regularly use screenshots of
their news apps and data stories to create a quick impression with followers on
Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
FiveThirtyEight, the data news site created by Nate Silver, formerly of the New
York Times, creates small, fun and digestible pieces of content to promote their
work. To better suit this micro-content for the casual social media audience,
FiveThirtyEight likes to hand-draw many of their social graphics.
11
Financial institutions and businesses also share visualizations to explain key parts
of their business or show key developments in their business. The graphic from
Goldman Sachs below shows the composition of capital markets.
12
The increasingly diverse world of products and services that market themselves
on the internet is forcing marketers to become smarter, faster and more
inventive.
With the ever-shifting social media landscape, content marketers and analytics
experts will be challenged to come up with new ways to reach audiences quickly
and measure the effectiveness of these efforts.
However, by understanding the types of micro-content that have been used
successfully in the past, it is easier to predict what may work in the future.
Tricks of the Trade: Five Ways to
Overcome Short Attention Spans
with Micro-content
What can your content or advertising do in 10 seconds? Successful marketers
and advertisers understand the need today to focus on micro-content: clever,
persuasive, and concise messages to target an audience with barely-there
attention spans.
Micro-content should play a big role in your content strategy. Here are five
ways to make the most of it:
1. On Social Media, Embrace Images and Keep Posts Short
The numbers don’t lie – including an image or video in social media posts can
do wonders for your engagement rates. Tweets with image links are twice as
engaging as those without14
and photos make up 93% of the most engaging
posts on Facebook15
.
13
Keep Tweets and Facebook posts down to a sentence or two at most: click-
through rates on Twitter peak between 120 and 130 characters16
and
Facebook posts with less than 70 characters garner the most likes17
. Couple
images with sentence-long quips for maximum social media engagement.
2. Make it Stackable
With so many media options available, from TVs and laptops to smartphones
and tablets, consumers are often engaging with multiple platforms at the same
time. Research firm Millward Brown’s recent AdReaction study found that
more than 40% of 16- to 45-year-old multiscreen consumers in the United
States use devices simultaneously.18
You can hone in on this audience by crafting stackable content that meshes
well with other platforms and encourages sharing. Stackable content examples
include gaming apps with short but addictive gameplay mechanisms such as
dots, short form videos from Vine and Instagram, and immersive second screen
experiences like the Story Sync feature within AMC’s iPad app..19
From Millward Brown AdReaction 2014
14
3. Don’t Skimp on the Copywriting
AMC’s Mad Men shows the power of Madison Avenue copywriters during
the 1960s, and today the art of copywriting is anything but antiquated. In the
digital age, creating an attention-grabbing headline or first sentence can make
or break any blog post or article. And wordsmithing is even more important on
social media networks like Twitter, where new content - a.k.a. Tweets - go out at
a rate of nearly 350,000 a minute!20
So what could you do to make your Tweets stand out and engage your
audience? HubSpot social media scientist Dan Zarrella analyzed 200,000
link-containing tweets and found that adverbs and verbs helped increase
the clickthrough rate (CTR) of a Tweet, while nouns and adjectives had the
opposite effect.21
15
4. Play to Your Platform and Audience
Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram are the leading social media platforms, but
posting the same message the same way on all three is simply asking to be
ignored. Each platform skews to a different user base, and each platform posts
content differently. Instagram is centered around photos and videos rather
than text, Twitter has a exact character limit, and Facebook posts can cleanly
combine a user’s comment with an image, title and description of the link that is
being shared.
Before you share any content on these or any other platforms, be sure to go
through this simple three-step checklist:
Image Source: Dan Zarrella. http://danzarrella.com/infographic-how-to-get-more-clicks-on-twitter.html
16
1.	 Figure out which platforms are best for getting your message across.
2.	Recognize the strengths and weaknesses of each platform.
3.	Customize your content to fit each platform’s strength.
5. Make the Connection
Micro-content is only as powerful as the connection that it makes back to
the brand or advertiser. Content marketing does not exist in a bubble, and
micro-content is hardly an exception. With every blog, social media post, app
download or micro video, there must be a call to action or larger connection
back to the brand. Think of micro-content as the first minute of a sitcom before
the theme song – compelling enough to draw you in for the next half hour, but
not too informational, as to give away the entire episode’s plot.
How To: Diversify Your Content
Strategy with Micro-content
If you want to develop a successful content marketing strategy these days,
creating high-quality content is just the beginning. You could add value – and
shelf life – to your videos, infographics and even articles by simply using your
existing creative assets to develop an accompaniment of related micro-content.
Say you put a lot of time and effort into a video about the horrible
consequences of the US Drug War. Before you step up to the plate and hope for
a home run with the video, try and load the bases with micro-content:
This is a powerful image that, combined with a relevant hashtag, could pique
some interest on Twitter. The image by itself would take a creative at least an
hour to produce, not including the time spent finding the data to visualize.
17
But in this case, it’s just a still image
from the video you plan to release
and putting it together would be
much faster.
But just because you publish micro-
content to a social network does
not mean it’s going to work. Different
networks have different aesthetic
norms — or in Vine’s case, timing
norms — that you should try
to incorporate.
The content should be slightly
different if you are sharing on Facebook (you don’t need to include hashtags)
or other networks; and for Instagram, you should crop the images in the
correct proportions.
https://vine.co/v/MqDzn6AKjKr
See the full video here: http://visual.ly/violence-mexican-drug-cartels
18
The great thing about video is that it’s… video! So you can pull video-based micro-
content out for sharing on Vine or Instagram. Infographics are great fodder for
micro-content because they are often already segmented for the viewer.
Here is a stand-alone graphic suited for Twitter:
It is also a recomposed section of an original infographic produced by Visually
and Orbit Media Studios, which itself is based off an article written by Orbit’s
co-founder Andy Crestodina, originally published on Spin Sucks. It’s the content
version of Inception!
19
The best part? The article and infographic were nearly a year old and the micro-
content was able to give it a second (third?) wind:
You can publish and promote micro-content before your main content to tease
your audience, or use it after to drive clicks to the landing page. The rollout
strategy really depends on your goals, but having a full clip of micro-content to
accompany any premium content is a smart move.
And sometimes, the micro-content you produce may even end up replacing its
full-length predecessor as the focus on your campaign.
In the weeks leading up to April Fool’s day this year, we worked with the
creative talent on our Visually Marketplace to create a series of visual jokes.
We crowd-sourced the jokes, encouraging designers to submit suggestions –
provided they are funny and properly sourced. Each designer ended up picking
a joke to illustrate.
The result was meant to be an infographic, with all jokes neatly displayed two to
a row, forming one long comic strip-like visual. But we quickly realized that this
type of content would work much better if it were published and distributed
individually.
The result: a series of micro-graphics we published individually and promoted
on Twitter all through the day on April 1, with the hashtag #visualjokes.
20
21
The key to getting value out of micro-content is to produce it from existing
work. If you set out to create original content for Twitter, it is going to be
expensive and you’d be putting all your eggs (and content marketing dollars) in
one basket when it comes to distribution and promotion.
Instead, you should always be looking for ways to diversify your content
strategy portfolio — and micro-content is one relatively easy, low-cost way to
do just that.
Tools You Can Use: You don’t need
sophisticated design skills to create
shareable micro-content
By now we’ve hopefully convinced you how big of an impact micro-content can
have on your marketing campaigns. The best part? You don’t need to spend
hundreds of dollars on image-processing software and you most certainly don’t
need killer design skills to create shareable images. The seven tools outlined
below will help facilitate the design process and give your content a splash of life:
1. Canva
Canva is a free and exceptional design tool that people with zero design skills
or experience will find easy to use. From blog graphics to posters to Facebook
ads, you can start any new design from scratch, or start with a layout if you need
a little guidance. You can upload your own images or choose from a wide array
of backgrounds. Canva also has quite the selection of premium stock images,
which cost $1 when you publish.
22
2. Pixlr
This free online photo editor integrates design and paint tools to create
custom content. Many of its features (or tools) are similar to what you find in
Photoshop: you can choose from various filters, fonts and experiment with
different layers. Although Pixlr may seem a little rough around the edges, it’s
fairly intuitive and its open form allows your creativity to take reign over your
content’s direction.
https://www.canva.com
https://pixlr.com
23
3. Picmonkey
With PicMonkey you can edit, touch up, design or create a collage. It is similar
to Pixlr in function, but its interface is much more user friendly. Although users
can edit and create images free of charge, one can upgrade to Royale for added
effects, fonts and textures. The monthly cost for Royale is $4.99 or you can
opt for an annual membership of $33. It is a great tool for anyone who needs a
quick photo editor with a short learning curve.
4. Quozio
Quozio makes quotes visual - and shareable. Just provide the text, pick a
predetermined style and share. It’s that easy! Its bookmarklet makes it even
more convenient to create an eye-catching quote – highlight text on any web
page, click the bookmarklet, and your text is delivered into the tool for a hassle-
free experience. The only downside to Quozio is its lack of font choice and
custom styles. However, its favorable price tag – free! – and the convenience of
no registration required makes this a charming, great-to-know tool.
https://www.picmonkey.com
24
5. Share As Image
Share As Image is a seamless tool that turns any text into a shareable image in
seconds. It works just like Quozio, but offers more options to customize font
and background. Users can also play around with filters to add texture to their
images. Once they’ve created an image, users can download it or easily share
it on social media. You can use this tool for free if you’re open to having the
Share As Image watermark at the bottom of your image. Upgrading to the PRO
account for $8/month will allow you to add your own branding, get access to
premium photos and manage your images.
6. Skitch
Skitch is a free application from Evernote that helps you create insightful
content. This isn’t an exhaustive design tool, but rather one allowing you
to bring out qualities within a screenshot or your own image — because
https://quozio.com
25
sometimes all you really need is a little detail to strengthen your visuals. Fully
equipped with bold arrows, text, shapes, pixelizer and a color palette, Skitch can
turn a boring and unclear image into a resourceful asset.
https://shareasimage.com
http://evernote.com/skitch/
26
7. Coggle
Sometimes, you may be dealing with a difficult subject that can be daunting
to your audience. A great way of inviting your readers to dive into your post is
to create a mind map. This visual can help guide your reader through complex
ideas that otherwise might have gotten lost in translation. Coggle is a free,
straightforward mind mapping tool that allows you to work independently
or invite others to work on the map as well, after signing in with Google. Just
double-click on the main Coggle to get started and the rest is cake.
https://coggle.it
27
Mobile Apps: Create Shareable
Micro-content on the Go
If there was any doubt left in your mind that micro-content is one of the most
powerful new strategies for social media marketing, a recent micro-content
campaign by Mazda Canada should seal the deal.
A collaboration between the auto maker and marketing firm, JWT Canada, the
“Long Drive Home” campaign featured various images and videos of a Mazda
car making its way through different stages of a journey that were released
over a three month period. Each of the images formed a piece of a highly
detailed larger image that Instagram followers could see being formed in a grid
layout on Mazda Canada’s Instagram page.22
http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/mazda-takes-one-awesome-road-trip-through-60-instagram-posts-grid-view-157053
28
This campaign by Mazda involved a lot of time and likely a sizable budget for a
professional ad agency, graphic design and art direction – which might make it
seem out of reach for anyone with a smaller business and marketing budget.
But with the right tools and image, putting together a similar campaign could be
well within your reach. Here’s what you need to know:
The Image
The first and most important tip for any marketing campaign that involves an
image – and especially a campaign that’s entirely centered around one – is to
use a high quality image, something that looks good and grabs the attention of
your target market.
And since you’re dividing your image up into many small pieces, which you’ll
release one at a time, the image you choose should have several different areas
of visual interest, so they can keep people engaged throughout the campaign
and make them want to see the finished product. That’s one reason why
Mazda’s giant image worked so well: the image was designed so each individual
part engaged the viewer and made them want to see more of the overall
picture.
You also need to make sure your image file has a high enough resolution to
ensure good quality when you crop it into nine pieces and then display them
as full-sized Instagram photos. For best quality, your image should be at least
1836px by 1836px.
29
The Tools
The apps below automatically break down or resize images so they are easily
used on Instagram or other social media channels:
1. Giant Square
Go to: http://thegiantsquare.com
Cost: $1.99 — or download the
free version, if you don’t mind the
app developer’s watermark on your
work.
Giant Square is the ultimate app for
creating this kind of micro-content
for your social media campaign.
Along with the capability to easily
resize any image to fit Instagram’s
aspect ratio sizing, it lets you quickly
upload one of your existing images
and divide it into up to nine separate
frames in any size or configuration
you want. You can post these images
on your account separately as your
followers wait to see the whole
image. The app also lets you create
collages for your Facebook page or
Twitter profile’s cover photo.
Photo by Colin Payne
30
2. Instasize
Find in the App Store
Cost: free (with pop-up ads)
Instasize is another great app that
lets you easily re-size any of your
existing images or visual content
and post it to Instagram. It also
offers “stickers” and text overlays
you can add to your photos to
create instant memes, as well as filters, frames, collage options, backgrounds,
editing, custom Instagram hashtags and more.
Bring it all together
You’ve got your images ready to go, now you just need to make sure you execute
your campaign and make the most of the micro-content you’ve created.
If you need a high impact micro-content solution for your brand,
Visually can help. Our world-class pool of talent can provide
everything from ideation to design and execution. Let us know how we
can help by dropping us a line at sales@visual.ly.
31
Contributors:
Allison McCartney is an editor at the PBS NewsHour focused on education and
informational graphics, and a freelance designer in the Visually Marketplace. [Twitter:
@anmccartney]
Colin Payne is a professional writer, photographer, visual journalist and freelance
journalist in the Visually Marketplace.
Jess Bachman is a Creative Director at Visually. [Twitter: @mibi]
Jon Salm is an associate client analyst at Millward Brown Digital in New York City
and a freelance data journalist in the Visually marketplace. [Twitter: @S4LM3R]
Kristin Kovner is a marketing strategist. Her firm, K-SQUARED STRATEGIES, works
with Visually. [Twitter: @kristinkovner]
Stephanie Castillo is a digital marketing specialist at Visually. [Twitter: @
StephanieIvania]
Editor: Aleksandra Todorova, Editorial Director at Visually.
32
1.	 Not Quite the Average: An Empirical Study of Web Use; by Harald Weinreich, Hartmut Obendorf, Matthias
Mayer, Department of Informatics, University of Hamburg; and Eelco Herder, L3S Research Center, University of
Hannover, Germany.
2.	 A (Biometric) Day in the Life of the Consumer: study commissioned by Time Warner; Nov. 5, 2012.
3.	 Dan Zarrella, How to Get More Clicks on Twitter.
4.	 BufferApp Blog, 7 Powerful Facebook Statistics You Should Know for a More Engaging Facebook Page
5.	 The Guardian, Why Micro-content is Big Business, Dec 3, 2013.
6.	 Anil Dash, Introducing the Microcontent Client, Nov 13, 2002.
7.	 Denise Wakeman, Microcontent -- Use Short-Form Content to Amplify Your Message, Aug. 15, 2013.
8.	 Socialbakers, Honda’s Vine Campaign: Just How Successful Was It?
9.	 The 7th Chamber, Brands on Vine, Sept 13, 2013.
10.	 PBS History Detectives: Trade Cards
11.	 James Ball, Read this to find out how Upworthy’s awful headlines changed the web, The Guardian, March 16, 2014.
12.	 Jakob Nielsen, Microcontent: How to Write Headlines, Page Titles, and Subject Lines, Sept. 6, 1998.
13.	 Experian Marketing Services reveals 27 percent of time spent online is on social networking, April 16, 2013.
14.	 Belle Beth Cooper, Buffer: 10 Surprising New Twitter Stats to Help You Reach More Followers. Posted on
Huffington Post, Dec 6, 2013.
15.	 Socialbakers, Photos Make Up 93% of the Most Engaging Posts on Facebook.
16.	 Dan Zarrella, How to Get More Clicks on Twitter.
17.	 BufferApp Blog, 7 Powerful Facebook Statistics You Should Know for a More Engaging Facebook Page
18.	 Millard Brown, AdReaction: Marketing in a Multi-Screen World, 2014.
19.	 Bryan Bishop, How a second-screen app made ‘The Walking Dead’ come alive, The Verge, Feb. 13, 2014.
20.	 Form S-1 Registration Statement, filed by Twitter with the Securities and Exchange Commission on October 3,
2013; claims 500,000,000+ Tweets per day.
21.	 Dan Zarrella, How to Get More Clicks on Twitter.
22.	 http://instagram.com/mazdacanada
Sources:

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The Marketer's Guide To Micro-content

  • 2. 1 Less is more. As consumer attention fragments and content consumption moves to mobile devices, content creators – including marketers – are finding that the best way to engage audiences is with shorter, bite-sized chunks of content. Making it crisp and keeping it short is essential: the majority of internet users now spend fewer than 10 seconds on a page1 and the average digital native switches screens 27 times an hour2 . Even on short-form platforms, brevity wins: click-through rates on Twitter peak between 120 and 130 characters3 , while Facebook posts with fewer than 70 characters receive the most likes4 . “We have a long history of technology influencing the content that’s created,” Scott Cohen, founder of digital music distribution service The Orchard, told The Guardian in December5 . “Now instead of making longer form content, we are seeing a trend for shorter form. Technology facilitates it and the consumer demands it. Because of the limited amount of time they have, the device they are on, and the location they are at, consuming long-form just doesn’t make sense.”
  • 3. 2 Enter “micro-content.” The opposite of longform content, micro-content is optimized for social media channels and distribution. Micro-content comes in myriad forms, from posts on Facebook and LinkedIn to Vine videos, Tweets and Instagram photos. Blogger Anil Dash, who is often credited with coining the term in its modern usage, wrote in 2002 that even email subject headings, instant messages, and URLs can be considered forms of micro-content6 . But micro-content has been around since long before the digital age. Coffee sleeve marketing, “Snapple Real Facts” under bottle tops, cereal box trivia, and even fortune cookies all delivered bite-sized content to consumers. Brand taglines and jingles are themselves forms of micro-content, building brand equity in just a few words or notes. What’s new is micro-content’s accelerated growth and importance in the digital and social realms. Over the past 18 months, both Twitter and Instagram rolled out short-form video sharing services, and Twitter’s Vine has registered more than 40 million users to date. For brands, micro-content represents a new tool in the content marketing arsenal that can break through the clutter, while generating efficient engagement and leads. “Micro-content is designed to be digested in seconds, not minutes,” says Visually Creative Director Jess Bachman. Micro-content doesn’t replace long-form content. Rather, it is a key component in any larger content marketing strategy. Specifically, micro-content helps promote longer-form content, driving shares on social networks and traffic
  • 4. 3 back to a marketer’s site. As digital publishing expert Denise Wakeman advises on her The Future of Ink blog, use micro-content to “spark curiosity and drive traffic.”7 When produced in conjunction with long-form pieces, micro-content also helps brands extract greater value from existing content. Turning a video into a series of six-second Vine clips, or the assets from an infographic into a set of images optimized for Instagram and Twitter, puts a brand’s content in front of new audiences, and can spur a second wave of interest and brand engagement. Honda, for example, created a series of six-second Vine videos to promote its Summer Clearance Sales Event, driving users to engage with existing brand- related content on its site and, ultimately, to sign up for a test drive. The results were impressive. The first day of its #WantNewCar campaign brought Honda 1,020 new followers (compared to its six-month daily average of 242) and 2,292 mentions8 . Home Depot recently produced short-form videos highlighting easy DIY spring projects (e.g., “How to build a hanging garden”) to drive RSVPs for in-market DIY workshops at nearby retail locations. The easy distribution of these videos through platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter is key to their success: branded Vine videos are four times more likely to be seen than branded videos outside the platform9 . With micro-content, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. As you’ll read in the pages that follow, Visually has helped many brands execute effective content marketing campaigns that use micro-content to their advantage. From tips for creating successful Vine videos to best practices for extending content shelf life, you’ll learn how micro-content can fit into your overall content marketing efforts and help you achieve your business goals.
  • 5. 4 Lessons from the History of Micro-content Micro-content is by nature promotional, meant to encourage an action or elicit an emotion from a consumer. But it isn’t an outright advertisement. Rather, it serves as the reason to act, showing the audience with a few words, a picture or a video why investing their attention in more of your content is worth their time. While micro-content now mainly refers to bites of content that can be shared over social media, companies have long been using small bits of their product to create memorable moments and impressions to hook consumers to keep them coming back. Let’s travel back in time and take a look at how brands have been using micro-content through the years. Trade cards Collecting trade cards — the early predecessors of trading cards and business cards — became a popular pastime in the U.S. in the 19th century, though early trade card examples date back as early as the 17th century:
  • 6. 5 Businesses distributed these cards as a form of advertising, and often featured colorful illustrations, cartoons and sayings as a way to capture the attention of potential consumers. Businesses valued them as “a cheap and effective way to reach consumers,” who would often then keep the card, or distribute it to someone else 10 . Baseball cards As technology became more sophisticated, photographs became a feature of trade cards, and the advertising component became more subtle. Baseball players, whose sport was reaching popularity about the same time as photography, became a popular portrait subject. In 1886, the first baseball tobacco cards were printed and used as protective liners to packs of cigarettes. Later, baseball cards began to make their way into more kid- friendly products like candy and gum as a way to cater to young consumers. The Topps company, one of the most prolific sports cards producers, began as a tobacco distribution company, then became a chewing gum company that used jokes and card freebies in their products as a form of advertising. Eventually they turned to producing the cards full-time as the core of their business. Baseball cards from the Benjamin K. Edwards Collection at the Library of Congress Series T3: (American Tobacco Company, 1911); Tim Jordan — first base.
  • 7. 6 Gum wrappers and Bazooka Joe While the Topps company primarily sold gum, it created the Bazooka Joe comic strip, a long-running comic that began in 1953 and was printed on individual gum wrappers that were included in every package of Bazooka bubble gum. The wrappers would also include special offers or other extras. The comic strip was discontinued in 2012 after Bazooka reported flagging sales. In its place, Bazooka decided to use brain teasers and activities on the inside of their new gum wrappers as part of a comprehensive rebrand. With its sixty-year run, the marketing campaign can hardly be called unsuccessful. Other businesses that implemented similar strategies in advertising include popsicle makers, who include jokes on the popsicle sticks, Cracker Jacks, which includes a variety of prizes in its packaging, and cereal companies, which sometimes include children’s toys in the cereal boxes of those brands that are targeted towards kids.
  • 8. 7 McDonald’s Happy Meal toys Since McDonald’s first introduced the Happy Meal in 1979, the Happy Meal toy has been a key part of the company’s strategy of marketing to children. While encouraging kids to get their parents to take them to McDonald’s, most of the toys don’t feature the company’s characters or logos. Rather, they use brands and characters that are popular with kids at the moment, capitalizing off of the success of brands like Disney by providing a captive and powerful demographic. Who, after all, can forget the McDonald’s Teenie Beanies tie-in with TY’s Beanie Babies? The 1996-2000 campaign, which sparked fights and long lines in franchise locations, sold the miniature plush dolls for $2 each along with the purchase of a Happy Meal, though many sold on the aftermarket for much higher prices. Headlines Newspaper headlines may be the most basic type of micro-content, and have been a part of print publications for hundreds of years. However, it was only in the late 19th century that increased competition between newspapers led them to create the now-familiar front page headline aimed at grabbing attention. As the news business has evolved over time, the need for a short, descriptive and catchy headline to pull potential readers into investing their time in the next 500 words has only become more important.
  • 9. 8 As articles have been shortened to lists and news packages have been cut down to minute-long news summaries in an attempt to ease consumption for viewers, the headline remains the most digestible and sharable way to frame a story. In recent years, headlines have lent themselves perfectly to Twitter and reinvented themselves to drive traffic on Google and Facebook, inviting what is now known as “the Upworthy headline.”11 As the Nielsen Norman Group pointed out more than a decade ago, online headlines are different from printed ones because, “Online headlines are often displayed out of context…so users don’t get the benefit of applying background understanding to the interpretation of the headline.”12 Therefore headlines today must stand on their own, a “pearl of clarity” that NN/g says should use only 40-60 characters to explain the long-form content. RSS feeds Since the first version of RSS feeds was released in 1999, the condensed web format has led to a permanent change in how newspapers interacted with the web. Perhaps the most stark development in the “micro-contentification” of the news industries, RSS feeds allowed users to scroll through hundreds of headlines and excerpts from a variety of news sources in record time. Any issues with how the web decontextualizes words in a headline are exacerbated in this space. Headline writers have to pay special attention to how each headline will appear in a cramped space next to other typically unrelated headlines. Often this means web producers will create different headlines for use within the article and use within the metadata, so as to maximize the different spaces.
  • 10. 9 Enter social media The rise of social media has challenged marketers to meet customers in their online social spaces, and develop an entirely new vocabulary to speak to online audiences that are eager to share the most interesting content they find online. Almost three-quarters of online adults uses social websites, and the average social media user spends 27 percent of their time on a social networking site.13 The best social content marketers don’t just advertise to audiences, but inspire members of the audience to advertise to each other. Twitter When Twitter debuted in 2006, commentators wondered how anything meaningful could possibly be said in only 140 charac- ters. Eight years later, the most common tweet length is only 28 characters, falling well below the limit. The instantaneous nature of Twitter allows brands and users to create and distrib- ute micro-content in re- cord time, allowing them to react to events in real time.
  • 11. 10 This famous tweet from Oreos during the blackout at the Super Bowl earned more than 22,000 interactions on Twitter; a result of quick thinking and good execution. Instagram When Instagram was first released in 2010, it soon became the domain of people’s vacation, baby and pet photos. Since then, the photo sharing site — now part of Facebook — has become one of the fastest growing online social networks. While social interactions take center stage on platforms like Facebook, Instagram is content-first, emphasizing the photo over conversations and comments. This makes it a perfect medium to showcase single images and short videos. However, unlike Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, Instagram doesn’t allow the audience to continue the sharing chain - no “share” or “re-Instagram this” option is available yet. Visualizations: upping the social game Small visualizations of data or illustrations of ideas can be used as micro- content by many industries. Online newspapers regularly use screenshots of their news apps and data stories to create a quick impression with followers on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. FiveThirtyEight, the data news site created by Nate Silver, formerly of the New York Times, creates small, fun and digestible pieces of content to promote their work. To better suit this micro-content for the casual social media audience, FiveThirtyEight likes to hand-draw many of their social graphics.
  • 12. 11 Financial institutions and businesses also share visualizations to explain key parts of their business or show key developments in their business. The graphic from Goldman Sachs below shows the composition of capital markets.
  • 13. 12 The increasingly diverse world of products and services that market themselves on the internet is forcing marketers to become smarter, faster and more inventive. With the ever-shifting social media landscape, content marketers and analytics experts will be challenged to come up with new ways to reach audiences quickly and measure the effectiveness of these efforts. However, by understanding the types of micro-content that have been used successfully in the past, it is easier to predict what may work in the future. Tricks of the Trade: Five Ways to Overcome Short Attention Spans with Micro-content What can your content or advertising do in 10 seconds? Successful marketers and advertisers understand the need today to focus on micro-content: clever, persuasive, and concise messages to target an audience with barely-there attention spans. Micro-content should play a big role in your content strategy. Here are five ways to make the most of it: 1. On Social Media, Embrace Images and Keep Posts Short The numbers don’t lie – including an image or video in social media posts can do wonders for your engagement rates. Tweets with image links are twice as engaging as those without14 and photos make up 93% of the most engaging posts on Facebook15 .
  • 14. 13 Keep Tweets and Facebook posts down to a sentence or two at most: click- through rates on Twitter peak between 120 and 130 characters16 and Facebook posts with less than 70 characters garner the most likes17 . Couple images with sentence-long quips for maximum social media engagement. 2. Make it Stackable With so many media options available, from TVs and laptops to smartphones and tablets, consumers are often engaging with multiple platforms at the same time. Research firm Millward Brown’s recent AdReaction study found that more than 40% of 16- to 45-year-old multiscreen consumers in the United States use devices simultaneously.18 You can hone in on this audience by crafting stackable content that meshes well with other platforms and encourages sharing. Stackable content examples include gaming apps with short but addictive gameplay mechanisms such as dots, short form videos from Vine and Instagram, and immersive second screen experiences like the Story Sync feature within AMC’s iPad app..19 From Millward Brown AdReaction 2014
  • 15. 14 3. Don’t Skimp on the Copywriting AMC’s Mad Men shows the power of Madison Avenue copywriters during the 1960s, and today the art of copywriting is anything but antiquated. In the digital age, creating an attention-grabbing headline or first sentence can make or break any blog post or article. And wordsmithing is even more important on social media networks like Twitter, where new content - a.k.a. Tweets - go out at a rate of nearly 350,000 a minute!20 So what could you do to make your Tweets stand out and engage your audience? HubSpot social media scientist Dan Zarrella analyzed 200,000 link-containing tweets and found that adverbs and verbs helped increase the clickthrough rate (CTR) of a Tweet, while nouns and adjectives had the opposite effect.21
  • 16. 15 4. Play to Your Platform and Audience Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram are the leading social media platforms, but posting the same message the same way on all three is simply asking to be ignored. Each platform skews to a different user base, and each platform posts content differently. Instagram is centered around photos and videos rather than text, Twitter has a exact character limit, and Facebook posts can cleanly combine a user’s comment with an image, title and description of the link that is being shared. Before you share any content on these or any other platforms, be sure to go through this simple three-step checklist: Image Source: Dan Zarrella. http://danzarrella.com/infographic-how-to-get-more-clicks-on-twitter.html
  • 17. 16 1. Figure out which platforms are best for getting your message across. 2. Recognize the strengths and weaknesses of each platform. 3. Customize your content to fit each platform’s strength. 5. Make the Connection Micro-content is only as powerful as the connection that it makes back to the brand or advertiser. Content marketing does not exist in a bubble, and micro-content is hardly an exception. With every blog, social media post, app download or micro video, there must be a call to action or larger connection back to the brand. Think of micro-content as the first minute of a sitcom before the theme song – compelling enough to draw you in for the next half hour, but not too informational, as to give away the entire episode’s plot. How To: Diversify Your Content Strategy with Micro-content If you want to develop a successful content marketing strategy these days, creating high-quality content is just the beginning. You could add value – and shelf life – to your videos, infographics and even articles by simply using your existing creative assets to develop an accompaniment of related micro-content. Say you put a lot of time and effort into a video about the horrible consequences of the US Drug War. Before you step up to the plate and hope for a home run with the video, try and load the bases with micro-content: This is a powerful image that, combined with a relevant hashtag, could pique some interest on Twitter. The image by itself would take a creative at least an hour to produce, not including the time spent finding the data to visualize.
  • 18. 17 But in this case, it’s just a still image from the video you plan to release and putting it together would be much faster. But just because you publish micro- content to a social network does not mean it’s going to work. Different networks have different aesthetic norms — or in Vine’s case, timing norms — that you should try to incorporate. The content should be slightly different if you are sharing on Facebook (you don’t need to include hashtags) or other networks; and for Instagram, you should crop the images in the correct proportions. https://vine.co/v/MqDzn6AKjKr See the full video here: http://visual.ly/violence-mexican-drug-cartels
  • 19. 18 The great thing about video is that it’s… video! So you can pull video-based micro- content out for sharing on Vine or Instagram. Infographics are great fodder for micro-content because they are often already segmented for the viewer. Here is a stand-alone graphic suited for Twitter: It is also a recomposed section of an original infographic produced by Visually and Orbit Media Studios, which itself is based off an article written by Orbit’s co-founder Andy Crestodina, originally published on Spin Sucks. It’s the content version of Inception!
  • 20. 19 The best part? The article and infographic were nearly a year old and the micro- content was able to give it a second (third?) wind: You can publish and promote micro-content before your main content to tease your audience, or use it after to drive clicks to the landing page. The rollout strategy really depends on your goals, but having a full clip of micro-content to accompany any premium content is a smart move. And sometimes, the micro-content you produce may even end up replacing its full-length predecessor as the focus on your campaign. In the weeks leading up to April Fool’s day this year, we worked with the creative talent on our Visually Marketplace to create a series of visual jokes. We crowd-sourced the jokes, encouraging designers to submit suggestions – provided they are funny and properly sourced. Each designer ended up picking a joke to illustrate. The result was meant to be an infographic, with all jokes neatly displayed two to a row, forming one long comic strip-like visual. But we quickly realized that this type of content would work much better if it were published and distributed individually. The result: a series of micro-graphics we published individually and promoted on Twitter all through the day on April 1, with the hashtag #visualjokes.
  • 21. 20
  • 22. 21 The key to getting value out of micro-content is to produce it from existing work. If you set out to create original content for Twitter, it is going to be expensive and you’d be putting all your eggs (and content marketing dollars) in one basket when it comes to distribution and promotion. Instead, you should always be looking for ways to diversify your content strategy portfolio — and micro-content is one relatively easy, low-cost way to do just that. Tools You Can Use: You don’t need sophisticated design skills to create shareable micro-content By now we’ve hopefully convinced you how big of an impact micro-content can have on your marketing campaigns. The best part? You don’t need to spend hundreds of dollars on image-processing software and you most certainly don’t need killer design skills to create shareable images. The seven tools outlined below will help facilitate the design process and give your content a splash of life: 1. Canva Canva is a free and exceptional design tool that people with zero design skills or experience will find easy to use. From blog graphics to posters to Facebook ads, you can start any new design from scratch, or start with a layout if you need a little guidance. You can upload your own images or choose from a wide array of backgrounds. Canva also has quite the selection of premium stock images, which cost $1 when you publish.
  • 23. 22 2. Pixlr This free online photo editor integrates design and paint tools to create custom content. Many of its features (or tools) are similar to what you find in Photoshop: you can choose from various filters, fonts and experiment with different layers. Although Pixlr may seem a little rough around the edges, it’s fairly intuitive and its open form allows your creativity to take reign over your content’s direction. https://www.canva.com https://pixlr.com
  • 24. 23 3. Picmonkey With PicMonkey you can edit, touch up, design or create a collage. It is similar to Pixlr in function, but its interface is much more user friendly. Although users can edit and create images free of charge, one can upgrade to Royale for added effects, fonts and textures. The monthly cost for Royale is $4.99 or you can opt for an annual membership of $33. It is a great tool for anyone who needs a quick photo editor with a short learning curve. 4. Quozio Quozio makes quotes visual - and shareable. Just provide the text, pick a predetermined style and share. It’s that easy! Its bookmarklet makes it even more convenient to create an eye-catching quote – highlight text on any web page, click the bookmarklet, and your text is delivered into the tool for a hassle- free experience. The only downside to Quozio is its lack of font choice and custom styles. However, its favorable price tag – free! – and the convenience of no registration required makes this a charming, great-to-know tool. https://www.picmonkey.com
  • 25. 24 5. Share As Image Share As Image is a seamless tool that turns any text into a shareable image in seconds. It works just like Quozio, but offers more options to customize font and background. Users can also play around with filters to add texture to their images. Once they’ve created an image, users can download it or easily share it on social media. You can use this tool for free if you’re open to having the Share As Image watermark at the bottom of your image. Upgrading to the PRO account for $8/month will allow you to add your own branding, get access to premium photos and manage your images. 6. Skitch Skitch is a free application from Evernote that helps you create insightful content. This isn’t an exhaustive design tool, but rather one allowing you to bring out qualities within a screenshot or your own image — because https://quozio.com
  • 26. 25 sometimes all you really need is a little detail to strengthen your visuals. Fully equipped with bold arrows, text, shapes, pixelizer and a color palette, Skitch can turn a boring and unclear image into a resourceful asset. https://shareasimage.com http://evernote.com/skitch/
  • 27. 26 7. Coggle Sometimes, you may be dealing with a difficult subject that can be daunting to your audience. A great way of inviting your readers to dive into your post is to create a mind map. This visual can help guide your reader through complex ideas that otherwise might have gotten lost in translation. Coggle is a free, straightforward mind mapping tool that allows you to work independently or invite others to work on the map as well, after signing in with Google. Just double-click on the main Coggle to get started and the rest is cake. https://coggle.it
  • 28. 27 Mobile Apps: Create Shareable Micro-content on the Go If there was any doubt left in your mind that micro-content is one of the most powerful new strategies for social media marketing, a recent micro-content campaign by Mazda Canada should seal the deal. A collaboration between the auto maker and marketing firm, JWT Canada, the “Long Drive Home” campaign featured various images and videos of a Mazda car making its way through different stages of a journey that were released over a three month period. Each of the images formed a piece of a highly detailed larger image that Instagram followers could see being formed in a grid layout on Mazda Canada’s Instagram page.22 http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/mazda-takes-one-awesome-road-trip-through-60-instagram-posts-grid-view-157053
  • 29. 28 This campaign by Mazda involved a lot of time and likely a sizable budget for a professional ad agency, graphic design and art direction – which might make it seem out of reach for anyone with a smaller business and marketing budget. But with the right tools and image, putting together a similar campaign could be well within your reach. Here’s what you need to know: The Image The first and most important tip for any marketing campaign that involves an image – and especially a campaign that’s entirely centered around one – is to use a high quality image, something that looks good and grabs the attention of your target market. And since you’re dividing your image up into many small pieces, which you’ll release one at a time, the image you choose should have several different areas of visual interest, so they can keep people engaged throughout the campaign and make them want to see the finished product. That’s one reason why Mazda’s giant image worked so well: the image was designed so each individual part engaged the viewer and made them want to see more of the overall picture. You also need to make sure your image file has a high enough resolution to ensure good quality when you crop it into nine pieces and then display them as full-sized Instagram photos. For best quality, your image should be at least 1836px by 1836px.
  • 30. 29 The Tools The apps below automatically break down or resize images so they are easily used on Instagram or other social media channels: 1. Giant Square Go to: http://thegiantsquare.com Cost: $1.99 — or download the free version, if you don’t mind the app developer’s watermark on your work. Giant Square is the ultimate app for creating this kind of micro-content for your social media campaign. Along with the capability to easily resize any image to fit Instagram’s aspect ratio sizing, it lets you quickly upload one of your existing images and divide it into up to nine separate frames in any size or configuration you want. You can post these images on your account separately as your followers wait to see the whole image. The app also lets you create collages for your Facebook page or Twitter profile’s cover photo. Photo by Colin Payne
  • 31. 30 2. Instasize Find in the App Store Cost: free (with pop-up ads) Instasize is another great app that lets you easily re-size any of your existing images or visual content and post it to Instagram. It also offers “stickers” and text overlays you can add to your photos to create instant memes, as well as filters, frames, collage options, backgrounds, editing, custom Instagram hashtags and more. Bring it all together You’ve got your images ready to go, now you just need to make sure you execute your campaign and make the most of the micro-content you’ve created. If you need a high impact micro-content solution for your brand, Visually can help. Our world-class pool of talent can provide everything from ideation to design and execution. Let us know how we can help by dropping us a line at sales@visual.ly.
  • 32. 31 Contributors: Allison McCartney is an editor at the PBS NewsHour focused on education and informational graphics, and a freelance designer in the Visually Marketplace. [Twitter: @anmccartney] Colin Payne is a professional writer, photographer, visual journalist and freelance journalist in the Visually Marketplace. Jess Bachman is a Creative Director at Visually. [Twitter: @mibi] Jon Salm is an associate client analyst at Millward Brown Digital in New York City and a freelance data journalist in the Visually marketplace. [Twitter: @S4LM3R] Kristin Kovner is a marketing strategist. Her firm, K-SQUARED STRATEGIES, works with Visually. [Twitter: @kristinkovner] Stephanie Castillo is a digital marketing specialist at Visually. [Twitter: @ StephanieIvania] Editor: Aleksandra Todorova, Editorial Director at Visually.
  • 33. 32 1. Not Quite the Average: An Empirical Study of Web Use; by Harald Weinreich, Hartmut Obendorf, Matthias Mayer, Department of Informatics, University of Hamburg; and Eelco Herder, L3S Research Center, University of Hannover, Germany. 2. A (Biometric) Day in the Life of the Consumer: study commissioned by Time Warner; Nov. 5, 2012. 3. Dan Zarrella, How to Get More Clicks on Twitter. 4. BufferApp Blog, 7 Powerful Facebook Statistics You Should Know for a More Engaging Facebook Page 5. The Guardian, Why Micro-content is Big Business, Dec 3, 2013. 6. Anil Dash, Introducing the Microcontent Client, Nov 13, 2002. 7. Denise Wakeman, Microcontent -- Use Short-Form Content to Amplify Your Message, Aug. 15, 2013. 8. Socialbakers, Honda’s Vine Campaign: Just How Successful Was It? 9. The 7th Chamber, Brands on Vine, Sept 13, 2013. 10. PBS History Detectives: Trade Cards 11. James Ball, Read this to find out how Upworthy’s awful headlines changed the web, The Guardian, March 16, 2014. 12. Jakob Nielsen, Microcontent: How to Write Headlines, Page Titles, and Subject Lines, Sept. 6, 1998. 13. Experian Marketing Services reveals 27 percent of time spent online is on social networking, April 16, 2013. 14. Belle Beth Cooper, Buffer: 10 Surprising New Twitter Stats to Help You Reach More Followers. Posted on Huffington Post, Dec 6, 2013. 15. Socialbakers, Photos Make Up 93% of the Most Engaging Posts on Facebook. 16. Dan Zarrella, How to Get More Clicks on Twitter. 17. BufferApp Blog, 7 Powerful Facebook Statistics You Should Know for a More Engaging Facebook Page 18. Millard Brown, AdReaction: Marketing in a Multi-Screen World, 2014. 19. Bryan Bishop, How a second-screen app made ‘The Walking Dead’ come alive, The Verge, Feb. 13, 2014. 20. Form S-1 Registration Statement, filed by Twitter with the Securities and Exchange Commission on October 3, 2013; claims 500,000,000+ Tweets per day. 21. Dan Zarrella, How to Get More Clicks on Twitter. 22. http://instagram.com/mazdacanada Sources: