Daniel Vieco Landucci (Digital Marketing and Content Executive)
I have been working for the last 9 years at Red Bull, focusing on Social Media, Content, Digital, Communications, Partnerships, and Paid Advertising. People want to be surprised! And they have no time to waste.
Why did the video above get 7MM views?
Let's start with the location. A church that is now a skate park is something quite rare.
Then let's talk about the character. You have a young, full-energy person who comes up with crazy ideas. But more importantly, he is fun.
And then you have a “how-to” on how to build a terrifying machine. That is a good recipe for success on Facebook.
But anyway, why should you care about me?
I saw social media accounts grow by 300% and increase their monthly reach by 70% in just a few months. The videos I produced, commissioned, or ideated have reached over 50MM views across social, YouTube, and Red Bull’s platforms. I was also able to double the traffic on the music-focused version of the site in just one month. After 6 months, the average monthly traffic increased by 500%.
How? Well, it’s a mix of strong editorial values (innovative, credible, and authentic), making use of data, consistency, having the right team, and a clear activation strategy.
People are clicking “or touching” their screen before even thinking about it. It helps if you have something that can shine in the really crowded social media space.
Story Telling
If you want people to care and stay with you, storytelling is one way. You can have amazing-looking content, but it won't make people stay.
Stories can be long or short, but they should be meaningful. Short stories with text on-screen work. These entertain and help you learn about things in an easy and “fast” way.
They are also relatively cheap and quick to make.
Mixing different disciplines helps you reach different audiences at the same time. Using questions, in the beginning challenges the viewer, forcing him to find out.
Content that makes us happy, sad, or challenges our views is more engaging and makes us want to share! Celebrating different cultures, moments and using nostalgia (90s stuff, what it used to be, what could be…) helps to connect with the viewer.
Show the world to the world and make them proud!
If language is an obstacle, spin it around. How to introduce an English-speaking audience to the biggest Spanish rap battle in the world?
RAW vs. Polished
The content piece above, is something that you don’t see every day on your feed.
You probably heard this a few times by now, but make sure you tailor your content to your platform and audience.
Influencers and content creators
The internet is full of creative minds; the good thing is that you don’t necessarily have to compete against them. You can work with them.
Harry Mack is a freestyle rapper, his video in Venice beach went viral. We had a connection to him through one of our production partners, and we knew he would be someone that can bring us reach! But, more importantly, he was a brand fit that can represent our values.
Going back to the collaboration with Look Mum No Computer
At the time, we had a rather small audience on Facebook and YouTube, but we saw the potential. (I saw his video on YouTube one afternoon and reached out immediately via email).
We asked him for a phone call, and we came up with a “test scenario” so we could see if a collaboration would have potential. The video had 4x more views than his previous videos, and the comments were inspiring.
After the test, we agreed on a fee for 3 videos based on calculation considering his average views and followers.
The deal was simple LMNC would deliver two simple videos that would integrate or mention the brand, and we would collaborate on a bigger “dream project.” Something he always wanted to make but couldn’t because of resources or other constraints. The last part is key when working with content creators or influencers; helping them achieve their goals or to improve “their game” is the way to build strong, durable relationships.
It should, of course, also have a positive outcome for your brand or business.
Audiences and Data
Sure, you know who your audience is and who you want to reach; you even identified some profiles to describe them. But who is actually engaging with your content? And what kind of content has the highest potential to reach a specific audience? Two answers; existing data and testing.
Behaviors and trends rapidly change on social media, it is crucial to test until you find out what works best.
Facebook Audience Insights is a powerful and somehow scary tool 😱.
I use it to see how many users use Facebook in different locations, what percentage of them are interested in specific interests or to find out which other pages are reaching specific profiles.
*This is from 2018 BTW
Or to understand which other pages are reaching specific interests.
By measuring different metrics like reach, views, AVG time spent, pages per visitor, and engagement rate on published content (tagged according to the interest or audience), you can run YTD, quarterly, and monthly analyses. That's a good way to identify a few insights.
Nevertheless, to measure success, you need to have a reference to compare your results (benchmarks).
Paid
Facebook’s average organic reach for most major pages is 1%, meaning Facebook is a paid medium, and the exorbitant amount of content creates the necessity to spend, the key is smart spending. One great thing about the Facebook ads platform is the access to more data points allowing you to identify what demography is more efficient to convert depending on your targets.
Organic reach might be death, but virality is still a factor; the better the content, the better it will perform. Similar to gasoline, if there is a spark, there will be fire 🔥.
Using different creatives and constant optimization should set you for success. Dont forget to use all the great features like retargeting, pixels, and the different placings.
Leadership
Being a manager is a continuous learning path, but a key lesson is to ensure your team understands the overall team goals and vision. It is important to allow the team to feel comfortable enough to ask questions when they are in doubt and make sure each team member owns a project.
Giving them tools and make them awesome. A healthy amount of freedom and support inspires creativity and commitment.
You need to help your team to get their job done, not make it harder for them.
Tech and Project Management
I love gadgets, computers, and video games. I'm one of those who likes to open things to see what's inside and doesn't use a manul. I had the chance to work on a few different projects.
- Product Design and Tools: As part of the social team, I led the social features on the redbull.com design and was in charge of finding and closing the deals with different social tools like Wayin, Sprinklr, Spredfast, bit.ly, and others.
Gaming: This was one of the first projects I worked on, the first Kinect-enabled downhill ice skating game!
- Hardware and Software: The task was to build a customizable, transportable, plug-and-play WIFI solution for large and small events to allow people to share their experience, find more info and ultimately collect data.
And a Kinnect enabled selfie screen with probs.
This was written in 2018, but an updated version is coming soon.
Peace ✌️