How to Avoid Orphan Video Content with Effective Market Activation - Aspect

• Updated on: 2019-01-19
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How to Avoid Orphan Video Content with Effective Market Activation
By Evelyn Timson
How Marketing Activation can bring Brands to Life
It has often been said of the internet that content is king. Create fabulous content and it will get noticed by savvy and eagle eyed content consumers and spread across social media like wildfire, garnering you a bucket load of brand exposure in the process.
This is perhaps one of the most misleading premises in online marketing today. Content quality is undoubtedly important, there’s no doubt about that but that doesn’t make it king. Without proper marketing activation and a robust planning methodology, your videos might be absolutely brilliant but just won’t gain the attention they deserve and need to justify their creation. In other words the chances of any given piece of online content joining the sea of orphan content, that sits unloved and unnoticed online, is far greater in the absence of a plan.
In this article, I want to look at the phenomenon of orphan content and how to avoid it by implementing a proper planning methodology that informs and shapes the creation and activation processes,. We’ll also look at the importance of evergreen content and how to get the most from your video content through proper activation. Let’s start though by exploring the scale of the problem and how content ends up orphaned in the first place.
What Leads to Orphan Content?
Despite the inevitable ambiguity around the term ‘orphan content’ let’s look at some stats. In 2015, Moz and Buzzsumo conducted some research looking at content shares and referring domain links on a random sample of content. I’ve outlined some of the headline findings below.
Across 100,000 posts over 50% had two or less Facebook shares, likes or comments
Across that same sample 75% had no external links
Amongst the various content types surveyed list posts and videos attracted the most shares, with video being the most popular of these by far
Of 99,520 videos surveyed 17,708 was the average number of shares, compared to 10,734 for list posts, 1782 for ‘how to’ articles and 1443 for ‘why’ articles.
In a separate study, web marketing company Fractl looked at why people share content and found the following:
44% of respondents surveyed said they shared on social media to entertain
25% of respondents surveyed said they shared on social media to educate
20% of respondents surveyed said they shared on social media to reflect who they are as a person
10% of respondents surveyed said they shared on social media to support a cause or organisation
Comparing this last stat to the first stat can tell us a lot about why so much content ends up orphaned. With a more than 4 times chance of being shared, it really does pay for brands to be making content that’s entertaining.
The problem of orphan content isn’t just restricted to the consumer market either. A 2013 study by Sirius Decisions found that between 60-70% of content that is created by B2B marketing departments sits unused. This is a huge waste of time and resources and shows once again, that without a proper activation strategy in place, content can end up very lonely indeed.
It’s difficult to say with 100% accuracy exactly how much orphan content there is online. In fact the term orphan content doesn’t mean that no one at all has seen a given piece of content, merely that it has not got the love and attention it deserves.
With that loose definition in mind, there are three distinct reasons that content can end up as orphan content. These are:
Poor content quality:
No matter how good you promote a piece of content, if it isn’t very good the it won’t get shared and it won’t do your brand any favours. In other words, you can’t polish a turd. If the content is truly awful then it may even have a net negative affect. The phrase any publicity is good publicity does not apply in this instance.
Poor market activation strategy:
Marketing activation is the process of pushing your content to its intended audience through any number of marketing or media channels. Get this wrong and it doesn’t matter how great your content is, it just won’t get enough attention.
Poor content repurposing:
As well as a wide audience reach, longevity is another characteristic of successful content. If you want to avoid your video becoming a flash in the pan then it pays to keep them in the spotlight.
Creating powerful, engaging and memorable videos is something we’ve touched on before in this blog, so for the purpose of this article let’s focus on the last two factors.
Creating an Effective Market Activation Strategy
According to Russell Perry from McCann London content value is often lost through “a series of disconnected, tactical executions” instead of taking a “seamless joined up approach.” I’ve quoted this before in a previous article looking at marketing activation , but I’m quoting it again because, for me, it gets right to the nub of the issue.
It is the disconnected nature of poorly organised marketing strategies that is responsible for the vast majority of orphaned marketing related content online; in particular brand films . As much as content quality will always be a prerequisite for shareability, the importance of an activation strategy cannot be understated.
Successful activation is in itself built off the back of a proper planning process , which involves understanding your audience, your business objectives, what your competitors are talking about, as well as what is creating a buzz in your industry in general. Basing the content ideation process on this type of planning methodology will allow you to formulate core creative ideas that have the potential for building real audience traction and engagement.
From your core creative idea, will come your activation strategy. This can be broken down into three distinct areas:
Find and Optimise:
Optimising your content for search by tying it into your wider SEO strategy.
Making sure all your CTAs are in place and that your brand, products and/or services are properly represented and described.
Ensuring your content can be integrated into all relevant digital channels and that individual pieces of content fits with the intended audience.
Campaign Assets
Taking stills from the shoot, as well as behind the scenes footage, cast and crew interviews and other secondary filming
Info visuals, blog posts, press releases
Push to Audience