Curated Content
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| Figure 1 |
Curated Source 1: Pinterest
Pinterest is a source of curated content with a focus on visual imagery that allows users to add images, articles and videos to a collection. This is called pinning to a board (Meng, 2019). It's much like a digital scrapbook where users can quickly and easily sort this content into topics of interest to refer to later, or to share with friends and, increasingly, with customers.
Pinterest will be ideal as a curated content source for this campaign given its popularity for featuring users' lifestyles (Meng, 2019). Posts about food, health and wellbeing are everywhere and come in all formats including photographs, videos, illustrations and infographics to name just a few (Figure 2).
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| Figure 2 |
It's free to get a Pinterest account, be it a personal or a business account. An individual can sign up using email, their Facebook profile, or their Google account whereas a business user will need to sign in with an email address (Figure 3).
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| Figure 3. Pinterest business account signup screen on a desktop browser |
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| Figure 4 |
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| Figure 5 |
Curated Source 2: BuzzFeed
BuzzFeed is another curated content source which focuses on light news, fun and entertainment with plenty of stories, lists and quizzes available for sharing on social platforms to generate engagement (BuzzFeed, n.d.).
BuzzFeed is also free to use and users will need an account if wanting to bookmark content, post comments, and create content for others to use. Users can sign up with an email address or their profile with Apple, Facebook or Google (Figure 6). If using the BuzzFeed app on a mobile device, the user can upgrade to BuzzFeed+ for US$5.49 per month to use the app ad-free and to receive a couple of other customisable features (BuzzFeed, n.d.).
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| Figure 6 |
Users can easily find content via category topics at the top of the screen on the mobile app, or via the icons at the bottom linking to the homepage, news, shopping, quizzes and the search icon where the user can enter their own keyword search (Figure 7).
Figures 7 and 8 also show some of the food related content on this site that may be useful for adding value and generating some fun engagement for this campaign.
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| Figure 7. The BuzzFeed app search topics and icons |
Sharing content from BuzzFeed is easy too. On the app, open the post and simply tap the share icon and select the platform or app required. On the website, the user just clicks the relevant social media, email or copy link icon at the bottom of the post to share (Figure 8).
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| Figure 8. Share buttons on a post on the BuzzFeed website |
Digital Platforms
There are a number of digital platforms to choose from when considering digital marketing content but they are not all created equal. Some are better than others at presenting specific content and reaching certain target markets so it's good to compare the options. Figure 9 from Accion Opportunity Fund (n.d.) provides a good starting point and allowed some platforms to be ruled out straight away for this campaign:
- LinkedIn is more for business to business networking so not as relevant for this campaign.
- TikTok's main audience is in the 18-24 age range which does not fit our buyer persona.
- Twitter's audience is predominantly male and engagement on the platform is mainly for business information and news articles so again, not as relevant (Forsey, n.d.).
- Pinterest certainly fits with the buyer persona, and that the food industry find it an appealing platform, however research suggests Pinterest could be limiting for a campaign in New Zealand when 50% of their audience is within the US (Omnicore, 2021).
Figure 9. Comparison of social media platforms (Accion Opportunity Fund, n.d.)
Digital Platform 1: Facebook
Launched in 2004 by founders Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew MCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes, Facebook now boasts over 2.7 billion monthly active users and revenue of $86 billion (Walsh, 2021).
Facebook's largest demographic group is in the 25-34 age bracket of whom 56% are male (Omnicore, 2021).
It is principally a platform for keeping in touch and building relationships so is great for building a loyal following but can be a bit more difficult for businesses as Facebook often de-prioritise business posts in favour of social ones (Barnhart, 2020).
Facebook's ever-changing algorithm (Figure 10), which is basically the set of rules on how content is shown to users, currently evaluates posts, gives them a ranking, and then makes them available from the most interesting to least interesting depending on how that user has interacted with posts in the past (Cooper, 2021). The ultimate goal of Facebook being for users to keep scrolling and therefore be exposed to more paid ads.
The algorithm can make it difficult to achieve organic growth and in fact organic reach is trending downwards finishing 2020 down 5.2% on the year prior. For context, this was on top of a decrease of 5.5% in 2019 and 7.7% in 2018 (Cooper, 2021).
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| Figure 10. Cooper (2021) |
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| Figure 11 |
Digital Platform 2: Instagram
Launched in 2010 by founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, Instagram has 1.6 billion monthly active users and revenue of $6.8 billion (Walsh, 2021).
Instagram's largest demographic group is also the 25-34 age bracket of whom 50.8% are female (Omnicore, 2021) but it is very much the platform of choice for 75% of 18-24 year olds (Walsh, 2021). Because of these demographics and the analysis suggesting the Rachel Jones persona is not very active on Instagram means it has been ruled out as the main platform for this campaign.
Instagram's early focus was on photographs but it has since evolved to include video and in 2018, shoppable posts were introduced (Figure 13). Shoppable posts have provided a real boost for product-based business who are now able to connect with Instagram users and lead them straight through to their eCommerce sites all with the click of a link (Walsh, 2021).
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| Figure 13. Instagram shoppable post example |
Digital Platform 3: YouTube
Launched in 2005 by founders Jawed Karim, Steve Chen and Chad Hurly, YouTube has 2 billion monthly active users and revenue of $19.6 billion (Walsh, 2021).
YouTube has a much broader reach in terms of age groups and appeals slightly more to men with 56% of global users being male (Omnicore, 2021). According to Omnicore (2021), 37% of those aged 18-34 are not just watching YouTube daily, they are binge-watching. Due to these demographics, YouTube has also been ruled out as the platform for this campaign.
YouTube was the platform that focused on video content from its inception which makes it ideally placed to capitalise on this growth area of video marketing. It's also a pretty good search engine in its own right as well as a social media platform.
Advertising on YouTube is varied with a number of different formats available (Figure 14). Each format is designed to reach different audiences so it is important businesses are clear about what they want to achieve (Haslam, 2018).
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| Figure 14. YouTube ad formats |
Evaluation of the digital platform's suitability against the content source and the buyer journey
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| Figure 15 |
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