Branded Media 8: Feedback Loop
“The haters always scream the loudest.”
– Tucker Max
Of course you have to monitor the feedback and metrics surrounding your branded media. Unfortunately, monitoring alone is useless.
You also need proper analysis, which is not easy and also useless by itself. The value is when your analysis informs your planning and publishing.
The previous articles in this series (An Overview, Vision & Value-Add, Idea Generation, Scope & Assignment, Project Management, Approval & Publishing, and Distribution) were about creating, publishing and distributing content. This article provides tips and strategies for optimizing the final step of the content marketing cycle: the Feedback Loop.
The goal of content marketing is to establish and enhance your relationship with customers, both existing and potential. Relationships are not easy, so a comprehensive approach is ideal. You regularly publish articles and videos that your customers find valuable. You pay attention to their reactions, which informs future publishing. This results in a dynamic canon of works much more effective than any single video or article could be.
The Feedback Loop is the relationship stage of a comprehensive publishing cycle
Two Words of Caution: Eschew Oversimplification
Human behaviors are inherently difficult to understand. Your data only addresses small slices of your customers’ behaviors. Therefore, quick, literal conclusions are often misleading (like more views are always better). Instead, you need to be diligent about amassing as much information as possible, analyzing patterns and checking assumptions.
With enough information, though, you can identify trends and outliers, and contrast them to your benchmarks. You’ll learn to read the moods and preferences of your customers like you do with friends and family. But you won’t get there without a sophisticated Feedback Loop.
Understand Normal
First, develop a baseline of current metrics and normal behavior. Begin with your content metrics: views, visits, followers, likes, shares and anything else you already track. You’ll want this data both collected together and isolated per outlet (blog, Facebook, Twitter, etc).
Add snapshots of your core business metrics, such as revenue, closing rates, cost of customer acquisition, retention rates, and/or any other primary drivers of profitability. In the end, you measure the success of your content by the growth of your business. Unless you’re a media company, content metrics don't directly affect profit. The business metrics are what count, but the feedback loop is too slow to inform your publishing cycle. You need other ways to track and adjust, for which content metrics are great.
Also, develop an understanding of normal online behaviors for the internet in general. For example, sensationalistic posts get more views than balanced coverage. Bikinis are shared more than infographics. While you may not be publishing much of either, you will qualify your metrics by the type of content.
You’re the Expert: Hold the Course
You know your products and services best, and how to get the most out of them. You know your successful customers and how they integrate your brand into their lives and businesses. Your content reflects all this (as per the second article in this series, Vision & Value-Add).
With media in general, people don’t know what they want from you because they don’t know what’s possible. If you ask them, you’ll constantly pursue a faster horse. Instead, be deliberate in your approach and stick with it. Responses to content evolve over time. The very steadiness of your publishing changes your market’s reaction. If you flip-flop strategies, you never discover your content’s true impact.
That said, use the Feedback Loop to refine what types of content you publish in which forms, where and when. You seek the most effective ways to reach and affect your market, not to alter the primary messaging.
Infrastructure: Enforce the Loop
Collecting data by itself is useless. Even analyzing and interpreting the data is useless. The value only comes when valid interpretations are fed back into the system to inform your publishing cycle.
Watch out for silos in your production environment. This is obvious in theory, but it requires a large effort in practice. If you don’t deliberately force the feedback into the system, it won’t happen. Bring analytics and feedback into every Idea Generation meeting. Even if you don’t have strong conclusions about the data, incorporate what you do have into every discussion.
Only make small adjustments to the content, especially if the data is inconclusive. You need time to normalize responses. Plus, excessive changes undermine customer trust.
In the beginning, experiment with how you distribute content among your various outlets (as per the previous article on Distribution). Be as methodical as you can, and track the responses. People are more tolerant of variations in distribution than in the content itself.
Over time, slowly shift the balance of content toward what is most effective, and regularly introduce small tests for new content (bullets before cannonballs).
No Magic Formula
I wish I could give you a simple formula for what makes content work. Over the past 15 years, I have been responsible for over 6,000 videos, articles, web shows, TV shows, and even books. I have analyzed responses, reactions and engagements throughout. There is no simple cause-and-effect formula for engaging people successfully. It really is a dynamic interplay of many factors.
The solution, though, is the high-volume, comprehensive branded media strategy described in this series of articles. Collectively, the content creates a strong, reliable dynamic with your customers that transcends individual pieces. It’s like fishing with a net instead of a hook.
That said, there are a few subtleties of analysis worthy of extra attention.
Qualification: Content vs Distribution
One of the big challenges when interpreting feedback is distinguishing between the reaction to the content versus where and when it was published. For example, breaking news reduces engagement for other content, while a particularly bland day might see higher engagement. Over time, these external variations become normalized, and you can get a better sense of what works best for your customers.
Look for patterns in the reactions to different types of content. Control for length, topic and theme. Recognize that there are natural variations in execution that can make similar pieces perform differently. These are more reasons not to jump to quick conclusions.
Qualification: Popularity vs Influence
The purpose of your branded media is to build relationships. Views are relevant and easy to measure, but not the goal. Influence is more important, but harder to measure.
For example, when I was Managing Editor of the CrossFit Journal, we noticed that articles heavy in theory got fewer total views than the majority of our articles. We later discovered that they were referenced more frequently by key members of the community. In other words, theory articles were less popular but more influential.
Ideally, all of your content would be both popular and influential. If some of your content isn’t as popular, don’t abandon it until you’re confident it’s not influential.
Qualification: Happy Customers
Another important challenge in assessing feedback is that most happy customers don't show up in metrics. They see your content in their newsfeed, read the summary, recognize the effort, and move on. They have identified your name and logo, been reminded of how the brand can be used, and had the relationship reinforced. But because they didn’t click, like, or share, none of it appears in your metrics.
Over time, these frequent reinforcements show up in overall business growth, greater retention rates, and other core business metrics. And even then, there’s no concrete proof that your content caused the growth. This can be frustrating, but don’t confuse hard-to-prove with non-existent.
Qualification: Outliers
Pay extra attention to outliers of any kind. They could be in the form of a home run or a complete dud. They might have generated enormous passion (positive or negative). In any case, dig in to see what happened. You might get a profound insight into your market. Or, it could be just a fluke. In any case, experiment further.
Managing Comments
The internet gives equal voice to all commenters. Unhappy people comment more than happy people. Disaffected teenagers in their parent’s basement get the same access as world-class reviewers. There will always be haters out there.
I like to read all comments quickly with thick skin and a grain of salt. Some of the criticisms will be legitimate, and every once in a while, a random commenter will have a great idea. Either of these can be immensely valuable.
Minimize your own commenting. Put your voice in the great content you publish, and let the world discuss it. I’ve seen other “authorities” recommend the opposite: thanking every positive comment and addressing every negative comment. I believe this weakens the brand. Instead, only respond to serious or insightful comments that require engagement.
Disregard pure haters and trolls. They have no interest in resolution. Everyone expects them to be ignored, and responding just encourages them. Their comments can be deleted, but never delete a comment legitimately trying to address an issue. This reduces your credibility.
Defend your brand against legitimate attacks (not trolls). The customer is not always right. Clarify confusion. Fight fact-based accusations with your own facts, not personal attacks. Your customers will like you even more when you stand up for yourself.
In a situation where you have made a mistake or done something wrong, acknowledge and apologize quickly. Do whatever you can to fix it now, while doing everything needed to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Conclusion
A high-volume, comprehensive strategy for branded media is ideal for building relationships with your customers. Produce quality, useful content, and stick with it. This is your main voice online. Comment sparingly, only when the situation requires it.
Track and analyze as much data as practical. Check your assumptions. Draw conclusions slowly and carefully about what kinds of content work best in which forms, where and when. Be aggressive in forcing the feedback into your publishing cycle, making regular, small adjustments. Then reap the benefits of an increasingly loyal customer base.
This article is the eighth in a series. See the previous articles: An Overview, Vision & Value-Add, Idea Generation, Scope & Assignment, Project Management, Approval & Publishing, and Distribution.