Pinterest, Reddit, Quora, and YouTube
Last year I went to Pinterest in San Francisco to learn about the philosophy behind the platform. As cofounders Evan Sharp and Ben Silbermann explained, Pinterest is about creating a life you love. Evan said, “Words are the language of knowledge; images are the language of dreams.” This means that Pinterest is more about curating your dream life for yourself than making your life look great for others.
So how can brands benefit from this behavior?
Erica Chan Coffman runs a huge online lifestyle blog, Honestly WTF, that curates fashion, art, travel, interior design, and DIY content. Pinterest is perfect for her readers, and her 6 million followers love nothing more than a stylish image of an adorably designed nursery, a clean pink desk, a fashionable rattan purse, or a stacked gold necklace. Many times they save the images she curates, click through, and buy. (Erica often gets a small commission.)1
If your brand doesn’t specialize in beautiful images of beautiful things, should you forget about Pinterest?
Not necessarily. Ruth Soukup first built a huge Pinterest following around her popular blog, Living Well Spending Less. Pinterest is full of moms interested in recipes and DIY crafting solutions, so even though Ruth’s posts weren’t necessarily ready for the pages of Martha Stewart Living like Erica’s, they still attracted a large following.2
Her efforts also showed that businesses that aren’t design focused can also have success. When Ruth started a new business, Elite Blogging Academy, she proved just that. On that account she doesn’t share images, but rather eye-catching graphics that link to informative articles about blogging. (And, sometimes, information about how to enroll in her Academy.)3
More than 2.5 million people a month now consume her blogging-related content.
Ultimately, even though Pinterest is less about sharing with others than about curating for yourself, it can still be a great tool for some brands.
REDDIT AND QUORA
Earlier in the book we talked about why asking questions is such a good strategy to generate engagement on social media. In fact, question-asking is so effective that there are entire platforms built up around it, and Instagram now has an Ask Me Anything function you can use in their Stories.
In-depth questions or ones that beg different opinions can be even more effective. This is the entire basis of the social media platform Quora, which gets 300 million monthly unique users. With more than four hundred thousand topic question threads, it’s clear that people love sharing what they know.4
Reddit’s AMA platform works according to the same idea. AMA stands for “Ask Me Anything” and refers to a written online interview that occurs between a host and the public participants who attend the written interview and ask questions. Currently, there are 18 million users on Reddit, and the most famous AMA ever hosted was in 2012 when Barack Obama attracted 3 million page views. On Reddit you can start a chat about anything, and folks will respond with questions.5
As I write this, a teacher in Borneo and a small rodent are both offering to answer questions about their different areas of expertise.6
I’m coming to the end of 3 years teaching in the Brunei jungle, Borneo AMA
I’m 27, my partner and I have had great time here and travelled to some awesome places near and far to here!
My rat’s hands work on my phone screen, I’m gonna let her answer some questions. AMA. Her name is Peach and she’s 1 year old. She’s hairless. She’s extremely pink.
What more could I want?
To make Reddit work for your brand, follow these two key guiding principles:
1. Bring in someone people want to ask questions of.
2. Create context around the open-ended discussion.
Everyone wants to ask questions of a rat. And of Bill Gates. Luckily for us, they both offer opportunities. Bill Gates, in fact, does annual AMAs on Reddit, and he does a good job of coming with context around the discussions.7
He introduced one by saying:
I’m back for my third AMA. I’m happy to talk about anything. Philanthropy, technology, what it’s like to drink water made from human waste. . . . (Short answer: Just like drinking any other kind of water, except that people get a little freaked out by the whole idea.) I hope you’ll take a few minutes to look at the annual letter that melons and I just published (gatesletter.com). This year we make a case that in the next 15 years, life will improve faster for people in poor countries than it ever has before.8
And remember, even if you’re not using Reddit, the strategy of a one-off or serial AMA works on other platforms.
YOUTUBE
YouTube can be a great tool for many brands. One of the simplest ways to get started is by including video testimonials in your social media marketing.
Earlier we talked about Hard Exercise Works, the high-intensity fitness center in Florida with dozens of locations. They came to me concerned that their marketing was directed too much toward elite athletes and not enough toward the real people who work out in their gym. In their BrandScript, we identified that their character was an everyday person and the internal problem she faced was not believing she could do the hard work to get in shape.
That’s why it was so important that the testimonials they used in their marketing visually show that real people could really do hard workouts. And that’s where YouTube came in.
Remember that video testimonial they had showing women in their gym reacting to a New York Times article that said that women couldn’t do pull-ups? Few things could be more motivating to women sitting at home, not sure they can do it.
That said, the biggest mistake people make when it comes to social media marketing on YouTube is not realizing that many of the same strategies that apply to written content also apply to video. The key is in remembering that even on other platforms your content is often a mix of different types of media.
Remember the #LetThemLeave campaign, which successfully freed three missionaries? That campaign kicked off with a YouTube video where Thomas Kemper, general secretary of the United Methodist Church, encouraged folks to sign the petition and share it using the hashtag on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
Crossover like this happens all the time. On Reddit, a celebrity who does an AMA proves it is really them by including an image or video at the start of the AMA. Bill Gates likes to take it to the next level. In one of his annual AMAs, he recorded a funny YouTube video to go along with the written content in a Reddit AMA to prove it was him.9,10 Another time, he sent a package of gifts to a Reddit user who participated in his AMA. One of the virtual items in the package was a video from famed YouTube vlogger Hank Green.11 It was a great way to continue the social media conversation and engagement across multiple platforms.
Speaking of Hank Green, he and his brother John Green may just be the kings of YouTube vlogging. Back in 2007, they began a fun project where they stopped communicating via text or emails for an entire year and instead conversed only through daily public vlogs posted on YouTube. The success of their still-thriving “vlogbrothers” YouTube channel has now expanded into eleven other channels and more than 12 million subscribers.12
Although the Green brothers do use other forms of social media these days, their bread and butter is YouTube. One reason is that YouTube offers a way for users to accessibly watch and rewatch videos in a way that other social media platforms haven’t completely mastered (which means that content creators can reliably earn from advertising dollars).
Green describes his bizarre career, “I’m just interested in stuff and so like I will find myself on Wikipedia just reading about things and part of the reason is that’s part of my job. . . . finding out interesting things about the world turns into an episode, and that episode turns into money. So it’s kind of work, which is wonderful.”13
Thankfully for the rest of us, it delivers great value. Teachers regularly praise the Green brothers for entertaining, educational content that works well in the classroom.
Importantly, the Green brothers show that success with video marketing on YouTube isn’t about saying the exact right words, but rather adhering to the overall message. Or rather, creating multimedia content that shares your BrandScript.14 In their case: “creating resources that allow for more valuable interaction in the classroom.”15
Sometimes your stories on YouTube don’t need any words at all. As a parent of three toddlers in the digital age, I am constantly amazed by the riveting content that exists on YouTube for humans who can’t even speak yet.
Take toy unboxing videos. Or mixing slime. Or a recent favorite: lava.
Whatever form of media you use—text, images, video—your brand’s social media marketing goal is the same: to share a clear, engaging story. And if an eleven-minute video of a lava flow working tirelessly to slowly crush a Coke can isn’t a clear, engaging story, I just don’t know what is.