Content Is Queen - Part 2 "The 4Cs of Next-Generation Commerce" - Ashley Heather

As brands and retailers we entice consumers with beautiful words and images that make our culture and core values resonate This we call Content As one of the 4Cs of nextgeneration social commerceamp8212along with Commerce Community and Contextamp8212it39s a big part of how we sell products There are selling points too qualities and features that differentiate our products from the herd Text images and rich mediaamp8212all of itamp8212is ContentIn increasing numbers we brands are becoming producers curators and publishers of content Often it39s to support product It can be direct as when fashion sites put together looks to provide contextual relevance for an itemamp8212or simply a wealth of product details Or it can be pure lifestyle branding independent of product to buoy up the brandamp8212promoting its culture values point of view and community The term branded content many in the industry use to mean gratuitously entertaining collateral but really in effective marketing all content is branded Content is the currency of branding It39s how we make our dreams compelling to othersNow in the age of social media it39s a twoway street We produce content for our consumersamp8212and our customers produce content for and about us which we can curate amplify and broadcast if we so choose It39s a beautiful dance powered by digital technologyWe remember how it was back in the early stages of the ecommerce evolution Many major retailers initially saw their online channels as a way to reach customers out there in the hinterlandsamp8212same as they had their catalog business These folks were necessarily removed from the real experience of the brand which lived in fashion mags and the exciting NYC flagshipamp8212stuff of pure fantasyamp8212making it all the more exciting because it was to some extent inaccessible Dressing up your site back then to look like a million bucks wasn39t really the point After all designer outlet stores were doing just fine A bland templated website was good enough for valueconscious convenience shoppers At the very least it proved itself capable of generating positive ROI But this situation was not to last longGuardians of the brand had looked askance discounting the web as a clunky nerd thing When they finally awakened to its true potential they were typically aghast quotOur website rotsquot is something one got used to hearing from the marketing and creative types at the timeamp8212off the record of course As the web got more popular everyoneamp8212not just geographically remote customersamp8212were checking out your brand online and they were judging you by what they saw They were even Googling you personally The stewards of the brand didn39t even try to hide their embarrassment What these early ecommerce sites typically represented was 180degrees at odds with what these soldiers of the brand had been working so hard to promote in other channels They were in painTheir initial answer was Flash HTML menus and confining grids just didn39t say luxury Beautiful animations they were confident made the experience far more emotional And for a time those Flashmastered sites appeared to us all as truly class acts However several extremely important downsides soon became apparent First the consumer was annoyed In survey after survey a clear consensus emerged quotStop trying so hard to seduce me I just want to buy somethingquot Secondly the search engines were not impressed Unable to read Flash sites they sank them in them in their rankings Additionally thirdparty offsite contentamp8212read bloggersamp8212couldn39t link to the relevant pages further diminishing the natural digital footprint of the brand So the scions of best practice recanted Flash was not the answer we had hoped forWhat really started to matter was blogs As their influence has increased many brands have even taken up the challenge of developing their own to communicate a uniquely branded point of view and expertise Expert content has been the cornerstone of authority marketing for a long time Something was all knew deep down was that even if people weren39t reading it they were happy it was there But influential blogs they do read In certain areas like fashion where subjectivity reigns and consumer electronics for which there is such a dizzying glut of technical information experts and curators of content can present a cogent and unified vision that is compelling to many shoppers1 They read to learn in the hopes of becoming prosumer intheknow experts of the brand And so we use blogs to lure in the customerBut it is not all just lovely words and education On our blogs we highlight certain trends or items while linking to specific merchandise offerings in the hopes of driving traffic Additionally there is SEO Consistently hammering away at certain key subjects goes a long way towards raising our ranking putting us on the map for many who might otherwise never know we exist In other words driving traffic to us and ultimately our products makes all content ultimately part of a larger strategyamp8212ie pull in traffic Years ago it was often sufficient to build an amazing site Word would get around Consumers would find you But no longer All fantasies of virally snowballing momentum aside the quotbuild it and they will comequot mentality has given way to the realization that with so many campaigns competing for consumer attention those unsupported with a committed marketing outreach effort will not likely succeedAs the influence of the expert waned there came to fill the void a new kind of celebrity content that went way beyond mere product endorsement Retailers have been using celebrities39 personal appearances for years as a draw to get consumers instore while they promote their latest album or film More and more however we were asking for their point of view on style and product Suddenly it was experts who were becoming the new expertsamp8212even if ultimately it was only on themselves2 Still consumers were very interested to know what they wore how they lived what they liked Long a staple of glossy magazines retailers eventually caught onamp8212eg JLo39s top five picks of the seasonThe advent of UserGenerated Content took us all by storm In a vibrant twist consumers themselves are now by far the largest producers of Content Everyone39s a star No one anticipated the degree to which so many people were hungry for an audience and the lengths they were willing to go to get one I hope you agreeamp8212it39s exciting to live in the midst of a huge popular creativity movement with affordable consumergrade technologies that can make anyone look like a pro sort ofUnfortunately much of it isn39t so terribly inspiredamp8212and some of it is jokester or downright hostile This latter component of the mix of course terrifies many brands discouraging them from opening themselves up to a social media that would give anyone the opportunity to publicly broadcast a negative statementamp8212let alone engaging in ambitious and active campaignsBut the worries were for naught Brand communities have proven their natural corrective capacityamp8212inciting fans to vociferously jump to the defense of the brands they love If things are as they should be negative comments get lost in the sheer profusion of more positive contributions And people just sort of expect that there will always be jerks Moreover correctly handled a negative comment can be transformed into an opportunity to make compelling appeasements to win the hearts of allamp8212quotWe39re happy to take care of that for you Mr Smith Please accept our apologiesquot It39s also our chance to listen and learnYes a freeforall to some extent it remains But it doesn39t have to be just one big mess With the aid of design professionals brands can gracefully weave together the vast profusion of UGC creating concepts and frames to gracefully unify it all And then there is the sortamp8212best things most liked first that is and the garbage way at the end many pages down It39s there but no one really sees it We39ve adapted by learning to amplify the best stuff and let the rest just quietly disappear Current UGC bestpractice strategies enormously empower the brand allowing us to hero the consumer sentiments and expressions that really resonate for us It can be an informal callout on the wall or featuring it in a campaign that stretches all the way across your digital footprint Not incidentally the like button has been very natural aid in bubbling the most exciting UGC up to the top By filtering and sorting with moderation technologies we can also make sure only the appropriate stuff gets seen making it failsafe to publish it all openly even on the front of our store or website where thousands may see itConsumers our potential customers among them are demanding the right to get involved with every aspect of what we do Content is how they mean to do it Clearly we39ve been growing over the years Whereas the early web was a nononsense information delivery system it has in the last decade been steadily morphing into sophisticated entertainment One reason is the evolution of Content Lately faster upload times for the mainstream consumer have led to a buzzing proliferation of rich content including product shots in teeming multitude and videoThe question is where to put it all It has long been a challenge for brands to organize sort and deliver content in a way that is effectively integrated with the ecommerce shopping experience so as to be both unobtrusive and relevant After all we don39t want all that branding to get in the way of shopping And we don39t want to silo it off on its own down a side corridor either where the only ones who will see and read it are kids doing their homework Nor do we want to use our content links to draw the consumer away from the point of purchase Best it is instead to integrate that content smoothly knitting it throughout the shopping experienceThat consumer experience is not all in our hands There are more and more places to publish nowadays from affiliate sites to Facebook and Twitter We39re putting our content out there now to where the consumers are in the hopes that we can lure and link them back to our shop This combined with the increasing influence of thirdparty editorial and customer postings on the Social Network is changing the landscape As noted in our recent blog entry customers are no longer coming exclusively through the homepage as the main gateway but often instead going straight to the item level page where they are apt to miss Content that is not tightly woven into this primary layerThere needs to be a balance Stuff it all on the itemlevel page and it39s just so much clutter Page real estate is valuable especially for luxury and fashion retailers for whom white space is a priceless branding statement But for allamp8212 More elegant integration with dynamic content is not only desirable At this stage in the game it is imperative3This necessitates savvy design and strategy It may mean limiting content to what is contextually relevant to each customer on a very personalized basis which I39ll explore in a later post Or we could in the end become even more assiduous producers curators and publishers finding innovative ways to get the purchase button unobtrusively into our continuous streams of content Likely the isolated item level page and our siloed content will soon merge to become one rich and seamless whole It is all part of a larger trend of businesses learning how to make life buyable Walk through your day See something you like Point and click Learn more or just buy itNext in this fivepart series on the 4Cs of nextgeneration commerce we discuss the impact of Community Click here to read the previous posts1 So powerful is the online impact of a keen editorial vision that not a few blogs now draw awesomely huge followings One recent trend Some are now even transforming into retail brands with their own merchandise offerings2 For a while recently it seemed like no one really cared at all what the stuffy experts had to say they seem of late to have cleaned up their rep but stars are beautiful people consumers can easily identify with3 It also needs to be consistent across all channels Many are still customprocessing individual assets to fit into all the different templates At first the task seems daunting stretching current staff to their limit But fortunately a new generation of technology platforms have risen to the challenge with the builtin efficiency of unified multichannelintegrated Content Management Systems for simple onetime uploadsdotbox CEO Ashley Heather is one of the pioneers at the intersection of ecommerce social interaction and locationaware services His companies include Musikube and Entertainment Media Works which brought us StarStyle StyleLogue and Plinkingamp8212in 2004 among the first Social Commerce websites In his native London he was the lead digital consultant at Impact Plus and an executive at Ford Motor Company He is a frequent speaker at media industry events including iBreakfast CTIA Wireless The Digital Coast Roundtable MoMeMo Social Media Week and is an Associate Member of IADAS He can be reached at ashleydotboxcomRead all Ashley39s MediaBizBloggers commentaries at dotboxCheck us out on Facebook at MediaBizBloggerscomFollow our Twitter updates MediaBizBloggerThe opinions and points of view expressed in this commentary are exclusively the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaBizBloggerscom management or associated bloggers MediaBizBloggers is an open thought leadership platform and readers may share their comments and opinions in response to all commentaries

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Content Is Queen - Part 2 "The 4Cs of Next-Generation Commerce" - Ashley Heather

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