Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you will know that Facebook announced a new mobile app last week called Paper. The premise of the app is to focus on content and provide the user with a slicker, distraction-free Facebook experience.
Paper was the first app invented by the internal group “Facebook Creative Labs”, who will be creating new apps to extend and improve the Facebook experience.
Featuring a full-screen design with large, striking images and a layout reminiscent of FlipBoard, this app puts content front and center. Users can select categories like “Headlines,” “Tech,” “Lol,” and “Planet,” where human editors will gather and arrange content from news sources worldwide. Additionally, a section labeled “Facebook” showcases friends’ and brands’ status updates and activities presented as “Stories.”
But will Paper save Facebook, whose death has been predicted more than once, and how can brands use this app to promote their business and content?
Paper offers a fresh approach to consuming Facebook content, combining news with the social aspects of the platform, which revitalizes an established service. Additionally, the content shared in users’ feeds may not always come from brands they follow, so if your content appears on Paper, it’s an excellent opportunity to reach more casual users.
So, fancy using Paper in your social media marketing strategy? Here are five tips to make sure you get the most out of Facebook’s latest feature.
1) Create Unique Content
This goes without saying, but it is more important than ever with the introduction of Paper. Unique blogs that users will not have seen elsewhere, creative images and informative and entertaining videos created in-house will do extremely well on Paper (excuse the pun!).
While you should be creating unique content already as part of your strategy, it’s important to make sure that you’re not just regurgitating information about a topic that’s already been covered elsewhere without putting your own spin on it. Where possible, try and tap into a subject that hasn’t been covered too much, to boost your chances of appearing in the elusive Paper sections.
2) Plan Your Content
With the introduction of Paper, having a well-thought-out content strategy and calendar will really boost your social reach.
It’s no longer enough to just post a random funny picture of jokey article that you found on someone else’s Facebook page, now you need to make a structured plan to create your own high-quality, unique and shareable content consistently. Having a plan means that you’ll know what you’ve already covered, what events are coming up in your niche that you can add your unique thoughts to and what sort of content belongs on which social media platform.
3) Make Your Content Strategy Section-Friendly
So you’ve created some unique content, put it into a calendar and you’re good to go, right? Wrong!
As Paper’s content offerings are broken down into different sections, make sure that whatever content you produce falls into one or more of these sections to maximise the social reach (the more sections it relates to, the more chances of it getting chosen!). The beauty of Paper is that it won’t be a jumble of random content like the standard Facebook newsfeed, so make sure that what you create isn’t jumbled to really make the most of the app.
4) Plan For Future Advertising
We know that the guys at Facebook love a bit of advertising revenue, and it’s also now apparent what a great platform for advertising Paper will be, so it’s only going to be a matter of time before they start offering ad space to brands.
If your company has the budget for some good old Facebook ads, then start planning content that will fit into Paper’s sections and will really benefit from some promotion. There’s no harm in being prepared!
5) Visual Is Key
Paper is heavily focused on images and videos, featuring full screen images with panoramic functionality, as well as autoplaying videos within the app.
Don’t miss out on this visually appealing platform by only creating text content. Speak to the creative team in your company about making some high-quality images and videos to incorporate into your content strategy for Facebook 2.0.
So, what do you think? Will Paper revolutionise a tired platform like Facebook? If so, do you have any more marketing tips to add or do you disagree with mine?