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Cosmopolitan Magazine's Social Media Director Elisa Benson
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GUEST BLOG—By Kelsey Lundstrom, Media
Industry
Newsletter (min)--Social media isn't a fleeting
phenomenon. It's here to stay and, if navigated correctly, it drives engagement
and traffic and offers a daily touch-point platform. Although it's now a
critical tool for publishers, some are still struggling to get the most out of
social—whether it's their content strategy or organizational structure.
Here, min chats with Elisa Benson, social
director for some of the largest women's titles including Seventeen.com, Cosmopolitan.com
and Redbookmag.com, about social
media teams, engagement and more.
min: Is it
necessary for publishers today to have editors and teams solely devoted to
social media? Or can existing editors wear multiple hats? This post first
appeared in min on October 15, 2015.
Elisa Benson: Publishers absolutely need social
media teams—the same way you need writers and designers and video editors and
photographers and other people with specific skill sets. When I first started
tweeting awards shows for Cosmopolitan, photos didn’t even show up on Twitter.
And now live-tweeting is about creating video clips and GIFs in real time. The
social landscape changes very quickly, and it’s crucial to have people paying
attention to those changes and steering the brand. Just because you have a
personal Twitter account and a few thousand followers doesn’t mean you can
navigate a Facebook algorithm change, or create a compelling Snapchat story, or
understand what Instagram photos drive boosts in followers and which ones
don’t.
min: How do you define 'engagement' for your own terms, and
how does that definition change across platforms?
Benson: Engagement is the best indicator
that your social posts aren’t boring. Take Instagram—a photo can be beautiful
and technically well executed, but that doesn’t mean people will leave a
comment or even 'like' it. You pay attention to the engagement metrics—which
just means the sum total of comments and likes and shares on a post—so you know
your followers care.
min: Give us some examples of social content that really
resonated with your audience, vs. something that didn't? What can you learn
from that for future campaigns?
Benson: Cosmo has been growing insanely fast
on Instagram. I like to say that funny is the new pretty. We post jokes and
funny stuff that our followers tag their friends in, and that’s how we grow. A
year ago, I think I still thought that Instagram should be for really beautiful
photos. And it’s true that if you post a picture of flowers it will get a ton
of likes. But now I have much higher ambitions for what I want our feed to look
and feel like.
min: What's the best piece of viral content you've seen
this year—that wasn't from a Hearst brand?
Benson: For
sure #TheDress, which Buzzfeed broke. The story was so irresistibly shareable.
You couldn’t help but text it to your entire family.
min: What are the sites you oversee doing with video? Is
that where everyone needs to be focused right now?
Benson: In terms of video, I think it’s
helpful to think about our audience as the auto-play generation—they mostly
watch video that is shared with them by friends and which plays automatically
and practically magically on their phones. They decide in two seconds if they
want to keep watching. That’s a real change from a few years ago, where online
video was still being treated like a watered down version of TV, with series
built around personalities.
min: What's the next big platform push we should be looking
out for? Where are you seeing engagement/traction decline in terms of other
platforms?
Benson: Snapchat—I think we’ve just
scratched the surface of what it can mean for brands.
min: What social network can you personally not live
without? Why?
Benson: Lately I’m obsessed with Instagram.
“Do it for the Instagram” is like the new YOLO.
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