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Shannon’s Pinterest Adventure

Pinterest is a website I have used off and on since the early days of high school, but I have never considered using it as a place to get anything other than aesthetically pleasing pictures of things like Halloween decorations, cheesy quotes and outfits I love, but will never actually buy. This week, I am going to dig a little deeper into Pinterest by seeing what is beyond the photos I typically would just pin to a board and then never look at again.

When I opened up my Pinterest home screen this morning, I was greeted with a cool picture of a girl running down a stormy road. Typically, this is a photo I would just pin (which, I did pin this anyways) and not think anything else about. But this week, I clicked the link attached to the photo and was taken to Trail & Kale. This is the first one I have done this for and it’s a total hit. Sign! Me! Up! Upon taking just a couple minutes sifting through their site, I realized that they have some awesome photos which made me look back at their Pinterest profile and figure out that they have a lot of pins and a lot of followers considering they are bloggers. I would be curious to know how much of their traffic comes from Pinterest because they obviously know what running pinners are looking for! (*hits follow on Trail & Kale’s Instagram and Pinterest*)

Photograph from Trail & Kale Pinterest

While it has been around since 2010, in 2020, Pinterest has 265 million monthly users and it drives 33% more traffic to shopping sites than Facebook. In 2018, 50% of the new Pinterest sign-ups were men and, in 2017-2018, 80% of the new Pinterest sign-ups were from outside the United States. Two-thirds of the pins on Pinterest represent brands and products, and advertising on Pinterest makes a $2 profit for every dollar spent. This year, Pinterest is the fifth most popular social networking app in the U.S. and, between 2017 and 2018, it saw a 50% increase in small business advertisers. Thirty-four percent of people between the age of 18 and 49 use Pinterest, and high-income and educated U.S. households are most likely to be on the platform. (99 firms)

When it comes to popularity of pins, ones with descriptions of 100 to 200 words are the most popular and the top-performing categories are art, art supplies and hobbies. Ninety-five percent of millennials have discovered products on Pinterest and 72% of pinners say the platform inspires them to shop even when they aren’t looking for anything. These shoppers spend 29% more than non-pinners do and 61% of pinners have discovered new brands or products from promoted pins. (99 firms) Considering I have never personally bought anything directly from Pinterest, I have been really interested learning about how many people do! This is great information for brands to have (especially one with as great of products and photography as Tracksmith) when they are trying to reach customers. 

Fabletics’ Pinterest profile gets 9.9 million monthly views and currently has 106k followers. It is worth noting that Pinterest gives brands of this size a checkmark to verify that they are official, and they have a “Shop” tab where price tags are featured on the pins without pinners having to open them up. This is a tab that regular users do not have.

Photograph from Fabletics’ Pinterest profile

Overall, Pinterest content is well-produced and high-quality. A lot of the photos that are posted to the site look like they were taken with a professional or nice camera rather than a phone. Anything really goes on Pinterest as there are graphics that are completely text, videos, landscape photos, portrait photos, infographics and charts, and more. People’s creativity shines through in the content published here.

The algorithm I now have from what I typically search for and pin, as well as those I follow, gives me a feed that is exactly what I want to look at. This makes me think that Pinterest is great at customizing an experience based on your interest and history on the platform.

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Shannon’s Strava Adventure

Is it obvious yet that I really like running and talking about running and reading about running? Well in case it hasn’t been made totally clear yet, I have decided to take a deeper look into Strava this week as it is a platform that has a lot of unknowns to me, but is very important to runners as well as running brands (hint: Tracksmith). 

While I downloaded Strava to my phone about a month ago with every intention of knowing the app inside and out by now, I haven’t taken the time to really understand its offerings, the best ways to interact with brands or anything else really other than how to follow a few of my absolute favorite runners (Emily Abbate, Kilian Jornet, Lucy Bartholomew).

The first thing I have found in my research is that people who use Strava are not only active on bikes, in pools and on their feet. They are also active on the Strava app as they shared more than 1 billion activities in the 13 months leading up to February 2020. According to a Strava blog post from earlier this year, 20 activities are uploaded to Strava every second, 1,100+ professional athletes use Strava, 4.9 billion kudos were given between athletes in 2019 (kudos on Strava = likes on Facebook), and there are over four million photos shared on Strava each week. Something I didn’t expect about Strava was how awesome the photos are that runners share from their routes. They are less edited than the ones you would find on other social media platforms and are often just a snap of something cool they saw while getting their miles in. It definitely brings posts to life. 

Most recently, Strava launched Local Legends which is a new way for users to compete against one another while celebrating grit, discipline and passion. How Local Legends work is, to win, you must be the user that logs the most efforts on a specific segment (route) over 90 days. This new feature is just one example of the way that Strava encourages friendly competition. Strava is also known for its interactive challenges that users can join, some of which are hosted by brands. For example, right now, Nuun is hosting one that is challenging participants to do 10 total hours of activity in two weeks. Participants who complete the challenge get a completion badge (equipped with Nuun’s logo) as well as discounts on Nuun products. So the participants get something, but Nuun gets brand awareness in return - especially when finishers post their badge on their feed for all their followers to see. 

Photo pulled from Strava

Strava thinks their user base is interesting. So much so that they launched a survey to 25,000 runners in nine different countries around why they run. From their findings, they were able to identify five types of runners including: passionate runners, invested runners, fitness runners, mindful runners, reluctant runners. Of all the groups, health is a primary concern for them with 80% saying at least one physical motivation gets them out the door. A finding I personally loved to see was that goals (41%) and workout plans (41%) motivate runners moreso than guilt (15%) or checking a responsibility off a list (12%).

Photo pulled from Strava blog 

Brands use Strava in a way that is very interactive and fun, not forced. They create clubs on behalf of the company that their fans and customers can join. There, they post about their challenges, products, runs, activities, announcements and more. These club pages also highlight members’ activities with a leaderboard that celebrates the top three athletes in the following categories: Total Time, Total Distance, Total Activity. Clubs are a great way to boost brand awareness and connect with your target audience in an organic way. 

One takeaway I have from digging into Strava this week that is worth noting is how user-friendly the desktop version of the app is. It’s simple to navigate, but also an awesome way to check out your (and the people your following’s) running achievements throughout the week rather than scrolling through a tiny iPhone feed. This experience will definitely make me add a Strava bookmark to my Chrome!

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Shannon’s Lifestyle Publications Adventure

Very rarely, I have to do lifestyle media research for my clients. Typically, I am searching publications for technical coverage for B2B and enterprise media opportunities. When I do, however, have the task of researching lifestyle publications and sections, I enjoy it and always try to make a mental note to come back to the resources for fun in my free time. Have I ever actually done this? No. Therefore, this week, I will be actively getting my news from lifestyle publications and sections to finally give myself the experience I have been promising.

Where to start? I checked out Amazon’s Best Sellers in Lifestyle & Communities Magazines and found a few that I am either interested in reading or have read before: Real Simple, Cosmopolitan, Women’s Health, Runner’s World, and Travel + Leisure. For this blog and your reading pleasure, I am going to focus on Women’s Health and Runner’s World since those are two places I could see wanting coverage for Tracksmith. The first article I started with was this extremely inspiring one on Runner’s World around an American runner, Sara Hall, placing second at the London Marathon on October 4. Something I noticed about this article, other than how much it made me want to get out for a run, was the different media included throughout. A tweet and a video interview!? Talk about great content that made me want to look at everything to learn more about the story.

Photo from Runner’s World article

Since Runner’s World only allows me four articles before I am hit with a paywall, I found it interesting to see that three out of the four articles I read didn’t have a single comment. This content seems really engaging and like something that readers would have something to say about. On other social media platforms or publications, I feel like it would for sure have gotten some reader engagement. But that doesn’t mean they don’t have an engaged readership because Runner’s World also offers Runner’s World + which has two subscription packages that offer everything from expert-led workout videos to opportunities to be featured in their magazine. I know what my wallet and I are doing this weekend!

All of the content on Runner’s World is very specific to runners with topics around marathon training, running shoes and gear, and running nutrition. This is very different from Women’s Health which covers a variety of health topics with running just being a very small one. The running content they do have, however, is not nearly as in-depth and doesn’t appear to be written by the experts we find on Runner’s World. For example, one of the articles around running found on Women’s Health is about celebrities who have run marathons. While this is definitely interesting to scroll through, it’s not going to help a competitive runner/reader reach their next personal record on a racecourse. 

Photo from Women’s Health article 

Scrolling through Women’s Health’s homepage, I was surprised to see how many of the cover photos of articles are animated. The site is very feminine and is clearly a lifestyle publication as there are no hard-news stories. Women’s Health also has opportunities for branded and sponsored content as well as editorial staff available for pitching. Based on the content on their site, they are most interested in things like product reviews for gear and food.

Through its social, Snapchat, digital and print, Women’s Health reaches millions of people, including over 16 million women in 2018.  According to Runner’s World’s 2019 media kit, it has 2.24 million readers per month with 43% being men and 57% being women. One of the great things about Runner’s World that directly aligns with their readership is that they are providing content for every kind of runner - from the elite ones to the ones that haven’t even got out the door yet. Pre-COVID times, Runner’s World had in-person events with half/full marathons and pop-ups that brands could sponsor to receive audience participation. 

Photo from Women’s Health media kit 

Overall, I think both of these sites are great resources for people who are more interested in health and exercise than they are in world news and politics. These sites are user-friendly, inspiring and have great, easy-to-digest (no pun intended?) content. They have successfully made me want to visit their sites more often, potentially purchase a digital subscription and, most importantly to me, lace up and run!

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Shannon’s Medium Adventure

As I start my adventure diving into Medium this week, I have very little knowledge about the platform. Frankly, the only thing I know about it as I am typing is that when my clients are mentioned in a Medium piece, we don’t count it as coverage. I’m hoping this week gives me some insight as to why that is. (Spoiler alert: It did.)

Upon opening the home page of Medium for the first time, I am asked to select topics that matter to me. Thinking about the subjects I am personally interested in, as well as the ones that are most relevant to my clients, I have chosen: Technology, Health, Work, Relationships, Self, Artificial Intelligence, Food, and Startups. After this step and giving Medium my email address, Voila! I am officially on Medium and am ready to dive into some content...

The first thing that caught my eye about the community on Medium, and one of the unique ways the community interacts, was how they can highlight sections of the article they want to react to in the comments and it pops up along with their review at the end of the article. This way, you know exactly what they are referring to and you can refresh yourself on the excerpt when reading their comment/feedback. Dare I say, this may be my favorite Switch Up discovery thus far!?

Medium is a place for content creators to have their work seen and, turns out, a lot of people want to see it. According to a recent post by Medium CEO Ev Williams, this has been one of Medium’s fastest-growing years ever. 

Photo from Medium article

Medium’s readership tends to be mostly interested in technology, design, marketing, life learning, business, entrepreneurship, startups, culture and politics. And, according to this article, technical content is performing “better and better” on the site. I can promise you that it is not me who is reading the technical content. It’s unclear whether the article mentioned in this Quora thread still exists, but according to Lark Ismail’s comment, 95% of Medium's readers have graduated college and just a little less than half of them earn at least six figures. The readers are also young (which is something I predicted since I don’t think anyone I know that’s my parents’ age would be familiar with the site), with half of them ages 18-34 and 70% of them being under 50 years old. 

In a recent post, Medium CEO Ev Williams wrote about Medium, saying “It is perhaps the only place where someone with no industry connections, no investment, no social followers, and no technical or marketing expertise can show up and offer a story or idea to the world that finds an audience of thousands or even millions of people.” I think that this is amazing, romantic and inspiring, and is a great opportunity to give people a voice. I do believe that there is a place for these types of platforms, but I don’t think that means that it needs to be a part of a client’s earned or paid media program. In fact, I think in a majority of scenarios, it shouldn’t be.

Something I found interesting about Medium’s platform, considering it gives me a glamourized blog feel, was that Medium’s algorithm prioritizes quality over the date something was published. On the site, the content that is most visible to readers isn’t always the most recent, but it is considered, by the editorial team, the best. Personally, when I am browsing the internet looking for news, this isn’t an algorithm I would choose for a site. I prefer being given the information I would find most interesting based on the beats I follow, but I want the stories I see to be breaking news, or at least the most recent. Also, while the cover photos of articles are engaging and draw you in, I didn’t find one piece that included media within the article. No picture books here!

Several brands, including Salesforce and Airbnb, have used Medium for their own blogging purposes, but both have not published in over a year which makes me think they have moved on to new, shinier social platforms that have better return on their business. All of their Medium blog posts included call to actions around either visiting the blog on their company’s site or following them on their social channels so another reason they may have stopped using Medium is because of the lack of traffic analytics. The biggest difference between brands’ Medium posts and other creators is how self-serving they are. This is actually an opportunity that is a bit rare for brands (to have created content that is all about them and have it published on another site) so I can see the draw. 

After personally using and combing through Medium this week, I have determined it wouldn’t be a platform I would worry about my client getting a mention or feature or even a profile on. The site lacks a lot of hard news and isn’t somewhere I would go to seek out the most accurate and/or thorough information. However, I could see Medium being useful if my client wanted to interact with influencers or people that get a lot of engagement and readers in their space. Farewell, Medium!

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Shannon’s Snapchat Adventure

It’s the week of September 7, 2020, that I spend free moments consuming media and news through Snapchat. I very rarely use this app, but, when I do, it is strictly to keep up with friends that live, unfortunately, throughout the country. Hardly more exciting to the regular person than the news I receive from the actual news section of Snapchat, the only updates I am receiving from the app on a weekly basis are which of my friends ate what, who moved where, and which girl just bought which new summer outfit. 

Typically, when I am looking to figure out what is going on in the world and what the trending news is, my first stop is Twitter. I appreciate the easy-to-navigate trending hashtags and I follow 400+ reporters, influencers, and news outlets, so my timeline is constantly full of everything I need and want to know. However, given my lack of experience with Snapchat’s news cycle and my friend’s constantly referencing the crazy stories they find within it, I decided to give it a shot and see if there was anything that it could possibly bring to my personal life or my clients’ businesses.

The first thing that stuck out to me about the community who uses Snapchat to receive news, is that they can’t interact with it in a public-facing way. They can send snaps directly to their Snapchat contacts, but they don’t have the ability to comment or “like” anything. What do internet trolls do in a situation like this? Do they screenshot the posts and share them on platforms where they can publicly criticize? Do they just not use Snapchat at all? Even when I looked to see if I could post one of the frames directly to my Snapchat story, it appeared as though I was not able to. This could very well be user-error though. 

According to an article by Sprout Social, 13 to 29-year olds are Snapchat’s key demographics with 69% of 13 to 17-year olds using the app and 62% of 18 to 29-year olds. I can’t speak for the 238 million daily active Snapchat users, but with my friends (who in some cases don’t know each other and live around the country), I find that the most popular way for them to use Snapchat for news is looking at Daily Mail’s story. Here, they keep up with who Brad Pitt’s new girlfriend is and which Kardashian had another baby. But otherwise, they use Snapchat just to keep up with friends.

Something that I find extremely interesting about the way Snapchat’s news is presented is that all of the content is vertical. Typically, when you see a video or picture on a news outlet, Instagram, Twitter, etc., the content is horizontal. I would like to know the behind-the-scenes of creating this content and how the editors make videos that, I assume, are sometimes filmed horizontally look so natural in the vertical format… What’s their secret? 

Snapchat is different from other platforms in the way that it presents its stories. It’s visual with stickers, moving text, pictures, and video, sometimes all in one and sometimes making you (me) feel a little nauseous if you hang out on there too long. There’s the option to have background sound or sound that provides additional context, or you can swipe through without sound (the first example I am thinking of where this is great is sitting in a dentist office’s waiting room) and get the same level of detail.

During my adventures exploring Snapchat this week, I noticed that while scrolling through a publication's Instagram, I am served more advertisements than I would expect. On Daily Mail’s today, for example, I was served ads from Discord, Z Supply, Poshmark, Caviar, Nike, Dollar Shave Club, Chewy, Casper, Audible, Origins, Webtoon, thredUP, and Albert. Receiving thirteen ads while swiping through Daily Mail made it so that I saw one every two to three frames. This actually came as a shock to me because I knew I had been getting ads, but I never realized how many. I haven’t heard of a majority of these brands so it makes me curious whether the same ones are shared with all viewers or if they are tailored to me based on the other things that I look at. If I am going to be receiving that many ads, I really hope it’s the latter.

Other than advertisements, I don’t see how brands (publications not included) are using Snapchat’s news/For You section if they are. Historically, I have seen brands use Snapchat for marketing and brand awareness by creating Snapchat filters for seasonal moments or big events. This way, users can take their picture with the brand’s filter and share with their contacts to spread awareness around something. A friend of mine made me a personalized filter for my 21st birthday party, but that was just to add another level of “extra” to the celebration. 

Overall, I found that the ease of the mindless swiping through publications’ daily Snapchat stories made it easy for me to spend more time than I wanted to on the app. This makes me think that it is not a source I am going to use to get my news going forward, especially since it was mostly around topics and soft news that I am not particularly interested in reading about. I will continue to survive on the updates my friend’s share with me when they read jaw-dropping news around things like… this… on Daily Mail’s Snapchat story.

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Shannon’s Reddit Adventure

This week, I have shifted my social media focus to be mostly on Reddit as it is not a channel I typically use. I have had an account on Reddit for several months, but I often forget that I even have it as I am consumed by checking and scrolling through Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Snapchat. Wow, writing (typing) it down definitely makes it seem like I am consuming a lot of social media throughout the day. Probably because I totally am.

Given I am fairly new and inexperienced with Reddit, I still find myself not understanding exactly how to use it or what I should be following (any advice and/or best practices are very welcome here!) As of now, I have joined communities that are mostly around my current hobbies as well as subjects related to clients I would love to have someday. For example: r/AdvancedRunning, r/CampingandHiking, r/Fitness, r/NationalPark, r/nonprofit, r/writing, and r/PublicRelations.

Hanging out on Reddit this week differs greatly from the media I typically consume because it is based more on discussion than it is about the content being posted. When I am using other social media platforms (such as Instagram or Twitter), I am just skimming captions (if I am reading them at all) and mostly looking at the images being posted. Reddit causes me to slow down a bit and think more, whereas using other social media is usually a more mindless experience for me.

The Reddit community (Redditors), unlike other social media platforms, is engaged in a more long-form way. Rather than just sharing likes and quick comments on posts, they share full responses to subreddits that are sometimes paragraphs long. Since I am in a handful of fitness and health communities, it is interesting to read all the subreddit comments because the Redditors are so encouraging of one another. Everyone seems genuinely interested in sharing advice and comparing experiences. I find this very motivating and inspiring! It’s fun to see what like-minded people are doing and thinking.

According to an eMarketer (2019) piece from March of 2019, Reddit had 26.4 million monthly users, and, in fact, last year, Christine Cassis shared a blog post on Reddit (2019) which reported that, from 2017 to 2018, the site found a 43% increase year-over-year in its health and fitness category. Personally, I love this about Reddit since this is the topic I am most interested in getting content around!

Photo from Reddit (2019)

I find that the most interesting thing about the media format of Reddit is how casual and low-key it is in comparison to a platform like Instagram. When I am scrolling on Instagram, I see highly-edited, high-quality photos that appear to go through a decent amount of production before they are posted for the world to see. On Reddit, when I browse through my feed, I am met with photos of screenshots and lower quality videos and pictures that appear as though they were taken on an iPhone rather than a professional camera. The content on Reddit is a bit more everyday and organic, which is also refreshing.

The content I follow on Reddit is also somewhat different than what I follow elsewhere. On social media platforms such as Instagram and Twitter, I like to keep up with news outlets, journalists, and companies. On Reddit, I don’t find that these organizations and people have communities that they post from themselves so it isn’t a great way to find out what they are currently promoting or reporting on. 

To me, Reddit is a lot different than other social media platforms. It’s wordier and more thoughtful. It engages you in a different way and makes you think about things and other people’s opinions differently. It’s a great way to seek and share advice without being expected to keep your comment short on someone’s photo. I’d like to integrate Reddit into my weekly routine more so that one day I will feel comfortable enough to make my own contributions to a subreddit and experience it firsthand. 

Lastly, a really random experience I had in just the past couple days scanning Reddit: I saw two posts (in running-relevant subreddits) that had to do, specifically, with the town that I am from! One man was talking about the trail he runs on, which is right by my parent’s house and is the trail that I have ran on hundreds of times. The other post was a woman who posted a map of a bike ride she did and, when I looked at it, I noticed she was riding around my town/neighborhood. So weird!

References

Cassis, C. (2019, January 23). Health & Fitness on Reddit. Reddit.

https://redditblog.com/2019/01/23/health-fitness-on-reddit/

eMarketer Editors. (2019, March 26). Reddit to Cross $100 Million in Ad Revenues in 2019. eMarketer.

https://www.emarketer.com/content/reddit-to-cross-100-million-in-ad-revenues-in-2019