Microsoft Oscars app story among the most shared

Twitter: 497  LinkedIn: 54  Facebook: 81

Digging through the 10 tips and how-to stories thrown up by the search term “content marketing” over the past week uncovered a few interesting items. But the one that stood out was a story about some Oscars-related content by search engine Bing.

Owner Microsoft put out a webapp allowing people to upload pictures of themselves to find their actor doppelgangers. Like Bing it uses the Cortana analytics system. The company says it is extremely accurate in recognising the faces of celebrities when compiling search results.

That’s not to say it is infallible. As you can see from the example above, the system failed to identify my likeness to a young Russell Crowe. Instead, it picked out Charles Durning. He is probably best known for playing the cop in The Sting, less so for his part in Eighties film Meatballs III Summer Job.

If the aim of marketing is to make people feel good about something they might use or purchase, Microsoft is taking a bit of a chance with this one. Bing might be able to recognise Tom Hardy, but people have more subjective views on appearance. However, Microsoft also understands that consumers like and are proven to use interactive content.

B2B content marketing misdirection

Twitter: 497  LinkedIn: 54  Facebook: 81

Another story of interest concerns a post about B2B content marketing from the US Content Marketing Institute that received several hundred shares.

Running under the headline B2B Manufacturers Stuck When It Comes to Content Marketing, it found that only 18 per cent of B2B manufacturing marketers felt their content marketing was effective. This is an eight per cent fall from 26 per cent in 2015.

Why? The CMA is not entirely sure. It could be because more companies or marketers have started producing content. Or it could be they have realised that they lack a proper content marketing strategy.

Microsoft Oscars story among the most shared is part of Content24, the online magazine for London content marketing agency FirstWord.