The Future of Social Media Marketing

Stephanie Wierwille (00:00.979)

Welcome to the No Normal Show brought to you by BPD. This is where we leave all things status quo, traditional, old school, and boring in the dust. And instead we celebrate the new, the powerful, the innovative, the future, all related to how brands can lead the way in health. I’m Stephanie Weir-Will, EVP of engagement here at BPD, and I will be your host today. And I am so excited because I’m going to be talking with two special guests today about the future.

And those special guests are Molly Cook, Director of Social Media at BPD and Kara Fox, Senior Social Strategist at BPD. And I am super excited to be here with you all. I think we’re about to have the best time ever. I’ve already had a great time in prepping with y’all because we’re all three obsessed about this topic, which is the future of social media marketing. All three of us eat, breathe, drink, social media all day, every day.

So I’ll give a little bit of an intro for our guests here and then I cannot wait to get into this. So we have with us Molly Cook who leads social strategy for a variety of hospitals and health systems here at BPD. She has a background in journalism and has led social media for broadcast news channel, which then led her to social strategy and working with brands all across various industries. And then luckily for us, she found her way to healthcare.

And now she schools us all on paid social advertising, content creation, channel strategy, and all the things every day. So thank you, thank you, thank you, Molly, for joining us today.

Mollie Cooke (01:30.988)

Thanks for having me.

Stephanie Wierwille (01:33.257)

Yay. And Kara is a returning guest, I believe. Kara leads social strategy for healthcare organizations like providers, health tech, nonprofits. She also has a background in journalism and also got her start running social media for a news channel. So I think Kara and Molly, you all are twinsies. And then Kara found her way to health tech and she’s especially talented at building communities, which she has done a lot of for Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

and the nursing program called Shift that we work with with them. And she also constantly finds creative ways for health tech brands to cut through all that B2B clutter on social media. So hello, hello, and welcome back, Kara.

Kara Foxx (02:16.303)

Hello, I’m so excited to be here and believe it or not Stephanie, this is my first time on the NoNormal show. Yes.

Stephanie Wierwille (02:23.057)

Really? Okay, wow, I think I dreamed that maybe you and I did a show or something.

Mollie Cooke (02:30.966)

Okay, good. Two first timers are mine first time as well.

Kara Foxx (02:34.033)

Excited to be here.

Stephanie Wierwille (02:34.395)

Yeah, okay. I’m so excited. Like I said, I mean, this is a subject that we’re all just absolutely obsessed with. And so the subject is the social media marketing trends for 2025. And obviously, you know, thinking about the trends, there are so many of them that we could cover. And we actually I think in brainstorming, and working with clients recently have about 10. Is that right, Kara? About 10 trends total that we have.

Kara Foxx (03:03.151)

Yes, that was the short list actually.

Stephanie Wierwille (03:05.839)

yeah, yeah, that was the short list. There’s a lot happening. But for today’s episode, we’ll just cover three of them. So just to give you all some background on some of the others that hit the cutting room floor, at least for today, there’s a lot developing in terms of new channels that are popping up. And they’re always popping up and dying and popping back up. And that’s an evolving door.

Certainly we’ve covered on this show, even recently, the fact that social networks are launching their own AI models. There’s a lot happening in the influencer marketing world, but today we’re going to dig into three trends. So the three are, first of all, the evolution of social first marketing. Secondly, we’ll talk about the future of the metaverse, which is its own revolving door, right? It’s been a bit of a roller coaster that’s been kind of back on radars in the last couple of weeks.

And then we will thirdly discuss the continued blurred lines of social and search. So how does that sound, Molly and Kara?

Mollie Cooke (04:06.776)

Sounds great, let’s do it.

Kara Foxx (04:09.253)

Yes.

Stephanie Wierwille (04:10.859)

Okay, let’s go. All right, I’ll set up our first trend and then I’m gonna turn it to our experts here. So the first trend for 2025 as we look forward is social first marketing. Now here’s the thing, we all three have been screaming from the rooftops about social first content for many years. Every chance we get, every time we get a microphone, we’re like, here’s what social media content should be like. But social first has changed a lot over this past year and

why it matters has evolved too. So we want to revisit it and also sort of share some of the updates. So first I’ll give a bit of a definition of what do we mean when we say social first? Social first marketing is marketing programs and content that’s made specifically for social media, designed to grab attention, designed to be shareable and designed to meet the behavior of users in social. So of course, social should be shareable, right? Of course, it should be attention grabbing. Of course, it should be built for channels.

But there’s some nuances here and I think the stats, we’re gonna have a lot of stats this episode because we like to keep on track with how folks are using channels here. But time spent with media has changed and in fact, in 2025, social users are projected to surpass TV viewers with people spending 2.5 plus hours per day on social platforms. So I wanna just pause here very quickly and say.

Okay, 2.5 plus hours per day per user on social platforms, which is an increase year over year, increases every year. So I’ll ask you first, Kara, how does this number track to you as you spend time both with users and communities as well as on platforms yourself?

Kara Foxx (05:53.623)

Certainly tracks for the users and audiences I’m familiar with, and I’ll say for myself, two and a half hours is pretty accurate. And then some might add a couple more hours on that.

Stephanie Wierwille (06:08.011)

How about you, Molly?

Mollie Cooke (06:09.442)

I agree my track with the user, but for me personally, I definitely don’t want to show you my screen time report. Yeah, but I mean, it’s for research. you know, I think it’s expected to be more because it’s my job.

Kara Foxx (06:22.435)

Exactly, it’s our jobs.

Stephanie Wierwille (06:22.741)

Yeah.

That’s what I tell myself too.

Mollie Cooke (06:26.872)

Yeah.

Kara Foxx (06:27.843)

Hahaha!

Stephanie Wierwille (06:30.491)

Yeah. Yeah, and I think this stat is interesting because just to put it into context, so that 2.5 plus hours per day is social media specifically for Americans across all demographics. When you zoom out and look at digital media time spent, it’s actually above eight hours on average, which is probably not shocking, especially for folks that are using computers for work. But on average, I think that number is shocking, actually.

Mollie Cooke (06:31.404)

So yeah, I think our numbers should be a little higher.

Kara Foxx (06:34.512)

you

Stephanie Wierwille (06:57.875)

And then when you start comparing this to traditional media time spent, it continues to decrease and decrease. So that’s been a trend that’s been growing for a while, but I think, you know, where this gets interesting is when we start thinking about, how do we market to folks and how are expectations changing for content? Because expectations for content are truly changing. And now the expectation for users is that content would be a lot more social.

first and social friendly no matter what channel they’re on. So for younger audiences like Gen Z and Gen Alpha, video equals social, right? And so that’s sort of a big mind shift we have to make as marketers. So Molly, I’ll ask you, you’re out in the feeds every day on behalf of BPD’s clients. So when you think about what social first means today and tomorrow in 2025, what does that look

Mollie Cooke (07:49.176)

Sure, well, first of all, yes, it is constantly changing and as marketers, we have to keep up with it. So to me, social first means that we’re creating video with the social channel and the audience in mind from the start. So it’s not an afterthought. And yes, this is something I’m stressing all the time to our clients and our coworkers. So you can’t just resize a TV ad anymore and then slap it on Instagram and then call it a day.

So to me, social first is when you’re creating video that’s for social media. It’s not just tweaked for the channel. It’s really about how do you show up authentically on each channel, on each platform.

Stephanie Wierwille (08:30.377)

Yeah, I love that. That’s a really good, simple, succinct answer. So let’s dig in. So how do you show up authentically? What are some of those really tactical, actionable best practices when, I know you create video content as well for clients. So what are some of those things that you implement?

Mollie Cooke (08:42.23)

Yes. Yes.

Sure. Well, first, think a good analogy to think of before you apply those best practices is you have to really think of each platform, each channel as its own planet. And people really engage with content on each of those channels in a different and a unique way. So for example, on TikTok, the videos, they have to be more unpolished, have that organic feel.

but you want them to be entertaining, informative. We call it infotainment. I’m not sure if I made up that term or somebody else, but that’s what we constantly refer to TikTok content as. It almost has to feel like it was made by a user or it won’t work. And then, you know, what’s happening on Reddit and Instagram, X, Discord, I could go on because there’s so many different channels to keep up with. They all have like a totally different vibe. So,

Once you understand the different channel culture, it’s about taking those insights and what you know about each one. And then that’s when we apply the best practices. So as far as the best practices, which is what you’re asking me to go through, it’s knowing when to use vertical video. Because not only do we have the different channels, but each channel has different placements. Like on Meta, you have

Reels, stories, the feed, messenger. So there’s different sizes, different safe zones for all of those placements. How do you make sure something’s not cropped or cut off by the user or the platform interface? It’s knowing what the sweet spot is for length of a video. And it can be 10 to 15 seconds, which is best practice for paid, even eight seconds. Basically, don’t blink.

Mollie Cooke (10:40.401)

is what’s recommended because people have such short attention spans. And then in those eight seconds or 10 seconds, you have to get across the main message in the first three seconds and you have to get across the brand. So there’s a lot of things that you have to get in, like upfront, totally different story arc than what you’re used to seeing on TV.

And then you have to think about the fact that people might be scrolling on their phones when they’re in a meeting and they don’t have their sound on. So you just have to think about all of those things. And those are just some of the best practices that we think through.

Stephanie Wierwille (11:19.689)

you called it the don’t blink rule, I think. I love that. I’m gonna use that from now on. That’s amazing. Yeah, because it’s almost like as we’re, you know, even as as you know, we’re all creating creative and reviewing creative. I love that idea of, okay, look at this until you blink. And once you blink, it’s almost like the user has moved on. It’s that fast.

Mollie Cooke (11:21.642)

Yeah.

Love it.

Mollie Cooke (11:42.218)

Exactly. So you have to get it all in right away, don’t blink, but also in a creative way.

Stephanie Wierwille (11:48.371)

Yes, no, yeah, easy, right? So you make it look really easy every day. I know that I’m working with you, but this is actually really, really complex. So maybe I’ll ask Kara, you a little bit about because, you know, how do we create content that makes it feel like it’s created by a user that gets everything across before people blink? All the things that Molly said, I mean, that is a really complex job and it’s even more complex when you take a step back and think about as a marketer.

This is not the only part of a marketer’s job, right? Social is really one piece of the bigger whole in picture and we need to create probably thousands, maybe tens of thousands of pieces of content over the course of a year. So I’m going to ask you, Kara, how do we do this? This is a pretty big production challenge.

Kara Foxx (12:34.689)

It’s no easy feat, but I think the best place to start is we need to flip a traditional production and narrative on its head. So it’s not about creating, let’s say a traditional TV spot and then adapting it for social, wedging the social activations in there. Instead from the jump, we should be asking, what do we need to capture for all channels? Or as Molly said, how are we going to create for all the channel planets in our solar system of marketing?

So I think we’re kind of already seeing this shift happening. You can see it in the way brands are incorporating social first styles, even into traditional TV ads. We started seeing this shift back in 2020, early pandemic days, a lower five FaceTime style video was starting to pop up on TV commercials because they kind of matched our shared experience at that time. But now here in 2024, as we’re going into 2025, that’s evolving deeper. So for example, Starbucks right now.

The running an ad on TV, it’s an ASMR style commercial, feels straight out of a TikTok feed. It takes viewers through the journey of harvesting coffee beans and it has these quick cuts, full bleed visuals. It’s really captivating and sensory driven. And you hear the sounds of the beans being scooped. It’s rich, it’s immersive. It’s just a style that’s stray from social media, focusing on these raw and sensory aspects that

we know from ASMR style videos perform well online. Another great example would be a commercial that’s running right now from Rocket Money. Are you all familiar with these man on the street interview styles on social media where someone kind of like runs up to someone and puts a microphone in their face? Yeah, okay. It’s like that. Rocket Money turned it into a whole series of commercials where they’re…

Mollie Cooke (14:12.984)

this.

Yes.

Kara Foxx (14:24.343)

acting that style out on the street and they have this handheld kind of shaky camera style, meme-like graphics, super quick cuts. It feels very native to social screen rather than a traditional commercial. It really is something you’d stumble upon as you’re scrolling. And that’s intentional. And because these brands are really fully embracing a social first approach to make multi-channel ads feel like they belong on Facebook, they belong on Instagram, they belong on primetime TV.

And I think the great news though, when you’re thinking about social channels alone is that you don’t need a huge crew or production budgets. Like Molly was saying with TikTok, it needs to look in the style of what your friends or your favorite creators are posting in. It’s about being nimble, getting out there in the real world, capturing moments as they happen and producing content that feels authentic.

Mollie Cooke (15:15.466)

You almost wonder if those… Sorry. I was gonna say, you almost wonder if those TV ads that you’re talking about were actually shot with a smartphone.

Stephanie Wierwille (15:15.647)

Yeah, there’s two. Go ahead, Molly.

Stephanie Wierwille (15:25.929)

You’re muted, Karen.

Kara Foxx (15:26.799)

They look like they are, the Rocket Money one especially.

Stephanie Wierwille (15:31.433)

Yeah, the Rocket Money one, I’ve seen that one, Kara. I love it. It’s a great example. think that one does feel, you’re right, like the shaky camera. The Starbucks one is very, very beautiful. So I would imagine that one maybe did have a high production budget, but it captures the user behavior and the user expectations. So it’s kind of that blend of polish, you know, for TV plus.

Kara Foxx (15:49.627)

Yes.

Stephanie Wierwille (15:58.525)

the user expectation and the trends of social, which I think is a really interesting example. something really interesting that you’re bringing up is, you know, this word social first. think what we’re what we’re not trying to say here is social media should be the only thing that a brand does. That’s not the point. Like, obviously, like we are very much, you know, TV still matters. Mass media matters, especially given your audience, even sometimes print and newspaper. All of that still has a place in the space. The point is, how do we understand

Kara Foxx (16:13.979)

Right.

Stephanie Wierwille (16:26.193)

what are user expectations for content and how is that changing and where does that look and feel different? Like you said, Molly, depending on the channel culture, which is now starting to bleed over. So I think that’s the nuance where we are now versus where we were in January of this year. And Molly, I mean, you certainly play in media for all kinds of channels. So I know you have to have this channel culture hat on.

Mollie Cooke (16:38.454)

Absolutely.

Mollie Cooke (16:44.085)

Absolutely.

Kara Foxx (16:45.465)

Exactly.

Mollie Cooke (16:48.566)

Right?

Right? Yeah, exactly.

Stephanie Wierwille (16:55.467)

All right, well that was a fun one. So that’s trend number one. For the sake of time, let’s jump into trend number two. So, trend number two is also a fun one. I’ve been calling this the metaverse roller coaster recently because the metaverse is something we covered a lot on this show, the No Normal Show in 2021. It was like hot, hot, coming out of pandemic. Facebook rebranded to meta. That was a big investment, billions of dollars. And Zach said that one day we will all live in an embodied internet.

Do y’all remember his big announcement when he like walked around the metaverse? Yes, you remember that Molly? That was a day.

Mollie Cooke (17:27.638)

Yes. Yes. Yes, I do. But not knowing exactly what it was still. Like, are we in it?

Kara Foxx (17:32.697)

Yes.

Stephanie Wierwille (17:35.659)

Right, what is the metaverse? you know, that back back then, it feels like a decade ago, three years ago, we were thinking about VR and AR and mixed reality and brands like Gucci and Vans and McDonald’s were flocking to the metaverse to Horizon Worlds to Oculus to Roblox to the central land to try it out. And they were launching all kinds of interesting things. I think even CBS did a metaverse test. I don’t remember what

Mollie Cooke (17:43.404)

Ha

Stephanie Wierwille (18:04.203)

was exactly, maybe a loyalty program. Anyway, we covered it a lot in the show. So the idea kind of went into hibernation, right? Like 2023, was like meta versus dead, AI took over, even meta turned into meta AI, but it’s back, it’s back. So, and it’s changed. I think it’s very different. last week, this is October 16th. So last week, meta shared their prototype for a new type of glasses that they’re called Orion, I believe. So Molly.

Mollie Cooke (18:32.664)

Mm-hmm.

Stephanie Wierwille (18:33.461)

Tell us a bit about Orion.

Mollie Cooke (18:35.968)

Yes, so Orion, you have to thank Google Glass from way back, I guess, 2013. That’s even earlier than 2021. It’s Apple’s Vision Pro headset. So, Orions are the first AR glasses, but they’re better than Google Glass. I’m not sure if they’re more fashionable, but I was watching a video. Yeah, I’m not sure about that. Maybe they’ll improve. But yeah, they’re less like sci-fi looking, I think.

Stephanie Wierwille (18:57.771)

That’s a statement.

Mollie Cooke (19:05.598)

And I was watching the video when Zuck was showing them off to one of the reporter and they’re just kind of like showing off like what they can do and they were playing ping pong with each other except they really weren’t they were standing in a room and just like using their hands so it looked really awkward if you were just watching without the glasses on but they were literally playing ping pong with their hands and then the glasses used meta AI which he just referred to

to put together a recipe with the ingredients that the reporter was looking at. Like, hey, I have these ingredients. What kind of a smoothie can I make with these? And literally right then and there, put together the recipe right in front of his eyes, which I thought was pretty crazy. And then right now, at least, and this might change, they were wearing a wristband that kind of looked like a Fitbit. And that’s how they controlled the glasses, I guess, with their fingers. So it was like…

their fingers were the mouse. So very futuristic, impressive though.

Stephanie Wierwille (20:13.395)

Yeah, fun times. Would you wear these, Molly? Would you? Would you?

Mollie Cooke (20:17.336)

Well, seeing as how I constantly lose sunglasses, I don’t know if I would want to. But I used to say, why, you know, when they first came out with the iPad and we were all like, why do we need a bigger iPhone? And here we are, we all use iPads as much as we use our iPhones. So I think it might be like one of those things where, like, eventually it’s just going to become part of our everyday life. Everybody’s going to be walking around with these big glasses on that are computers.

Stephanie Wierwille (20:44.627)

Yeah. And you know, someday I think is the key word there because these are not available yet. There’s still a vision of what’s to come, which there’s just there sure is a lot of vision happening in the tech world right now. But anyway, these are prototypes. They’re too expensive to actually sell. So to your point, who knows what the price will be. But here comes.

Mollie Cooke (20:56.854)

Yes.

Mollie Cooke (21:04.664)

Exactly. Yeah, so something tangible where meta is showing us like, the metaverse is paying off. It might actually happen one day, but yeah, it’s not here yet.

Stephanie Wierwille (21:16.893)

Yeah, Kara, would you wear these?

Kara Foxx (21:20.559)

really want to try them, but I think I’ll have to wait till the second generation comes out to take the plunge of purchasing.

Stephanie Wierwille (21:27.691)

I hear you. Okay, so to marketers, especially healthcare marketers, this might sound really like, that’s interesting, but like, is that practical for me? Is that applicable for my marketing programs? It doesn’t sound like it. So Kara, tell us, is that right or wrong? What are their practical applications at this stage? How should we be thinking now that we are several years in to this embodied internet idea and now we are multiple prototypes in? Is it?

Is it time to start applying it? What does it look like?

Kara Foxx (22:01.531)

So I would encourage marketers to continue to be curious about this evolving tech. But when we look at it from how we can take action right now, I would think the metaverse is more like the content verse.

Stephanie Wierwille (22:17.471)

Okay, the content verse. Hold on, hold on, that’s new word, Kara. The content verse, I love that. Flipping, because I’m kind of tired of the word metaverse, honestly. It’s like been a while. So tell us, what do you mean by that?

Kara Foxx (22:17.729)

Everything.

Mollie Cooke (22:23.416)

.

Kara Foxx (22:30.235)

think it’s indicative that everything in our lives now can be content. We’re all going to eventually, potentially, be wearing these glasses with a built-in high quality camera. Think of the potential opportunities when that happens and now. So the everyday content opportunities you may encounter in your day. You’re on Zoom. Your transcript is being recorded and that content can be repurposed as a blog post.

a social clip, maybe training material for a new hire. Or let’s say your doorbell camera records your child running to give their grandparents a big hug. Boom, content you uploaded onto Instagram. Or you’re going for a run and your wearable tech captures your routine, uploads it to Strava, or you have a GoPro that’s filming your route and you share that on Instagram. There are these content opportunities everywhere because it’s a collection of many moments.

We do not need to really boil the ocean when it comes to content on social. We don’t need to fit multiple concepts and angles into a single video because that’s not really the way stories are told on social. But it’s these individual moments and big nets that add up to a larger brand story that you may be wanting to tell. And I think that’s where the content verse comes in. Thinking of all of the different opportunities you have to capture content throughout your day.

Stephanie Wierwille (23:51.925)

Kara, you’re kind of blowing my mind a little bit. It’s giving Copernican consumer vibes, shout out to Joe Public 2030, which we’ve covered a lot on this show, but that’s the idea is that because of AI sensors wearables that health will be the center of everyone’s universe. And so now apply that to content in a way. thinking about how…

It’s not just the iPhone anymore, right? Like the iPhone obviously democratized content, it democratized video, allowed everyone to be a videographer and photographer, and now we have what we have with the internet. But what I’m hearing you say is because of so many devices, you mentioned a Ring Doorbell, you mentioned Zoom. I mean, I think about, you know, even car care, all the things. It’s like content is everywhere for everyone all the time. It is the center of our world.

I don’t know, I’m just, I’m trying to process this, because I think like what you’re saying is really an important mind shift.

Kara Foxx (24:53.071)

Yeah, and I think to wrap our heads around it, I like to think of it in like very simplistic terms. So your ordinary is your audience is extraordinary. I heard that recently and I was like, whoa. So what’s routine for us in healthcare can be fascinating for our audience. For instance, I recently saw a TikTok video from a water park, not sure where it was, showing a staff member walking the slides each morning and showing how they check for safety.

It racked up nearly half a million views. Think about like in the future when we do have Orion glasses or currently right now we have some wearable tech that could capture this very mundane moment for this waterpark worker’s day, but to the audience, it’s fascinating. And the healthcare version could be just as intriguing to the outside viewers or surgeon describing the process of scrubbing in and how they prepare for an operation.

Mollie Cooke (25:23.512)

You

Kara Foxx (25:48.139)

It’s like behind the scenes on steroids is where we’re heading. It’s imagining, empowering your entire healthcare team to capture moments like this for your marketing team, to adopt this mindset that every moment can be an opportunity for content. And of course, always be mindful of patient privacy, but capturing potential raw and scripted moments that might seem ordinary to you, but are really extraordinary.

Not saying you need to outfit your team right now with Orion Metaverse glasses.

Kara Foxx (26:23.045)

I’m not saying you need to outfit your whole team with Orion glasses right now, but take this trend as an invitation to start thinking about extending the limits of how you define content and how you can welcome your audience into the everyday situations that make people feel like insiders and how you can share the experiences that shape the work you do and build like trust and loyalty and brand recognition through those small opportunities.

Stephanie Wierwille (26:49.575)

Kara, that’s absolutely brilliant. love that this is not about, yes, the glasses is the latest thing that’s happened in this, but it’s not about that, right? Like glasses aside, that’s not the point here. The point is, how do we rethink our content strategies because back to the point of channel culture or just culture in general, people are really loving these POV style behind the scenes. Your quote is brilliant, which is…

you know, your ordinary is your audience is extraordinary. Like what are the ordinary moments in the brand’s life, if you will, or in your clinician’s life or your executive’s life, so where your audience is like all those things. How do we turn those ordinary moments into something extraordinary instead of trying to, you know, overly architect or create something extraordinary? I think that’s amazing.

Kara Foxx (27:40.325)

Yes, exactly. Overly architectics. It’s actually an opportunity to kind of simplify things for you and take a fresh perspective. And the benefit of social is that we can test and learn and see what is resonating with our audiences with these like low lift style videos as well and iterate from there.

Stephanie Wierwille (27:59.999)

Love that. Okay, we are running a little low on time, so let’s hit the third trend, although I could spend all day trying to process the brilliance that you’re sharing, Kara. Okay, so our third trend is social is the new search. And I think we might have touched on this earlier this year, but it’s just continued to grow. And so as we head into 2025, we want to take a fresh look at where are we now? So just a few stats to get us started. Gen Z started this trend as they start every trend. We love them.

by turning to TikTok for search. And I think the headlines at the beginning of this year were, TikTok is the new search. So 16 to 34 year olds are more likely to visit social channels in general, not just TikTok, than search engines when they’re looking for brand information. So think I’m going to a restaurant and I wanna check out the menu, or I’m doing vacation research and so I’m searching an Instagram for people who have been to Cabo to see where did they go and what did it look like.

or I’m buying a pair of shoes and I want to see real people’s images. So I’m going to where the brand was tagged or whatever. So that’s what we mean by search. And before I hit a couple more stats, I want to ask you all, are you using search in your personal lives? So maybe I’ll come to you first, Molly. How are you using social as search?

Mollie Cooke (29:17.556)

yeah, 100%. I’m always using it and I’m using Instagram and TikTok. I’m using all the platforms to search just for, you know, every nearby restaurants or mostly recipes, be honest with you, recipes and, you know, new exercises. So yeah, it doesn’t really surprise me. It’s definitely, I feel like it’s way more fun to watch a quick video rather than to just get a bunch of links back on a Google search. So maybe Google needs to kind of like sprinkle in some dance videos and they’ll be with it.

Stephanie Wierwille (29:42.825)

Yeah.

Stephanie Wierwille (29:47.307)

Yeah. So, I know that you work across all kinds of channels sitting inside the traditional media team and working with paid media as well. Your team is also thinking about Google search and PPC and thinking about social as search and ways to weave these together. So tell us, how are you thinking about this for media planning and for marketing strategies in general? How are you weaving social and search together knowing that this

Kara Foxx (29:47.931)

Ha

Mollie Cooke (30:02.114)

Mm-hmm.

Mollie Cooke (30:12.386)

Sure.

Stephanie Wierwille (30:16.203)

behavior is evolving.

Mollie Cooke (30:17.858)

Sure. Well, first of all, yeah, it’s super important for our clients, for healthcare organizations, because search is such a key critical point in the journey. So yeah, I mean, obviously in addition to recipes and exercises, you know, I’m also one of the ones who search for my symptoms, look for doctors, different kinds of health information. So yeah, here at BPD, we’re constantly finding new ways to capture that intent. And one specific example,

that was recently launched on TikTok, which I’m super excited about, is there’s a new targeting option where you can actually pop in your top performing keywords from Google into the backend of TikTok. And then you can show your ads, which we don’t want to look like ads, right there in the mix on the TikTok search results page with relevant organic content. So it’s super exciting. And like I said, I’m really excited to.

to use this for our clients.

Stephanie Wierwille (31:18.453)

Yeah, and that TikTok example, the search ads or ads inside TikTok search is really new. I mean, that’s just three weeks old, I think, at the end of September.

Mollie Cooke (31:25.792)

Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, it’s very, very new. And again, it’s really exciting because for social and social marketing, we’re so used to reaching people who might not need what we’re offering in that very moment. They’re passively scrolling. So it’s really exciting that we can actually get the message in front of people who are looking for what we have to offer. yes, again, it’s very new. But it’s been available this

keyword targeting on Pinterest. I think you referred to it also as the OG of keywords and then Reddit also… Yes, yes, but there’s still some exciting things on Pinterest and also Reddit offers this as well. But I think it’s really helpful, especially for our industry where we might not be able to have all the tracking set up. You can still have really precise targeting on the back end.

Stephanie Wierwille (32:00.233)

Yeah, RIP Pinterest, right?

Mollie Cooke (32:22.22)

by using these keywords.

Stephanie Wierwille (32:25.045)

Yeah, total side note here, but I still love Pinterest. I think it’s like the wholesome channel of social. I love it and I still wish that there were, I don’t know, that it was just a lot more robust in terms of its ad capabilities, but they’ve certainly grown over the years and I think there’s a time and a place for it, absolutely. So Kara, speaking of, as Molly said, this is really about capturing intent.

Mollie Cooke (32:31.099)

Yes.

Stephanie Wierwille (32:49.877)

So on the content creation side and social strategy side, how are you creating content that captures intent knowing that this behavior is a thing?

Kara Foxx (32:59.215)

Yeah, so it’s about some optimizations. Any SEO folks out there will be able to tell you this as well. Thinking of every single element of this content item and what we need to do to surface in search results. So is the topic relevant to what a user is searching? Is the copy optimized for search? And when I say copy, I mean the copy in the actual caption that you read, but also in the closed captions on the videos or what you might call subtitles.

platforms like TikTok and Instagram are also reading that text there if you were inputting it natively on that platform. So those can make a difference in surfacing and search as well. Think about the thumbnails. That’s a big driver of what someone is going to click on. Visuals in general, headlines on your video thumbnails. Basically just taking this all into consideration can allow for your content to kind of have longer tail, longer shelf life. not only is it being served to people

for a longer amount of time in their discovery feeds and their for you pages on their timelines, but it’s also going to stick around and search results for a while. So I searched earlier today about daylight savings times and tips for transitioning young kids as the time changes. And the first and second result that popped up were from a year ago. So there is opportunity to stick around if you get these keywords and optimizations down for your content.

Stephanie Wierwille (34:27.083)

Yeah, that’s really fascinating because I think we’ve often thought of social ads being a flash in the pan. I’m going to give a really old school reference here with anybody remember where this quote come from, that today’s news is tomorrow’s waste paper lining.

Kara Foxx (34:43.281)

That’s a familiar one. No, but no.

Stephanie Wierwille (34:44.733)

No, it’s a rom-com, classic rom-com, Notting Hill. Anyway, I always think of that when I think of social content sometimes because it’s like we’re trying to create something that’s gonna maybe have a couple hours of shelf life if we’re lucky, or maybe a few days if we’re really lucky. If we put paid behind it, we can control that. But what you’re saying, Kara, is that’s just not so true anymore given this behavior shift. We can actually create content that lives and lives and lives, which is a

Kara Foxx (34:50.161)

Stephanie Wierwille (35:13.611)

It means that the topic strategy needs to change. It in a way means that everything needs to change and not that this is the only part of social, but it’s a really key addition.

Kara Foxx (35:25.169)

Right, exactly. And so think about those more evergreen or timely topics that are going to come up on a regular or annual basis. How many times are people turning to social for health information in a day at this point? Because it’s not just Dr. Google anymore. We have Dr. TikTok, Dr. GPT, Dr. YouTube. And when people go to social to search, they’re not just looking for health advice, they’re looking for

hopefully reputable health advice. And that’s where health systems can really come in here and leverage their clinicians as creators in social and have really long-term lasting benefits for a healthcare brand to show up in a search that’s happening over and over and over again.

Stephanie Wierwille (36:09.259)

Yeah, okay, I love that. Again, we could talk all day. You all are truly blowing my minds. I think there’s so much here that’s really, really actionable for marketing plans as we head into 2025 and really good ways to shift our approach and take advantage of all of this to drive real business change. So thank you, thank you, thank you for chatting. I’m gonna wrap up here, but thank you Kara for being here.

Kara Foxx (36:13.659)

I’m

Kara Foxx (36:34.609)

Thank you so much.

Stephanie Wierwille (36:36.533)

And thank you, Molly, for joining us.

Mollie Cooke (36:38.594)

Thanks for having me, it went by really fast.

Stephanie Wierwille (36:41.097)

Yeah, it always does. Thanks for such a fun conversation. And for anyone listening, if you want us to cover more social trends or other trends or dig into anything different, let us know at nonormal at BPD Healthcare. And if you want to continue the conversation, reach out to us there as well. Make sure you share the show and give us a review. We always appreciate that. And until next time, don’t be satisfied with the normal. Don’t be satisfied with the metaverse. Push that content verse, right, Kara?

Kara Foxx (37:08.817)

Absolutely.

Mollie Cooke (37:09.666)

Trade market.

Stephanie Wierwille (37:11.115)

Yeah, yeah, that’s right. Copyright. Okay, so we’ll talk to you next week and thanks for a great show.

Kara Foxx (37:20.305)

Thanks guys.