Content Strategy: The Human Element of Sony AI

Background

AI is inescapable these days, and the world it represents can be scary. While we wish for helpful friends like WALL-E or Cortana to emerge from the ether (and not take everyone’s jobs) it’s just as easy to imagine a GLaDOS or Skynet lurking around the corner too. Thankfully, Sony AI is guiding the way to a better AI future.

Launched in 2020, Sony AI is the Dr. Light of our times, pioneering advancements in AI ethics, privacy-preserving machine language (PPML), and robotics to empower creators and foster societal benefits. But all of their groundbreaking research in gaming, imaging, sensing, and gastronomy can be tough to share with a wider audience. Our mission as their social agency of record: to expertly weave a content ecosystem that establishes Sony AI as an approachable thought leader while connecting with niche audiences such as researchers, AI engineers, academics, press, and brands.

Challenge

Sony AI needed a big-brained, yet street-smart partner who could not only grasp their mission of unleashing imagination through creativity and AI but also translate this vision through a targeted content program across Linkedin, Twitter(X), Instagram, and the official Sony AI Blog.

This task required engaging with specific audience groups, building a consistent brand identity for all channels, establishing a well-rounded content production workflow, and defining success benchmarks and KPIs for continuous program and content optimization.

Solution

Through a collaborative partnership which began in 2023, Off Base developed a robust content strategy, including:

1. Success Benchmarks & KPIs: A baseline for measuring content performance and understanding how each channel routinely performed.
2. Competitive Landscape: A deep dive into other players in the AI space, outlining top content by performance and identifying gaps in the content space by platform.
3. SEO Audit: Analysis of current web traffic, search rankings, and identifying key areas of focus to boost visibility on search engines for organic discovery.
4. Target Audience Profiles: Distinct profiles and personas that had different messaging priorities and focuses.
5. Content Buckets: Repeatable content formats that were turn-key and informed by industry best practices and platform insights, all to specifically spotlight Sony AI’s contributions to gaming, robotics, and AI ethics.
6. Publishing Cadence: A consistent blog and social schedule that would allow them to connect with their audiences on a regular basis.
7. Best Practices By Platform: A playbook for each active platform, with actionable insights on how to create content that was algorithm-friendly and discoverable for target audiences.
8. Brand Guidelines: A unified visual and tonal identity reflective of Sony AI’s innovative yet approachable ethos.

To engage Sony AI’s audiences meaningfully, Off Base conducts social listening and regular competitive analysis to understand creative trends, innovative content formats, topical AI news, and relevant platform updates to inform our content recommendations and overall program.

Results

The numbers don’t lie. Our strategy paid off and showed impressive growth and engagement:

Website Performance

• Blog Traffic: +44%
• Engagement Rate: +23%
• New Site Visitors: +21%
• Event Count: +19%
• Total Site Visitors: +19%
• Organic Search Click-through Rate: +11%
• Average Search Position: +9%

Social Media Growth

• LinkedIn: +28% follower growth
• Instagram: +35.4% follower growth 

It doesn’t take a supercomputer to see these metrics showcase big gains in visibility and reflect real engagement with Sony AI’s high-value audience segments.