Snapchat

Snapchat is a strictly mobile-only visual social media channel, popular for its disappearing content. Users can send photos and videos to one another lasting 10 seconds or to their public Stories which will disappear in 24 hours. Since it came onto the social media seen in 2011, Snapchat has seen various updates adding chat, messaging, image storage, events and media content to the application. Content can now easily be saved and uploaded across multiple social channels which is why it’s such a loved tool by it’s 150 million-plus users.

Business Insider reports 158 million use Snapchat every day, opening it, on average, 18 times daily. Another survey from Variety also showed 63% of users said the main motivation for using the app was to message friends.

The most recent changes to the app allow videos to be played in a “loop”. This means they automatically repeat until the viewer taps their screen causing it to disappear. Images can still be shown for either 1-10 seconds or again, until the viewer clicks for it to disappear. This makes the content viewable for longer and as a result has been received well by users. Alongside these changes, the app has completely reorganised its layout too. For more on the update, see here.
Now that you understand a little more about the instant messaging app that is Snapchat, let’s take a look at why it’s great for business use.

Why is Snapchat great for business use?

Posts on snapchat, regardless of the new update are temporary. Hence, there is less need for the content to be of the highest-quality. Instead of spending hours creating a great visual, you’re able to give users live updates that are easy to do and get content in the eyes of your customers almost immediately.

Documenting day-to-day operations in your business or live footage when you’re out at events, gives your viewers a exclusive peak at content they won’t find on your website and even other social channels. It’ll add to the enjoyment that users get when watching your stories and help to generate more awareness and interest in your brand.
Businesses are most likely to use Snapchat for its Stories as this targets a bigger, generic audience. When wanting to communicate one on one with users, direct messaging it okay, however, due to the content disappearing, if important information is needed to be saved, this would cause problems.

Important: It’s good to keep in mind that only users who have added you on Snapchat can view the story content. However, once you have an audience, the story feature allows you to easily create story-driven and interactive content.

Snapchat Analytics
Snapchat offers some basic analytics built into it. You can see how many and which specific users, viewed your story. You can also see if a user has opened the image or video sent directly to them and when it was opened.

Tips for Snapchat Business Use

1. Upload content regularly

Like any good marketing strategy, content needs to be published regularly. Don't let your followers forget that you exist. Content on your Snapchat Story disappears after 24 hours, so remember to upload daily content.

2. Interact directly with users

As stated above, 63% of users interact with the app to message friends. Be sure to answer any messages that come your way and be personal with your responses. Address them by their name or username. The same applies when replying to photo or video snaps.
For businesses who have may already have a large audience and following, make use of this on Snapchat by sponsoring certain features. These include sponsored Snap Ads, Lens and Geofilters.

3. Sponsor A Snap Ad

Sponsoring a Snap Ad will allow you to create a ten-second audio-visual clip. This will help you to raise awareness, increase consideration and drive action. Below are some of the types of snap ads you can create. For more information, see here.

• Snap ads with web view. These drive traffic to preloaded websites. With the Autofill feature, Snapchatters can send you their account email and more by simply tapping on the ad.
• Snap ads with app install. These drive installs for your app with a simple swipe and a tap. Users can easily download your app without having to leave Snapchat and being directed elsewhere. Perfect!
• Snap ads with long-form video. Users can swipe up on your ad to view your trailer, short film, how-to or any other video clip.

“Make an impression on a huge audience with the most engaging ad formats on mobile. Inspire potential customers to lean in and learn more, seamlessly driving them to your website or content. Drive foot traffic, sign-ups, app installs, and more with ads that make an impact, fast, and are fun to interact with.” - Snapchat

4. Create A Branded Lens or Geofilter

Lens

Sponsored lenses are probably the most effective method of advertising on the entire platform. The difference between a snapchat lens and geofilter is the lens is animated whereas a filter is static. The animations follow your face and add what’s deemed as a “cool” effect to your snaps. This is cleverly done using facial recognition software to track facial features and apply an animation that follows your facial movements.

The first of the above moving images, shows a sponsored lens from Red Bull. Here you can see a user looking as though she is drinking a can of Red Bull. This was related to the fact that school exams were coming up and hence they were encouraging users to take an energy drink to prepare. For your business, assuming you were a local coffee shop, your lens could be as simple as allowing the user to drink a mug of coffee.

Geofilters

Snapchat’s geofilters allow you to be where your product is bought, thought about, or consumed. As noted above, they are static overlays that are used to jazz up an image or video. They are based on the user’s location meaning when in different countries, cities and even buildings, users will find they have access to filters other people elsewhere in the world, don’t.

You’ve probably noticed that if you use Snapchat in any McDonald's across the country with your location settings on, a McDonald's themed geofilter will appear. That’s of course because McDonald’s have a sponsored geofilter. For more information on Snapchat filters, see here.

Remember: Different to most social networking platforms, Snapchat’s messaging services are entirely mobile-based. Meaning, if you want to use the app for your business, your smartphone will be a compulsory marketing tool.

YouTube

Moving on from Snapchat, Youtube is another great social media tool for business use. Aside from being the second largest search engine, YouTube is owned by Google. Hence, the content published to YouTube is a great addition to any online marketing strategy in terms of SEO as these videos are more likely to appear in search results than other websites.

“YouTube is currently ranked No. 2 both domestically and globally, according to internet analytics company Alexa. It has more than a billion users, according to the company, and more than half of all views come from mobile devices.” - Business News Daily

Why Use YouTube for Business?

1. YouTube Live

YouTube has its own live streaming feature, like that seen on Facebook. Currently, YouTube Lives are most popular for sports, news and gaming content. However, just like on other apps, going live on YouTube gives active users live footage of your business perhaps at an event or doing a business tour. This gives users never-before-seen content as it’s done in the present and the same exact footage cannot have been done before.

2. Target Large Audiences By Working With YouTubers

You may have heard of the buzz about "YouTubers" and their “fandoms”. These are essentially personalities, such as those on reality TV, with their own channels and mass group of supporters. From years of living on the “Tube” they’ve maintained an enormous following, sometimes in the hundreds of thousands or millions of subscribers. Many YouTubers specialise in particular areas such as fashion, beauty, food, gaming and travel. Stand out YouTubers includes beauty blogger Zoella and young tech vlogger Marques Brownlee.

So, what does that mean for your business? By working with YouTube personalities in a ‘corporate sponsorship’ you’ll be sure to make a clever business move. By sponsoring a YouTuber you’ll often be required to send them your products for them to mention and use in their videos. You’ll be sure to generate brand awareness and if the product is reviewed honestly and positively, you’ll no doubt have increased sales too. Great!

3. Create Your Own YouTube Adverts

YouTube adverts are seen before, during and after video streaming. They’re in the form of short clips that can also pop up whenever a video is embedded on other pages on the site.

Every time a user watches 30 seconds (or shorter, depending on the clip’s length) of your ad or clicks to “learn more”, you pay. Meaning if a user doesn’t qualify for the above, you don’t pay. In terms of expense, this is beneficial to your business as it will only really mean you pay for those users who show an interest in your content and as a result are most likely to be an active lead for your business.

There are also discovery ads which unlike normal YouTube ads, aren’t limited to 30 seconds in length. These can be as long or short as you wish, though you’ll be charged every time someone clicks on the ad to watch the full video. Discovery ads can be found when a user is searching or browsing content on both YouTube and across the web.
Good To Know: You can choose how much you're willing to spend on advertising, as well as targeting specific audiences based on age, gender, interests and location.

Further Tips for YouTube Business Use

1. Optimise your video’s title, tags and description. Select relevant keywords you want to target that best describe the video and make sure they’re relevant. This is good practice for SEO purposes and will help audiences find accurate content related to their search term and therefore, interest.

2. Use clickable links to reference other content. YouTube allows you to reference other video content at the end of the video you’ve just streamed, may that content be older or more recent. The reference has a clickable link within it which can also link back to any web pages or sites your video covers. That means you can promote not only video content but your website pages, blog content and so on as well.

3. Create and organise your playlists. If you have videos that are all related by theme it’s best practice to organise these together. For example, as a marketing company you’ll want to create a playlist on all SEO-related videos and a separate playlist for all Social Media videos. This makes navigating to the right type of video a lot easier for the user and results in them finding the most useful content to them, that you have.

4. Promote your content across other social platforms. Having now optimised your videos and organised them into playlists, it’s time to cross promote them on other social channels. Make sure you link back to your videos whenever possible on your website, blog and other social networks. Your links back don’t need to be direct video links. You can link back to your channel in general so that your audience can view your whole YouTube profile and content and also have have the chance to subscribe.

5. Engage with similar videos. Get involved with the YouTube community by “liking” and “commenting” on videos uploaded by other users. This can encourage those users to visit your videos and channel and engage with you in return. Not only this, but it will mean that users who see your content is being interacted with, may feel more pressure to get involved as well.

Important: When engaging with other videos, make sure that they share a similar topic, interest or theme to attract the right viewers. It’s no good encouraging users to view your content if they’re unlikely to have an interest in it. These users may get misled and frustrated as a result of this, which could negatively affect your channel.

Youtube and Snapchat Can Help Further Your Marketing

All in all, as great as social channels like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are, the online world is growing and it’s time to explore other networks that are just as good. From this article you should have learned just why social app Snapchat is a great mobile marketing tool as well as why YouTube will help get you ranking well on Google and your products talked about by millions of people.

Katie Rose, Digital Marketing Assistant

Katie Rose is Digital Marketing Assistant at iWeb, a leading UK based eCommerce agency. iWeb are certified Magento developers with over 22 years experience designing and developing eCommerce websites.

The post Consider YouTube and Snapchat for Business Use appeared first on RELEVANCE.

We’ll go back to the basics. Imagine Instagram stories have only just been launched. You know nothing about them. So, let’s find out what they are and what they do.

What are Instagram Stories?

Instagram Stories allow users to add images and videos to their profile to share moments of their day with their followers. The photos and videos will disappear after 24 hours and won’t appear on your profile grid. That means you can be as creative as you please, without over-posting and cluttering up your followers’ feeds. Great!

“Instagram Stories, a new feature that lets you share all the moments of your day, not just the ones you want to keep on your profile. As you share multiple photos and videos, they appear together in a slideshow format: your story.” - Instagram

Where are they found?

Instagram stories are shown at the top of your instagram homepage feed. The picture in the circle is the profile picture of the person whose story it is. The coloured pink and orange border around the circle tells you that there is a post on their story you haven’t yet viewed. (In the below example, the same goes for you! You have uploaded a new photo to your story, but haven’t checked it out yet!)

To view someone’s story, just tap on their profile photo in the story bar. Viewing stories can be done at your own pace: tap to go back and forward or swipe to jump to another person’s story. Unlike posts to your Instagram feed, stories aren’t prone to getting lost in your follower’s feeds. Instead they remain at the top of a user’s Instagram homepage. The chances of followers seeing your post is, therefore, a lot greater.

How to Use Instagram Stories

The Basics

Before we dive into the business benefits of Instagram Stories, it is important to know how to use them. First things first, let’s learn how to add a post to your story. Sounds simple, but unfortunately like most technology, it’s more confusing than you think.

Adding a post to your Instagram Story: Lucky for you, there are two ways to add to your story: the first can be done by going to your profile page and clicking on your profile picture (icon). The second can be achieved by navigating to your main feed and clicking on the camera icon on the top left corner. Take your photo and then add text, drawings, and stickers to your masterpiece. Once you’ve created your post, tap the “+ your story” icon on the bottom right corner and BAM! it’s officially added to your story.

For some businesses, an ordinary photo just won’t do your post justice. Sometimes, using a video or Boomerang or even going “live” will give your users a more exciting post. Think about it. If you are posting about a business event you are attending, taking a photo of the place would be fine, but “boomeranging” inside the event and giving video updates of insightful talks would be a lot more useful (and not as easy to quickly tap through!)

Choosing an image from your camera roll: So you have attended a great business event. You have lots of image and video coverage but it’s sitting in your camera roll. Fear not! Instagram has a feature for that. You can upload the photos and videos taken in the last 24 hours to your story in two ways: Clicking the small thumbnail icon on the bottom left of the screen next to the flash icon will unveil your content. Alternatively, you can swipe your screen down to see all of your recent images to post.

Important! The dimensions for Instagram Stories are at 1080 x 1920 pixels. This means that, for many photos, you may need to get cropping your content before you post it. The video aspect ratio is 9:16 and the length can vary from anywhere between 1 second up to 15 seconds. Again, you may have to get savvy with your story cropping skills.

Remember: Unfortunately, you can’t post anything that has been taken more than a day ago.

Editing Your Post

To post optimized content on your Instagram Story, businesses should be making the most of the text, pen, and sticker options available. This will help to explain what is going on in the image, the location it was taken and the people who are involved, etc.

Adding text: Adding text is done by clicking on the top right corner on the “Aa” icon. Then start typing. Having written your masterpiece, you can tap out of the text box where you can change the style and alignment. There are three styles to choose from: a slight faded colour behind the text, a solid text background colour, and no background, just the text in your colour of choice.

To change the colour of your text, highlight the word you want to change. By using the colour palette bar you can tap the shade you want. To have different words in different colours, you can write one word at a time and choose your colour. Having created the first word, tap out of the text box and go back to the “Aa” icon to add a separate text box. Type your text in and make this a different colour… Ta da!

Geotags: These are a form of ‘sticker’ that can be accessed by clicking on the square happy face icon on the top right corner of your screen. Here you will find a “location” sticker. Tap this to add your location to the image. This is great for letting customers know where you are or if you are attending an event. Your viewers can then click on the event to “see the location”. This takes them to a page to view the map location of your whereabouts and other popular posts tagged in the same location.

Good to Know: With any sticker, you can increase and decrease their size by pinching or expanding it with two fingers.

Adding hashtags: There are two ways to add a hashtag to your post: by clicking on the stickers icon and tapping “hashtag” or typing your known hashtag in the text box (so through the “Aa” icon). Either approach will result in a tappable, searchable hashtag in your story.

Tagging people in a post: Click on the “Aa” icon and type the “@” symbol, followed by the Instagram user (handle) you want to tag. Instagram should generate a list of people who you are trying to tag as you are typing. Click on their image to tag them.

Remember: You must click on their image to make sure the tag works. Otherwise you can type the @name of someone, without actually tagging them. In order to tell if it has worked, their Instagram name will be underlined.

Tips for Verified Accounts

How to add links: If you have a verified account, the link feature is great for driving people to your longer form content such as a product page or offer page. You can do this by adding a photo or video to your story, and then tapping the paperclip icon on the top right corner of your screen. Add the URL and when you “add to your story,” you’ll see the call to action “see more”.

Tip: Get creative with the pen and stickers to create arrows and other focal points, drawing the attention of your users to the “swipe up” section of the screen.

 @kimkardashian uses image tags and tags via text on her image to encourage users to other Instagram accounts related to the post. @huffpost layer text boxes, hashtags, and arrows drawn with the pen tool help focus user attention to “swipe up for more info!”.

Many people describe Instagram Stories to be “like Snapchat” - an image messaging and multimedia mobile application. But, sadly for Snapchat, Instagram Stories are taking over. We are going to take a look through some of the reasons, why Instagram Stories are becoming so popular, particularly for business use.

Why Should Businesses Use Instagram Stories?

If you’re a brand, the list of reasons why you should use Instagram Stories is endless. As a well-established social media channel, there are lots of benefits and features you must utilize to enhance your social media marketing tactics.

Reach More Customers than Other Apps

Most importantly, the amount of people you are likely to reach on Instagram is usually far greater than on similar devices such as Snapchat.

Why?

• It’s harder to find people on Snapchat (and hence their content).
• You can’t share links or tag people on Snapchat.
• Instagram quite simply has a larger audience (700 million users over 300 million users).
• Media content is of better quality on Instagram.

Fact: TechCrunch reports that the marketing platform TheAmplify is seeing 28% higher open rates on Instagram Stories compared to Snapchat.

Maintain a Presence in Your Followers’ Feeds

With Instagram getting a new algorithmic model, your posts are now less likely to appear in your followers’ feeds multiple times. Your posts only show to followers that Instagram deems will be most interested in them. That’s where Instagram Stories come into play.

Unlike regular posts, your stories don’t have to compete for a spot in your followers’ feeds. They feature at the very top of a user’s feed. You can stay at the top of the feed - and mind - of your followers.

Lots of Average Posts Encourages Engagement

Instagram Stories aren’t known for showing the highest quality images and videos. As a matter of fact, they are more your “average” posts, published frequently and consistently to show users a “day in the life” of your business. Not everyone can capture wow-factor content on the go, and that’s fine. As long as the media is clear, posting regular business updates encourages followers to engage with you by checking your profile for the latest posts and useful information. So, make sure you give it to them!

Diversify Your Strategy

Maintaining the attention of anyone can be a difficult daily task. Diversifying your content helps to keep the attention of your target audience and cater to their many preferences. For many businesses, this can be in the form of adding a new channel or social media platform to your strategy. That sounds a little time consuming to us.

If you are already on Instagram, using Instagram Stories is a perfect way of mixing up your marketing content with the resources you already have. Take away the need of creating a new social profile and try to rebuild your audience by utilizing Instagram Stories, which is a new feature of an already existing platform.

Use Real-Time Marketing

Not only do customers have a need for more personalized content, they are also demanding it now! You can cater to this need by posting live during an event or sale to encourage more people to attend. For those who can’t attend, your posts bring them closer to your business, giving them the opportunity to experience the antics through social updates.

Save and Repurpose Content

As you now know, Instagram Stories have a lifespan of 24 hours. Some will see it as a downfall, but that’s where being social savvy comes in. Your post content can be saved manually (or you can set Instagram to save all Story content to your camera roll automatically) to reuse it at a later date! Perhaps you ran an Instagram poll? This data can be turned into a really cool, informative Instagram post to thank those who got involved and voted. Great!

Closing Thoughts

As you can see, using Instagram Stories is pretty straight-forward and there are dozens of benefits to them. It gives freedom and flexibility to your Instagram marketing, despite the ongoing changes in the platform and to-use behaviour.

“Instagram has always been a place to share the moments you want to remember. Now you can share your highlights and everything in between, too.” - Instagram

With so many reasons to use it, why not try an Instagram Story today?

The post The How and Why Guide To Using Instagram Stories appeared first on RELEVANCE.