Social media continuously evolves, as seen in the emergence of features like Facebook Live and new platforms like Snapchat. With the ever-changing world of social media comes new ways of engaging users and adding to the mix of your company’s social media marketing strategy.
Here are some ways you can make the most out of Facebook Live and Snapchat to amp up your social media engagement and connect more with your followers.
How to Include Facebook Live in Your Marketing Strategy
At Pubcon 2016 in Las Vegas, Brent Csutoras, SEJ’s Chief Social Media Strategist, sat down with Kendall Bird of Collegis Education to talk about how to incorporate Facebook Live into your social media marketing strategy.
Here Are Some Key Takeaways From Her Interview:
- With Facebook prioritizing video, it’s important to engage your audience using video content. If you have a large initiative you’d like to share with your followers, use that as an opportunity to create a Facebook Live broadcast.
- You can show outtakes to give your followers a taste of what’s going on behind the scenes. But, you should also have a production plan. Follow that production plan but don’t overdo it. Make your Facebook Live broadcast organic in a way that allows your followers to be part of the experience.
- You need to be live at the moment rather than show pre-recorded live material so your followers won’t feel cheated. However, it’s also important to share video content outside of Facebook Live. The more video you’re showing, the more you’ll pop up in organic search results.
- Birchbox is an example of a company doing Facebook Live well right now. They use Facebook Live for unboxing events and showcasing their products. They’re also good at pre-promoting their broadcasts and sharing it after.
For more information on Facebook Live, explore the following resources:
Use These Snapchat Hacks for Your Business
In this interview at Pubcon 2016 in Las Vegas, Christina Baldassarre, Zebra Advertisement Founder, shares a few Snapchat hacks to utilize for your business.
Here are Some Key Takeaways from the Interview:
- One of the metrics to track in Snapchat is the number of people who take screenshots of what you snapped. You get a notification each time someone takes a screenshot. If you want to know what your competitors are up to in Snapchat, you can set your phone to Airplane mode then take a screenshot of what they snapped. That way, you can track what your competitors are doing without them ever knowing about it.
- When creating custom geofilters for Snapchat:
- Make sure you put in your request six weeks ahead of your event date because approval is on a first-come, first-serve basis.
- Get the maximum usage length of 30 days.
- Ensure that it’s a PNG file with a transparent background, a width of 1080 pixels, and a height of 1920 pixels. 80% of custom geofilters for businesses are disapproved because they aren’t transparent.
- Capitalize on user-generated content in Snapchat by making it visible to people who aren’t on Snapchat. Grab content that people are creating about your products or within your location then create a custom hashtag for it and share it on Instagram. You can also paste your Snapchat image or video on Twitter and have your followers tweet you a short code that integrates with a notification calendar.
For more information on Snapchat, explore the following resources:
Please visit SEJ’s YouTube page for more video interviews.
Image Credits
Featured Image: Screenshot by Rina Caballar. Taken November 2016.
