Social media trends you need to know for Marketers
Recent technologies have greatly opened doors for customized interfaces, and this conveniently allows every potential user to explore from a simple yet unique blend of content based on their choices. This customized interface has shown to be far more effective in marketing products and services to users, unlike the typical old school media approach. Here the users benefit from the meaningful contents and the marketers also benefit from positive user’s feedbacks and views analytic. Such, a win-win situation.
Our focus will be solely on unique features of, WhatsApp, Snap chat and Instagram, and how their features can be utilized in direct marketing and business promotion.
WHATS APP
WhatsApp is convenient as well as an effective social media platform, as you expect to see all age groups engage actively on this platform due to its simplicity and easiness in understanding its features. Aside from its simplicity, it offers lesser charges on messages, status updates, voice and video calls due to its insane file compression algorithm. With the new Whats App status (stories), not as recent as we make it sound as of the time of this post marketers can conveniently promote their products and services and also achieve this at a cheaper rate. This feature lets you showcase your status (in story format), to a specific audience, for a period of 24 hours before it automatically times out thereby giving them a personal touch, messages, and interactive Hyperlink buttons can also be attached to the status to give a brief description about a product or service. This feature can be set in such a way that specific customers can have the right privilege to view the status platform.
Aside from using the basic SMS broadcasting, WhatsApp has a broadcast feature that can be used, as this allows marketers to send identical messages to 100 or fewer people at the same time and you don’t reveal the recipients to one another. This means that you can send the same message to a lot of users without revealing their contact information. That’s a major advantage in terms of privacy, another important thing to note is the fact that marketing through Whats App gives the assurance that the receiver of your message uses a smartphone, therefore it gives you the opportunity to send links to your conversation pages, so that people can view additional messages related to your product.
SNAP CHAT
Snap chat a social media platform with over 166 million users possesses features that enable marketers to send photos, videos(snaps) to their followers(users) that can be viewed for up to 10 seconds before the messages time out. This feature makes marketing less boring. take for example, from the perspective of flashcards and power points, viewers are able to understand as well as pay more attention due to the message presentation style, instead of having to read a lengthy message describing a product or service. Also, the colorful filters, face-swapping effects and other playful functions, have made the application widely acceptable by people of all ages. Another practical example is the Starbucks snap chat chilled summer drinks campaign. The promo gave Starbucks drinks the opportunity to superimpose a festive lens over a photo of their beverages and send it to their friends. Snap-chatters who see their friends snapping photos with lenses may be inspired to head to the nearest Starbucks and purchase their chilled drinks, or probably add Starbucks to their list of brands to follow, thereby exposing them directly to future marketing strategies and in the long run expanding the brands profit as well as providing utmost satisfaction to their user’s.
Snap Ads are also a great way to catch the attention of interested users. A snap ad is basically a 10 second, full screen, vertical video ad that appears in-between stories. This feature works in such a way that advertising brands can offer Snap-chatters the choice to swipe up to view more in-depth content, like an article of some sort, a mobile website or an application.
Instagram stories are a photo and video sharing app, where content can be shared, thus allowing viewers(users) to share photos and videos in a slide show format. With over 150 million daily active users, this feature is intended as a space for rawer, real-time sharing, with contents that disappear after 24 hours. With this, you’re at a reasonable percentage of certainty that viewers who were not able to view your content at the initial posting time can still view them hours later. Also, like the Snap Ads, this feature creates the opportunity for users to view contents and swipe up for additional information about a product either in a blog format or just basic articles.
It’s safe to say that one-third of the most viewed stories are from businesses. Live videos can also be made, as with a one in five percentage, Instagram stories get direct messages from viewers. The comment box section provided in a story helps users communicate directly and somewhat conveniently with the marketers as well as airing their views and complaints about various products and services.
