Increase Engagement with 360° and 3D posts this holiday season
It’s that time of the year again! Hallelujah. We wait and watch as a gazillion brands descend with their marketing material on us, and campaigns that are passé and get lost in the sea of Christmas greetings you never end up reading.
Now, how do you reach out to your audience in between all this noise?
The answer is all about making your audience interact more with your posts, and immersing them in your content. Remember, it’s about them, not about you.
A great way of creating higher interaction and engagement with your audience is to use immersive mediums like Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) or an amalgamation of both, Mixed Reality (MR). You might have heard of these terms and about how you need to learn complex tools like game engines, about how much of it involves 3D modelling and coding and so much more.
Now, of course, you are going to panic about all the code or 3D expertise involved. That’s where we come in, we’ve made creating immersive VR/AR/MR experiences a breeze!
Two of the quickest ones to create are:
• Facebook 360° posts
• Facebook 3D posts
Facebook 360° Posts
Facebook’s latest format of 360° posts provides users with a chance to interact with immersive photos and videos across mobile and desktop through simple interactions.
All you need to do is make a 360° post, place it on your timeline and see the engagement on your feed soar.
Scapic is the perfect tool for you to create your 360° post. Let’s explore how you can create one within minutes:
2. Create an account if you’re a new user or login if you’re an existing user.
3. Once the Dashboard opens up, click on the Facebook 360 template.
4. When you enter the FB 360 template, the “scenes” store opens up which contains a lot of 360° images suited for various needs, if you already have a 360° image, you can upload it onto the tool.
5. The first icon on the bottom bar is Media. Here you can find a wide variety of images and videos (2D elements) that you can add to personalise your scene from signboards to emojis. The Scapic editor has integrations with Unsplash which spoils you for choice with images that you can add to your experience. You can even upload your own media to give your creation a more personalised feed.
6. The next icon is 3D objects which contain a wide variety of 3D objects (these are interactive elements that can be rotated in space just like real-life objects).
You can choose one from the Scapic library, from our integrations such as Google Poly, Sketchfab or upload your own.
Once you add your object to the canvas scale and reposition it.
(We currently only allow 3D objects that are in glTF/GLB formats to be uploaded because they’re more optimised for the web. Go web!)
7. The last icon on your bottom bar is the Text template. Click on it to add text to your scene and choose from a set of fonts available after which you can scale and reposition it. If you would like to edit your text, click on the edit icon on the top right corner of your handles. You can also change the colour of your text using the action bar at the bottom of the screen.
8. Once you’re ready with your post, you can share your creation using the share button on the top right corner of your screen. Here, you can download your 360° image and later share it on Facebook.
If you would like to embed it on your website, you can go ahead and click on the embed option present with the other share options.
Facebook 3D posts
We’ve seen content progress from text to photo to video. With 3D models and VR/AR content on the horizon, the next wave of content is immersive; interactive 3D formats at scale with the real world, encouraging users to interact and engage with content.
1. Head on over to the Scapic editor to get started.
2. Create a free account if you’re a new user or login if you’ve been here before.
3. Click on the Facebook 3D template and let’s get going
4. You will get a blank canvas to start creating your post by either adding 2D media, 3D objects or text and if you’re feeling adventurous, try all three! Don’t forget the 3MB limit though, as this is a limit that Facebook has set to ensure optimal load times.
(To make it easier we’ve got a counter on there to ensure that you keep your creation within the size limit)
5. The Media icon lets you choose from a library of stunning images courtesy our integration with Unsplash or upload your own by tapping on the media icon. Click on the image and place it where you’d like.
6. Add a 3D object by clicking on the 3D object icon and selecting from a range of available objects or upload your own.
(Currently, we support gLB & gLTF models only but if you would like to convert your other models to the correct file format, you can use this tool.)
7. Personalize your 3D post with some text to tie your message together.
8. Now, you can share your creation directly on to Facebook by clicking on the Share button in the top right corner and sharing directly to your Facebook feed or to another page.
Want to share all your creations onto your websites for a merry makeover? Just use the embed link in the share panel and place them on your site!
