It’s one thing being an active poster on social media in order to expose your brand, but with virtually all growing companies following suit, you’re going to really have to stand out if you want to gain a larger following.
Snapchat or Instagram stories
If your company are not already using Snapchat, take a look at this infographic and you may reconsider. Statistics show that 57 million Americans use Snapchat, and 50% of those people use the platform every day, making it compelling for any brand. However, research by L2 shows that only 40% of B2C businesses have accounts, compared to 93% for Instagram. This may have been a factor for Instagram’s choice to also introduce a stories feature. Whichever platform you choose, it’s a great marketing opportunity to invite your audience behind the scenes of your company. Shopify (@shopify) uses a range of Snapchat features to make their stories stand out. Their tips are as follows:
- Creating title cards for longer Snapchat stories
- Doing Snapchat takeovers with celebrities or partners
- Using shortened URLs for links
- Adding music over your snaps
Infographics
Adding pictures to text makes your message 25% more comprehensible, in addition to being easy to digest and more engaging. If you don’t have a designer to create infographics for you, it’s easy to create your own using tools such as Canva or Piktochart. Check out these tips from the experts about what makes a good infographic. And if you really want your content to stand out, you can create animated infographics.
Facebook Live videos
Although a fairly new feature on the social media platform with over 1.71 billion monthly active users, it is fast becoming more popular and one of the best ways to form real connections with your audience, and according to Facebook, people spend 3x longer on real-time video. Facebook Live videos have the added advantage of automatically being pushed higher in users’ newsfeeds. Benefit Cosmetics are an example of a company using Live videos to promote their brand, posting live-streams every Thursday as an opportunity for users to have their beauty questions answered.
User-generated content
A great way to increase engagement on social media is to post content from your followers. This not only encourages people to upload shots and tag your company, it also gives your posts variety. Roughly a third of Starbucks’ Instagram uploads are regrams from customers’ accounts. Numerous companies also run competitions, whereby they ask customers to post a photo of something specific in order to enter.
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