Snapchat Closed Nature Could be its Demise

Hi there!

Wanted to share a blog post I originally wrote for my agency, Barkley, back in September about Snapchat versus Instagram:

Snapchat has been on a winning streak since its launch back in 2011. From Stories in 2013, to location filters in 2014, to Discover in 2015, the platform has seen nothing but success. Brands took notice quickly, and eventually rival social platforms were forced to take notice, as well. Snapchat reported 7 billion daily video views in January of this year, while social giant Facebook reported 8 billion daily video views around the same time. After a long reign as founder of the #1 social platform, Mark Zuckerberg became nervous. And rightfully so. Snapchat was scooping up the younger users that Facebook was losing, and ad dollars depended on that demographic. Facebook even attempted to buy Snapchat for $3B from founder Evan Spiegel, but was unsuccessful.

Facebook-owned Instagram has so far been the saving grace for Zuckerberg, especially regarding the millennial demographic that uses it. Searchability and a focus on aesthetically-pleasing, aspirational content helped propel Instagram to the top alongside Facebook, with Instagram now citing as many as 300M daily active users. And with the recent release of Instagram Stories, Zuckerberg is one step closer to beating Snapchat – and Spiegel.

Instagram Stories, a recently-released Instagram feature, enables users to easily share photos and videos which auto-delete after 24 hours, unless users choose to showcase them on the profile permanently. It’s very similar to the Snapchat platform, but more open in terms of user discovery. With higher follower numbers typically seen on Instagram than on Snapchat, the Instagram Stories feature is primed for success.

It’s been cited that when Nike used Instagram Stories, the brand generated more than 800,000 views in a single 24-hour period. When compared to their 60.4 million followers on the platform, that doesn’t sound so impressive. But compared to Nike’s Snapchat stats, where the brand’s top performing video only received 66,000 views, 800K is notable. Not to mention, those 800,000 views were received on the first day of the feature’s release.

Snapchat’s consistent difficulty, through all of those wins and feature releases, revolves around restrictions in growing the user base and interactions between users. With a closed platform build of users needing a phone number, username or snapcode to add friends or brands, the level of discovery is unfortunately low, and this could come back to bite them. The ability to add people nearby doesn’t add much to this, either. While the purposes of the platforms are all different, and people are generally not yet conditioned to reach for Instagram rather than Snapchat when posting in-the-moment, the social sphere changes very quickly and Snapchat will need to evolve their platform to keep up.

Periscope Gives Power to the People

Hi there!

I regularly blog for my agency, Barkley – check out this post I wrote back in June on updates from Periscope: https://www.barkleyus.com/insights/periscope-gives-power-people/

On June 1, Periscope rolled out a new comment moderation system in response to increased spam and abusive language used in broadcast comments. Known as a jury voting system, if a user flags another user’s comment as inappropriate, random viewers of the same broadcast receive a prompt to vote whether the comment is abuse or spam, or if the comment is acceptable. If the majority of these users deem the comment inappropriate, the comment is removed and the commenter’s permission to post is temporarily disabled.

For many broadcasts, this new system is purely positive. Spam comments can be flagged by anyone and removed almost instantly, which helps cut down on trolls, hate speech and other discriminatory and offensive language. However, there is huge variety in messages broadcast on the platform, and not all opinions resonate with every user. Users may not be able to freely comment their thoughts if they risk having them marked as abuse by someone who disagrees. However respectfully and thoughtfully a comment may be delivered, if it’s in the minority, enough randomly selected users could disagree with the comment and vote to have it removed by deeming it spam or abuse.

For most brands, this shouldn’t have a negative effect on Periscope presence. However, users whose broadcasts may invite polarizing opinions should consider disabling the ability for users to moderate comments.

TL;DR: Periscope now lets users vote to remove abusive or spam comments, which in many cases will help cut down on trolling or hate speech. However, this could also silence the opinions of the minority viewers in some cases.

Instagram Announces Account Switching

On February 8, Instagram announced the roll-out of a new feature to users, which made social media managers everywhere rejoice: The ability to easily switch between Instagram accounts.

For years, in order to post to multiple Instagram accounts, a user needed to log in and out of the different accounts. Community managers everywhere shook their fists at the sky, wondering why the world could be so cruel. Instagram finally took notice of the inconvenience and made the change for users everywhere.

With the newest app update, Instagram users will now see an “Add account” option in their profile settings. From here, up to four additional accounts can be added to the list for easy switching between.

 

However, Instagram didn’t just do social media managers the basic favor. They even included multiple safeguards, to help ensure people can’t easily confuse accounts and post to the wrong one. Instead of the house icon in the bottom bar of the app, it shows the profile photo of the account you’re currently using. And when you post a photo to an account, it now shows a “Post as” text with the logged-in handle listed instead of the previous, vague button to push your photo live.

From social media people everywhere: Thank you, Instagram.

Facebook Moves to Qualitative Algorithm

On February 1, Facebook announced changes to their algorithm in efforts to
continue prioritizing qualitative user insights. The change centers around increased real-time feedback on what people actually want to see in their News Feed, rather than solely judging algorithm ranks by engagement levels.

This real-time feedback is obtained in the form of surveys presented to “tens of thousand of people each day” in order to glean more information around what users are truly interested in seeing. Crafted by Facebook’s Feed Quality Panel, the surveys ask users to rate various stories from one to five stars, answering the question “How much did you want to see this story in your News Feed?”

This algorithm change comes as no real surprise, following other quality-
focused updates which dissuade from “likebait” posts and overly promotional content. However, it may be a particularly difficult adaptation for brands due to the need for knowing exactly what fans want to see.

Algorithm updates like this increase the need for insights and data-driven
observations tenfold. Without knowing what performs well with your fans, it’s near impossible to predict what will resonate with them.

Luckily, there are plenty of analytics and insights available to help get that
inside look. Digging into engagements and engaged users numbers on Facebook can help determine positive resonation the content has with fans. Those findings can be used to identify trends within top-engaging content, then used to drive content strategy forward and create content that fans truly want to spend time with.

Promoted Moments Prove Opportune

Since the introductions of storytellers like Storify, growth of real-time information delivery has only sped up over time. Snapchat stories curate from around the world. Facebook introduced Graph Search. And this quarter, Twitter introduced Moments.

Similar to Snapchat, Twitter Moments curates user stories to share in a new section of the Twitter navigation. Users can follow Moments for seamless integration into their own timeline, or scroll through the Moment to see what’s been curated so far.

Moments has been in development for quite some time, having originally launched as a new project back in June 2015 with the acquiring of Project Lightning. The unveiling of the result has been eagerly awaited, as many wondered how Twitter would match Snapchat’s continually growing real-time efforts as well as what the platform would do with Lightning. With new ad forms being introduced across multiple platforms, Twitter also needed a way for marketers to utilize the update: Promoted Moments.

Promoted Moments launched in October, with a motion picture release to introduce the feature. Twitter claims Promoted Moments are seamlessly integrated into that section of the site, authored by the brand and live for 24 hours. This new promotion ability could be momentous for brands, especially with those whose promotion can easily fit within the 24 hour time frame.

Live events will shine in this section – large premieres or day-long events hosted by brands. Super Bowl sponsors could get involved in the Moments feed for the day, or brands like Red Bull with large-scale real time events could promote through this spot. Smart brands will look to Moments as a viable option, as the seamless timeline integration is non-disruptive with the possibility of generating large numbers of additional impressions for a brand.

It doesn’t come cheap, though. The buy-in is currently $1 million, so it’s for serious brands only.

Customized Oreos

In preparation for the holidays, Oreo is promoting customizable packages of the beloved cookie. Not only is customization promotion a smart way of utilizing the new Facebook carousel ad format, it gives people a sweet gift idea that hasn’t been done before.

Customization as a trend has been living for years now, with individuality becoming more prominent and protected. Brands quickly realized this opportunity and capitalized upon it, from names on Coke bottles to NikeID shoes. The identity of Oreo lives partially in its packaging; it’s a smart move to suggest pre-populated designs with relatively free reign on the details. Oreo retains brand integrity, but there’s just something special about five pastel colors and a blank canvas that makes consumers come running.

We see it in our everyday client work: custom content often outperforms cookie-cutter responses from brands. Oreo just takes it outside of the digital sphere. Especially during the winter holidays, people have gifting (and getting) on the brain. This is the perfect opportunity for Oreo to create a custom experience with their fans, that fans can then share with people they care about. It increases the spread of the brand touch and the loyalty people feel to the brand, resulting in higher positive sentiment and advocacy going further.

Facebook Introduces Virtual Reality Capabilities

After buying Oculus Rift in 2014, Facebook has recently added virtual reality capabilities to the platform.

It’s an interactive experience, more captivating than simple image or video abilities. The power is given by the brand and utilized by the consumer, which I love. Users can customize their experience with content based on their personal interests. No algorithms determine which angle the camera will take next – it’s actually up to us. And to have power in our hands again on Facebook is something rare as of late. Check it out yourself, using this experience from MythBusters’ Adam Savage.

How to Manage Social Influencers

As a Senior Community Manager, part of my role involves regularly blogging for Barkley. One of these blogs is about managing social influencers, especially for smaller brands. I wanted to include a link to the post, as one of my focuses is around developing and activating organic influencers in the social space for my client.

Copy and pasted from Barkley’s website:

“Imagine you’re a community manager. You’re doing what you usually do: you’re
trying to increase engagements while working to build brand loyalty through new
connections and relationships. Then you see a notification on Twitter of a new @
mention. You look, and the tweet about your brand already has dozens, if not
hundreds of engagements. Perfect timing! Even better, it’s from [insert influential
person that fits into your brand’s voice here]. It’s a positive mention, and you know this could be a great opportunity. So you engage with them, and they retweet you, and a relationship is born. It’s a shaky relationship for now, but it’s easy to strengthen.

When engaging with influencers for your brand organically, organization,
monitoring techniques and having a plan are integral to successful organic
influencer development. Otherwise, you could have countless engagements like the one you just imagined become untapped and wasted opportunities. Without
organization, monitoring techniques and having an influencer outreach plan in
place, it’s going to be much harder to re-activate those influencers and turn them
into stronger advocates for your brand in the future.

Organization: Organizing your influencers is imperative to keeping them all in
order. Organization can help you recall information about each influencer for
custom influencer kits or personalized content. Even a simple spreadsheet outlining the influencer’s name, social handles, favorite items or services provided by your brand and their relevant posts would make things much easier for you.

Remember to lay out your key objectives:

 Do you want to keep a record of all engagements with each influencer?
 Will you be sending them influencer kits over time?
 What information do you need to reach your goals?

Monitoring: You may not always conveniently be on Twitter or Instagram when an influencer posts about your brand, so having a monitoring system in place can keep you informed of potential opportunities. Do you have access to a social monitoring platform that can email you when certain people mention your brand? If not, can you go through the list of influencers each morning to see if they mentioned your brand since you signed off last? Whatever the technique, the goal is to ensure you can take action quickly when needed. The longer you wait to engage, the less relevant you’ll seem.

Have a Plan: What are you going to do with these influencers if and when you
connect with them? Are you going to keep a record of them and simply engage with them as they mention your brand? Will you set up an activation plan for different groups of influencers, so that whenever the opportunity arises you know what to do? Do you have a set budget for personalized surprises that you have to stick to? Make sure you preplan as much as possible, so when a real-time opportunity arises,
you don’t miss out on strengthening that 1:1 relationship.

Influencers are people too, and they’re unpredictable. Be sure to keep an eye out
and be prepared, so when an influencer mentions your brand, you’ll be ready to
build that relationship and gain a potential brand adovcate.

Hi Again.

Okay, so in my previous post I said I was going to update on what happens next. Naturally, that’s when I took a break from posting. For a year.

To give a quick catch up, I had accepted a job with Panera Bread in their St. Louis office as a Social Media Coordinator. It was temp-to-perm, and while I absolutely loved the experience, the agency side was calling my name.

So here I am now, a Community Manager with Barkley in Kansas City, celebrating my one-year in two weeks. Crazy how time flies. Dairy Queen is my client and I couldn’t be happier. I’ve gotten to take ownership of a lot of things, such as influencer activations and content coordination, and I’m learning quite a lot. Plus, Kansas City is the coolest place. I never would have moved here by choice since I was pretty unfamiliar with the city, but I have no regrets.

Post-Grad Life

I realized it’s been awhile since I’ve blogged— my apologies! Things have been a little crazy. I graduated from Mizzou last weekend with a Bachelor of Arts and do have a job set up for after college! I’ll blog about it later, after I start. Until then, I’m being a little superstitious about counting my chickens. But I’ll be working in St. Louis for now, and I’m so excited to spend lots of time with family and friends.

As it stands, I don’t have a huge amount of contacts in St. Louis. I’m trying to figure out how to join the Social Media Club chapter there, and if you have any ideas of other groups I could join to network, please comment and let me know! I’m so eager to begin this new chapter of my life, and I can’t wait to see what happens and where my career path leads. Social media marketing is my passion, as I realized during my internship with Intern Queen, Inc. the summer after my sophomore year. As I sat in my makeshift home office in the guest bedroom of our house (the internship was virtual), learning Google Analytics and experimenting with community management tactics, I can remember perfectly the excitement I got from learning everything I could and putting it into practice. I had always hoped that I would get a job right out of college, and that I would graduate in four years. At some points it didn’t seem possible. And during my seven-month job search, there were many times I had to just put my head in my hands because of how frustrating it was to try to track down recruiters and get an interview with them. But I did it. I graduated in four years, and my career path has been paved.

I’ll be sure to update on what happens next.