Well 2016 is marching toward halfway through and what do we know?
- GIF's are great a study by Buffer shows tweets with GIF’s began to receive 18% more clicks, 89% more favourites and 150% more retweets, this is not just retweets gif’s of cats!!
- Video has exploded but it still has to be short and interesting just because video is the “thing” at the moment it does not mean you can throw your corporate video up and expect views, make it relevant or funny
- Live streaming: According to Fast Company Periscope viewers are watching 40 years’ worth of video a day so get live streaming!! and now Facebook and You tube are offering live video no excuse get your brand out there
- Instant messenger: The teenagers are not signing up for Facebook, not relevant to them so if you are a youth brand get Snapchatting or to be more specific Geo Located filters are the best
- Twitter: Not been a good year ad revenue down, growth down and what some would say slightly desperate deals in India to try to add some growth back in. Twitter is now the turf of customer service and reacting to news the edge has gone too many people trying to own. (Graph below)
- Emoji: Growth but not where everybody predicted not so much in the use (which is up) but the apps that allow personalisation this is the explosive growth area with the growth so instant messenger and snapchat has driven the growth in these apps and the emoji keyboard being one of the fastest growing areas.
- Mobile Apps: This is very interesting massive growth in this sector (graph below) but games are in reverse! Well not quite as the size of the gaming market is huge. So apps are now about sustainability as it will be for all markets keeping hold of your customers once they have signed up is the trick don’t churn keep customer engaged.
- Facebook: is still a corner stone of most social strategies, invest in this channel, no it will not pay back on day one but social selling is on the increase and the Buy Now button we will be seeing more and more this year. BUT if you jump in at the top of the wave on selling you won’t have created the engagement so you will be perceived as exploiting so engage and build your following NOW it will deliver returns. Why? Facebook is the most visited web site of all web sites and everyone from the Economist to the New York Times are talking about how it could be one of the biggest influences on the USA election.
- E-PR or bloggers: Really coming of age, not just the trendy Brighton mob, but mixing fun with experience and blogger deliver incredible reach and content generation. We have delivered over 7.5million reach for a £25K spend but beware golden rules when finding bloggers is Domain Authority and engagement just a big reach is not enough there are enough tricks to get you followers but by measuring DA you can actually see the quality of engagement and double benefit of good SEO back links.
So hot tips for the rest of the year for brands:
- Get Live!! Live streaming, show me your production line, your team, your product and live real mistakes and all show me you are open and engaging
- Snapchat: Geo filters are a great way of connecting and adding value, brands should show humour and fun to engage
- Facebook: if you are not actively on it, with a strategy, you are losing customers to your competition
- E-PR: Use bloggers but engage with them http://www.graymatter.co.uk/awards/drum-social-buzz-award-win-2015-best-blog/ this is the evidence it works, is measurable and done right award winning!
If you need help with you social strategy get in touch, if you have no social don’t kid yourself all companies have a place on social.
Have a social 2016