Over the past few years, social media marketing has been one of the key marketing strategies for leading real estate developers to reach out to their potential buyers. For some developers, over 1/3rd of their sales comes from the digital medium. Advertising your property on social media platforms is a guaranteed way to showcase your property to the real estate investors and increase the possibility of a sale. However, just posting images of your next upcoming project may not be captivating enough. Here are some new trends that real estate developers can leverage upon.
What if you could give your potential home buyers the luxury of a walkthrough of their new apartment without them leaving their homes? Sounds too good to be true? The latest trend of 360 videos will let you do just that. It is an excellent way to connect with your target audience and show them home buyer what is in store for them if they buy your apartment or villa.
While virtual reality is making an entry in the marketing scene, it is not mainstream yet because of the cost of the VR gears. However, if you are looking for an engaging video, then a 360-degree video is a good starting point. These videos can be created through low-cost tools as well.
This trend is highly beneficial for real estate for developers to showcase their upcoming projects. Apart from the 360 videos, developers can also use 360-degree photos to showcase an immersive 360-degree experience. Both the 360 video and photo produce more engagement and message retention than regular videos or photos.
Casa Grande, one of India’s leading real estate developers, have used this marketing strategy to connect with their potential customers. For the launch of one of their projects in ECR, Chennai, they used 360 videos to exhibit to the potential clients what is in store for the project.
With organic reach on Facebook almost dead, brands are using focused advertising to reach their potential audience on Social Media. While the regular lead generation and website conversion ads are a great way to reach your target audience, it is also important to engage with the potential audience to understand them to improve the quality of your leads. A good way to do this is by using interactive ads. Interactive ads are the next generation of ads, which has taken social media marketing by storm. These ads increase the engagement by interacting with potential customers. A typical example of an interactive ad are the Facebook live polls hosted by companies to produce user-generated data to study what the customers are interested in buying. For example, a real estate developer can put up a poll on Facebook to check if their clients prefer sea-facing apartments or pool-facing apartments. This will give them a rough insight of what their customers want and can even use this data in pricing their property.
If you are looking at the next level of interactive advertising, try out M-Canvas ads, a mobile-only advertising service with very interactive and engaging ad formats. They are unlike any other format available on social media. They are highly interactive and uses a mix of images, video, and carousel to create a memorable and stunning visual experience on mobile. Moreover, these ads allow you to interact within the publisher i.e while you are reading your news article on the same page you can interact with the ad, rather than going to a different page. Once you click, the ads expand and give your further information and ensure the viewer interacts with the ad to take the next steps.
It is one of the best ways to showcase real estate products. For example, if your end goal is for your customer to enquire about the project, you can show a sneak preview of the project’s interiors with Call to Action that prompts viewers to take the next step. An audience who's interested enough to swipe all the way through your ad is likely willing to click through to your website and make the enquiry. These canvas ads are a new concept that is catching up, and we see it as a trend that is here to stay.
Micro-targeting is a marketing strategy of using consumer data and demographics to identify the interests of specific individuals and then influence their action of making a purchase. If a property is for sale on OMR in Chennai or in Whitefield in Bangalore or BKC in Mumbai, with three bedrooms, three baths and is close to the IT corridor, then it is most likely to be bought by a working professional in his 30s with a family of two kids. With the help of micro-targeting, real estate developers can reach out to their target audience by specifying the demographics and the geography of the potential customer on Facebook. You can even target users around the world whose hometown matches the city where the project is. Hence, their ads are displayed to a more specific and niche crowd making the probability of selling the property even higher than before.
Hindi Content has been growing faster than English content, and this is likely to increase even further in 2017. This is not only the case for content but also advertising. if you looking to reach a wider audience, especially in the tier II and III cities, then using regional content is a must. Ads in regional languages have started rolling out, and marketers have begun incorporating this concept into their marketing strategies to reach out to their target audience. When a potential home buyer reads an ad in his regional language, he develops a bond of trust and comfort with the seller and is more likely to make a purchase, or at least recommend that product to a friend.
For example, Aryan Housing, one of the leading real estate developers based out of Mumbai, ran a campaign of ads in Marathi to connect with their local audience and received a phenomenal response.
While the majority of the first time home buyers are researching online, they make the end decision of buying the property offline only. So for a real estate company, integrated offline and online marketing efforts is highly essential. While it is important to run ads and get leads, it is also important to understand that consumers do not make purchase decisions based on a single ad or message alone. Potential buyers gather all their information from various channels and this data gathered through several stages of the buying process are the building blocks of sales.
If you have a potential lead from an online ad and your sales team is following up with them, it is important to also reach out that potential lead online as well. You could use automated email or drip email to reach them until they actually make the purchase. Real Estate developers can target and constantly stay in touch with a group of people based on certain criteria. Let's say that a customer has visited property website and shown interest by coming for a site visit, digital marketers can use the information provided by the customer to send emails about the development and completion of the property and news on various other related properties. Drip emails are a powerful lead nurturer, with statistics showing a 119% increase in click-through rate via trustworthy emails.
Advertising across social media platforms is all about building your brand and making it a household name for people to connect to and rely on. In “Across the Funnel” marketing, real estate developers build their brand names through four essential steps. They initially start the process by running engaging campaigns on social media, which explain their products and attract potential buyers. Then, they work towards increasing traffic to their websites and drive site visits and enquiries through their conversion data. Lastly, they customise their audience by eradicating cold leads and focus on customers who have actively shown interest in their marketing campaigns. With Facebook’s Brand Reach & Frequency campaigns, brands can even get assured visibility and reach, similar to what a front-page newspaper ad gives.
All of these social media marketing strategies are currently trending in 2017 and are here to stay! Which of these techniques will you be adopting in your social media marketing strategy? Tell us in the comments below. Content marketing blogs to follow.
In the meantime, go through our complete guide for digital marketing for real estate.
In Apr 2017, Social Beat in partnership with Facebook India conducted the second edition of the Digital Marketing Masterclass. With a packed audience of 50, we had an insightful session on how to approach digital marketing to build a brand and to acquire quality sales or leads.
The top three expectations, shared by the audience, that was elaborated during the session were:
So, if you are facing similar challenges, then read on!
From Facebook’s own research, users on average spent 3 hours on mobile per day that signifies that your consumer is on mobile for 3 hours and you have the opportunity of 3 hours to be in front of your consumer!
One thing we all need to understand is that Facebook is a discovering platform. Your brand personality has to stand out in the consumer’s mind and there need to be multiple touch points and impressions to make the connect. The Reach & Frequency category of campaigns can be useful in achieving this goal. Moreover, Facebook users are active throughout the day, unlike most other mediums (TV, print or radio) and in fact, 35%+ of Facebook Users are active at any given time.
Did you know that on average in a single day people check their Facebook feed 14 times? As many as 62% of the audience check their phones over 30 times a day. That means you are getting 14 times the opportunity to sell your product via Facebook. With over 184 million Facebook users in India, it gives brands a tremendous opportunity. Moreover, as per the report from NCCSAB, 210 million is the consuming population in India out of which, 142 million can be reached through Facebook.
As per the statistics, 33% of the users are from metros. So 67% of the Facebook universe belongs to the population from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities – which is contrary to popular perception. This is also going to give rise to content creation and consumption in regional languages.
Facebook is the platform to keep in touch with family and friends whereas Instagram is the platform where people look for inspiration, photos and brands to follow.
Top Interests on Instagram are:
Moreover, the Instagram user is a more evolved and engaged user with a premium lifestyle. For example, while only 5% of the population in India has mobile postpaid connections, 25% of Instagram users have postpaid connections – highlighting that a luxury or premium brand cannot be ignoring a platform like Instagram.
Facebook is 85% accurate and when further information like age and gender is included, the accuracy rate goes up to 90%.
The top reasons why Facebook is more effective is
This feature allows us to reach a precise audience based on four main targeting types:
For example: When targeting NRIs to sell your property - The audience which is core to Facebook is provided with age and gender information. Behaviour targeting will help us target people living in a joint family, who are frequent travellers internationally and nationally, who have travel apps and are newly married.
The custom audience is an excellent way to make use of CRM data. The CRM tool can also help in lead nurturing, which is critical to improving the final conversion of leads to home buyers. Research by Social Beat shows that there is a 60% better chance of converting if called within 2 hours.
Another medium we can customise our audience is with the use of Facebook Pixel, which creates a list of users who came to your website, converted into the site, visiting more than a certain number of times in the last 30 days etc.
The custom audience also helps in improving the quality of the leads. Users frequently visiting your website are more like to become home buyers and can be given more focus.
Lookalike audiences are a way to reach new people who are likely to be interested in your business because…
You’re telling Facebook that you want an audience created of people who are most like your email list, website visitors, people who have hit one of your conversion pixels, etc. Facebook will create an audience based off data points on a Facebook profile that would denote similarity.
You can also create an International Lookalike audience – because people are same everywhere! Eg: People have visited your luxury product landing page. You can create a lookalike of similar users internationally!
Facebook Brand awareness tracks people who look for sponsored content. If you plan to go ahead with lead ads in the first go, it will go to the people who have filled the leads in the past. You are missing out on the potential to reach a newer audience.
How does Brand awareness work?
Point to note: Investing in your brand awareness is similar to running ads on radio and television. You need to frequently appear on the wall of the people!
For Brand awareness videos, relevant content and E-books along with the below ideas can be tried
Sequencing of ads is also possible by using custom audiences after using Reach & Frequency ads and we have seen some tremendous results come through this.
There are numerous case studies that one can find on the Facebook Business Success page but we discussed a few in detail and you can read them up via the below links:
We have a more detailed blog on tracking ROI from digital marketing, which you may find useful.
There are some common mistakes marketers make, which should be avoided in order to improve conversions:
Its important to the have the below elements & approach to getting the best quality leads and conversion:
What do you get when you add a dollop of creativity, a layer of great marketing strategies and an immense helping of team effort? Two delicious awards from, Social Samosa, a portal, which is known for providing Big Data Analysis and social media insights across all industries.
We are proud to announce that we have won two ‘Best Social Media Brands’ awards for our Social Media Marketing efforts. We share the awards with our clients Murugappa Group (Gold Award under the B2B category) and Forum Vijaya Mall (Bronze Award under the Retail Category).
Murugappa Group, a leading conglomerate in the B2B segment, has not just focused on their products. They are always looking to connect with the target audience while also subtly hinting at the brand’s various services. One of the key reasons the brand won the award is the engaging and highly educative content that they have been posting.
Murugappa Group’s most popular social media campaigns include:
This interactive and informative campaign educated people about how various industries such as bicycles, tea and finance to name a few, grew and developed over time. People were asked to view videos on each industry and were later quizzed on what they had seen. The response was almost instantaneous, with over 4 lakhs views and 2,000 quiz interactions.
Murugappa has been closely associated with agriculture for over 4 decades and to pay a fitting tribute to the farmers’ tireless efforts, the company released a video on YouTube with the message “Thank You Farmers”. The video is both touching and informative and received an overwhelming response of 3.2 lakh views (on FB & YouTube) and over 1 million impressions for the entire campaign.
The Forum Vijaya Mall is a product of the Prestige Group and one of the most celebrated malls in Chennai. The mall is buzzing with amusing activities and a host of popular local and international brand outlets. Most of the mall’s social media feed include updates on activities that are going to happen, live feeds on events and interactive posts. Forum used some of the latest Facebook tools such as Live poll and 360 videos and images to create engaging content, relevant to its target audience.
Forum Vijaya Mall’s most popular social media campaigns include:
In order to promote Palazzo Cinemas, Forum Vijaya Mall came up with a live poll campaign where they asked people to vote on their favourite popcorn flavour offered at the theatre. The reaction was great with 963 unique views and 251 post engagements.
Forum Vijaya Mall geared up for one of their biggest events in spectacular social media marketing fashion. Everything from pre-event engagement to blogs to live press and video coverage was done, resulting in big numbers of reaches, likes and shares.
With another year gone by, new technology, tools, and trends have emerged in digital marketing. Keeping this in mind, we have put together eight key trends that we think would be ones to watch out for in 2017.
With 90% of mobile usage on FB and more than half of the searches happening via mobile, its already a focus area. We are going to see brands invest a lot more in the mobile user experience, especially when it comes to speed. Google has already launched Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) and Facebook is expanding its Instant Articles feature, both of which is going to expand their reach in 2017. Google is also pushing the Progressive Web Apps (PWA) framework to enable websites to give theirs user an app like experience via the browser. Even social media engagement via mobile is going to change with brands adapting to how they can get more engagement on mobile devices.
Brands often believed that more content is always better, but with millions of content pieces and social media posts going out every day, the opposite is true. 2017 is going to see a sharp trend towards brands focusing on high value content, which is engaging and far more personalised. With voice search growing in scale (currently at 20% of mobile searches in USA) many of our digital activities are going to be conversation. Even more a reason why content needs to be unique and stand out from the competition. Google also tends to pick more structured and details content for their “Answer Box”, which comes above the regular search results.
With automation and machine learning playing a large role in advertising this year will see even smaller brands adapting programmatic advertising. With platforms like Double Click for Google as well as Power Editor for Facebook, a lot of elements will get automated. Google has also launched responsive display advertising allowing for brands to run ads of multiple sizes without having a design team. YouTube is also soon launching a feature to allow for automated product showcase below videos, wherein machine learning would determine which product it is, rather than the brand manually having to tag which videos showcase their products.
The last time Google reported data on this, it showcased that Hindi content was growing faster than English content and this is likely to grow even further in 2017. With Netflix, Amazon Prime and others spearheading the video content in multiple languages, we are also going to see written and visual content growing in regional languages, especially Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam and Bengali. Facebook has also launched an auto-translate feature for all the Brand Pages – though nascent it is bound to improve this year.
Building the brand is key and what better way than videos? Its never been easier to create videos with the help of free and low cost tools. As per statistics by Facebook, users watch an average of 100 million hours of video every day and most of these are on their mobile devices. Facebook has made it even easier with its Facebook Live feature, which is a very engaging tool, especially for the entertainment, fashion and hospitality industries.
Especially for online/offline the attribution will continue to be a grey area. While there have been many initiatives launched and many in the pipeline, most restaurants, retailers and offline stores find it difficult to attribute walk ins and business results to the digital medium. Facebook and Google Maps have been improving their proximity data to understand if users are at a specific location and encourage them to review the location. Google is also in early stage testing of beacons to allow for better attribution but it’s still 1.5 – 2 years away from mass adoption.
Brands have always found it difficult to be active on multiple social media networks and we do expect some consolidation. Twitter has been in talks of selling out and even growth of Snapchat has not increased. As platforms evolve and mature, we will see brands also focusing on select platforms that make sense – usually a maximum of 2-3 platforms.
There has been a lot of talk around virtual reality devices, including the launch of the DayDream by Google. While the experience it provides is phenomenal, it is not going to be main stream yet. While the cost of devices is getting lower, the adoption of these rather bulky devices is still limited to a select few tech savvy individuals at least in India.
The article was originally published at Business Standard.
Consumers are spoilt for choices across multi-devices and multi-channels, thus making sales competitive for marketers. As consumers become more and more digitally sound, marketers constantly feel the need to evolve and source new ways to reach their relevant audience to drive long-term online sales. This has lead marketers to venture out and capitalise on brand and product videos along with text and display ads. Here is an ultimate guide on how to advertise on YouTube, types of ad formats, the best way to optimise and measure results for your campaigns.
Videos are entertaining, engaging and help increase customer retention. Do see our guide on videos can help in content marketing and in engaging with your customers.
As per Google, there are only two things users do more than watch video: sleep & work. Every day, people spend hundreds of millions of hours on YouTube and generate billions of views. Users consume videos to feel the rush, laugh, connect and learn. The youth, younger generation and savvy users are on YouTube most of the times through their mobiles, thus making this channel the most preferred media mix on the go. Studies also claim, 42% use YouTube for pre-purchase research and 64% buy products after watching a video on YouTube, making videos the future of entertainment and online marketing.
YouTube, being the second largest search engines is a powerful media mix to retain old customers, gain new customers and engage savvy customers through video content.
YouTube is also a community-driven social media channel that values genuine content and meaningful engagement with real people and stories. To get the most out of YouTube, the video content and ads need to build a relationship with YouTube users above and beyond the traditional advertiser-customer relationship.
Since consumers purchase decisions are influenced by the video content, promoting content with advertising messages can make it difficult to increase viewer engagement with the brand.
Videos that are light, fun, humorous, emotional, real and true make it through the consumer’s heart and mind. To know more about how to capitalise on online video and how YouTube can play a bigger role, get hooked on this blog for some more time. Do have a look at some of our work with the Murugappa Madras Song to get a sense of it.
To advertise on YouTube, there are several video ad formats and each offers a unique opportunity to attract consumers and achieve goals. Before making an ad, it is prudent to have a clear marketing goal and know the audience to reach them in the most cost effective way.
Skippable ads are designed to capture the attention of the relevant audience in the first five seconds of the video. After five seconds, the audiences are given a skip button, to skip the ad and continue watching their initially selected video. These are an excellent way to increase visibility on a Cost Per View as YouTube charges only after the ad is watched for 30 seconds and more. Skippable YouTube Ads appear on YouTube watch pages right before, during and after other videos and to top it all, gives free visibility for first few seconds. These ads contain a call-to-action button that often links to a landing page.
Skippable ads work best for branding and often have a lower conversion rate. Although these ads are best for people who view similar content on YouTube, avoid targeting by keywords as this could significantly limit the frequency of the ads. To keep viewers from skipping the ads, create an engaging video that can grab the viewer by their collar within the first five seconds.
They are similar to In-Stream Video Ads, but viewers do not have the option to skip the ads. The ads usually play for 15 – 20 seconds and up to 30 seconds. Non-Skippable YouTube Ads also appear on YouTube watch pages right before, during and after other videos and viewers have to view the entire advertisement. They work best when videos are short, simple and showcase good offers.
Bumper Ad formats are designed to increase brand awareness and impressions and reach a wider audience. They are usually non-skippable short video format of six seconds or shorter and plays before, during or after another video. Advertisers are charged on impressions (cost-per-thousand-impressions).
These ads appear at the top right of the YouTube search results page and to the right of the feature videos. They also appear below the player (for larger players) and are meant to capture the attention of the viewers while watching other videos. They blend with organic listings. They have a thumbnail image with a short text, and the advertisers are charged when the viewer chooses to click the thumbnail and watch the ad.
The images on the thumbnails make first impressions and need to provoke the viewers to click and watch further. Choose the video still that highlights the content the best. Also, try and match the image to the content in the promotional text or keywords
Display Ads are best suited to increase subscribers rather than directing them to the landing page.
As the name suggests, these ads are semi-transparent and appear on the lower 20% portion of the watch video space on YouTube. Link the call-to-action to the relevant landing pages as these ads have a higher chance of lead conversion.
With these ad formats, advertisers can advertise their ad inside the videos of their competitors. Overlay ads work well as they get more views without causing interruptions.
Try these tips to optimise your YouTube Videos and keep your viewers engaged for long: -
Link AdWords and YouTube to allow both the networks to work together and provide deeper insights like click and engagement performance, reach and frequency, video viewership and other advanced data and reports.
Hook viewers in 5 seconds. Create an engaging video content to elevate your customer’s video experience to get more viewer engagement.
Clearly, communicate the brand/service and provide a strong call-to-action button to guide the viewers to the next process i.e. make a purchase, visit a landing page, subscribe, like, share, comment and so on. Having a clear call-to-action within the ad helps direct traffic from the ads to your YouTube brands channel or website with additional video content
Deliver the most relevant message when the video begins, so the audience gets the crux of the video content, in case viewers plan to skip the ads after five seconds.
The demographics and other details help to create venturing into a new platform.
YouTube uses playtime or watchtime a factor in the algorithm to suggest videos and creating playlists can be used to boost the overall playtime for your videos. When the next video automatically starts playing at the end of the first video, there is a higher probability of keeping the viewer longer on your page.
YouTube has a feature to Create “Subscription Links” that asks the visitors who click on the link to subscribe to the channel before playing the video. This can help gain more subscribers for the channel, thereby boosting the long-term reach & engagement. This Is How Many Brands Have Grown Their Subscriber Base.
As they say, any publicity is good publicity. While you receive comments and critics, it is also important to respond to the viewers.
YouTube has a potential to reach a vast audience. YouTube is the world's second most-used search engine and the third most visited site after Google and Facebook. It has a total of 1.3 billion users and 300 hours of new video is uploaded every minute.
By Targeting video ads on YouTube, advertisers can reach relevant customers at the spur of the moment, just when they are interested in a particular product or service. YouTube’s varieties of targeting options help reach the right customers when it matters.
Advertisers can use contextual placements to show ads on specific videos, channels or websites – places that attract audiences with high conversion potential. Advertisers can also target by keywords, interests, placements, remarketing lists, location and demographics – age, gender, and parental status.
Advertisers can also place their ads on your competitors’ videos and steal leads from right under their noses.
It is not only the volume of users that make advertising on YouTube so interesting, but also the nature of the platform and how audience interact with videos and the brands.
The cost of making the video depends on the subject, message, length of the video, the kind of the video and depends on from one brand to another. Here is a guide on how your brand can create low cost videos. But advertising on video can be completely controlled and measured. An advertiser can spend as per his/her convenience and only pays when someone engages with the video ad or watches the video for 30 seconds and more. There are also other ways to optimise your Adwords and YouTube campaigns.
YouTube's easy to use in-built analytics helps advertisers monitor the performance of the video ads and channels. Data's like demographics, watch time and traffic sources help the advertisers to optimise the campaigns further. Advertisers can make adjustments to the ads at any time and also are free to run multiple ads at once to see which works best.
Google AdWords also provides certain key metrics to analyse the ad performances in detail. Want to increase leads and multiply your revenue? Log into AdWords account, click on the add new campaigns, select online video and start creating your campaigns. Remember the call-to-action button must make viewers click the ads and optimising the video ads is the key to better results.
Get started and leave comments in case you have any queries.
From merely a selfie-sharing app, Instagram has come a long way and now has over 300 million monthly active users sharing 70 million photos per day that garner over 2.5 billion likes daily. Instagram recently launched a new feature named stories, which has a striking resemblance to Snapchat’s feature of the same name. They are essentially photos and videos that last just a day and just like Snapchat; they can be enhanced with drawings or special filters.
Stories are not part of the main feeds and are in a separate space where you can post as frequently as you want without worrying about spamming your friend’s feeds. Wondering how to use this and how you can leverage this feature in your marketing strategy? Worry not! We have the answers.
If you don't want to take pictures and want to upload from your existing gallery, just swipe down to choose your photos or videos.
Additionally, stories also let's add filters. All you need to do is swipe right.
Your story will now appear on top of your friend’s feeds. It is also visible on your profile page. You can also save this story for later use. All you need to do is open your story and click on the three dots on the bottom right, then selecting "Save Photo."
You can see who saw your pictures and videos by swiping up when seeing the photo or video. If you do not want someone seeing it, all you need to do is hit the "X" next to their name to block them from seeing anything you add to your Story.
You can also change your privacy settings to make sure certain people on your feeds don’t get to see your stories. Go to the setting icon in your profile and choose to hide your story from certain users or restrict who can respond to it.
After Facebook took over Instagram, Instagram opened up to advertising on their platform, and more brands have started using Instagram for business. Instagram also has an inbuilt analytics tool, which helps you track the most viewed and liked posts, post engagement rate, website clicks and impressions.
If your brand already has a fairly decent base, Instagram Stories is something you must quickly jump to create a buzz. Wondering how to leverage stories? Here are a few ideas.
One of the best and easiest ways to use this cool, new feature is during an event. Give your audience a sneak peak of what is going on behind the scenes. Be it a photo shoot or just a short video to show how things are working at your office, it is an excellent way to connect with your audience. Here is an example of a brand that leveraged this feature, Mercedes-Benz (@mercedesbenz) shared a compilation of videos and photos of a photo shoot highlighting its Mercedes-AMG model.
For any retail brand or e-commerce brand, Instagram stories are an excellent way to announce a sale. With a combination of images and videos, you can send out promotional messages about your upcoming sale. In fact, J-Crew, an American multi-brand retailer did just that. Before their one-day sale of “Jane in Pink”” sunglasses, they took to Instagram Stories to highlight their sale.
Source: Simply measured
If you are having an event in your office or if you are just looking to make a big announcement about your brand, take to Stories to tease your audience about it. If you are making your big announcement through Facebook Live videos, you can use stories to notify people about a Facebook Live broadcast to get more viewers for your live video. This is a great way to promote both your platforms at once.
If you are looking to promote your product, Instagram stories are a great way to do that. You can not only show how your product works but also show them unique ways to use your product well. This will not only increase visibility but also gives them reasons to buy the product and driving conversions. Be it makeup tutorials with a specific product or styling ideas with a scarf, there is no better way to educate your audience about your product than these stories. Even Starbucks highlighted its chilled cold brew and iced Americano with cream using Stories.
Source: Instagram
Has your company just turned one or five or did you just win a big award? Well, congratulations! It is important to announce these to your target audience, and this is where Instagram stories come in. Using series of interview video and images, you can create engaging content to highlight your milestone.
South West Airline is a classic example of this. When they retired their 737-500 planes, they took to stories to make this announcement.
Source: Social Media Examiner
Showcasing these milestones is an excellent way to humanise your brand and keep your audience and potential customers interested in what you do and how you do it.
Are you going to be using Instagram stories? Share your thought in the comment section below.
This article was originally published in Techstory.
Here is a happy news for all you Snapchat lovers! Snap.Inc has introduced this cool and fun pair of spectacles to help you shoot videos on the go.
With Instagram now having the story feature, which is one of the major USP of Snapchat, snap decided to introduce a new hardware to stay ahead of the game. Although, the first time you hear it, it may sound like a replica of Google glass; the truth is, no it is not! The spectacles cost just one-third of the price of the Google Glass, and they look more like shades and are only used to shoot videos or photos. Experts say that you can compare them to a GoPro rather than google glass.
Interested to know further about Spectacles? We have all the info you need! About Spectacles
This device is a pair of wayfarers, which has an inbuilt camera of 115degree lens. Two yellow circles can be found at each end of the glasses: one is the camera, and the other hides a ring of LEDs that light up when the device is recording.
These glasses are paired with your Snapchat and the video recorded on this will automatically get stored in the Snapchat memories. They are available in three colours - black, teal and coral and are priced at $130 each.
Every spectacle comes with a recharging case, USB cable for the case and a glass cleaning cloth.
Spectacles are compatible with both Android and IOS devices. To pair, wear the glasses and open the Snapchat app on your phone, click on the ghost icon and press the button on the top left corner of the specs.
Now the device is paired, and all set to record. Press the button on the top left a corner of the specs. A small LED light will switch on to indicate that video is being recorded. The spectacles will record a 10-second video if you want additional recording time then press the button again to add extra 10 seconds. The longest video one can record is 30 seconds. The videos are recorded in a circular format.
The snaps are saved to your Snapchat memories automatically. In case, you do not have your phone with you then; the spectacles will store the snaps and later it can be transferred to your phone either via wifi or via Bluetooth for IOS devices.
To charge your spectacles just place it in the case, which comes with the device or you can also directly charge it using the USB cable. However, experts in the tech space recommended using the case to charge. Usually, the charge stays for a whole day or two.
These are currently available only in the US. If you are visiting the US or asking your friend to buy it for you here is where you can find it. Snap inc. is selling them through a bright yellow vending machine, don’t mistake it for a minion although it looks like one! These are called Snapbots that will travel around the country. You will be lucky if you spot one around your neighbourhood. Snap is making them in a very limited quantity.
The Snapbots will be available at each location for a day. You can also track the bots current location using the map on the spectacles website.
Snap also gives you the facility to try on the glasses before deciding to buy them. All you need to do is use the QR code provided on the website and scan it to add a filter to Snapchat, which is for a limited time to try them on virtually.
Just like Snapchat, the spectacles can also be leveraged for your business. Here is how….
Although Snapchat shares the same feature, the plus point about shooting on spectacles is that you can shoot the video while working on anything. Whether it is unboxing a product or a demo of a product, use this device and give your fans a complete walkthrough of it. (literally).
Esquire Network a TV network used spectacles to promote their show by shooting a 90-second video. Another great way to leverage this is by shooting behind the scenes videos, which can give your followers a feel of getting a unique or an exclusive pass to the event.
Spectacles can be used to promote any location or space. Feature a ride, coffee shop, your apartment, office space, etc. using this device and make your audience feel like they are a part of the scene. If you are planning to sell a property or an apartment, this is an innovative way to advertise. Your target audience can get a complete view of the property.
Now, you can ask your clients, to give a live feedback about your product or a service. You can also create a story on your Snapchat account and ask people to add their reviews on there. This can be an excellent way to promote your brand.
While Indians scurry around exchanging their notes, Americans stand in shock and awe over the result of their votes. Donald Trump emerged victorious on Tuesday as America's President-elect, leaving a rather uncomfortable feeling on the rest of the world. It's only a matter of time before the dust settles and reality bites, as "The Donald," as he is fondly known, takes office.
Many may call his campaign one of the most controversial to date, but they just can't deny that it has proven to be highly effective on his road to victory. Trump's landslide victory came as result of his smart use of social media, a platform he has praised since winning. Marketers could take a leaf out of his book on how to implement strategies and work action plans to ensure the best results on minimum expenditure. His campaign is a great example of ROI driven digital marketing, where he spent virtually nothing while making the most out of free publicity.
Have your mind blown over the review in numbers on Trump’s campaign! While the use of social media for a political advantage is not new, considering how well Obama fared during his campaign, Trump’s win is a testament to why it has become so important in daily life. Let’s have a look at the various tactics Trump employed on his campaign.
Everyone knows, a politician's biggest lie is when he is trying to convince everyone he's telling the truth. But what happens when a politician comes out with an open mike in hand, and effortlessly speaks his mind to the people. We've seen that with Modi on his public rally's and Trump took centre stage on the best platform to express oneself- social media. Forget the fact-checking, Trump's sometimes outlandish claims added a perspective of thought amongst his ever-growing flower base. Here's an example of that, one which Trump posted 24 hours ahead of election day.
Even Obama had to admit, in his last hilarious speech as president, that Hillary's attempt to bond with the public on social media failed miserably. Trump, on the other hand, having prior expertise with social media norms thanks to his entrepreneurial background, modified his approach to fit political standards while still using social media jargon and youth slang that could connect well with his followers. His use of hashtags and constant responses to queries from his supporters leveraged success to his campaign.
You've already noticed that we're referencing most of Trump's campaign with his Twitter feeds, that's because he practically owned the microblogging giant over the past few months of his rigorous campaigning. Nothing makes free press feel any better than having the power to deconstruct your opponents within 140 characters. His infamous hashtag #CrookedHillary and attack on the existing government emphasise his no-holds-barred approach to social media.
One method that has become increasingly important on social media today is the way brands interact with consumers. Engaging with an online audience makes for conversion rates to increase, turning them into potential buyers of the product. In the case of the Trump Brand, Trump knew what he represents and had a decent idea on what his audience expect, opening the floodgates to thousands of interactions per tweet.
Trump was able to achieve an incredible response on election day, all thanks to the effort he put in and the ease of reach through social media. His formula for success should be familiar with adept digital marketers, but if you are till keen on maximizing those efforts and using the full potential of social media, here's what you have to do, the Donald Way.
Trump's slogan, "Let's Make America Great Again," is a powerful example of brand positioning strategies. In just five words, he sums up what he is all about and more importantly, what America wants the most, the return of those glorious days. Digital marketers know that brand positioning is the first of many key factors that can make a campaign run successfully. While Clinton's slogan, "Stronger Together," invokes an action, it doesn't have a definitive goal. Your brand positioning must reflect the entire process of your campaign, and give consumers a meaningful reason to interact with you on social media.
Trump's entire campaign was emotion driven. He appealed to the audience by telling them what they wanted to hear. Constantly rubbing the existing governing systems in the mud and hitting out on policies the public themselves have protested against over the years. He also narrowed down his target audience to the majority race in America, slashing out on the minorities through the early stages of his campaign. This method built his fan following in quicker rates and gave him the image of an all-American common man, which touched the hearts and minds of millions in the USA.
Hillary's and most of the Democrat Party's campaign focused on benefiting the rich 1 percent of America. They left behind their blue-collar Democrats and ignored a vast majority of the American demographic. Trump did the exact opposite; his campaign appealed to existing voters as well as ignited passion in first-time voters. He even managed to pocket the blue-collar Democrats and win the vote of almost all Republicans. Trump's campaign is a good example of effective customer management, where he was able to retain old voters and garner the support of new voters.
Everyone knows that advertisements are bloated with exaggerated claims and over-the-top promises, but if that doesn't keep consumers interested, what else will? Trump's campaign was splattered with colorful promises and rather comical goals, but it played well with his audience as it clearly was a fantasy in their heads already. On the post-purchase point-of-view, every customer wants his money's worth, so it's only a matter of time before Trump's true colors come shining out.
Trump carried himself very well throughout his campaign; never backing down from a potential war of words and staying true to the image he had created over the years as an established business tycoon. Trump portrayed himself as an all-American American, winning over the public with his celebrity stylized presentation and tough-guy demeanor. It was very much like the Modi one-man-show which gave Americans the confidence to vote for "The Donald." Trump carried over this personality on every form of media he used, thus managing to cement his image in the hearts and minds of the public. Just have a look at this speech he made at one of his best rallies ever.
In typical businessman fashion, Trump knew that he could never achieve perfection without a little trial-and-error. If you've been following his campaign closely, you'll notice how he carefully shifts his marketing strategies from one perspective to another; beginning by attacking the opposition with harsh, over-the-top judgments to slowly letting go of the hominem insults and placing focus on talking about a better America. Trump also balanced his mediums of delivery smartly, telling people what they wanted to hear at the exact moment they wished to hear it, all the while constantly drilling into the consumer's mind, his underlying message of a greater American future.
The Trump Brand is the shiniest new thing popping straight out of the realms of Social Media. Polished and ready to be grasped by the consumer's hands, it's only a matter of time before the brand's USP comes into full play and hopefully deliver its promises.
You may also find it interesting to read how social media was used by Indian politicians in the 2014 elections.
Small and mid sized businesses are indeed the backbone of India’s economy and digital marketing can be a powerful medium for SMEs, especially when you can get more through targeted marketing. This is the purpose with which Facebook India launched their SME India Council last year and this year we extremely excited to be part of it and are looking forward to working closely with Facebook.
As Facebook reported in 2015, more than 1.99 billion interactions have been made between people and the 2 million small businesses with Facebook Pages in India. And of the close to 160 million people (as of Oct 2016) on Facebook in India (95% on mobile), more than half of them are connected to at least one small business in the country.
The Facebook SME India council is made of a group of small business from various industries and geographies across the country and will meet throughout the year to share feedback, discuss new ideas and work with Facebook to build better ads solutions. Due to confidentiality, we cannot share many of the information shared during the 1st meeting that was held in Delhi in October, please do stay updated on our Facebook Marketing blog to see what's the latest (as and when Facebook announces its new feature launches).
You may also find it interesting to read our Facebook Marketing Trends for 2017.
Mike Henry, a renowned writer in the media industry, once wisely said, “We’re in the operating world where one good video can lead to a massive social following.” With video being one of the trends to watch out for in the coming years, Mark Zuckerberg too joined the bandwagon and launched Facebook Live, allowing millions of users to gain the power to go live and broadcast themselves to anyone in the world. Going on air live is just a click away. Here is a guide to use Facebook Live effectively
How to go on air with Facebook live?
All you need is your smart phone, the Facebook app and 12 simple steps to follow.
Step 1: Get to your Facebook profile on your Facebook app and click on the status bar like you’re going to create a new post.
Step 2: To go on air, click on to the “Live” tab that resembles a video camera with an eye.
Step 3: You will find a pop up asking to access your camera and microphone. Allow Facebook to gain that access. Once you have allowed Facebook to gain the camera and microphone access for the first time, you will not receive the request again.
Step 4: Click on the “Continue” tab on that initial page, which mentions, “Go Live on Facebook.” Clicking continue doesn’t mean your video has started recording to go live. It’s just a couple of steps away.
Step 5: Customise your privacy settings
If you want your Facebook Live video to go viral and have a lot of viewers, then you could customise your audience by clicking on Public. However, if you don’t want everyone to view your live video and want to just keep it to your known people, you could then click on ‘Friends.’ You could always customise your viewers by making a specific group of audience. However, if it’s your first attempt to use Facebook Live and you’re still trying to get used to it and understand how it works, then you can change your privacy settings to “Only Me.” The option to activate “Only Me” can be found by clicking on “More” and scrolling all the way to the last. Later on, Once you’re sure about your video and want it to go viral for the rest of the audience you can change your privacy settings accordingly.
Step 6: Write a description.
Once you’ve got your privacy settings sorted, you will need to add in a description about the live video you will be sharing. This description will be more like a caption to the video that will best describe it for your audience. In order to gain a larger viewer list, make sure you have an attention grabbing description so that the audience would gain interest and tune in.
Step 7: Set up your Camera View.
Just before you’re all set to Go Live, make sure your camera is facing the direction. You can shoot either with your front camera or rear. You can either hold your phone vertically or horizontally as the video will be in a square format and it won’t matter.
Step 8: Click on the “Go Live” blue button to begin broadcasting.
Once you have got all the prior steps in place to kick start the Live Broadcast, all you need to do is just click on to the “Go Live” button which will then have a countdown 3,2,1… and the next thing you will see is that you’re on air going live. As soon as you start streaming and going live, you will find yourself on your own as well as others news feed based on the customised privacy settings.
Your online broadcast can as long as 90 minutes. However, do remember that the longer your broadcast is, better the chances of a larger viewership.
Step 9: Interaction with commenters and viewers:
In order to make the most of Facebook Live, your aim has to be to engage with your audience by being on air and interacting with them. With Facebook live, there are two ways through, which you can interact with your viewers:
These comments and reactions can be viewed just below the broadcast live. The earlier comments will be much further downwards as these comments are present in the reverse chronological order like on twitter. While responding to viewers, if you wish to block any particular viewer, you could do so by just clicking on the profile picture on the viewer’s comment and clicking on “Block.” You can always unblock a viewer that you have already blocked.
(Image Credit: Hubspot)
Step 10: Click "Finish" to end the broadcast.
Once you do this, the video will stay on your Timeline or Page like any other video post.
Step 11: Save the Broadcast to your camera role
Once you’re done with your broadcast on Facebook, you will come across an option allowing you to save your video to the camera roll like given below, so that you can always have the original copy.
Step 12: Kudos! You have officially broadcasted your first Facebook Live video. In order to review the video, can always go back to your timeline and do so. You can also change the privacy settings, description or even delete the video just like any other post.
Live videos can not only help individuals post fun videos but can also help brands reach out to their audience and help build a closer relationship with their fans. When done well, these videos can be used as a medium to engage the audience and create an active conversation.
From behind the scenes videos to product a launch, this new feature is ideal to showcase some unique content. In fact, brands can also use this feature to give an opportunity to fan to exclusive look at what’s unfolding behind the scenes in real time. For example, Dunkin Donuts, a US-based brand did exactly that. Their first Facebook Live video was that of a behind the scenes look into their kitchen for Valentine’s Day. Their fans were able to see their chef’s make a heart shaped donuts. The video went viral immediately and saw great engagement and plenty of views within minutes. The video has more than 39,000 views till date.
The performance analytics of Facebook Live video is similar to that of normal videos you put up on Facebook. However, live videos do have some add-ons.
Facebook allows you to analyse a lot of metrics for the live video like, minutes viewed, unique viewers, video views, 10-second views, average % completion, peak live viewers, people reached, reactions, comments, and shares.
Apart from all of this, Facebook also lets you view and keep a check of relevant analysis of “peak live viewers” in the form of graphs for a particular piece of time during the video in order to know the interaction taken place.
(Image Credit: Hubspot)
Step 1: Click on the “Insight” tab on the Facebook page.
Step 2: On the left-hand side of the screen, click on the “Videos” tab.
Step 3: To open all your videos and their analytics in a new video, scroll down and click on the “Video Library” tab. Under the “Video library” window, the Facebook Live videos that were recorded will have the human silhouette icon.
Step 4: Select the video that you wish to see the analytics for and over time, you will have a graph view as well.
The following tips and tricks will help in using Facebook Live effectively:
There you go, hope this was helpful in order to understand better on “How to Use Facebook Live.”
