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Snapchat is a growing photo-messaging app with 100 million daily active users, 80 billion video views per day, and users spend an average of 30 minutes on the app per day. Definitely, as Snapchat user base grows in 2016 your opportunities of finding your audiences on Snapchat grow as well. 

Snapchat is a mobile app that allows users to send photos and 10 seconds videos directly to friends that will see it once and never anymore. Or send it as a Snapchat Story that allows friends to see the photos and videos sent for a period of 24h as many times as they want.

From the business perspective, using Snapchat Story to send out a message to the audience that may be potential customers is the key for success on Snapchat. So, if your business is not on Snapchat yet, take a look in this 6 types of content used to engage with Snapchat users and get started now. Make Snapchat part of your marketing strategy! 

1) Broadcast Events:

If your business is hosting an event use Snapchat to show your audience the event through your company’s eyes. It will allow your audience to feel they are connected to the company and know about the behind the scenes of the event. The objective is to make your audience feel they are also in the process of the event. 

A good example of how to interact with audience in live events is NBA. In 2014 NBA created a Snapchat account to show the live action of players during the games. It proportionated viewers the value of feeling more intimate with their favorite players.

2) Tease New Products:

Make your audience curious about new products and services. Give your followers a little piece of evidence of what is the new product. For example, show them color of the product, or use photos as a puzzle. They will be engaging with your company because they will want to know about the new product. Also, they will be excited for the new product release.

Also, you could allow your followers to make part of the process by offering them the possibility of choosing between colors or surveying them about the product. Just ask them to screenshot the photo they prefer, and instantly you will be able to measure your followers reaction. 

3) Behind the Scenes

Show behind the scenes of you company. You can show products development, products production, and different sectors of your company. Be creative, of course you do not have to show everything about the company on Snapchat. But showing few parts of how people work in your company may be interesting to followers. 

Also, if you show behind the scenes of your company, your audience will connect to your company and feel they make part of it. You will create advocates for your brand.

4) Keep It Fun

Snapchat users want to be entertained. So, do not show them a corporate life without action with people sitting in front of computers. It is not fun and will bore your audience, and consequently they will not see your Snapchats anymore. Instead, show your audience fun things that happen in the company, you can also be creative and make something that is boring seems to be nice!

Just don’t forget that you are still a company that wants to be taken seriously. Use causality as Snapchats users look for it, but keep it professional.

5) Tell a Story

Since Snapchat is a source of entertainment, use Snapchat to tell stories. But remember, keep it simple and easy to digest. Snapchat’s users want a quick to access content that can be seen rapidly during a little break or even during daily activities.

Snapchat limits its videos to 10 seconds each, so you can make many 10 seconds videos one followed by the other to tell short stories that anyone can see at once.

6) Driving Traffic

Use Snapchat to drive potential customers to your website, and even to your brick and mortar store. Give your audience coupons they can use to buy products. According to a study made by Sumpto, a marketing company, 67% of college students would want to receive discounts and promotions from brands through Snapchat. And 58% of college students would be more likely to buy products from a company if the company sends out coupons via Snapchat. 

Final Thoughts

The music industry, as well as other entertainment industries, have expanded their marketing strategies by the revolution of social media and the power it conveys. Social media allows easier access and engagement between the fans and the artist, musician, or band by providing unique content onto their accounts. Many artists of the music preference I follow partake in the social media world with accounts in Instagram, Twitter, and now even Snap Chat. And why not? It allows fans to take a look outside of the public eye and let’s fans see what their favorite artists do or act outside of the cameras and/or stages.

However, for those musicians on the process of building up their music careers and waiting on the opportunity to become mainstream, a social media strategy could be their best bet and could help benefit their musical talents from operating these steps:   1. Listen Social media carries the word social in front for a reason. Socializing is a two-way street between two or more humans where a conversation is taken place. One talks, while the other one LISTENS. And this applies to the artist or musician listening to their fans, and perhaps their producers and other musical characters, on social media. Stay connected with your audience through social media, and listen to what they have to say.

2. Leverage online and offline Keep more than one account active and going with content. Have a strategy for each platform you have an account for and keep fans engaged. Many artists out there do a good job on having multiple social media pages and have fans interested in their post and the content they provide to their audience. Obviously, mainstream artist can post anything and more likely than not have countless numbers of like, repost, retweets, etc., but an uprising artist can focus more on the content provided on each platform.

3. Write post yourself Keep each post original to your style and personality. Like mention before, target each platform a little different with originality. Fans can detect when one post on one platform, makes its way through the rest of the other platforms with the same content, same image, same strategy. For bands with many personalities, have each member create their own account under the umbrella of the band’s account, to present each individuals character and behavior.

4. Be conversational Mainstream artist or musicians can get away with this one as well. But those uprising musicians and bands can focus on this one by creating post with a conversational spark welcomed to fans. Artist like Kanye West, can just post his thoughts or a statement on Twitter, but bands can deliver a statement with a question where fans can comment and state their thoughts.

5. Be genuine This is really the key to life and for many, key to natural success. And that is “be yourself”, be genuine, and people will appreciate you for it. There are ,maybe, just a few artist that began their career as a “douche-bag” or “over-confident” that made it to be successful, but certainly every musician starts out humble in character and willing to do anything to please their fans. If you are a naturally genuine overall person, your character can carry you a long way, especially in the music industry, well, maybe your connections too. But character opens up doors who can get you to the right people to succeed. So be yourself on social media, as you are in person.

6. The 80/20 rule This rule is 80% for content pertaining funny, exciting, and personal, while the 20% is more for the marketing purposes of the post or strategy. Anything above and beyond the 20% of marketing content, and your audience will slowly loose interest.

7. Drive interest Have a professional online site where it provides further and detailed content about your career and music. Let that online site be the core to your sales, and detailed information for your fans. Let your fans have knowledge of your online site by displaying a link to your online site on post of different social media platforms.  

8. Don’t over-invest yourself in every social media platform available This secret to social media campaigns is to have the applicable amount of team members behind the strategy to support the main idea behind the posts. Create accounts to only the platforms ideal for the campaign. Do not just create accounts to every social media platform, just to have accounts in them. Have a purpose for each platform and only create the ones you can manage.

9. Pick platforms that are relevant to your image and brand As previously mentioned in the advice above, only select the social media platforms you will be able to manage, on a consistent base, and have a purpose behind your musical career and band.

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Running out of ideas for content marketing? Think again! There are two important days coming up in march, that means more opportunities to create fresh ideas that will strengthen your content strategy. Audiences love holiday related content that is the reason why those contents tend to do better. Audiences are searching around to find inspirations and ideas for special events. Therefore, you want your content to satisfy their needs.

1. Saint Patrick’s Day: March 17th

For Saint Patrick’s Day, popular contents would be DIY crafting ideas, gift ideas, and food recipes. Marketers can utilize Pinterest for these contents to encourage shares and likes. Companies like Oreo, Pillsbury, and Cheerios can create Saint Patrick’s Day related dessert recipes which will be very valuable to a lot of audiences who are hosting a party or is looking for dessert recipes. 

2. Easter: March 27th

For Easter, candy brand Hershey’s who also owns Reese’s uses Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook to post their Easter themed candies. This will let loyal customers know that they are available and that they should get these limited edition candies before they run out. Hershey’s post shows audiences that they can put the carrot shaped chocolates in Easter baskets which will be valuable to individuals who are putting a basket together as a gift to loved ones. Similar to the candy brand, the natural cosmetic brand Lush also uses social media to showcase their Easter bath bombs with links and info on where to get them. By doing so they are facilitating purchases. 

The most difficult part of content marketing is creating valuable and compelling content. Due to a large number of companies doing well in content marketing on social media, more and more companies start to have a misunderstanding of content. They think they can just post anything online and it would be considered as content marketing. Truth is, excellent content should have these 3 characteristics:

ENGAGING - Engaging content grabs the audience’s attention which makes he/she want to take part by commenting, liking, or sharing the content. Create entertaining, helpful, and unique content that cannot be found elsewhere. Content that makes audiences feel angry, surprised, happy, or AWE will encourage audiences to engage. 

VARIETY - Have a high social media presence in order to provide customers with a variety of contents. Companies who wants to reach a broad audience should be active on at least 3-4 platforms. Different platforms target different audiences and forms of content. Videos are found on YouTube, visuals are found on Pinterest or Instagram, and text contents are found on Tumblr. A company should have all forms of content to target different audiences.

For example, Urban Decay is on most of the platform except Pinterest but they utilize Instagram to share visual contents. They use social media to encourage trial and create brand loyalty.

CONSISTENCY - All content should have consistency so the audience knows when to check for new content. When you don’t post frequently, audiences will stop following you and eventually replace you with your competitor. Therefore, create an editorial calendar that will organize your posting time and reminds you to post on time. Content marketing is a long term investment; therefore, marketers have to be patient and consistent in order to see the results of CM.

In general, sports possess a wide range of spectators and fans around the world, breaking barriers and bringing people and diverse cultures together to cheer for their favorite team, player, and or just an exciting game. The sports industry brings excitement and joy to the fans, and sports teams have taken advantage of their marketing skills by welcoming social media into their strategy. Social media engages fans and allows interaction between fans, permitting trash-talks and arguments that gives the subject or game more hype and excitement. Along with trash-talks and arguments, fans also can express their sports knowledge by giving their opinion about stats and predictions.

Social media made its way into the NFL and has been playing a key role looking into big games. For example, the 2015 season opener between the Denver Broncos and Baltimore Ravens, had a lot of fan buzz, due to their previous neck-and-neck games. A lot was mention about these two team’s defense supremacy in the league, and a lot of discussion was on predictions to this game.

Here are 6 ways to deliver social media marketing for strategy success, based on the accounts of the Denver Broncos.

1.       Go where the fans are:

The Broncos established an online and inside the stadium engagement strategy where fans can share photos, spark conversations, and live feed. Creating a mobile app for fans to interact wherever they are located, forming an online site for those ‘at home’ fans with access to a computer, and displaying venues inside the stadium for fans in attendance.  

2.       Drive the momentum:

In 2014, the Broncos used different hashtags weekly in order to create engagement and encourage fan participation. Upload a picture on social media and include the weekly hashtag Bronco’s released to their fans. Keep the momentum going and the fans engaged.

3.       Make it personal:

Display live feed during the event and/or game. The stadium is the perfect surface to display this exercise, due to the fan engagement and excitement presented at the venue. It allows fans to interact with the rest of the fans inside the stadium.

4.       Set your sights on a goal:

Real-time marketing is key. Fans do not enjoy old information, but rather live-feed. Having a goal on the marketing strategy can help expand the fan base, build loyalty, and create revenue.

5.       Prepare a game plan:

Creating a careful strategy, as to what the goal for this campaign is the main focus. Keep in mind the audience targeted and overall…

6.       Stay focused:

Just like in sports, it is a process to build and construct a winning, championship team. Same goes for social media and its success. The Broncos succeed in this topic because they maintain a fun and consistent face on social media. Their fan base on social media has increase in 2015 by more than half of their followers. They’re targeting a younger audience by displaying campaigns on a youth recognized social media platform like Vine and Instagram.

During 2015 Instagram showed its power of image sharing and engagement. Instagram is a fast-growing platform that can give business the opportunity to build audience, engage with customers, and even boost sales. 

So, if your brand does not have an Instagram account yet, 2016 is the year for you to consider this platform in your marketing strategy. Or if you already have an Instagram account, but haven’t yet seen the desired results, here are some reasons why you should keep your Instagram in your marketing strategy and some tips for you to achieve your goals using Instagram.

First, why should your company be on Instagram? 

If you are not sure yet if your company should be on Instagram, or you are thinking about leaving Instagram, here are good 4 points for why Instagram is the best platform to invest in 2016: 

1. Reach: Instagram is the new trending social media with more than 400 million subscribers. Different from the other social media platforms, it still has a powerful organic reach. In addition, Instagram does not have algorithms that determines who sees your content or not. If you post a picture into your Instagram, this image will be visible on the feed of all your followers.

2. Engagement: Instagram has the highest rate of engagement compared to other social medias. Users are very active. They not only passively viewing content, they engage with it by commenting, tagging friends, and giving “likes”. It gives almost immediate feedback of how your campaign is doing. And more than that you can also join the conversation and boost even more the engagement with your audience.

3. It’s visual: It is not new that people in general love visual content. Visual content is very appealing, in addition, it is an easy to digest content and your audience will absorb and remember it. Instagram is perfect to show your products or services in creative ways. Furthermore, you can also have access to user-generated content that can give you good insights of how people are interacting with your product. 

4. Ads: If you want, you can also use Instagram to publish ads. It allows brand to have a broader reach and to target even more your audience. Besides, when you make an ad on Instagram you are also allowed to use a “buy button” that directs your customer to your website. 

Instagram Content

Now you have considered that Instagram is a good option for your marketing strategy you might be asking yourself how to create appealing content that will grab your audience attention. 

The most important aspect of Instagram is image. You want to be sure you have an image that translates what you want your audience to know about your business. Furthermore, you want to be able to effectively boost image reach through #hashtags and follow up engagement by joining the conversation with you audience. 

So, here are 3 tips you can use to help you achieve Instagram content perfection:

1. Theme: First you have to be clear about your Instagram theme is. When you define a theme for your Instagram, it make easier for you to choose what types of content you will be posting. Furthermore, it allows your audience to instantly know what your Instagram is about. 

For example, if you are a company that is selling fitness tea and you want to use your Instagram to give your customers tips on how they can keep a healthy life style, make sure all your posts are related to this topic. Do not post random pictures about other topics. You want your audience to know that every time they see your feed they will find healthy life style tips. 

2. Photos: The images you choose are the key for successful engagement. No doubt, you will have to dedicate some time taking the picture that fits in your theme. You can use professional cameras or even your phone camera to take pictures. But remember, the picture needs to have high quality. This is very important because your first contact with your audience is through the image. If it is not good enough your audience will pass by without noticing it.

How to improve your image quality:

Lighting: choose a good lighting set up to take your picture. It defines the mood of the pictures, helps image quality, and it gives texture and shape. If you don’t have professional lighting equipment, you can use natural light that will work as well.

Filters: do not exaggerate the usage of filters. You can choose one filter that enhance the picture, but not more than that. Make sure the filter you choose to not over saturate your picture. Also, if you prefer not to use filters you can take advantage of Instagram features that allows you to edit sharpness, saturations, contrast, and exposure manually. 

Composition: composition is how you position the object, subject and the components of the picture within the frame. It helps you create a more interesting, eye-catching picture. So, make sure to plan your picture before actually taking it.

3. Description: In the description you can tell your followers stories about the product, service and give them a call for action. Also, the description is the place for you to improve your reachability by using #hashtags. Hashtags can give you access to the people that are potential new followers. Use #hashtags wisely, only use hashtags that are relevant to your picture and to the message you want to give. Definitely, you should be taking advantage of this space that is designed to complement your image, don’t leave it blank.

Now, you are ready to dive into Instagram and use it to improve your marketing strategy in 2016.

Red Bull is a globally recognized company for its famous energy drink that supposedly gives you "wings." It’s no surprise that Red Bull doesn’t give you actual wings; however, their contents on social media says otherwise. Red Bull’s targeted audiences are students and extreme sports fanatics. Therefore, Red Bull has excellent social media presence in order to make sure that they capture all potential customers. Red Bull is active and posts daily on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and occasionally on Vine. Red Bull’s use of social media platforms show understanding of how different platforms work and develops the best strategy to deliver compelling and valuable content relevant to their target audiences. One of their rare but effective strategy is using non-branded hashtags. Non-branded hashtags can attract new audiences. Red Bull utilizes social media to post amazing pictures of nature and outrageous stunts.

Let's look at Red Bull's content based on Jonah Berger's 6 Principles (STEPPS): 1. Social Currency - The content is shareable because of the high quality pictures and videos Red Bull provides. There are a lot of pictures of extreme sports and beautiful landscape. 2. Trigger - Content triggers interest because it makes you want to drink red bull when doing extreme sports or something that requires a lot of energy. 3. Emotions - Red Bull’s content on social media makes audiences feel adventurous, excitement, AWE, and energetic. 4. Public - Content includes pictures of attract young women giving out Red Bull (wings) to people on the streets and college campuses.  5. Practical Value -   Red Bull boosts your energy. 6. Stories - There are definitely stories involved in the visual contents. The stories focus on athletes and individuals accomplishing crazy stunts.

Overall, Red Bull is excelling in content marketing on social media becuase of following reasons:

Understands who the targeted audiences are

Understands how different social media platforms work in order to deliver different content

Responding, retweeting, liking, and interacting with other users

Creating high quality, compelling, and valuable content relevant to audiences

Posting daily to stay active

Many companies are utilizing social media platforms for campaigns nowadays, but it does not mean that content marketing and campaigns are the same thing. However, companies are replacing campaigns with content marketing as if they have the same functions and deliver the same purpose. Content marketing ultimately is about building relationships with customers and brand image. In contrast, campaigns are designed to promote a product or service provided by the company.

Customer Relationship Unlike campaigns, content marketing allows companies to communicate and interact with customers through comments to understand how they feel about the company and receive valuable feedback. Don’t just monitor and listen, always reply by explaining, informing, or thanking customers for their engagement so they feel valued and important.

For example, Coca-Cola takes the time and effort to interact with their audiences by liking and replying to their comments on Facebook. This encourages audiences to take part and engage because Coca-Cola acknowledges their opinions by showing appreciation and consideration.

Brand Image The content reveals the company’s values and ethos which contributes to brand image and helps audiences relate to the brand. In addition, behind the scene contents are popular because it encourages and promotes customer loyalty. Since they are exclusive, it makes the audiences feel like insiders. Also, behind the scene contents, builds trust because it shows the public the authentic side of the brand.