Whether you’re stuck in an Instagram video rut or are just beginning your brand’s forays into video sharing on the network, we’ve got some tips for experimentation that are do-able for any brand.
Read on for some quick, engagement-generating inspiration.
Speed Up…or Slow Down
Generate engagement by posting your video in hyperspeed or slowed down to a snail’s pace. Consider using Instagram’s Hyperlapse app to put your video into either of these formats.
A lot of brands are generating solid engagement by showing movement from an unusual perspective — especially visually-based brands like Nickelodeon, which uses Hyperlapse to show off its impressive animation with dramatic flair.
Release in Installments
Build sustained interest for your brand’s content by releasing different parts of one video throughout a day, week, or month.
Vine sensation Lele Pons has taken her excitement-generating video content to Instagram, and builds a ton of engagement from releasing video narratives in installments.
This series of video posts, though they seem casual and impromptu, drove 470,000 likes and 15,178 comments between just two videos which built off one another, and were supported by friendly pillar content on either end.
Give a Taste
In this recent post from Lululemon, the fitness apparel brand presented an inspirational chopped-up video to fit within Instagram’s 15-second max length.
The video was a teaser for the longer “film,” which Instagram users can access by clicking on the link in Lululemon’s Instagram bio.
This is a savvy example of a marketing team repurposing content for Instagram and driving traffic to its site simultaneously.
Use Calligraphy and Hand-Lettering
Post a mesmerizing video of a hand-letterer drawing your logo or a quote your brand feels an affinity for.
This is a useful way to leverage the “intimate” feel which makes Instagram stand out as a social platform and medium for brands and users to connect.
If your brand is more traditional or B2B, this is also a smart method of giving your brand personality and surprising followers, while also staying safe enough to be broadly appealing.
Put Your Fans on Display
Grab user-generated content by asking followers to post videos using your campaign-specific hashtag for a chance to win.
Alo Yoga sees a lot of success with these UGC campaigns, leveraging its strong network of influencers like kinoyogato do so. These influencers foster Instagram video-sharing by posting their own videos.
Important to note here: A unique hashtag is attached to each UGC campaign which Alo Yoga runs, so that tracking and measurement are easy-peasy.
Get Goofy
Put a smile on people’s faces and they’ll remember your brand, then, eventually, seek your brand out.
Remember that, above all, Instagram users decide who to follow on Instagram based on how consistently entertaining your content is. If you can make ’em laugh, you can make ’em do anything.
GENEVA: Nescafé, the instant coffee brand owned by Swiss FMCG giant Nestlé, is dumping its traditional website in favour of Tumblr, the microblogging and social media platform that is popular with younger consumers.
In a move that Nescafé claims is a first for a global brand, the company is aiming to build stronger relationships with consumers, especially millennials, as well as boosting ecommerce sales.
Michael Chrisment, global head of integrated marketing at Nescafé, told Marketing Week that Tumblr has "higher organic reach among millennials" and that its customers expect Nescafé to "share more and be more open".
"As Tumblr is traditionally a blog platform, it's very much tied to co-creation and user generated content, which is the main reason we are moving there," he explained.
A major attraction for Nescafé is that it will be able to engage directly with its consumers and take part in conversations among coffee enthusiasts using Tumblr.
According to recent estimates from Statista, the statistics portal, Tumblr has 230m active users and, with its bid to reach this audience, Nescafé is making a clear shift towards the more informal marketing on social media.
However, the company will continue to be active on other social media networks, such as Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest, and has no plans to stop using traditional marketing platforms, such as TV, radio and outdoor.
"We are moving away from our traditional marketing strategy towards something that's more natural by leveraging owned media, looking to consumers on earned platforms and then amplifying this with paid media," Chrisment said.
In addition to improving its engagement with consumers, Nescafé also hopes the move to Tumblr will drive up ecommerce sales.
"Tumblr brings a lot of mobile advantages, but it also produces a lot of benefits in terms of people being able to buy our products online and being connected," he said.
National weight-loss and pitchman phenomenon Jared Fogle has left Subway in hot water. As a consequence of Fogle's child pornography scandal, Subway has been forced into the spotlight under less-than-positive circumstances.
Though none of Fogle's wrongdoings are tied to the company itself, separating Jared "the Subway Guy" Fogle from the Subway brand is almost impossible. The two have become synonymous.
So, what Subway could have done differently? Could it have prepared for this situation?
The simple answer is that nobody could have been prepared for such a scandal. But the Subway team's biggest mistake wasn't an inability to predict the future; it was putting too much brand recognition into the hands of a single individual.
(To be fair: Subway tried to distance itself from Jared long before the scandal news broke, but his close connection to the brand was too powerful and longstanding to ignore.)
Celebrity Endorsements Gone Wrong
Unfortunately, the problem is all too common. Promoting a well-known pitchman seems like a fast and easy way brands can increase recognition and sales, but time and again companies have been burned by the actions of their celebrity endorsers.
In 2007, NFL quarterback Michael Vick was charged for organization and participation in an illegal dog-fighting ring. At the time, Vick had a $2 million endorsement deal with Nike, which was immediately pulled and left Nike reeling from the consequences.
The headlines focused on how the brand's numbers were affected—from sales to market share to the number of executives now under investigation for their complicit action or inaction surrounding the scandal.
Moreover, one person's actions can have a ripple effect on one or many brands. For instance, at the time of Lance Armstrong's performance-enhancement scandal, Armstrong was tied to Anheuser-Busch InBev, Trek Bicycle Corps, Honey Stinger, and more; Nike even had a major building on its campus named after Armstrong.
Celebrity Endorsements vs. Micro-Influencers
Celebrity endorsements have long been a staple of building brand awareness, but marketers are getting smarter—and they're taking new approaches.
One method that marketers have been tapping into lately is what some brands are calling micro-influencers. These are people who have little to no "celebrity" compared with giants like Tiger Woods and Lance Armstrong, but these non-celebrities' engagement and credibility within a particular community make their advice and opinion highly influential.
When you take a close look, these micro-influencers personify the more powerful factors of influence that go beyond huge celebrity and high follower counts, such as first-hand experience, category expertise, and authenticity.
Consumers don't trust traditional advertising, and though celebrity endorsements are flashy and can build a stronger connection between consumers and brands, celebrities are proving unreliable. Consumers generally look for product reviews on Amazon and a blog as well as experts within their own networks. Marketers are therefore trying to adopt brand awareness programs that cater to such behavior.
The Example of Lululemon
When Christine Day started at Lululemon in 2008, she implemented the brand ambassador program. The company began to reach out to yoga instructors near its retail stores and gave them the opportunity to help build Lululemon's brand awareness. By providing local instructors with merchandise that hadn't yet been released to the public, Lululemon began creating a powerful network of micro-influencers and local brand experts.
Ambassadors quickly became a part of Lululemon's early product feedback cycle and helped to both relay information back to the brand and promote Lululemon to class participants. Because of Lululemon's brand ambassador program, retail stores began to show a 6% increase in sales growth within the first quarter alone.
Despite product crises or bad publicity, Lululemon's group of grassroots brand advocates can always be called upon to recommend the company's products and share their knowledge of the brand in a more relatable way than any celebrity can.
The Example of Luvo
Luvo, a frozen-food startup, is using a hybrid of these methods. By using more high-profile brand ambassadors, such as Russell Wilson and other major athletes, Luvo is still using the power of celebrity while spreading it across multiple spokespeople to ensure that its ambassadors are more independent from one another. That way, if one celebrity falls, it doesn't ruin the image of the entire brand.
What makes Luvo's brand ambassador program different is that many of its brand ambassadors are also investors. That not only shows an added measure of faith in the product but also helps to add a layer of insurance: By being financially invested in the company, these influencers will be less likely to behave in a way that jeopardizes their financial gain.
* * *
A new era of brand awareness is being ushered in by companies like Luvo and Lululemon that understand that consumers listen to brand advocates who embody trust—whether in the voice of a single expert or in influencers by the hundreds and thousands.
Micro-influencers give organizations not only the ability to find a voice that aligns perfectly with its brand but also an army prepared to pick up the slack the next time a Jared Fogle emerges from their midst and threatens to give a black eye to the brand.
A micro-influencer strategy both builds more loyal customers among the influencer crowd and spreads a powerful message to the consumers you want to reach.
We know that YouTube is the 300lb gorilla of online video. We know that videos posted on YouTube have the potential to be seen, and shared, by millions of people. We know that YouTube is indexed by Google extremely well. Then there’s Facebook. Facebook is the world’s most popular social network. Facebook has millions of users who actively read and share all kinds of content—including videos—every single day. So, if you want to put your video on Facebook—say your business’ page—you can either upload it to YouTube and embed/link to it or you can upload the video directly to Facebook. The question is: which is better. SocialBakers and ReelSEO both have some commentary, but leave what to do for us to decide. I’m going to go out on a limb take a stance.
Better Engagement and Reach With Facebook Native Videos
Let’s look at the data first. SocialBakers published two related studies on Facebook native versus YouTube links to videos. One study looked at interactions and the other focused more on reach. These are closely intertwined numbers, so I think it’s important to see them both together.
According to SocialBakers, native Facebook videos have a 40% higher engagement rate over links to YouTube videos. For individual metrics, you can see that the only item were Facebook has a clear lead is comments. Comments are important, but I don’t know how YouTube link engagement is measured (I’m going to hazard a guess that it’s from Facebook data publishers can see) maybe comments are more heavily weighted that other kinds of engagement. Now let’s look at the reach and lift chart (original post):
Facebook native videos get a reach of 12.5% versus 9.1% for YouTube links. This is a key stat, maybe the most important stat for us to consider when making an informed decision. You can get more reach with Facebook-native videos than YouTube linked videos. Chris over at ReelSEO hit the nail on the head with his summary:
I think there’s no doubt that what SocialBakers found here had a lot to do with the ease-of-use for Facebook users to watch the video completely on-site as opposed to being re-directed to YouTube. Obviously, it’s easier for those who share video to simply upload it to YouTube, which is what a brand/marketer is going to do anyway, and then provide the link which is very easy itself. However, getting people to jump around, even though it’s not much, makes a pretty sizable difference.
“Frictionless sharing” might be a buzz word, but it has real-world implications for how content spreads across the Internet. The faster and easier people can share and item, the more likely they are to actually share it. For video, what’s important is for people being able to watch the video in the fewest number of clicks so they can feel comfortable sharing it (and in the shortest amount of time—remember viewers start abandoning videos within two seconds if the video doesn’t immediately load). So Facebook native videos perform better over YouTube video links, and these are probably due to videos loading quickly and natively within Facebook. Interesting, but…that’s not the whole story on which platform to choose for your videos. SocialBaker outlined a few pros and cons in their engagement post:
The Benefits of YouTube Links
YouTube is the most popular video-sharing website that can aggregate, not only your videos, but also data concerning its views and shares.
You can share the YouTube link anywhere that supports your online exposure, unlike Facebook videos which cannot be shared outside of the social network.
The Benefits of Facebook Videos
Your Facebook fans can be tagged in the video.
Your Facebook videos suggest that users Like your Page via a button directly in the video.
Which option do you prefer and why? Are Facebook videos suitable for the needs of businesses or are they intended for casual, personal rather than for content creators?
SocialBakers left the decision up to commenters; which didn’t work out so well, with no consensus in the 16 comments so far. I don’t like leaving data like this just hanging out there, so I’m going to put a stake in the ground and give you an answer that I think will satisfy everyone: Yes. I think that given these data, if you want more engagement and reach with your videos within an active Facebook community, upload the videos to Facebook so they display natively. For the occasional video, or if you have a large and more active community on YouTube than on Facebook, just embed the link to the video from YouTube. However, if you upload your video to Facebook, don’t forget to upload it to your YouTube channel as well. This might be a blinding flash of the obvious, but since Facebook remains (essentially) a walled garden from Google, you need to make sure your videos are on YouTube as well to ensure you have the widest possible audience—and greatest breadth of sharing options.
That’s where it stands. This isn’t an either or decision, it’s a “yes to both” decision. This decision is also one that you need to experiment with yourself and your audience. Maybe you have a large Facebook community, but a community ofbloggers who will want to embed your video on their blogs as well—and the best way to do that is via YouTube. There isn’t going to be a one size fits all solution. The only sure thing is to make sure you have all your bases covered.
What has your experience been? Have you experimented with native Facebook video versus YouTube links? Chime in below…
And you thought you had just figured out millennials. It's time to start wringing your hands about the new generation that's about to enter the workforce. What do they even want?
Poor Generation Z. The oldest members of this cohort are barely 18 and they’re already getting a bad rap. Media and market research companies have labeled them "screen addicts" with the attention span of a gnat. And the pressure: They only have the weight of saving the world and fixing our past mistakes on their small shoulders.
Really?
While generational research is an inherently messy process—older generations study "the kids" to figure them out—much of the recent research is awash in normative preconceptions, biases, and stereotypes. Gen Z deserves a fairer shake, and the rest of us need a more nuanced conversation: This group makes up a quarter of the U.S. population and by 2020 will account for 40% of all consumers. Understanding them will be critical to companies wanting to succeed in the next decade and beyond.
My firm Altitude set out to dig below the surface to understand not only what Gen Z were doing but why—in their own words. We worked with over a dozen 16- to 18-year-olds with diverse backgrounds from across the country through a series of in-depth discussions, video diaries, and daily interactive exercises designed to provide a glimpse into their lives. Our goal was to view the world through their eyes.
The recent headline-grabbing studies suggest that Gen Z attention spans have shrunk to eight seconds and that they’re unable to focus for extended amounts of time. However, we found that Gen Z actually have what we’re calling highly evolved "eight-second filters."
They’ve grown up in a world where their options are limitless but their time is not. As such, Gen Z have adapted to quickly sorting through and assessing enormous amounts of information. Online, they rely heavily on trending pages within apps to collect the most popular recent content. They also turn to trusted curators, such as Phil DeFranco and Bethany Mota, to locate the most relevant information and entertainment. These tools help Gen Z shrink their potential option set down to a more manageable size.
Once something has demonstrated attention-worthiness, Gen Z can become intensely committed and focused. They’ve come of age with an Internet that’s allowed them to go deep on any topic of their choosing and learn from like-minded fans. Marcus, a 17-year-old from Connecticut, spent years exploring the corners of vintage sneaker culture online, eventually becoming somewhat of a "sneakerhead." During his freshman year in college, he realized he could leverage this knowledge and started a side business flipping rare shoes.
Gen Z have a carefully tuned radar for being sold to and a limited amount of time and energy to spend assessing whether something’s worth their time. Getting past these filters, and winning Gen Z’s attention, will mean providing them with engaging and immediately beneficial experiences. One-way messaging alone will likely get drowned out in the noise.
The media has painted Gen Z as a bunch of socially inept netizens and older generations struggle to understand why they spend so much time online. In reality, Gen Z are under immense pressure to simultaneously manage their personal and professional brands to help them fit in while also standing out.
On a personal level, Gen Z seek immediate validation and acceptance through social media, since that’s where all their peers are and where many of the important conversations happen. They curate different social media personas in order to please each audience and minimize conflict or controversy. "We filter out whatever flaws we may have, to create the ideal image," says Sneha, a 16-year-old from Arizona.
On a professional level, Gen Z are hyperaware of the negative stereotypes that have plagued millennials. As a result, they want to be known for their ability to work hard and persevere offline. "I’ve always felt like I needed to prove myself," says Sneha. "Hard work eventually pays off."
The majority of the people in our study also said that their ability to communicate clearly in person, specifically with older adults, was the number one skill that would ensure their future success. "I need to be able to look adults in the eye, give them a firm handshake and ask them how they’re doing," says Liam, 17.
Between these two forces, Gen Z feel torn: They need social media to build their personal brands but resist being defined by it. They seek social validation and inclusion but are looking to differentiate themselves professionally. Companies that understand this tension will provide Gen Z the tools they need to reconcile and better manage their personal and professional brands.
Recent reports have labeled Gen Z the "entrepreneurial generation" and highlighted their desire to forsake the corporate grind for their own startups. We found that while Gen Z like the idea of working for themselves, the majority are risk-averse, practical, and pragmatic. Their supposed entrepreneurialism is actually more of a survival mechanism than an idealist reach for status or riches.
Whereas millennials were criticized for their lack of focus, Gen Z are determined to plan ahead. Gen Z have been strongly shaped by their individualistic, self-reliant Gen X parents and they’re committed to avoiding the mistakes their meandering millennial predecessors made. "I need a job that will come out with money, otherwise college will be a waste", says Marcus, 17. "I want to pick a career that is stable."
To ease this anxiety, the participants in our study all claimed to be aiming for jobs in growing, less-automatable fields like education, medicine, and sales. And they’re obsessed with developing contingency plans to help them navigate the dynamic job market. While the media has singled out a number of high-profile entrepreneurial teen success stories, the majority of Gen Z in our study are biased in favor of career andfinancial stability. Entrepreneurship is seen as a way to not have to rely on anyone (or anything) else, and their version of it will likely be focused on sustainable "singles and doubles" ventures rather than Silicon Valley "home runs."
Society tends to either romanticize youth or criticize the things they’re doing differently. The reality of Gen Z, however, lies somewhere in between. They face many of the challenges that everyone faces in that life stage—transitioning from school to work, separating from parents, and forming their own identities. But they’re doing so in an ultra-connected, fast-moving technological age.
It’s critical that we recognize Gen Z’s differences and meet them where they are, rather than where we want them to be. Without empathy and understanding, brands risk being filtered into obscurity. As writer Logan Pearsall Smith put it nearly 100 years ago: "Don’t laugh at a youth for his affectations; he is only trying on one face after another to find a face of his own."
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