Social Media & SEO

For those representing academic institutions online, the task of evaluating yet another new social network or social media offering from established outfits can feel overwhelming. Several years ago, it was tempting to think the world would cleave neatly into Facebook and Twitter camps. With some extra effort, we could adjust our messages to both, engage with their respective audiences and respond to new features. The market for social networks seemed almost mature.

Snap Inc. is preparing for an initial public offering as early as late March, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. The potential valuation: $25 billion. Those following Snapchat’s history may remember that Facebook offered a $3 billion buyout in 2013, which CEO Evan Spiegel turned down.

If your brand is on Twitter, it (literally) pays to respond quickly and consistently to followers’ tweets. A recent survey conducted by Twitter in partnership with Applied Marketing Science (AMS) found that brands that respond quickly to customer queries on Twitter see increased revenue and brand loyalty, while waiting too long to respond can cause major drops in potential sales.

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Snapchat must be feeling pretty buttered up. In the past week Facebook launched two additions to its messaging suite that more or less clone Snapchat’s most popular features. Facebook’s Messenger app launched a small test run of “Messenger Day,” which lets users send customized photos and videos that disappear in a day, similar to Snapchat Stories. And WhatsApp users can now edit photos and video with text overlays of multiple colors, emojis and custom drawings.

As you’ll see in this first of a two-part series on content for Snapchat, the advice is to continue to assume it’s best that snaps avoid feeling like ads.

While Twitter Moments aren’t new to the platform, it’s taken some time for average users to get their hands on the feature. When Moments hit the scene, it was a highly regulated and carefully aggregated stream of content. Dedicated staff and Twitter’s content partners patched together tweets, images and Vines to tell important and trending stories in a more concise way than sifting through the platform’s deluge of content. Now, all Twitter users can create Moments to share with the world.

Twitter’s live streaming platform Periscope has unveiled a three-tiered VIP Program, in which users with a sizable Periscope following can apply to receive benefits including increased visibility and discoverability, a direct line to Periscope staff and a private channel for networking with other VIPs. The program is divided into three tiers (Bronze, Silver and Gold) based on number of followers, average number of stream viewers and streaming frequency.

Since Instagram Stories was released in early August amid accusations of it being a Snapchat ripoff, users have quickly warmed to the new feature—and that includes brands. What are brands communicating via this new platform? Let’s take a look at some of the Stories posted in the past 24 hours to find out how this evanescent medium is being put to use, and see if we can glean some lessons about what makes them effective.

Snapchat is taking its first step out of the digital world and trying its luck in the hardware space, according to a blog post on the company’s website. Snapchat’s newest product, dubbed “Spectacles,” is a pair of sunglasses with a built-in camera that can shoot short videos and upload them directly to Snapchat.

With only this table of most-engaged B2C brands on Instagram for Q2 ’16 to guide you, one might conclude Instagrammers enjoy photos of cosmetics while quaffing coffee and energy drinks and decorating cakes. Seriously, it’s logical for cosmetics brands to dominate consumer engagement, or actions, on Instagram. A visual platform, Instagram was conceived to display photographs. Beauty is a visual business.