Social Media & SEO

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.

With White House aspirants and professional footballers live streaming, what are the best ways for brand communicators to take advantage of these live streaming tools? We asked communicators for insight about content strategy and content creation, selling these live (read “unpredictable”) tools to the C-suite, measuring effectiveness and working with influencers.

Life is live, but so much of what we watch on screens is taped. For brands wanting to control their messages, avoiding in-the-moment tools would seem to make sense. Still, for brands there’s much to be gained by using Snapchat. With many brands getting started on Snapchat, and plenty timidly staying away, we asked Sarah Maloy, director of social media and external video at Fuse Media LLC, parent of national television network Fuse TV, to tell us of Snapchat traps to avoid.

A look at the top stories of the past week in PR. This week including the not-so-friendly visits to Capitol Hill by Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf and Mylan’s Heather Bresch. Other stories include Facebook’s goof on how it measures time viewing videos, Finn Partners’s growth spurt and a new tech chief for APCO Worldwide.

Communicators know Snapchat is a powerful tool for audience engagement, but that means nothing if they’re dealing with a skeptical C-suite. Limited metrics, doubts about the platform’s staying power and a reluctance to stretch lean social media budgets further are just a few of the arguments communicators might encounter when proposing a Snapchat channel launch.

At the risk of sounding obvious, you need to have strong visuals to have a good Instagram presence. This is not something that comes naturally to some brands, especially nonprofits and B2Bs. With a little help from some communicators at the top of their game, however, anyone can put a strategy in place that will make their Instagram feed more engagement-friendly.

Snapchat is known for its informality and immediacy. For communicators seeking to control their brand’s messages, however, those two descriptors could be reasons to stay away from this hot, new tool. Sarah Maloy, director of social media and external video at Fuse Media LLC, the parent of cable music network fuse, has managed to meld (yes, we could have said fuse) Snapchat’s in-the-moment tone with various corporate strictures.

It turns out that one of those right-brain skills—good writing—may be the best SEO weapon available. Now more than ever, SEO success depends on strategic writing skills. Creating content that satisfies search engines’ need to deliver useful information improves Google search rankings.