We covered a huge range of topics when I sat down with Zac Boatright for our first Blab session. One of the stand out pieces, besides the plea for sponsorship from Subway (hint hint Subway, your move), was our conversation about what’s coming in 2016. You can watch our chat here, but I wanted to point to a few trends that are on our radar for the coming year.
Micro Impressions
We saw a bit of this over the past year, and it’s only going to become more prevalent. Small bits of advertising and content that are quick and easily digestible are going to be a staple of 2016. Mediums like Vine, with a tiny timestamp of only 7 seconds, and SnapChat will become the battleground of the brands. It’s already happening! We see Vines cropping up starring so-called Vine stars with the words “#sponsored” in the description; companies are giving these top content creators products to try out, sample or simply feature in the background of their short videos. SnapChat is also entering the fray. Brands and celebrities have SnapChat accounts that they’re using to interact with their fans or debut a new product. Large companies are reaching out to star SnapChatters to work with them to curate stories and content, like Taco Bell has done as linked above.
Additionally, as Zac points out, there’s a new feature rolling out on Facebook that gives you the ability to have a short video or slideshow of pictures as your profile picture as opposed to just one static image. While that’s a great opportunity for me to showcase my dogs in adorable scarves, it also provides companies with an incredibly unique opportunity to present a series of images in addition to their logo that are important to their brand – and it will be constant. If someone is following your company, they’re going to see that little slideshow every time you post something to your Facebook feed.
Live Streaming Engagement
This is a topic I’m very excited about. It’s provides such an interesting, untapped vein of engagement for companies. Plus, it’s incredibly humanizing. It’s live, and live broadcasts are hard to script so viewers get to see people as they really are.
Sure, Zac and I had a list of questions I was going to ask him and we had topics we wanted to address, but then people started joining our channel and interacting with us. They asked us questions, they gave us “props” (Blab’s version of likes) and they proved to be an actual captive audience interested in the things we were talking about. Livestreaming platforms like Blab, Periscope, Meerkat and even Facebook Live are going to hit in a huge way in 2016. From product demonstrations, to a behind the scenes look at how something is made or produced, companies are already embracing livestreaming. And there’s a huge variety of content to choose from that will only increase in the New Year. I watched a Blab the other day about social media marketing and presenting yourself online and then was able to quickly click over to one about taste-testing craft beers with well-known foodie bloggers and Facebook frequently sends me notifications when companies I follow go live using Facebook’s live feature.
Note: Blab is an awesome new platform, that we’re not affiliated with in any way. I found this great guide to using it and navigating potentially dicey situations – click here to check it out on Social Media Examiner!
Now You!
What are you looking forward to in 2016? Let us know in the comments! And if there’s anything you’d like to see covered in an upcoming EV blog, drop of a comment below as well.
One Last Thing…
Happy New Year from all of us here at Engaged Video!
Thanks for a great year!
