Live-Content:
Live-streaming, as big as it has gotten, is primed to get even bigger. Regarding video, YouTube was a hit about 12 years ago and now it is more of a player in entertainment than many large networks on television. Just as radio was in many ways replaced by TV, the TV is now seemingly being cast off to the side by the social networks and their live-stream capabilities. The mobile phone is not only where we get much of our news and entertainment, but is also a broadcasting device for the likes of Facebook Live, Periscope, and many more.
As a business and as a brand, you will always want more reach, more awareness, more eyeballs on YOU. The trend of live-streaming and live-video content allows for authentic storytelling, an advanced avenue of audience engagement, and a great way to educate while building trust and credibility. Entrepreneur and social media leader Gary Vaynerchuk notes that, as platforms are slowly becoming the networks, people will pay to stay exclusive. YouTube and other online personalities are making large wages to be the faces of big brands and events…a number that will only grow.
Expiring Content:
The social media platform of the year in 2016 would undoubtedly be Snapchat. The fastest-growing app is also the easiest to use – while users may ponder what they post to Facebook or Instagram, Snapchat is a way to share micro-thoughts and mini-moments without the ‘stress’ of thinking things out. It’s meant to allow users to be themselves while snapping authentic and fun photos off-the-cuff. The big key, however, is the scarcity effect (aka expiring content).
Users are motivated to check Snapchat more than they would any other platform because they fear (be it human nature or “FOMO”) that the images of their friends and celebrities they follow will be deleted before they get the opportunity to view them. This urgency, in turn, drives the popularity of Snapchat, and now has many competitors attempting the same concepts – Instagram now has it’s own expiring feature, and WhatsApp is in the works for an element called ‘Status’ that will do a similar action.
More and more applications will be built with the scarcity effect in mind, and with that, more marketing will be created for bite-size expiring content, and brands will (as aforementioned with live-streaming) invest funds to get and stay exclusive on those platforms.
