Have you noticed an uptake in live videos across social media?
With all our constant Zooming, Housepartying and Skyping, everyone is getting much more comfortable communicating through video.
Any time you log into Instagram you’re pretty much guaranteed to see at least one business account, celebrity or influencer broadcasting live to their followers. This is a great time to reach a captive audience especially as activity on the social media platforms has increased.
Instagram has now added the ability for users to watch live videos from desktop, which is a huge move for them considering how they’ve stuck to ‘mobile-only‘ features the last couple of years. The really useful aspect to viewing Instagram live videos on desktop is that now businesses will have a URL to cross-promote on their other social platforms to boost viewership of their live video.
Instagram have now added more tools as stickers on Stories to help businesses during these times, including gift cards, food orders, fundraisers and challenges. These will allow businesses that have been impacted by limited availability or shutdowns to continue to generate income at this time.
“Businesses can share a new gift card, food order, and fundraiser stickers in Stories and on their profiles. When you see gift cards or food orders, you can tap to make your purchase through our partner’s site.”
The gift card function is a great option for all businesses to build on their brand loyalty and encourage engagement with their customers.
The food order stickers run through third-party delivery businesses such as Deliveroo & Uber Eats, which can be very useful for those food businesses already using those services.
Challenges are another fun sticker Instagram has introduced recently to keep up with all the engagement around real-life challenges happening between their users. Using this sticker allows you to browse the other challenges that are currently popular on the app and also to tag the friends you want to challenge.
It can be useful for businesses to use this function if they have a fundraising challenge they want to promote amongst their followers.
The social media platforms continue to innovate and stay up to date and relevant by their ability to respond to customers requirements, trends and changing circumstances – Instagram have done well here with their latest innovations.
Alma
Alma Brosnan is part of the Digital Marketing team providing Social Media Consultancy and Training services at Fuzion Communications from our offices in Dublin and Cork, Ireland
