Posted by In the era of digitization, everything revolves around social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, LinkedIn, etc. Isn’t it?
But not every social media platform is created with a similar purpose.
While Facebook might be a powerhouse for one business, it may do nothing for another – and while one brand may have tons of user engagement on Instagram, another brand will gain more traction on LinkedIn.
With all this in mind, how would you select a platform to invest your time for your brand? The best move is to explore every major platform and opt for the best features like creating targeted ads, tagging products to your posts, providing social-only discounts, etc. Then you can start promoting your business to generate leads and increase your revenue strategically.
Sometimes back, Instagram and Facebook “adopted” ephemeral content trend from Snapchat, which led their user base to go up a staggering 339% since their creation. It shows the power of ephemeral content. It is essential to know why this type of content has gained such popularity and how it will keep growing in 2020 & beyond. But before that, let’s take an in-depth insight into ephemeral content.
What Is Ephemeral Content?
Ephemeral content is a kind of content in a photo or video format that disappears after a certain period. It provides the viewers or audience a small window to see the content and engage with it. The concept of short-lived content on social media platforms was first seen back in 2011. Picaboo, the printing company headquartered in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States, first used this concept along with Snapchat. They mainly focused on providing a way to send photos or videos related to anything that disappears within a few seconds.
And as the popularity of short-lived content skyrocketed, many renowned and well-established social media platforms adopted ephemeral content marketing. Are you pondering over the reasons behind its popularity? Take a look.
Reasons Why Ephemeral Content Is Gaining Popularity
1. Elicit an Immediate Response
The primary purpose of advertising any product or service on social media platforms is to elicit an immediate response from the users. Most of the brands post stories on their Instagram account with a link to purchase or subscribe to their products or services. And because of ephemeral content, users react to the stories intermediately. Sometimes they even share the link on their account in return for some amount of money.
2. Increase User Engagement
The ephemeral content strategy focuses not only on promoting the business product or service to impress the customer but also on increasing user engagement. Nowadays, brands are more into creating memes related to their product or service because the user is more likely to engage with them. Such a type of content may stay in the trend for a limited period, but leaves a strong impact on the users.
3. Reach a Wider Audience
As mentioned above, ephemeral content helps elicit an immediate response through stories that create a sense of urgency. It ultimately widens the brand’s reach. The social media managers of various brands work on creating the stories so that the user can share it with their friends and let them know about the brand and its product. In this way, the brand gets fame and acknowledgement from its loyal customers and creates a new customer base with the help of an ephemeral content strategy.
4. Maximize the Content Volume
If we look at ephemeral content statistics, well-crafted content enables the brands to create maximum content volume with less effort and lower overheads. They have to use high-definition images and videos to compel the audience to go through their full range of products and services.
Once the brand develops its visual concept strategy, preparing and creating the content become streamlined. It helps them in posting the stories and quality content very often.
5. Boost Loyalty
When a brand or a business posts stories often, it creates transparency of products and services with customers. The primary aim of any business is to boost loyalty and maintain the liking towards the product. And it can only be achieved by building a solid reputation and creating authentic content over the internet. Ephemeral content helps in fulfilling this goal as it increases user engagement.
These are the five reasons why ephemeral content is gaining popularity and helping brands create their presence in the competitive market. Establishing authority can be easy, and maintaining it for the long term is tricky. Using effective ephemeral content strategies is one of the best ways to keep your business in the searches for long.
You should note that these strategies require a few elements to create an impact on users and help brands get most out of every story that they post on their social media account. Thus, the next section provides insight into the elements required to build effective ephemeral content.
What Elements Are Required to Build an Effective Ephemeral Content?
1. Platform
You should know that one of the essential elements required for ephemeral content is a social media platform where you can post photos and videos. The fact that ephemeral only works on social media is a drawback. You can post any content on your website, but if you don’t share it on social media platforms, it will go unnoticed. Furthermore, if you do not have a good following, your content is more likely to get zero benefits.
But if you have a partner whose followers and reach is extensive, you can ask him to share your content. Other than this, you can also collaborate with influencers having a strong social presence to promote your product or service in a way that seems attractive to the audience.
2. Content
Whichever social media platform you select for promoting the product or service, you need to have appropriate content. It is because ephemeral only works when the content is native to your choice’s social media platform. The market and the user both have a shortening attention span that results in not watching the photo or video posted by the brand unless it promises something extraordinary.
3. Timing
Another vital element of ephemeral is timing. Every business manager handling the social media platform of brands must identify the perfect time to post stories and create a hype around your product or service. Proper planning to promote the product helps generate revenue through online portals and create a new customer base, which is beneficial for a brand.
In today’s world, ephemeral content has gained such popularity that almost every brand is using it to promote their products and services to attract users from different corners of the world. If you are an established brand or thinking to set up a new business, the ephemeral content strategy can help you reach a wide audience. You just need to ensure using it on the right platform by analyzing the product’s requirements. Along with this, you need to focus on creating the right content at the right time. In this way, your brand will keep gaining popularity in 2020 and beyond.
Summary: In the digital era, ephemeral content is a great way to engage users on various social media platforms. This article highlights a few reasons why it is in trend and will keep growing in the coming years.
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