Media, Multimedia

Upcoming generations of social media users are trending away from platforms, such as Facebook, and are embracing multimedia-style platforms — Pinterest, Vine, and Instagram, for example. In fact, recent stats have been dreary for Facebook: the company announced a sharp decline in teen use. iStrategyLabs, a digital marketing agency, revealed in January 2014 that more than three million teens, or 25.3% of Facebook’s user base, had left the social networking platform. At the same time, adoption rates at alternative network sites are blossoming. In order to survive, companies must adjust their social marketing strategies, especially if they hope to reach new generations of shoppers.

Attention-grabbing photos

Stock images won’t cut it anymore. Audiences want an insider’s perspective of life at your company. Photographs of your team’s most inspiring moments can help viewers see the human side of your work.

Multimedia is also an excellent way for audiences to connect with one another, which The Gap demonstrated with its “What I Wore Today” campaign. When it comes to fashion trends, users on Pinterest can create elaborate outfit plans and shopping lists by browsing pins that are located through apparel keywords and boards created by liked-minded peers. Users’ own fashion boards are typically an amalgamation of their friends’ most-liked posts.

Masterful mini-films

Vine has taken short films to a new level. Posters have up to six seconds to create a mini scene, convey an idea, make us laugh, or get us to think.

While it may seem as if this approach would be too brief, especially when compared to the longer-form videos hosted by YouTube, mini films are actually great news for marketers. Instead of being concerned about producing the next viral music video, companies can reduce their film budgets to tell stories within the concise time frames set by Vine and now Instagram.

Learn from what works

The numbers you derive from analytics can help your marketing team pinpoint ideal posting times, which can lead you to successful schedules for queued posts. As you read the metrics, always consider the impact these measurements have on your brand image. Are the engagement rates actually helping your brand visibility, or are your audiences following links away from your online presence? Analytic tools can also help you identify key demographics, so that your future video and photo content can be tailored to your primary audience’s needs and desires.

Multimedia content is quickly taking over the arena of social media marketing. However, you want to avoid making the mistake of dropping the emphasis on your text-based content: Descriptions and hash tags are still just as crucial as ever. Blending creative images and videos with strategies based on analytics can give businesses the edge they need to reach massive new audiences in the future.