We’ve all seen the astounding success that Snapchat has had from their upstart to all the updated features we’ve come to know and expect today. In fact Instagram was so impressed that they rolled out their own version called Instagram Stories. When they first launched, some harsher critics of instastories mocked their imitation and swore that it wouldn’t be anywhere near the success of Snapchat. But Instagram Stories quickly ascended to an astounding 150 million users a day. Much of their success in part due to their method of allowing users to upload pre-shot videos–both from their camera roll and even from Snapchat videos. In that way, Instagram Stories became a complimentary feature to Snapchat rather than just a direct competitor. Yet both apps still offer unique features that differentiate them from the other and appeal to different users.

Facebook admits that when they saw the massive success of Instagram Stories that’s when they decided to test out Facebook Stories as well. In January the company began a soft roll out and found the market extremely responsive and pushed onward.  On March 28th the full roll-out to most users in 12 different countries launched.

Uh-Oh Snap Chat

Not exactly the best news for Snapchat who rejected Facebook’s acquisition offer. Facebook didn’t present a straight up copycat of Snapchat’s features. No instead Facebook used it’s massive wealth and resources in engineering and design teams to develop a similar but overall different product with their Camera, Stories, and Direct messaging than Snap. Read on to discover the unique features of Facebook Stories.

Post Like an Instastory 

Much like Snapchat, Instagram Stories or WhatsApp, users will press the circular button at the bottom for a picture, or press and hold for a video from either the main or front camera. This straight-forward method is easy and no-nonsense for even a novice story user.

Filters, Filters, Filters.

This is where the product development of Facebook Stories really shines through and where Facebook will really capitalize on appealing to their much larger audience with animated filters and borders the user can set up before recording.

Swipe up or down to access your filter “favorites” i.e. the last 8 filter’s you’ve used. Don’t see one you like? Click on the magic wand icon located on the bottom left-hand corner in order to access a whole library of filters. Unlike Snapchat you’ll have a lot more filters and skins to access on Facebook Stories. However, you won’t be able to add emojis or stickers to the stories after the way that you can on Instagram Stories or Snaps. You’re post-edits are limited adding text or scribbles.

Check-Out this great comparison list that TechCrunch put together:

What’s in Facebook Camera:

• Drawing with resizable marker and chalk brushes
• Emoji stickers
• Colored captions
• Animated selfie lenses and masks
• Environmental effects like highlight lines and funhouse mirrors
• Reactive filters that respond to movement like lava lamp colors
• Iterative filters that surprise you with new effects if you get more people in frame
• Fine-art-style transfers that make your images look like line drawings or impressionist paintings
• Professional artist filters like Hattie Stewart’s doodle bombs and Doug Copeland’s psychedelia
• Licensed filters from six movie studios, including a Minions filter
• Cause-supporting filters like rainbows for gay pride
• Geotagged location filters for certain places
• Country-specific filters for around 10 initial markets

What’s missing:

• Simple Instagram-style color filters for boosting exposure or contrast (Snapchat, Instagram)
• 3D stickers for pinning text, emoji or drawings to objects in a video (Snapchat)
• Playback effects for slow-mo and fast-forward (Snapchat)
• FaceSwap (Snapchat)
• User- and business-submitted filters (Snapchat)
• Caption background colors for easy reading (Instagram)
• Location tags for turning any place-name into a stylized sticker (Instagram)
• Mentions for tagging friends (Instagram)
• Computer-generated filters that turn any text into frames (Messenger)
• Who’s Up For? filters for inviting friends to hang out (Messenger)

More On-Screen Time

Let’s compare your max video times:

Snapchat: 10 seconds

Instagram Stories: 15 seconds

Facebook Stories: 20 seconds

Share a Variety of Ways 

Want to save that story you just made? Press the down arrow to save to your camera roll or simply press the center arrow to share. Additionally users have the option to send their story directly to friends in the form of a message or post to their timeline.

Control Who’s Seeing What

On Instagram and Snapchat it’s pretty simple. If you have a public profile, then you have a public story. If you have a private one, then your story is restricted to your friends only. But Facebook offers some different controls. Much like their sharing features already established on other posts, the user has the choice to make individual stories Public, Friends, Friends Except.., Select a certain subset of people, and so on when posting to their Timeline. A particularly appealing feature to parents who may only want to share photo’s of their kids with friends but also want to be widespread and public on a rant they made or great tip they want to share with everyone. However, this type of control is limited to stories posted on the timeline. If you share to your broader “Facebook Story”, the video will be available on the newsfeed of all your friends and appear as a bubble at the top of their feeds.

And just like Snapchat and Instagram Stories, these Facebook Stories have a 24-hour shelf life.

Watch It Again

“Direct” stories can be played twice before the video “self-destructs” disappears. But does it really disappear? While Facebook itself has issued that statement that once the content disappears from your Story or Direct messages, it also completely deletes the content off its servers, there are still other concerns. As of the official launch date, Facebook has not implemented features such as letting a user know when a screenshot of your story has been taken. So share with that safety tip in mind!

Facebook Stories for Businesses

While the launch of Facebook stories is great for the individual users, business pages should hold on to their celebration hats a little longer. As of the official launch date, Facebook has yet to open up Facebook Stories to business pages–only personal pages.

So what to do if you’re a business who wants to capitalize on this new way to reach potential customers? Tell the people on your team, such as community managers and experts to start building their personal brands and start pushing people and viewers to your business’ website and business social channels in this way.

With so many social video platforms out there, it can be hard to find the time to update each and every profile. WE strongly suggest if this is you that you stick with creating one video via Snapchat. Sure you may be limited to just 10 seconds, but you can save this 10 second story to your camera roll and upload the same story onto Instagram Stories and Facebook Stories. If you do choose to use one video for all platforms then we strongly encourage you go above and beyond to create unique video content.

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After a soft roll out announced early July 6th, Snapchat has officially rolled out ‘Snapchat Memories’ onto everyone’s app (and chances are if you don’t have it, you might be due for a software update!). Hopefully by now you have seen the Snapchat Memories feature on your Snapchat app. Yet we have recently been made aware that many people are not using this feature at all or to its full capacity! So in order to rectify that, we break down the features of Snapchat Memories in this short and sweet Snapchat Memories Spotlight Article.

Let’s Start With the Basics.

So what is Snapchat Memories? Think about Facebook’s “This Day” memory, but searchable and selectively shareable. Save your Story in a personal collection of favorite memories.

Now, let’s break it down:

• Start off by clicking the smaller button below the large button camera button

• Once you’ve activated your Memories you can simply swipe the camera screen up to access the memories.

• At initial set up, selectively add your saved My Story’s into your Memories — all backed up from Snapchat’s Server!

• Use these Memories to create new stories or combine stories for a new longer My Story!

• Send snaps from Memories to friends or post to your My Story (and don’t worry it will be framed in to show it’s from the past!)

• Edit past My Story photos and images with limited, but useful edits (basic filters, time of photo, and speed).

• Want to share your Memories with friends and not fear an embarrassing photo popping up? Make sure you put that saved Memory into “My Eyes Only”

• And don’t worry, Snapchat doesn’t access your camera roll — that is unless you use a camera roll picture to make a new story or want to add a picture to My Eyes Only album

All in all, the update is a welcome change for Snapchat. The only thing we’ve noticed that could be called a “con” is 1) to download your My Story, you now have to save it to memories, then access the memory to export it onto your camera roll and 2)the inability to arrange the order of New Story’s in Memories. The video/picture collaboration automatically sorts chronologically. While it’s appreciated initially, it would be nice to have control to switch things up! While the extra step to get your My Story on your phone camera roll is annoying to those used to the previous simpler option, it’s undeniable great marketing by Snapchat to force users to explore and learn more about Snapchat Memories.

For more Snapchat insights, follow subscribe to our blog or follow our Digital Minds on Snap!

Check out COO Jeff Brewer @ jeff_brewer for great trending updates on digital marketing!

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What is InstaZoom?

Yesterday, August 31st 2016, Instagram began its soft roll of their latest update in a long line of newly launched features: Zoom. The ability to zoom is something users have been asking about for some time. And with Instagram being primarily a visual platform, it’s a wonder it took so long to add this feature for camera happy users. Nevertheless we’re thrilled the day has finally come!

Use the zoom feature by pinching on photos and even videos in your feed. That’s right, unlike Facebook, Instagram allows its users to zoom in on video’s as well. Keep with surprises like this Instagram—we like it.

When Will it Roll Out?

Like we mentioned, this is a soft roll. Meaning most but not all iOS devices should have the zoom feature. We’ve noticed while most accounts we monitor Instagram for had the feature live when we checked yesterday, a few are still on the list for the update. Android users are less lucky as they’ll be slowly getting the updates in the following weeks.

What Does This Mean for Future Marketing?

As Instagram serves as the mecca of visual marketing, the InstaZoom feature means quite a lot for marketers. In one scenario (the most common) it means more details can be added to photos to surprise and titillate fans. Your target audience can now zoom in to discover exciting crisp details about their favorite products that may increase the likelihood of making a purchase.

However in the second scenario, the InstaZoom might prove the negative for some marketers. The previous method most people used to zoom in on the details of a photo, was to take a screen shot of the Instagram post, and then zoom within their Camera Roll. The clear advantage of this method is that many persons do not clear their photos out right away. This means that those businesses that had photos that were screen shot, were able to re-market their audience several times: in their camera roll, in their iCloud, and even on their computer. for businesses because not everyone clears about their photos right away. With this new Zoom feature, while the user experience will be better for the customer, some marketers just lost a potentially brilliant marketing strategy.

Nonetheless, whether a few may lose out on one lesser used marketing strategy, more will gain from the Zoom feature. It means high quality pictures matter more than ever—oh and another bonus: no more of those pesky accidental double taps when your parents are trying to zoom in on an Insta photo #3monthsdeep #tapsofshame

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With Pokemon Go raking in $1.6 million dollars daily on just in-app purchases it may comes as no surprise the stock for the app shot up—but then again maybe an 11 billion dollar increase in valuation may surprise you!

That’s because the revenue potential for Pokemon Go isn’t from the daily millions, although that surely adds to its revenue stream. It will only account for a small percentage of this billion dollar valued free product. Advertising for Pokemon Go is predicted to bring in over $16 billion dollars this year! You can bet investors, who spent around $30 million to launch the app, are going wild over this news. Read more about their financial gains in this article

Not only is the company making money, but savvy business owners have set-up their business’ as Pokestops or spent some “advertising” dollars on lures to drive Poke-users to their store front. Not only are investors benefiting, but local economies are benefitting meaning the Go phenomenon isn’t going anywhere.

So what’s coming next? While Nintendo owns a third of the Pokemon app, surely they won’t be the only company attempting to capitalize on this Go craze. Google owns another percentage of the Pokemon Go technology and will, providing any restrictive contracts, partner up with other corporations to launch other apps.

Users of the Pokemon Go are already throwing out suggestions for the next avenue for the Go mobile market. The key to Pokemon’s success is that it hit’s a strong era of nostalgia. Previous lovers of the Nintendo game, cards, and/or television show are now adults with money to spend. This perfect combination is going to be the key to future successful Go games. While it is highly unlikely that any other game will touch the success that is Pokemon Go, there is surely money to be made in future augmented reality adventures.

Some suggestions include:

• Harry Potter
• Star Wars
• Magic the Card Game
• Grand Theft Auto
• World of Warcraft.
• Angry birds.
• Candy Crush
• And other old school games such as Pac Man, Monopoly, or Space Invaders Smash are popular contenders.

These particular games already make substantial monies in their current platforms and are bound to have a steady stream of users in the mobile virtual world.

Much like video game consoles are not designed for just one game, the augmented mobile reality market is about to explode with a whole variety of gaming options. Wise investors and marketers will tap into this new and sure to be explosive market.

See another opportunity for an augmented go market? Leave your suggestions in the comments.

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Today Microsoft has announced they are purchasing the social network for professionals, LinkedIn, for a cool $26.2 billion.

Both the boards of Microsoft and LinkedIn have approved the purchase, which equates to $196 per share. If for some reason the sale falls through, LinkedIn will owe Microsoft a $72 million termination fee.

How LinkedIn Benefits:

The company keeps their branding, but uses Microsoft’s company strategy to create and offer more services for the enterprise sector. Now they will be able to compete beyond the software level, a previously large disadvantage for LinkedIn.

How Microsoft Benefits:

Microsoft will use LinkedIn’s social graph tool as a sales funnel for their products. It additionally will complement products Microsoft already offers for both collaboration and communication. Since LinkedIn’s launch in 2002 the company has acquired over 433 million users in over 200 countries. Of those users 105 million are active users. This is a great new audience and platform for Microsoft to use in order to gain more consumer’s and create new collaborations.

This acquisition comes at a good time for the LinkedIn team who’s stock had dropped from a high of $258 per share. Despite drops in share value, LinkedIn brings in roughly $2 billion a year alone in recruitment revenue and is one of the largest purveyor’s of new job postings. The great work the company has done with their SEO has lead to an astonishing high of 45 billion quarterly page views.

Despite a decreased value in shares, LinkedIn should still be considered a resounding success of a tech company and a great acquisition for Microsoft.

Read LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner’s Letter to Employees

Read Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s Letter to Employees

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If you are an entrepreneur or business owner, this post will highlight why it is well worth your time to incorporate event marketing into your overall marketing plan.

Check Out These Event Marketing Statistics!

Event marketing can take a lot of pre-planning and strategizing. If you feel like you are already wearing far too many diverse hats, you may be tempted to put off including event marketing in your greater marketing strategy.

But then again, there are these statistics….and they may just change your mind about taking the time to learn the art of event marketing!

As a further incentive, a recent joint survey by Inc. and the UPS Store revealed that 42 percent of small businesses routinely allocate a portion of their annual marketing budget to event marketing.

1.  Main Categories of Event Marketing

In today’s event marketing arena, the word “event” can be used to define just about any action that draws prospects and customers together with marketers and businesses.

Having said that, there are 2 main categories of events in use today for marketing purposes:

• In-person events.

  Conference booths, networking breakfasts, lunch-and-learns, happy hour meet-and-greets, sponsored shows or charitable events, hands-on workshops and other types of personal face-to-face events create ready pathways to begin building a relationship that can lead to sales.

• Online events.

  Webinars, podcasts, Tweet parties, Facebook groups, Instagram meet-ups, sponsored contests or giveaways and other online and social media-based virtual events can be just as effective at building customer and brand loyalty, attracting new prospects to learn more and begin building relationships that lead to future sales.

Choosing Your Marketing Event Types

The type of event marketing your company pursues will naturally be driven by your sales outlets.

For instance, if your business comes primarily through local customers visiting your brick-and-mortar stores, you will certainly benefit by hosting in-person events.

If, however, you make most of your sales via e-commerce regionally, nationally or internationally, online events may be the better approach to take.

Many businesses plan for a combination of in-person and virtual online events to gain traction with local and web-based prospects and customers.

2.  Main Event Marketing Goals

For any marketing-based event, there are typically 3 main goals.

• Goal #1: The primary goal for all event marketing (no matter what any marketer may claim) is to make more sales. Whether the sales happen right then and there or later on isn’t necessarily an issue. As long as the future sales can somehow be traced back in whole or in part to attending the event, the marketing effort can be considered a success.

• Goal #2: A strong secondary goal set for most companies is to build brand awareness. Even if your company sells niche or specialty products or services that are only needed in certain specific situations, by making a good first impression and reinforcing the relationship over time, you can position your brand to make a future sale.

• Goal #3: Strengthening customer loyalty is a key goal for any company, but especially for companies that sell products that are household staples (think toilet paper, light bulbs) or services that are entirely relationship-based (think massage or hair styling).

3.  Expert Tips for Using Event Marketing to Achieve Your Goals

These tips can help you translate your overarching goals into their “how-to’s” – in other words, how are you going to achieve what you want to achieve through event marketing?

Here are 3 expert tips for enhancing the results of any type of marketing-based event:

Tip #1: Incorporate a virtual aspect to in-person events.
Even if you are hosting a local event for customers in a certain city, you can extend a virtual invitation for social media followers to attend virtually by way of live streaming, Tweets and Instagram photos and video clips of the event-in-progress, giveaways on Facebook or how-to recaps of live workshops on Pinterest. At the same time, you can be collecting new followers at your live event to add to your social networks.

In this way, you get twice the reach for essentially the same marketing cost.

Tip #2: Focus virtual events on only one social media channel.
If you have a goal to build your network on Twitter, you can host a virtual event that is exclusive to your Twitter network of followers. But you can also promote that the Twitter event is occurring on your other social feeds, which can bring your followers from other platforms over to Twitter to follow you there as well.

Marketing pros call this “exclusivity” of event marketing – when the event is happening only on one social channel, and attendees must follow you on that channel to get in on the action.

Tip #3: Be sure you are ready for your own event results!
This can be a tricky one. From ensuring you have enough supplies and products on hand for local events to boosting your bandwidth in anticipation of an online crush, you want to make sure you and your business are ready to handle seeing your marketing event turn into a runaway success!

Planning your first event will definitely include a learning curve. By keeping your goals simple and leaving sufficient time to plan and prepare, you can look forward to a successful event outcome every time!

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If you are brand new to the ever-evolving arena of online advertising, expect to feel overwhelmed right at the start. There is a lot to learn! Happily, there is also a rich payoff for those who take the time and invest the energy to learn it well.

One reason many entrepreneurs and companies fail to achieve their return on investment (ROI) goals in the online arena is because of an ineffective (or non-existent) landing page.

In this post, learn how to optimize your landing page for the best results.

“Landing Page” Defined

When you buy an airline ticket, you have to choose your destination. And if you don’t look carefully at the gate information when you are boarding the plane, you could very well end up somewhere you never planned to visit!

Landing pages are like travel advisors, giving browsing customers options for where to shop or find information.

Let’s say you sell hiking shoes for men. A customer opens their browser, types in a search query related to men’s hiking shoes and is then presented with a page of “hits,” or weblink options they can visit to shop for the shoes.

Since you sell men’s hiking shoes, and here is this customer searching for men’s hiking shoes, you want to be sure they “land” on your page – hence, the “landing page.”

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