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The new way to consume video: Meerkat vs Periscope

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If you are a regular user of Twitter you may have heard the combustion around an app called Meerkat.

Meerkat is an app that allows you to stream live video onto Twitter for people to watch. You can even schedule your video and people can join it when it goes live. a1This is a marked difference from the Vine app Twitter released a few years ago where you can record up to 15 seconds of video then share it out to your followers to watch. Meerkat is live video. Real time activity. People that follow your stream can even send you comments that you and the other viewers can see and discuss.

One way businesses have used this is to open a live stream of how their business runs behind the scenes. For instance a restaurant will set up a phone on their kitchen as you can watch them make your food. If you offer classes you can live stream your class or event to Twitter now too. This could be a great way to help more people understand your business and have a glimpse of what you do. Educational sales processes can benefit from this tool.

Not long after Meerkat was dominating the News cycles a new app came up that competes with them. It’s name is Periscope. Periscope basically does the same thing yet tends to encourage more engagement from your followers and be more about constant interaction with the people on the video rather than just a live stream of what you are doing.

a1In Periscope you can watch people’s videos, comment to them and others watching as well as hit a button to offer hearts or “love” to the person making the video. These videos are actually saved for up to 24 hours so you can go back and watch them later too. There is a lot more interaction between the watchers of the video and the producer of the video here. Periscope is a great way to offer Q & A sessions and offer the opportunity to allow people to learn more about your business.

Both apps are really moving video in a new direction of being real time rather than something made then viewed later. For a business, the opportunity to interact with customers and help them buy from you is truly amazing with these types of apps.

How would you use these in your business? Leave a comment below and tell us!

What’s new with Facebook

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Last week Facebook held their annual Developers conference and revealed where Facebook is going in the journey on increasing their relevance in the lives of consumers and businesses. There are some great updates they are making that have huge effects on how a business can use Facebook that I want to share with you today.

a1Facebook video- Facebook has really worked hard to create better ways to improve the type of engaging content you can share with your followers. Video is one of the best ways to get your message across to your followers. Many people want to watch videos since it is easy content to consume. With Facebook’s auto play feature whenever someone comes across a video in their newsfeed it will start playing with mute on automatically until they move on from that post. Most people watch at least the first few seconds of the video before moving on or clicking on it.  If they click on the video it will start over and add sound so they can watch it in its entirety.

What this means for a business is when making a video for Facebook you want to make sure you have visuals in those first couple of seconds that can help catch people’s attention and keep them watching and hopefully click on the video to get the sound too. Facebook has been enhancing the analytics you can use for tracking the effectiveness of your videos too.

Facebook Messenger- This is one of the major changes to their platform they are working on this year. Messenger is moving to become its own platform with its own SDK for developers to use and build for. If you have an app that helps create interesting content you can now have people use your app in this instant messenger tool from Facebook.

The biggest update here is Facebook wana1ts messenger to become a  preferred way for customer service to occur. To do this they are opening it up to allow business pages to communicate with customers who want to talk with them. They are setting it up too where you can integrate messenger into your website so people can track their purchases and receive product and shipping notifications from you. If there are problems with a product or order people can use messenger to work with you on resolving the problem as well as even order more from you. Messenger is already integrated with Zendesk as a tool for customer service. Im sure all the other CRM and web based customer service tools will be integrating soon. It’s not fully baked yet but this can be huge for business!

Many people wonder if Facebook will stay on top as the biggest social network. With the new things they have coming up they are definitely staying ahead of others on innovating ways to increase their relevance to our lives. The best part is these updates will spawn more innovation from other social networks so we as consumers and businesses will be the ones who win.

Do you think Facebook is going in the right direction with Messenger as a customer service tool? Let us know in the comments!

The business of tomorrow

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One of the things I have learned over my years building businesses is that if you are not growing you are dying in business. Businesses must continue progressing and learning or they risk falling behind and becoming irrelevant in the market. As the digital revolution grows businesses must learn how to reach customers in new ways and change how they do business to keep up with these new trends.
Recently I was reading an article from Brian Solis about a study done from the Harvard Business School Forum on Innovation on what the difference is between successful companies from the others. It came down to two things:
– Better before cheaper: companies that compete on differentiators other than price win.
– Revenue before cost: companies that prioritize increasing revenue over reducing costs prosper more highly than others.

For many years the easiest way to compete was to undercut everyone else or cut back on things in business. Now the way to stay ahead is to work on providing a better experience for your customers. Using social media and digital marketing is a great way to reach out and work with more customers in less time.

The next time you set goals for your business consider asking ” how can we be the best in our field rather than the cheapest?” And “how can we spend our money better to grow revenue more?”
It may just change your business for the better.

Why social media for a business

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These days businesses are feeling the effect of the fast paced technology boom we have all experienced in our lives. For a business owner it is a daunting task to figure out how to stay ahead of the curve and know how to use these new tools to help the business have more success.

One of these major tools is Social Media. With the advent of social media the way in which a business markets itself has changed dramatically. If you think about it, over 20 years ago when a business wanted to let people know they were in business you would run ads in the local newspaper or send phonebookout a mailer and have a spot in the phone book so people could find you. The goal was to help people become aware that they can shop with you. In the 90’s businesses were given the internet and websites as a way to help more people connect with you and learn about your business. With Social media a business can actually reach out and connect with its current customer base as well as future customers all the time.

The challenge for a business is to realize that how consumers shop is changed with these tools. Rather than have to call numerous competitors to find out who has the best deals customers fbjust have to go to Facebook and ask their friends to recommend businesses to them. Gone are the days of looking for a company. Now it’s a matter of leveraging their network of online friends.

The part of this that most businesses have not caught on to is that with the improvement in the way people communicate it is harder for a business to not have good customer service and still stay in business. It is important for all business owners to recognize that potential customers can now talk with your current customers to learn if it is worth their time to do business with you. No sales pitch or sales or deals. Just the straight truth on if your customers like you. What this means for a business is that traditional marketing is losing it’s effectiveness. As a business you no longer control your message. Your customers control it.

Young adult working on a digital tabletBusinesses that fail to realize this and do not work to provide customers with a great experience will find themselves struggling to succeed in this new reality. The companies that understand this realize that their best marketing is their current customer base. The questions to ask yourself is: Do my customers come back? What brings them back and stay loyal to us? What value do we offer our customers above and beyond pricing or deals? If we asked our customers to refer people to us would they?

Today it is important to be a part of the conversation and make sure we can provide value to customers before, during and after the sale is made. Social Media provides us with an amazing set of tools to accomplish this if we are willing to learn and adapt to them. How have you use social media in your business?

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