#tags formatted in handshake meme

[elizabethrobertajones]

Really here for Miss Bounding Frog, but I wanted to thank you for becoming a Wyll BG3 appreciation blog. Because while I've no interest in playing the game myself, he's just so charming and lovely and always a joy to have on my dash

You: is today the day I blacklist the bg3 tag? Wyll: *smiles with his whole heart out of a gifset* You: .... naaah he can stay, he seems polite.

You made me realise he and Frog are fairly alike in that I try to go for girlprince in her glams a lot of the time and he's just pure disney prince (but a devil).

(spoilers for BG3 musing on their similarities)

Also I guess their personalities are pretty similar in that they remain genuinely well-meaning heroes after going through it all. Like, the vacation before Dawntrail has been fun but Frog would still absolutely throw herself back into the fire when the self-sacrificing bullshit returns. She slept Endwalker off in a week and then was confused about why the scions were treating her with kid gloves. "Look, I'm upright again! What next??" "Have you tried this adventure called 'retiring to the beach'?"

I know a looot of people have rightfully tired or grumpy WoLs who are completely done with being asked to do things and people Assuming you will be the hero, or being in the crosshairs of the universe, but I did want to write a WoL who was genuinely hype to be here and would take it on the chin with old school heroic stoicism. However gutting everything is she's like, well, we hear-feel-think this trauma and on the other side we understand and respect what it did to us and move on stronger. And then forgive everyone who caused it. (she's very annoying)

Mr Of Frontiers over there had his tragic backstory at 17, a year younger than when Frog started adventuring (intentionally with no tragic backstory, I wanted her to be in it for love of the game) and I'm hypocritically declaring she was more than old enough because I say so and Wyll was a KID just a LITTLE GUY... but also Alphinaud doesn't exist in BG3 thankfully so there's no need to debate when kids should be allowed to be in charge of armies - although I think Alphinaud and Wyll should have a catch up and maybe learn some things about how they were doomed by the narrative together...

Anyway Wyll's various endings aside from the one where you set him up to be a Duke in the city (which I did on my Astarion play since Astarion is marrying him, craves creature comforts, and was presented with not even a persuasion check to decide Wyll's entire future, which is shockingly cruel of the game) he will just go back to adventuring and saving people. Like, a guy who can legitimately retire off the back of everything that just happened and return forgiven or at least as a hero if you did get his dad murdered to not be around to forgive him, and he's like... Actually, the People Need Me, I'm going to go write the next chapter of my life as an itinerant hero killing monsters and swashbuckling all day.

Also, aside from him definitely having whatever's wrong in his brain that Frog has (and Meteor Finalfantasy who is ready to Dawntrail also and is swashbuckling), he does also have the WoLbrain when it comes to Just Saying Messed Up Things. He's so funny and sarcastic and would absolutely fit in with WoLs who pick all the weird dialogue options. WoL can make moogle noises at Thancred? Well, Wyll over here will meow at you.

He also genuinely thinks clowns are funny, and every year the WoL earnestly goes along with a demon clown halloween event so there's that.

[meme-formats]

[imaredshirt]

bro just saw the tags on the valentines post and I too have been single my whole life, a decade shorter though it may be. never had an s/o buddies unite 💫

You 🤝 Me

Never had a S/O

but Still Super Cool

(I was trying to be trendy with the little handshake meme so let's just pretend the formatting came out right and was totally successful)

[fluffy-critter]

Indieweb

You get someone’s profile URL, example.com/bob. You put that URL into a browser, and it shows you a human-readable profile which also contains machine-parseable data. You add the URL to your feed reader, and it subscribes to their posts with full attribution. The content is presented in your feed reader in a freeform way which allows a high degree of expressiveness, and it’s easy to go to the original post in case there’s some missing nuance or visual context. All subsequent interactions are directly between you and the person in question.

Fediverse

You get someone’s address, @bob@example.com. You put that into your web browser, and you get a warning that says, “You are about to log in to the site ‘example.com’ with the username ‘%40bob’, but the website does not require authentication. This may be an attempt to trick you. Is ‘example.com’ the site you want to visit?” You back out of the error message and try to manually reformat the address. example.com/bob? 404. Maybe it’s example.com/@bob? That doesn’t work either. You read a tutorial on Webfinger addresses and learn that you can load their “resource profile” by going to example.com/.well-known/webfinger?resource=acct:bob@example.com. So you put that into your web browser, which then downloads a blob of JSON text. Buried in it is the URL example.com/user/bob. Finally, progress.

Now to follow them. You try putting the user address into your feed reader. Error. You try putting the profile URL into your feed reader. Error. You see a “Follow bob” button. It brings up a “remote follow” page which requires you to put in your own Fediverse username. You think you have a Mastodon account, so you try putting that in. It starts to initiate a weird three-way handshake, but fails.

You go back to your Mastodon instance and try searching on @bob@example.com. Nothing comes up. You try to figure out why. No users from example.com appear. You search through both your instance’s and example.com’s blocklists, which are hidden deep in their respective “about this instance” pages. It turns out that five years ago one admin on one server said something mean to an admin on a completely different server and that led to a widespread level of discourse that resulted in a bunch of instances blocking each other, and others joining in solidarity.

Finally you dig up an Atom feed for the user via finding a HOWTO that someone wrote seven years ago. The feed shows no posts, because the instance admin decided to disable Atom because it allowed blocked people to still follow the person who blocked them and they don’t understand Internet privacy. But it turns out it wouldn’t have mattered because this particular instance is set up so that the only way that posts appear on other peoples' timelines is by push notification.

You give up and get an account on their instance so that you can participate in the conversation. Now you have another instance to check all the time. 90% of your notifications are random spambots following you. The other 10% are you either getting tagged into random conversations by mistake, or some random person on another instance replying to something you said totally out of context and attacking you for their interpretation of a thing that had nothing to do with anything you were talking about. They get downright abusive, so you report the user. It turns out that the abusive user is also one of the admins of that instance so the report just goes to them anyway. They start posting anime memes about you. Your blocklist grows exponentially.

Finally you find some thoughtful long-form content. All of the posts are formatted in the form of a block of text followed by up to four badly-cropped images; no images can be inline. You try to see a post in its original context, and it takes you to your instance’s view of their profile, which looks the same. You finally figure out that you can click on the date and that shows you the post on their public timeline. It looks the same, except now there’s no widget to let you automatically unfurl every CWed post in the thread for some reason like there was on your instance’s local view. But the instance’s local view is missing the first half of the thread because it happened before you subscribed to them.

One month later your timeline gets flooded with random unordered posts from 3 years ago because some forgotten instance’s Sidekiq queue suddenly got unjammed.

comments

(via busybee)

[misunne]

How exactly do you get started when roleolaying ? Like how to set it up

Hey there! I’ll let you know how I specifically set up a new blog. It’s different for everyone.

Sleep on it. This is a weird one. Whenever friends come to me asking if they should make a character, I like to tell them to sleep on the idea. A lot of times people pick up a character they may not understand or don’t know how to play, so when they actually make the blog, they feel sad and disappointed by their own writer’s block. I like to pine over the character first and create some headcanons so I already have a picture of the character in my head.

Aesthetic. Yeah, we all know I’m a slut for aesthetic, and this goes from the URL selection to the tagging format. 

URL. Personally, I’m partial to shorter URLs, and nothing too on-the-dot. For example, if making a Loki blog, I’m not too partial to something like ‘iamloki’ or ‘lokilaufeyson’ or something. I like a bit of imagination. Using the native language of the character, if it’s not English, is always cool. ‘misunne’ means envy in Norwegian. My Belle is ‘greatsomewhere’ from my favorite line of hers in her song Belle (reprise). Some of my favorite URL selections are Ryder’s skychose for Anakin (how Anakin chose to roam among the stars, and it’s a twist off of his last name), Annie’s guiltweathered for Tony (guilt is a big subject to Tony’s character, and the boi is tired), go on and so forth.

Theme. Now, this is where some people have a lot of dispute. So many say you don’t need to be overflowing with aesthetic to be a good RPer. I agree to a point. I consider your theme and aesthetic to be your blog’s handshake, and it’s really easy to make it cool. You can go full out like mine (Ryder made it for me) and design a background to fit around a theme. If you don’t have photoshop skills or you just don’t want to, minimalism is always in. This is why I think it’s easy to make your aesthetic look nice. Check out my Belle’s minimalist theme at @greatsomewhere . Clean, crisp, and white, with a pic describing her. Books! Easy. I like to get my themes from theme-hunter or just poking around my followers/mutuals’ theme makers.

Blog preview. Again, people trip up here. This is before your handshake. This is your first smile when you meet someone. Make it look nice. I like to make my mobile banners on photoshop with psds and whatnot (Loki’s current one is made by Ryder), but when I first started as Loki, I just wanted to get going, so I used something I found on Pinterest. Yep, that was literally it. It’s minimalist, drawing, and not too confusing. Do NOT make your preview colors anything but a neutral tone. I’ve seen bright blues, greens, pinks. I immediately click away, they hurt my eyes. Make sure your blog preview clearly says who your character is, what fandom they’re from, and your alias. This is the bare minimum. These things are required. I can’t tell you how many people I see around who have nothing at all. Don’t make your followers dig to see who your character is.

The blog itself. Again, you can be pretty simple here. A lot of people have fancy pop-ups, as do I, but it’s not necessary. Just making pages with links is good enough. You need to have a rules page, which needs to have the bare minimum of your age (18+ or minor is good enough), your alias, your pronouns, your triggers, and your interaction policy. Are you mutuals only? Are you open to non-mutuals? These are requirements. Beyond that, I like to have my thoughts on shipping (if you have a ship you will NOT do, or one that you love), mains/exclusivity (I’m never exclusive, but let people know if you will only play with one version of a character), and anything else you want your followers to know before interacting with you. I’m always editing my rules. Beyond your rules, if you’re an OC (or canon divergent canon character), have a detailed about page. It’s nice to have a verses (where you have the tags for all your different verses and AUs) and navigation (links to your open starters, meme tag, headcanon tag, etc) page. Then whatever else you want.

I list all the aesthetic things first because it’s best that your blog is at least SLIGHTLY finished before starting. I know you may be eager to start right away after making a URL, but I won’t follow a blog with nothing on it. If a blog is just the basic Tumblr theme, I’ll assume it’s a spam blog. We get a lot of those. I block spam blogs on sight.

Content. If a blog is all done up and pretty but with nothing on it, I won’t follow back right away. I may come back to look again later, but I may forget. Try to get some content on there first. Reblog your faceclaim, some aesthetic things, and maybe write a headcanon or two, just so people can see your formatting and writing pattern. Do you write in purple prose? Is your writing straight forward? Is it heavy with narrative? Is it mostly dialogue? Do you use icons? What kinds? There are always people who will write with different kinds of writing patterns, and always those who won’t. I like to make sure we have similar writing patterns before following.

Advertisement. After your blog is pretty and functional and you have some stuff on there, it’s time to let people know about it! Create a promo! These can be as simple or fancy as you want. When I first made Belle, I just wanted to get started, so I made one of those text promos that were popular a few months ago. I let people know I was still under construction, too. Just so they knew. Later when I put more time into it, I used one of the cool new templates that are going around, and I love them so much. I have photoshop, but I’m not good at it, and this is as easy as copy paste. 

Tags. How will people find you if you don’t have them? They’re so important! Personally, and I know a lot of people feel the same, I won’t follow people without some sort of tagging system. For promos, tag it with ways you would search in the Tumblr search engine for an RP blog. For Belle, I put things like ‘disney rp, disney roleplay, beauty and the beast rp, batb rp’, so on and so forth. For your average posting tags, I prefer to keep it simple. I have a tag for each verse, an in character and out of character tag, and I always tag the url of the person I’m reblogging in a reply. Making fancy url tags for your partners is cool, but ALWAYS leave their basic URL as well. If I go on my partner’s page and search my URL tag for my last reply but can’t find it bc it’s just a fancy one, I’m very annoyed.

Search! Same as above – go find people! Search the same tags you made, look for masterlists. Once you follow a few blogs you’re interested in, Tumblr recommends similar blogs, so I love eating those up.

Interact! People don’t really do intro starters anymore, like when someone follows you back and you make them a starter, but hey, you do you. It’s great to have a starter call out there (and reblog it a few times, like twice a day or so), as well as a sentence starter meme. Like people’s starter calls. Send them memes. Respect their rules. If they say they’re mutuals only, oblige. Don’t send them things if you’re not mutuals. (If you’re brand new, mutual means you follow them and they follow you.)

Have fun and don’t be discouraged! Making a new blog is hard. My Loki has something like 550 followers, Belle has something like 30. Depending on the character, the size of the fandom, a bunch of little things, it may take some time to get noticed. Don’t expect people to jump on you right away. It’s your job to reach out to them. Act like your blog already has a bunch of followers. I like to post jokes, headcanons, my feelings about my character, so when people follow or visit my blog, they see how passionate I am about my character and how much I’m thinking about them. People love to see you love your character. Don’t be negative. Do NOT post about how few followers you have, or how you’re not being noticed. I know it may be disappointing, but that sort of thing will only discourage them from following. Love your followers: thirty followers are just as beautiful as five hundred. They’ll keep coming. In the meantime, establishing great connections with the followers you do have will make it seem like you have a thousand. Make your blog a happy place to be! Make friends! There is always someone there who is interested.

Let me know if you have any more questions, and welcome to the RP community!

[bizmediaweb]

Snapchat, Instagram Stories, or Facebook Stories—Which is Right For You?

It’s hard to remember a time before they were everywhere, but long ago in Internet time, there was only one name associated with disappearing video: Snapchat.

In 2016 (five years after Snapchat), Instagram got in on the game, adding Stories to their platform with filters, stickers, and text overlay. And in 2017, their parent company Facebook rolled out Stories of its own, with unique filters and the option to crosspost between platforms.

The videos may disappear, but the format is now everywhere, offering rapid-fire cycles of possibility. The only question that remains is, which platforms make the most sense for your brand?

Snapchat

It wins among younger audiences

Let’s start with the OG. Snapchat is beloved by users of all ages, but it’s especially popular with Generation Z. Seventy-nine percent of US teens have a Snapchat account, and they rate Snapchat as their favorite platform.

Compare that to the two percent of Baby Boomers who use Snapchat, and this platform starts to look like the fountain of eternal youth. As other platforms struggle to hang on to their younger users, Snapchat is still growing in popularity with this demographic.

Its users are highly engaged

Snapchat users watch over 10 billion videos each day and send more than 3.5 billion Snaps. One hundred and eighty-seven million daily active users spend about half an hour each day on Snapchat, and open the app about 25 times per day.

It’s harder to use, but that makes it cooler

Part of the appeal of Snapchat is its secret-handshake nature—it can be deliberately confusing, but that’s why users love it. It also offers a lot of features, though they’re not always easy to find. But that means brands who can navigate the app acquire an instant cool factor. It’s kind of like getting your motorcycle license, but for social media.

It’s all about spontaneity

Snapchat’s ethos is authenticity and openness – compared to other platforms, it’s more spontaneous and raw. That’s what draws users in, especially younger audiences, who are resistant to traditional advertising methods.

As a result, brands who use Snapchat to go behind-the-scenes can build loyal followings from users who are as interested in people and process as they are in the finished product.

Everlane, an apparel startup committed to “radical transparency”, grew their audience through a conversational, candid Snap series called #TransparencyTuesdays, where they answered questions and shared product insights and previews.

And playfulness

Geofilters are custom frames that show up for users who take a Snap in a certain location—this can be an entire country, for major campaigns. They’re a major investment, with a price tag in the six figures, but country-wide Geofilters typically reach 40-60% of all daily Snapchat users, offering massive exposure.

Sponsored Lenses are face-altering filters that users can add to their Snaps, to share your branded content with their following. Taco Bell smashed records last year when they released a Cinco de Mayo filter that turned users into tacos, which was viewed 224 million times in a single day.

Got tacos on your mind today? Us too. Snap us your Cinco de Mayo celebrations using our @Snapchat lens today.https://t.co/56BlMUqlkV

— Taco Bell (@tacobell) May 6, 2016

Brands that stand out on Snapchat find a way to harness the platform’s spirit of playfulness to capture users’ attention. I mean, who wouldn’t want to look like a taco? That’s part of the genius of Snapchat: to stand out, you just need a great idea that no one can resist.

Ads perform well

Snap Ads are sponsored, 10-second videos that appear in between Snaps—entice users to swipe up and view longer content or visit a website. Ads perform well on Snapchat, pulling in more visual attention than any other social media platform.

The timeline prioritizes friends over brands

In January 2018, Snapchat rolled out a major update that radically transformed the app.

And the reception has not always been warm. A tweet begging for its reversal has been retweeted more than 1.4 million times, and a petition to scrap it has a million signatures and counting. Despite the backlash, Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel insists that the update is here to stay—so there’s no time like the present to leap in and learn to swim.

The biggest change for users: splitting Snaps into two feeds. Prior to the update, users could watch Snaps in one stream. Now, feeds are split into “Friends” (for users who follow you back) and “Discover” (for everyone else—including publishers, celebrities, and content creators).

What this means for companies is their Snaps will no longer appear in the same feed as their followers’ personal friends, likely resulting in less exposure. One way around this is to follow your audience back, but even then your Snaps will likely sink to the bottom of their feeds. The new Snapchat timeline is also algorithmic, pushing friends who interact frequently with a user to the top of their feed.

However, the update also came with a new opportunity for companies to share sponsored content, with Promoted Stories. These allow companies to push their Stories to more users and appear on the Discover screen, reaching new audiences beyond their followers.

Oh, and don’t worry about missing the opportunity to captivate audiences with your take on the taco filter. The update didn’t impact branded content like Geofilters and Sponsored Lenses, which will still reach users exactly the same way.

Instagram Stories

Contrary to stereotypes about middle children, the middle child of the disappearing stories family gets plenty of attention.

Instagram already had a massive user base in 2016, but Stories were like the Nos in The Fast & the Furious. When they launched, they gave users an incentive to check the platform daily and catch all those disappearing videos, increasing time spent on the app to around half an hour each day.

Users skew young, but not as young as Snapchat

More than 500 million Instagram users open the app every day, and 300 million of them are watching Stories daily. Like Snapchat, Instagram skews young—60 percent of users are under 30—but it also includes more older users as well, with one-third of 30-49 year olds using the app.

Instagram Stories share a lot in common with Snapchat Stories

After unveiling Stories, users and brands who had previously used Snapchat for candid videos and Instagram for curated content had both in one place. And brands had the same opportunity. Remember Everlane’s #TransparencyTuesdays? Those can now be found on their Instagram Stories.

Outdoor Voices, which makes workout clothes that fashionable people love, use their Stories to share videos of brand ambassadors #DoingThings outdoors, and approachable fitness tutorials that showcase products while inspiring followers to get active.

Instagram Stories have a lot in common with Snapchat. They also offer face filters that can flatter you with Photoshop-like effects, or make you look like a sea witch or a bunny rabbit (to name a few). Users can also add stickers, text, and recently (to the great delight of the meme-loving masses) GIFs to their stories.

If you thought that a Story was good before, just wait until you add a dancing cat GIF to it.

They are sorted according to an algorithm

Stories from people and brands that users follow show up in a row at the top of the Home feed, sorted algorithmically. A “Discover” tab includes branded content and promoted stories, featuring trending content and videos tailored to users’ interests. As with Snapchat, brands can promote their stories or create ads to reach more users, as well as share all their Stories with their followers.

They can drive direct traffic

Instagram Stories also offer a few special features that set it apart. For instance, brands have the option of adding links to their Stories, which direct users to an external URL after they swipe up and provides a ton of opportunity to drive traffic and engagement. Prior to adding this feature, brands could only have one link in their bio, and couldn’t include functional links in the photos and videos posted to their feed.

They get engagement

Creating a Story is not only easy, but effective: one in five Stories generate a direct message from followers.

Stories also have the uniquely engaging “Polls” feature, which lets viewers vote between two options.

Brands who excel at Stories know how to use these engaging features to keep users coming back – not just to watch, but to join in the conversation and feel like they’re part of an insider community.

The beauty startup Glossier built their following on Instagram by creating a mood board of images, each garnering thousands of likes, before they had even released their first product (they also raised $24 million dollars). They use Stories to engage with their followers, by offering sneak previews of new products, customer Q&As, and introducing the people behind the brand. But they also maintain their dreamy aesthetic, with Stories that are as Millennial-pink and Pinterest-worthy as their main feed, reinforcing their brand values of accessible beauty and casual luxury.

They have a non-disappearing option

“Story Highlights” allow users to pin Stories to the top of their feed. Unlike regular Stories, which disappear after a day as expected, these ones stick around for as long as they’re pinned.

Story Highlights are perfect for showing off your top performing Stories, latest products, biggest announcements, and the spirit of your brand.

They can be viewed on desktop

Even though Instagram is designed for mobile use, users who are looking you up on their computers instead of their phones can now also watch your stories, effectively increasing visibility. You still can’t upload from the desktop version, but given Instagram’s track record of giving the people what they want, that may not be the case forever.

Facebook Stories

Facebook is the blue whale of social media platforms, with a staggering 1.4 billion (!) daily active users, and 2 billion monthly users. In the U.S., the number of adults on Facebook (68 percent) is about the same as Instagram (35 percent) and Snapchat (27 percent) combined.

Facebook launched their Stories in March 2017, replacing a similar feature called Messenger Day with a more obvious parallel to their Instagram offering.

The two platforms share more in common than just the name. Facebook Stories also mirrors the placement of Stories (above the main newsfeed) and the camera to record them (top-left corner). It’s instantly familiar for anyone who’s used Instagram. So it’s a bit surprising that it hasn’t quite taken off—yet.

Facebook has the largest audience

Facebook hasn’t yet released numbers for how many users are sharing and viewing Stories, but anyone who looks to see how many of their own friends are posting them will likely arrive at the same conclusion: it’s not nearly as popular as Instagram Stories.

The slow uptake might lie in Facebook’s audience demographics, and how they use the platform. Everyone really is on Facebook: 76 percent of teens (ages 12-19) have a profile, but so do 62 percent of their grandparents (adults over 65). As a result, some younger users think Facebook is for old people. They’re using it to message their friends and watch videos, but not to discover content or follow brands the way they do on other channels.

For older users, who are less likely to be on Instagram and Snapchat, the Stories format isn’t second nature. They may just not be creating and engaging with this form of content yet.

It’s a blank slate of potential for brands

Stories may be slower to take off on Facebook than they were on Instagram, but this platform has nothing but potential. It’s a blank slate with great opportunities – and Facebook has been clear that they’re committed to the success of Stories, so we can expect they’ll keep rolling out features to improve ease of use and visibility. And Company Pages only got access to Stories in October 2017, so it’s still a brand new field of dreams.

It’s not limited to one platform

Why should you be posting to Stories? For starters, Facebook has the best ROI of any social media platform, according to 96% of social marketers. Facebook Stories can be integrated with other high-performing ad opportunities on Facebook, like promoted videos and posts in the Newsfeed.

And since you can cross-post your Instagram Stories directly to Facebook Stories without any extra effort, why wouldn’t you? Cross-posting isn’t always a good idea, but given that your Stories will translate perfectly to each platform, it’s worth testing.

It’s an opportunity to bypass the algorithm

Facebook Stories also presents a new opportunity to bring users to your Page. Many brands have noticed declining engagement since Facebook prioritized personal connections in their algorithm. But the Stories feed could be a way to reconnect with users who aren’t seeing your content in their Newsfeed the same way.

Your friends may not be posting there yet, but some companies are already using Facebook Stories with great results. Paddington 2, the surprisingly popular sequel to a movie about a bear in London, launched a Facebook Stories campaign with a Paddington filter that let viewers try on his stylish outfit (listen, a duffle coat and floppy hat counts as stylish for a bear, okay?)

Viewers also saw Stories of other Paddington characters, as well as iconic sets. This was a perfect fit for Facebook: a family-friendly movie on a multi-generational platform, showing off the most fun features in the app. The result: a three-point increase in awareness of the movie, and intention to watch.

Another example is Japan’s Kao beauty company, which used Stories as well as other Facebook ad placements to launch their Pyuan haircare line. Targeted to women in their 20s (the largest demographic on Facebook), Kao focused on short, high-quality videos tailored to the short attention spans and discerning tastes of their demographic. The strategy resulted in a 10-point increase in brand awareness.

There are opportunities for user-generated content

Facebook is determined to make their Stories more than just a clone of Instagram, and recently unveiled their first truly unique opportunity for brands to take advantage of the platform: Group Stories.

Group Stories allow anyone attending an event on Facebook to contribute to a Story roll, hosted on the Event page and visible in the Stories feed. Event administrators can moderate Stories and approve them. For companies concerned about the wild-west nature of other platforms, this is a reassuring mechanism. If your company hosts events, whether in person or virtually, Group Stories is a new opportunity to promote them and engage with your followers.

Which platform is right for you?

Keep your brand values and goals in mind: are you willing to be casual, informal, and offer candid insights? Do you prefer to keep things polished? Do you want to reach people of all ages? These questions can help you narrow down which Stories platform makes the most sense for you.

Also think about which features excite you most and fit the best with your content strategy. Do you want your audience to weigh in on new products? Try a poll in Instagram Stories. Hosting a launch party? Use Facebook’s Group Stories to engage attendees. Want to gain awareness among younger audiences? Try a Snapchat Sponsored Filter.

The important thing is to take advantage of the full menu of options when you try out a platform. Users get excited about new features as much as you do, so don’t leave them out when considering your strategy.

v Test out an idea on all three, and see where it performs best. Compare engagement rates and views. Many brands had success by rolling their Snapchat strategy over to Instagram, and others will find that cross-posting on Instagram and Facebook yields results.

Whatever you try, there’s one thing you should always keep in mind: users are savvy. If you make content that’s not true to your brand voice and identity, your followers will unfollow. Filters and stickers aside, videos let you build real connections with viewers and keep them engaged with authentic, insightful content.

Show off what makes your brand special and unique (you might surprise people!). That’s what your audience wants to see. Throwing a dancing cat GIF in the mix? That’s just the icing on the cake.

Connect with your audience using Hootsuite. Easily manage your social channels and engage followers across networks from a single dashboard. Try it free today.

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[unifiedsocialblog]

Snapchat, Instagram Stories, or Facebook Stories—Which is Right For You?

It’s hard to remember a time before they were everywhere, but long ago in Internet time, there was only one name associated with disappearing video: Snapchat.

In 2016 (five years after Snapchat), Instagram got in on the game, adding Stories to their platform with filters, stickers, and text overlay. And in 2017, their parent company Facebook rolled out Stories of its own, with unique filters and the option to crosspost between platforms.

The videos may disappear, but the format is now everywhere, offering rapid-fire cycles of possibility. The only question that remains is, which platforms make the most sense for your brand?

Snapchat

It wins among younger audiences

Let’s start with the OG. Snapchat is beloved by users of all ages, but it’s especially popular with Generation Z. Seventy-nine percent of US teens have a Snapchat account, and they rate Snapchat as their favorite platform.

Compare that to the two percent of Baby Boomers who use Snapchat, and this platform starts to look like the fountain of eternal youth. As other platforms struggle to hang on to their younger users, Snapchat is still growing in popularity with this demographic.

Its users are highly engaged

Snapchat users watch over 10 billion videos each day and send more than 3.5 billion Snaps. One hundred and eighty-seven million daily active users spend about half an hour each day on Snapchat, and open the app about 25 times per day.

It’s harder to use, but that makes it cooler

Part of the appeal of Snapchat is its secret-handshake nature—it can be deliberately confusing, but that’s why users love it. It also offers a lot of features, though they’re not always easy to find. But that means brands who can navigate the app acquire an instant cool factor. It’s kind of like getting your motorcycle license, but for social media.

It’s all about spontaneity

Snapchat’s ethos is authenticity and openness – compared to other platforms, it’s more spontaneous and raw. That’s what draws users in, especially younger audiences, who are resistant to traditional advertising methods.

As a result, brands who use Snapchat to go behind-the-scenes can build loyal followings from users who are as interested in people and process as they are in the finished product.

Everlane, an apparel startup committed to “radical transparency”, grew their audience through a conversational, candid Snap series called #TransparencyTuesdays, where they answered questions and shared product insights and previews.

And playfulness

Geofilters are custom frames that show up for users who take a Snap in a certain location—this can be an entire country, for major campaigns. They’re a major investment, with a price tag in the six figures, but country-wide Geofilters typically reach 40-60% of all daily Snapchat users, offering massive exposure.

Sponsored Lenses are face-altering filters that users can add to their Snaps, to share your branded content with their following. Taco Bell smashed records last year when they released a Cinco de Mayo filter that turned users into tacos, which was viewed 224 million times in a single day.

Got tacos on your mind today? Us too. Snap us your Cinco de Mayo celebrations using our @Snapchat lens today.https://t.co/56BlMUqlkV

— Taco Bell (@tacobell) May 6, 2016

Brands that stand out on Snapchat find a way to harness the platform’s spirit of playfulness to capture users’ attention. I mean, who wouldn’t want to look like a taco? That’s part of the genius of Snapchat: to stand out, you just need a great idea that no one can resist.

Ads perform well

Snap Ads are sponsored, 10-second videos that appear in between Snaps—entice users to swipe up and view longer content or visit a website. Ads perform well on Snapchat, pulling in more visual attention than any other social media platform.

The timeline prioritizes friends over brands

In January 2018, Snapchat rolled out a major update that radically transformed the app.

And the reception has not always been warm. A tweet begging for its reversal has been retweeted more than 1.4 million times, and a petition to scrap it has a million signatures and counting. Despite the backlash, Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel insists that the update is here to stay—so there’s no time like the present to leap in and learn to swim.

The biggest change for users: splitting Snaps into two feeds. Prior to the update, users could watch Snaps in one stream. Now, feeds are split into “Friends” (for users who follow you back) and “Discover” (for everyone else—including publishers, celebrities, and content creators).

What this means for companies is their Snaps will no longer appear in the same feed as their followers’ personal friends, likely resulting in less exposure. One way around this is to follow your audience back, but even then your Snaps will likely sink to the bottom of their feeds. The new Snapchat timeline is also algorithmic, pushing friends who interact frequently with a user to the top of their feed.

However, the update also came with a new opportunity for companies to share sponsored content, with Promoted Stories. These allow companies to push their Stories to more users and appear on the Discover screen, reaching new audiences beyond their followers.

Oh, and don’t worry about missing the opportunity to captivate audiences with your take on the taco filter. The update didn’t impact branded content like Geofilters and Sponsored Lenses, which will still reach users exactly the same way.

Instagram Stories

Contrary to stereotypes about middle children, the middle child of the disappearing stories family gets plenty of attention.

Instagram already had a massive user base in 2016, but Stories were like the Nos in The Fast & the Furious. When they launched, they gave users an incentive to check the platform daily and catch all those disappearing videos, increasing time spent on the app to around half an hour each day.

Users skew young, but not as young as Snapchat

More than 500 million Instagram users open the app every day, and 300 million of them are watching Stories daily. Like Snapchat, Instagram skews young—60 percent of users are under 30—but it also includes more older users as well, with one-third of 30-49 year olds using the app.

Instagram Stories share a lot in common with Snapchat Stories

After unveiling Stories, users and brands who had previously used Snapchat for candid videos and Instagram for curated content had both in one place. And brands had the same opportunity. Remember Everlane’s #TransparencyTuesdays? Those can now be found on their Instagram Stories.

Outdoor Voices, which makes workout clothes that fashionable people love, use their Stories to share videos of brand ambassadors #DoingThings outdoors, and approachable fitness tutorials that showcase products while inspiring followers to get active.

Instagram Stories have a lot in common with Snapchat. They also offer face filters that can flatter you with Photoshop-like effects, or make you look like a sea witch or a bunny rabbit (to name a few). Users can also add stickers, text, and recently (to the great delight of the meme-loving masses) GIFs to their stories.

If you thought that a Story was good before, just wait until you add a dancing cat GIF to it.

They are sorted according to an algorithm

Stories from people and brands that users follow show up in a row at the top of the Home feed, sorted algorithmically. A “Discover” tab includes branded content and promoted stories, featuring trending content and videos tailored to users’ interests. As with Snapchat, brands can promote their stories or create ads to reach more users, as well as share all their Stories with their followers.

They can drive direct traffic

Instagram Stories also offer a few special features that set it apart. For instance, brands have the option of adding links to their Stories, which direct users to an external URL after they swipe up and provides a ton of opportunity to drive traffic and engagement. Prior to adding this feature, brands could only have one link in their bio, and couldn’t include functional links in the photos and videos posted to their feed.

They get engagement

Creating a Story is not only easy, but effective: one in five Stories generate a direct message from followers.

Stories also have the uniquely engaging “Polls” feature, which lets viewers vote between two options.

Brands who excel at Stories know how to use these engaging features to keep users coming back – not just to watch, but to join in the conversation and feel like they’re part of an insider community.

The beauty startup Glossier built their following on Instagram by creating a mood board of images, each garnering thousands of likes, before they had even released their first product (they also raised $24 million dollars). They use Stories to engage with their followers, by offering sneak previews of new products, customer Q&As, and introducing the people behind the brand. But they also maintain their dreamy aesthetic, with Stories that are as Millennial-pink and Pinterest-worthy as their main feed, reinforcing their brand values of accessible beauty and casual luxury.

They have a non-disappearing option

“Story Highlights” allow users to pin Stories to the top of their feed. Unlike regular Stories, which disappear after a day as expected, these ones stick around for as long as they’re pinned.

Story Highlights are perfect for showing off your top performing Stories, latest products, biggest announcements, and the spirit of your brand.

They can be viewed on desktop

Even though Instagram is designed for mobile use, users who are looking you up on their computers instead of their phones can now also watch your stories, effectively increasing visibility. You still can’t upload from the desktop version, but given Instagram’s track record of giving the people what they want, that may not be the case forever.

Facebook Stories

Facebook is the blue whale of social media platforms, with a staggering 1.4 billion (!) daily active users, and 2 billion monthly users. In the U.S., the number of adults on Facebook (68 percent) is about the same as Instagram (35 percent) and Snapchat (27 percent) combined.

Facebook launched their Stories in March 2017, replacing a similar feature called Messenger Day with a more obvious parallel to their Instagram offering.

The two platforms share more in common than just the name. Facebook Stories also mirrors the placement of Stories (above the main newsfeed) and the camera to record them (top-left corner). It’s instantly familiar for anyone who’s used Instagram. So it’s a bit surprising that it hasn’t quite taken off—yet.

Facebook has the largest audience

Facebook hasn’t yet released numbers for how many users are sharing and viewing Stories, but anyone who looks to see how many of their own friends are posting them will likely arrive at the same conclusion: it’s not nearly as popular as Instagram Stories.

The slow uptake might lie in Facebook’s audience demographics, and how they use the platform. Everyone really is on Facebook: 76 percent of teens (ages 12-19) have a profile, but so do 62 percent of their grandparents (adults over 65). As a result, some younger users think Facebook is for old people. They’re using it to message their friends and watch videos, but not to discover content or follow brands the way they do on other channels.

For older users, who are less likely to be on Instagram and Snapchat, the Stories format isn’t second nature. They may just not be creating and engaging with this form of content yet.

It’s a blank slate of potential for brands

Stories may be slower to take off on Facebook than they were on Instagram, but this platform has nothing but potential. It’s a blank slate with great opportunities – and Facebook has been clear that they’re committed to the success of Stories, so we can expect they’ll keep rolling out features to improve ease of use and visibility. And Company Pages only got access to Stories in October 2017, so it’s still a brand new field of dreams.

It’s not limited to one platform

Why should you be posting to Stories? For starters, Facebook has the best ROI of any social media platform, according to 96% of social marketers. Facebook Stories can be integrated with other high-performing ad opportunities on Facebook, like promoted videos and posts in the Newsfeed.

And since you can cross-post your Instagram Stories directly to Facebook Stories without any extra effort, why wouldn’t you? Cross-posting isn’t always a good idea, but given that your Stories will translate perfectly to each platform, it’s worth testing.

It’s an opportunity to bypass the algorithm

Facebook Stories also presents a new opportunity to bring users to your Page. Many brands have noticed declining engagement since Facebook prioritized personal connections in their algorithm. But the Stories feed could be a way to reconnect with users who aren’t seeing your content in their Newsfeed the same way.

Your friends may not be posting there yet, but some companies are already using Facebook Stories with great results. Paddington 2, the surprisingly popular sequel to a movie about a bear in London, launched a Facebook Stories campaign with a Paddington filter that let viewers try on his stylish outfit (listen, a duffle coat and floppy hat counts as stylish for a bear, okay?)

Viewers also saw Stories of other Paddington characters, as well as iconic sets. This was a perfect fit for Facebook: a family-friendly movie on a multi-generational platform, showing off the most fun features in the app. The result: a three-point increase in awareness of the movie, and intention to watch.

Another example is Japan’s Kao beauty company, which used Stories as well as other Facebook ad placements to launch their Pyuan haircare line. Targeted to women in their 20s (the largest demographic on Facebook), Kao focused on short, high-quality videos tailored to the short attention spans and discerning tastes of their demographic. The strategy resulted in a 10-point increase in brand awareness.

There are opportunities for user-generated content

Facebook is determined to make their Stories more than just a clone of Instagram, and recently unveiled their first truly unique opportunity for brands to take advantage of the platform: Group Stories.

Group Stories allow anyone attending an event on Facebook to contribute to a Story roll, hosted on the Event page and visible in the Stories feed. Event administrators can moderate Stories and approve them. For companies concerned about the wild-west nature of other platforms, this is a reassuring mechanism. If your company hosts events, whether in person or virtually, Group Stories is a new opportunity to promote them and engage with your followers.

Which platform is right for you?

Keep your brand values and goals in mind: are you willing to be casual, informal, and offer candid insights? Do you prefer to keep things polished? Do you want to reach people of all ages? These questions can help you narrow down which Stories platform makes the most sense for you.

Also think about which features excite you most and fit the best with your content strategy. Do you want your audience to weigh in on new products? Try a poll in Instagram Stories. Hosting a launch party? Use Facebook’s Group Stories to engage attendees. Want to gain awareness among younger audiences? Try a Snapchat Sponsored Filter.

The important thing is to take advantage of the full menu of options when you try out a platform. Users get excited about new features as much as you do, so don’t leave them out when considering your strategy.

v Test out an idea on all three, and see where it performs best. Compare engagement rates and views. Many brands had success by rolling their Snapchat strategy over to Instagram, and others will find that cross-posting on Instagram and Facebook yields results.

Whatever you try, there’s one thing you should always keep in mind: users are savvy. If you make content that’s not true to your brand voice and identity, your followers will unfollow. Filters and stickers aside, videos let you build real connections with viewers and keep them engaged with authentic, insightful content.

Show off what makes your brand special and unique (you might surprise people!). That’s what your audience wants to see. Throwing a dancing cat GIF in the mix? That’s just the icing on the cake.

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The post Snapchat, Instagram Stories, or Facebook Stories—Which is Right For You? appeared first on Hootsuite Social Media Management.

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