

Imagine what happens if you realize you have left your phone home and went to work without it. Everything is done over the phone, you yourself can't even live without your phone for an hour. People are sitting on their phones at all times now. Well, if you recognize these challenges, then why not to try Ephemeral Stories. It looks hard, teenagy and also most of the time, we don't even have time to sit and think what to share. You do understand marketing is important but then doing it sounds like a foreign language. As the intern changes the content structure and style change with it and sometimes you don't post anything for days or even months until another "geek" appears at your door.

Here I wanted to share why it is good for businesses and in what ways using Ephemeral Stories may increase your target audience while still looking "serious".īig businesses have enough resources to hire content developers whilst small ones rely on "geek" interns. Although we all know it and individually use it, many businesses refrain from practicing it in fear of giving the "casual and unserious" impression. It is not a new concept or a function and has been around since 2012s with the birth of Snapchat. But the brands that learn to let go of the control and trust that real, less-curated conversations are always better in the new world of brand content, will be the real winners in the new storytelling economy.ĭisappearing content is king, and if the Stories are told right, they will have an impact far beyond 24 hours.Ephemeral Stories are simple visual content (video or photo) that are only available for a short period of time. This is a scary place for brands to play because some of the authenticity means a loss of control. You can learn from the numbers and use them to improve your stories so that authenticity becomes your core driving force. That data will tell you what your audience engages with, the content they will watch all the way through, and what spurs action. Insights are a key factor that many brands often ignore, but lying dormant in the data is a story in and of itself. It may be more work to find these fire starters and build out your network, but the authenticity they create will outlast any mass influencer flooding their feed with sponsored content by a mile. Leverage smaller-scale influencers with big sway over smaller, more niche audiences that are relevant to your brand’s story. Embrace the rising trend of microinfluencers. Reimagine the story for the medium and produce for mobile.ģ. Stories should be vertical, attention should be grabbed instantly, and the audience needs to be addressed and involved from the beginning. Stop telling stories about what makes your uniform special, and start telling stories about the pride they evoke in the humans who wear them every day.Įphemeral channels like Snapchat and Instagram Stories have different storytelling implications than their horizontally aligned counterparts. Look for the innate humanness in any story, because it’s always there. Better yet, invite them to tell the stories with you. Remember that stories are, and always will be, about humans. So, how can brands get authentic and stay there?ġ.
#Ephemeral stories software
And brands still aren’t getting it right.Īs the CEO of a software company that's helped hundreds of the world's biggest brands tell stories on Snapchat and Instagram, I've witnessed the shift in market sentiment firsthand, and I have seen what happens when those brands use ephemeral storytelling channels in a truly authentic way. Ephemeral stories not only gave audiences the authenticity they craved - they made them start demanding it. The key difference: the evolution of channels have changed audience’s expectations.Īudiences now crave authenticity above anything else. In fact, a 2017 global study found that 86% of consumers say authenticity is key when deciding which brands to like and support. The scary part for brands? More than half (57%) of consumers think that less than half of brands create content that resonates as authentic.Īudiences have been saturated with polished celebrity content, unrelatable staged-but-unstaged imagery, and shiny product placement with #ad lurking in the caption for too long. The markers of authenticity, however, and the way stories need to be told, have shifted completely. The minute brands forget this is the minute they will lose their audience for good. They always have been, and always will be - whether they’re vertical, horizontal, disappear after 24 hours or live on a profile forever. Here’s why : Stories are still, at their core, all about humans. And ephemeral stories have completely changed what this means. They have their place and, yes, they help the machine work.

This isn’t a story about technology evolution but the evolution of brand content and what it takes to survive in the new landscape.
