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You may have noticed that Snapchat is having a bit of a moment in Ireland…

Everyone’s talking about it, everyone’s using it; from bloggers to business owners, seeing it fast become on of the most powerful social media platforms with engagement levels that outshine the big players like Facebook and Twitter.

Snapchat has higher attention rates than other platforms. Digital influencer, Gary Vaynerchuck described this in a recent article in the Huffington Post, stating that “If you have 1,000 followers on Snapchat, 900 of them will watch your story.”

And that’s a seriously impressive statistic at a time when email open rates are at 20% and Facebook organic reach is often as low as 1%.

But what exactly is Snapchat?

It is essentially a video and photo messaging app which allows users to capture and send snaps, which are viewable only for a set duration within a 24 hour period, before they are automatically deleted.

So how can this be an effective platform for marketing?

Worldwide, Snapchat’s core users are currently 13-24 year olds, majority female. However, in Ireland especially, this demographic is much broader and includes avid users of all ages, genders and interests. So no matter who you’re business targets, the possibilities are endless if you’re creating engaging content.

Unlike Instagram or Pinterest where your content is carefully selected and organised, Snapchat is much less curated and from a much more realistic viewpoint. The spontaneity of Snapchat is what gives it a more authentic feel and allows your audience to get a different kind of look into your brand.

Here are 5 Ways To Use Snapchat For Your Business.

1. Cross platform activation

Although it isn’t so easy to find and follow accounts on Snapchat, you are certainly able to share your username or QR code on your various social media platforms to bring your existing audience across. Similarly, encourage your Snapchat audience to visit your other social media platforms too. Encourage your audience to follow you on Snapchat for exclusive content that can’t be seen on your other platforms!

2. Exclusive content

Snapchat gives you an opportunity to make your audience feel special in ways other social media platforms just can’t. Direct snaps to one person or a group of selected individuals is only viewable for a set duration before it is automatically deleted. Similarly, snaps that you add to your story are viewable for up to 24 hours before they are gone.

This gives you the opportunity to give something to your audience that they wouldn’t normally have access to and it’s going to feel personal to them. Whether it be a sneak peek of a new product launch or a special offer just for Snapchat users – give your Snapchat following something exclusive to get excited about your brand.

 3. Partner with influencers

Similar to an Instagram or Twitter takeover, businesses can partner with on-brand influencers to give their viewers a unique perspective. Taking the time to research some influencers in your niche could unveil a list of possibilities for exciting content to share with your followers.

Partnering with an on-brand influencers gives your audience someone they can relate to and this is a sure-fire way to grab their attention.

An excellent example of this is Irish tan brand, Cocoa Brown Tan. Owner Marissa Carter has her own significant following on Snapchat with tens of thousands of people viewing her video updates every day.

And to boost the brand awareness of Cocoa Brown, Marissa has also formed excellent relationships with with influential bloggers who are keen to promote her products to their large audiences too.

4. Encourage engagement

As with any social media platform, your aim is for your audience to engage with your brand. Snaps on your story will last for no longer than 24 hours, so this is perfect for planning and creating brief yet effective campaigns.

Encourage your followers to view your snaps to be able to screenshot a discount code to use, for example. Get your viewers involved – ask them to snap you their opinions or responses to a question you pose to them. Open up a direct line of communication and become a brand that is friendly and approachable.

Engagement is absolutely key and is the difference between having followers and customers.

5. Know your audience

Ultimately, Snapchat marketing isn’t going to work for everyone – but if your brand caters to the type of people who use the app on a daily basis, you can make it work for your brand.

Understand how your audience use Snapchat and remember that they are primarily using it for fun, so you should be too! Of all social media, Snapchat is one where you can really allow a sense of personality to shine, as it’s much more intimate and allows people to fall in love with your brand.

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For a brand to grow, Twitter is a key social media platform.

Twitter allows brands to grow through building connections and engaging with their targeted audience – and in the beginning, it can all be very daunting. Nevertheless, there are a few Irish brands who have a firm grasp on their Twitter strategies and are constantly on top of their game.

Whether you’re looking for some Twitter inspiration or simply on the lookout for a few great accounts to follow – here are five Irish brands who are brilliant on Twitter.

Brasserie Sixty6

The folks at @brasseriesixty6 are constantly on top of their Twitter game. They consistently post eye-catching tweets with images attached, which is such an effective way to catch the attention of their followers in a sea of tweets on a single feed. They fully embrace the power of the hashtag by means of tweeting about what is trending but keeping it relevant to their brand and they even have their own brand hashtag used by themselves, followers and customers alike.

Guys, look no more! We serve the best lunch in Dublin! #BackToTheFuture Open from 12.30 😉 #lunch #dublin #ireland pic.twitter.com/zUxdq3eqpG

— Brasserie Sixty6 (@brasseriesixty6) October 21, 2015

Cocoa Brown Tan

@cocoabrowntan are a highly engaging brand to follow on Twitter. They are forever retweeting their customers, replying to their followers with thank yous, compliments and questions, as well as giving shout outs to bloggers who blog about their products. People love to see a brand with a personality, and Cocoabrowntan’s feed showcases such a wonderfully approachable, bubbly persona that their followers love to interact with.

Thanks for sharing Mags! We are delighted you ❤️ the new Bronzing Gels ☺️ #HappyTanning https://t.co/YaS4mKkgIu

— Cocoa Brown (@CocoaBrownTan) October 20, 2015

Brown Thomas

@brownthomas boast an incredible Twitter following and it is all down to their consistency and the remarkable quality of their tweets. As well as being sure to reply to customer queries, Brown Thomas constantly tweet stunning, attention-grabbing visuals. They also implement a good balance of content, ranging between promotional tweets, giveaways, blog content, as well as audience-related or general humorous tweets that are relevant to the brand.

Squad goals #ShoulderToShoulder #RWC2015 #IRE #ARG #BTNutella pic.twitter.com/Yb18xn3qDG

— Brown Thomas (@brownthomas) October 18, 2015

Benefit Ireland

The delightful folks at @Benefit_IRE regularly post updates about what new surprises they have coming into stock, they’ll retweet their fans and customers, they will share links from their Instagram, they will get involved with fun trending topics, they will ask questions and on top of all of that, they will still take the time to reply to tweets that come their way. Everyone is going to love a brand who let their warm, friendly personality shine through and this is exactly what Benefit Ireland do, and it’s exactly why their customers keep coming back.

#ScaryStoryIn5Words We Don’t Serve Wine Here No Milk Left For #Tea Sold Out Of They’re Real Blusher Has Been Made Illegal

— Benefit Ireland (@Benefit_IRE) October 20, 2015

With such high levels of engagement and consistency, these brands continue to flourish on Twitter. If you’re a Twitter novice and need a few tips on how to get started, our recent blog post might help: 6 Beginner Tips for Irish Businesses on Twitter

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Strong visuals are key when it comes to building brand awareness.

If you run a small business, Instagram can be a great social media platform for you to portray the more visual side to your brand. It’s an especially powerful tool if you have a product based company or a business where aesthetic is a major focus – like a hair salon, for instance.

There are so many ways in which using Instagram more effectively for your business can enrich your growth, so here are our 5 helpful Instagram tips for your small business.

1. Love the hashtag

What sets the hashtag on Instagram apart from any other social media platform is that you are wholly encouraged to use it as much as possbile – within reason of course.

Unlike Twitter, which recommends using at most two hashtags per tweet to avoid devaluing the strength of the Tweet, Instagram wants you to hashtag to your heart’s content.

Each individual hashtag will instantly connect you with a user who is searching for something under that term – so use a good number of hashtags that are relevant to what you’re posting and your brand.

To keep your image and the caption looking as aesthetically pleasing as possible, try posting your hashtags into a comment underneath the image, as opposed to having the caption section looking messy. Do post your hashtag quickly however, otherwise it will get lost in the Instasphere. The first few seconds after posting your image are vital.

3. Looks are everything

It’s no secret that Instagram is all about the visuals.  Having clear, bright, interesting images with a running theme relevant to your brand can really draw people to your feed and want to keep coming back for more.

For example, is @brasseriesixty6 who regularly showcase mouth-watering dishes available from their menu on their Instagram feed. Their images are good quality, they post consistently and everything is in keeping with the overall tone of the brand. Seriously, this one will make you hungry.

3. Look at the numbers

Iconosquare is a great tool which helps you analyse the statistics surrounding your Instagram. It tells you when your followers are most active and where they are inputting the most engagement.

Another wonderful feature of Iconosquare is that it allows you to see which of your hashtags are most successful – this will really help you to refine your list of hashtags down to what is working for you and what might need some tweaking.

4. Get to know your audience

Instagram is a community, as are all social media platforms. And so it is so much more than simply uploading a photo and running. Engage with your followers and you will reap the rewards, building a reputation as a relatable brand that cares about feedback. Ask questions in your captions and take the time to respond to your comments.

@benefit_ire are pros at engaging on Instagram. They are forever re-gramming people who use their products, asking their audience questions and holding giveaways! This kind of engagement always makes the audience feel valued and like part of the brand, and people are always going to love a brand with a friendly and approachable personality.

5. Be consistent and persistent

Consistency is an important factor when it comes to growing your Instagram following. It will never look good to see that your latest post was 12 weeks ago. But likewise, over posting will drive people towards that ‘unfollow’ button. Posting on your Instagram once a day is plenty and enough for your audience to want to keep coming back for more. Quality over quantity is key – particularly with such a visual platform.

Irish wax brand @waxpertswax are always on top of their game with this. They regularly post top quality content that is relevant to their brand. Their is always fresh and exciting for their audience – which ultimately keeps people coming back for more.

Instagram is one social media platform that can be quite difficult to grasp, especially in terms of growth and engagement. That’s why it’s so important to be persistent – it’s one social media platform that is likely to creep up more gradually than the rest – but over time you will see your efforts paying off.

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Having a Facebook page for your business isn’t all about the likes. It’s true.

Yes, it’s good to have an audience, but what you really want when it comes to Facebook is a high level of engagement. More than anything, you want people to be getting involved in your business, talking about it and sharing it. It’s a guaranteed way to grow substantially.

And if you’re struggling, don’t panic. We’ve got you covered. Here are seven ways you can increase your Facebook engagement – without having to spend any money on advertising.

1. Analyse The Data.

With Facebook’s analytics tool; Insights, you are able to see when your fans are most active. These stats allow you to determine optimum times of the day for posting . Insights will also allow you to see which kinds of posts are getting the most engagement (photo, video, links etc)- what’s working and what’s not. This will give you a good guideline on what kind of content you should continue to produce and what you should perhaps experiment with – and don’t be afraid to do so.  It’s all about trial and error.

2. Get Experimental.

Embracing various types of media is key in growing your engagement on Facebook. We all know everyone loves to share videos and photos with their friends, and so these types of posts generally have high levels of engagement. It’s the perfect way to make your page come alive. Video posts have especially high potential in terms of reach and uploading these directly to Facebook as opposed to simply sharing a YouTube link will work in your favour – Facebook prefers when you use its native tools. 

3. Share, share and share some more.

Facebook is an online community, and so it is highly beneficial for your page to share content from others. Shares generally have a much greater reach, as you are giving users the chance to find content they may not have found otherwise. It makes your page more engaging and enticing for new users thanks to the diversity in content.

4. Consistency is key.

The worst thing you can do is post on your Facebook page and then abandon it for weeks. To grow your Facebook engagement you need to be consistent, posting as regularly as necessary for your business. It does take time and commitment – and luckily, you can schedule your posts so you don’t always have to be on hand to do so. Again, Insights can give you a good guideline for when you should schedule your posts so that you have the potential to reach your largest audience.

5. Get to know your audience.

A high level of engagement is what you’re aiming for with your Facebook page – so what better way to do this than to speak directly to your fans? Ask them questions and respond to their answers! People love to voice their opinions, and will ultimately engage more with a brand which is approachable and has a sense of personality.

6. Have a personality.

Yes, you’re a business, but you don’t want to sound particularly business-y all of the time, because it will put people off. Instead, don’t be afraid to be yourself – establish a relatable voice that doesn’t sound robotic or like a press release.

7. Don’t forget why you’re there.

Of course reason you’ve created a Facebook page in the first place is to promote your business – don’t forget this. Therefore, having a good balance of content is important. Implementing the 70:20:10 ratio is a good place to start – 70% of your posts to increase brand awareness, 20% shared content and 10% promotional – ultimately giving you good variation in what you post.

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It’s no secret that social media is a key feature in the marketing and branding of today’s small businesses in Ireland…

Without it, it’s difficult to have your brand’s voice heard and near impossible to make it grow.

Utilising Twitter for growth of your business is strategic, and can certainly be daunting, but once understood, it can be a wonderland for networking and building new connections for your brand.

6 Ways to Utilise Twitter for Your Business

1. ENGAGE

Engagement is one of the most important things you can do with Twitter. You will quickly realise that once you start acknowledging others, they will start acknowledging you. Follow those who may be interested in your brand and other local businesses. Favourite tweets, retweet good content and most importantly, respond to tweets. Thank people for following you or for recommending your business to others. People will always want to see a personality and they will always want someone to talk to. The more you engage with others, the more they will engage with you, thus building many connections along the way.

Tweetdeck is a desktop tool to help you stay on top of all of your engagements. You can make individual columns for your feed, your mentions, your lists and more, allowing you to see everything in one place.

Local Irish online shop Hippenings makes a habit of interacting with customers and retweeting any mentions of the brand.

Got my fab ban.do travel mug yday & it’s the biz!! If you haven’t been to @hippenings yet you need to! pic.twitter.com/6337ErXAPm

— Níamhi (@niamhi) September 11, 2015

2. VISUALISE

Twitter decided to add inline images to tweets in 2013, meaning that you no longer have to click on the tweet to see the image. Buffer experimented with this and found that tweets with images received 18% more clicks than those without. They also received 89% more favourites and 150% more retweets. Using images that are relevant and speak for your brand can be extremely beneficial in terms of recognition and engagement.

Canva is a great tool to use if you want to put together an image for a tweet that looks good and speaks to your brand. It allows you to select the dimensions perfectly formatted for Twitter and the freedom to design your own graphic.

3. ORGANISE

Timing plays a very important role in your Twitter strategies. There will always be better times of the day to tweet than others. Alas, the very last thing you want to be doing is spending all day looking at Twitter wondering when to tweet. Buffer is a great app to use to help you stay organised. The recommended optimum tweeting times are between 9am-4pm, showing the most activity and the highest number of clickbacks. Buffer allows you to schedule your tweets for specific times of the day, meaning you don’t have to worry about being on hand to tweet, and it ensures your highest potential reach throughout the day. It will also allow you to include images in your tweets, it automatically shortens any links you have included, as well as giving you some insight into analytics. Buffer analytics let you know which scheduled tweets are doing well and which aren’t doing so well – so you can always be on top of your scheduling with what works for your brand.

4. HASHTAG

Made famous by Twitter, the hashtag is a highly effective strategy, particularly for small businesses. A short, sweet, simple and clear hashtag that is relevant to your brand can be a huge driver for brand recognition. A perfect example is Irish tan brand Cocoa Brown Tan, who have recently been using the #CocoaBrownAW15 hashtag to build excitement for their new product launch, which is being used by customers, new customers and bloggers alike.

Ultimately, hashtags allow users to search for particular topics that interest them – so using a relevant hashtag within your tweets every now and again means people are more likely to find your tweet if it’s what they’re looking for. Hashtags can occur anywhere within a tweet, however it is important to remember that it is not worthwhile to spam your tweets with them. One hashtag is great, two is plenty. Twitter recommends no more than 2 per tweet as using anymore actually devalues the strength of each hashtag.

Oh what is in the bag from #CocoaBrownAW15 ? All to be revealed on September 28th! pic.twitter.com/8tmsiIaIa2

— Lorna Weightman (@styleisleIRL) September 22, 2015

5. ANALYSE

In a similar sense to Buffer Analytics, Twitter Analytics is a goldmine of information allowing you to see what you’re doing right and what leaves room for improvement overall. The user-friendly dashboard outlines which tweets are performing best, the number of impressions they are receiving, growths and drops in followers, mentions, profile visits and more. It gives you a monthly summary, allowing you to make a quick and easy comparison month to month.

Looking for patterns within your information gives you an idea on how well certain strategies are working – such as the time of day your tweets go out, which links are clicked and shared, who responds and so on. This leaves room for you to experiment on your strategies. For example, if you’re seeing a lot of impressions per tweet but not so many clicks, perhaps finding a more compelling way to word the tweet can work in your favour.

 6. CONSISTENCY

Once you’ve got the basics of Twitter down and you have established your presence, it’s important to stay consistent if you want your following to continue to grow. It is important to stay consistent with both your content and your Twitter activity. Posting something irrelevant to your brand or falling off the Twittersphere can negatively impact both your following and your reputation. Simply tweeting daily can keep your presence firmly established.

It certainly takes time and a craft, but once you have it grasped, Twitter can be a highly valuable social media platform for the growth of your business.

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