What Marketers Need to Know About Ephemeral Content

Ephemeral Content

What Marketers Need to Know About Ephemeral Content

No one could have an idea a few years back when social media was just used for chatting, that today it will become a major platform for marketing and promoting businesses. Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp which are now known as 'Meta' are the leading online social platforms in the U.S.A where you can see great marketing examples of brands reaching out to their target audience successfully.

Social media are now completely acclaimed into professional dashboards of brands to showcase their products and services around the world. Well, this is a great use of social space more than just chatting and sharing pictures. On the other hand, social media has also evolved according to the need and use of users.

It all started from a chat box to emojis & stickers, And now there are mind-blowing features like IGTV, Reels, and 24-hour stories. The data shared on social media are also used by cryptocurrency makers. Alongside social media, cryptocurrency is also spreading like a wildfire as reported by Scanteam experts

This allows space to enter social media marketers into the picture. Social Media Marketing is at its peak these days and digital marketers must need to know about Ephemeral Content. This article is throwing light all-around to the details of Ephemeral Content that every digital marketer should know.

What is Ephemeral Content?

This term - 'Ephemeral' might sound new but we're sure you have created such content hundreds of times before. Ephemeral content is nothing but those 24-hour stories you posted on your social media space.

When we post Instagram stories, WhatsApp status, Facebook Stories, etc, we never think about how useful it can be for a marketing strategy. Yup! Social media marketing is booming like never before and the role of these 24-hour story features is playing a prominent role in its success. Snapchat was the pioneer in bringing on this feature and all other social media accounts followed this trend one by one

All the images, videos, GIFs, or texts you share on a 24-hour story feature of your social accounts, are called Ephemeral content. This content lasts only for 24 hours, after which it disappears automatically. This means that you can't see it anytime after 24 hours. This is exactly contrary to the news feed and posts that remain forever on your Instagram or Facebook account. However, Instagram offers another amazing feature that helps you to keep the Ephemeral content alive years long. And i.e. the highlights feature. When you select to save any of your stories in highlights, it will always be saved there and people can see them at a convenient time.

In simplest words, Ephemeral content is any temporary material (be it an image, video, audio, GIF, or just text) that dangles around on the internet for a short period, eg Instagram or WhatsApp's 24-hour stories or WhatsApp's feature of 'Disappearing Messages' mode in 7 days.

Now you might be thinking why invest in content that disappears? Well, by the end of reading this complete article, we hope that your question will be answered.


What is FOMO?

FOMO

The entire concept of Ephemeral content is lying on the plinth of FOMO. FOMO stands for Fear of Missing Out. You must have noticed that the announcement of 'Limited Stock, Grab Soon!' outside the shopping mall eventually able to gain more customers than otherwise. Isn't it? The idea of FOMO is something similar.

When people know that something is available for a limited span, they crave it. That's how we humans are! Social media users purposely click on ephemeral content because they don't want to face the regret of missing something exciting and interesting around. And therefore such content would be able to gain more views, likes, and comments.

Social media marketers, big brands, and small-medium businesses cashing in this feature correctly compels the followers to must watch the story. This will be more relatable when regular stories are posted for promotional codes, coupons, and discounts. Ultimately the sole idea of FOMO is to force the friends and followers to do it Now else never.

Apart from the above-discussed advantage of Ephemeral content for businesses, there is one more good thing lying in it. Since such contents are temporary, one does not have to own the embarrassing content lifelong unless somebody has saved it or recorded it. Once it has disappeared, no one is going to talk about it anymore.

Goals of Ephemeral Content

Every good thing should be treasured. Right? Then why are we leaning towards temporary material rather than permanent posts that can be retained forever? Following are the goals behind motivating any content to be Ephemeral despite knowing its temporary nature.

Get Immediate Response

They are short and entertaining. So, users watch it more than permanent feeds. This forces the viewer to take immediate action like subscribe, sign up or comment. As already discussed, it instills a sense of urgency which if missed, remains a regret always.

User Engagement

Ephemeral content is meant to be for users only. Hence User-generated content ideas have been in place. Ephemeral marketing strategy offers users to take part in advertising and promotion. This develops a sense of belonging with the brands. In this way, existing users engage more audiences through sharing the content. And the graph of user engagement goes up.

Significance of Ephemeral Content

As you know so far, Ephemeral content disappears within 24 hours unless it is saved purposely. but people are still using it for advertising and promotion. Why? Here are the reasons that temporary stories are significant.

Broader Reach

Almost everyone around us is using social media, which is great! And probably this is the reason that even big brands are now utilizing the power of social media to promote their products. Beyond the barriers of age, geographical boundaries, timings, and gender reaching out to each and everyone are possible through social media. Instagram alone has 200 Million users which are HUGE. Ephemeral content is the best, short and crisp feature that enables to attract more audiences at a time.

Increase in Content Volume

Creating content is not that easy. It needs time, money, research, and excellence to create unique content that can rule over the heart of users. Ephemeral content can be created with lower overheads and minimal effort. Hence the frequency and volume of content will increase. In addition, there are many in-built filters, audios, and features available in the app itself that makes the making of videos bliss.

Competitive videos

Grey Areas of Ephemeral Marketing

Nothing is perfect in this world. No matter how beneficial Ephemeral marketing is for businesses and brands but there are always some grey areas that have to be dealt with.

  • Where on one side the temporary nature of Ephemeral content takes advantage of creating urgency. On the other hand, there is also a disadvantage that such content comes and goes easily without leaving any traces behind.
  • To keep pace with the ever-changing market and glue up your audience, you need to create and post content every day otherwise you will be lost among the mob of millions.
  • Need technical and professional skills to create competitive videos and posts.
  • Random content will not work because you need to be visible every single day without fail. Hence a long strategy must be in place to follow while creating content. It further requires deep-down research for planning long term.

Remember that viral content is ultimate when it comes to engaging your audience but when long-term brand loyalty comes, does Ephemeral content work equally effective? Find out your purpose and Answer yourself.

Tips To Create an Engaging Ephemeral Content

"Engagement" is of utmost importance when you are talking about utilizing social media space. If you are not able to engage, you will fail sooner or later. To get the most out of Ephemeral content, adopt these 5 incredible tips to create engaging temporary content.

Try To Be Interactive

In comparison with the old-school T.V. Ads, Ephemeral content lets the businesses promote their products and services at a more personal level with the end-users.

Ephemeral content can engage the potential and future customers making it more relatable to them. We're here sharing some cool maxims that will help you in generating extremely engaging Ephemeral content.

  • Use of filters, applying hashtags, asking questions, creating polls, etc, doing such things would be able to engage more followers.
  • Influencer or celebrity accounts often create polls, surveys, and Q&A to make their followers respond. And it works and gives results.
  • Make use of the live streaming video option. Live videos create buzz and excitement among the followers of the influencer to participate along with them in the live session. To make sure that it works effectively, Instagram also sends push notifications to the users even when they are not using the app.
  • Tag as many people as you can. This would increase your reach and visibility.

Analytics

Use Analytics

Instagram has a fantastic feature of keeping records of your profile statistics. You will get all the numbers about Q&A, Polls, and Surveys, who liked and commented on your story, who visited your profile from the story, etc. These statistics help you in making decisions like what kind of audience you should target and what type of content would be able to engage more audience.

Most people focus on what type of content to post but very few of them emphasize the time to post the content. Posting the content at a specific time makes it more visible and popular among followers. Posting the content on holidays such as Christmas or New Eves, Halloween, etc. makes it more noticeable among the followers because people usually find time on holidays to scroll their social media feeds and watch stories. Alternatively, it will also be a good strategy to send reminder emails to your followers but timing is always important.

Involve Your Audience

The audience is always the king who makes you or breaks you. So, never try to take your audience for granted. Develop whatever content, make sure it is for your audience. Snapchat was the torchbearer in introducing Ephemeral content to the world but soon Instagram took over and reported the record-breaking Insta users around the world. Whereas Snapchat is now history.

Ephemeral marketing is a good opportunity for the audience to take part in the brand marketing campaign and be a representative of brands on social media. This gives your audience a sense of importance and they give back more responses, like, comment, and share. All you need to do is create such content where user participation is required and encourage more people to take part in it. Also, tag them to help in increasing their followers too.

To make your audience more responsive, you may organize giveaways, encourage competitions, and somehow turn it to be more interactive. Involving your audience is the best way to grow on social media as an influencer and earn more followers.

Associate a Niche

Just a random post doesn't work at all. Users will stick to your profile if they get meaningful and consistent content. So, you have to be associated with a niche. Say if you are a traveling blogger and post about food, you will not say to be consistent. Also, go align with your brand name, logo, color schema, and graphics style. An ephemeral content must be fresh, unique, engrossing, and consistent.

Decision on a niche requires a lot of research and observation of similar influencer profiles. Expert give advice to pick a niche that is evergreen and always loved by all to read about.

According to social media expert Alex Lysak, To get more engagement, you should prefer videos as ephemeral content rather than text or images because videos can catch 40 times better responses. Besides that, there are many tactics to catch the attention of your audience.

For example, you can create a series of live videos which are interconnected or give the benefit of regularly viewing your content. Doing this type of trick helps you to fetch more engagement. The role of FOMO again comes into the picture here.

Show Behind The Scene

Sometimes the process of creating things is more interesting to see than the final results. Since Ephemeral content is available only for 24 hours, there are a lot of chances to experiment with it. You can afford to commit small mistakes to test and try. Say if you are creating a video, it is ok to have some minor errors. You don't always need to be perfect. Sometimes imperfect things are more soothing.

Instead of making a flawless video free from all the errors, it will be more fun for the viewers to see behind the scene videos. You must have seen this in the Bollywood movies which nowadays show BTS after the climax.

If you are constantly promoting your products on Instagram, your audience would like to see how these products are manufactured, packaged, who are the faces behind the marketing team, and much more. You may even share videos of birthday celebrations of employees at the office. This also helps in building brand credibility among the customer base. Plus, they feel as if they are part of a team. It will also be a great idea to add them into the real-time live videos that take them inside your home, office, or workplace. The concept of FOMO again comes into the picture here.

We can learn nothing better than the entertainment industry where reality shows are trending and liked by one and all. The reason is common that people want to see something original and not scripted. This is why people around the world are hooked up with Instagram reels and stories because they don't want to miss hearing from their favorite celebrities, brands, Influencers, and friends.

It's Ok To Be Not Perfect But Be Real

Not all can be perfect in making videos, writing eye-catching content, and Designing graphics to post like a pro on stories. It is completely ok if you are not a pro in making things perfect. Instead, we recommend you pay attention to creating original content that hits right to your valued audience.

To make this happen, we've gotta give you some tips. Don't miss it!

  • Don't be too robotic while creating your content. Else you will go boring and nobody will give a damn. Instead of thinking about how and what you say, be clear and confident for whatever you are writing or speaking. A few 'Umm' 'Ahm' or backgrounds will be fine.
  • WhatsApp allows only 30 Seconds long content. Why do you think WhatsApp did this? Because the world is going fast forward. You see Cricket has become 20-20, no one wants to watch the test series. So, long videos become boring, repetitive, and time-consuming. Create short yet engaging contentful videos.
  • Listen and reply also. When someone comments on your posts, feeds, and reels, don't be arrogant or ignorant to reply to them. Especially on live feeds, people often comment, ask questions and send emojis. You too revert them with a suitable response.
  • Make your audience feel important. This will catch their attention and reaction on your every post. Provide them with problem-solving content that answers all their questions.

Novice? Learn Here How To Get Started With Creating Ephemeral Content.

As individuals, we use social media for sharing our personal life. We hardly bother about how many followers we have, do people like our holiday pictures or other such things. But when it comes to building a brand presence in social space, every area needs to be explored.

For newcomers, who are joining social media marketing, we're here sharing some beginner's tips and tricks that help them to join the trend.

  • If you are planning to start a new business, start your business first. It has been observed that many businesses create Instagram or Facebook accounts before establishing their business. And the results are miserably failing. So, first, it needs to settle down your business for a few months and come with a bang on social media.
  • Now that you are successfully running your business, create a professional account or page on social media. Explain all your details in brief in the Bio. Don't forget to mention the essential links and how the audience can reach out to you.
  • Start creating the content. And be regular in posting content. Associate with some influencers so that they can help you in reaching out to a wider audience.
  • Utilize the features of social media by creating Ephemeral Content. Take advantage of FOMO and Offer discounts, promotional codes, coupons, and giveaways through short and disappearing content.
  • Try to engage as many audiences as possible. Engagement is very important, else your purpose for presenting on social media will not be achieved.
  • Marketing on social media is a never-ending process. The moment you think that you have done enough marketing, you mislead your target. So, last but not the least, keep posting content and work on increasing followers and friends.
  • Learn, explore, and apply new ideas and updated features of social media to grow your brand reach and loyalty.

Conclusion

Social media is the new marketing station for big or small, all types of businesses. And out of all the captivating features of social media, Ephemeral Content is what is trending and in demand these days. It is a very effective and easy way to reach out to your target audience.

Ephemeral Content has a wide scope for engaging more followers and developing an interactive environment with your followers. This is the tried and tested method that aids you in growing your followers in a jiffy, no matter you are boosting your profile or brand name.

Good quality Content indeed is important but what is more important is the element of engagement so that you can reach your target group of people. All in all, social media is flourishing with each passing day and businesses are getting the benefit from it through various features. And one such feature is Ephemeral content which we have talked about.

Alex Lysak

Alex Lysak

About the author: Alex Lysak is the CEO of ScanTeam and SEOBROTHERS.
Published December 7, 2021

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