By Tony Schwartz, “The Social Media DJ”
If you updated your Instagram app anytime in the past week, I’m sure you noticed a significant addition to the top of the app: Stories. And yes, it’s pretty much a direct copy of Snapchat’s main feature: images and/or video that is exclusively available for 24 hours.
But that doesn’t mean the immediate death of Snapchat, as both platforms are different and have different audiences and pyschologies. It does mean, however, that more people might become a bit more active on Instagram, especially if they found Snapchat confusing. Or annoying; how many times did you receive unsolicited Snaps? With Instagram Stories, your followers will either watch it on their own, or they won’t at all.
So be creative, be entertaining, and be captivating. I know event planners love Instagram, so it’s a good way to showcase your parties digitally to them, while saving your best photos and videos for posts during the week.
I’ve been making use of the search engines of each platform a lot more lately, and it’s been great for networking with both potential clients and industry colleagues. Think of it as extending a digital handshake.
As a wedding DJ, one of my favorite platforms to search on is Twitter, and my favorite search term to use is “got engaged”. But since that can be rather specific, I like to use the advance search and set a radius of 25 miles. This narrows my search down to people who have tweeted about getting engaged, or someone they know getting engaged.
From there, it’s a simple reply back with “@user hey, congratulations!” and a follow. Notice I didn’t promote my company or anything. My goal is to be nice, and try to earn a follow back. Later in the process, she’ll learn I’m a wedding DJ who does really cool things for really cool people. And it’s at this time that I’ll then try to ask for her business.
Seriously, cannot stress this enough: don’t tweet or comment to someone you found over search with a sales pitch. Worst mistake you can make.
Question of the Week
Robert from Pittsburgh writes in: “What’s the one social media aspect you would focus on, if you only had time for one?”
Easy: video. And I would post the full video to Facebook, Vimeo and YouTube (And post natively as much as possible. Don’t cause friction; make it easy to watch.) And then I would post teaser clips everywhere else: i.e. Twitter, Instagram, .etc
The reasoning is simple: video gets more views, period. Especially after you tag someone in the video post and incrase your exposure to them and you friends.
