For years, social media has been a digital platform used to keep up to date with friends and stay connected. More recently there has been a shift within that usage and as popularity grew, companies saw that potential and capitalized in on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, using these platforms to connect with their audience.

Merging social media platforms into your brand’s content strategy has become a fundamental key to not only create immediate engagement with your audience, but also as a creative way to show another side to your brand, giving it a personality. As we all know, a brand’s image and story are two fundamental aspects of marketing your company. Undeniably, Twitter is the main source of engagement for a company when it comes to their social media engagement but since new social platforms are constantly emerging online, it is visual content based platforms that are the popular new methods of communicating with their audience, allowing a whole new perspective into a brand’s image.

Some companies are solely using Instagram to pilot a campaign and, similar to Twitter, the hashtag makes this simple to collate. However, many brands are still using the photo sharing platform as simply a way to promote their new product which is a fail on the company’s behalf.

The golden rule of sculpting your brand’s image: Give it some personality

If people are bothering to follow you on social media it is most likely because they are interested on your brand and want to keep up to date. When it comes to Instagram and ‘newer’ visual social media platforms, people don’t want to see something they would normally see in traditional media i.e, promotions, products and news. You don’t want to bombard your followers with spam and promo.

Followers want to see that added extra insight or service into your company. Behind-the-scenes photos/videos are the best way to utilize these social media sites; give your follower that something extra that makes them feel a unique connection with the brand that they would have missed if they had not been following you. A great example of this done right is when fashion brands and models post a series of pictures as a ‘preview’ to their latest shoot. Exclusive and unique content is an effective method of engagement - it makes them feel that, to not follow you, they’re missing out.

It’s not all about Twitter and Facebook

Here’s a list of new social media platforms you should be getting to grips with to keep a step ahead of the game and give your followers that extra insight into your brand’s life:

Periscope

Twitter’s newest baby: an app that let’s you live stream video content straight from your smartphone to be discovered by anyone around the world. You can go from Obama’s conference to an Arctic Monkey’s gig in Hyde Park. But it is not just politicians and celebrities that are experimenting with the live-video streaming app, business’ can utilize the app by sharing breaking news and creative product placement.

Spotify

Not is Spotify only in the best interest for record labels and music events, Reebok is a prime example of a business taking a step into a new form of engagement and bridging that familiar gap between music and fitness. Reebok provide fitness playlists for anyone to follow who can then enjoy specifically chosen tracks that can cater for their own workouts. All selected tracks have playlists to cover different exercise programmes from yoga to running. Reebok also brought in athletes to create their own playlists, a creative marketing initiative.

Snapchat

Snapchat has been on the social media scene for over a year now but only recently has the company made that shift from a consumer orientated focus, monetizing in on a potential opportunity which allows businesses to get in on the action too. Snapchat more recently launched its ‘discovery’ tool allowing for business’ to share their story publicly with all snapchat users. Yahoo News, CNN, Cosmopolitan and even National Geographic. It’ll cost you though; to be featured on the Discover page a brand will pay around $750,000 a day for an ad. However, since the new update, Snaphat allows users to change their profile which makes their story public for anyone to see making it a freebie potential.

To most people, this may not sound ground-breaking but brands and celebrities alike are using this to their advantage by creating a new platform for followers to subscribe and see daily snapchat updates. Its become a new tool for marketers to creatively engage with a young audience. With Snapchat ranking as the third most popular social app among 18-34 year olds it’s a platform businesses need to tap into. Take a look at McDonald’s use of Snaphat during the Superbowl; using real time video activity they were able to integrate their tweets and snapchats with other existing social media. Timing is everything, if you are in connection with your audience, you can reach them at the perfect time.

While utilising social media will not necessarily give you the best ROI, it gives your brand a voice which lets people connect with you. After all, they are much more likely to purchase from a brand they engage with than a brand they’ve never heard of.