The Philantrepreneur Journal Vol2 Spring2016 | Page 18

Where practitioners and thought leaders share commentaries and insight SIMPLE SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGIES FOR 2016 Debbie Harris, MA [email protected] I nstagram, Snapchat & Periscope – is it time? I look at the “flavor of the month” platforms that come out and I am often asked “what should I do with ______”? As you are probably aware, younger people tend to be early adopters of many of the social platforms/apps that come out. Instagram, Snapchat and now Periscope has emerged. Instagram and Snapchat have consistently grown even though both still have a majority of users under age 29. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t investigate and use them for your business. It always depends on your target market. Let’s take a look at all three: Instagram – this platform has consistently grown over the past five years and in 2012 was purchased by Facebook for the amazing sum of $1 billion in cash and stock. Looked upon as yet another “teen” platform, it has matured and now as over 300 million users. Interestingly, the majority of Instagram users, at present, are out of the United States but we continue to grow on the platform as well. Not really a surprise to anyone, teenagers consider it the most valuable social platform. While teenagers might not be your target market, they are going to grow up to be adult consumers. Think about adding Instagram to your social media marketing strategy. Snapchat – this is the one that caused such a furor when it first arrived because young people were taking “inappropriate” selfies and sending them off. Presumably, these photos would disappear after a few seconds but the challenge was, you could save them and then share them. Much was made of this as I was working on a platform at the time that got me involved in cyber-bullying, sexting and nude selfies that teenagers and younger kids were sharing with this app. Now Snapchat has over 200 million users and yes, they are predominately under the age of 34 and mostly female. Should you incorporate this platform into your social media strategy? Time and budget are always an issue. I would skip Snapchat unless you are really mar- keting to a young female demographic. Periscope – Periscope was purchased by Twitter in January of last year and is an application that allows you to share live video from your smartphone. It’s primary audience is the 16 – 24 year old age group but that is only part of t