EyeEm vs Instagram

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Instagram VS EyeEmAs Instagram introduces paid advertising and is way beyond the 130 million users mark, EyeEm take their 10 million users as well as photo-sharing to another direction.

1 – The common points

Both Instagram and EyeEm are photo-sharing apps. The principle is the same: snap or upload a picture, choose a filter and a frame, post with hashtags. Beyond that, the two platforms don’t have much in common, starting with the format…

2- Picture format

Instagram is well-known for the Instamatic-like square format. It is a trademark and doesn’t change. However, EyeEm gives more freedom to the user by letting him/ her upload pictures in any format they want. Instagram’s restriction forces creativity while EyeEm’s freedom lets the artist in you let loose.

3- Filters and frames

While Instagram lets you choose between 19 different filters, each of which has a dedicated (or no) frame, EyeEm separated the two. You can choose between 17 different filters and match them with any of the 12 proposed frames. This gives you more freedom to bring out the desired effect out of your pictures and make them your own.

4- Search, albums and categories

Instagram’s search is simple: you can look for hashtags and users. The news feed only shows pictures from users you follow, and the “most popular” page shows you what pictures are getting the most likes in the shortest amount of time. It doesn’t go beyond that, which is perfect for a simple experience. EyeEm on the other hand features automatic tagging (including geotagging) and places your pictures in albums depending on the subject and the tags on your picture (maximum 4). When you sign up on EyeEm, you are asked to choose your topics of interest. Whenever you’ll open the app, you will greeted by a selection of albums relevant to these topics. This allows a more explorative approach with a real purpose of discovery, guided by themes and interests.

5- Contests

While both apps run contests, EyeEm has a clear edge here. Instagram has communities running contests and they appeal only to those who are part of said communities. EyeEm on the other hand sends private message to all users informing them of global challenges and competitions. They sometimes partner up with other companies (last one was with Blablacar, a carpooling platform) and use this to create the theme of the contest.

6- The future for Instagram

Belonging to Facebook and having a gargantuan user database, Instagram is ripe for advertising and in fact has already started monetizing services. Some brand are using it to advertise in the form of accounts, others (the select few) have the chance to sponsor posts. As brands get used to the Instagram way of advertising, the feature will become available to a greater number of applicants.

7- The future for EyeEm

Created by a photographer, for photographers, EyeEm has a different vision for its users. Here is the scoop: If a designer/ brand/ ad agency/ other likes a picture of yours, they can send a request to buy it. EyeEm gets 50% and you make money off your photography without having to be a pro or own professional gear. This service is the first of its kind and will revolutionize the world of stock photography by providing a mobile, in-app stock of user-generated photos.

If you look at the bigger picture, you will find Instagram to be a great tool for marketing and simple, social user experience whereas EyeEm appeals more to the aspiring photographer and photography lovers. Both are great for sharing pictures and getting in touch with others who share the same interest, but where Instagram encourages simplicity, EyeEm pushes creativity and discovery.

How Vines Can do Wonders for your Local Business

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About a year ago, Twitter took social media by storm with the release of their video-sharing app Vines, on Android and iOS. Today, we show you how you can engage your consumers more efficiently with this game-changing application.

1- Act it out

First things first: Vines’ main purpose is fun. It gets people to show 6 second-long slices of life so they have to make them count, and so do you. As a company, your opportunity here is to make your audience engage in a personal way. It gives them a chance to create a relationship with your business that doesn’t rely on sales, but on storytelling. With a good Vines contest, you can broaden your audience and engage them to have fun with the brand, making it memorable for them.

2- Generate wide exposure

With Vine, users can share their video on other platforms straight from the app. This means they can create Vines, share them on Twitter and Facebook instantly with your hashtag and link, which will tie the user-generated content with your page or campaign. It allows better customer experience and guarantees higher exposure. It’s up to you to make your customers want to Vine with you.

Vine

Vine

3- Be original

Vine has no editing option or filter, just press your screen and it records so it’s easy to cut and start again. In other words, you can make stop motion and use editing tricks for more humorous or surprising clips. You can make product demos, talk about your brand history (see GAP’s history of denim) or simply stunning mini clips to fit an event, but don’t forget to tailor your execution to the occasion. Speaking of which…

4- Hit the trends

A great example of Vine usage in contextual communication is Dunkin Donuts’ Superbowl campaign. They recreated the greatest moments of this year’s edition with their paper cups, sometimes prompting their audience to guess the game in which the action took place, with the hashtag #DunkinReplay. Dunkin Donuts engaged customers with a game and hit a trending topic, making their hashtag relevant and interesting to the American audience. What trend can your business use to reach its audience using local and/ or current events?

5- It’s free

So go ahead, enjoy!

Have you ever used Vines for online marketing? Tell us about your experience in the comment section.

Biz Stone Launches Q&A App Jelly

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Jelly App

Twitter cofounder Biz Stone along with a seven-person startup, has launched a question-and-answer style mobile social networking app called Jelly, available for free for iOS and Android users.

Jelly enables users of submitting questions with an attached photo captured from their smartphone camera, which will become available for their Facebook and Twitter connections to then respond to via the app with a link, a drawing on the original picture, or simply a text. Questions can also be forwarded via text message.

“In a world where 140 characters is considered a maximum length, a picture really is worth a thousand words,” Stone wrote in a post on Jelly’s blog. “Images are in the foreground of the Jelly experience because they add depth and context to any question.

Born out of a passion for helping people, Stone believes that Jelly is capable of making an act of kindness relatively simple. Stone got the idea for Jelly with cofounder Ben Finkel, cofounder of Fluther, another question-and-answer service that Twitter acquired in December 2010.

The “Finkel Rank” displays questions to the most relevant audience of a user’s social connections and is expected to improve over time as the application gathers more user data and should help improve Jelly’s functionality.

The app’s name was inspired by jellyfish, which have “a loose network of nerves that act as a ‘brain’ similar to the way we envision loosely distributed networks of people coordinating via Jelly to help each other,” Stone wrote in the blog post.

Links:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/jelly/id685652528

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jellyhq.starfish

YouTube’s latest makeover for its Android and iOS apps

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YouTube, Google’s popular video sharing website, has launched the latest versions of its Android and iOS apps this Tuesday bringing many new features that will improve mobile video viewing experience.

Watch a video and look for another.

So what are the new features and how are you going to experience these new changes? Well open a video, and with a simple swipe of a finger, drag it down to the bottom of the screen to explore other videos and browse through the app.

Watch videos back-to-back.

Youtube’s makeover comes with searching and browsing capabilities for playlists on mobile devices for the first time, which enables the user of playing back to back videos.

Preview what’s going on your connected devices.

Sending videos from your mobile device to your connected TV, like on Chromecast, Google TV, PlayStation 3 and other TVs using the cast button is already featured in the earlier version of the app. But now YouTube let’s you preview and queue what you’re going to watch next.

Packed with new features, the simpler and cleaner version of the YouTube apps is here and it’s available for Android and iOS.

How to Write Articles That Go Viral

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Viral contentThis is a question that many wonder about. A small research about articles that went viral show some similarities anyone can put to good use:

1. What to write about & when

Make sure you are writing about a current subject. People are more interested in reading about hot topics than about subjects they already know. Equally important, is to think when to post the article; for that purpose one needs to know at what time the target readers would be online in order to have the chance to read the article and not miss it.

2. Write piece with more elaborate content

People love to read stories. Whether it’s an engaging one or a guide, people tend to allocate more time to these types of content since they can connect or learn something new. You can also consider delivering stories in parts every once a week or two.

3. Pick a title and keywords that work

Effective keywords will help your readers find your articles; they need to be relevant to the subject you are writing about. At the same time, make sure that your article is still easy to read. The title is also important, think about it well; it has to be intriguing enough to get clicks.

4. Interesting and emotional content is the way to go

A unique content will always attract more people. Remember that you are speaking to your readers and not to yourself. Avoid duplicate content and use attractive media. Content that triggers an emotional response is more likely to go viral than content that does not.

5. Ask for feedback.

Send your articles to a couple of readers you trust and get their feedback for testing. This will give you an insight on whether your article is interesting enough and contains no errors.

6. Share your article on various online platforms.

Share, share, share! It’s the only way to get your article out there and ensure that it get to the biggest number of people possible.

Twitter Ads API

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Twitter Ads APITwitter officially launched their Ads API recently allowing marketers to work with chosen partners (Adobe, HootSuite, Salesforce, SHIFT and TBG Digital) in order to manage Twitter Ad campaigns in a quicker and automated way. They will use Twitter in much the same way they manage marketing campaigns on Facebook and LinkedIn using CRM platforms. For the time being it is unclear how long Twitter will work with only the five of them.

Twitter says that its focus has been on delivering better ads instead of more ads, encouraging ads that are “engaging, relevant and useful” and they will be leveraging the ability they have to deliver targeted ads. This would make Twitter the second-screen ad platform of choice after Facebook and will be starting a Certified Ads Products program just like Facebook. We can only think about the kind of revenue boost this will be for Twitter.

Promoted Accounts, Promoted Tweets and Promoted Trends are the 3 advertising options on Twitter. If a company pays to promote an account or tweet, the account or tweet appears at the top of results for searches of relevant terms. The advertising options also cause tweets or account handles to appear elsewhere on Twitter like for example on widgets. Promoted Trends, remain exclusive to Twitter enabling a company to surface its brand in the form of a hashtag on Twitter users’ trend sidebars.

Today, other major platforms like Foursquare, Pinterest and Google+ remain without an ad API.

It seems that Twitter took its time to study Facebook & LinkedIn ads before drafting its own strategy to ensure the success of the ads API. Soon it will be easier to compare how campaigns on all 3 platforms perform.

Would you invest in Twitter ads?

Optimizing Facebook Pages for Facebook Search Graph

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Facebook Search GraphFacebook Graph Search is here. Is your page ready for it? To make sure that you benefit from it, you need to check the following:

1. Your Category and About Section

Choose your category carefully as this could make it or break it for you and make sure that you fill your “About” section thoroughly with relevant keywords.

2. Claim your Place and Encourage Check-ins

If you do not claim a Place as your own, check-ins will not be useful. When someone attempts to check into your business, Facebook will display you Page if it’s set up as a Place.If you have a Place Page, you want to push for people to check-in. Although the number of check-ins does not always guarantee a better ranking of search results,you will come up in searches when people filter by their friends if many of them check-in at your place.

3. Encourage Tagging and Liking of Photos

People can search and filter photos of friends they like. They may see a photo of their friend at your location or tagged by your Page. All of this activity helps your Page and your business to remain in people’s minds more often.

Facebook Graph Search will continue to evolve as it goes through beta, but you can start encouraging interactions such as check-ins and tagging to help your Page show up more prominently as people search. Remember that it’s still important to post regularly, produce content that initiates high engagement levels, focus on keyword-rich status updates and connect with people through the news feed, since not everyone will use Graph Search.

What is Vine?

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VineVine is a separate iOS app from Twitter that lets users create short, 6-second videos that run on a loop (which could be irritating for some) and that can be shared on Vine itself, Twitter or even Facebook.Its aim is to become for video what text is to twitter.

There is a lot of content on Twitter even though it is brief but it will just get better with Vine. As a trusted and massive brand, with an instant huge user base, Twitter is guaranteed to make this new app more appealing to more new users. When Instagram ceased Twitter Cards integration, disregarding the capacity to embed Instagram photos right into the stream, Twitter’s visual appeal decreased. Although Twitter may have Photos feature, with filters, but it’s nothing compared to Instagram’s level of engagement. Instead of fighting Instagram on the photo arena, Twitter went a step ahead by working on the natural transition that will be video.

Vine will not replace any existing apps online it’s more of a new form of media — a self-made video rather than another filtered photo.

For marketers this is yet another opportunity to get their message across by creating brand relevant content. We can only think of the numerous ways they could use it.

One major downside to Vine is that there is no Android app for the time being and another concern will be the quality of content that will be posted and shared.

Have you tried it already?

Social Media Trends for 2013: What Will Change?

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There are many predictions for 2013 as far as social media is concerned across the internet.

Increase in online marketing budget and better content

It’s not a secret that that online marketing is the best and most cost effective way to achieve marketing goals like increasing the demand for a product as well as sales. We are seeing companies increase the budget for online marketing and creating better content to ensure a successful marketing campaign. In 2013 this will be more and more evident as 2012 was a stepping stone towards investing in social media campaigns.

Cross-platform storytelling

This is set to be the norm in 2013, as brands start to use several different platforms at the same time to support their social media campaign giving them the ability to deliver a single minded message. The difference with 2012 is that the message will be more adapted to each platform instead of being just copy pasted which will create a different yet related buzz serving the same marketing goal. It’s also clear that companies will focus on visual platforms including videos.

Big data

Companies today gather enormous amount of data from various different sources online and offline. Processing it to give the marketing department the needed information accurately has become more difficult. The biggest software companies have been working hard to be the first to provide a solution that will make data manageable in 2013.

Mobile

2012 saw technology move towards mobile devices and serving consumer demand for mobile applications. That’s where companies will shift their efforts in 2013. Mobile becomes more intense together with social media giving the freedom and privacy that laptops and desktops can’t give. Mobile application will become a necessity and every company will have to create more stimulating and original applications. With most users keeping themselves updated over their mobile phones, everything from online advertising to commerce will be made mobile-friendly to ensure accessibility at all times.

Companies in the Middle East are catching up very fast and 2013 will witness more companies from the region investing in online marketing and social media. Where is your company heading in 2013?

Nokia 808 PureView: Detail and Depth Never Seen Before

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Nokia 808 Pureview

Given that part of our work as social media ambassadors is to cover the live events of our clients by uploading pictures and comments on the pages we handle, Nokia Lebanon agreed to lend us the Nokia 808 PureView for a few days so we can test it and decide whether it is convenient for our work at Eastline Marketing.

Therefore, on Wednesday evening, while the JLP band was performing at The Angry Monkey, we, as social media ambassadors, were using the phone to take pictures for the launch of the new Stoli chocolate Raspberry.

If you’ve visited the Stoli Leb page on Facebook or if you follow us on twitter, you’ve probably seen the pictures posted on Wednesday, the 8th and Thursday, the 9th of August 2012. Amazing, aren’t they?

With its 41 MP sensor and Carl Zeiss Lens, the Nokia 808 PureView’s camera enabled us to take wonderful high quality pictures and instantly share them on our Facebook and Twitter pages for Stoli Lebanon. The camera on the new Nokia 808 is surprisingly powerful and it even has amazing pictures at lower resolutions. Finally, we can take amazing pictures for our clients with amazing quality without having to invest in an expensive professional camera.

However, the downfall encountered is when it comes to sharing the pictures on Facebook as we were only able to upload to a profile and not a page so we had to share the pictures via email. Although it is certainly a limitation, it is not that irritating since it is fast and easy to share them via email.

With more than 70 likes for each picture uploaded, we can say that this phone has really lots of potential (as long as the camera is concerned*). Only, for the next version, we hope that Nokia 808 will run Windows 8 OS because it is more flexible and adapted to the geeks that we are!

(* We’re not talking about the phone’s characteristics in general. As social media ambassadors, we are interested in the camera’s functionality.)