The huge power and potential of Snapchat

Launched in July 2011, by three Stanford University students (Evan Spiegel, Reggie Brown and Bobby Murphy), Snapchat went from being an application created for a University project to one of the biggest social media sensations in the recent years. First launched under the name Picaboo, the app received a re-launch and a rebranding and became the Snapchat that we all know and love.

The social media platform has grown immensely in popularity over the last 4 years and has now become one of the biggest social media platforms of this time. With over 100 million daily users worldwide, the app attracts especially Millennials and youngsters, but also a lot of celebrities. Therefore, the brands are “lining-up” and doing their best to attract the users’ interest and likeability. Moreover, Snapchat has grown as a marketing tool since brands have found it effective for promoting to a younger demographic group that they eagerly want to reach.

Part of the social media platform that attracted the most the users is the fact that people seem to be more genuine on it, even the celebrities, showing real moments of their lives, uncut behind-the-scene snaps, sexy and funny videos. Everyone from models to actresses (to model/actresses, to model/DJs, you get the idea) are daily users (DJ Khaled and Kylie Jenner just might be addicted) and now, some are even using the platform to premiere and  share original content. You can find here a list of the celebrities that love the social media platform, you will for sure have the chance to see some of your favorite ones. As of February 2015, more than 60% of 13-to-34-year-olds had the app downloaded on their phone, according to a U.S. Census study on Snapchat’s  site, even the White House having an account.

Also, as proved by several studies, more Americans are familiar with Snapchat than with Pinterest or Linkedin (not to mention Tumblr, Vine, etc), having more users than Twitter or Pinterest or Linkedin. In the past 12 months, awareness of Snapchat among Americans 12 and older grew from 60% to 71%, with the platform growing in one year as much as Twitter has in 4 years combined. In the 2013 Infinite Dial study, 15% of Americans said they used Twitter. By 2016 21% of the country claimed Twitter usage. Between 2015 and 2016, Snapchat went from 17% to 23%. Looking at all those figures, it’s no wonder that Snapchat is considered to be USA’s second-favorite social network, with 26% of Americans citing Snapchat as the place they visit most. Instagram is third at 17%, in the Infinite Dial’s 2016 study. First place is still held by Facebook, with 32% saying they use it most. This is a big move in just one year, as the previous edition of The Infinite Dial showed Facebook at 43%, Instagram in second place at 18%, and Snapchat at 15%. Essentially, what has happened is that in 12 months, 10% of the entire nation’s population of social media using 12-24 year-olds moved from Facebook to Snapchat as their platform of choice.

In this context, there is no wonder that, according to Re/code, advertisements and marketing videos on the service alone are seen between 500,000 and a million times a day.

Much of Snapchat’s surge in usage has been attributed to the app’s Stories and Discover features. People are able to connect with new brands and influencers that might have previously been outside their normal spheres of interaction and the stories the people behind those accounts create – visual tales like behind-the-scenes footage or brand messaging, for instance – build instant connections between companies and consumers.

According to Forbes, Snapchat has  more than 60 million users in the U.S. and Canada alone. Snapchat was set to rake in about $ 366.7 million in ad money in 2016 and they’re poised to break the $1 billion-mark in 2017. A lot of that money is coming from the full-screen ads strewn across those Stories and Discover sections.

The reason for the huge potential of Snapchat Advertising

Whether you are representing a small, medium or big brand, if you are targeting Millennials and youngsters, you must be on Snapchat. Try and learn from the brands that have already pathed the way for you. Take the best you can, try and innovate and, most of all, be present. If it’s something we’ve all learned through the social media boom is that being up-to-date with the changes and keeping an eye open are two essential factors in the success of the brands. And also, try to do at least a little bit of real-time marketing. Snapchat is the real place for it. The app others the marketers several big reasons for being there:

Frequency: Once a snap disappears it’s time to put up another one – that steady stream of content helps build rapport and frames the brand as reliable and communicative

Approachability: Many brands and personalities have found success posting raw footage that gives audiences a glimpse behind the curtain – from pre-concert footage from musical acts to touring a new pop-up store with a fashion designer, these sneak peeks build interest.

Story-First Focus: Most social platforms run off of “likes” or favorites that advertisers feel driven to accumulate. Snapchat advertising ditches that kind of approval, in favor of more organic storytelling that feels more authentic.

Getting more personal: Closer than ever to your favorite stars. What more can a fan want?

The fun / ironic side of it: We all want to have a good time and be entertained. And Snaptchat sure knows how to do it.

To multitask or not? This is the question

When I was little, my parents taught me to do one thing at a time and do it the best possible. Not trying to start ten projects or jump from one thing to another without finishing what I began first. Although I’ve always had the internal push to do several things at one time, I kept remembering their advice and trying to stick to it. As much as possible. Back then, the idea of multitasking wasn’t around and known to us, but I believe they were right. And recent studies seem to back them up as well.

According to Larry Kim, Founder and CTO WordStream, our brains are designed to focus on one thing at a time, and bombarding them with information only slows them down. MIT neuroscientist  Earl Miller notes that our brains are “not wired to multitask well… when people think they’re multitasking, they’re actually just switching from one task to another very rapidly. And every time they do, there’s a cognitive cost.”

This constant task-switching encourages bad brain habits. When we complete a tiny task (sending an email, answering a text message, posting a tweet), we are hit with a dollop of dopamine, our reward hormone. “Our brains love that dopamine, and so we’re encouraged to keep switching between small mini-tasks that give us instant gratification. This creates a dangerous feedback loop that makes us feel like we’re accomplishing a ton, when we’re really not doing much at all (or at least nothing requiring much critical thinking). In fact, some even refer to email/Twitter/Facebook-checking as a neural addiction,” said Larry Kim for inc.com.

As shown by Marketing Week,  Academics at Vanderbilt University found evidence in 2006 that the brain’s frontal lobe creates a “bottleneck of information processing that severely limits our ability to multitask”. The proliferation of media channels and devices makes this worse. Another study, published by  Stanford University researchers in 2009, found “heavy media multitaskers are more susceptible to interference from irrelevant environmental stimuli and from irrelevant representations in memory”.  And this hampers the ability to switch between tasks.

We can shift our focus really fast, sometimes it takes just a 10th of a second. But the time doesn’t matter as much as the bandwidth the brain requires to move back and forth. Now that might affect your performance, and might also affect the quality of the work that you finally produce.

New research suggests the possibility that cognitive damage associated with multi-tasking could be permanent.

A study from the University of Sussex (UK) ran MRI scans on the brains of individuals who spent time on multiple devices at once (texting while watching TV, for example). The MRI scans showed that subjects who multitasked more often had less brain density in the anterior cingulate cortex, the area responsible for empathy and emotional control. Unfortunately, the research isn’t detailed enough to determine if multitasking is responsible for these affects, or if existing brain damage results in multitasking habits.

Moreover,  there have been studies that show  women are generally better at  multitasking than men. Also, people who thought they were the best at  multitasking are almost always in fact the  worst. In fact, multitasking seems to be something not all of us are truly able to achieve, as only about 2% of the population is formed of  super multitaskers (people who are truly able to do several different activities at the same time without losing efficiency or losing quality as they do all that work). Most of us don’t have this gift.

According to Forbes, the problem with trying to multi-task is all that shifting back and forth between tasks isn’t all that efficient because, each time we do it, it takes our brain some time to refocus. So while it might seem efficient on the surface, it isn’t – studies show that multi-tasking can  reduce productivity by as much as 40%.

More than that, a study published by the American Psychological Association concluded that the ability to switch between tasks, which they term, “mental flexibility” generally peaks in the 20s and then decreases with age, in average of 30.9% from a person in their 40s to a person in their 70s. The extent to which it decreases depends upon the type of tasks being performed.  The information is back up by another study, this time around conducted on UK soil, at  the University of London where the results have shown that the participants who multitasked during cognitive tasks, experienced an IQ score decline similar to those who have stayed up all night. Some of the multitasking men had their IQ drop 15 points, leaving them with the average IQ of an 8-year-old child.

How to choose the best antivirus software for you – Part II

We continue the list of pieces of advice that will help you take a very documented and precise decision while choosing your antivirus software, after last week’s article.

According to pcworld.com, to find out about the biggest names in antivirus, you should visit  AV-Test’s Windows home users page. Here, you’ll find a breakdown by Windows version, with each program rated on three criteria: protection, performance, and usability. The companies are listed in alphabetical order, but you can click on any of the criteria points to get a ranking based on that (performance, for example). Each category is rated on a six-point scale represented by a group of circles. More colored-in circles means a better score.

According to  heimdalsecurity.com, 3 ways you can find the best free or paid antivirus for you are through: user opinions, expert reviews and independent testing.

Cybersecurity forums are still some of the best places you can check to find good and trustworthy reviews and comparisons of antivirus software. You may also use Quora (The website is designed so you can quickly access your areas of interest. You can ask a question or just simply browse it looking for your areas of interest), yahoo answers (centers on the experience and knowledge of everyday users rather than the knowledge of experts), reddit (Ask Reddit users to compare various antivirus software and you will end up with a very lively conversation among users that covers almost every antivirus program imaginable. ‘Redditors’ will talk at length about the pros and cons of one antivirus or another.), trustpilot (Reviews of antivirus programs are another way to choose the product that fits your needs. Most people read the reviews on the developer’s page, but it’s impossible to be sure which review is real and which isn’t.).

The next step would be looking for the experts’ opinions, that are well-documented.

Paid-for antivirus software

Many people keep their computer safe by paying for a security suite, which will usually include antivirus software, protection against scams and a firewall. Most brands have options for just one device or, for more money, multi-user licences so you can install the same protection on two or more computers in your home. Some also allow you to pay extra up-front for a further year or two of cover.

Pros: Provides an all-round security solution accessed through a single interface. Individual components are automatically updated at the same time so you get protection against the latest threats. Cons: They can be expensive and you’ll also face ongoing costs, usually in the form of an annual subscription, to receive updates after the initial period of protection is over (usually a year). Some security suites can place a drain on system resources, too, potentially slowing down your computer.

Pay attention to the performance

Security products are, by nature, programs that require quite a bit of computing resources in order to do their job. They will definitely use more computing power than your media player, for example. If your computer is not the most powerful on the market, you should take into consideration the performance aspect:

• Have a small impact on the boot timings of your computer. Your Windows should start almost as fast as it did before you installed your security product.

• Have a small impact on your computer’s performance. A very effective security solution is no good if it bogs down your computer. A good security product will know how to use your computer’s resources in a way that doesn’t negatively impact your computing experience in terms of performance and responsiveness.
• Be fast in scanning your computer for malware. Good antiviruses tend to be faster than others when it comes to scanning your computer for malware threats.

When choosing the right security product for you, you should check whether the additional tools are:

• Security-oriented. If a security product gives you for free additional tools that are not security oriented, we believe that they are not worth buying. Those tools are probably just a means to a marketing end.
• Useful. Whatever they do, the additional tools you get when buying a security product should be useful to you. They shouldn’t be just clones of tools that are already found in Windows.
• Don’t harm your security or your privacy. Some vendors choose to bundle additional tools that are not helpful in increasing your security or privacy. On the contrary, they are harming it. If a security solution includes shady toolbars, web browsers, browser add-ons or any other tools that lower your security or privacy, you should stay away from that product.
• Don’t involve additional costs. If you need to pay more money in addition to what you already paid for the security suite, they’re not worth it.

Usability is key 

According to Digital Citizen, a good security product must be easy to use both by knowledgeable users as well as casual users with little to no knowledge about security. Here are some of the facts that they are pointing out:

• Be easy to navigate. A good security solution should provide you with an intuitive way of navigating through its various windows, tabs, menus and settings.
• Be easy to use on devices with touchscreens. The era of the plain old monitor is dead. These days, the number of PCs with a touchscreen on them is increasing at a very fast rate. Thus, more and more people use touch in order to control how software works. A good security product should have large buttons, tiles, switches of all kinds, check marks and so on – control elements that are easy to touch with your finger too, not only with a mouse’s cursor.
• Be easy to understand. No matter how easy it is to navigate through a user interface, it’s no good if you don’t understand what each and every item and setting means. The configuration options that are offered should be easy to understand by all users.
• Be easy to configure. Good products are products which are easy to set… not like those at IKEA :). Security products should be easy to configure.
• Provide you with easy to find documentation. Just like any good product, good security products must provide an easy way to access their documentation. If Help documentation is available but you can’t find it, what’s the point?
• Give you complete control of how it works. Many people look for security products that don’t require any special configuration. But there are also people who want to set each and every detail of how a security product works. If that’s the case for you, a good security product must provide you with complete control.

According to heimdalsecurity.com, “ no single antivirus solution is enough to keep you safe. Even antivirus developers encourage you use multiple security software programs to keep you safe. If malware passes one software, they will have to face another, and with each new step chances of infection drop dramatically”.

And last, but not least, your attention and your smarts are some of the best antiviruses out there. Pay attention before opening any mail or links received on social media websites, delete the suspicious ones.

Tips & tricks on how to create a successful video campaign on Facebook

Today is all about finding your vision and place on the market and targeting it the right way. Specific messages are created and translated in a specific way, for each media in part. What works for YouTube may very well not work on Facebook or cinema. Even if we talk about the same brand, campaign, positioning and target. So how does one create a powerful and successful video for Facebook, in order to really help the brand?

According to kissmetrics.com, over three billion videos are watched on Facebook daily. Video is eye-catching and engaging and, when used properly, is a great way to bring life to a product or brand. The website editors identified 4 main rules that you can find here. (credit photo: Shutterstock)

As Facebook says, while video continues to grow as a storytelling medium for people and brands, it has been working with hundreds of businesses on building and analyzing video ads to discover what makes great video creative. What they found was that, like advertising of all kinds, building effective video ad creative requires both art and science.

Some rules that would anyone help create a good Facebook video are:

• Tailor your story to your audience.

People are more likely to pay attention to content that’s relevant to their interests, which means you’ll likely get better results if you customize your ad’s message for the people who see it. Consider creating unique videos (or different versions of the same video) for different audience segments.

• Invest in production.

Whether you use a camera phone or a production team, secure the best available creative resources and set a realistic production schedule and budget. People are more likely to watch and remember videos that are well-crafted and designed to play on every device. Remember, cheap doesn’t sell anymore and doesn’t give the “authenticity” feel anymore. Treat the channel with the proper respect and attention and you will get the wanted results.

• Make sure people will relate to the story, by keeping it real and close to them. Use situations that feel close to people’s lives and habits.

• Use the first few seconds wisely.

Bring your story to life quickly, so as people scroll through News Feed looking for content, your video ad quickly piques people’s interest. Consider showing brand or product imagery in the first few seconds.  Almost half of the value of a video ad is delivered in the first three seconds, according to research that Facebook commissioned from audience ratings and research company Nielsen. Seventy-four per cent of the value of a video ad is delivered to the audience in the first 10 seconds.

• Focus on storytelling.

Video length is less important than telling a cohesive and concise story. Your video ad shouldn’t be longer or shorter than it takes to tell your story well, so create a storytelling arc from the first frame to the last that keeps your audience interested along the way.

• Create empathy / entertain them / make them laugh or cry.

Everyone feels close to a good, real story that captivates them and brings their emotions to the table.

• Tell your story with and without sound.

Since videos on Facebook autoplay with sound off, it’s important to make sure your video ads entice viewers even when muted. When sound is off, beautiful imagery and on-screen text can help tell your story. When enabled, your video’s sound should offer additional value to viewers and further bring your story to life.

• Use the Groups section

Meeting friends, and sharing your life with those friends, is the business of Facebook. The platform’s ‘Groups’ video perfectly portrays how it helps people connect with others who share similar interests. It creatively identifies how users can benefit from using Facebook by providing a clearly defined problem and a beginning, middle, and end.