By Lane Ellis

Should B2B brands embrace the metaverse, BeReal, and other developing social communication channels, and if so, when is the right time to start becoming involved?

Part of what keeps the online world indispensable for marketers is the fact that social media platforms are forever either being created — in the form of new ones — or seeing their flames dim and eventually extinguish, in the case of those that don’t make it.

The web graveyard is littered with the digital skeletons of so many formerly promising social platforms, including some that were once seemingly poised to rise to the echelon of the most-used forms of online communication.

This social media platform churn is also what helps keep the web interesting and alive, yet there’s no doubt the turnover has made it harder for B2B marketers to invest in new and developing social channels.

The most frequently heard social channel of the future has over the past several years been the metaverse, while other new platforms have already taken off in earnest, such as BeReal, which recently supplanted TikTok as the most-downloaded mobile social media app.

Let’s take a look at how B2B marketers and brands can best assess new social channels, and in particular what they need to know about the metaverse and BeReal.

1 — BeReal: Enhancing The Human Face of Brands

BeReal — the mobile social media app that recently overtook TikTok as the most-downloaded among users worldwide — features posts that simultaneously capture front and back camera photos that are published at differing times each day on the up-and-coming platform.

One element BeReal offers that could prove particularly useful for B2B markets is its inherent aim of showing the more slice-of-life human side of its users — something brands have increasingly sought to reveal.

B2B marketers can consider utilizing B2Real in efforts that take advantage of the platform’s humanizing element, with just a few examples being:

• Behind-the-scenes double-image looks at company team-members, from corporate executives to freshly-hired interns.
• Candid looks at how customers are using a firm’s products and services in their day-to-day lives, showing both how they interact with on-screen or other physical elements and how these interactions make customers feel.
• At industry events B2B brands can offer up unique daily BeReal looks at conference activity and learning.
• B2B influencers and creators have a new canvas on which to share their ongoing efforts in creating and sharing content that answers key questions, in a new format that keeps things different.

Those are only a few of the many ways that savvy B2B marketers can experiment with BeReal content, and as with most rapidly emerging social media platforms, a great deal can be tested out and accomplished with relatively little cost or effort.

“If BeReal ends up going the mega-platform route, it could start attracting big-name brands, too,” Lizzy Lawrence and Sarah Roach recently suggested for Protocol in “BeReal wants close connections. Can it stay that way …read more

Source:: Top Rank Blog

Author: Aaron