If you haven’t incorporated live content into your social strategy already, it’s time to take a closer look. With over 300 million daily active users creating and consuming Snapchat and Instagram stories, this social storytelling capability is only going to grow. The story feature on Instagram and Snapchat allows users to chain a series of snapchats together into a public facing story. Stories (for the most part) have to be uploaded in real time, so brands don’t have the luxury of creating the perfect high production photo or video. Instead, videos and photos are off the cuff and when done right, can add a humanizing element to your brand.

There are a lot of ways to skin the live content cat, so let’s take a look at two very different brands doing stories right.

Glossier
Type: B2C
Target: Millennial women

Why live content:

Glossier has branded itself as a low-maintenance skincare/makeup brand that’s high on quality and low on price. They use celebrity brand ambassadors to appeal to twenty-something women. Their audience is some of the biggest consumers of live video and story content, so it only makes sense that they have an extremely robust live content strategy.

What they’re doing:

Glossier’s live content is focused on humanizing the employees behind the brand by giving them a platform to talk about life at the office, offer a behind the scenes look at the product design process, showcase their own makeup routines, and offer up close looks at the products themselves.

Why this works:

Glossier was born out of a well-followed blog that interviewed celebrities about beauty routines, they’re also huge advocates of transparency in the beauty industry. Showing real people experiment with their products and their product development process fits in perfectly with their brand message of approachable, transparent beauty.

Cisco
B2B Company
Target: Potential Clients; large brands

Why live content:

Cisco uses live content and stories to showcase their industry thought leadership (like when they host large industry events) and flex their creativity chops in the live content space. The goal being that live content is another way to showcase their thought leadership using visuals and events as opposed to a blog post.

What they’re doing:

Cisco uses live content to cover events and places their executives speak at. They conduct mini interviews and snap pictures captioned with quick quotes from their keynote speakers.

Why this works:

Thought leadership is important to Cisco (as it is for most B2B companies). Cisco proves their brand is a cutting-edge expert in their industry with their live content presence on social. By offering a behind the scenes look into events, awards, and thought leaders, they are hoping potential clients will follow their live content features and think of Cisco first when they consider software innovation and IT services.

These two companies are using live content and stories to meet very specific brand marketing objectives by creating content that communicates their overarching brand message. This is probably the most important takeaway for developing live content on social. Don’t start creating live content without a strategy and benchmarks in place as well a sustainable approval process for content.

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