Cultural Content – Is it time to BeReal?
Guest post with Steven Franklin, National Archives
Good day content folks,
Today we’ve got a guest post from Steven Franklin (those of you who have been around for a few months may remember Steven’s fab previous guest post on how he took the National Archives TikTok from 0 to 2.5 million views in 5 months).
Now he’s back and pondering… is it time to…
Social media managers are often in the position of trying to make a call on whether a new platform is going to be The Next Big Thing or if it’s all going to die away in a few months. And, beyond that, whether it represents a relevant opportunity to connect your organisation meaningfully with a broad range of audiences. This is a really interesting piece for getting the inside track on those decisions and the rationale for them from National Archives/Steven’s perspective. Enjoy!
As someone who spends a far too much time on social media, it’s been impossible to avoid BeReal. Sadly, it is a platform that has left me scratching my head and confused.
For those that don’t know, the basic premise of BeReal is simple: at a random point in the day the app will send you an alert, giving you a 2 minute window to post a photo of what you are doing at that very moment. You take a photo on both cameras, designed to provide friends with a glimpse of your everyday life. The final post’s composition is similar to that of a video call. The ‘selfie’ featuring in the top left of the screen, set against the image taken with the back-facing camera. BeReal is designed to be the antidote to the curated, over-filtered, fakeness of Instagram. It’s an app that’s designed to show your life in a way that’s real. What it encourages you to do is BeReal.
Is it just a passing fad?
How many of you reading this remember Clubhouse? During the initial months of the pandemic, it was the hottest thing in town. It hasn’t quite made it’s way onto the scrap heap of social platforms that didn’t quite make it. But it certainly never got to a point of mass adoption, stifled by more established platforms rolling-out similar features.
BeReal’s latest download figures suggest that the app is only gaining in popularity, with over 14 million installs in September alone. This figure an increase of 2 million on the figures of August and a 14 million increase on January. A reason to sit-up and take note, for sure. However, these impressive install figures are quickly put into perspective when compared against the user daily open rate of the app - sitting at a lowly 9%. And this figure made all the more depressing against the user daily open rate of Instagram and TikTok, boasting figures of 39% and 29% respectively. Lots of people have it. Not many seem to regularly use it.
So given all of the recent hype, media attention, impressive month on month install figures, and traction amongst younger demographics, is it time to BeReal?
In short, my sense is that we’re a long way from mass brand adoption. But, as is often the case, all it’ll really take is one innovative and savvy social media manager to make it work and we will quickly all pile on, looking to replicate the success and capture a share of new audiences.
Here’s my take on some of the main barriers to entry for both brands and cultural organisations.
Limit on the amount of friends you can have
Any app that limits the amount of friends or followers you can accrue is always going to be off-putting to large brands. If we work on the basic premise that cultural organisations use social media platforms to increase brand awareness, retain cultural relevance, and disseminate information as widely as possible, then it makes sense that we don’t want an imposed limit as to the numbers of people that could see this content. One imagines this is a fairly simple fix, but in terms of appealing to the broad spectrum of brands, this will remain a significant reason not to invest resource into the platform.
Is there value in posting mundane things?
Imagine the scene. It’s a grey Tuesday morning. You’re ploughing through emails and doing the less glamorous parts of your job. And then you get a BeReal notification, asking you to make your daily post. Do you run across the organisation in the hope of finding something interesting or post a photo of you looking thoroughly miserable and bored at your desk? Yes, you heard it here first, working in social isn’t always glitz and glamour!
Don’t get me wrong, there’s a certain degree of relatability to being open and upfront about the mundanity of working life. A daring organisation with a witty social media manager could do great things by providing an irreverent take on working life. For obvious reasons though, cultural organisations have historically gained most traction and seen highest results when posting about collections, rather than staff.
There are instances or certain jobs where this could work. It’s likely that a conservator might be doing something visually interesting more often than not. But perhaps the greatest value lies within the Front of House team. A gallery supervisor, surrounded by priceless art or valuable historic items, could provide a glimpse into the everyday experiences of cultural organisations.
How can we tell stories?
Perhaps the single biggest barrier to entry with BeReal lies in the fact that it offers limited storytelling potential. It’s true, posts can be accompanied by a short caption, but you’re never going to be able to tell a nuanced story.
Maybe this is an unfashionable belief, but the value of cultural organisations rests in the layered and complex stories that we can tell. Our hooks are often the jaw-dropping items or quirky objects that form the body of the collection.
Anyone can post photos with limited contextual information. Some would argue there’s inherent value in doing that. It is, after all, increasing brand awareness, presumably with an audience demographic that your organisation doesn’t regularly engage. In pure marketing terms, though, how does the audience journey continue? How can we take them further down the funnel? How do we get them to engage with other content and activities? It comes back to two central questions: why are you using the platform and what are you looking to achieve?
The Final Take
As with all of these things, the subject is far more complicated than a 1,000 word post can do justice. Undoubtedly, there are hundreds of other considerations that I’ve missed or not been able to conclude. But that’s the fun of working in social, there is always something new on the horizon. Thinking about ways we can translate cultural content onto these platforms is far from a laborious task. I am convinced that a few platform tweaks, combined with an innovative social media manager, and BeReal could be a viable option. As things currently stand, though, the return on investment seems limited. Unless, of course, you’re willing to think about how you navigate some of the hurdles outlined above.
Anyway, now back to seeing Elon ruin Twitter, tracking loss of followers, and getting my head around Mastodon.