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Suzi Dafnis and co-host Cat Matson are back together, after their South by Southwest adventures in Austin, Texas, to present Meerkat – the video streaming app that was the darling of the interactive festival.
The South by South West Interactive Festival is known for putting social media apps on the map and it was here that Meerkat was thrust into the limelight.
In their post-SXSW musings, Suzi and Cat both found it fascinating how this year was the first that social media wasn’t a huge conversation of its own. Rather, because of how ubiquitous it has become, social media is now assumed knowledge. No longer are there presentations explaining how to use Facebook, Twitter or the latest app. Social media is no longer foregrounded but remains in the background since it’s taken for granted that everyone is using it.
Because social media dominated the conversation at SXSW festivals of the past but has now receded into the backdrop, SXSW 2015 was able to focus on emerging trends in all interactive media, and innovation in health.
Suzi and Cat reiterate that why they go back to SXSW year after year is to come back to Australia, feeling expanded because this interactive festival is such an eye-opener.
Suzi introduces Meerkat as an essential social media-marketing tool for small businesses.
In essence, Meerkat is an immediate way for business owners to stay connected with their clients. It enables others to have immediate access to videos as they’re being broadcasted live.
Suzi, explaining the genesis for the name Meerkat, says that meerkats are really alert beings, travelling in colonies, and frequently popping their heads up.
Creating a video for your small business is something that you should seriously consider. Why? Because from an advertising perspective, videos are superior to print and radio; people like listening and watching things. They absorb information better from videos, which is why it always beats out text-based advertisements.
Moreover, Cat states that with improved bandwidths and improved mobile devices, there’s no excuse not to get involved with video streaming through Meerkat. Never before has it been easy to watch videos – gone are the days of videos that are slow to load.
Meerkat falls under the category of a parasite app because it is connected to Twitter and allows you to automatically stream videos to all of your Twitter followers.
The verb for Instagram is instagrammed and for Twitter is tweeted. In the same vein, the verb for Meerkat is ‘Meerkating’. For example, if you were live streaming on video the opening of a house on a Saturday morning, you would be Meerkating it.
Meerkat is incredibly user friendly. Although Meerkat makes everything immediate and ‘now’, if you can’t watch the clip, you can save the stream for viewing later.
Meerkat is an inventive, innovative and interesting way to connect with customers. Allowing users to host a live broadcast from their smartphone device, Meerkat is a potent communication tool.
To give your small business that edge when connecting with customers, why not give Meerkat a try?
Mentioned in this episode:
- Meerkat App
- Meerkat raises $12.5million
- Meerkat stole the show at SXSW. Sorry Twitter.
- Inside the Meerkat Bubble
- How Meerkat is going to change the 2016 election
- The Growth Show (Podcast)
This post was authored by Yenée Saw. Yenée is currently completing a content marketing internship at the Australian Businesswomen’s Network. She studies an Arts/Law degree at the University of New South Wales.
