The new social media app Vero, has made a rocketing appearance into the lives of social media users as this year. Claiming to be a platform which allows people to be themselves, the app’s name directly translates into ‘truth’, a telling sign that it is putting itself up against the most popular social media sites. Vero is different to the likes of Facebook and Instagram because it’s a subscription-based service meaning that at some point (user figure unannounced) subscribers will have to pay a small annual fee, the amount of which is not currently known. It already has over 3 million users who have bought into Vero’s ethos, expecting a ‘more authentic form of self-expression’. So, what are the pros and cons of this platform and is it really worth people’s time against the established social media giants?
Vero has attracted a wide fan base and grown quickly, namely because it boasts a strictly chronological feed. Ever since Instagram introduced an algorithm in 2016 which predicts what users enjoy seeing the most and presents these images and video to them via their feeds, a huge amount of users have complained. They argue that their content is being engaged with less and less as a result of the abolition of the chronological feed. It’s no wonder that these users have been quick to jump onto Vero to share their content in the hopes that their engagement levels will pick back up. Just like Instagram, Vero allows you to take and post photos as well as videos. This isn’t the only upside of the platform, it has also won users over by stating that it will never display any adverts. This means that the users, not the advertisers, are the customers. For small business owners, this is hugely valuable. Many SMEs struggle to reach their target audience on Instagram and Facebook if they don’t have a huge following already and/or a sizable advertising budget to back them. Vero allows small businesses and startups to enter a level playing field with more established brands and influencers.
There are additional bonuses of Vero, too. Simpler privacy settings, higher quality pictures, a 5 minute video upload allowance as well as users being able to include their own outbound links, make it clear why the platform has been able to attract so much interest.
All is not golden, yet, however. New social media app Vero might be appealing to the masses at the moment but is it really going to be able to deliver all the sparkling features it has promised? First and foremost, a new platform has a lot of unknowns. We don’t yet know how much a subscription will cost and whether the majority of the general public will latch on. We also don’t know if it will manage to sustain itself after the initial hype dies down.
We aren’t sure what the user demographic will be so knowing who your business will be able to attract on there is unclear, making it hard to judge whether Vero will be valuable for business social media or not.
At the moment, one thing is clear: the number of users on Vero doesn’t compare to that of Instagram and Facebook. There is no ability to Live Stream, a feature which can be used to gain a lot of traction on both Instagram and Facebook and there are no analytical tools for businesses on Vero to be able to assess the success of their efforts on the platform. Another downside is that you are not able to schedule content to be published like you can on other social media sites. For businesses, scheduling in advance takes a lot of pressure off and means that during work hours, you can focus on what it is you need to be doing at that time, rather than cropping images and coming up with appropriate captions.
So, should you sign up to the new social media app Vero and see what Vero can do for your business? Well, the decision is yours completely but what we would say is, there’s no harm in checking the new platform out and seeing if it works for you. Perhaps start by creating an account in your own name, rather than your business name and upload a picture of yourself as the profile photo. As Vero is all about “true social”, experiment to see whether taking a more human approach can benefit your business. It is a social platform and people are much more likely to be sociable with other people, not faceless businesses. Signing up to a new platform as an early user always has some pros, from getting in front of audiences and influencers that are much harder to reach on other platforms to discovering a whole host of innovative content.
We have only just signed up, so are complete newbies. If you have already joined or decide to sign up too, let us know in the comments below. What are your thoughts on Vero so far?