by Sofi | Oct 21, 2019 | Social Media Marketing
High Instagram engagement can help you increase your brand exposure and create better relationships with your customers, which can ultimately lead to increased sales. Even if your strategy is posting high-quality content on a regular basis, we assure you that’s not good enough. There are many other things you can do to engage your followers. So, here are four recommendations on how to create more engaging Instagram posts:
#1 Add long tail hashtags
When you post your content to Instagram, add long tail hashtags. Make sure they are relevant to your brand and industry, and don’t make them too general or too specific. Posts with too general hashtags will easily get drowned in other posts, while posts with too specific hashtags will be harder to find. Try to think like your audience and imagine what type of hashtags they are most likely to search for. Using the right long tail hashtags on your Instagram posts will help you attract and engage many followers.
#2 Use emojis
Emojis may not seem so relevant, but they can actually make a big difference when it comes to Instagram engagement. A study by the Social Media Lab found that posts with emojis had a 15% higher interaction rate, which means that using emojis on your Instagram posts can result in higher engagement. However, if you think that emojis are not really right for your brand or industry, then it’s better if you don’t use them often or at all.
#3 Add location
This one might seem like a no-brainer, but many users forget to add location to their posts. Adding location can increase your visibility to people that live in a specific place and to people searching for content related to that place. This is true for both posts and stories. So next time you post something on Instagram, don’t forget to add a location.
#4 Add a call to action
Adding CTAs to your posts is another way to boost engagement on Instagram. This means that to be more engaging your posts should include some kind of CTA statement that encourages your followers to take action, such as: click the link in bio, answer this question, tag your friends, etc. You can also include CTAs in your stories by using question or poll stickers for example. Make sure you include CTAs in your posts more often, but be careful not to overdo it because you will risk becoming annoying to your audience.
***
If you want to learn more, read the following articles on this topic:
- https://www.falcon.io/insights-hub/topics/social-media-strategy/21-tips-increase-instagram-engagement/
- https://www.quicksprout.com/instagram-engagement/
- https://www.socialinsider.io/blog/boost-instagram-engagement/
by Sofi | Dec 21, 2018 | Social Media Marketing
Social media advertising is one of the biggest social media trends, and it can benefit the growth of your business. The reach of organic content is slowly declining. Paid social makes sure that your content is getting in front of the right people. This form of advertising targets a specific audience that you outline with customizable demographic information. However, you need a strategy for paid social media advertising in order for it to work and be worth your time and money. This includes taking ad spend, content selection, and audience targeting into consideration. Here are some tips on how to create successful social media ads.
#1 Choose a Paid Social Goal
Every brand has a different goal. Prioritize your goals, and decide which one to attack first with your social media campaign. There are five common paid social goals: increase traffic, increase visibility, increase engagement, increase lead generation, and increase sales. Each one of these goals will require a different action from your target audience, so your ad needs to direct your audience on what action to take. Using social buttons helps provide the consumer with shortcuts to desired actions. Facebook and Instagram even include options for pre-set goals that affects how, when, and to who your ad is shown.
#2 Choose a Social Platform
Each social media site caters to a specific kind of content with a specific audience. So, you should run ads on sites that your target audience uses. Facebook has multiple ad formats that make it great for business-to-consumer campaigns. Instagram is suitable for increasing web traffic sales and driving awareness. Twitter heavily relies on gaining new followers, which can grow awareness and drive clicks to your website. Because of LinkedIn’s specific demographic, it is a better platform for business-to-business campaigns. Researching where your competitors’ ads are being displayed can be helpful in deciding which platform to use as well.
#3 Blend in With Organic Content
Although you want your ad to grab attention, it is not always helpful for an ad to stand out. When deciding what type of content to display, it is important to make sure that your ad content blends in with the organic content on users’ feeds and walls. Generally, people are aware of when they are viewing ads, and too many ads from your company might lead to people unfollowing you. Posts that stand out as paid social as opposed to organic content will draw more negative attention to how often they are being posted. It is important for your brand to not stand out as spammy.
#4 Choose a Bidding Strategy
One great advantage of social media ads is that they can work on any budget. However, bidding too high might be unnecessarily wasting money while bidding too low could make for an unsuccessful campaign. Researching the best days and times to run your ad can help cut costs while ensuring your ad runs when your audience will mostly likely see it.
#5 Analyze and Adjust
With any marketing strategy for your business, one of the most important steps is analyzing the results of your campaign and adjusting future campaigns based on your findings. You can view insights as to how well your ad is performing and the results in quantifiable actions during and after its duration. So, take the time to adjust your paid social media ad while it is active if the insights are showing that it isn’t reaching your audience. Afterwards, look closely at what was successful about the ad and what can be better changed for next time.
by Sofi | Sep 14, 2018 | Social Media Marketing
As one of the leading innovative social media platforms, Instagram released it’s newest feature over the summer: IGTV. This feature allows users to take longer videos in a vertical format suited for mobile devices with enhanced discoverability through channels. Instagram took advantage of the statistics revealing more people are watching digital videos than television, with mobile videos accounting for the majority of mobile data traffic. Using a simple and intuitive design fit for your mobile device, anyone can create content on IGTV. So, how can you utilize IGTV for your business? Check out these tips.
#1 Build stronger connections with customers
Use these longer and more permanent videos for deeper storytelling behind your business. IGTV allows for videos up to an hour long, and it stores them on your personal channel. This can be used to a brand’s advantage by showcasing other dimensions of your business without being limited to one type of content, length, or format. Sharing stories that resonate with your customers will build a stronger relationship between them and your brand. Meaningful connections that show the human side of your business are longer lasting.
#2 Create a better mobile experience
With 800 million users, it’s important to cater to the mobile Instagram user in a way that best suits their mobile experience. One of IGTV’s biggest boasts is the vertical format that perfectly fits mobile screens. Do not repurpose and upload old horizontal videos. Instead, start fresh and take your time creating new content that embraces the vertical format. Online audiences are more in touch with amateur videography than that of professionals. Vertical videos feel more personal, less produced, and are therefore more appealing to your audience.
#3 Know when to post
The general social media tip of knowing what times are best to post to reach your audience still applies. Instagram is currently giving IGTV priority by adding notifications for new videos, so users scrolling through their feed will instantly know when you upload content. This makes posting when your users are most likely using the app very important. Now is the time to take advantage of this new feature’s extra promotion. Be one of the first to step out and use IGTV! Consumers will remember that.
These tips will help you take advantage of IGTV as a feature. However, you might be wondering what kind of content will help you grow your business on IGTV. Check out these video content ideas.
#1 Frequently Asked Questions
Do your current and prospective customers continually ask the same questions on your posts, website, by email, and by phone? You can film a weekly Q&A answering all of the frequently asked questions you collect. This provides your customers with important information with a personal touch that can build their relationship with your brand. With some luck, you can save customer service time as well!
#2 Behind the Scenes
Everyone feels more connected to a brand when they can see what happens behind the scenes. You want your audience to respect your work and feel loyal to your brand. Bringing them behind the scenes, even digitally, makes people feel included. Customers want to see the real you, and using IGTV provides a more authentic approach.
#3 Product Reviews
Most likely, your Instagram followers follow you because they are already interested in your product. IGTV is a great way to give more in-depth product reviews that are visually appealing and personal. Tag other accounts that are relevant or included in your product reviews to make them aware of your content to increase reach.
by Sofi | Aug 17, 2018 | Marketing Strategy, Social Media Marketing
Every business needs a solid marketing strategy to ensure that they’re meeting the needs of current and potential customers to the best of the company’s ability. In today’s digital world, utilizing social media platforms and creating a social media strategy is an important element of this overall marketing strategy. According to HostingFacts, there will be an estimated 2.62 billion social media users in 2018. Social media is one of the most powerful (and FREE) marketing tools for your business, so you need a strategy to use this tool effectively. Here are the key components of a successful social media strategy.
#1 Identify Ideal Customers
Your social media posts should speak to a specific audience, which should also be your ideal customers. Creating or using your existing buyer personas will help you define and target the right people in the right places at the right times with the right messages. This will also help you choose the right social media platforms as part of your strategy later on. To create a buyer persona, you need to identify your ideal customers’ demographics, interests, problems, likes, dislikes, and motivations. Then you can create posts that best appeal to them.
#2 Set Goals and Objectives
The point of your marketing strategy is to accomplish business goals. You cannot move forward without knowing what you are working toward. The best way to do this is to look at your business’s needs and identify what you want to achieve with your strategy. Then, decide how you want to use social media to achieve these objectives. However, do not try to tackle all of your objectives at once through social media or else the messages will be confusing for followers. Focus on one goal at a time and switch when necessary.
#3 Choose Your Platforms
Most social media users have accounts on multiple platforms, but not every platform is right for your business. To effectively reach your audience, you will want to utilize more than one network, but do not attempt to engage customers on all networks or you will spread yourself too thin. The goal is to stay active on the platform you do use. Each platform caters to specific kinds of content and draws different demographic groups. To avoid wasting time and effort on the wrong platform, use your buyer personas to choose the right platform. Another helpful exercise might be to create a customer survey to find out what social media sites your clients actively use.
#4 Create Content Plan
Catching the attention of your audience requires great content. There are three main components to consider when creating a content plan: type of content, time of posting, and frequency of posting. All three of these components are heavily impacted by your platform, and each social media site has a unique “sweet spot” for each. All content online is generally the most successful when it is visual, emotional, and useful. This can be used as a guideline when deciding what kinds of content to create.
#5 Assigning Team Roles
The first step of deciding how to implement this strategy is deciding whether your internal staff will head your social media strategy, you will outsource the work, or have a combination of the two. Having a clear understanding of who is responsible for what will increase productivity and prevent confusion or overlapping efforts. Your strategy should assign all of the necessary roles and outline the exact responsibilities and expectations of each role. There are many tools available online to help your team develop content on their own, track the analytics of your social accounts, and manage/assign tasks to your team.
#6 Decide on Budget
Social media can be a completely free resource for your marketing needs, but there are also ways to spend money on any budget to increase effectiveness. There are also other expenses to consider such as social media monitoring and content creation. Will you need a graphic designer? Will you need video production? Do you plan on buying ads? Make a list of the tools and services you need, and then decide on the budget required for your current strategy. You can adjust your strategy until it fits your ideal budget
#7 Track Analytics and Adjust
Once you have your social media strategy outlined, it’s time for action! Execute your plan, and wait for results. Analytics tracking is one of the most important things you can do to improve your social media marketing strategy over time because it shows you what kind of content and promotion strategies are working or not working. There are many tools available online to help you track the progress of your social media accounts and analyze the data. Continuously making changes in order to improve the effectiveness of your accounts should be the most important factor in your social media strategy.
by Sofi | Aug 3, 2018 | Social Media Marketing
You probably hear about “viral” social media content regularly, and it is possible that you even view this kind of content multiple times a day. What exactly does “going viral” mean? Urban Dictionary explains it as an image, video, or link that rapidly spreads online by being frequently shared. In the marketing field, creating viral content is the best way for your brand or product to reach maximum exposure. Let’s look at five examples of brilliant viral social media content.
#1 WATERisLIFE’s first world complaints YouTube video
The non-profit organization WATERisLIFE created a controversial social media campaign that ended up being a huge success. They created a documentary composed of clips of the underprivileged with captions of common complaints from the privileged. Examples of such complaints are “I hate it when my phone charger won’t reach my bed” and “When I go to the bathroom and I forget my phone.” The result was a very striking visual that obtained over one million views in the first day. At the end of the video was the caption “First world problems…aren’t problems,” which directed interest to their Twitter as followers made their own captions with the hashtag #firstworldproblems.
#2 Cadbury’s giant chocolate Facebook thumb’s up
Originally as a thank you to fans for reaching one million likes, Cadbury constructed a giant Facebook thumb out of their Dairy Milk bars. The photo of this construction quickly went viral, and they gained an additional 40,000 followers within a very short amount of time. Due to this success, they decided to stream a live real-time video that showed the making of the thumb. The video alone was viewed by over 350,000 fans around the world.
#3 Dunkin’ Donuts and #thedress
You might remember when the color of #thedress sparked debate all over the internet. It started when Scottish singer Caitlin McNeill posted a picture of her dress on Tumblr asking users if the color was blue/black or white/gold. Dunkin’ Donuts capitalized on this piece of viral content in order to make their own viral content based on something that they already knew was wildly popular on the web. The company tweeted a picture of black/blue and white/gold glazed donuts with #thedress hashtag. Adding to an internet craze already in effect, the post was an instant success.
#4 Kellog’s Eggo campaign with Stranger Things
Netflix original Stranger Things has a cult following that invaded popular culture, so when the second season came out Kellog jumped on board to take advantage of the character Eleven’s favorite snack: Eggo waffles. Kellog discussed a marketing campaign with Netflix before the new season came out that resulted in an advertisement partnership. Their marketing team prepared a whole line of Stranger Things inspired ads, including a tweet written upside down asking the Stranger Things Twitter if they were messing with Kellog again. Fans loved the partnership of these two companies.
#5 Chiquita Banana’s solar eclipse
There was a lot of hype online regarding the 2017 solar eclipse, and Chiquita took credit for this eclipse by dubbing the sun’s crescent shape the “Banana Sun.” For a full three weeks leading up to the eclipse, the company created gifs, a website, and even a massive glowing banana. This content gained Chiquita thousands of new Twitter followers, hundreds of comments, and thousands of retweets. They even released banana eclipse videos that reached over a million views each.
