Tag: instagram

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Social Media

How To Use Instagram Carousels to Drive Engagement

Instagram carousels are not a new feature, and were first introduced to Instagram in 2017. So why bring them up now? They’ve regained relevance in 2022 because of engagement trends, signaling a change in how users on Instagram are behaving and consuming content.

While the rule of social media marketing is often that content is king, we have to remember that a king cannot rule without his advisors, chief among them being data. And data shows that Instagram carousels are currently netting greater engagement in terms of clicks, comments, likes, and saves alike.

If you have been diligently using social media to market your business online, then leveraging the potential for growth through carousel ads and carousel posts should definitely be on your to-do list for early 2022. Here are a few important tips and pointers.

What are Instagram Carousels?

Instagram carousels are album posts that contain as many as ten different slides or cards, either one of which can be an image or a video.

Instagram has been letting people upload video and image posts in album form for years now, and it seems the data is showing that carousel posts are becoming one of the best ways to drive up engagement around your brand on the app.

Some key statistics account managers and marketers should know: profiles with less than 10,000 followers have the best engagement when posting more carousels, while the best performing medium for accounts between 10,000 and 100,000 followers was video.

But for accounts larger than that, at 100,000 and more, things switched back over to favoring carousel engagement – with an average engagement of 1.40 percent, versus about 1.1 percent on image and video posts.

In other words: carousel posts benefit the smallest and largest accounts the most.

When posting an Instagram carousel of your own, here are a couple important limitations to keep in mind for feeds:

  • Video cards can be up to 120 seconds in duration.
  • Each card has a maximum file size limit of 30 MB.
  • The uploaded image should be JPG or PNG.
  • Carousel posts can be anywhere from 2 to 10 cards.
  • The aspect ratio for each card should be 1:1.
  • Ideal resolution for image cards is 1080 x 1080 or higher.
  • Text density matters. More than 20 percent text may lead to reduced ad delivery to customers.
  • Maximum text length is 2200 characters.

On the other hand, here are important considerations when setting up your carousel posts for stories:

  • The aspect ratio of your post should be 9:16 (vertical), 16:9 (horizontal), or 4:5.
  • Image and video resolution should be at least 1080 x 1920.
  • Video cards can be up to 15 seconds in duration.

Why You Should Bother with Instagram Carousels

The main reason carousel posts are more interesting for Instagram profiles moving into 2022 is that they bring in more impressions, more likes, more comments, and are more likely to be saved than other posts, especially if you use all ten cards or slides.

Even for accounts with anywhere between 10,000 and 100,000 followers, carousel posts were still more competitive than normal image posts at an average of 2.01 percent impressions versus 1.76 percent.

And even more importantly, carousel posts average the highest engagement per impression regardless of profile size. This means that no matter how large or small your profile is, you have the best chance of generating a conversation with your followers through a carousel post.

Being on Instagram at all is crucial at a time like this. Social media is just one avenue into building a better online customer base, which current times have taught us is important.

But Instagram is gearing up to become much more than just a place for people to share pictures and videos from their family vacations. Instagram is gearing up to enable platform-wide ecommerce through small and large online retailers alike, and further empower advertisers to promote and sell their products on the app.

Building your profile in 2022 means laying the foundation for a stronger customer base as Instagram grows into a marketplace of its own.

Get the Basics Right

At the end of the day, creating a good Instagram post to promote your brand is still a matter of understanding and mastering the fundamentals – even if they’re spread across ten cards.

That means writing good copy, making sure it’s clean and proofread, finding a readable font and size to work with, following the ad specs, and keeping things short and sweet. This is before we get to the actual design and content of the post itself – which, of course, is just as crucial.

A good carousel post is one that not only stays true to the fundamentals of good design and readability but introduces flow while maintaining uniqueness per slide.

One update Instagram made to their carousel feature was that if a user scrolled past one slide on your carousel post or ad without engaging with it, the next time it would show up on their feed they would see another slide.

This would increase your chance of making an impact on users – and helps explain why carousel posts have a much higher engagement average than other types of posts. Unlike single images and video, a carousel posts nets you as many as ten different opportunities to make a new first impression on the same user, with the same post.

But that means you can’t have any given post looking completely nonsensical out of context. The art in creating a good carousel post is that you need a flow of posts that make sense individually, but still encourage readers or viewers to slide through the cards and get to the call of action. Here are a few great examples.

Let Your Content Breathe

It’s important not to try and see this as an opportunity to cram more information into a brand-new format – instead, see the expanded format as an opportunity for the same amount of information to be presented in a better, more entertaining, more interesting way.

It’s very easy to lose your readers if you cram too much into your carousel post.

Carousel posts have been around for a while, but Instagram’s changes to the way they’re presented, as well as increased potential for long-term growth and results means that you should be leveraging them this year to make the most of your profile.

Let us help you spruce up your Instagram account, and get your brand the kind of online representation it deserves.

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Social Media

Instagram Expands with Reels

If you were asked “what is Instagram?” and opened with the answer “it’s a photo sharing app”, you’d be forgiven for making a false assumption – or at least, one that the company is hoping to prove wrong in the near future.

Opening with new features such as Instagram Shopping, and now the newly updated Reels function, head of Instagram Adam Mosseri has announced and gone further into detail on the app’s ongoing and continued expansions, as it plans to diversify in the fields of social media.

Currently, Mosseri identified four key strategies in Instagram’s continued development. Note the highlighted keywords. They are:

  • Supporting creators through new monetization options.
  • Shifting gears towards focusing on video content, with expansions to the aforementioned Reels feature.
  • Expanding Instagram shopping to take advantage of the recent surge in e-commerce.
  • Finally, expanding into messaging. Mosseri’s video post on Twitter explains that more and more people have been using Instagram to communicate, and that in-app communication has been shifting steadily towards direct messages.

No Longer a Photo Sharing App

Changes to Instagram Reels, and Instagram video content, are planned to be much more than yet another feature. Perhaps in part to shift away from the criticism that Instagram might be trying to ape on potential competitors like YouTube or TikTok, and Vine in the past, it is instead part of a general change in direction for the app, towards leaning in on video. In other words, this isn’t a toe-in-the-water gimmick – it’s supposed to be the company’s new direction.

To be more specific, Instagram is banking on making entertainment – both as a provider and a source of revenue for entertainers – its main feature. After all, that’s what most users use the app for, according to their own research.

To support that, Instagram has recently started rolling out ads on Reels posts worldwide. Reels ads are full-screen and vertical and will be toggled in between Reels posts as viewers spend time watching through their feed. The ads can be up to 30 seconds in total length, and can be interacted with through likes, comments, and even a sharing function.

According to the company’s own blog post, these ads will: “help businesses reach greater audiences, allowing people to discover inspiring new content from brands and creators.”

Or, to put it more concretely, they’re coinciding with the release of updated recommendation features on Instagram, designed to help content creators reach wider audiences, improve user experience by bringing them closer to content they might find interesting, and helping advertisers by bringing more views to their ads. A win, win, win, on paper.

Wait, What Is Reels?

Reels is a feature Instagram rolled out nearly a year ago, in August 2020. At the time, it seemed like an attempt to stop TikTok in its tracks – or at least, that’s what the app was lampooned for.

Reels are 15-second multi-clip videos you can record and edit with Instagram’s own in-app sounds, filters, effects, and more. Reels are featured on your followers’ feeds, and you can make them available throughout the app if you’re posting from a public account, via the Explore tab. Since its release, Reels editing functions included:

  • Additional audio from Instagram’s own music library, and your own recorded sounds.
  • Augmented Reality effects, both user-created and from Instagram.
  • Speed up and slow-mo functions.
  • And more

While Reels hasn’t taken off quite as well as its other video sharing competitors, it still has a few impressive accolades, including over 22 percent more engagement versus a regular Instagram post or story in the case of the NBA.

Currently, Instagram is testing a new Reels collab function in India.

Should I Invest More Time Advertising on Instagram?

While the announcement that Instagram will continue to push to support content creators and enable simpler in-app relationships between them and advertisers is exciting, Instagram has always been an effective platform to garner engagement, provided you hit the mark with your niche and content.

Furthermore, almost everyone on the app – an overwhelming 90 percent – follow at least one business, whether it’s Victoria’s Secret or a local coffee shop. Companies know and continue to leverage Instagram as a research tool when looking for B2B partners on products and services – over a third of surveyed B2B decision-makers cited Instagram as a deciding research tool.

In other words, given the audience and the numbers, it’s a good idea to market your products and services on the Gram. You just need the right strategy.

So, What’s the Future of the App?

There’s a lot to read up on Instagram’s business strategies and future plans, but only the people actually making the sausage knows what goes into it.

We’ve already gotten hints that Instagram is planning to bank more heavily on a content creator system, with monetization strategies centered around improved recommendations for users for both content and ads.

We also know that the company is going to continue developing Instagram Shopping, potentially rolling out tested features such as the new AR try-on feature for beauty products in other industries, such as fashion.

And finally, we’ve heard about Instagram’s future as a video platform, or truer to their words, an entertainment platform that is currently prioritizing video.

Advertisers may want to keep an eye on the potential for Reels ads and how best to implement them, as well as watch as Instagram continues to work on its content creator system, which aims to supplant the ongoing behind-the-scenes influencer system where larger accounts get scouted and paid off-app to promote products.

Naturally, Instagram wants its cut – while also enabling everyone else to produce better content, form better partnerships, and provide a better use experience.

At the end of the day, we will just have to wait and see how these plans with pan out. Right now, Instagram remains one of the largest social networks in the world, with well over a billion users.

Tapping into that user base with fresh and original content continues to be a viable marketing strategy. With Reels ads and future monetization options, Instagram aims to make it even easier to appeal to the users it sends your way.

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Social Media

Instagram Announces Plan to Develop Influencer Marketplace

Instagram has seen a surge in daily use because of the pandemic, along with the rest of the social media landscape. It has also affected the dynamic and culture of Instagram influencers – and the rise of influence activism and community outreach through social media.

Many of these brand-influencer relationships were formed through platforms like Instagram, as they have for years – but never quite at the volume seen during the pandemic.

In response to this, and to address a slew of other issues surrounding the widespread use of social media to scout and create brand-influencer relationships, Facebook has announced the development of a new influencer marketplace in place of its recent Instagram Shopping feature.

Why is Instagram Announcing This Now?

Facebook has previously stated that they have refrained from implementing any tools designed to improve brand-influencer interaction to keep the app from becoming too commercial.

But it seems that the last few months have changed their mind. The fact is that many have turned to Instagram to support themselves throughout the pandemic or grow their very own brand.

The growth of the brand-influencer dynamic has exploded throughout the last year, and its purely informal presence has paved the way for some serious concerns about equity and exploitation.

This move on Facebook’s part is largely designed to bring transparency to the whole ecosystem and facilitate the exchange of gigs and money between brands and influencers in a way that would allow for a more seamless experience.

According to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, creators “should be able to get a cut of the sales of things that they’re recommending, and we should build up an affiliate recommendation marketplace to enable that to all happen.” Furthermore, Instagram wants to develop a “branded content marketplace” to match influencers with brands.

Depending on how the matchmaking feature and marketplace will be implemented, it’s plain to see that Facebook would also benefit from a potentially larger share of the pie.

Zuckerberg did note that the plan is to offer “very favorable terms” to content creators and that they’re “not building this from the perspective of us trying to make a lot of money”.

“Branded content is the economic engine behind the creator ecosystem,” said Instagram head Adam Mosseri in an Instagram Live in late April. “Matchmaking is something we can add a lot of value for.”

Other efforts Facebook has previously mentioned and is considering implementing on the app include a tipping system, video and content monetization, and other means of making money through the app.

Rather than shy away from the idea of a commercial Instagram, it seems that Facebook is interested in further exploring the app’s potential for both businesses and personal brands/entrepreneurs. Keeping things informal, Facebook has said, has led to an opaque system where the prices paid for the same kind of posts vary greatly.

What a New Marketplace Means for Businesses and Influencers

So far, all the information Facebook has been willing to divulge has been pointing towards a greater suite of tools to help content creators monetize their work while making it easier for businesses to connect with professionals who would best represent their brand through a proprietary matchmaking system.

But the details of how this affiliate system might be implemented, how matchmaking will work, or how businesses might compensate influencers (aside from an affiliate system) are up in the air.

Assuming the model will work similarly to Instagram’s shopping platform, monetization is likely to be implemented over the app itself, and new Terms of Service from Instagram might specify and disallow brands from paying incentives to creators under the table.

But with no explicit details, it’s important to note that most of this will remain speculative until Instagram makes another announcement for their new influencer marketplace.

A Widespread but Opaque Business Practice

One of the primary motivators Mosseri mentioned during the live reveal was the need to solve Instagram’s problem of having an “opaque system”, where influencers vie for a chance to represent a brand in hopes of building a long-lasting and profitable relationship, even if the first few paychecks are less than promising or take on the form of intangible “exposure”, with no context of how other influencers are being compensated for the same kind of work and effort.

While Instagram has been the cradle for many a highly publicized influencer success story, being an influencer is a risky and difficult proposition in a completely unregulated creator ecosystem, best described as a “winner-take-all economy,” as stated by Brooke Erin Duffy, associate professor of communication at Cornell University. “The lack of regulation amplifies these imbalances” between so-called “idealized influencers” and “aspiring influencers”.

A marketplace may help aspiring influencers earn enough to continue to develop their talents while encouraging more content creators to consider Instagram as a platform with similar potential to YouTube or Twitch as a means to connect with brands, develop and nurture audiences, and monetize one’s entertainment talent.

That earlier point – about mirroring YouTube’s business model for creators – is yet another motivator behind Facebook’s embrace of a more commercial Instagram. With TikTok and YouTube vying for supremacy on video content, Instagram is seeking ways to edge out its competitors – or at least keep up with them.

Watch Out for New Developments

We’re sure to hear more from Facebook and Instagram as development on their marketplace continues. More information will be needed to gauge how this change might affect businesses that rely on influencers to build their audience.

In general, this change will help smaller influencers get noticed and matched to respective local as well as global brands and make money through Instagram. It will also incentivize spending as much time on the app as possible – as influencers will no longer have to link to outgoing shops and platforms and can instead both promote and sell products through the app itself.

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Social Media

Facebook Confirms: Instagram For Kids Is Coming

According to an internal post obtained by BuzzFeed News and a statement from Mark Zuckerberg given at a Congressional hearing earlier in March, Facebook is currently prioritizing the development of an Instagram for Kids, specifically targeting audiences below the age of 13.

Instagram’s vice president of product, Vishal Shah, wrote to employees on the company message board in early March, stating: “I’m excited to announce that going forward, we have identified youth work as a priority for Instagram and have added it to our H1 priority list.”

As of right now, Instagram does not allow individuals under the age of 13 to use the service. However, the protections put in place to prevent younger teens and children from joining the app are not very strong.

Some speculate that the decision to create a new app specifically for younger audiences comes in part from an interest in protecting existing younger users from the negative influences of the social media app, ranging from increased potential for self-harm, body dysmorphia, and cyberbullying, to exposure to conspiracy content and extremism.

Instagram for Kids is On the Way

One way or the other, Facebook has confirmed that Instagram for Kids (not the official name) is in the works. But it has also stated that the development of the product is very much in its early stages, meaning we know little of what to expect form Facebook in terms of additional protections, privacy, service costs, monetization techniques, and advertising.

What we do know is that the internal memo identifies two specific priority missions of the company: “(a) accelerating our integrity and privacy work to ensure the safest possible experience for teens and (b) building a version of Instagram that allows people under the age or 13 to safely use Instagram for the first time.”

According to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s intentions for an Instagram for Kids center around working out issues that the current app has with underage audiences.

“There were clearly issues that need to be thought through and worked out, including how parents can control the experience of kids, especially kids under the age of 13,” Zuckerberg explained at the hearing. “And we haven’t worked through all of that yet.”

The US government is concerned about Facebook’s apparent lack of transparency towards crucial information such as how many of Instagram’s users are estimated to be under the age of 13, especially given the company’s track record regarding privacy and conspiratorial content, as well as cyberbullying.

During her opening statement in the virtual meeting, Republican Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers asked: “What will it take for your business models to stop harming children?” Perhaps this app is one of Facebook’s answers to that question.

Justified Worries and Concerns

An estimated 95 percent of teenagers have access to a smartphone, with the overwhelming majority of them logging the most hours on Snapchat, Instagram, and TikTok. In 2018, nearly half of all surveyed teens stated that they were online “almost constantly”.

That number has assuredly risen since the pandemic, at a time where teens have been all but encouraged to lead their social lives almost wholly through digital means. But all that connectivity comes at a steep price, according to various studies.

While only a quarter of teens in 2018 found that social media’s impact on their lives has been mostly negative, another Pew survey from the same year found that 59 percent of teens experienced one of the following forms of abusive behavior on social media:

  • Offensive name-calling
  • False rumors
  • Receiving unsolicited explicit images
  • Constant asking of where they are, what they’re doing, who they’re with by someone who isn’t a parent
  • Physical threats
  • Having explicit images of themselves shared without consent

Social media is a relatively young and volatile technology, and negative content is to be expected, especially at the sheer volume at which data is being produced and consumed on the Internet today. Unfortunately, teens and children with access to these apps and websites (often against the companies’ own Terms of Service) are most at risk of experiencing the negative impact of this content.

There’s more than just name-calling and unwanted messages on platforms like Facebook and Instagram. Other concerns include the rampant spread of misinformation and conspiracies, and the platform’s potential for radicalization.

In part, the decision to create a separate app for children may help protect some of them from the less savory elements of online social media without attempting to do the impossible, which would be to cut them off from a growing online social ecosystem.

Of course, there’s a clear incentive for the company here. An Instagram for Kids would help stave off some of the criticism headed for Facebook over the negative influence that its apps may be having on kids especially. Furthermore, it may given them an opportunity to funnel young users into their other networks when they become of age.

What This Might Mean for Parents

Now more than ever, being a parent and trying to protect one’s child from negative interactions in the outside world is incredibly difficult. Parents will continue to have to supervise and monitor how their children interact with the Internet and use social media, something Mr. Zuckerberg claims he does at home as well.

Facebook also suggested that a potential Instagram for Kids might expand parents’ options for monitoring their child’s use of social media, further empowering parents.

How Will Facebook Monetize an Instagram for Kids?

But perhaps the most crucial question is: what about the money? Facebook and most other free social media platforms monetize their data aggregation and advertising functionalities, allowing users to use their services for free while selling the ability to target and market to hundreds of millions of people.

But if Facebook is planning on creating a platform that specifically allows advertisers to target children on the Internet, it may be entering a regulatory maze. So far, the company has been unclear as to how they are planning to monetize an Instagram for Kids, or to what degree advertisers may be able to work with Facebook on such a platform.

The comparable YouTube Kids has been heavily changed to comply with the FTC’s children’s privacy law, with the onus largely being on content creators to correctly label and monetize their content according to whether it targeted kids or not.

In many cases, YouTube would designate content as “for kids” depending on viewership and the nature of the content and would strictly control engagement and monetization on such videos, even if that content wasn’t flagged as for kids by the respective creator.

Many videos with subject matter usually associated with children (including popular video games and comic book characters) may be intended for mature audiences. Furthermore, terms like “kid attractive” and “kid directed” are not at all clearly defined by the FTC. So far, YouTube is relying on machine learning to try and better distinguish between content intended for younger audiences, and content for more mature audiences.

What the content on an Instagram for Kids would look like, and how advertisers would be allowed on the platform, are unanswered questions for the near future. Keep an eye on this space.

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Social Media

Instagram Guides Now Available to All Users

In May, most of the country was used to the idea of working from home, with the understanding that this isolation would be indefinite. Instagram used this to launch its Guides feature, focusing on mental health.

Initially, Guides were only available to certain content creators, organizations, publishers, and public figures. It allowed those accounts to create curated collections of content, using their own profile as well as the profiles of other Instagram users.

Earlier this month, Instagram announced they’ve expanded the Guides feature to all users.

What is Instagram Guides?

According to a press release, “After Guides were first introduced in May, Instagram saw strong community response and requests for increased availability. Guides provide another way for the community to connect with their favorite accounts, discover new products from people they may not already follow, and get inspired by what content people are loving on Instagram.”

Guides, as a concept, was intended to target travel content. However, because of the pandemic, leaving the country isn’t allowed. Instagram pivoted the direction to promote self-care tips and suicide hotlines. As Black Lives Matter protests started unfolding across the country, Instagram Guides began to include an array of resources for the black community.

The goal is to provide users with another way to post longer-form content going beyond photo and video. Not only can creators dive deeper, but they can also create a multimedia experience to engage and expand their audiences. Guide creators are able to include their own tips and commentary alongside the content they curate.

The expansion tells us though, Instagram is focusing on keeping users on its platform, rather than directing traffic to content creators’ blogs or websites.

Types of Instagram Guides

Back in August, TechCrunch reported changes to Instagram Guides. Users can choose between:

  • Places Guide: This guide recommends a person’s favorite places.
  • Products Guide: A guide for recommending your favorite products to others.
  • Posts Guide: A guide showcasing a variety of posts on a similar topic.

Right now it seems most people are using the Posts guide type. They make a great way to show step-by-step processes, so they are wonderful for recipes, DIY projects, crafts, etc.

Where Guides Display on Profiles

At this point, Guides are currently featured prominently on account pages. They are generally placed between IGTV and Tagged Photos. They may also be featured in the Instagram Shop. The Instagram Shop is another new feature within the app that connects creators with new customers.

By linking guides to shopping, there is plenty of space for brands and influencers to build style Guides. Linking these guides to their IG shops may help boost sales during the pandemic recession.

When visiting another person’s profile, you’ll see a Guides icon on the feed tab that will take you to all the guides they have published.

How to Create an Instagram Guide

  • Tap the + icon on the top-right corner of your profile page. Select “Guide.”
  • Choose your guide type.
    • If you choose Posts, you’ll recommend posts that you’ve either created or saved in the past.
    • If you choose Products, you’ll only be able to curate products available from an Instagram Shop.
    • If you choose Places, you’ll be able to share location-based recommendations, such as a city guide or restaurant.

After you create your Guide, you can share it to Instagram Stories, or share it with other uses. Tap the paper plane icon at the top right of your screen.

Are you excited to see what you can do with this new feature? I’d love to hear your thoughts and see your guides in the comments below.

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Social Media

Instagram Saves are the New Super Like

Likes are a thing of the past. Saves are where it’s at – and brands like yours need to pay attention. Instagram has been testing the removal of likes for a while now, which left brands scrambling, at first, to find a replacement success metric. That success metric is here – the private “saves” metric.

Instagram saves are a signal for how the Instagram algorithm works. The more saves your posts get, the more people will see it, according to the algorithm. That means, if you want to grow your account, focus your efforts on getting people to save your posts. Understanding how certain signals work can mean the difference between successful social media development and a campaign that lacks results.

How do you do this? Before I get into that, let’s take a closer look at what Instagram saves are and how the algorithm uses them.

What are Instagram Saves?

They’ve been around for a couple of years, as a way for people to collect and save their favorite posts. All it takes is tapping the “bookmark” icon at the bottom right corner of a post. It gets added to Saved posts so it is easy to find again.

What are Collections?

Collections provide a way for users to categorize saved posts. You can create a collection based on any classification you want to organize your posts with. The goal is to allow users to create a personalized library of their favorite posts.

How the Algorithm Uses Instagram Saves

The more saves your posts get, the more likely the Instagram algorithm will position your posts within the Explore page and higher within people’s feeds. Saves are one of the seven key factors the algorithm uses to rank posts in a feed. These factors include views, likes, comments, and saves. It sees the number of saves as an indicator of quality. The more likes, comments, and saves a post gets, the better – and it’s even more powerful if that engagement occurs quickly after the content is posted.

Why Instagram Saves are so Crucial

Instagram is testing removing post likes from a number of countries. The experiment first started with Canada but has expanded to include Brazil, Argentina, Japan, Ireland, Italy, and New Zealand. As this shift continues, the number of likes a post gets is less important, and the focus is now more about the overall engagement the posts get, including the number of saves and comments it gets.

Businesses are now starting to track the number of saves as part of their engagement rate calculation.

Engagement Rate = (Likes + Comments + Saves) / Impressions x 100

The “super like” term comes from James Nord, the CEO of the influencer marketing platform Fohr. A like is a way for a user to tell brands they’ve seen and enjoyed the content, but a save is an indication that this value is so strong they want to come back to view this content again later.

If you look at the posts that get the most saves on your profile, you can see the kind of content your audience is most connected with, which helps further fuel your content strategy.

Ways to Get More Saves on Your Posts

Not getting a lot of saves on your content? Use these tips to help boost your numbers.

Create Infographic Style Images

Photography is important, but mixing things up is never a bad idea. Infographics are a great way to make data-heavy or educational content more digestible. People may want to save it for later so they can take a closer look at the information on their own time. They serve as good reference material.

Write Better Captions

Your captions need to be more than emojis. Use the space to create value for your followers. Make your captions longer and richer. Think of each caption as a mini-blog post. The more valuable and interesting the content, the more likely your audience will save it. Go above and beyond.

Ask Your Audience

Just like you would ask your audience for likes, you can also ask them to save your content, too. The key is to include a call to action in your post caption. When done correctly, it not only acts as a friendly reminder to your audience that your content is worth saving.

Create Quotes

It may feel a little like filler content, but they’re a great way to increase saves. People love to have a collection of quotes to share with their friends and family, so you should create some to include in your regular content rotation. They can be inspirational, funny, or otherwise related to your brand or products.

Aim for Evergreen Content

Instagram moves quickly, and you should never assume that your followers will ever see your post more than once. Timely and new content is important to the algorithm. That’s why you have to create content your audience wants to come back to again and again. Whether it’s a year-long calendar of events, a tutorial, a reference sheet, a checklist, a workout, or something else – it should be something that is relevant to your audience today, next week, month, and year.

Create Tips and Hacks Posts

Who doesn’t love an industry tip or something they’ve found online to help them save time? I’ll never forget when I learned how easy it was to pop popcorn in the microwave in a brown paper bag. Not only is it cheaper, but it also eliminates the chemicals in pre-made microwaveable popcorn bags. It was something I learned online, and I come back to again and again.

If you can craft educational content in this format, you can help users to get to know your products or services while also helping them learn something along the way. That is the perfect way to boost saves.

While there’s no official word on where “likes” stand in the United States, making adjustments to your strategy now to boost saves will certainly help if and when they disappear from the platform here. If you have an international brand, accounting for it now is essential.

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Social Media

Ads for IGTV Are Coming

IGTV ads are a monetization feature on Instagram, allowing creators to earn revenue by including short advertisements in their IGTV (Instagram TV) videos. These ads, typically lasting up to 15 seconds, are inserted at natural breaks in content, offering brands a new avenue to reach audiences. This feature not only benefits advertisers with increased visibility but also supports creators financially, fostering a thriving content ecosystem on Instagram.

Instagram is promoting IGTV videos in its main feed in an attempt to increase popularity among advertisers and influencers. IGTV is Instagram’s foray into long-form vertical video content on mobile devices. It launched last summer and was the first major update to the platform since Instagram stories was released in 2016. It helps to move Instagram into a space that has long been dominated by YouTube.

In the constant rivalry between Google and Facebook, IGTV represents a new attempt for Facebook to compete with YouTube and set up as an alternative destination for both content creators and businesses in the $1.7 billion Instagram influencer marketing industry.

IGTV is closely connected to the main Instagram platform as the same accounts are used across both formats and can be exist either through the stand-alone app or Instagram. Instagram has also worked to ease fears about IGTV struggle to attract eyes by featuring aspects of IGTV with the main app by including previews of IGTV videos in the main Instagram feed which cause subsequent views to Skyrocket.

Why IGTV and Not YouTube?

For brands thinking that they should just use YouTube, it’s important to understand how IGTV has differentiated itself from YouTube. IGTV content is presented in a vertical format with an aspect ratio of 9:16 rather than horizontal that is seen in most video platforms. IGTV focuses on mobile first which is a lucrative opportunity for Instagram and marketers alike. With Instagram, the videos on IGTV can range anywhere from 15 seconds to  10 minutes. Verified or larger accounts can record for up to an hour with the eventual intention of providing this video link to all users. Creators are not limited to what kinds and formats of content they can produce.

Influencers who have a following on Instagram may struggle to translate that popularity to YouTube where the space is crowded so an Instagram based video-sharing platform can give existing Instagram influencers a launchpad for moving into video without starting from scratch. it also gives them a chance to carve out a new Niche and expand the types of content they create which in turn allows them to diversify their sponsored content and brand partnerships.

Brands will have the opportunity to reach their target audience the new ways and increase their visibility with new audiences. Google has been encouraging longer-form video on YouTube for years now and Instagram understands the marketing potential of the longer content for developing the all-important positive influencer and brand connection. IGTV is just another way for brands to exercise their marketing muscles.

Unlike Stories which took off quite well in 2016, IGTV has had a harder time getting the ball rolling. Long-form video on Instagram is still in its early stages so many creators are reluctant to start devoting their time and energy into the platform. IGTV content takes longer to shoot and edit than a simple photo or a 15-second story.

Only recently has Instagram discussed adding ads to IGTV so until now there have been limited marketing options for brands. For creators, without the advertising platform, Instagram isn’t paying for the content made by influencers, so there are few financial incentives.

The Catch-22 for Instagram

Why has it taken so long to get here? Instagram wants to make sure the platform has legs and that people are willing to stick around and view the content. If IGTV uses ads too soon, then the users may not want to stick around through mid-roll ads to see if the content is good enough. They have to make sure that they’re content creators are creating high-quality content that their audience is interested in and watching. However, when the content creator has other avenues for monetization, it’s hard for them to justify investing their resources in IGTV content creation.

Instagram has plenty of money – they earned $20 billion in advertising revenue last year, which was a major portion of Facebook’s income. But they’re not going to throw money at the platform if it’s not going to get a return on investment.

Instagram is under a lot of external pressure, from content creators who are making money on YouTube, TikTok, Facebook Watch, and Byte, with revenue-share options. IGTV needs content if they want to grow and stay relevant, but can’t expect that people will provide it without revenue-sharing.

Internal Experiments with Monetization Programs for IGTV Creators

In an interview with TechCrunch, Instagram confirms that it is prototyping an option for IGTV creators to earn money by showing advertisements with their videos. By giving creators a sustainable and hands-off way to generate earnings from IGTV, Instagram hopes they will be inspired to create more high-quality content on the platform.

Right now, Facebook watch video producers earn a 55% cut of the revenue from their ad breaks that are inserted into the middle of their content. There is no word on what the revenue split would be for IGTV, but because Facebook tends to run its ads across all of its apps with the same buying interfaces, it may stick to that 55% approach so that creators get the majority of the money earned.

In the past, Instagram only words with a limited set of celebrities paying to offset small production costs for IGTV content but did not offer a way to earn a profit. That left creators looking to sponsored content or product placement to earn money or trying to push their followers to platforms like YouTube where they could earn money from their ads. This lack of monetization may have contributed to the absence of great content on IGTV.

It’s not clear as to whether IGTV monetization policies would be different but for Facebook, they require users to:

  • Follow all normal Community standards
  • Share authentic content without clickbait, sensationalism, misinformation, or fake news
  • Share original content they made themselves
  • Avoid restricted content categories including tragedy or conflict, sexual or suggestive activity, strong language, explicit content, misleading medical information, politics, and government, and debated social issues.

What are your thoughts about IGTV ads? I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

Categories
Social Media

How to Get Approved for Instagram Shopping and Product Tags

If you are in the e-commerce space and want to take full advantage of Instagram, you must apply for Instagram shopping and product tagging. However, if you don’t do things correctly, you could find your application has been denied.

If you have been denied for Instagram Shopping and product tagging in the past, follow these steps to reapply and get approved.

Were You Denied Instagram Shopping and Product Tagging?

Instagram product tagging is a feature available to Instagram business accounts. It allows you to tag products and post and link them to your website so users can make purchases directly from Instagram with just a few clicks.

A couple of years ago, Instagram rolled out the product tagging feature exclusively to the Shopify platform users and beta to test the idea and make sure the technology ran smoothly. Almost anyone who sells products on their website can apply for product tagging with Instagram. This allows users to browse products, save items they want to purchase later, and buy items all within the Instagram app.

Instagram has come a long way in terms of e-commerce, and for many businesses, denial for Instagram shopping and product tagging has been an issue they’ve been dealing with for months, and they don’t have a solution. The problem is that if you’re denied, there’s nowhere to see why you were denied and get help. All you get is a default message from Instagram telling you that your application has been denied and to view their policy or contact them for more information.

If your account has been denied product tagging, it’s important to read Instagram policies and ensure you comply with what they do and don’t allow for product tagging. This will be the first place to gain insight into why you were denied.

Instagram has a variety of helpful materials for most situations users. Still, when it comes to setting up Instagram shopping, tagging your products, and selling your items on the platform, answers aren’t always easy to find, meaning many people are frustrated.

If you’ve been struggling to resubmit your account for approval and still have issues, look at this step-by-step solution for getting your account approved for product tagging and shopping. You must have a website where you sell your products before you are approved for product tagging.

Before you follow these steps, you’ll temporarily switch your Instagram Business account to a personal profile. In doing this, you’ll lose content and insights from your promotions. You won’t be able to access the insights for current and future posts and stories, but you can switch back to a business account at any time. Because of this, you’ll need to decide whether getting Shopping approval is worth losing that data.

If you find all of this overwhelming, consider working with a team of digital marketing professionals specializing in social media development.

Step One: Disconnect Your Instagram Account from Your Facebook Page and Business Manager

Get a fresh start by disconnecting your Instagram account from your Facebook Page and Business Manager.

Disconnect your Facebook page from your Instagram account by going to the top right-hand menu on your profile. Navigate to Settings > Account > Linked Accounts > Facebook. Tap “unlink account” to disconnect your Facebook page.

You also need to disconnect your Instagram profile from the settings on your Facebook page. Open your Facebook page and a web browser. Click “Settings” at the top of the screen. Then select “Instagram” in the left menu.

Step Two: Revert to a Personal Account

In the Instagram app, you’ll need to switch your account to a personal profile. Just switch account types in the app, tap the settings icon on your business profile. Select account. And tap “Switch to Personal Account”. Starting from scratch resets everything is so you’ve never done this before and erase everything you’ve done previously.

You will also need to remove your Instagram account from Business Manager. Open Business Manager and navigate to Business Settings. On the left side of the screen navigate to Accounts >  Instagram accounts. Click your Instagram account name and then click “Remove” in the upper right corner of the screen.

Step Three: Set Facebook Page Template to Shopping

Many Facebook page owners set their Facebook page to be a general business page. But if you’re trying to get approved for Instagram product tagging, you need to use the shopping template on your page.

Navigate to the settings for your Facebook page. In the left menu, select “Templates and Tabs”. On the right side under Templates, select “Shopping”. If you have a different template in use, click the edit button under the templates section and switch to Shopping.

Step Four: Switch Back to a Business Account

After a few days, open your Instagram profile and switch it back to a business account. Don’t reconnect your Facebook page yet because you’ll do this in a later step.

When you switch your Instagram profile back to a business account, Facebook often automatically pulls it back into your business manager. If this happens you don’t need to worry. It won’t prevent your account for being approved for Instagram shopping as long as you don’t connect your Facebook account to your Instagram right now.

Step Five: Manually Build Your Product Catalog in Facebook Business Manager

At this point, you’ll open Business Manager and manually create your product catalog. There are several ways to connect catalogs to your business manager depending on the platform you use. In the first step when you disconnected everything, the same goes for any apps you have connecting your products on your website to your Facebook catalogs.

For instance, if you use Shopify to sell products, you’ll need to disconnect a delete your Facebook Shop app and Instagram shopping app so you have nothing connected to your products that would automatically update a catalog inside of your business manager.

The reason you need to do this is Instagram likes data and information displayed in a specific way when it comes to product tagging. Instagram doesn’t like titles of products to display in all caps and Instagram will deny you for product tagging if your items are listed this way.

Instagram also doesn’t like links to other products in the product description and requires your items to be listed and described as shown in the product image. If you have color variations are several sizes of your products that aren’t filled out correctly or left empty on your website, Instagram can penalize you and deny you for product tagging.

Anything from the way your products are listed, your naming conventions, problems with pricing, missing product variations, and more can get you denied for product tagging over and over again.

If you import your product catalog using an app that connects to your Facebook catalogs and business manager and you are not sure if there is use with your code or other things that need to be fixed, you can look in the catalog manager under Diagnostics. There you can find issues that may be preventing your catalog from displaying properly giving any potential reasons why Instagram denies you for product tagging.

That’s why it’s best to create a manual catalog of your products so you can be sure all the information in your catalog is correctly listed and filled in properly before applying for product tagging on Instagram and potentially getting another denial.

Step Six: Setup Commerce Manager in Facebook Business Manager

For your Facebook shop to start working and be approved for product tagging on Instagram, you must set up Commerce Manager. Sign in to your business manager and click on the Commerce Manager under the create and manage section.

From there, all you have to do is follow the prompts. Validate your business when you set this up. Facebook will request your EIN, bank information, business address, and other business details so that Facebook knows you are a shop with real products and you are a legitimate e-commerce business.

Step Seven: Connect Facebook Catalog to Facebook Shop

Once you’ve manually created your Facebook catalog, you’ll need to connect the catalog to your Facebook shop. You’ll do this by going back into your catalog in Business Manager.

When you select the catalog you want to use, you’ll be brought to the use cases area of that specific catalog. This is where you will connect your Facebook page to the new catalog. Follow the instructions under the Facebook page shop section.

It’ll take about 5 to 15 minutes for your catalog to starts playing on the Facebook shop tab on your business page. If you aren’t sure you completed this step correctly, you can check your work by clicking on the shop tab on your business page. You should be able to see all of the products displayed from your catalog there.

Step Eight: Add Shop Now Button to Your Facebook Business Page

A lot of people miss the step because there is nothing anywhere on the internet that tells you you need to have this button in place before applying for Instagram product tagging. All you have to do is add a button for shopping on your Facebook page under your header image. Take care of this step was your catalog is displaying on your Facebook page.

Open your Facebook page and click add a button or click your existing button. In the pop-up window, select shop with you and then shop now. This will add the button or change your existing button.

When prompted, Facebook will ask if you want to direct users to the shop on your website, or your shop from Facebook. It’s important to select the shop on your page option rather than your website.

Step Nine: Reconnect Your Facebook Page to Your Instagram Business Profile and Facebook Page

When she’s made it this far, it’s time to reconnect your Facebook page to your Instagram account. Before you do this, however, make sure you’ve updated to the most recent version of the Instagram app on your mobile device. If you’re not running the most current version, you run the risk of being denied for product tagging again.

You need to make sure your account is reconnected to your Facebook page into places on the Instagram app. First, check in the Settings > Account> Linked Accounts > Facebook. Then check in the edit profile section on your Instagram account profile screen.

Now, reconnect your Instagram account to your Facebook page via Facebook. Open your Facebook page in your web browser and click settings. Select Instagram and click “Connect Account.”

Reconnecting your Instagram account is the final step in reapplying for Instagram shopping. The weight can be anywhere from a few hours to a few days. In some cases, it may take up to two weeks for Instagram to review and approve your account for product tagging. If you haven’t heard back from Instagram after a couple of weeks, reach out to Facebook and see what the problem is.

It’s possible that after completing the above steps, some people will still see the not approve screen when they go to apply for shopping. If this is the case for you, contact Facebook directly for assistance because sometimes Instagram does not reset properly and will stay on the screen even after you’ve completed all the steps you need to get approved.

Facebook customer support is great. It’s best to contact them through their messenger chat service because they are quick to respond and have approved on the same day, many shop accounts that have run into this issue.

Categories
Social Media

Study: What 100 Social Media Followers are Worth

While a recent study set out to answer what 100 social media followers are worth, it’s difficult to measure the ROI. The value of social media followers lies beyond mere numbers – it’s about engagement and conversion potential. Followers who actively interact with content and align with the brand’s target audience are more valuable. They can increase brand visibility, drive traffic, and potentially lead to conversions. Therefore, the focus should be on building a quality, engaged follower base.

When it comes to the social web, platforms like Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram command billions of eyeballs every year. This makes the channels too big to ignore, so you have no choice but to participate in them to avoid missing out on revenue and traffic.

That brings the question of how much time and money should you spend on each social platform. Which ones produce the best return on investment?

Fellow digital marketing expert Neil Patel recently sought to answer the question and surveyed nearly 500 companies who are all using Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Twitter. Each company surveyed has been actively participating in all of the social channels for at least three years and have at least 100 social media followers on each platform.

Out of all 483 companies surveyed 159 of them were in the B2B space and 324 were B2C companies. Revenues varied from as little as $10,000 per year to $250,000 per year.  Before we dig into the data remember all of the stats are broken down based on 100 social followers.

Organic Social Media Traffic Over Time

Compared to when each social platform it made its debut, it has become more difficult to generate organic traffic from each of them. Though it’s possible to still generate organic visits your reach has declined. But how much has it declined?  From 2015 to now, we have gone from just over three monthly visitors per 100 followers to two monthly visitors per 100 followers.

Related: How to Turn Instagram followers into Customers

Traffic By Social Network

While it’s true organic social media traffic is dying as each network wants to earn your advertising dollars, certain social media networks drive more traffic than others.  Which one would you guess drives the most?  If you guessed Facebook or Instagram you’re wrong as these two generate the least amount of organic traffic every month.

Pinterest drives the most organic social media traffic at a little more than four visitors per 100 followers. LinkedIn was a close second driving a little more than two visitors per 100 followers followed by  YouTube also driving a little more than two visitors per 100 followers. It’s worth mentioning that although YouTube drives a decent amount of visitors per 100 subscribers, most people using YouTube don’t experience much traffic because they aren’t linking out to their site within their videos. Though it used to be possible with YouTube annotations, those were discontinued in January 2019. Link to your site in the video description and include a video transcript with your URL.

Do More Posts Mean More Social Traffic?

Even though organic reach is dying down, if you post more often this should in theory increase your traffic. In general, posting more often does increase your traffic but after 8 months of posting on each social network, the data indicates that you will see diminishing returns.

The majority of social media algorithms work is based on engagement. The more people engaged with your content the more of them will see your content as you post it. As such, your goal should only be to post content people love and want to engage with. The second you start posting any kind of mediocre content, it will hurt your overall traffic numbers because it means fewer people in the future will see your new content regardless of how amazing it is.

Engagement By Social Network

Speaking of engagement, Which social media platforms tend to have the most engaged users? like Neil, I assumed Pinterest would win the engagement battle since they are driving the most traffic but I was wrong.

Though Pinterest did well, LinkedIn won.  Instagram also did well but this isn’t really a surprise as most people use it for a social network rather than leveraging it for business. That’s why Instagram engagement is high.

Post that don’t contain a link, such as images or videos tend to get the highest amount of engagement. This is also because social sites tend to promote content that keeps people on their site as opposed to sending visitors to your site.

Which Social Platforms are Best for Videos?

If videos aren’t part of your digital marketing plan, it’s something you should consider starting. Even though they don’t wink well on Google they are the future of the internet. When it comes to video, there are two main types: ones that you upload and ones that are live.

The data shows that Instagram produces the best results for video and then LinkedIn and YouTube. But, Instagram automatically plays videos while YouTube is much stricter about what they count as a video View. That said if you’re going to create video content, you should plan to post it on all of your social media Networks focusing the majority of your efforts on Instagram LinkedIn and YouTube.

YouTube won’t give you amazing numbers within the first day of uploading a video but by utilizing YouTube SEO you can continually get views that you won’t see happen on any of the other social platforms.

When it comes to live video, the results are similar in that Instagram and YouTube are the leaders. Live videos don’t generate as many viewers as just posting in scheduling them. The main reason wasn’t that social sites don’t want your live content it’s that when it comes to non live videos, businesses are spending more time leveraging keyword research and optimizing videos for the maximum amount of views. That is quite a bit harder to do with live videos.

Putting keywords in your title and descriptions isn’t enough. Social media sites are able to interpret the sound to see what your video is really about.

Building Your Email List

It’s no secret in the marketing world that the money is in the list. If you aren’t using your social media platforms to collect emails, you need to start immediately. Once you have your email list you can always make it to the people on your list and convince them to buy your services or products.

In terms of converting a visitor to an email subscriber, LinkedIn has the best conversion rate but Pinterest and YouTube also perform well. It’s a common misconception that most of the people on LinkedIn only care about B2B. Everyone on LinkedIn is a consumer who buys everyday products.

The most interesting part of the email collection data is the majority of your social media followers will never convert into email subscribers. But as you continue to share and post content on the social web, the followers of your followers may also see your content which then increases the likelihood of getting more traffic and email subscribers

Revenue

Regardless of how you feel about leveraging social media for your business, the truth is these platforms to drive your revenue and you do not have to spend money on ads to generate that Revenue. Ads of course do help but the percentage of Revenue that each business generated from organic social media traffic is quite impressive. while the percentage of Revenue has declined from just under 8% in 2015 to just under 2% in 2018 and 2019, we’re starting to see the numbers even out.

The decline isn’t just related to social media algorithm changes. It can also be attributed to the fact that businesses are diversifying their marketing approach to take an omni-channel approach meaning they are leveraging more channels. Because of that each one makes up a smaller portion of their total revenue.

Social media is still going strong despite the fact that it has become harder to make things happen organically. You may only be able to generate two visitors a month for every 100 followers you have, but as you grow your following that scales and can generate a hefty amount of organic traffic.

Categories
Social Media

7 Ways to Share Links on Instagram

Instagram is one of the most popular social media networks with more than one billion monthly users. If you are in the ecommerce niche, it can be a great source of traffic and sales for you. There’s just one problem. The only place to include a clickable link on your Instagram profile is in your bio. But, that doesn’t mean there aren’t other ways you can share links to drive traffic. Let’s take a closer look  at some of the more creative ways you can share links on the social platform.

Add Link to Your Instagram Bio

Adding a link to your bio is the first and simplest way to share a link. It is the only place where anyone, including private personal accounts can share a clickable link.

The link you place here should be your “home” link. There are other ways to share clickable links but those methods are targeted for more specific audiences. The link you include in your bio is there for anyone who happens to visit your profile. You could change this link at any point in time so a lot of people change it in accordance to the promotions they’re running.

The only problem with changing your leg frequently is that old posts Austin get lost in the shuffle. What if someone finds a post from 6 months ago and goes to your bio to learn more but finds a different link? rather than changing your bio link frequently, I believe it is best to share those links in your stories. If you want to keep the content available, you can save the stories as permanent

highlights to provide clickable links.

Use a Link Service to Add Multiple Links

When Instagram first reached popularity among marketers, it was common practice to use link services. while they are still available, they are not quite as popular as they used to be. To compensate for that, they’ve added additional design capabilities and created a better user experience.

You can choose from a few different formats. Services such as Linktree and Shorby present your followers with a list of clickable buttons. This way you can direct people to your blog, specific landing pages, other social media platforms, or a certain category on your website where you want more attention.

These services allow you to create a screen that matches your branding in terms of aesthetic. there are however others the choose to provide a more native Instagram experience. Rather than  tapping on text buttons, users are presented with a photo grid similar to Instagram. When they tap the photo from the post that caught their attention, the link service directs them to the relevant page on your website.

Share in Post Captions – With a Catch

While it’s true you can’t include clickable links in the captions of your normal Instagram photo posts, you can still use the caption space to get users attention, share excerpts from your content, and extend your reach with hashtags.

You have two options when it comes to using your Instagram post captions. You can use a link shortening service such as Bentley so the link is easy for users to copy or remember. this approach requires more effort from your followers so you should save it for your  top contents or links where you only want to convert a small group of targeted people.

Alternatively, whether you’re using a link in your bio or in stories, make it obvious. Share directions to a  link and included shorten links that people can copy if they want to. Just make sure that the directions are absolutely crystal clear is that even those with limited computer and internet experience can navigate to where you want them to go.

Add Links to Instagram Stories

Business accounts with 10,000 or more followers unlock the swipe up link feature, enabling you to include live links in your Instagram stories. Because stories only last 24 hours unless they’re saved and added to your highlights, this is a wonderful way to share links to new or time-sensitive content. If you’re running a limited time promotion or giveaway, flash sale, or seasonal event, this is a great way to promote it.

You can also save your stories with swipe up links in the Highlight section of your profile. These stories stay pinned between your bio and your photo grid. You can use highlights of the library for Evergreen content such as your top selling products, past events to show new followers what they’ve missed, and FAQs.

Create Links in Shoppable Content

Shoppable posts give you the option to use highly specific links. Each one of your shopping tags links to one product only and it must be a physical product rather than a digital one. Shopping tags are the most targeted conversions possible.

If you sell physical products, start by creating a product catalog on Facebook. Once you have your products uploaded with shopping links, descriptions, and images, you can start adding shopping tags to your Instagram posts.

You’ll also see a shopping tab that appears on your profile next to the standard tabs of your profile grid, tagged photos, and individual photos. Clicking this tab allows users to see your full product catalog. items on the shopping tab appear in a standard PhotoGrid but users are allowed to tap to shop. They can save your items just like they save standard posts or shop immediately.

Instagram Insights allows you to check engagement on individual shopping post or compare shopping post based on a variety of metrics including Impressions, save, and engagement. But Instagram shopping will not add an attribution to individual product links so you may want to experiment with adding UTM time to the links in your product catalog for analytics purposes.

Use Instagram Ads

You can use your Instagram business profile to pay to promote posts and stories with Instagram Ads. This allows you to segment your audience and add clickable links to the captions of the promoted posts. Instagram allows you to share links in your post captions as long as you’re paying for them.

If you use this approach, make sure your links are relevant to the post and the story in which they appear. If people click and then bounce you’ve wasted money on your ad spend. When creating the ad think about the conversion you want. Are you educating users about your brand? Drawing them in with captivating content? Promoting a shoppable post? Different conversions require different designs. Aim for balance between an attractive post design and an obvious call to action.

Add Links to Instagram Direct Messages

Many brands fail to use Instagram direct messages to their full potential. Take time to monitor your inbox every day for message requests, stories Dimension your brands, and customer service questions. Take time to respond, reshare, and build those customer relationships.

Start a conversation by reacting to a user story or reaching out to offer help. Messages on Instagram are private so they are a more personal form of communication. If you reach out to followers in their direct messages, they’ll appreciate you treating them as individuals.

There are several ways you can use these direct messages as part of your strategy. For instance, you can send a message to welcome new followers. You can set up quick replies to handle typing out a new message every time someone follows you. You can share links in both your standard messages and quick replies allowing you to start automatically lead nurturing every new follower.

Though sharing links on Instagram requires you to get a bit creative and spend a little time with set-up, leveraging the platform to its fullest can go a long way to improving your bottom line and helping you build stronger relationships with your customer base.

Categories
Social Media

6 Ways to Engage Your Audience on Social Media

There are several ways to engage your audience on social media, some of which are more effective than others. Effective ways to engage audiences on social media include creating interactive content like polls and quizzes, hosting live sessions or Q&As, responding promptly to comments and messages, sharing user-generated content, personalizing content to audience preferences, and storytelling that resonates with followers. Consistency in posting and authentic communication are key to maintaining engagement.

Social media development can sometimes be a beast and leave you and your team frustrated. There are some methods that work for one group and others that work for another. Sometimes, you just have to experiment and take notes on what works and what doesn’t. But what if you’re stuck on where to start?

Take a look at these six ways to engage your audience on social media to help you get started.

Use Hashtags to Build Comradery

Hashtags are extremely popular and have a dual purpose. You can search a hashtag on any social media platform and see what others are saying while using your hashtag. Every business should already have a main hashtag (ie: #sachsmarketinggroup) and create specialized hashtags for major events, contests, or changes in business.

Let’s say you have a donut delivery business and you plan to release a new donut in September. You can create a lot of engagement on social media if you use a hashtag designed for that release (such as #WheresTheDonut2019 or #DonutSurprise92019). When creating a specialized hashtag, search for that hashtag to see if it is already being used and if you can tweak it to make it yours. Continue to use main business hashtag alongside the event/promotion-specific hashtag so that people who discover you through the promotion can easily find out more about your brand.

Use Live Videos to Your Best Advantage

Creating video content is one of the best ways to get social media engagement. Video should be a part of any marketing plan, but it’s even better if you can include live video. Live videos air live on a social media platform (YouTube and Facebook are the popular options) and allow you to see comments posted as you move through your script.

It’s best if you have a script, or at least a general idea of what you plan to cover before going live. Practice can help you figure out how to speak naturally without getting flustered, which is important if you have a fear of public speaking or are camera shy. If you have a script, you definitely don’t want to read from it during the live event – it’s just meant as a guide to help keep you on topic.

What are live videos good for? Product line release parties, introducing new members on your team to your audience, contest and winner announcements, and good content encouraging a call to action. If you want to see how others have used a live video for sales, look for  lives featuring the Paparazzi Jewelry line. The men and women who sell the jewelry on live videos have seen major sales increases and were some of the first people to use lives to sell items.

Use Tools for Better Engagement

One of the hardest things many businesses struggle with is the time factor. Live videos will require a specific time frame that you can schedule in, but the rest can be automated. Plenty of automated tools will post your content across a wide range of social media platforms. Automation is every marketer’s friend because it allows you to keep a steady flow of content without additional work. This can be an invaluable tool for you while deploying your content strategy.

This is especially helpful if your audience is spread out across time zones or primarily in a time zone different from your own. It is also extremely helpful if your business will be closed for long holidays or other special circumstances. It’s particularly useful when you’re a one-person team, or your team has other priorities to focus on.

Be Responsive to Comments on Content

Whether it is a blog post, Facebook review, or a comment on an Instagram post, always make time to be responsive. You want to nurture the positive comments so that people feel like they can speak freely with you. You also want to tackle any negative comments to curb any issues.

It is always worth investigating every complaint, even if the complaints are unfounded (some people refuse to be happy). It is especially important to respond to feedback about any campaigns that are well-received or not. While some people can be particularly ferocious when it comes to a campaign that triggers heavy emotion, those are the comments you will not want to respond. Vicious commenters are usually the ones you don’t want to engage because they are soliciting for an online argument. Save the energy for those that are respectful and to the point.

Contests and Giveaways Are Your Best Friend

If you are struggling to gain new followers or even getting your audience to engage, a contest or giveaway can fix that quick. People love contests and giveaways and are willing to do a few steps in order to win. You can require that they visit the landing page and then a pop up shows up so they can include email and name information. If they want extra entries, they can fulfill other tasks. Blog posts on their website, following on Twitter/Facebook/Instagram, or sharing the contest announcement are few great ideas you can start with.

Offer just two or three extra entry options. Offering too many will overwhelm people and cause them to skip entering the contest. As they spread the word about your contest, more followers are likely to join in and take the time to learn more about your business. If you keep the engagement up and quality content flowing, you will retain a majority of the new followers. Always be sure to learn about the guidelines for running contests and giveaways on any social media platform to keep your accounts in good standing.

Share Content That Is Relevant To Your Audience

The general rule for content on social media is that only 20% of the content you share should originate with you – and not all of that content should be promotional. Social media isn’t about tooting your own horn. The remaining 80% of the content you share should come from other sources – but still be relevant to your audience. You want to establish yourself as a source of credible information, not as a constant sales pitch.

Social media engagement doesn’t happen overnight. Constantly test and experiment, focusing your efforts on what your audience responds to the best. You can always ask them what kind of content they’d like to see more of, then make an effort to give it to them.

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Social Media

Are the Days of the Plandid Over?

Oops! Close up portrait of sexy, beautiful, impressed, amazed blonde girl holding her hand near mouth, looking to the side on pink background

In the early days of Instagram, one quick look through your feed revealed a ton of seemingly meticulous photos – of people who looked “natural.” This concept is known as the plandid – or the planned candid. Planning the shots ahead of time ensures influencers get the type of image they’re looking for – one that satisfies sponsors – but one that also appeals to their audience.

The platform has reached more than 1 billion monthly users – and there’s a common theme among most of the photos on the network. You’ll notice things are almost always staged against a bright wall, with carefully arranged lattes and fancy food, Millennial pink, and color-corrected aesthetic. Images that capitalize on these trends do so well on Instagram the look became associated with the platform itself – and gradually made its way into the world beyond. Even those who don’t use Instagram have become familiar with the Instagram Wall – a place in your home with an Instagram worthy backdrop, created for the sole purpose of photography.

The Early Influencers

Influencers are the ones who capitalize on this plandid look more than anyone else – with some of them even creating photo presets in Adobe Lightroom that edit anyone’s photos to fit the aesthetic. But all trends have a shelf life – and as quickly as Instagram welcomed beach photos and Millennial pink, it’s being ushered out in favor of something different. The buzz now is that it’s no longer cool to have the manufactured look – and Instagram is now shifting to authenticity.

The New Generation of Influencers

Young influencers such as Joanna Ceddia and Jazzy Anne, along with many others,  are rejecting the curated feed concept, in favor of an unfiltered, messier, and ultimately more authentic vibe. While the early generation of influencers carried DSLR cameras and learned photo editing to master the “perfect” photo, those rules don’t apply to the rising generation of influencers, who prefer to use their smartphones to take photos.

Many teens are going out of the way to make photos look worse. Huji Cam, a filter that makes your images appear to be taken with an old disposable camera, has been downloaded more than 16 million times – and younger influencers say adding grain to your photos is a big thing right now.

Reese Bluestein is a 22-year-old influencer who has gained more than 238,000 followers in a little over a year by posted unfiltered low quality photos of herself in strange outfits. She doesn’t stress about getting the perfect look for each image, or posting similar looking photos back to back. If she likes an image, she posts it, without caring about the effect it has on her overall feed.

Over the past year, we’ve seen the concept of “Instagram vs. Reality” photos growing in popularity because influencers want to make themselves more accessible. As people become more aware of how prevalent sponsored posts are, beauty influencers have started to abandon the branded shots for the ones that feature empty bottles of the products they actually use. The number of accounts dedicated to calling out celebrities and influencers for the cosmetic procedures they’ve had is rising. Influencers are speaking out about the burnout and stress that comes with trying to maintain perfection, which is fostering the growth in authenticity.

James Nord, the CEO of Fohr, an influencer-management platform, says he sees this shift play out in his clients’ numbers every day. “What worked for people before doesn’t work anymore,” he says. “For the first time, influencers are coming up against this problem of, How do I continue to grow as tastes change?”

He says 60% of the influencers in his network with more than 100,000 followers are losing followers month over month. Just a year ago, you could post a photo of well manicured hands around a coffee cup and get lots of engagement. Now, doing something like that will make people unfollow. Influencers who are still standing in front of those Instagram walls are struggling – and will need to change their approach if they want to maintain their influencer status.

Instagram itself could be in part responsible for the evolution. Instagram began as a purely visual feed of filtered photos, but has morphed itself into something different. Now, it has grown into a true social network where photos and videos are competing against stories, GIFs, and IGTV for attention.

Why the Change?

Instagram walls and museums were built so that normal people could easily take influencer-quality photos. However, the photos worked so well they became commonplace. As a result, they no longer resonate with people like they used to, and now we’re living in “influencer overload.”

The stress of aiming for perfection is just too much. One influencer, LA-based Sarah Peretz, known for her curated, hyper-saturated feed, says she spend months looking for a wall of a certain color – and she interrupted a vacation to take a photo against a roadside casino’s orange wall, she’d had enough. She started shifting her feed away from the traditional aesthetic and experimented with more creative photography. She knew her audience was bored with it, and more interested in Instagram Stories.

As what is “ideal” on Instagram is shifting, brands are on the lookout for ways they can catch (or create) the next wave. People are just looking for stuff they can relate to, so being real is a trend that’s catching on and will stick around a while.

How do you feel about meticulously planned feeds? Are you looking forward to the authenticity movement? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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Social Media

Instagram to Hide Like Counts on Photos

Instagram has made plans to stop showing how many people have liked users posts. Posters will still be able to see when someone likes their posts, and clicking through will show them everyone who has done so. Only the poster will be able to see the like count – other users will not.

This is in addition to a recent redesign that makes a user’s follower count much less prominent, according to the head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri. Right now the design is being worked on internally but is not yet available to the public.

Why Make the Change?

The change, announced at the most recent F8 Developers Conference, is an effort to make the app a better place to be, by changing the focus from the amount of engagement they’ve earned to just the posts being shared. The Instagram spokesperson told TechCrunch, “we’re running a test in Canada that removes the total number of likes on photos and video views in Feed, Permalink pages and Profile. We are testing this because we want your followers to focus on the photos and videos you share, not how many likes they get.”

It seems to be a response to how anxiety about the damage of social media is negatively affecting mental health and well being. The idea is that by removing some more obvious markers of competition and popularity, social media will become a healthier place to be, with a focus on community. This approach has won the support of many people, such as Kanye West.

Is it Platform Wide?

At this time, the feature is only launched to some users located in Canada. Depending on how successful it is for the test demographic, it’s possible this will roll out to all users. This means no one would be able to see how many likes their posts get.

Why is the test happening in Canada and not in the United States or another area? According to a company spokesperson, “Canadians are highly social and tech savvy, with over 24 million people connecting across our family of apps each month. We wanted to test this with a digitally savvy audience that has a thriving community on Instagram.”

How This Could Affect Influencers

As of now, influencers and other popular people who are paid to post on Facebook use the like metric to help in understanding how popular and engaging a post is. Because these numbers affect how much brands pay them to post, this is a highly important number for influencers.

Instagram said that it was aware that hiding the like numbers could create financial difficulty for influencers and users. Instagram told TechCrunch it was “thinking through ways for them to communicate value to their brand partners” and the idea was still in “exploratory” stages.

Additional Possible Features Coming to Instagram

At the F8 conference, Mosseri announced that Instagram wants to lead the fight against bullying, rather than just working to stop it. He announced multiple new tests of features that aim to make the app less hateful and toxic. These include:

Manage Interactions

The manage interaction feature will set limits on how certain people interact with you, without having to block them completely. This is ideal for situations where you don’t want someone to be able to comment on your posts but you are fine with them being able to still like the posts. Or, if you are okay with them seeing your posts, but do not want to get direct messages from them.

Away Mode

The Away Mode feature will encourage people to take a break from Instagram during the more intense times of their lives, like moving to a new school, or dealing with other stressful events. They do not need to delete their account, but this feature aims to allow users to get a break from the constant flood of notifications and worrying about how they look.

Nudge

This feature aims to warn users if they are about to comment something hurtful. The test ensures users aren’t censored, but still addresses bullying before it happens.

If these features are successful at promoting digital well-being, Instagram will likely roll them out to everyone. Though there currently is not a timeline for when this may happen, I will update this post, or blog about it again, as the information becomes available.

It’s refreshing to see Instagram adding well-being features after the founders left the company. They were big fans of reducing envy and promoting authenticity on social media, which was part of the reason they launched Instagram Stories – giving users a platform to share the unpolished parts of life. Before their departure in September, Instagram released the Your Activity dashboard that shows you the average time you spend each day in the app, and an “You’re All Caught Up” warning that lets people know they’ve seen all the recent feed posts and can stop scrolling.

A 2013 study showed that 20% of all envy-causing situations that experiment participants experienced happened on Facebook. The study also determined Facebook causes toxic envy, saying the “intensity of passive following is likely to reduce users’ life satisfaction in the long-run as it triggers upward social comparison and invidious emotions.” Instagram, because of the focus on imagery and a “manicured” life may cause even more envy, so hiding the likes would be helpful in ensuring we don’t judge ourselves as much.

How do you feel about Instagram and your well-being? Do you feel like you’re constantly chasing likes and find yourself disappointed if a particular post doesn’t get the level of engagement you thought it would? Share your experiences in the comments below.

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Social Media

Preparing for Instagram’s New Local Business Profile Pages

In March, word of Business Pages rolling out on Instagram started making its way around the internet. Though we’re nowhere near an official release, if you want to be among the first businesses on Instagram to take advantage of this feature once it’s fully available to the public, it’s time to do some prep work.

If you’re not on Instagram yet, you need to be. With more than one billion monthly active users and engagement rates 10x higher than Facebook – not cultivating a business presence there could be doing your business more harm than you realize.

What the Business Pages Will Look Like

These pages will be shown in-app, and provide much of the same information you’d find in Google’s Local Knowledge Panels. It’s almost like a Google My Business listing for your Instagram profile.

Credit: Twitter

The pages include a link to the business’s Instagram profile at the top, along with business address, hours, contact information, and website URL.

At this point, there are only a few users who can see this feature and claim their local business profile on Instagram. Claiming the profile is what will allow you to edit and control the information displayed on the page.

Even though we don’t know when this feature will become official, there’s still plenty we can do to prepare for the release.

Your business profile will display the three most recent images posted to the Instagram account. Video content is not displayed on the page. Knowing this is helpful as you plan your content strategy.

Start with Your Facebook Business Profile

Once the feature is fully rolled out, we’ll see a “Claim” button in the upper right hand corner of the business page, if the owner hasn’t claimed it. Users will be able to claim a business page if they also have access to the business’ Facebook page. This means that businesses have control over who can claim their Instagram business page.

Because of this link, it’s safe to assume the basic information on the profile will come from what’s on the Facebook business page. As such, you’ll need to double-check the information that’s there, to make sure that it is still correct and relevant.

This is an especially important step for businesses that have more than one location, because it could cause confusion when Instagram extracts the information. It would be easy to understand a New York store could end up with Boston’s information.

Approach What You Post to Instagram with More Scrutiny

Right now, we don’t know if a business will ever have the option to pin images to the three slots shown on the local profile, or if it will always be the last three photos you’ve posted. If it turns out that it is always the last three photos you post to the account, you will have to be more strategic about what you post your business’ Instagram page.

Going back to the original Twitter announcement, we see a few screenshots. Let’s take a closer look at the one for The Harding Tavern.

With the first image, we get a full view of the bar in the background, with one of their cocktails as the main focus on the image. That’s a great way to promote the restaurant. The second image is of a basketball game, which makes sense given that this was taken around March Madness. They posted the photo in an effort to indicate to their audience that the tavern is a great place to catch the games. The last photo, however, doesn’t do a good job of highlighting anything about the restaurant. It’s only when the user takes the time to click into the profile page to look at the page that they will find out it has to do with an upcoming event with a local brewery.

While the photo may constitute good content for the bar’s current followers, it doesn’t do anything to promote getting new business from the people who are visiting the local profile.

With the introduction of this new feature, it means adjusting your strategy so that you are mindful of appealing to both your current and potential audience. You’ll be able to attract new customers (and Instagram followers) with the business page. It means paying attention to every post and the message you’re sending with each of them, despite the fact that only the three most recent will display on the local profile page.

Start Planning and Posting Instagram Stories

If you’re not already using Instagram Stories, this may be the motivation you need to get started. As a business owner, the Instagram local profile won’t leave you a lot of space to draw visitors in. Beyond the three most recent pictures at the top of the page, there’s not much to judge your business on.

Users are often more likely to look at your stories than they are your profile page, especially when they’re just browsing through Instagram. Clicking through to your profile page means they’ll have to go back to the page they were looking at before.

Instagram Stories, on the other hand, don’t get in the way of the browsing experience. Once the story is over, users immediately return to the content they were looking at.

Think about it from the user’s perspective. If you’re looking for a business in your local area, do you want to have to click each profile link to learn more, then have to click back to your local map? Or, would you rather watch a few stories to learn more about each business, without needing to click back and forth?

Users are going to almost always take the easier option, and Stories are one of the most popular features the platform has to over. Instagram’s data reveals more than half a billion users watch an Instagram Story every day – and there are over half a billion active accounts every day.

Even though we don’t have a target launch date for this feature, there are many sources indicating it is on the way. If you take the time to consider how the feature fits into your current Instagram strategy and think about ways to adjust it to accommodate it, you’ll be ahead of your competition.

Revisiting your strategy regularly is never a bad idea, but using these tips to adjust it now means you’ll definitely be ready whenever the time to claim your local business profile does arrive.

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Social Media

Lush UK Quits Social Media

Earlier this month, cosmetics brand Lush, announced on social media that they are quitting social media. (Ironic, right?) Lush is a global brand known for their bath bombs, body care products, and makeup. The social media boycott applies only to the UK division, as Lush North America has announced it will continue to be active on all its social media channels.

What’s the Story?

The Instagram announcement, shown above, included a caption that reads:

“We’re switching up social.⁣

Increasingly, social media is making it harder and harder for us to talk to each other directly. We are tired of fighting with algorithms, and we do not want to pay to appear in your newsfeed. So we’ve decided it’s time to bid farewell to some of our social channels and open up the conversation between you and us instead.⁣

Lush has always been made up of many voices, and it’s time for all of them to be heard. We don’t want to limit ourselves to holding conversations in one place, we want social to be placed back in the hands of our communities – from our founders to our friends.⁣

We’re a community and we always have been. We believe we can make more noise using all of our voices across the globe because when we do we drive change, challenge norms and create a cosmetic revolution. We want social to be more about passions and less about likes.⁣

Over the next week, our customer care team will be actively responding to your messages and comments, after this point you can speak us via live chat on the website, on email at wecare@lush.co.uk and by telephone: 01202 930051.⁣”

The same was shared on the Lush UK Twitter and Lush UK Facebook accounts.

Days later, the company posted another announcement across their social channels:

This caption reads:

We believe it’s time to stop talking, and start listening. So that’s what we’re doing.⁣⁣

You can still get sneak peeks and news from our inventors, founders, and everyone else who makes Lush what it is.⁣⁣

You can join in conversations with our staff, friends and shop social media accounts on their pages and on hashtags like #BathArt, #LushLabs, #LushMakeup (let’s face it, anything that starts with #lush).⁣⁣

Plus there are plenty of other places to take a dip into the Lush world, from our shops, events, and Customer Care team, to our digital platforms. Soak up fresh content on Lush Player and Lush.com, give feedback about exclusive products on Labs.lush.com, and engage with us and the latest digital experiments on the Lush Labs app.⁣⁣

Let’s spark passions, and stop chasing ‘likes’.⁣⁣

Here’s to the #LushCommunity, where all are welcome, always. ”

Though as of this writing the accounts are still active, they have not been updated since that status on April 15. Their social following is quite large, with 596,000 followers on Instagram, 423,000 on Twitter, and 202,000 on Facebook. It seems they don’t want to pay to play, so they’d rather use other channels to connect with their customers.

In addition to the main accounts, BBC reports they also plan to close accounts associated with Lush Kitchen, Lush Times, Lush Life, Soapbox, and Gorilla.

Ultimately, Lush UK isn’t getting the ROI on their social media efforts they consider high enough to justify continuing their current strategy. There’s nothing wrong with changing tactics when you find that something doesn’t work out the way you believe it should or the way you want it to. However, when this happens to most other brands, they shift their tactics without completely closing down their social channels.

Social media provides a connection to your audience, but it also provides your business with data you can use to provide better products and services. Letting go of it altogether doesn’t seem like a good move for the majority of today’s brands, especially considering social media is such a highly preferred customer service channel.

Why Lush North America Still Says Yes to Social

Lush North America, based in Canada, handles orders in the United States. They have no plans to stop the use of social media to connect with their audience. Unlike the UK division, it seems they don’t feel like social media is the middleman between themselves and their customers… or, they’re waiting until the decision can be supported in the North American market. Time will tell.

As of this writing, the Lush North America division has 4.4 million followers on Instagram, 313.4K followers on Twitter, and 1.2 million followers on Facebook. The difference in social following between UK and US could easily explain why the US division isn’t so ready to ditch social.

Could This Be a New Trend?

Instead of relying on branded social media channels, Lush says the new strategy will involve a rise of  “Lush personalities” online. In a statement provided to The Independent, the company says, “This isn’t a replacement for the brand channels but an opportunity for our customers to connect one-on-one with people within Lush based on the various categories. This isn’t the end, it’s just the start of something new.”

I believe it means they’re switching from a pay-to-play model on social media to focusing their efforts on influencer marketing. I don’t believe many brands will follow in their footsteps, as it is possible to do both, and to do them both well.

The lack of social signals from the Lush UK side isn’t likely to harm their SEO efforts, because there will still be plenty of people discussing the brand online. I do find it somewhat baffling they’ve decided to abandon ship, but it’s clear they’ve gotten a lot of press as a result. Maybe it’s just a publicity stunt and they’ll return to social channels eventually. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens.

What do you think about their decision to shut down their social media channels? Would you consider doing the same to find other ways to connect directly with your audience? Talk to me in the comments!

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Social Media

Ultimate Guide to Choosing Instagram Hashtags for High Engagement

Instagram has more than one billion monthly active users, with more than 500 million of them using the platform every day. In terms of social networks, only Facebook and YouTube have more logging in. What’s more important for businesses, however, is the fact that 60% of those users turn to Instagram to find new products. That’s plenty of reason for your brand to consider adding Instagram to your social media strategy. If your brand is already using the platform, but looking to get more engagement, it may be time to review your hashtag usage and strategy.

What are Instagram Hashtags?

Instagram hashtags are used as a way to categorize content. Users can follow hashtags as well as individual profiles, so using hashtags is a great way to grow your audience as people can use them to discover your content. Instagram allows up to 30 hashtags per post, but you do not need to use that many for every post.  You can include them as part of your caption, or include them in a comment after you post to your account. If you choose to post the hashtags in a comment, you’ll want to do so immediately after posting. This is because Instagram displays the content in the hashtag feed based on the time the photo or video was posted, not based on the time the hashtag was added.

Step One: Do Your Research

It’s tempting to use the most popular hashtags, but that won’t do much in terms of engagement. Because the hashtags are so widely used, your post will only be visible in the top posts for a few minutes before other content pushes it down the feed.

Plus, Instagram has a list of banned hashtags due to spam activity. Many of these hashtags are seemingly harmless, and people who don’t realize they’ve been banned still use them. Some banned hashtags include: #dogsofinstagram, #books, #adulting, #women, #killingit. Using banned hashtags doesn’t do any good for your account, and can harm you in the long run. Instagram may think you’re a bot, and could shadowban your account. If you’ve been shadowbanned, that means your account is banned, but Instagram won’t tell you.

Doing hashtag research beforehand can help you see what the current hashtag landscape is like, so you can make sure you’ll get engagement and avoid associating your brand with things on a hashtag that may have a negative connotation.

There are many hashtag research tools out there, such as Hashtagify, Display Purposes, and RiteTag. Using these tools, you can explore possible hashtag options and make a list of the ones you may want to use on your profile. You can also research the competition and industry leaders to see what tags they are using.

Step Two: Use a Mix of Generic, Niche-Specific, and Branded Hashtags

To maximize your reach and engagement potential, aim to use a healthy mix of generic hashtags related to your brand or the content you’re posting, those that are specific to your niche, and some branded hashtags you’ve created yourself. Need inspiration for creating branded hashtags? Check out these five campaigns, from brands like Airbnb and KitKat that did well.

When creating a branded hashtag, check to make sure it’s not already being used. Keep it short and easy to remember – often your brand name is enough, and you can create variants as needed for various marketing campaigns. Encourage your followers to use your branded hashtag when posting content that features your products or services. And when you see someone who has used your branded hashtag in their content, give them a shout out to show appreciation.

When choosing hashtags, you want active ones, with thousands of posts that are fairly recent. It’s when you get hashtags with millions of posts that you’re running into the highly popular ones that won’t give you much bang for your buck. Avoid hashtags that are used hundreds of times a minute.

Step Three: Test Hashtags

When you’re first starting out, try a variety of hashtags. Test the number of hashtags you use on each post. While many marketers say five or six is good enough, others say 11 is the magic number to use for maximum engagement. Really, it all depends on your audience. Some audiences don’t mind a lot of hashtags – and you can hide them to keep them from cluttering your captions. However, other audiences may feel that consistently using 30 hashtags on every post is spammy. That’s why testing what works for your audience is important. Generalized advice like this can help you get started on the right foot, but because no two Instagram audiences are the same, you must do the work on your own, too.

Pay attention to your Instagram Analytics to see which posts get the most engagement. This way, you can determine which hashtags are influencing your success. Keeping the hashtags relevant to your content and varying them across your posts is the best way to get engagement. When you have enough data to notice trends, that’s when you’ll know which hashtags are the most effective.

In addition to testing hashtags, you’ll also want to test varying your post times, as certain days of the week and times of the day are prone to more engagement. Following that part of your analytics will help you learn when the majority of your audience is online so you can schedule your posts accordingly.

Step Four: Rinse and Repeat

Your Instagram analytics data will help you guide your strategy in the future. Paying close attention to the data will help you see where you’ve made missteps and where you’ve succeeded. When you find something that worked well, rinse and repeat it. When you find an area where you’ve made a mistake or could improve, adjust your tactics and test again to see how the outcome changes.

Hashtags are a crucial part of the Instagram experience, but choosing them randomly could be a waste of time and effort. By investing time in researching them ahead of time, keeping a list of the ones that work well for you, and experimenting with how many you use can help you boost engagement, increase your following, and improve brand awareness.

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Social Media

IGTV or Instagram Live? Here’s How to Pick

Video is the lifeblood of the Internet. It fuels our entertainment, lets us advertise products, and even has the potential to teach, inspire, and change the world. Now, even Instagram is getting into the game and letting people record longer clips.

Instagram actually has one of the most robust video platforms on the market (aside from YouTube, of course). You can upload a very short video to your permanent feed, go live, or upload longer-form videos to IGTV.

Instagram live and IGTV are by far the most  popular right now, but how can you be sure which is right for your campaign?

Take a look at this guide to find out.

What is Instagram Live?

Instagram live is similar to Facebook live in that you can use it to stream a real-time video to friends on your personal timeline or fans on your formal pages. The main difference is that Instagram treats live videos more like stories, deleting them after 24 hours. This creates a sense of urgency.

While you can use Instagram live for marketing purposes, it won’t have the same long-lasting impact as a pre-recorded video. It’s better to use it for limited-time sales, branding, behind-the-scenes footage, or lead generation.

Instagram also offers better interactivity. You can still engage with your audience while streaming on Instagram live. There are options to moderate comments, pin your favorites to the top of the stream, and even turn off comments if they’re becoming distracting or off topic. Live videos don’t cost much to produce and you can make them on the fly, giving you tons of opportunity to engage with your audience.

What is IGTV?

IGTV is a newer feature designed for brands that want to delve into longer-form video content. Regular video in your feed is limited to 60 seconds, but IGTV videos run anywhere from 10 to 60 minutes. The app allows for vertical video, instead of square, and you can use it separately or within the regular Instagram app.

It also comes with some pretty flexible and useful additional features. Videos don’t expire; plus, you can upload a strong video description or even add a hyperlink to the description. That means no more directing people to your “link in bio.”

The IGTV app also includes extra creative tools. Add stickers, use branding watermarks, or just jazz your video up with filters before publishing.

Should You Use Instagram Live or IGTV?

It’s not really a matter of using one over the other. In reality, both have a place in your marketing campaigns. Instagram live videos are better for bringing a little extra attention to static posts published on your timeline. Their shorter nature also makes it easier to promote flash sales or drive extra engagement quickly.

Using IGTV gives you an endless number of possibilities for expansion. Use it for regular weekly and monthly updates, instructional videos on how to use your products, how-to and DIY tutorials, customer service tips, and just about anything else you can think of. Come up with a creative series, find a great backdrop, and start recording.

How to Make Better Instagram Videos

No matter which content type you choose, there are a few actions you can take to ensure your videos get noticed.

Here they are:

  • Grab attention fast. Make sure the first few seconds of your videos are eye-catching and compelling to entice people to stop and watch.
  • Include text in the first few seconds. This will entice people to turn the sound on. Captions are fine!
  • Tell a great story! It doesn’t matter how long it is. People want to feel engaged and a part of what you’re doing. That’s true whether you’re going for a walk or wrapping a gift.
  • Don’t skimp on quality materials. Invest in a tripod and good lighting so your brand and products always look great. You don’t have to spend a ton of money on lighting to make your videos look professional. Grab a couple of pieces on Amazon and you’ll notice a world of difference.
  • Don’t be cold. The more personal your attitude, the more your followers will relate and engage. Be human – stop stressing over the occasional um.
  • Plan great hashtags. The hashtags you choose should be a mix of generic and branded content to make it easier to find your videos.
  • Keep time limits in mind. A video you record in the Instagram app for your feed can be up to 60 seconds long, but a video in your feed or story can only be 15 seconds long.
  • Show followers what they want to see. They don’t need to hear the entire history of the development of each product in your line on a live feed. Just show them how it works and point out some of the most notable or cool features. Save the history for your IGTV segments.
  • Visuals are important. People get bored and there is a lot of “noise” on the internet. Use bright colors and startling images to make your content stand out.
  • Focus on one goal at a time. Create a plan – and stick to it. Instagram users live in a fast-paced world where smaller nuggets of information are easier to absorb.
  • Avoid being spammy. Try not to make your videos look like ads (even if they are). Your videos should blend into the rest of the feed, grabbing attention without screaming “buy me” at consumers.
  • Focus on dimensions. Remember, ITGV is vertical, not horizontal – this is a really common error.
  • Planning to promote a video? Make sure you include a thumbnail shot. You won’t be able to upload a separate image.
  • Be consistent. Both in your publishing schedule and your brand’s visual assets. Use similar colors and styles so that people begin to recognize your brand and look for your new messages.

The good news here is you don’t have to choose between Instagram Live and IGTV. Both platforms are an important facet of any Instagram video marketing strategy. So, grab your marketing team, start putting some ideas together, and get to work. You just might find you’re amazed at how much you can grow your audience with a consistent, engaged video presence.

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Social Media

Here’s How Instagram’s New Algorithms Functions

Instagram is changing – okay, that’s not really a new phenomenon, really. The platform evolves every few months much like Facebook, changing back end coding here and there to hopefully produce better results for users and advertisers. The most recent changes, however, are a bit more involved.

Essentially, Instagram is changing how their feed works. Most of the changes seem to be targeted at improving user experience, including how the site sorts content based on interests, likes, hashtags, and more. Depending on how and what you’re marketing on the platform, this may force you to adapt your strategy to keep up.

Weighted Influences and Impacts

First, we need to talk a bit about what Instagram claims is most important. These are the factors and variables that influence how and what a user sees. They’re like a much simpler version of Google search weights (like on-page optimization and backlinks), but they do affect the feed in similar ways.

Instagram claims three main influences have the power to change feed exposure and reach:

  • Interest
  • Timeliness
  • Relationships or connections

All three of these influences will be significantly more influential going forward, but there are changes deeper within. How, where, and when they influence is also changing; we’ll break that down in the next few sections.

Interest

Interest is a bit abstract, and it can be a little bit difficult to get a good grasp on sometimes. Instagram looks at how often the user interacts with pictures or shares from specific accounts or on specific topics, automatically adjusting the feed to show them more of what they’re already viewing.

Here’s where things get space age: Instagram’s new algorithm also cross-checks the visual content of what people post. Using extremely advanced detection, the site determines what the picture is, the photo’s theme, and in some cases, even who’s in the picture. It uses that information to further define the feed.

As a marketer, your biggest challenge here will be in finding out how to meet those interests in a way that serves both users and the algorithm. Think lots of A/B testing and significantly more experiments. This is a great time to branch out a bit.

Timeliness

This influence is really simple: the sooner the post was published, the more likely users are to see it at the top of their feed. Allegedly, Instagram made this change after users complained about seeing too much older content – sometimes, days-old posts would show up in the middle of posts from earlier in the day.

This change isn’t so much an update as it is addressing a significant bug in the platform. Older posts were really never meant to show in this manner in the first place. The phrase “it’s not a bug; it’s a feature” comes to mind…

For the vast majority of businesses that use Instagram, this change won’t really make much of a difference at all. A small percentage may see less reach per post as posts “age” out of the feed much faster than before. Adapting with a more rapid posting schedule and tweaking post times should help.

Relationship

Last but not least are changes to the weight Instagram gives relationships and connections on the platform. This, naturally, starts with followers and followed connections, but it goes beyond just clicking that button. Instagram will also factor in common interactions, including comments, likes, hashtags, and even DMs. The platform also claims they plan to slowly phase in influences as simple as having someone else tag you in a photo or in the comment section of a picture.

IF this works correctly, it should actually improve your ability to target specific audiences. It also paints a compelling reason to start answering your DMs from customers, clients, and followers in a timely manner.

The downside is the potential for malicious use; it’s feasible that people could start tagging others or following from fake accounts with negative connections if they wanted to impact your reach. Fortunately, there isn’t any proof this is actively happening just yet – but you should keep a close eye on interactions just in case.

Explore Function

Alongside changing algorithms, the platform also significantly changed their Explore layout. Traditionally, this function allowed users to type in tags or key terms and “explore” content visually via a grid-style map of images. This worked similarly to Pinterest, and was fairly easy to manipulate if you just included the right tags.

One of the biggest changes to the explore function is that Instagram plans to include topic categorization across the top. Instead of just seeing a photo grid of content, users will now have the option to “channel down” into specific topics, like Photography, Animals, Education, or Finance.

Why is this an issue for businesses? Firstly, guided search puts far more power back in the hands of users. It also makes hashtags and key terms less useful because users are much more likely to follow the suggestions before scanning the grid. It’s right there at the top, in their face, and far more likely to catch attention.

Image detection may play an important role here, too. As Instagram’s algorithms can detect what’s in a picture, it becomes harder for marketers to game the system. You may need to get a bit creative with what you include in your pictures to make it work.

We’ve been hearing rumors that this change may actually point to Instagram’s growing ecommerce involvement. It’s possible that this feature might end up helping product and service sellers later on, leading them through to what they really want to see – whether it works remains to be seen.

Is Instagram Still Worth It?

A bit of brightness on a rainy algorithm-influenced day: these changes don’t mean Instagram isn’t worth exploring for businesses. It may not seem like it at first, but the fact that the platform puts its users first and is making a solid attempt to cater to their preferences is actually a good thing. Transparency and being in control of data are more than just a trend; people want control over what they see, when they see it, and how they consume it. Users should have that right at all times.

But marketers still need to find ways to get noticed, and that’s where the downside comes in. You may need to get more creative with your content, inspiring instead of just tossing down hashtags or tagging influencers to get noticed. Think of it like a gentle nudge into more holistic, effort-based marketing rather than a negative.

Remember: Instagram is all about networking, creating engaging content, and finding ways to connect that motivate and inspire. The back end is what makes it possible to craft that kind of content and still get attention – you just have use the right strategies and methods. Algorithms that make content more specific drive warmer leads to your best content, and that’s a recipe for more sales, better conversion numbers, and fewer angry accusations of spam.

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Social Media

How to Create Instagram-Worthy Photos to Grow Your Account

Creating Instagram-worthy photos involves understanding good lighting, composition, and the use of color. Utilizing the rule of thirds, experimenting with different angles, and ensuring high image quality are key. Editing photos for a consistent aesthetic and using filters judiciously enhance appeal. Capturing unique, authentic moments and storytelling through imagery resonates with Instagram audiences.

Taking fantastic pictures is, in fact, an art form (hello, photographers!) that goes far beyond even the standard photography basics. In today’s social media-soaked world, you need to go over and above by flexing your post-processing and photography skills to create an image that truly shines.

On no other social media platform is this more obvious than Instagram, where photos take precedence over just about any multimedia format in successful marketing. The second you sign up, you’re competing against some of the most highly-skilled, fierce image creators in the industry.

If you happen to be a business attempting to market a product, person, or service, you have an incredibly steep hill to climb to overcome the competition. Not only do you need to ace every photo, but you must also ensure that your photos meet marketing needs at the same time.

Here’s the good news: this isn’t an impossible goal. With a bit of practice, knowledge, and patience, most businesses can become at least semi-proficient in taking Instagram-worthy photos. We recommend starting your journey with these impressive insider secrets.

 

Be Your Weird (And Wonderful) Self

Whether the “you” here is you as an individual or your business, you won’t be able to take pics that truly shine until you figure out what it is you’re trying to say in the first place.

Who are you? What’s your goal each time you create your photo? Who is your audience, and what do they enjoy seeing? Most importantly, what is it you’re trying to market in the first place?

You have to know who you are, what you provide of value through your photos, and why people should care before you take your snaps. That said, don’t let it hold you back; it’s also okay to get a bit weird and creative now and again.

One of the best ways to flex your personality is to try on new aesthetics or even create your own new aesthetic. Doing so makes you instantly recognizable, and that leads to more viral sharing power.

Wait… What’s an Aesthetic?

That fancy word refers to your overall style or personal appreciation of beauty. There’s no one specific aesthetic; in fact, people create new aesthetics every single day on Instagram. Think of your aesthetic as a one to two-word description of the main theme present in your photos. Aesthetics can include colors, lighting styles, forms of photo content, or even photo angles – whatever makes your photos truly yours.

Here are a few examples of trendy Instagram aesthetics we see:

  • Summery beach girl
  • Mermaid
  • Unicorn
  • Dark and Grunge
  • Minimalist
  • Girl Power
  • Outdoor fun
  • Country chic
  • Warm and friendly
  • Romantic and sweet
  • Bright and bold colors
  • Rich and Luxurious
  • Powerful in Business
  • Professional and polished

You can see a few of these aesthetics (and more) in action at Later.com. Note how the overall theme of each set remains the same, even if the content changes over time.

Ultimately, finding your aesthetic is about discovering who you are, how you want people to feel, and what your purpose for your photos really is. Once you have that information, it’s up to you to create a theme that weaves its way through each of your photos in some way.

 

Camera Quality Matters

The type of camera you use to snap your photos can make a big difference to a picture’s overall quality. If you’re hoping to get that perfect pic with a 5 Megapixel Sony Cybershot, we’re sorry to say it just won’t usually come out right.

Do This Instead

The fix? Break up with your ancient or obsolete camera and use a newer device instead. Professional cameras like the Sony a7R II, work best, but they can be expensive, especially given that they address only one need.

Budget-Friendly Options

If pro cameras are out of your budget, the GoPro HERO5 and the Panasonic LUMIX DMC-GM1 both come in at just shy of $450. This is a considerable savings, and the GoPro is versatile enough for indoor/outdoor shots, too.

You can also bridge the gap by killing two birds with one stone: use your smartphone’s camera instead. iPhones and Android devices like the Samsung S8 may be expensive, but they let you justify the investment because they serve an important second need, but they also boast incredible picture quality and access to on-the-spot editing tools. That combination is precisely what lets stars like Alice Gao enjoy impromptu photo shoots from anywhere.

 

Lighting is Everything

In photography, photo quality and ambiance are heavily influenced by the quality of your lighting. Too much light will make your pictures overexposed and washed out; too little will induce too much contrast and make darker areas impossible to see.

Color and Position

Even lighting color and position has a role to play because it can change skin tone, create undesired shadows, or draw attention to problem areas rather than highlighting what’s good. Generally, you should light objects that require immediate attention from the front, but don’t be afraid to play around with angle until you find what works best.

Natural Light vs Artificial

Whenever possible, use natural light instead of artificial light. It just plain produces better pictures than most artificial light sources. Whether it’s sunlight, overcast, or even pouring rain, it just makes pictures look better than LEDs or CFLs (don’t even consider pictures under fluorescents).

Sunlight is Best

Sunlight rules the roost for selfies, pictures of food, and all other “feel-good” photos because it’s warmer, more balanced, and kinder to most camera lenses. If you can’t or won’t access the great outdoors for your pictures, try to at least stand close to a large window.

Artificial Lighting Sources

Sometimes, you just don’t have the ability to access natural light. When this is the case, you’ll have to rely on your flash and/or other artificial lighting sources and devices instead. Understanding the differences and how they impact your photo will let you make the most of your tools, so here’s a short overview of the most common.

  • Ring Light – Use a high-quality ring light with a daylight/UV bulb for portrait selfies and macro photography. It disperses light beautifully and also creates the attractive “ring highlight” within the eyes seen here.
  • Flash Diffuser – This device softens flash, making it ideal for up-close shots, macros, and portraits. It prevents the blown-out look some up-close pictures can have, especially when you’re snapping light-colored objects.
  • Strobe Lights – No, these aren’t for a dance party. Strobe lights create a crisp and sharp lighting effect because the camera picks up the light for only a second, preventing overexposure while preserving even lighting.
  • Fill Light – These come sized for smartphones or for professional cameras. Fill lights “fill” the local area with light, evening out contrast issues and preventing overly dark shadows. They’re fantastic for night shots and overcast days.
  • Spot Light – Just as the name suggests, a spot light is any light that shines from a specific position within the room. This can be a separate spot light on a stand or even an overhead light in your house. Whenever possible, use daylight bulbs in it for better lighting.

Above all else, remember that positioning and shadows can make any artificial lighting source look bad. This is true whether you’re snapping portraits, food pics, furniture pics, or something else entirely. Always take a few test shots and adjust your lighting as-needed.

 

The Verdict

Crafting the perfect Instagram-worthy pictures that fulfill marketing needs while also producing a high level of engagement certainly isn’t easy. Even if you do nail down the perfect pic, you still have to think about how to market it to the right audience in a way that boosts your online presence and leads to conversions.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, know that it’s okay to ask for help. What you stand to gain from partnering with an expert marketing agency or influencer often far outweighs the small costs associated with partnering with the experts.

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Social Media

13 Ways to Improve Instagram Advertising

Instagram is one of the most popular social networks, reaching more than 400 million users in less than five years after the launch. That’s more than Twitter and Snapchat. Now that the Instagram  advertising platform is available for everyone, it’s a particularly useful way to connect with potential customers – especially Millennials – and grow your following. Did you know customers are 58x more likely to engage with your branded Instagram content than they are on Facebook? And perhaps even more surprising, they’re 120x more likely to engage with that Instagram content than they are on Twitter. But, like with any other social platform, bland and boring advertising will be a waste of money. Check out these secrets to creating better, more effective Instagram advertising campaigns.

 

Tell a Story

As a visual marketing platform, Instagram ads, particularly the carousel format, make for a great story-telling opportunity. You have four images, and though your first one should grab user attention, it shouldn’t rely on others to get the point across. Whatever story you’re telling – be it about your brand or about a product you sell – make the images compelling enough so the user swipes through all of them.

Use Video

Video ads can be up to one minute long, and are available in landscape format, too. You have plenty of time to get your message across, while still leaving room for interactive shots. For the most effective ad, opt for no more than one filter throughout the entire ad, keep the video in either .MP4 or .MOV format with a minimum 720p resolution and a 16:9 aspect ration. With the video ad, you’ll also have the option to upload an image to display when the video isn’t playing.

Choose Your Objective With Care

Of course you want to to increase your sales and profits – don’t all businesses? I mean, isn’t that the point of marketing? With the obvious out of the way, let’s dig a bit deeper into the importance of choosing your ad objective with care. You have several ad types to choose from, and you should choose the one that’s best for the type of engagement you’re looking to get.

Your Instagram advertising can:

  • Drive traffic to any number of landing pages – choose the clicks to a website objective. Keep in mind, users are asked if they want to go to the website, and are only redirected if they agree.
  • Help increase brand awareness
  • Create/engage loyal brand advocates
  • Promote products – share one product and include a call to action.

 

If you want to promote products – choose the carousel ad. This one will allow you to include four images, along with live product links. But, if you want to drive brand engagement, opt for the video ad. If viewers like it, they may share it with friends.

Blend in with the Feed

It’s critical that your ads allow you to blend in with the feed, rather than standing out as a sponsored post. For example, take a look at how Michael Kors used the Instagram advertising platform. The ad pictured was their first experiment with Instagram’s paid advertising. It helped them get nearly 40,000 new followers, earning them nearly 16x the new followers than their non-sponsored content. It looks less like an ad and more like an actual photo someone posted on their account – and that’s exactly what your brand needs to go for. Like with anything else, you want to add value – rather than blatantly advertise your product or service.

Run Small-Scale Campaigns First

If you’re still relatively new to Instagram advertising and don’t have a lot of information available about your audience, it’s a good idea to run multiple smaller scale campaigns before launching a larger scale version. This way, you can learn key information about the audience you’re targeting and how well they are responding to the ads, so you can create an optimized version of the campaign for the best possible results. This way you can learn what call of action is most likely to entice them to take action, the messages they are most likely to respond to, and the ones they are most likely to share. Rather than focusing solely on the sales and attaining other business goals, run smaller campaigns that are designed to help you find out more about your audience. This way, you’ll be able position larger scale campaigns to get positive results.

Split-Test Visuals

The only way to determine the kinds of visuals your audience will respond best to is to split-test the images. Try creating a standard photo ad with up to four photos in a carousel format, and comparing it to a video, or try multiple standard ads, with different photos. Try using your own photos and using some of the user-generated content you’ve collected, if you have any. Test the variants to see which one gets the best results.

Beyond split-testing the visuals themselves, you could also split-test your posting schedules and calls to action. Over the course of a few split tests, you could easily craft the perfect ad for your audience engagement.

Make Instagram Shoppable

If you’re an e-commerce store with a lot of products, treat Instagram like a product catalogue of sorts. On each of your product photos, make sure the caption includes a link to the page where customers can buy the product. This makes it easy for people to browse and make purchases immediately, which is what you want. Instagram users are spending an average of $65 per referred sale, compared to just $55 on average from Facebook, and $46.26 from Twitter. It literally pays to maximize your Instagram advertising and engagement, and keeping things simple makes for a better user experience.

Use Real-Life Situations

Staged photos scream ad, which will contribute to it being ignored. But, showing your products in real-life situations will help your audience relate to it. When someone relates to it, they are more likely to click on it, simply because it helps catch their attention, which leads them to identifying with the ad, and increasing the ad’s trustworthiness.

Limit Use of Text

Adding text to the image may scream to the audience that it’s an ad. For best results, if you must use text, keep it to no more than 20% of the image. It’s the same guideline with Facebook ads, though instead of a requirement, it’s now just a suggestion.

Highlight User-Generated Content (UGC)

UGC is a powerful form of advertising, with 92% of global consumers saying they trust earned media more than they trust all other forms of advertising. Your customers want to see people using what you have for sale – and happy customers like the idea of sharing their photos and experiences with you (and others) for a chance to get their 15 minutes of Internet fame.

Have your customers submit candid photos of themselves, either alone, or with friends and family, using your products. Your Instagram photos should look real, and shouldn’t look like they’ve been staged for marketing purposes, so UGC is an ideal option. Plus, UGC helps boost conversion rates. Simply displaying customer product photos on a product page increases conversion by nearly 5%, and if a customer interacts with the photos, the rate nearly doubles to 9.6%.

If you can find pictures including people’s faces – that’s great. These are the most compelling type of images – after all, there’s a reason behind why everyone loves the selfie. In fact, more than 300 million Instagram photos have been tagged with “selfie.”

From a psychological standpoint, it’s said the selfie is way to figure out who we are – suggesting that how we see us doesn’t come from who we actually are, but how we think others see us. The more photos we post of ourselves promoting a certain identity, the more likely others will think that is our identity.

If we go beyond the photo of ourselves, we’re also drawn to photos of other people – especially faces. Face-tracking studies show that the profile picture is the first thing we look at on social media profiles, and the numbers prove them helpful on Instagram, too. Pictures (thereby ads) featuring human faces are 38% more likely to receive likes, and 32% more likely to receive comments, when compared to photos that don’t feature faces.

Interestingly enough, eye tracking studies show we tend to follow the eyes of the faces we see on the screen – and looking at faces helps create empathy, even improving the way doctors treat their patients.

Create and Use Hashtags

Ads won’t show up in hashtags, but including hashtags in your ad copy allows you to send the viewer to relevant content based on the ad. But, you can’t just use basic, run of the mill hashtags, or else you can’t really have control over what the user sees. Instead, you’ll need to craft your own branded hashtags, and then use those on other posts to curate the library of content users will find when they follow the hashtag from the ad.

Use the Call to Action Buttons

Like Facebook, Instagram allows you to include a prominent call to action button on your ad, making it easier to achieve your marketing goals. You can choose between:

  • Shop Now – best for ecommerce ads
  • Install Now – best for app promotion
  • Sign Up – best for email marketing
  • Learn More – best for encouraging people to learn more about product and service offerings, driving traffic to landing pages

You can split-test these calls to action to see what works best with your audience, but all of them can help them learn more about what you have to offer, with action taken directly from the ad itself.

You can support your ads by including the same calls to action in your organic posts. Though it will be different because the segment and posts will not be the same as the ad, your audience will get a chance to take action on your message after the ad has left their feed.

Build Stronger Relationships with Your Best Customers

Using the custom audiences feature, you can reach out to your existing customers, particularly the ones that are the most loyal, and target them with their own set of ads. You can use those ads to offer exclusive deals, promotions, and the chance to be the first to try a new product or service you’re offering. If they’re not already following you on Instagram, this is a great way to convert them to followers.

You can also use this approach to target potential customers with exclusive content. You can set a custom audience to target email subscribers who have yet to make a purchase from you, showcasing ads that promote your company’s culture. Once they see those ads, they may be more inclined to make a purchase when they get your next email.

The “Lookalike Audience” feature can run your ad to a series of users that share common traits with your current customers’ profile. This means you can find new followers that match your best customers, and then use ads to introduce them to your brand.

Instagram is Not Facebook

Though Facebook owns Instagram and you can run the same ads on the two networks, it’s important to remember the platforms are different in nature with different audiences. While you will have some overlap, naturally, people are on Instagram to experience something different than what they find on Facebook. As such, you need to treat your ad campaigns completely differently, using different audiences accordingly.

If you really want to see what a customer sees, and get an idea of their experience, create or use your personal account to follow your own brand. This will allow you to see your brand from the eyes of your target customer, and help you get a better idea of what kinds of ads work best with them, and what may entice them to interact.

What tips for a successful Instagram advertising campaign can you share with us?  Let us know in the comments section below.

Photo credit: Adobe Stock

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