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Day 16: The complete guide to Instagram marketing

08/03/202101/19/2016 by scmarketing

Why Instagram matters to marketers

Listen up, Instagram is revolutionising the visual web as we know it. The platform, bought by Facebook in 2012 for a nice 1 billion dollars, is a simple app that allows its users to share artsy photos in an instant. With over 200 million active users and 60+ million photos shared each day, it’s evident that consumers can’t get enough of it. In turn, brands like L’Oreal, GE and Warby Parker have achieved success marketing on Instagram. The number of businesses exploring using Instagram, as a means of marketing, has grown exponentially over the last decade.

So, how can you tap into Instagram to strengthen your brand awareness? This guide offers research backed best practices for developing an Instagram strategy. we explore examples from top brands that are using Instagram to win over their audience.

1. Peel back the curtain on your life at your company
Post images of your desk, the view from your office, or post a video at the company Christmas party. Let your followers feel like they know what’s happening at your company.

2. Think DIY
Educate your audience by creating a collage of product images, or show the creation process of your service/product through a video.

3. Show travel motifs
Instagram users love landscapes and photos of the open road. Find stylish ways to showcase your products in the natural environment.

4.Make bitesize versions of existing content
From a snippet of a TV interview or a quote from your latest blog post.

5. Think outside the box
Don’t just post a plain picture of your product, think of creative ways to showcase your products.

6. Food Pictures
Post overhead pictures of your meal, trust us, people love food.

7. Hashtags #
Use relevant hashtags to help people find your images.

8. Post content featured by your consumers.
We’ll talk more about this later.

Monitor metrics

How Much traffic is the link in your bio getting? Gather Social referral data from Google analytics.
What is the average/ current range of likes that your photos receive?
What is the average number of comments that your photos receive?
What is the ratio of comment and likes for you photos?
How many followers do you have?
Evaluate your branded hashtags. How frequently are they used?

Quick tips

Keep in mind that all photos uploaded must be of a high quality, don’t just post for the sake of posting.Instagram has a variety of filters to choose from within the app. The Mayfair filter results in the most engagement, whereas the Toaster filter results in the least engagement.
Don’t feel limited to those 20 filters. Many brands opt to edit and capture photos outside the app itself. Furthermore, don’t limit yourself to only uploading pictures. You should also use other features, such as Instagram stories, to connect with your audience.

Build community and affinity through consumer engagement

Our study found that top Brands’ Instagram posts generated a per follower engagement rate of 4.21%. that means Instagram delivered these brands 58 times more engagement per follower than Facebook, and 120 times more that Twitter,” Nate Elliot, Forrester.

A Brilliant way to boost engagement is asking questions to your audience. Take a picture of two products and ask them which one they like better.

Remember to keep the conversation going. Don’t forget to reply to your followers’ content. Participate in popular hashtags that are relevant to your business.

Top 5 hashtags

#love
#instagood
#me
#tbt
#follow

Harnessing user-generated content is quickly becoming one of the most effective tactics used by social media marketers.

Consumers share and trust real pictures and content more than direct brand outreach. Plus, you reduce the amount of work dedicated to producing all those images and videos, while drastically increasing your engagement rate.

At least half the photos that Ben & Jerry’s shares through their account today are from community member – Instagram business blog.

Post content from your Instagram profile to your Twitter account

Cross posting straight from the app can look messy on Twitter. Instead, upload the image separately to Twitter for easier sharing. Link your Instagram account to your Facebook page. Share your content directly to Facebook.

Share photos with blog posts

Does your brand have a blog? If not, you should. Read why here. You can embed Instagram photos and make it easy for fans to follow you, no matter where they find you. Use the Instagram app to pull photos right from Instagram

We hope you found this guide useful and good luck with your Instagram Marketing!

Social Media marketing agency

Incorporating social media into your marketing strategy can raise brand awareness and online presence. If you feel you need support in getting your business noticed on social media, then get in touch with Smart Cow Marketing to discuss your needs further.

What is Twitter churn?

11/06/201910/15/2014 by scmarketing

Many Businesses are still falling into the trap of following back everyone who follows them, this can be a very risky strategy of building up and audience, as they may not all be interested in your brand.

However, having a large audience of people who are interested in the brand and who will talk about it can have many benefits, from increasing lead potential to good old fashioned brand lift.

Although, it is difficult to know the difference between followers who will engage with the brand and those who are ‘ghost’ followers and will not interact. But how would you find out?

There are many sites that can monitor data from twitter feeds such as www.justunfollow.com or www.followerwonk.com. These sites provide information on who is following/ unfollowing you on a daily basis. There can be many reasons as to why someone may unfollow you and these sites give you the ability to try and find out why.

You can look at the time at which they unfollowed you and try and see if there was a correlation to a post you may have tweeted at this time? Check their profile, perhaps they are no longer active on twitter? Maybe they’ve changed career and no longer need the information you’re providing? Perhaps you were tweeting too much and flooding their feed, or they may just want to change things up and keep their feed fresh. It is then down to you to decide what action you’re going to take to prevent this from happening too much.

Twitter does have limits on following to followers so unfortunately you can’t just follow loads of users and hope they follow back. Although twitter have kept the exact ratios a secret, it has become obvious that once a page has reached over 2000 followers you can’t follow more than 10% of that. So if you had 5000 followers, you couldn’t follow more than 5500 users or you’ll run the risk of having your account suspended. As well as this, if you use third party websites or apps to follow/unfollow users, this would also leave you at risk of your account being suspended, to avoid this from happening you shouldn’t let the website/app automate who you follow/unfollow, you should choose yourself as the suspension of accounts is automated based on patterns.

The problem with spam social media marketing

08/03/202102/04/2014 by scmarketing

Social media is an affordable and simple method to market your business. It involves using social sites such as Twitter, FaceBook, YouTube, LinkedIn and more to build brand awareness and advertise your business. It is an excellent method to boost a business or create a presence in social media for an existing business. The hardest problem with creating successful social media strategies for marketing is to avoid spamming works especially with the people you are willing to target.

Spam is prevalent all over the Internet, spotting social media spam is not hard. Usually this comes in the form of an account in social media that only automates posts throughput the day and night that generally link to a website, service or product. So it is very important not to use spamming words like “view my product”, “check here for a free product”, “the first one to post gets a free product” etc., because these are all just spam advertising and people know that they won’t get anything in return while the spammer just tries to get more exposure.

Spamming is really a big problem with some accounts created only for the purpose of spamming or scamming others. There are people with good intentions but they don’t know the method to perform the tasks correctly. They usually think that blasting out the links and information everywhere and anywhere may help them build a business which is totally wrong and it is just a way to lose the ranking of your social page in the search engines.

Social Media marketing agency

Incorporating social media into your marketing strategy can raise brand awareness and online presence. Visit our blog for tips on how you can improve social media presence.

If you feel you need support in getting your business noticed on social media, then get in touch with Smart Cow Marketing to discuss your needs further.

When and what to schedule for social media marketing

08/03/202101/28/2014 by scmarketing

Some social networkers don’t like to engage in the discussion but they are there just for purely egotistical reasons. Social networkers simply collect friends and followers for the sake of having bragging rights in each time they get people. But following, connecting, or befriending just anybody dilutes your standing and influence among those in your audience.

Other people join because they feel they just need to join. They spend some days in setting up their own profiles.

Connection is the real motivation for any social networker especially in the field of business. You need to connect with people that share the same ideas and those who can improve your business standing and whose businesses you can help. You need to add value to the conversation, and not to enter the conversation as spammy, desperate or a time waster. If you develop a weak reputation in these social networks, it will be tough to stand up again.

Check social media twice daily – in the morning and afternoon

• Check Twitter through free online programs like HootSuite. Respond only when necessary and don’t waste your time in replying to senseless replies.

• Check LinkedIn. Reply to comments and emails when appropriate.
• Check your Facebook Page for inquiries or questions and respond quickly and professionally.

Certainly, your daily to-do list in social networking websites will be very different, given your commitments and your available time. Just ensure to make your schedule liveable as best as you can and keep changing it until it works well for you.

Social Media marketing agency

Incorporating social media into your marketing strategy can raise brand awareness and online presence. Visit our blog for tips on how you can improve social media presence.

If you feel you need support in getting your business noticed on social media, then get in touch with Smart Cow Marketing to discuss your needs further.