In the last 5 years, Instagram has turned into a go-to social network for businesses looking to put their names on the map. Companies love to use Instagram because it gives them a chance to connect with their targeted audience. And with more than?500 million daily active users?it seems like an easy enough task…or is it?
If you plan to use Instagram to promote your business it?s important to stay on top of things. Knowing all the latest trends and statistics, using the right hashtags or when to post are some of the tricks you need to master in order to make this platform your money-making machine.
Here, we?ll give you some useful insights and help you uncover the secrets of Instagram marketing that will take your business to a whole new level.
1. The story behind Instagram stories
In 2017 only 8% of businesses used Instagram story ads as an attempt to engage more customers. Yet, the stats are about to change since 2018 is shaping up to be the year of the Stories. According to statistics whopping?88% of businesses?are changing their strategies and focusing more on posting through stories.
Using Instagram stories quickly became a huge marketing trend. This relatively new feature released in March 2017 gives you a chance to experiment and see what works best for your business.
Still, the most important thing is to create quality content based on clearly established goals and KPI?s. After that, all you need to do is track your success rate through?Instagram Stories analytics. Together with impressions and reach you?ll be able to see your Instagram Stories? exits and replies from the last two weeks. And if you?re interested in generating traffic, try using a third-party tool for counting clicks.
2. Start boosting your posts
Getting familiar with Instagram advertising is something you?ll have to work on if you want to maintain or acquire high engagement. Luckily for you, it?s not that difficult. All you have to do is boost your posts to your followers. That way you can avoid using Instagram ads and special targeting. ?Just take a regular Instagram post and promote it in order to get more likes, impressions and visits. Your post will look like a regular one accept it will have the ?sponsored? sign and a call to action button.
3. Will Instagram profiles become the new home pages?
More and more people are looking for brands on Instagram rather than Google. Instagram profiles are becoming the home pages of the future so it?s really important to focus your attention on Instagram aesthetics as a crucial part of your Instagram marketing strategy.
Having a consistent aesthetic flow and a nicely organized color pallet could do wonders for your profile and attract new followers.
Aesthetic is essential for companies which base their business on visual appeal. For example, focusing on this type of?social media marketing for real estate?could make a huge difference when it comes to outshining the competition. There are many available visual Instagram planners which will help your profile really come together resulting in aesthetically pleasing appearance.
4. Everyone will shop on Instagram
Instagram decided to join forces with Shopify in a form of a?new shopping feature integration.
This new feature will allow Shopify users to tag their product in a photo along with the name and the price of the product. Customers will be able to do their shopping through Instagram without having to switch to another app.
People from Shopify explain that partnering up with Instagram was the next logical step because staying on the same platform will only result in increased number of additional sales. So, if you?re not using Shopify yet, this might be the best time to start.
5. It?s all about Instagram analytics
If you want to run a successful Instagram campaign you?ll have to get familiar with?Instagram analytics. Mastering analytics tools is really important because it will help with constantly changing the Instagram algorithm.
Also, frequently optimizing your content is another crucial factor in generating a high number of impressions and engagement.
And since 2018 seems to be all about Instagram analytics, you can look forward to more advanced versions of the tool not only limited to mobile apps.
If you want to be a successful marketer you need to stay on top of your game. This year is huge for Instagram, especially Instagram Stories so make sure you?re amongst the first who?ll use all its potential and put it to good use.
Once you have had a new website designed and it?s live, how do you ensure that you are getting the maximum traffic and the highest conversion rates possible for your business? With promoting your site, there are a whole load of things to consider and simple ways to ensure you are reaching the right people. Follow these steps and be on the road to more hits than you can handle.
Know your Purpose
When deciding to have a website built, you will have certainly thought about what you are going to use it for and who you are trying to appeal to. When trying to direct visitors to your site, you must be able to implement this in an effective marketing strategy. If you are seeking page hits, then you are going to use a different strategy ? for example, your business plan on sales isn?t going to work. Make sure you keep this in mind before you launch any campaigns and certainly before you spend any money.
Utilize Social Media
An obvious one, but not always put into practice effectively. Read up on the best ways to maintain brand identity across platforms, and make sure you do not publish contradictory information. The last thing you want to do is confuse potential viewers. If you are seeking visits to sell, make sure you are present in forums discussing the industry you are a part of. Never doubt that community can make or break a small business.
If SEO sounds like a foreign term, you probably need to do your research. Getting traffic to your page is not about sitting back, crossing your fingers and hoping to the high heavens that somebody will stumble across your page. Whether it is running a blog, outsourcing some content or targeting particular geographic locations, you will need to understand a little about SEO to get those all important clicks.
Make Sure Your Website Loads Well
A great looking, totally sleek website will not do much if whoever visits has to endure slow loading times and poor usability. More traffic than ever will be accessing your site from a phone or other small device, and so you need to find out if your website is up to the challenge. If not, you really must address this issue right away. You could potentially be losing half of your customers. Furthermore, if your website is slow to load, then your bounce rate will be artificially high. Look into the Best Web Hostingfor your requirements; you will kick yourself if your server causes potential customers to leave, and a loss in sales.
Keep it fresh
There is no point in having a website that you don?t update; therefore, make sure it stays in line with the times and that there are new backlinks promoting it as much as possible. Remember that repeat customers will see your website many times, and if nothing changes in a few months, they are likely to become disinterested. Unless you are using your website primarily as a CV, aim to update the content on it as often as you can.
When it comes to social media marketing, it is really easy to get lost in this bottomless ocean of shares, likes, tweets, and news feeds. It seems like opportunities are everywhere, and young entrepreneurs try to get the most out of every single one of them. Facebook and Instagram are the first and the second most popular social network in the United States as of November 2016 (according to Statista). So, it's no wonder almost every brand plunges headlong into this Facebook/Instagram marketing battle for customers.
However, what is the difference between these two social networks and which one should you use for your business?
User base
Facebook is clearly a winner here. It can boast almost 2 billion active users of any gender, age, and nationality, and it looks like this number is only going to grow with time. This is why chances are high that you already have a Facebook business page and are actively using it to promote your brand. This is, definitely, not a mistake. Whether you sell socks or provide accounting services, Facebook won't let you down when it comes to exposure. Instagram, on the other hand, is being used by 600 million users monthly, and its demographics is not so diverse.
Demographics
Since Facebook is a place where people of all ages, professions, and income levels hang out, it is a universal platform with an extensive pool of potential customers for literary every business. However, according to Pixel Vulture, teenage use of Facebook decreased 45% in 2014. So, if you are trying to market your product to youngsters, better try Snapchat or YouTube. At the same time, Facebook is still effective when it comes to 30+ professionals, teachers, moms, entrepreneurs, etc.
Instagram, on the other hand, is a social network with the prevailing number of female users (38% vs 26% of male ones) aged under 34.
This makes Instagram a perfect place to market fashion, design, travel, entertainment, and other things that make up ?Instagram lifestyle?.
Engagement
Surprisingly, Facebook with all its billions of users lost this battle to relatively tiny Instagram, with the latter giving you up to 10 times more engagement (according to Jenn Herman's study). She put one and same post on both Instagram and Facebook in order to see how many likes each of them will collect. The study proved that though Instagram's audience is smaller, it is more willing to engage with brands. The post on Instagram won with almost 10 times more likes and comments within the same period of time.
It happened because Facebook is perfect for private use, while we use Instagram mainly for following celebrities, getting inspired, and keeping up with the latest trends. It means that when we are on Instagram, we are subconsciously prepared to like or comment on posts (since that's pretty much all we can do on Instagram). When we are on Facebook, we simply want to text out friends or read the latest news on Donald Trump.
Purpose
In essence, Instagram is a photo/video sharing platform with a?simple interface and a?limited number of sophisticated distracting options. It makes it really easy for businesses to bond with customers through sharing personalized, inviting?pictures that reflect the philosophy of the brand. Such an approach allows brands to appear?closer to customers. The lifespan of your Instagram post is short, however, so make sure to post regularly. Apart from that, choose only high-quality pictures in order to keep up with the competition.
If your products are more complex or highly specialized, Facebook is, undoubtedly, a better fit. You would probably want to write longer and more informative posts, join groups, create events, share valuable videos or blog articles. You should also focus on Facebook if you are doing content marketing, since, as we remember, Facebook is a place most turn to in order to satisfy their information hunger.
Facebook or Instagram?
Facebook and Instagram are two social media giants that are currently being owned by Mark Zuckerberg. They both allow targeting specific groups of people (e.g people of specific language or gender) and offer paid ads that can help to promote your business.
However, remember that if your customers would prefer?to see your product, not read about it, Instagram will do a better job getting your message across. Fashion, style, travel?and hospitality are industries that would definitely benefit from Instagram marketing.
If you target older audiences, however, or have very specific products and services that a picture cannot explain, then Facebook is your guy. It is also better for marketing more expensive products (since, again, the audience is more mature and solvent).
Author bio:
Jenna Brandon is a blogger, copywriter, and digital marketer at Writology.com.When she?s not busy writing articles and studying modern marketing trends, she cooks pizza or goes hiking with her friends. Jenna is also an avid traveler, and she is secretly Italian at heart.
Whether you have a business or a product that you want to promote online, or you are a blogger who wants to target a certain type of audience to bring in the visitors to make his blog successful; it is very crucial to understand the type of audiences that one targets using the social media platform. The key term here is ?traffic?. The amount of traffic that you get will help the popularity of your business grow, but what you should really target is a particular demographic (type of users). Random traffic will be as quick to disappear as quickly they appear; knowing your demographic will help your hard work ripe, and help retain potential traffic than simply having visitors who will quickly bounce off.
Types of Audiences
Most of the potential audiences of social media are scattered across various social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and others preferring to read blogs. According to Forrester Research?s Groundswell team, they have categorized profiles of internet users into groups like spectators, joiners etc. The 3 major audience types, or in other terms target audiences, for simplicity, can be categorized as Passionate, Influencers and Ad-Hoc.
Passionate
Passionate are people who are dedicated and care deeply about topics that are too specific, too niche to impact the mainstream subjects. But within those specific areas of interest, they are respected, acknowledged, and their opinions are taken seriously, regardless of the size of their audiences. These people are often the original bloggers, who start off blogging on subjects they are close to, care about and are dedicated enough to keep it interesting.
Influencers
Influencers are group of people who have large pool of followers, across different online demographic. They usually start off as a Passionate, but then they usually evolve into a more mainstream arena, and can even end up as trend-setters. They can even be a part of the modern media, but not all the time.
Ad-Hoc
Ad-Hoc is the casual everyday folks. But they are equally important too, though this group is very hard to make sense of. But by being proactive and patient with as many folks as possible from this group, a brand marketer can gain respect targeting this group, which is eventually noticed by bigger entities. But at the same time, if one only pays attention to a select group that gets noticed too.
To understand and target these three specific types of social media audiences is not easy. To identify this audience in their social media channel is important, and it can be done through many analytic tools available, such as Google Analytics. It can determine the source of your audience by social media channels, which can help you to break down social media traffic from organic or paid search. This will help to further segment the type of audience you get, their source channel, and how they are reaching to you, helping one to successfully manipulate the information to make proper target decisions, and classify audiences that make up the social media what it is today.
About the author: Bethany is a blogger by profession. She loves writing on technology and luxury. Beside this she is fond of gadgets. Recently an article on Vending machines attracted her attention. She is loves?photography?and dreams of owning a 3D Camera.
As a blogger, you are always on the look-out for things to do in order to taste a rapid increase in growth. This is a very typical gesture of someone looking for success. ?But the fact remains that there are many things you are not doing to the fullest. However, let?s focus on what you are doing which you are not supposed to do.
Those are the things A-list bloggers and success-aspiring bloggers want to avoid doing. They are the things that may undermine your efforts in turning your small blog into a big blog that every new blogger wants his or her blog become.
If you are a blogger dreaming to become the next Problogger, let me share those things you should avoid like pest with you in this article.
Living off other bloggers? efforts
Relying on people?s efforts is one of the easiest ways to dwindle as a blogger. If you have other important works doing that require that others fill your position in your blog, you shouldn?t use guest bloggers or rely on another blogger for that. The best thing to do in that situation is hire writers for your blog. Presently, I hire some writers to keep my weight watchers discount and ediets coupons blog updated for me, but that doesn?t mean I do not put my efforts in it.
A lot of bloggers leave their blogs for guest writers and before a long period of time, their blog will lose its personality. Readers are reading your blog because they want to see things in your own light, if you can?t give this to them, they are off.
Being Discourteous to Guests
Honoring guest bloggers on your blog is one of the smartest ways to make your blog taste a rapid growth. There are many reasons for this: when a guest blogger contributes for your blog, you have an extra article on your blog without stress. The guest blogger will share his article on other sites ? which means he?s also sharing your blog. These and many more is the reason you should avoid making your guests uncomfortable on your blog.
While you have to limit the rate of guest posts you allow on your blog, you shouldn?t disrespect anybody that wants to contribute to your site if you are not going to accept his article ? many people do this (writing guest posts) out of good will and not only for the sake of backlinks.
A lot of bloggers know the benefits of search engine optimization or SEO on their blogs. Getting your blog to rank in the top of search engines for competitive keywords can help you attract an eye-dropping amount of visitors to your blog.
But many bloggers have blatantly ignored SEO for their blogs and they fail to find out that their blog is suffering because of that. Imagine the amount of keywords your blog could rank for in search engines if you pay careful attention to SEO.
Conclusion
Avoid doing the things that are shared in this article and focus more on building a better blog by doing SEO and using Social Media to promote your blog and you?ll see your blog grow bigger.
John Edget is a blogger from coupon blog where he shares tips on getting latest discount coupons for weight watchers and ediets. He is giving away weight watchers online coupon code and ediet coupon on his blog.
