Instagram has had quite an evolution. Just two short years after launching in 2010, the photo-sharing app was acquired by Facebook for a sum of money that shocked the then-burgeoning social media industry—$1 billion. While the price tag seemed jaw-droppingly high at the time, Mark Zuckerberg had no choice but to make Instagram’s founder, Kevin Systrom, an offer he couldn’t refuse or else Facebook would’ve seen a nosedive in users, engagement, and revenue. Yes, Instagram was that big of a threat.
The acquisition occurred right around the time that other social media platforms were launching and rising in popularity. Platforms such as Vine, Snapchat, and Periscope each brought unique features to the market, which pushed Instagram to update and enhance its photo capturing features as well as add additional features that diversified its engagement capabilities.
“We’re no longer a photo-sharing app. The number one reason people say that they use Instagram, in research, is to be entertained.” —Adam Moserri, CEO of Instagram
In a lot of ways, Instagram has not stopped evolving since it was launched over a decade ago. Today, Instagram users can shop, video chat, watch IGTV channels, and engage with other users on the platform in countless ways. Businesses can advertise and interact with potential customers, all while building their brand and social media presence.
Instagram has launched many improvements throughout the first half of 2021, and more features are yet to arrive as summer turns to autumn later this year. Here are the new Instagram features and how you can make them work for you.
There are upwards of twenty Instagram updates, upgrades, improvements, and new feature launches to watch out for in 2021—far too many to cover in one article. So, we decided to focus this section on five new Instagram features that are most relevant to your business account.
Since its inception, Instagram has been an in-app platform, exclusively. Unlike Facebook, which allows users full access to their platform via desktop and laptop computers, Instagram made it virtually impossible to comfortably navigate, upload posts, comment, and DM via computer. Though users could sign in to Instagram on their computers to search hashtags and view profiles, the platform intentionally disincentivized this option. Well, all that has changed. As of the middle of last year, Instagram has upgraded its desktop features so that users can DM. The messenger API update that Instagram used to accomplish this also allows users to DM multimedia files such as photos, images, gifs, pictures, and other kinds of media, as well as start group chats. Even more exciting is the DM messenger interface, which offers better organization and an ability to access and manage your DM conversations across account profiles so long as they’re integrated. There are a few caveats, however. Messenger API for Instagram will have a staggered rollout as follows:
● Starting June, only IG business accounts that have between 10,000 and 100,000 followers will have access to this new Messenger API.
● Starting July, this new Messenger API will be available for business accounts with between 1,000 and 100,000 followers.
● Finally, by the end of the third quarter, 2021, all business IG accounts will have access to Messenger API.
Though Instagram has offered business accounts for years, only at the beginning of 2021 did they launch their Professional Dashboard, a new organizational tab for Instagram’s business account users. The purpose of Professional Dashboard is to consolidate other business account features in one place—features such as Badges, Instagram Shop, Checkout, and Branded Content. By consolidating these tools and resources into one central hub, Instagram hopes to better assist businesses to reach their marketing goals. There are three key features of Professional Dashboard that will help you stay organized and productive:
● Performance Tracking: this feature allows business account users the ability to analyze trends and study engagement insights, among other critical metrics.
● Business Growth: this feature helps business account users discover new marketing tools that will help them run their accounts more efficiently to build up their businesses. Most importantly, this feature allows users to check the monetization status of their ad campaigns.
● Stay Informed: this feature shows business account users personalized, curated, educational resources that will help them promote their businesses on Instagram. These resources include tips, tricks, guidance, and inspiration.
Shocker of all shockers—recently, Instagram initiated the option to hide “likes” so that they aren’t displayed! Why would a user want to hide the number of likes their post has? The answer is complicated. Psychologically, social media has done a number on all of us, especially young people. Research has proven that these platforms are physiologically addictive and impact the mental health of users. Users often experience a “high” when their posts receive a ton of engagement such as likes, comments, and shares. That’s all fine and dandy, but unfortunately, when users experience low engagement with their posts, it actually affects their mood, making them feel low, disappointed, and dejected. Instagram, and its parent company, Facebook, have decided to give users the option to hide the number of likes their posts have so that other users can’t see. Time will tell if this new feature positively improves user experience.
This feature isn’t too new. Suggested Posts actually launched in the middle of last year, but it’s still catching on, so we wanted to mention it. The purpose of Suggested Posts is to expose Instagram users to other user accounts, both business and personal, that they might enjoy. Suggested Posts only appear once a user has finished scrolling through the most recent posts of the accounts they follow in their feed. The actual posts of other users that are suggested will be relevant to the user’s personal preferences and interests. Instagram’s machine learning A.I. uses an algorithm to determine what a user likes based on the other accounts they follow and posts they “like.” At the moment, Instagram is still playing around with this feature and compiling user feedback. Due to the fact that there is no current way to turn this feature off, many users have complained that Suggested Posts are intrusive and at times infuriating. Have you encountered Suggested Posts? What do you think? The general consensus at FTx 360 is that they seem to be the “personal account” version of straightforward Instagram advertising. Meaning that we’re keeping our eye on them.
Interactive stickers for Instagram stories is easily our favorite new feature! The concept of story stickers emerged a few years ago, but in the last few months, Instagram has really leveled up its sticker game by adding brand new story stickers that provide far better interactive user experiences. If you’re unfamiliar, the purpose of story stickers is to add clickable links to your posts. In essence, these stickers serve as in-app CTAs, which can be a powerful marketing tool for businesses. Right now, the most popular stickers available on Instagram are Location, @Mention, #Hashtag, Donation, Music, Poll, Questions, Challenge, DM Me, Countdown, Quiz, Stay Home, Food Orders, Gift Cards, and Support Small Business. Let’s look at the story stickers that can best support your business’s Instagram marketing efforts:
● DM Me sticker: Instagram launched this new story sticker to help users DM business accounts easily and promote messaging interaction. By altering the DM Me text to state “Get More Info,” this particular sticker can become a powerful CTA that drives private discussions about products and services that could lead to sales.
● Food Orders sticker: if you own a restaurant, coffee shop, or quick-serve business, this story sticker is for you. The Food Orders sticker enables users to tap the sticker and get redirected immediately to your business’s online ordering platform. Connecting with popular food delivery service platforms such as GrubHub, Uber Eats, or DoorDash is possible with this sticker.
● Support Small Business sticker: this story sticker is excellent for businesses that want to partner with other non-competing businesses and cross-promote each other’s products and services. With the Support Small Business sticker, you can tag the business you’ve partnered with, which will introduce your visitors to the other business, and vice versa. By tapping the sticker, visitors will be redirected to your partner’s IG account or website, depending.
In addition to the Big Five that we covered in our last section, there are thirteen additional features to be aware of, which will be the focus of this section. These features affect both business and personal accounts.
At long last, Instagram offers in-app eCommerce solutions for business accounts. This Shop feature has to be accessed through your Facebook business account, however, since the platforms are married.
Depending on the nature of your business, you may have several Instagram accounts that appear under a larger umbrella company. Previously, there was no way to post the same content across multiple accounts, but now there is. This feature is a bona fide time saver.
Featuring user-generated content has become a highly effective social media marketing strategy, but efficiently “sharing” and “reposting” user-generated content hasn’t always been so easy on Instagram when it comes to stories. Instagram improved this by creating notifications for business account handles that users “tag” in their stories. If you’re tagged in a story, a notification will appear in your account.
In their effort to save businesses even more time, Instagram now offers Create Mode—a way to create, save, and reuse story templates. If you’re in the habit of including stickers, text, and a lot of bells and whistles in your story posts, this Create Mode template feature will save you a ton of time in the long run.
“Have you ever wanted to turn off your video or audio when you’re Live? Now you can. Hopefully, this gives you more flexibility and lessens any pressure to look or sound a certain way during a Live.” —Adam Moserri, CEO of Instagram
Have you ever hosted an Instagram Live only to have your child, dog, or neighbor make an unwelcomed, albeit unintentional, intrusion? Even Live videos you record at the office can be suddenly sabotaged by the unexpected. There’s nothing worse than scrambling to quiet a mysterious noise or correct a visual issue while your entire virtual audience looks on. That’s why Instagram now offers an “Off” option, allowing users to easily and quickly turn off their video, audio, or both.
Instagram TV, or IGTV for short, offers long form video content (longer than 60 seconds). This content format has grown in popularity, which is why Instagram is now working to promote IGTV channels and episodes. Using organic reach, Instagram will include IGTV Previews as though they are regular posts. The only downside is that you will have no control over the preview content. Instead, Instagram will automatically play a 15-second clip from your IGTV episode as a preview.
Using the Instagram app can be a huge drain on cell phone battery life, which is why Instagram launched Dark Mode, a “dim” version of its content. The main difference is that Dark Mode features a black background, as opposed to the traditional white background.
Taking a cue from Google, Instagram now divides its Inbox into three tabs—Primary, General, and Requests. Messages from users you follow or who follow you will show up in the Primary tab, and the rest will appear in the Requests tab, which you can then manually move to either Primary or General.
We’re not sure how we feel about Instagram’s new “Suggested Unfollow” feature… Instagram will now suggest to users, not accounts they should follow, but rather current accounts that they should unfollow due to the fact that they haven’t been engaging with those accounts anyway. Generally speaking, the accounts that Instagram will suggest you “unfollow” will be the accounts in your “Least Interacted With” list.
Sometimes, it’s necessary to block a follower. Sad, but true. But what if you don’t want to completely cut your profile off from a follower? That’s where Remove Followers comes in handy, Instagram’s “soft block” feature. In your Followers list, you’ll now see Remove buttons next to each account name. Simply tap “remove” and the follower won’t be blocked from finding your account in the future, they just won’t see your posts anymore since they’re no longer following you.
Instagram Alt Text is a great new feature for business accounts that want to cater to their followers who are visually impaired. With Instagram Alt Text, you can compose shorter captions that will appear in large print font. As an added bonus, using Alt Text is another opportunity to plug in SEO keywords and hashtags that Instagram will pick up.
As an alternative to Remove Followers, Instagram now offers the new Restrict Accounts feature that enables users to disable a follower’s ability to comment on their posts. Originally, this feature was designed to fight online bullying, but it’s helpful for businesses, as well.
Depending on the nature of your business and the content of your social media account, it might be appropriate to prevent users who are under a certain age from accessing your posts. For example, vape retailers and CBD shops might want to restrict underage users from viewing their content. With the Age Limit feature, you can “hide” your profile from younger audiences by defining the “minimum age” setting within your account. Once a minimum age has been set, only users who meet the age minimum will have access to your profile, posts, and stories.
Instagram remains the most popular photo-sharing app, and yet this social media platform has evolved to become so much more. Instagram’s success and continued popularity are due in large part to its ability to adopt and mimic the successful features that competing social platforms offer.
At the moment, the social platform that’s giving Instagram the biggest run for its money is TikTok. TikTok is young, fun, and growing at a rate that has been making other social media platforms very nervous. Currently, TikTok has over 1 billion active users across the world, but why? What makes TikTok so appealing?
What makes TikTok unique is the app’s discovery feed, known as the “For You” page. This view serves as the user’s primary timeline, or feed, and it uses a special algorithm to populate the most optimal and personalized content for the user. The algorithm’s artificial intelligence uses machine learning to record, analyze, and leverage the specific posts that a user interacts with in order to show them highly relevant content that they’re likely to enjoy.
Unlike competing social media platforms that foster social networks and connections with people you know in real life, TikTok actually does the opposite by connecting users with content that’s generated outside of their social circles.
Why mention this?
TikTok is a bigger threat to Instagram right now than any other social media platform, and Instagram knows it. Over the course of the past year, Instagram users have begun to split their social media time between Instagram and TikTok, which has affected Instagram’s user engagement as well as its ad revenue.
What’s Instagram doing about it?
Instagram plans to study TikTok and adopt as many popular TikTok features as it can.
“The important thing is that people are seeing stories that resonate with them and are meaningful to them.” —Adam Moserri, CEO of Instagram
Truth be told, Instagram isn’t suffering due to TikTok… yet. Instagram is still the #1 platform in conjunction with Facebook for effective advertising. In fact, posting regularly on Instagram for marketing purposes will gain you more followers and daily interactions than posting on TikTok at the moment… But we’re definitely watching both platforms closely.
As of writing this article, TikTok has upgraded its ads, making them personalized and also unavoidable. Meaning, users can no longer opt-out of seeing ads on the platform. This upgrade took place in April earlier this year, and the marketing specialists at FTx 360 are still tracking ad performance metrics to determine if advertising on TikTok will at some point rival placing targeted ads on Instagram.
If the scales tip in TikTok’s favor, we’ll let you know! In the meantime, Instagram is where it’s at for social media marketing if your content contains highly visual photos and videos.
FTx 360 provides social media marketing services that can help you get the most out of your social media presence, increase social engagement, build followers, and convert users and followers into website visitors and loyal customers. No matter how big or small your business is today, or what industry you’re in, our team of experienced digital marketers can increase social engagement for your brand on Instagram, Facebook, and other social platforms. Using paid advertisements, PPC Marketing, and social media marketing strategies, our marketers combine the power of hashtags, SEO, and geo-targeting to deliver results. Contact us to discover what FTx 360 can do for your brand.
FTx 360 is a full-service digital marketing agency that offers the most advanced digital marketing solutions for businesses of all industries, and that’s not all. Our digital marketing specialists are also committed to serving the greater marketing community by publishing informative articles every week.
Our July articles covered the importance of choosing the best social media platforms to market your brand, the how-tos of writing content that attracts Google bots, and the measures business owners must go to ensure their websites are both ADA compliant and mobile friendly.
In case you missed them, we’ve put together brief summaries of each article that you can reference as you market your business online. Just remember, nothing beats reading the originals, so we encourage you to check out the full-length articles if you want to get the most out of our digital marketing strategies, tips, and techniques.
Ensuring that social media marketing works for your business will depend on choosing the right platforms. Each social media platform offers users a different experience. Each platform provides brands with advantages and disadvantages. And each social platform must be carefully analyzed for its business marketing potential.
The first article we published this July compared the benefits of five major social media platforms—Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube—to help readers determine which ones will best serve their marketing goals.
A veteran social media platform that has been around longer than any other social platform, Facebook is by no means passé. Yes, there are newer, more trendy platforms out there, but in terms of ideal user demographics and the ability to connect businesses with new customers, Facebook remains an excellent choice for social media marketing. Bottom line, Facebook is an excellent platform for B2C companies that want to post micro-content to increase brand awareness, gain followers, stimulate social engagement, and convert followers into customers.
More so than any other social media platform, Instagram is all about the visual. As an ideal platform to post photos, images, graphics, and viral memes, Instagram has taken over and dominated the social media marketing space for businesses that are capable of portraying their products and services using images and little else. Instagram really isn’t a listening and learning platform. In terms of fostering conversations, it pales in comparison to Facebook, but that doesn’t mean this platform is any less valuable. Bottom line, Instagram is best for B2C retail companies, especially when those companies primarily sell on an eCommerce platform.
Twitter is an information-spreading platform that serves news outlets and organizations that either cover or contribute to current events. Twitter tends to be politically charged and entire debates can unfold within a single thread of Tweets. That being said, certain business owners can get a lot out of using Twitter for their social media marketing. Since Twitter is a real-time social media platform, every Tweet you post is equivalent to sending a group text message to the entire world. Thanks to hashtags and the immediacy of the platform itself, Twitter offers businesses a way to engage with their audiences in real time, having complete conversations. Bottom line, Twitter will serve B2B and B2C businesses that want to spread information, comment on current events, and elevate their professional authority within their industry.
LinkedIn has had a slow evolution in terms of joining the ranks of well-known social media sites. Considered the world’s largest professional network on the internet, only in recent years has LinkedIn been regarded as an authentic “social media” platform. It wasn’t until LinkedIn provided newsfeeds and the ability for users to post blogs and other content that it joined the ranks of social media. Initially, LinkedIn was used strictly as an employment-oriented online platform that connected professionals and aided job seekers in obtaining the best positions on the open job market. Bottom line, LinkedIn is best for B2B companies that can commit to regularly publishing informative blog articles. If one of your social media marketing goals is to elevate your brand’s expert standing within your industry, then using LinkedIn is for you.
YouTube exclusively offers video content, though some channels publish audio-only files with a static image that fills the video field. When an internet user wants to watch video content, YouTube is the social media platform they go to, hands down. In this sense, YouTube has virtually no competition, not even from Vimeo. If you’re prepared to create professional-looking video content, then using YouTube for your social media marketing could prove more effective than all other platforms combined. Bottom line, when it comes to which social media platform businesses should use to publish video content, no platform compares to YouTube. Whether you own a B2B or B2C business, if you want to reach a massive audience using video content, then you must publish on YouTube, period.
This article also went into great depth, helping readers ascertain their social media marketing goals, so be sure to read the full article if you want to learn more.
The next July article we published on our blog informed readers about how to write web content that will engage customers while pleasing Google’s algorithms. All digital content that’s published on your website has the potential to help elevate your website’s search engine ranking on Google. In our article, we defined the characteristics of “well written” content and described how to write content that will satisfy both consumers and Google bots.
Your business is unique, which means your customers are unique individuals with unique needs. This means that the content you write should speak to your audience, so bear the following in mind to get the most out of the content you write:
Write your content as though you are speaking to your ideal customer, one-on-one, in their language with their vocabulary, remaining mindful of their interests and pain points. Use the following checklist as you write:
In order to compose effective content that Google bots will love just as much as consumers, keep the following pointers in mind as you write:
Finally, we examined how robots.txt files can help Google crawl your web pages, and we also went over black hat SEO, cloaking, and how to avoid these major Google violations. We strongly encourage you to read the full article to stay informed.
In our third July article, we tackled the ins and outs of transforming your business website so that it meets the accessibility standards of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Currently, there are over 60 million Americans who are living with a disability. Physical disabilities that affect a person’s ability to use a website include:
You can take action today and work towards meeting the ADA’s compliance standards by making the following simple changes to your website:
For a comprehensive assessment of where your website stands in terms of ADA compliance, use the following tools to check the accessibility level of your website:
Put very simply, in order to meet ADA compliance standards, your website must be:
A perceivable website is a site that offers both visual and auditory options for every element that appears throughout the website. For example, a blog article will also offer an MP3 playbox so that blind visitors can listen to, instead of read, the article. Embedded videos that appear on a web page will include closed captioning that displays text, enabling deaf visitors to understand what the video is talking about. In short, a perceivable website is one that provides alternative ways to consume content.
An operable website is a site that enables visitors to easily navigate through web pages via any method they choose—keyboard, mouse, automatic or manual scrolling, or touchscreen. Operable websites do not place time limits or restrictions on web pages, which would otherwise cause web page sessions to “time out.” Another aspect to consider when it comes to operable websites, is that the web pages should avoid use of physical “triggers” such as automatically running a strobe light that could cause migraines or seizures.
The basic rule for ensuring your website is understandable is this: a visitor should spend almost no time trying to figure out how to use your website, but rather spend their time on your site gaining information. Using simplistic, logical web page layouts can greatly reduce the amount of time visitors spend familiarizing themselves with your site. For example, keeping the search bar, newsletter opt-in, and chatbox in the same spot on every web page of your site can aid in presenting an understandable website.
You’ve probably heard this term before—robust web design is critical for countless reasons. A robust website will work well on all browsers and perform properly on all devices, including mobile smartphones, tablets, and other handheld devices. But did you know that you can also design your website to perform robustly for disabled visitors? By including assistive technologies on your site, you can enhance website engagement with the vision and hearing impaired. The key is to continue making upgrades as technologies evolve.
Be sure to check out the full article if you want to learn the specifics of ADA compliance and website accessibility.
Our final article of the month discussed not only the importance of website mobile-friendliness, but also what you can do right now to ensure that your website is mobile friendly. Today, mobile friendliness is the one and only ranking factor that Google uses to either promote or demote websites in their search results. What this means is that if your website isn’t configured to display excellently on mobile devices, then Google is not going to rank it.
However, a mobile-friendly website will not only get crawled, indexed, and ranked by Google, but it will also ensure that consumers can visit your site from their mobile devices, encounter an excellent user interface, and have a wonderful experience while navigating from one web page to the next. When visitors have a positive experience on your website using their mobile devices, they will be far more likely to become repeat visitors, first-time customers, social media followers, and even lifelong loyal customers.
In the article, we introduced the following three configuration techniques you can use to ensure your website will be mobile friendly:
The term “responsive web design” refers to websites built with HTML code that are able to render the original HTML code differently depending on the screen size of the device. Meaning, the webmaster only needs to build one website, because the code itself will dictate how content is displayed from one device to the next. Responsive web design is the most cost-effective, time-effective configuration technique because it has the easiest design pattern to implement and maintain. For this reason, Google recommends responsive web design over the other available configuration techniques.
Dynamic serving is slightly different from responsive web design. Though dynamic serving uses the same URLs on the mobile version that appear on the original website, it generates a different version of HTML code depending on the device the site is being displayed on, as well as specific users’ browser data. Dynamic serving enables a website to be fully accessible. However, Google bots tend to crawl this configuration differently than how they crawl responsive web designs, which means you would have to invest in server-side rendering as a temporary workaround for these crawlers.
“Separate URLs” is a configuration technique that provides different code to each device category, each using separate URLs. First, the user’s device type is detected. Then, the configuration uses HTTP and Vary HTTP Headers to redirect users to the appropriate page. In the case of separate URLs, the mobile site will utilize a mobile-specific URL, such as an “m-dot,” “dot-mobi,” or even a separate folder altogether. A common myth is that this configuration method causes duplicate content that Google will penalize, but this rumor is completely untrue.
Here is a checklist you can use to evaluate the mobile-friendliness of your website:
For additional information about website mobile-friendliness, including links to Google’s Mobile-Friendly Testing Tool, Google’s Mobile Usability Tool, and Google’s Speed Test, be sure to read the full article.
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As a business owner, you’re probably aware that social media should play a role in your digital marketing strategy. But which platforms should you invest your time in?
There are many social media platforms to choose from. In fact, new social platforms hit the internet regularly, which can be overwhelming for business owners who are trying to keep up. The good news is that you don’t have to. When it comes to using social media to promote your business, accrue followers, and increase brand awareness, there are only five major platforms to consider. Those are:
● YouTube
Should you create profiles and attempt to publish on all of these platforms? Absolutely not. As counterintuitive as it may seem, if you try to tackle managing accounts and publishing content on all five of these social media platforms, you will cause the adverse effect of diluting your brand and weakening your digital presence.
Ensuring that social media marketing works for your business will depend on choosing the right platforms. Each social media platform offers users a different experience. Each platform provides brands with advantages and disadvantages. And each social platform must be carefully analyzed for its business marketing potential. In this article, we will assess the major platforms listed above to help you determine which ones will best serve your marketing goals.
In order to reach your social media marketing goals, you must first get clear on what those goals are. Social media goals can range widely from one business to the next. Some companies strictly use social media platforms to sell directly to consumers. Others choose platforms that will enable them to collect thousands of followers, because building general awareness about their brands is their greatest goal. Company owners who want to promote their B2B businesses might expect their social media marketing efforts to result in gaining podcast subscribers and website visitors since those are their two biggest conversion channels.
What are your social media marketing goals? Your answer will depend on the following factors, so first ask yourself:
● What type of business do you own?
● Who are your clients or customers?
● Which social media platforms do they spend the most time on?
● What type of information do you want to impart to your targeted audience via social media and what would be the best content form to communicate that information to them?
Let’s take a look at each question, the possible answers, and how your particular answer will inform your social media marketing goals.
The first major differentiator is whether you own a B2C company—”business-2-consumer” company—or a B2B company—”business-2-business” company. The industry in which your company operates is the second major differentiator. B2B companies that operate within the manufacturing industry, for example, will have very different social media marketing goals than B2C companies that operate as pet supply stores, golf & country clubhouses, or 24-hour diners. Certain social media platforms will serve B2B companies better than B2C ones, while other social media platforms will benefit retailers more so than restaurants, all of which we will examine further in this article. For now, simply identify the nature of your business.
This question goes much deeper than what meets the eye initially. The answer we’re looking for is all about customer demographics, customer interests, customer favorites, customer “pain points,” and the list goes on. You really must know who your customers are if you want to engage them online using your social media content. Do you have a digitized Point-of-Sale system at your retail location? Are you using Customer Relationship Management software at your hospitality business? Do you have a customer loyalty rewards program in place at your quick-serve diner? Any of these software tools can tell you exactly who your clients and customers are. Simply review and analyze all of the valuable customer data that has been historically recorded. You can access this data via the reporting function of the software.
We admit, if you already knew the answer to this question, you probably wouldn’t need to read this article in the first place. Obviously, you want to focus your social media marketing efforts on whichever social platforms your customers spend most of their time. That being said, determining which platform your current customers—and also your potential customers—spend the bulk of their time on isn’t as straightforward as it should be. Answering this question will require research, but the good news is that there are several independent websites that have conducted this kind of research already by comparing user data from one platform to the next. Not to mention that any social platform that is a publicly traded company has to provide key demographic information as part of their financial reporting transparency obligations. Check out Facebook’s Investor Reporting website.
In terms of identifying and reaching your social media marketing goals, this is the most important question you will ever answer. Social media is all about interaction and engagement, which means that you must understand what kind of content your customers want to find on social media in order to provide them with content that will effectively engage them. For instance, if you own a holistic dentistry practice, your customers are probably concerned with the toxins that are known to leach out of dental fillings and implants, and the dangers that mixed metals are suspected to cause in the human body. The dental materials you use, as well as your services, are toxin-free. So, how can you communicate this information to your potential customers, quelling their fears while educating them at the same time, all while using the most accommodating social media platform to relay your message?
As you can tell, a great deal of thought goes into figuring out what kind of information your customers are seeking online and which content form will be best to communicate that information to them. In the next section, we will look at each social media platform to help you understand how using it could benefit your business and to also help you eliminate the platforms that are less likely to serve you, your customers, and your marketing goals.
Each social media platform has a fluctuating number of daily users, and depending on the specific demographics of those users, your business could have access to a very deep pool of potential customers if you choose to market your company on those platforms. But is it better to be a big fish in a small pond, a small fish in a big pond, or a fisherman who casts the widest net possible? Only you will know what is best for your business. Here is the social media platform information you can use to assess which platforms will be right for you.
A veteran social media platform that has been around longer than the others on this list, Facebook is by no means passé. Yes, there are newer, more trendy platforms out there, but in terms of ideal user demographics and the ability to connect businesses with new customers, Facebook remains an excellent choice for social media marketing.
● Over 2 billion active users visit Facebook daily
● The biggest demographic on Facebook are male users (19.3%) and female users (13.2%) between 25 and 34 years of age
● 75% of social media users with an income of $75k or more are on Facebook
By using Facebook as part of your social media marketing strategy, you will be able to attract users and gain followers organically. Simply posting content regularly, using relevant hashtags, and replying to comments as they come in will do wonders for gradually building brand awareness and converting visitors into customers over time.
But that’s not all Facebook can do for your business. What makes Facebook one of the best platforms for B2B and B2C companies who ultimately want to increase revenue is its targeted digital advertising platform.
Between running PPC advertising campaigns and selling goods to customers from the platform itself, Facebook has helped to transform a lot of companies into eCommerce powerhouses, and it can do the same for your business.
Bottom line, Facebook is an excellent platform for B2C companies that want to post micro-content to increase brand awareness, gain followers, stimulate social engagement, and convert followers into customers.
Founded in October of 2010, Instagram hit the social media scene and instantly won over a multitude of users across the world. More so than any other social media platform, Instagram is all about the visual. As the ideal platform to post photos, images, graphics, and viral memes, Instagram has taken over and dominated the social media marketing space for businesses who sell products that “give good photo.”
Instagram really isn’t a listening and learning platform. In terms of fostering conversations, it pales in comparison to Facebook, but that doesn’t mean this platform is any less valuable. In fact, Instagram can do what Facebook can’t, which is present the beauty of life in a visual format with no distractions such as written commentary, website links, random polls and surveys, and other chaotic options that tend to be presented on the average Facebook feed.
● 200 million+ Instagrammers visit at least one business profile daily
● 70% of shoppers use Instagram to discover new products
● Instagram’s potential advertising reach is 928 million users
If you’re already convinced that including Instagram in your social media marketing is a must, you aren’t alone. That being said, Instagram tends to benefit businesses in the B2C retail consumer goods space where the primary customer demographics are teenagers and young adults.
Bottom line, Instagram is best for B2C retail companies, especially when those companies primarily sell on an eCommerce platform.
The social media platform, Twitter, was launched back in 2006 and frankly, most users did not comprehend its potential for about ten years. Once upon a time, Twitter had a primitive look, Tweets were referred to as Updates, and Followers were referred to as Friends. Most Tweets were basic if not random, and because Twitter lacked the visual components of Facebook, as well as the number of characters one would need to write a paragraph, many users were initially confused about how they were going to use the platform to connect with friends.
But today:
● 77% of Americans who annually earn $75k or more use Twitter
● 80% of Twitter users are affluent millennials
● 71% of Twitter users say they use the social platform to get their news and stay informed
The last statistic sums up everything you need to know about Twitter. Twitter is an information-spreading platform that serves news outlets and organizations that either cover or contribute to current events. Twitter tends to be politically charged and entire debates can unfold within a single thread of Tweets.
That being said, certain business owners can get a lot out of using Twitter for their social media marketing. Since Twitter is a real-time social media platform, every Tweet you post is equivalent to sending a group text message to the entire world. Currently, a Tweet can be up to 280 characters, which allows you to make a complex point, and because you can also share website links, Twitter is an ideal platform to drive traffic to your business blog or YouTube channel where visitors can gain even more information from you.
Thanks to hashtags and the immediacy of the platform itself, Twitter offers businesses a way to engage with their audiences in real time, having complete conversations. Your business can also take advantage of trending topics on Twitter by retweeting and commenting on whatever is going on in the world.
Bottom line, Twitter will serve B2B and B2C businesses that want to spread information, comment on current events, and elevate their professional authority within their industry. If your company serves a specific community, has a non-profit mission, or interconnects with the world of current events, then using Twitter as part of your social media marketing strategy could greatly benefit your business.
LinkedIn has had a slow evolution in terms of joining the ranks of well-known social media sites. Considered the world’s largest professional network on the internet, only in recent years has LinkedIn been regarded as an authentic “social media” platform. It wasn’t until LinkedIn provided newsfeeds and the ability for users to post blogs and other content that it joined the ranks of social media. Initially, LinkedIn was used strictly as an employment-oriented online platform that connected professionals and aided job seekers in obtaining the best positions on the open job market.
● More than 70% of LinkedIn users are from outside the USA
● 90 million LinkedIn users are senior-level hiring managers and 63 million are in decision-making positions at their companies
● LinkedIn makes up more than 50% of all social traffic to B2B websites & blogs
LinkedIn is an interesting social media marketing option. While it doesn’t have nearly as many users as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter combined, it has far more marketing potential than you might think. If you own a B2B company that does international business, you really can’t afford not to be on LinkedIn.
One of the biggest benefits of using LinkedIn is that you can be a big fish in a small pond. Unlike Facebook and Instagram that have crowded newsfeeds, there are fewer users on LinkedIn to compete with. And the users who actively use LinkedIn have specific goals in mind, such as connecting with relevant businesses, reviewing the resumes of qualified professionals, and gaining insights about their industries by reading newsfeed articles.
If you use LinkedIn to the fullest, which includes publishing posts regularly and updating blog articles to your business profile, you can potentially build massive awareness about your brand in a relatively short amount of time. And best of all, because LinkedIn isn’t crowded with consumers, you don’t have to advertise on the platform. Simply post regularly and use relevant hashtags, and you will reap the benefits of advertising without spending a dime thanks to LinkedIn’s algorithms.
Bottom line, LinkedIn is best for B2B companies that can commit to regularly publishing informative blog articles. If one of your social media marketing goals is to elevate your brand’s expert standing within your industry, then using LinkedIn is for you.
Last, but certainly not least, is YouTube. YouTube exclusively offers video content, though some channels publish audio-only files with a static image that fills the video field. When an internet user wants to watch video content, YouTube is the social media platform they go to, hands down. In this sense, YouTube has virtually no competition, not even from Vimeo. If you’re prepared to create professional-looking video content, then using YouTube for your social media marketing could prove more effective than all other platforms combined.
● 73% of U.S. adults use YouTube and 89% of YouTube users come from outside the USA
● The number of channels earning six figures per year on YouTube grows by 40% every year
● YouTube is the second-most visited website in the world after Google
In order to publish video content on YouTube, you will have to pick an account package that’s appropriate for your business size. Owners of startups can first use YouTube’s free publishing services and then when you grow, you can upgrade to one of their paid service options. The best part about YouTube, and there are many, is that the platform itself is a search engine. When you correctly categorize your channel and videos, and add hashtags, users will be able to easily find you. YouTube also provides analytic tools to help you gauge video performance.
YouTube can provide your business with an additional stream of income if you gain enough subscribers to your channel, which is something that other social media platforms simply do not offer. Bear in mind that there’s a significant delay on payouts, but once you earn the minimum dollar amount, which triggers the automated payment process, YouTube will email you an alert.
What kind of video content should you publish on YouTube? The answer will have to do with what your specific customers want to see. But here are a few ideas to get you started:
● Webinars, Tutorials, and How-To Videos
● Candid Customer Testimonials
● Q&A Videos
● Trailer Videos
● Stats Videos
Bottom line, when it comes to which social media platform businesses should use to publish video content, no platform compares to YouTube. Whether you own a B2B or B2C business, if you want to reach a massive audience using video content, then you must publish on YouTube, period. You can also take clips of your videos to use as micro-content teasers on Facebook, Instagram, and other social platforms as part of your strategy to drum up interest and drive traffic to your YouTube channel.
Hopefully, this article has helped you refine your social media marketing goals and aided your decision as to which social platforms to invest your time, money, and efforts into. The real trick is to pick only one or two social media platforms to focus on, rather than attempting to manage every platform under the sun.
Want personalized, hands-on social media marketing assistance? FTx 360 offers social media marketing services to B2B and B2C businesses of all industries. Our team of marketers specialize in both macro and micro-content, and know how to make the most out of each social media platform so that you gain a growing audience and provide your customers with the information they want most. Contact us anytime to find out how FTx 360 can benefit your bottom line without breaking the bank.
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Do you know how many customers are socially engaged with your brand online? Or are you scratching your head right now because you have no idea whether or not you even have a social audience, much less how many they number. You don’t even know who they are…
You’re not alone.
Many business owners focus on advertising and overlook the importance of increasing social engagement with their customers.
Though effective, advertising is impersonal whereas engaging with your social audience is highly personal. Interestingly, advertising campaigns that lack correlating social engagement campaigns don’t end up doing very well.
So, what is social engagement? The simplest definition is that social engagement is the process of actively interacting and communicating in an online community, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Reddit, Quora, or any blog, forum, third-party review site, or social media platform.
Strategies to increase social engagement emphasize initiating personal conversations in order to stay in constant contact with a given audience online. This means that your campaigns to increase social engagement cannot—and should not—include too many blatant advertisements of your products or services.
But why is that?
While overtly promoting your products and services on social media platforms is a valid form of advertising, it will not foster social engagement nor help you build a social community of online followers.
When social engagement efforts are maintained correctly, the benefits include gaining shoppers, building customer loyalty, and ensuring overall business growth.
Providing your customers with opportunities to engage with your brand in meaningful ways will lead to a better customer experience. Customers who have positive experiences while socially engaging with your brand online are more likely to tell their friends and family about your company.
There are many strategies to increase social engagement, but for the sake of expediency, this article will focus on the following three ways:
● Research & Utilize Trending Hashtags
● Provide Novel Content
● Use the A.I.D.A. Formula
Hashtags are the SEO of social media. Keywords are used to amplify SEO and drive web traffic, and in a very similar way, hashtags are used in social media posts and blog posts to attract site users.
Every hashtag is prefaced by the hash symbol—#. When hashtags are used correctly, posts get seen by large audiences. When hashtags are used expertly, posts can go viral. But when hashtags are used incorrectly, or worse, not used at all, those posts will never see the light of day.
In fact, almost 70% of Instagram posts go unseen! What does that tell us? That 70% of social media posts are not using hashtags correctly, which means that 70% of social media users are not utilizing those platforms to increase social engagement.
By adding just 1 hashtag to a post, the post’s engagement can increase by roughly 12.6%. That’s valuable!
However, you can’t just thoughtlessly slap a few hashtags onto your posts and expect to see results.
Finding popular, trending hashtags that are relevant to your business’ social media post requires research and testing.
If you have been using hashtags but haven’t noticed an increase in social engagement, then your hashtag strategy is flawed. Don’t worry, we have tips to correct your strategy. First, stop doing the following:
● Don’t copy / paste the same hashtags in each post
● Don’t invent your own hashtags unless doing so is part of a specific marketing campaign; a newly invented hashtag is “empty” of followers, which defeats your goal
● Avoid gimmicky hashtags such as #like4like, #follow4follow, and other bland, nondescript hashtags
● Never go over 30 hashtags in a single post, and make sure every hashtag you use is highly relevant to your business and the post’s content
Interestingly, whether a hashtag is added to the caption section or in the comments section it will work the same way, perform the same way, and be equally effective. That being said, users and followers become turned off when they see an ugly block of hashtags within a caption, so be mindful about how you present your hashtags. Remember, Facebook and Instagram will reward posts that look neat, pretty, and synchronized. The bottom line is that if you have a block of 30 hashtags and they’re all relevant, that’s fine, but use them in the comments section, and never the caption itself. Capeesh?
Instead of falling prey to the list of “don’ts” that we mentioned above, here’s what you should do:
Invest in a good hashtag tool. Instead of inventing your own hashtag or using a social media platform’s limited search function to manually collect seemingly relevant hashtags, try using a hashtag tool. Hashtag tools are designed to help you discover relevant hashtags, and you can even check the engagement stats of each hashtag to make sure it’ll be worth your while.
Watch out for high-density hashtags, though. Any hashtag that has 500,000 followers or more is considered high-density. If you only use high-density hashtags, the likelihood of your post being seen by a wide audience is nil. Remember, high-density equals “high competition.” That being said, including one or two high-density hashtags won’t hurt you, in fact it will help, but only if you’re primarily using a bunch of low-density, relevant hashtags.
Thoroughly research each specific hashtag so that you can make an informed decision about whether or not to use it. And be sure to include a mix of the following types of hashtags in your posts.
● Community Hashtags—These hashtags revolve around small niche communities, which means they’re highly targeted, yet they’re considered low competition because the overall audience is a comparatively lower number of users. For example, #oceanlife is a hashtag centered on a community of people, i.e. those who live near the ocean and have a beachy lifestyle.
● Audience Descriptive Hashtags—These hashtags use words and phrases that describe your target audience. Audience descriptive hashtags work best when you use between 5 and 8, being careful that you aren’t using variations on the same description. For example, #bookloversofInstagram is a hashtag that defines an audience, and other descriptive hashtags can be used to complement it such as #readerslife, #kindleaddict, and #bookwormsunite.
● Location Hashtags—These hashtags are exactly what you might think, i.e. a geographical region that’s relevant to the post. This is not to be confused with adding a location sticker to a post, which will pinpoint the address where the post was uploaded. Location hashtags serve to cast a wider net than a particular address. For example, #NewYorkCityCatering is a hashtag that will attract the attention of everyone in the NYC area, whereas #catering is much too broad and #124FrontSteetBrooklynCatering is way too specific.
● Product Descriptive Hashtags—These hashtags are not as cut-and-dry as you might assume. Rather than hashtags that describe your products, product descriptive hashtags reference your customers’ “pain points” and the solutions your company offers to solve those problems. For example, #flattiressuck, #tirerepair, and #automotiveaccessories work very well together as three product descriptive hashtags.
There’s so much more we could say about using hashtags to increase audience engagement, but we’ll leave you with this final thought before moving on to the next section: be prepared to engage with your audience when users begin to comment on your posts. If you don’t respond promptly and keep the conversation going, your post will go dead no matter how effective the hashtags were at attracting an audience.
No, we aren’t referring to a 300-page paperback novel. The term “novel content” refers to digital content that is unique, exclusive, and time-sensitive in the sense that it will eventually expire. The social media platform Snapchat is based on the concept of novel content. Each “snap” is only available to be seen for a limited period of time, after which it disappears forever.
In order to understand why novel content works to increase social engagement, you must first understand what “conventional content” is, and why it’s too broad to foster social engagement all on its own.
Conventional content includes blogs, articles, ebooks, videos, webinars, and podcasts.
A blog post, for example, could spark a discussion in the comments section based on questions that were posed within the article itself. But will a blog post automatically spark social engagement? No.
The same can be said of videos, webinars, and podcasts. These mediums deliver information, provide entertainment, and boost brand visibility, but that doesn’t automatically lead to social engagement.
However, when novel content is added to conventional content, it serves to effectively increase social engagement.
So, what is novel content? The following is a short list of the most popular and engaging forms of novel content:
● Polls—The great news is that most social media platforms have integrated a “polls” feature, making it easy for account holders like you to craft an engaging poll for your audience. Polls empower you to gain insights about your audience by simply asking them questions. You can quickly gather feedback from your audience about the kind of content they’d like to see, what they think of your latest article, and even the challenges they’re currently facing. Polls are structured with multiple choice answers, so bear that in mind when you’re designing your next poll to increase social engagement.
● Quizzes—You can build Buzzfeed-style quizzes to trigger your audience into engaging. Use your most popular content to build your quiz around, whether it’s a recent podcast you aired or article you published. Establish the goal of the quiz, i.e. will there be a winner and a prize? Then create your quiz questions based on the information you shared in the podcast or article that the quiz is based on. Lastly, don’t forget to promote your quiz on social media.
● Contests—People love contests. The prospect of winning, even if the prize isn’t terribly valuable, is enticing enough to provoke healthy social engagement online. The best part about hosting a contest on social media is that it can serve to drive traffic to your website or eCommerce store, effortlessly converting visitors into customers. In your contest campaign, clearly define the prize, the rules, and the deadline. You can think of the rules as your CTAs. To define the rules, ask yourself, do you want participants to like the post, share the post, follow your account, and comment under the post with the answer to the contest question? Once you’ve established the parameters, be sure to market your contest across all social media platforms and also on your website.
● Call-in Q&As—A surefire way to amplify engagement for your podcast, webinar, or any live broadcast you’re hosting online is to allocate a segment to call-in questions so that your audience can make direct contact with you, ask you a question, and get an answer from you, an expert in your field. Offering Q&A segments can help to build a deeper relationship with your audience wherein they will trust you more and you will learn more about them. Be sure to advertise the call-in phone number with the date / time of the Q&A segment, then use all social media platforms to get the word out.
● Type-in Q&As—Hosting a call-in segment might be a bit advanced for some businesses. Alternatively, you can devise a type-in method for your audience to send their written questions to you. Type-in Q&As first appeared on YouTube Live, where audience members could type comments, questions, and observations into the live chat reply (not to be confused with the comments section below the video) as the live video broadcast unfolded. Nowadays, live chat reply boxes have been added to social media platforms like Facebook Live and Instagram Live.
● Disappearing Content—As of the writing of this article, there are a number of social media platforms that offer disappearing content features. Those are Facebook Stories, Instagram Stories, Snapchat Stories, Twitter Fleets, LinkedIn Stories, and YouTube Stories. Content you publish within these features will disappear after a preset time frame, usually 24 hours. You can include hashtags and location stickers to geotag your disappearing posts, which will help other users discover your content and engage with your brand.
When you invite your audience to engage with your brand in the ways we’ve mentioned so far, the organic result is that they will begin to socially interact with you by sharing their opinions, voting in polls, asking questions, and entering for their chance to win prizes from your company.
Back in the early 2000s, social media platforms began to emerge. The impetus of their creation was to enhance personal communication within social circles. Sites like Friendster, MySpace, and heck, even 1997’s premier social platform Six Degrees were all launched with the personal user in mind. No one was thinking “business” when these social media sites came to market. No one was even thinking “advertisement revenue”.
Fast-forward twenty years, and social media platforms have gone far beyond merely providing a means of online social connection. These sites have become one of the primary marketing strategies among businesses both large and small. All the while, platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn have managed to retain their original purpose of providing the average user the best way to personally communicate and stay intimately connected to their online social circles.
Social media marketing for businesses isn’t merely a passing trend, either. This form of marketing is so advantageous that it’s undoubtedly here to stay. Why? The potential for collecting user data that can be successfully leveraged in future advertising campaigns is exponential.
Thanks to machine-learning A.I. and other technologies that have been built into the back-end of these platforms for the purposes of collecting such user data, there are many benefits to launching social media marketing campaigns as part of your overall advertising strategy if you’re looking to connect with prospective customers.
In this blog, we’re going to take a look at how you can use social media to build your brand’s online presence and ultimately grow your business. But first, we strongly recommend that you pick one social media platform to focus your marketing efforts on. Yes, just one! Too often, business owners who are new to social media marketing spread themselves thin by attempting to manage many different sites at once. Instead, pick only one of the following platforms to pour your marketing strategies into!
Social media content planning involves deciding where, when, and how often you will deliver a branded message to a targeted audience. You want to reach the highest number of ideal customers with the right message. The trick is exposing your content to your audience on social media only as often as necessary to get the desired effect of brand awareness, leads, website traffic, sales, or another business goal.
Elaborating on the previous tip, your social media content will be memorable if you share your posts at the “right” frequency. But regularly posting once a day or once every six hours will be up to your targeted audience and their threshold of what they want and what kinds of posts they’re interested in interacting with. The trick is to post consistently, so if you find that posting once a day, for example, provokes the most interaction, then be sure to consistently keep up that posting frequency. This is the first step to becoming memorable.
The second step to becoming memorable in the minds of your audience is to present a consistent brand image with all of your social media posts. This could be as simple as including your branded logo in the corner of each post. If your brand has a signature font and precise color scheme, be sure to use that in all of your content, too. Your company’s core identity and the “story” behind your brand should stay consistent.
Assuming you’re focusing your social media marketing efforts on the platform that best suits your business’s needs, it’s only a matter of time before you’ll build up a loyal following. Social media, no matter which platform you’re active on, is a great way to share other digital content, such as your website, e-commerce site, and blog. You can post links to all of your new content so that your followers, as well as other social media users, can easily find information about your company’s latest offerings.
Nowadays, the number of “likes” a post gets isn’t the only benchmark for its success. Sure, “likes”, “shares”, and “reposts” of your social media content will tell other users on the platform how popular, or viral, a post has become, but if you want to truly develop your social media presence, then you’ll need to study and measure the analytics of each post by tracking your data. A great social media marketing tool to help you analyze your data is Google Analytics. Each social media platform has its own analytics, too, which provides detailed demographic information that you can use to leverage for any future paid advertising you choose to do, i.e. PPC marketing.
The internet lends itself to the fastest available communication, but at times, that isn’t always a good thing. When interaction gets heated, or out of hand, arguments can quickly evolve into a very bad P.R. situation… Or worse, things can explode into a full-on social media crisis. It’s imperative to have a plan in place for such a disaster. To pull through, we recommend you prepare a list of key responsibilities for the personnel that will be involved in damage control, and delineate a clear chain of command. You can avoid the majority of crises by putting copyright guidelines, privacy guidelines, confidentiality guidelines, and other guidelines in place right now, and be sure all of your employees understand them. One of the built-in benefits of social media is that even if a P.R. crisis arises, you can use the platform itself, posting about the measures you’re taking and your company’s position on the matter, to inform your followers and other users about how you’re handling the snafu.
The larger and more engaged your audience is on your social media platforms, the easier it will be for you to spread awareness about your brand and boost sales. Social media marketing can also help you:
Have you hesitated to look for a marketing agency to handle all of your social media, because you assumed you wouldn’t be able to afford it? What if we told you that FTx 360 can work within any budget? For more information about the social media marketing services at FTx 360 and how our team can benefit your bottom line without breaking the bank, contact us today.
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