Social Media Archives | Social Speak Network

Creating a killer LinkedIn Profile

LinkedIn is, what I think one of the most overlooked social media platforms out there. A lot of business owners have a LinkedIn profile that they set up when they were back at their corporate job and maybe have updated it once or twice. Well, I am here to tell you WAKE UP and make sure you have updated your LinkedIn profile! In this blog we will be covering:

What you should include in your personal profile
How to create a company page
How you can add connections and build your network.

What Do I Need To Supply For A Linkedin Profile Page?

Top 9 things that you NEED to have in your profile

1. YOUR Picture

Do NOT use an avatar or cheesy image of yourself, people want to see YOU
You can use a current up-to-date headshot, or an image of yourself with a natural background, not a party or fuzzy image or a selfie. Take your time on this photo!

2. Headline and Header

Think of this as the first impression, this is what people are going to see with your name and picture.
Have your headline be intriguing, eye-grabbing, relevant and clear.
Include your company name and then your title or what you do.
You can now have a customized banner (1400×425), which you can create in Canva. This header should be relevant to who you are and what you do. Have fun with it.

3. Summary (Good for SEO)

Tell your story, what’s your WHY. Keep your summary in the first person.
Personalize your summary.
Your summary should be engaging, relevant and conversational.
In this area, it is great to demonstrate that you are an expert in your field/industry. Add media (Videos, PowerPoints, Presentations, PDFs. etc.)
Remember SEO when you are writing your summary. It is important to include your keywords in this section along with long-tail keyword phrases to have a higher rank within LinkedIn searches but also Google searches. Here are two pieces we did on finding your keywords so you know what you should be writing about. Finding Keywords and How to Use KWFinder.com
As I mentioned before add media to your summary! There is not a limit, I mean you don’t want to add your WHOLE YouTube Channel, but I would say between 2-5 videos, or maybe big presentations you have done, recorded webinars, things that give your audience value. Something they can learn from looking at your LinkedIn profile! AND this helps you stand out from everyone else. 🙂
We have spoken about what’s your WHY, creating that personal brand, your core values, brand message, you want to make sure those come through in your profile. People should be able to read your summary and understand who you are and WHY you do what you do.
Talk to your target market, at the end of your summary have a call-to-action

4. Experience

Start with the most recent position or company and give us details! What is your role, responsibilities, etc.
List the experiences you have had with each position or company
List our accomplishments and challenges you have encountered, what was the outcome?
Remember your target market and speak to them when you are adding your services and details.
You don’t need to list EVERY job you have had from the time you turned 15! Stay relevant list that last few with great detail.

5. Education

Where did you go to school? You can list high school and college
Remember to list your degrees, diplomas, certifications etc.
It’s important to also include dates and locations.

6. Volunteering & Causes

People LOVE to see that you are involved in your community or a certain cause. Cause marketing is HUGE!
List the non-profits you have helped, maybe sit on the board or have organized events for.
What causes do you donate your time, money and energy too?

7. Skills & Endorsements

We get asked this question a lot, should we include the skills and endorsements in our profiles? The answer is YES!
People have recognized you for a skill that you have, acknowledge it.
LinkedIn will have those endorsements show up by the ones people have selected the most. You can always go in and edit or delete these as you find needed.
Think of your keywords when adding your skills, you will notice in the image below, the last skill on the bottom right corner says DOGS, um, I do social media and digital marketing, BUT in my past experience I was a Vet Tech at an Animal Emergency Center, so I may think of deleting that one just because it is not relevant with what I am doing now.

8. Recommendation & Awards

We always encourage our clients to have people give them recommendations on LinkedIn and include them in your profile.
List any awards you have won through work, community, networking.

9. Interests and Groups

As a bonus to your profile included interests you have
Also, include groups you are apart of on LinkedIn

Now, that we have your personal profile taken care of it is time to move into business. You can still post business related topics to your personal profile, but there are so many perks to having a business page on LinkedIn. In the video below I show you how to create that company page, so if you don’t have a company already take a minute to create one and then we will talk about “WHY” you need to have one and all the benefits!

LinkedIn Business Page

You want to make sure you optimize your company page to build brand recognition. We spoke last week about being consistent across the board with your social media and that remains the same with your company page. You want to make sure you have the right size header, logo, etc. Here are the sizes you need to have on your company page:

Company logo – 300 x 300
Cover image – 1536 x 768
Overview tab image – 360 x 120
Hero image – 1128 x 376

Here is an example of H&R Block’s company page, it is consistent with their brand, brand colors, logo, header, overview image, about us and more!

About Us Section

This is the MOST important piece of your company page, you have 2000 characters to use up. Think of your story, WHY your business does what it does, who do you help, speak to your target audience and use your keyword phrases. This is where your audience gets to really know WHO the company is. They are taking a peek inside and understand more of the foundation of your business. What makes your company stand out from the others, how did your company come to fruition, what is your business’s mission and vision, etc? More details the better. You want this section to be eye-grabbing and you want your audience to fall in love with your business, your brand, you want them to want to find out more. . . you want them walking away liking you, building that trust. You do not want them walking away feeling like they were being “sold” or not understanding what your business does.

Also remember in this section you want to add your website, your main office – with this piece most of our clients, including us work from our homes and do not want our address out to the world, I love coffee dates but don’t want people knocking on my door 🙂 You still need to enter your full address, but on the public page it will just say headquarters in CITY, ST not your address. In the video above I show how this process works! Also, you will enter the number of employees you have, the year you were founded, company type and BONUS – Specialties! You can use keywords in this area of specialties or a very clear short statement of what you do.

If you have LinkedIn upgrade package you can also add jobs and life section, we won’t really go into those today, just because most of our readers just use the free version of LinkedIn, just like us! The next thing we want to add as an extension of your company page is:

Add Showcase Pages

Creating a showcase page is adding to your company page, it is an extension. You can highlight a specific product or service your business offers. This allows your brand to come to life a little bit more. Before LinkedIn had a services/products tab, but they do not have that anymore. They now offer the showcase page/ It is an independent page with its own “About Us” section, logo, cover, website, etc. It also will have its own followers and you can post your own updates to this showcase page to show that service or products own personality. These updates you post would only be about this service or product. You can also monitor its own analytics, so you can see how that showcase page is doing.

We created a showcase page just for our small group online coaching: As you can see this is just for our small group coaching and its website url is to that page on our website, then to the right you see that is says “This is a Showcase page by: Social Speak Network” which links back to our company page. This is a great way to talk about your key services or products. I would like 3-5, it adds so much value to your company page.

This is so freaking cool right?!?! Yes, it is! Now that you built your awesome Showcase pages I am sure you are wondering where does it show up and how do people see the connection between your company page and Showcase pages??? Well, it is pretty simple your Showcase pages show up right under (Well after the ads) the About Us section. This is just such a cool way to promote those key services or products. Think of these Showcase pages as website pages, they are meant to stay on your company page and be updated as needed. These are NOT pages to create events or short-term marketing offers or campaigns. These Showcase pages are going to help build trust and relationships with your audience. This is what is looks like:

Great job on getting your personal profile set up, your company page and showcase pages created, now it’s time to feed them! What I mean by this is CONTENT!

Start Posting Valuable Content:

Content stills remains a key component of these pages. If you took the time to create these pages, and make sure they look pretty and match your brans, why wouldn’t you want to do more with them? They need to be thought of the same as you think about your Instagram Business profiles or Facebook Page, you post to those daily or weekly correct? Your LinkedIn profile, Company Page, and Showcase pages should be thought of the same way! WOW, we just added a lot more to your list! Don’t worry you can add your company page and showcase pages to Buffer or Hootsuite, so you can schedule your posts to go out through one of these tools to help save time, but also to be consistent. You may need to upgrade your package with these two tools if you have already used the 3 free social profiles. Each of these is free to post through up to 3 profiles, so you may already have Facebook, Twitter, and your personal LinkedIn profile, you will need to increase your account so you can add more.

What are things you should talk about on each of these pages? I think we need to split these up into three different sections, each area such as your personal profile, company page, and showcase page will have their own personality. You need to treat them as their own entity. Each page audience will be different, they may be similar or you will have people that you are connected with on LinkedIn and YOU and then they follow your company page and maybe one of your showcase pages as well. So, they will NOT want to see the same content on each page. Let’s start with your personal profile first, this is what most people will see, because like all the social media algorithms you will get more engagement with your personal profile than your company pages.

Personal Profile Tips:

Post valuable content, NO political or religious posts
Post Daily
Share your businesses blog posts with clear call-to-action
Share your personal story
Stay away from posts you would put on your personal FB – LinkedIn is a little more professional
Share tips, techniques, tools, videos that align with your business
Talk about your role in your business, your journey, who you have helped, your WHY

Company Page Tips:

Post focused, clean, relevant, and valuable content
Share your blog posts
Talk about your content upgrades with call-to-action
Share your YouTube videos
Curated content – articles, videos, images from other companies that align with your business.
Feature an employee or a person that works with you
Behind the scenes – stories, pictures, videos
Test your audience – post an appropriate funny video or image and see the response, mix up your content to see what your audience is engaging with the most.
Branded images via Canva that have a quote or stat
Events – talk about local events that are going on or events you will be attending
Local – if you are a local business share local news
Speak to your target audience – ask them questions and get feedback

Showcase Page Tips:

This is about that one service or product
Stay focused on the topic at hand
Post maybe 3 times per week – people tht follow your company page or personal profile will already see what your business is doing so posts on your showcase page need to be specific to that service or product. You don’t want to overwhelm your audience.
Videos you have done on that service or product
Client testimonials
Share stories of your struggle, your journey or clients journey and how this service or product has helped them.
Share stats and success stories

As you can see these are all similar but different at the same time.

How to Grow your Profile and Company Page

One of the features I like most about LinkedIn is you can add connections to grow your online community. Before, people would just add anyone and everyone so they built quantity connections, rather than quality. Yeah, it’s great to have a large number of connections but we want to focus on adding the quality connections. A key piece to adding quality connections is to have a little note, an intro when you ask somebody to connect with you if you don’ already know them. You may see LION next to peoples names, this stands for LinkedIn Open Networker, meaning they are open to connecting with everyone, I don’t see this being used too much anymore, which I like. You will get asked to connect with people you don’t know and that is OK, check them out, look at their profile and see who they are. I like to think of LinkedIn is an online networking group.

In this image below you will see that someone asked me to connect with him, I do not know him personally, but he did send a message along with the connection. LinkedIn will also show you “People you may know” similar to Facebook. These people show up based on your profile and mutual connections.

Here are a few ways to be able to connect or invite people to connect with people on LinkedIn:

If you know a specific name of the person you want to connect with, you can search for them and find their profile and then click connect.
You can also upload your email list or contacts from Gmail, yahoo, outlook, etc.
Then as I mentioned above looking at the “People You May Know” section and asking people to connect through there.
NOTE: If people have asked to connect with you and you have pending invites they will appear on the top bar on your LinkedIn account next to “Network”

Again, we highly recommend before you go connection crazy that you craft together a short, simple to the point message of why you want to connect with that person and send it along when you ask to connect, let me show you:

What’s Next?

It is such a great feeling when you have your LinkedIn profile updated to 100% and then when you create your company page, Showcase pages and have started to add connections, but what will make people want to connect with you? CONTENT! Be sure to be consistent as we have spoken about. In our next blog, we will be talking about groups, article and how to prospect on LinkedIn to take your profile to the next level!

If you need some help setting up or company page or creating the right size graphic, please let us know!

May 10, 2018/by Amber Irwin

Business Management, Social Media, Video

Tools for Entrepreneurs

As an entrepreneur, it is important to find tools to help us stay organized, creative and on top of our social media. In this video, we will go over 10 tools to help you save time, work smarter, not harder.

April 23, 2018/by Amber Irwin

Instagram, Social Media, Social Speak

6 Reasons You NEED to be Using Instagram Stories for Business

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6 Reasons You NEED to be Using Instagram Stories for Business

Instagram stories are where it’s at! Instagram is putting a lot of focus on stories, and always adding new things to them to help make them, even more, user-friendly.

In this blog, we will be discussing 6 reasons WHY you should be using Instagram Stories to market your business.

If you didn’t know already Instagram is owned by Facebook, which means their algorithm is going to be similar, the more you use their bells and whistle they offer the higher they rank you. Along with the more people engage in your posts they will see your posts more if you have common interest etc. Before the stories and posts would show up in chronological order, NOT anymore. Most social media platforms are following a similar algorithm to Facebooks. They like to think they know who you are, based on interests, likes and engagement so they want to show you the stories and posts they think you will most like. Sometimes, it is crazy how spot-on they can be!

So let’s dive in . . .

#1 – Top of Mind – That is KEY!

We feel like one of the biggest reasons to use Instagram Stories is to be top of mind. It is the first thing people see when they open up their app. Once they see you once up there they are going to be looking for you even more. With Instagram Stories you can give value and keep your tribe coming back for more! The stories only stay up for 24 hours so it is a great way to increase engagement and get your message across. You want to keep your stories relevant and catchy!

Why is it important to stay top of mind? In today’s digital world people are being bombarded with thousands of different things daily, think of all the things you see on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, not to mention emails, texts, and good old fashion phone calls! If you are not consistent with your online marketing and sticking to a strict schedule you will get lost in the shuffle.

Each time you are posting a story you are giving your brand exposure, you are climbing the favorite list for your target market, and that’s what it is all about . . . being someones favorite, right?!?! Well, it kind of is with social media. People will start to notice that you are posting a story more regularly and that each story you are posting they are liking, they are engaging. They are excited to see what you have in store for them next!

#2 – Create a Strategy and Theme

People love when you are using all the components of Instagram. It’s important to keep your content fresh, get creative with it. Have a story that is a series of quick videos, images, a special offer, funny images. Get creative! One exciting way to use Instagram stories is to start creating a theme with them. Write down 10-15 different ideas for stories, be strategic about them. Maybe they are 10 tips and each story has 2-3 different components to it, like a static image with title, then short video and then call-to-action. you do this for 10 different stories each have your brand color, logo, and a video of you to build your brand.

Stories are real-time, so this is a great tool for your strategy. Stories tend to build engagement and help reach your target audience.

Think of using stories when you are at:
* Live Events
* Networking Groups
* Speaking Engagements
* Behind the Scenes
* Live Sale

Here is an example of what an AMAZING story would be, Forbes had an AARP event and they put together such a good story. They had branded images for each section of the event, such as Learn, Connect, and Health. They tied in still photos, branded photos, and videos of the event. They also branded the hashtags #DisruptAging. You can see in the first photo there are 15 little white lines, that means there are 15 slides to that story. You can have A LOT of images and videos to one story!

6 Reasons You NEED to be Using Instagram Stories for Business

#3 – Let Your Creative Side Show

Instagram Stories are easy, quick and fun! It only takes a couple steps to get up your masterpiece. You can also share those stories on your Facebook page! I want to share a video with you that will show you how to create branded Instagram Templates. I know that everyone loves a pretty Instagram account when their images are all color coded, they have the same look and feel to them. It attracts people more to your feed. Well, why wouldn’t you do the same thing with Instagram Stories? We use Canva to create our brand templates:

Even though Instagram stories are made to be quick and easy you still want them to look good. By working ahead and creating your templates with Canva you are getting ahead of the game like we have said in previous posts, it is so important to be always working ahead. Create a “Story” list, what topics do you want to cover? Create the images ahead of time and save them on your phone, then you have them and can pop them right into Instagram.

#4 – Set Your Standards High

When people come to your Instagram account you want them to think . . . “Wow, they do an amazing job!” Your photos are all branded and you are giving amazing value, your engagement is high, and your stories are great! The only problem with doing stories is they ONLY stay up for 24 hours. Your photos and videos you post to your feed stay forever. That is where step #2 came in with the strategy and theme, once you have these stories and they are offering the value you can highlight them in your profile.

If your story is promoting a special offer like a one-time deal, or talking about an upcoming event that doesn’t repeat on a weekly or monthly basis, those stories are a good story to just leave in “story-land” and let them disappear in 24 hours. They stories like the 10 tips, stories about your products or services, the stories that give that value, those are the ones we want to highlight.

In this video below we will show you how to highlight a story and keep your brand consistent:

#5 – Adding Value to Your Business Profile

Think of your Instagram account as a mini website, people are going to Instagram all the time to research new products, services, and places before they buy. You want to make sure your business profile stands out. When people come to your profile they see who you are as a brand. What you do, who you are, why you do what you do. When you just put static posts up to your feed they may get lost with the new algorithm, they may not be seen as much as they should, especially if you have lower engagement. By using stories it allows you to keep bumping up in that algorithm, it’s like Instagram is giving you kudos for doing a job well done. You can’t just put a story up once, you have to be consistent. Some brands are putting stories up every day with multiple images and videos. Since you can ONLY have 1 story per 24 hours, each time you add an image or video to your story within those 24-hours it will go to the same story but then you can highlight the images you want from that story to certain highlighted storyboards.

Here are a few examples of brands that have gone above and beyond with Instagram:

#6- Connect with Your Tribe

If you build it they will come… Feild of dreams. You are building your brand to give value to your tribe, you want to give them just enough to keep bringing them back. With over 800 million people engaging in stories each and every day it is so important to use stories to engage with your audience. Get creative and maybe do a live story, have people ask questions and you can answer them with a live story.

There are two ways you can think of your stories:
1) Oh they only last 24 hours so it doesn’t matter on quality, they are quick and fast stories just to get something up every day

OR . . . .

2) Think of your stories as an opportunity to connect. Your stories can be providing value to your audience then you highlight that story. You will have a mix of stories the themed ones with your templates you created and then the live stories, behind the scenes and event stories, which are still important to have, remember it is your brand you are dealing it.

You want a brand that is raw, authentic and transparent! People want to do business with people they know, like and trust! Go to a deeper level with your Instagram account, get to know your audience.

Bonus . . . Topics you can do Instagram Stories On:

Your Goals
Showcase your products and/or services
FAQ – answer those questions your audience has asked
Exclusive Offers and Deals
Ask for people to sign-up for a Newsletter
Behind the scenes
Family Life
Repurpose Blogs
Testimonials and Interviews
Recipes
Podcasts
Events
Trends

Spruce up Your Stories

Like I said, in the beginning, use the bells and whistles that Instagram offers the #hashtag stickers, location, dates, emojis, filters etc. Try out the different options they offer the Type, Live, Normal, Boomerang, Focus, Superzoom, Rewind, Hands-Free, and Stop-Motion. These are all cool ways to be creative with your brand. The markup capabilities they have to allow you to create eye-catching images that stick out!

Take advantage of tagging people in your stories as well. Once you reach 10,000 followers you can also add a link to your stories! I think by using Instagram stories it gives your brand more freedom.
Instagram is always adding new features, remember to check them out. Here is what they are offering now:

Weather
The current time
Holidays
Days of the week
Location tags
Funny hats and sunglasses
Emojis

What do all the Features Mean in Instagram Stories:

Text – Text is an option where you can tap to type, Instagram has4 different templates you can choose from as far as Modern, Neon, Typewriter, Stong. You can then tap the small circle color icon on the bottom lefthand corner to choose a different color.
Live – The live option is pretty obvious you are about to go LIVE on Instagram! You can have it in selfie mode or turn it around. Pretty plain Vanilla here.
Normal – You can upload a picture or video, also add filters to the pictures you take.
Boomerang – You can now access the “Boomerang” app through Instagram Stories, this is in a way making your own gif. If you take a picture of a high-five or walking your dog, yoga pose, etc it will have that quick segment play over and over.
Focus – This is the NEWEST Instagram story feature. This option allows you to focuses on a subject’s face while blurring the rest of the photo’s background, this helps create that professional look. Great for selfies or products, yup, you can use this feature for front and rear facing camera modes.
Superzoom – This allows you to ZOOM super close up to an object and then is shows that process of moving closer.
Rewind – This plays your story from back to front
Hands-Free – This is great if you are doing a quick video and you don’t want your phone moving because your hand is shaking. You are still holding your phone, but you don’t have to keep holding the button, you can just tap it. It is also fun to try out the filters!
Stop-Motion – Stop Motion allows you to take a series of photos, but you cannot edit them. Once you’re done snapping photos, you tap “done” to see your story-editing tools like stickers and text. From there, you can post the stop-motion GIF to your story.

Wrap-Up

As you can see there are many options and features to try out with Instagram Stories, you can get lost in the creativity alone with these stories. Have fun with it and take your brand to the next level! We would love to hear what stories have worked best for you and which stories you have highlighted! We invite you to follow us on our Instagram account, we ALWAYS follow everyone back that follows us!

We also invite you to check out our FREE Resource page, we offer a ton of checklists to make sure your social media profiles are always at 100%. There is also an Instagram Caption Checklist that can help you craft together those eye-catchy captions to attract your target audience.

Cheers to your Instagram success!

April 13, 2018/by Amber Irwin

Instagram, Membership Only, Social Media

Instagram Insights

Let’s talk Insights! If you are anything like me, you could care less about the analytics right? They are just numbers, what do they mean? I have always loved numbers, but analytics not so much. If you put those numbers and stats into a pretty infographic, then I am all over it! Since I have been a social media manager for almost 10 years, I have had to find that LOVE for analytics and be able to explain them in such a way where our clients get it! With Instagram busness profile, their insights ROCK! I get it! I would say it’s a mix of pretty pictures and hardcore data. I love the way it compiles the information to make it easy and understandable for you to read.

When Instagram Insights came out, I was not sure how much I trusted them. I remember when Facebook Insights were out and some of that data was wack! I mean for a few of our clients, it just didn’t make sense or even add up. I always said take Facebook Insights with a grain of salt. Now, with that being said they have come a long way and I think they learned a lot, so they were able to implement more pros into the Instagram Insights.

Instagram Insights:

These insights collect data for you that will help you learn more about your followers and audience. We started our Social Speak Network Instagram not even a year ago and we have some awesome insights to who our audience is, what days and times they are looking at our account, where they are located and much, much more!

Overview

First things first, you have to have a business Instagram account o get these AWESOME analytics. When you log into your account, on the top righthand corner you will see 4 lines, click there and this will take you to your insights.

From there the first thing you will see if your overview: this is going to show you your incease or decrease of followers from the week before and the reach from the week before. You want these number to always be in the +, if you see a – negatice or decrease we need to take a further look. Below your weekly numbers you then see your actions meaning how many people liked your posts that week. We had +19 actions in the past week. So, with all the posts we put up we had +19 actions meaning people liked our posts or made a comment.

Discovery

Ok, let’s discover something new! This area is all about discovery, just like it says. It is going to tell you where your post was seen and how many people it reached. This shows your reach and impressions. Your reach is the number of accounts you reached this week. Impressions are the number of times the media you created this week were seen. Your posts are discovered in particular places within Instagram such as a user’s home feed, a search someone did, your profile, your location or location tag and/or a hashtag you had used.

Demographics

This is where it gets exciting! You really get to see who your audience is. I love how Instagram has put together these insights.

The demographics on Instagram insights are great, they tell you the % of men and women that are engaging in your brand, the top locations, age range (which is key) also a HUGE nugget of information here is the days and times that people are engaging. So Monday early mornings may be one of your biggest days, whereas maybe Thursdays between 11-2 are not very good. You can play around with this and see what weeks, days, and times are best for you and your brand. Then create your strategy around those days and times to be sure to give that value back to your audience.

YAY, we have shown you all about Instagram Insights, now what do you do?

Download our Instagram Insights Tracker by clicking HERE

March 26, 2018/by Amber Irwin

Instagram, Membership Only, Social Media, Video

Instagram Stories

All aboard! It’s time to jump on the Instagram Stories Train. Did you know that Instagram Stories has over 800 million people that use this feature??? WOW! That is amazing. Below is a video that talks about the best ways to use Instagram Stories for your business.

Some tips to remember:

Have a plan for your stories – what are your goals when creating your stories
Use all the features that Instagram offers you, the stickers, colors, text, selfie sticker, location, as you use more of these options Instagram will push your story to more places
Try out the different features of stories to mix it up with Type, Live, Normal Picture or Video, Boomerang, Superzoom, Rewind, Hands-Free, and Stop-Motion
Build your brand through Instagram Stories
Stories only last for 24hours – be sure to share to Facebook Stories and as IG posts
Videos for Instagram Stories can be 15 seconds

Topics for Instagram Stories:

Talk about products or services you offer
FAQ
Being an expert in your field
Exclusive offers for your Instagram Followers
Signing up for FREE offer or newsletter
Behind the Scenes
Testimonials
Contests
New Blogs
Recipes
Podcasts

We would love to hear about your Instagram Stories Successes!

March 22, 2018/by Amber Irwin

Blog, Growth Prompts, Instagram, Membership Only, Social Media

Step up your Instagram Game – What makes a good image (or feed)?

We have the basics set for Instagram, but now it is time to step up your game and create a cohesive strategy for your images and your Instagram feed. I wish I could say do X for a beautiful Instagram photo every time, but unfortunately, it all depends on your brand and the sentiment or feeling you are trying to evoke with your images.

In this post I’ll be exploring some of the ways to create an Instagram feed that you can be proud of! And, guess what? It all comes down to the images you plan to post.

Step 1: Make a List of the 3-5 things you/your business brand LOVES.

Common themes may be nature, organization, people, community, animals, sketches, etc. Think about what sentiment or feeling you get from these or that your brand wants to communicate.

Then think about the visual elements you are drawn to as they also relate to the sentiment of your brand.

For example, if you are a business coach and you value bringing clarity into your client’s lives and one of the things you are passionate about is organization, what other ways can you visually display this? What about crisp shadows and light filtering through architecture, or clean and clutter free office spaces.

Maybe your office values authenticity and personality. Would behind the scenes photos of office dogs capture a sense of playfulness?

In this stage, just brainstorm all the different types of things that encapsulate your brand, your passions, and the sentiment your want to convey.

Step 2: Find your color theme

By now you should have your brand colors selected, but if you don’t, that’s okay. Your Instagram can take on a slightly different color theme than your other marketing, as long as you are consistent.

To create a cohesive look for your Instagram photos, you need to always be thinking about the colors you are capturing in your images.

Which 2-3 colors do you want to bring into your color palette? I often enjoy feeds that are either vibrant with greens and colors found in nature or feeds that are crisp with whites and pops of color here and there. As you create your own ideas around colors, take a look at what some other popular accounts are doing below.

Once you have these colors, make sure to space them throughout your Instagram feed so you don’t have multiple photos in a row with the same color present.

Step 3: Use the same filter

One of my business partners is a photographer who emphasizes the need to edit photos before applying any filter. Personally, I think that is too much work for the average Instagram user, but I do agree that you should always be applying the same 1-2 filters in your posts so they all work well together.

However, as you you are taking the photos, pay attention to the natural light and backgrounds of your photos. Just being aware of what else is around can help you find consistency.

color filter

Step 4: Zoom in!

Sometimes on Instagram we try to pull too much into our images. Let’s say you are taking a picture of your office space for Instagram. Rather than trying to capture everything in one photo, zoom in on a single element. Not only will this make it easier to post more images of your office space, but you also will have a more visually appealing photo.

Sometimes I find that taking multiple photos at once can help keep the lighting consistent. So, pick a morning before your day gets busy and spend 30 minutes just taking photographs of small details within your office.

You aren’t going to publishing these all at once, but the simple zoomed in elements can provide a nice break within your Instagram feed.

Step 5: Always crop the same

Rather than trying to include both square and rectangular photos in your feed, it often is easier just to always crop your photos to square. There are some beautiful feeds which combine different photo orientations for a very playful feed, but for most of us, square works best.

Step 6: Create templates for any image with text overlay

We love utilizing Canva to create templates for any of those images where we share a quote or are announcing a sale, etc. Canva makes it easy to create that square image, incorporate your colors, and utilize your brand fonts.

Take a moment to think about what types of images you may want to use that will need a font overlay and how you would like the image to be displayed. Then, jump into canva and make a few variations of your designs that use different combinations of your brand colors. Below is an example for one of our clients.

Step 7: Don’t plan one image at a time, look at your entire Instagram feed

As you are compiling your posts for Instagram, I always recommend looking at how everything flows together. Apps like Later and the Preview App make it easy to visualize your entire Instagram feed rather than only one photo at a time.

Some common elements to consider are:

Tile Grid Layouts

Diagonal Grid Layouts

Row by row

Lines
Puzzles

As you can see, these take planning and sometimes if you are in a pinch, it is easier just to remember to rotate through your topics, your colors, and the various design elements of your photos 🙂

Step 8: Above all else, high quality photos win

As I’m sure you guessed, you always want to make sure you are using high quality photos for your Instagram feed. Some tips to remember as you are taking pictures:

If you use your phone for your images, the back camera is higher quality.
If you repost an image, use a reposting app rather than a screenshot. Better yet, reach out to the original photographer and ask if you can have the original photo to republish (and tag them in).
Quickly ‘enhance’ your photo on your phone with the built in photo editor.
Take multiple shots of the same item to ensure you use the one that is the most infocus with the best lighting.
The best times of day to take advantage of natural light are the mornings and the late afternoon. Here, the sun is still strong, but you won’t have such harsh shadows or bright spots in your images.

That’s it! Have fun with your Instagram photos and try to view your entire feed as an ever changing piece of art rather than each block as an individual element.

Please note, all images of Instagram Feeds are taken from The Preview App.

March 20, 2018/by Caitlin McDonald

Instagram, Membership Only, Social Media

Instagram Content Calendar

Now, that you have your Instagram Business account set up, and ready to rock and roll, right? We have spoken about the importance of having the business Instagram account, all the data it gives you and how it can help you define your target market. So, what now? It’s time to start posting! Before you just jump right into posting anything, it’s important to have a plan. What topics do you want to talk about on Instagram, what’s the story you want to tell? What value do you want to give your audience?

A couple resources:Content Calendar from videoLink to 2018 Holidays and HashtagsYou now know what you will be talking about each day, you can start looking for images on Pixabay or Pexels or even better take your own. Have the topic, image and post put together, you can even put the hashtags you want to use in each post. There are a few tools that we love to use to organize your Instagram posts:

These all help you organize your Instagram posts. Hootsuite, Buffer and Later, you can actually schedule your posts to your business Instagram account. Although this is great on time-management, we still highly recommend posting manually. If you are posting 7 days a week maybe you can schedule 3-4 posts per week and manually post the others. You still want to engage with your audience, follow people, comment and share posts. It can be easy to get comfortable with these awesome scheduling tools you forget that Instagram is a 2-way street.

March 16, 2018/by admin

Facebook, Social Media

4 Reasons Why Contests Should be a Part of Your Marketing Strategy

For years, businesses, small and big, have been using social media contests to capture the attention of their audience and engage their customers. When done properly and effectively, social media contests can bring a number of benefits to your brand.

Here are 4 reasons why contests should be a part of your
marketing strategy.

Give people a reason to follow your brand

Most brands would share interesting and informative content in the hopes of capturing the attention of their audience. But despite their efforts, many of them are having a hard time standing out from the competition. If you want to have more followers and expand your reach, consider hosting a contest on social media.

When running a contest, most brands would ask people to like their social media accounts and share their content. Knowing that they’ll get an opportunity to win something, most people would gladly do as they are asked. This is a win-win for both the brand and consumers. You get the opportunity to reach more people while they get the chance to win something – a gift, a discount voucher, a gift certificate or a free period of service.

Improve brand awareness

Most people aren’t aware that your business exists until they hear it from their family and friends. With social media contests, people are often urged to do just that.

Regardless of how well established your brand is, contests can be a simple yet effective way to improve brand awareness.

Collect data

Often, people are hesitant to share their information for the fear of identity theft. Social media contests provide an easy way to grow your email list and collect data. People will be more willing to provide you with their personal information, knowing that they get something in return.

You can ask people to leave their name, contact number, and email address to enter the contest. Also, think of the type of information you need for your future marketing campaigns. Want to know how many of them went to the local university? How many of them have kids? Now is your chance to find out.

Increase engagement

Contests are one of the best ways to boost your engagement. When you host a social media contest, your post is likely to get a lot of likes, shares, and comments.

More than the number of fans and followers, engagement is the most important element in social media. The engagement rate represents the number of people who are talking about your brand. The higher the engagement rate is, the higher the reach rate. That means, your content will be viewed by a wider audience.

Why is it a good idea:

Holding contests and campaigns

on social media is more popular than ever, and we don’t see that changing anytime soon. Any company can give out free gift cards or electronics, so that really is not enough to hold the attention of social media users anymore. What is taking your contest to the next level? If you are running a contest, you must make sure your contest stands out from the rest.

As we know, consumers are constantly interacting with social media on their mobile phones. This means it is vital to take advantage of location. Urge users to check-in on social media when they are interacting with your company’s physical location. Offer some sort of incentive such as a discount, a charitable donation, a few points in a contest, etc. Getting social media users to check in not only allows you to generate more traffic but also creates a deeper user interaction (physical and digital).

Do your users have a reason to keep coming back to your page? Include your fans and contest participants in every possible step of the contest. Brands often do this by allowing the fans to vote on a winner, respond to a question, or answer a poll. Get creative here and choose what seems most relevant to your brand and product.

Although your contest is Facebook based, ask yourself if other social media platforms would enhance your contest. For example, say you are the marketer for a line of gluten-free butter and your Facebook contest asked users to post pictures and recipes of things they made with your butter. In this case, it would make sense to start a Pinterest board, displaying the recipes. Using more than one social media platform can allow you to reach a larger audience. The key here is to make sure your second social media platform is relevant to your contest.

The general goal of Facebook contests is to allow users to interact with your brand. Anybody can make a Facebook contest, but your goal is to expand that user interaction as far as possible. Think of ways to take your contests to other social media platforms, physical locations, and beyond.

March 12, 2018/by admin

Instagram, Membership Only, Social Media, Video

How to convert your Instagram into a Business account

If you have set up an Instagram account and have not yet converted it over to a business account, don’t wait any longer! You are missing out on a TON of data! There are not a lot of differences between your personal Instagram and Business Instagram as far as looks go, BUT the key to the business Instagram is that you get to really know who your audience is. The insights of your business account will really let you know who is engaging with your brand. It will tell you age, gender, location and more!

By switching to a business account you will have the ability to:
* Run ads and promotions
* Link to your Facebook business page, Twitter, and Tumblr accounts
* View Insights

March 9, 2018/by Amber Irwin

Growth Prompts, Instagram, Membership Only, Social Media

Instagram: An Introduction to Instagram for your Business (Plus Download)

Who doesn’t love Instagram?

Beautiful images, user friendly, frequently updated, but is it something you can actually use for your business?

YES!

Instagram is a power marketing tool that can transform your ability to connect with your market online. It is the platform where you can showcase your personality, but also connect with other businesses and consumers on a professional level.

In the past, I used to tell businesses that if they needed to cut one network from their marketing, it should be Instagram. Now it is one of the first networks I recommend. Whereas we used to never see traffic from Instagram, businesses are now being flooded with clicks from their profiles. Additionally, Instagram is now the network where businesses are seeing the most engagement. If increasing engagement and brand recognition is one of your goals for social media, how could you not have your businesses account already set up?

Below I’ve put together some steps for you to ensure a successful Instagram strategy for your business.

Step 1: Convert your Instagram Account to a Business Account

As a business account you have access to analytics and you can also share content directly to a Facebook Business Page rather than only your personal profile. You also gain the ability to add Click to Call button or other buttons in your profile.

Some highlights of the Instagram Analytics include:

Profile Views
Top Posts
Engagement Metrics

The steps to make this change are straight forward. Click to edit your profile settings and click the option called “Switch to Business Profile.” From here you are all set to get rocking and rolling with Instagram for business marketing.

Step 2: Have a Game-plan and Stick to It

We recently were working with a business that had just created its Instagram account and after a month they were ready to give up. Growing your network on Instagram takes time, just like any other social media network. However, it does grow fairly quickly!

This client was upset they were only at 90 followers in 20 days, and I explained to them that the strategy we followed of “following your complementary businesses followers” took time. Sure enough, a month later the business was up to 400 followers.

Having a game-plan is more than just how to grow your network. You also need to create a game-plan for the types of posts you are going to be publishing. I find it easiest to create a calendar of must-post items and then filling in the rest with consistent topics.

If you are a chef, you can consistently share recipes, if you support a cause, you can consistently post about the cause. Just make sure if you post 3 times per day for a week that you then don’t jump to posting only once per week as your followers will forget you even existed.

This brings us to this week’s Action Item!

What topics can you post about on Instagram? Please download this sheet of 100 Instagram post topics you can integrate into your Instagram strategy!

Download List Here

Step 3: Align your Images with your Brand

As you are posting images, you want to make sure they have a similar look, feel, and tone. You don’t always have to include your brand colors, but if you do use fonts on images or color blocks, make sure they are aligned with the content viewers will see elsewhere.

To keep your images consistent, try to use only a few filters on instagram. These filters will help make images appear as though they were shot in the same light and will help to increase brand recognition.

Additionally, you can use apps like Canva to create templates for your images. This way any image that has a text overlay uses the same colors and fonts.

Step 4: Include a Call to Action in your Bio

Rather than just saying what your business is about on your Instagram bio, also add a call to action. We love using Linktr.ee in our profiles to add a menu of links that people can click to learn more.

A non-profit, or example, could add links to their programs, donate pages, and events on Linktr.ee whereas an ecommerce store could use the space to highlight specific products, blog posts, and sales.

This functionality can greatly increase the effectiveness of your Instagram Marketing.

Step 5: Gain Exposure with Hashtags

Make sure that as you are writing your post you are also using hashtags.

We use Hashtagify.me to search for related hashtags and often have a database of hashtags for different types of posts that we can copy and paste.

Also, look out for banned hashtags. Instagram does a great job penalizing accounts that are using derogatory hashtags, however sometimes these are legitimate for businesses to actually use. Let’s say you are a dog walker, #dogsofinstagram may seem like an appropriate hashtag. Unfortunately, because of other connotations, it is on the banned keyword list!

Good luck and have fun on Instagram! Showcase a behind the scenes look at your business and try to fully connect with your followers!