Social Media Archives | Page 15 of 45

How to Gain a Massive Following on Instagram

Every business owner or social media marketer hopes to increase their following on Instagram. After all, the number of fans and followers you have reflects the success of your social media marketing efforts. Plus, the more followers you have, the more people you reach.

Follow these tips to increase your Instagram followers.

Find your target audience

Your community is the core of your brand’s success. There are over 400 million Instagram users from all over the world, so posting random stuff without targeting your audience would be ineffective.

In order to yield better results, you need to find a community that is relevant to your industry or business and connect with them. Also, pay attention to the topics being discussed in the community, as well as the hashtags that are often used. You may also want to check which marketing tactics they respond well to. Do they participate in contests? Do they respond well to special offers? Are they responsive to questions? Use these information to guide you in your social media tactics.

Work with brand ambassadors

Working with brand ambassadors is a great way to build your community and gain a massive following on Instagram. Brand ambassadors are mostly unpaid volunteers who are willing to promote your company and endorse your products and services. They also embody your corporate identity. Look for people who are enthusiastic about your brand and build a relationship with them.

Hold contests

Holding a contest is one of the best ways to get more followers. Although, you’ll have to handle the cost of giving out a prize, the cost will be worth it in the end. A contest will help generate buzz about your business. When done right, you’ll be rewarded with hundreds or thousands of new followers in a matter of days. In order to motivate people to join your contest, give out valuable prizes – something that would be of interest to your target audience.

Use hashtags

Hashtags are a great way to organize your content and engage with your followers. It is a good idea to create a unique hashtag for your brand and encourage your followers to use it. This would be an excellent way to motivate people to engage with your brand. When used appropriately, it will help increase your exposure to new customers; hence, increasing your following on Instagram.

April 28, 2017/by Caitlin McDonald

Facebook

Surefire Ways to Skyrocket Your Facebook Engagement

Most business owners use social media to connect with current and potential customers. After all, it’s free, and people are already using it. So why not take advantage of it, right? But with so many businesses vying for people’s attention, posting updates every now and then is no longer enough to maintain an active Facebook page.

Making small changes on what and how you post can help boost your page engagement.

Here are 4 ways to skyrocket your Facebook engagement.

Share something funny

People use social media for entertainment. Many of them would log in to their social media accounts during their lunch break or after office to de-stress. Sharing something funny with your Facebook fans will help lighten up their mood. Go ahead and give people a good giggle.

Boost your best posts

So you have just recently published a new blog post. You share it on Facebook to spark some engagement and drive traffic to your website. Sure, it will work. But if you’re looking to reach a wide range of audience, then we suggest that you boost that post. You don’t need to spend a huge sum of money in order to get that post in front of your target audience. Just give it a modest boost of $25, target your audience and you’ll see a tremendous increase in likes, comments and shares. Plus, traffic to your blog or website will also increase.

Timing is essential

More than half of the American adult population are active on Facebook. Given the number of people that post every minute, your posts would be buried in a very short span of time. As such, you want to make sure you that you post when your fans are online. There are several online tools that allow you to schedule your post, so you don’t have to wait for a specific time before posting something on your page.

Ask a question

One of the easiest ways to start a conversation with your fans is to ask them a question. If you own a restaurant, you can ask them what food they usually order when they visit your place. Another option would be to ask what they want you to add on your menu. Find a way to leverage in people’s needs or interest.

April 27, 2017/by Caitlin McDonald

How to Use LinkedIn for Your Business

LinkedIn is one of my favorite places to share content. Of Twitter and Facebook, LinkedIn is the best social network for lead generation with a conversion rate of 2.74%.* It also tends to direct the most traffic to B2B (and B2C) websites even though there is fewer interactions with specific posts.

I recommend using LinkedIn a few different ways for your business.

Add:

Add connections who are prospects AND referral partners. Don’t hesitate to reach out to your dream connections, just be sure to write a personal note about why you would like to connect with them.

Join:

Join groups that include your prospects AND those made of folks within your industry.

Share your blog posts to your personal profile, your business profile, groups you are a part of, and as an Article.

Ask:

Ask questions of folks within your industry. Many people are afraid this will make them look inexperienced, but why not learn from someone who has already been through the same or a similar experience!

Export:

Export your connections and invite them to join your email list. You can also add these emails to a custom audience in Facebook ads as a way to broaden your reach.

While you are using LinkedIn, think of it like a networking group or coworking space. You want to put your best foot forward and still be authentic. Sharing, commenting, and asking questions can help you to stand out as an influencer in your industry.

LinkedIn is also a space where you can connect with the “untouchables”.

Brainstorm a list of the top 5 to 10 individuals that you admire or have changed your industry and put together a personal note for each of them.

For these messages, start by explaining how you found them and what you have in common. It is okay if you are straightforward and say you were doing research and came across their profile. Then lead into why you would like to connect. By being transparent you can overcome many initial apprehensions an individual may have. Lastly, ask for the connection or the next step.

As long as you get to the point quickly for why you are writing and don’t expect someone to give, give, give, without knowing you or getting anything in return, we’ve had great success building networks on LinkedIn with the big game changers in industries.

*Hubspot

April 24, 2017/by Caitlin McDonald

Boundless Internet Marketing Solutions, Instagram

Metrics to Measure Success on Instagram

Do you know if your Instagram marketing is working? Is all the time and energy that you’re spending following accounts, writing comments, and sharing images really paying off?

instagram kpis for business Knowing how and what to measure for success on social media networks is one of the biggest concerns that we see for our clients. Most small businesses know that they need to be on social media, but they aren’t sure what sorts of things can measurement their success. Let’s face it, success on social media means much more than only getting a sale, though the end goal of any marketing should be money in the door. Success on social media means competing with the big brands when it comes to brand recognition and building a network of people who trust and will turn to your business when the time is right.

Social media creates an avenue for staying top of mind for your network.

What metrics can and should you be measuring online for Instagram?

Well it depends on your goals … the following KPI’s can help you understand whether or not your strategy is worthwhile online. Track each of the following, or at least the ones that are of interest to you on a spreadsheet for easy reference.

Size of your network.

This is simply how much your network has grown week over week or month over month.

Posting frequency.

This is a measurement of how frequently you are posting. Are you sticking to your goals of posting daily or a couple times per week? Keeping track of how frequently you are posting allows you to be realistic about what your efforts have been.

Your Comments on Other Posts.

This metric allows you to see trends between website traffic or likes and comments on your own posts compared to the number of times that you are commenting on someone else’s posts. This interaction and visibility outside of your direct network can lead to great return.

Your Likes on Other Posts.

Just as with comments, we want to track the number of times that you are liking another profile’s post so that you can see correlations between increased interactions on your own posts and website traffic.

Followers to Following Ratio.

Ideally, you should have more followers than the number of people that you are following. Often times when we are first getting started this will be reverse. You want to track this to make sure that it starts creeping the other way.

Interactions: Number of Likes.

Here I always recommend not only paying attention to the number of likes that you get each day or each week, but also what types of posts these likes are on. Is your network responding to posts on one topic over another?

Interactions: Comments.

Just as with lakes you also want to understand which post are getting the most comments. A great goal is to have an increase in the number of comments but you want to make sure that these are positive comments rather than negative ones.

Mentions and Tags.

Have you ever paid attention to the number of times that other accounts have tagged or mentioned you? Keeping track of this information is a great metric so that you can see more successes and interactions within your network.

Use of Brand Hashtags.

I highly recommend every business use a specific #’s for their brand. This # then gives way to competitions in the future as well as different promotions. Your goal should be to get other Instagram users utilizing your # in their posts.

Website clicks.

Every business Instagram profile should have a link in your bio back to your website. You can swap this link out for a special or promotion and include the call to action in your posts for that time period. Utilizing Google Analytics, you can tell if folks have clicked on the link and were to your website.

New Leads on Your Website.

Through Google Analytics and using goal tracking, you can actually set up a filter to see the number of new leads that came directly from your Instagram profile. This is a great way to combine data from your number of website visits to see which post and types of posts are actually converting to new leads for your business.

What other KPI’s do you measure in your business for your Instagram marketing?

April 22, 2017/by Caitlin McDonald

Blogging, Boundless Internet Marketing Solutions, Infographics

Can you use that image?

As a small business owner, the last thing you want to be caught up in is a legal battle and additional expense for an image you, at the time, didn’t think twice about using. Even though it is alright to share posts others have made on social media in most circumstances (typically because sharing a post gives credit to the source and links directly back to the original post), you should not assume that every image you find online is okay to use for marketing or on your website.

Watch out, you could be sued.

How to Find Appropriate Images (For Free)

Luckily, there are a handful of sites with tremendous databases of high-quality, “royalty free” images. Additionally, Google has a search feature to sift through search results to find images that have been marked for commercial use. As long as you are grabbing the images from one of the below sites and giving credit where asked for, you should be in the clear!

Pixabay

With over 920,00 free stock photos, illustrations, vectors, and VIDEOS, Pixabay comes in at the top of our list. Even for commercial applications, attribution isn’t required.

FoodiesFeed

Food Blogger? Nutritionist? Just like food? This is the free image directory for you. With new images added frequently, FoodiesFeed offers a great selection of, you guessed it, food and beverage oriented photography.

Iso Republic

Another great database of images offers images of architecture, food/drink, nature, people, urban, technology, textures, and other images. The wide variety is easy to sort and updated frequently.

Stokpic

Stokpic uploads new pictures every 2 weeks with a focus on lifestyle photography. These images are perfect for blogs and social media and the site is easy to navigate.

Superfamous

The Superfamous database of images offers a vast variety of nature, landscape, and abstract images. These images are free to use for both personal and commercial purposes.

Pin now and read later!

What Tools Can You Use to Add Text?

Adding text to images can also help make them pop. I used to tend to make templates in Adobe Photoshop, however, this was a little overkill for most situations. Now I use free tools that are available to anyone online. My go-t0 tools include:

Canva

Canva allows you to make streams for different image templates allowing you to easy copy a previous image to then adjust the background and text. Additionally, with Canva you have the ability to upload new fonts if your brand font isn’t a present and select your brand colors so you are sure to stay on point. Additionally, beyond social media sized images, you can create banners for blogs, ebooks, infographics, and more. Canva comes with free images, text layouts, and icons, but does offer the option to purchase some premium ones for $1.

Pablo by Buffer

Buffer created Pablo as a way to make it easier to create images with text overlay. They offer a variety of different options you can control, such as filters and sizes, though much fewer than Canva. Pablo has free images you can use as backgrounds and various fonts preloaded. We use Buffer to schedule social media posts, so Pablo is a go-to choice for images with quotes that we wish to load directly to the client’s account.

What Happens When You Get an Email or Letter from Getty Images?

The goal should be to always use images that are released free of copyrights under Creative Commons, but at times everyone makes a mistake and overlooks using one image vs another. You may wake up one day to an email from Getty Images, for example, stating you owe $800+ for the use of a single image. My best advice here is Do Not ignore this notice.

Reach out to the sender and explain that you thought the image was royalty free and are incredibly sorry for utilizing it. Inform them that you have already removed it from the site (delete it from your image directory not just from the page it appears) and ask as politely as possible for them to work with you on the price of the violation.

Often they will come down in price depending on the number of copyright violations you have had. Just make sure you pay quickly and are more careful in the future!

April 21, 2017/by Caitlin McDonald

Digital Marketing, Social Media

Finding Your Target Market Online

As a marketing professional, it is imperative to be able to find our client’s prospects online. Our clients often ask us how we make sure that the folks we are targeting fit their ideal customer persona, so I assume this is a common question for business owners. I wanted to lay out the steps we take so you can follow them for your own business.

Though many of us have accounts on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, SnapChat, Tumblr, etc, we can assume there are only one or two networks where we focus most of our online activity. Luckily, numerous agencies share data freely about the types of individuals that are found on each network and network growth over time.

For example, take a look at this chart from Smart Insights. 16-34 year olds dominate most networks, but if your market is 55-64 year olds (green marker), I would highly consider targeting LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube. SnapChat wouldn’t be a valuable network for this age group.

Additionally, though it is common to hear that Facebook is on its way out, this is still the largest network of users. Twitter on the other hand has remained fairly stagnant over the past few years.

Data like this may sway where you want to put your attention on social media.

Exercise:
Write a description of your ideal customer. How old are they, what job do they hold, what do they do in their free time?

Look at the statistics of the social media networks, is there somewhere this person is most likely to be found (and active)?

Now work backwards. Make a list of each social media network. What type of customer have you had that would use this network? Now write what type of post they would be interested in seeing on that network (yes, you should tailor your social media posts to the market they are getting in front of)

Beyond data, our team also analyses what works for your competition. We often hear a client raving about how well Business X uses Facebook, for example, but when we actually take a look, their posts aren’t receiving any traction or they only are posting once per month. This leads to a conversation about what our client’s are viewing as a success.

By “spying” on competition, you can learn what has worked well, what seems to be a waste of time, and they types of graphics and posts your target market is used to seeing on each social media network.

Exercise:
Brainstorm a list of your competitors and other businesses that sell to your target market. Then find them on social media. Gather notes on their network size, average number of likes, shares, RT’s, and comments on their posts, the topics they post about, and if there is one network that seems to garner most of their attention. You can also use Fanpage Karma – http://www.fanpagekarma.com/ – to gather insights.

You don’t need to necessarily present this research in any specific way unless you are proposing it to a board or others at your organization. I use this research as a gut check and to establish expectations for clients. I do believe that if you are 100% devoted to a particular network, you can find results, so don’t necessarily cross off SnapChat, for example, if your competition hasn’t jumped on board yet.

My recommendation is to use this research from “spying” on your competition to gain a better understanding of the online landscape within your industry.

Know Yourself

Lastly, take a moment to reflect on your own interests. We’ve already looked at the overall trends for social media networks and seeing how your competition uses social media, but how do YOU use and interact with social media. Is there one network you absolutely love?

No matter what the research says, if you are passionate about a specific social media network, start there. Even though there are few 65+ individuals using SnapChat, you can still work to capture a portion of these individuals if you commit to working SnapChat.

If you are just jumping in, take a moment to consider where you would like to spend your time marketing your business. Use this as a starting point. You can always add more social media networks once you are confident in the process of marketing your business online.

April 15, 2017/by Caitlin McDonald

Infographics, Internet Marketing, SEO, Social Media

3 Types of Visual Content That Will Increase Your Conversion Rate

Finding ways to attract and encourage people to keep coming back to your site is no easy feat. If you are looking for ways to generate a stream of targeted traffic that converts, we recommend that you incorporate visual content into your digital marketing campaign.

Visual content is one of the most powerful online marketing tools. They are easy to consume and understand. On top of that, they also increase engagement, brand awareness and earn more new business.

Here are 3 types of visual content that will increase your conversion rate:

Infographics

We live in an era where an average person has an attention span of about 8 seconds. People want to get the information they want fast. Otherwise, they’ll move on swiftly to the next site. Infographics can help you reach your audience and grab their attention, mostly because you make things easier for them.

People love infographics. They are filled with valuable information, but are presented in a user-friendly layout. It requires less time to read, absorb and get the gist of information.

Images

Every day, the average consumer is exposed to a large volume of advertising messages. As such, it can be easy for your content to get lost in the jungle. Providing your text content with an appealing image can help you cut through the noise.

Photos are a great way to showcase your products and services. Take some photos of behind the scenes of your brand. Take some snaps shots of your team members, as well as the process that goes into creating your product. You may also include some photos of happy customers who have recently purchased your products or availed your services.

Videos

Studies suggest that posts with videos attract 300% more inbound links than text-only posts. But in order to set yourself apart in the digital era, you need to make sure that your video is of the highest caliber.

A great video serves as an extra clout for your campaign. It is useful for presenting common problems and then showing people how your products can solve that problem. Also, it is imperative that the videos are congruent with the overall style and ethos of your brand.

March 7, 2017/by Caitlin McDonald

Blogging, Boundless Internet Marketing Solutions, Connecting with Customers, Social Media

How to Use Content Marketing to Build Trust and Credibility

If you’re the content person for your brand, you’re probably busy creating pieces of content that aims to give out information about your products or services. You may also be focused in writing content that tell about your brand’s story. Amidst the churning out of content, have you ever stopped to think about why people choose to buy from your company? The answer is simple. It’s because they trust your company.

Whether you’re creating content for your clients, existing customers or new prospects, it is important to keep in mind that the real purpose of content marketing is to build greater levels of trust with your audience. Trust and credibility are important to win the loyalty of your customers.

Use these tips to create content that will help you enter your customer’s world and become an important part of it:

Put people first

In order to build trust and enhance your influence, you need to remember who you’re writing for. The content you create should be relevant to the people you are trying to communicate with. Know their demographics, determine your niche focus and stick with it.

Deliver high quality and relevant content to your audience on a regular basis. Overtime, people will see your brand as a trusted authority. They’ll keep coming back for more once they see you as a trustworthy source.

Be consistent

People don’t have an idea how reliable you are unless they start working with you. But by observing your activities and posting schedule, they can decide whether or not they can rely on you.

Choose your social media channels carefully and commit to being there regularly. Also, make it habit to post new content on your blog and update your site from time to time. By turning up regularly and publishing high quality and relevant contents on a regular basis, you will start to earn the confidence of your marketplace.

Interact with your audience

Newsletters, social media updates and blog posts are a great way for your audience to stay up-to-date with your business. But it’s not supposed to be a one-way communication. Find ways to interact with your audience online.

You can ask questions, encourage them to send photos of them with your products, share their stories etc. Don’t forget to respond to mentions on social media and reply to comments on your blog. Through this strategy, you’ll be able to build a relationship with your target audience. Through this relationship, they will come to trust you.

February 28, 2017/by Caitlin McDonald

Social Media

Reasons to Schedule Your Social Media Posts

It’s Friday afternoon. Within a few hours, your target audience will be logging in on their social media accounts to post updates or see what their friends have been up to. Now is the perfect time to post something and remind your followers about your upcoming event. Unfortunately, you haven’t prepared anything yet. You hurriedly write a blog post, posted it on your website and shared it on your social media account. Whew!

We commend you for coming up with good content fast, but wouldn’t it be better if you prepare your posts in advance and then coordinate them across different social media channels? Scheduling tools such as Sprout Social, Buffer and HootSuite can help you with this task.

There are tangible benefits to scheduling your social media content. Here are some of them:

Target your audience

Scheduling your content allows you to post, even if you’re busy or away. Since you can choose your publish date and time, it will be easier for you to reach your target audience. Schedule your post at times when your followers are online.

It saves time

Let’s face it. Social media can be a big distraction. You log in to your account to post an update and the next thing you know, you’ve spent half an hour browsing through your newsfeed.

Scheduling your posts saves time since you can schedule up to 10 posts at a time. This is especially advantageous if you are managing a number of accounts. Plus, scheduling tools like HootSuite, Buffer and Everypost allows you to schedule posts through different platforms; hence, freeing up time.

Consistency

Sharing high quality and valuable content will ensure that your audience keeps coming back. In order to turn your visitors to regular readers, you need to be consistent in your posting schedule. Committing to a social media scheduling helps you stick to your publishing schedule.

People are counting on you to provide them with fresh, unique and interesting content every day. Make sure that you post at the same time every day. Eventually, you will notice an increase in engagement.

February 21, 2017/by Caitlin McDonald

Social Media

Best Tools to Manage Social Media Posts

Aside from your website, social media provides an effective way to increase your web presence. It provides a way to generate PR for your company, build your brand and drive traffic to your website. You need to be active on social media if you are serious about achieving these goals. After all, you can’t expect any results if your page is inactive. The problem is that, social media marketing takes time.

If you are a business owner, you can’t afford to spend all day hopping from network to network, managing your social media accounts, planning future posts and checking analytics.

Are you looking for a better way to manage your social media posts? Here are 4 social media tools to add to your arsenal.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is one of the most robust social media management tools around, and social media managers swear by it. The tool has a feature called Autoschedule. If you have multiple accounts, you can use this feature to manage your posts and make sure that they don’t appear on different channels all at the same time. It also shares your updates at the best possible time of the day to give them the greatest chance of being seen. Hootsuite also allows you to monitor and analyze your performance on your main social networks.

Buffer

Buffer allows you to easily distribute your content across multiple accounts. Just drop your updates to your Buffer queue and you don’t have to worry about when it will be posted. These posts will be posted for you well spaced out throughout the day.

Buffer also allows users to schedule up to 10 updates at once. The paid version, on the other hand, allows unlimited scheduling.

SocialOomph

Twitter has become one of the must-have marketing channels for any business. If you are interested in automating your Twitter marketing, SocialOomph is the best tool for you. It has a feature called Twitter unlimited, which allows you to manage your Twitter followers and direct messages box from within the app. The free level also allows you to work on up to 5 Twitter accounts. It helps you track keywords and schedule tweets.

Sprout Social

Sprout Social allows you to manage all your relationships, interactions and customer support from a single dashboard. This tool also analyzes your audience to determine the optimal times to deliver content. Because it’s not free, this is recommended for larger businesses that are looking for an all-in-one solution to manage their social media presence.

February 7, 2017/by Caitlin McDonald