Instagram has recently eclipsed the 300 million monthly active user mark, which ranks it as one of the largest social networks available for marketers to serve their customers. To develop a powerful marketing strategy on Instagram, and other social networks for that matter, marketers should first understand the unique elements that make the network popular and the mindset behind its user base.

A typical user will build their Instagram account with a collection of visual moments from their lives, which is similar to how they develop their other social channels; however, Instagram differs by giving their users tools to crop, edit, and better perfect their posts prior to sharing.

While this doesn’t initially appear to be a big feature as it relates to your marketing efforts, it is likely to change the behavior of how your audience interacts with your content on the network. Instagram users tend to curate their content to reflect a specific look or feel that they are trying to achieve through public perception, essentially creating an idealistic representation of themselves. Continue reading “Align Your Instagram Marketing Strategy to Serve Your Customers’ Intentions” →

Over the past few years, Twitter and Pinterest have become essential channels for both business owners and marketers to build stronger brands and nurture customer relationships. With nearly 50 million active users on Pinterest and over 300 million monthly active users on Twitter, it’s clear that these social networks will continue to influence a large audience of people for years to come.

When it comes to integrating your efforts over each channel to create a more efficient approach to your content marketing, there are many key aspects to think about, such as keeping in mind the unique feature sets and habits of each channel’s user base. These considerations can often complicate your content strategies and make it more difficult to understand which tactics are most important to focus on.

From planning content specifically for each channel to repurposing your content between channels, learn how to properly integrate your Twitter and Pinterest marketing to become more agile when sharing content effectively on both networks. Continue reading “Smart Ways to Integrate Your Twitter and Pinterest Marketing” →

It’s no surprise that Twitter can be a powerful tool for your business to drive audience engagement, create customer dialogue, and ultimately increase the bottom line, but it can also be challenging to prove that your ongoing Twitter efforts are actually producing these optimal results.

Often times, businesses think that retweets are the sole indicator of success on Twitter when it’s merely one of the many metrics that they should be focusing on when determining if their social efforts are a success. By placing too much priority on a single metric, you could be missing out on how other important aspects could be affecting your marketing campaigns and fail to make the correct adjustments to maximize ROI.

Learn about some of the most important Twitter metrics that you should be following to build a stronger understanding of how this social channel is performing and whether or not your Twitter efforts are affecting your company’s business objectives. Continue reading “Tweet Smarter: The Twitter Metrics That Matter Most” →

Promoting and encouraging user generated content (UGC) can be a cost-effective tactic that yields a variety of benefits from enriching customer experiences to building a stronger community. According to Nielsen, 43% of consumers are more likely to purchase a product after learning about it on social media, a common distribution channel for user generated content.

While there are multiple social channels to promote user content, Instagram has been an increasingly popular platform for brands interested in visual storytelling and can be an effective network for both large and small businesses to encourage users to generate content.

From having an on-site photo booth in your retail stores to running a social contest or integrating Instagram photos in your web properties, there are many ways to encourage your customer base to take and share images of your products and offerings on Instagram.

Learn from the following strategies and how these brands promoted and drove unique user generated content campaigns on Instagram to expand their content’s organic reach, increase social proof, and create visually compelling stories. Continue reading “6 Interesting Ways to Encourage User Generated Content on Instagram” →

Pinterest recently launched Cinematic Pins as another version of their already successful Promoted Pin advertising offerings. Sponsoring pins could be a viable advertising avenue to help your business attract new customers and drive more engagement from your current audience.

Although considered a more niche social network when compared to the giants such as Facebook or Twitter, Pinterest’s popularity is continually on the rise and has amassed nearly 50 million users, further proving that it is a relevant platform for many different types of marketing campaigns.

What Pinterest lacks in pure volume, it makes up for with a unique audience. Users actively seek and share their favorite products, brands and project plans, which may ultimately indicate their future purchasing decisions or customer behaviors.

Learn how to generate results and drive engagement for your brand using these two forms of advertising on Pinterest and why your business should pay attention to this on-the-rise social platform. Continue reading “How to Generate Results Using Promoted and Cinematic Pins on Pinterest” →

We are currently entering the wild west of Snapchat, uncharted territory that marketers love to compare to the early days of Facebook and Twitter. When we throw those big network names into the mix, we can start to get pretty excited about what Snapchat can do to further bolster our ongoing social campaigns.

Snapchat may still be the new kid on the block, but we understand how important becoming an early adopter of a new trend can be and some of us are primed to claim our space right now. We’ve even seen a few creative success stories from larger brands like Taco Bell and Victoria’s Secret, but some marketers have been experiencing trouble finding similar value with their Snapchat efforts.

This highly personalized network appears to be the perfect channel for delivering our message directly to the consumer and it seems relatively straight forward. You send the snap, they view the snap and voila, your brand grows. Well… not so fast. If you’ve experimented with a Snapchat campaign or even used it on a personal level, you may have noticed that Snapchat is designed for the user and provides little insights for a marketer to analyze.

In addition, Snapchat is lacking a significant third party analytics tool that can help display our content performance on a universal dashboard, meaning that you’ll need to analyze your data manually. By taking a closer look at the information that Snapchat does provide, you can begin to find tangible metrics and learn how to effectively measure your Snapchat efforts. Continue reading “Metrics That Don’t Disappear: How to Effectively Measure Your Snapchat Efforts” →

With 300 million monthly active users and over 70 million posts per day, it’s difficult to argue against the recent dominance of Instagram among other social networks. The soaring popularity of Instagram and other media sharing applications such as Snapchat and Vine is proof that visual content is in high demand and it is here to stay.

Instagram has entered the big leagues of social networking platforms, but when it comes to leveraging this large community for sales, some marketing strategies can fall short of their goals. Sometimes we forget to realize that each social networking platform has it’s own quirks and each require unique strategies to best align with your business objectives.

Instagram can definitely feel a bit quirky, but to start generating sales, you’ll need to understand the ins and outs, just as you would any other platform. The following tips can help you learn the latest Instagram sales strategies to begin profiting from your visuals. Continue reading “Profit From Your Visuals: How to Generate Sales from Instagram” →