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Can you believe the holiday season is right around the corner?! That’s right, cue the holiday music every which way you turn! It also means that if you haven’t already, it’s time to get on those important holiday marketing campaigns! According to Facebook, 43% of shoppers did their holiday shopping in November or earlier. The holiday season offers businesses opportunities of all sorts! You will want to make sure you grab your audience’s attention amongst the noise and make a profit while you do so.

Fun fact: Instagram and Facebook are some of the most powerful social channels marketers can use during the holiday season. When used correctly, they can help your business grow in sales tremendously, during the short period of time. Don’t know where to begin when it comes to planning your holiday social campaign? No worries, we’ve decided to put together a list of 5 easy tips that’ll help your business sleigh your marketing holiday campaign this year.

1. Start Planning Early & Create a Budget

As in start planning your holiday Instagram campaign, yesterday. Most companies start planning holiday campaigns as early as August and September. The earlier you start strategizing, budgeting, creating, and content collecting, the more success you’ll have. Success, especially on Instagram and Facebook, always favors those who plan. Figure out what your goals are for the holidays and go from there. Also, advertising gets expensive during the season as everyone is fighting for a spot online, optimize your ads and make sure they are set up correctly.

Wasn’t you? Don’t fear, it’s not the end. We understand and know that many brands get overwhelmed with planning these things out. Also, you’re in luck! We created a free content planning sheet to help you plan and organize your content, coming to the shop soon!

2. Conduct Market Research

Market research is one major key to success, always, & the holiday season is no exception. Take a look at your competitors Instagram feeds, search up holiday campaigns on Google, & look at what they chose to do previously. Was it successful? Did it seem to engage with their demographic well? Ask yourself questions to help use their holiday campaign almost as a case study into what works, or what doesn’t work for seasonal content in a social scape. Looking at competitors will also help make sure you are coming up with ideas that are fresh, exciting, & have never been done before.

3. Tell A Story

Every successful holiday campaign shows a cohesive story to the audience. Let’s go back to the Coca Cola holiday commercials, especially the trucks! PRIME example of a campaign that has everyone in their feelings every holiday season. Their commercials associate hit’s one of the 3 E’s, emotion, and makes you want to have their products at your gatherings. Notice how we said SHOWS, not tells. The message behind your campaign should entertain, educate, or hit an emotion. Make sure your creative and copy all work together to tell the message you want to communicate. This means it’s extremely important that you are using the same colors, image style, filters, etc. to help your holiday campaign be clear, recognizable, & not confusing for followers.

4. Create Something your Followers Can Engage With

On social media, successful campaigns always encourage followers to be interactive and are fun! An example of this is the “Elf Yourself” by Office Depot (don’t tell us you haven’t done this before?). The campaign wasn’t necessarily to drive direct sales, but to bring brand awareness, which was their goal and they did a great job with it.

Social media is known for being engaging & truth be told, most holiday campaigns that don’t involve some sort of follower engagement, will probably just be ignored. If you create a holiday campaign that is just focused on promoting your services, or products, with no benefits or value to your followers, we can promise you won’t have optimal success. Or, a lot of brands are now using the power of messaging to fuel brand loyalty and as always, know-like-trust is the name of the game. Make sure messaging is something your business is on top of and make yourself available to your customers.

5. Utilize Basic Analytics and Be Consistent

Yes, analytics can be overwhelming, & often need an agency’s review for optimal success, but there are some basic analytics you can review to review your campaign’s success. For example, posting at the best time possible for your brand, your reach in increasing, there is engagement, increase in sales, etc. This will help you know what is working and what isn’t. This is key to improving your campaigns.

Also, consistency with posting matters. If you’re not consistently posting your campaign, on stories, and your feed, then you likely will have less success. Post daily or whatever works for your brand specifically, but be consistent with it, & we promise it’ll pay off. Also, make sure your posts on Instagram are shoppable and that your stories are too. 500 million accounts view and use stories daily, you’re leaving money on the table if you’re not tapping into it!If you’re wanting to chat about your holiday campaigns, set up a complimentary call with us here and we’ll be happy to assist you the best we can!

“Social media is super important for your business.” – Every Social Media Manager

We’re sure you’ve heard this statement before. While it’s true, we believe the statement that should be professed over & over again is: social media when DONE & STRATEGIZED CORRECTLY is super important for your business.

Often times business owners don’t realize what a difference planned, strategized, and goal-oriented social media marketing, can make.

And okay, let’s be honest… as business owners, often times remembering to:

• post intentional and brand reflecting content,
• engaging with users to grow following organically,
• using analytics to make sure your brand gets the most exposure possible,

and the million other little details that come with social media marketing aren’t exactly on the top of your daily to-do list. That’s okay, and perfectly understandable, you’re already wearing so many hats. This is when hiring a social media manager for your business can help!

Here are four quick reasons you should hire a social media manager to help your business flourish in the digital age we live in:

1.You need a social media strategy to be effective

In order to make your social media presence worth-while, you really need an intentional and thought out strategy. This includes a very detailed social media calendar, researched based hashtags, analytical post times, planned out aesthetically pleasing & on brand content, and much more. It can be time consuming and way too overwhelming for many, or an employee to take on. Hiring a professional, social media expert, to plan out your strategy and work with your business to accomplish your marketing goals, can be both, business and life changing.

2. Protect your reputation & customer service

The moment a potential client, or consumer hears about your brand, service, or product, we can almost guarantee they’ll either search your business up on search engines or via social media networks. Even when searching on Google, often times they’ll still visit your Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook pages before even heading to your website. Either way, your online social presence really matters. Your social media streams should not only convey your vibe and branding with one quick glance, they also should reflect your reputation, values, and customer service.

What do we mean? Well, for example, when people comment asking brands valid questions, or voicing possible issues, it’s important that the brand responds in a timely and professional matter. Not responding to customers on social media reflects a company that may lack in customer service, or care for their consumer- even when this is far from the truth. Responding to comments and staying on top of inbox messages can once again be a time consuming matter, but when you hire a social media manager they will do so for you. Taking the pressure of maintaining your social reputation, off of you, and allowing more focus directed toward other important aspects of business.

3. The World of Social Media is Always Changing

Just when you think you have social media figured out, it changes. New tactics, new features, new algorithms, new trends… The list goes on, but staying on top of it all is a full-time job in itself. Hence why hiring a social media manager to-do so for you, will not only save you time, but also ensure your business is always having optimal social marketing success.

4. Feasible to Source the Job Outside of the Company

Many often question if they should just hire someone to handle the role in house, or source the role to an outside company. If you have the budget, paying an employee full-time to-do so could work, but ultimately sourcing outside will be much more feasible. Sourcing an outside company to do your social media managing is a great way for a smaller business to obtain flawless and beneficial social media, without breaking the marketing budget.

Interested in seeing a social media proposal for your brand? Or want more information about hiring a social media manager? Email info@thesocialproject.ca, fill out the form here so we can learn more about your business and goals, or set up a free consultation here for all your lingering inquiries.

Social media is something that almost everyone is adopting. It isn’t going anywhere anytime soon either because it’s where the crowd is and most businesses snag up a piece of real estate on platforms as soon as they have a business name! As we try and keep up with the ever changing scene of social media, there are definitely a few things to avoid when it comes to social media! Are you participating in any of these common social media mistakes?

Stop focusing on the numbers and start focusing on engaging

Repeat that one more time. Stop focusing on the numbers. Whether it is followers or likes, this does not define you or your success. We know because we used to feel like people may not think my business was successful unless we had thousands of followers. Boy, were we wrong! The value your product or service brings to people has nothing to do with numbers and let’s not try and point fingers at the algorithm, because let’s face it, that’s out of our control. The moment you start creating those meaningful relationships with your audience, is when you’ll see the return. Do not just wait for people to comment on your content, get out there and go engage with your target audience and what they’re posting! Social media is a two way street.  

Having no strategy

Okay, so you’re on social media and you keep posting and hashtagging and posting and hashtagging. Throwing in quotes and whatever else you see everyone doing. Okay, pause! Every single business is different! Different goals, different audiences, different content! Go back to your business goals and use social media as a roadmap as to how you will get there. Social media is like free (or sometimes paid) PR. You want to try and get eyes on your business. How are you converting traffic from social media into paying customers? Because let’s be real friend, how are you going to pay those bills and keep your business alive if you have no money coming in?!

Using Social Media as a sales platform

This is a big no. People are on social media to be social. Surprise!Among the life updates, engagement announcements, and whatever else, it’s how we all stay up to date on the latest celebrations and tea. We start conversations on social media. We engage in creating real relationships on social media. People choose to see what they want to on social media. This is why it’s important to implement the know-like-trust factor for your brand using social media. You don’t get the sale just by throwing it up and asking for it.You need your audience to engage and see the value in your product or service before they can invest in it.

 Not being clear on your brand and target market

This is something seen over and over again. Before you jump on social media and start creating content, nail down your brand and target market. What is your brand voice? Is your message relayed? What is your style? Who is your product or service created to help?  This will help create the right content for the right target audience. Instead of shouting to the masses and hoping to be heard, focus on spreading value to the right audience. A tip for identifying your target market is to create avatars.Give them names and pin point every little detail from where they shop, what apps they use, their relationship status, their age, their income, their hobbies, etc. Include it all! This way, the moment you see someone, you’ll know if it’s for your brand or not.

No Call To Action (CTA)

What are you asking your audience to do? How will you build those relationships and get to know them? How will you get them to your website or email list to learn more about your business? It’s simply not from just posting on social media. Also,remember that platforms like Facebook and Instagram are just rented space. You do not own them. If they shut down, how will your business continue to run? This is one question I always ask my clients to think about because it’s so crucial! Social media is a way to get seen or heard, the rest is up to you. It’s not Instagram or Facebook’s fault you aren’t getting the sale, you need to make sure you are carrying the conversation off the platforms – whether it’s setting up a call, downloading a freebie (like our marketing maze), the options are endless!We get it, social media can be overwhelming. But you are not alone and many get stuck going around in circles when it comes to social media. Make sure you stay focused on the bigger picture of creating a solid brand and intentional presence on social media, platforms which are meant to be social and engaging. Stop falling in these traps for 2019! Things will continuously be changing so we need to adapt, but being able to be clear on these points and acting on it can create the biggest difference for your business! You can also book a complimentary consultation with us here and chat about ways to level up your business for the New Year!

Halloween is over and the holiday season is officially in full-swing and so should your marketing campaigns. Which means essentially 5 days of non-stop shopping. This includes: Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, sales on the Sunday and Cyber Monday. With mobile shopping for the holiday season expected to increase by another 10% this year, solid holiday social media marketing campaigns can be essential for your business. Thus why, we’ve come up with 5 tips, that’ll help your business crush your Black Friday & Cyber Monday social media campaigns this year!

1.     Optimize & Prepare Your Profiles

This might seem silly, and maybe a bit of a no brainer, but we promise it’s often forgotten by many to optimize their campaigns in their social media profiles. So, let this be a reminder to coordinate all your social media streams’ bios, banners, descriptions, & links and make sure they are all cohesively promoting the ongoing campaign that you are pushing. This includes, changing your cover photo on Facebook to a banner promoting the sales offer, creating an Instagram highlight with everything to do with the massive sale, & making sure it is promoted with links and descriptions in every bio.

2.     Build a Sense of Urgency

Every good social media marketing campaign builds a sense of urgency with the follower. Black Friday and Cyber Monday campaigns are no different. Most consumers already have a sense of urgency when it comes to jumping on Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals, but that doesn’t mean you can’t build on that & create a campaign that is centered around FOMO (fear of missing out) with the consumer. Be clever with your caption writing and using jargon that will excite and create urgency. Be careful, we don’t recommend you overdo it, but make sure your follower knows it’s a special, once in a blue-moon, type of offer.

3.     Get Creative

Over campaigns that are centered around insane price drops & outrageous sales? Or maybe your business just doesn’t offer a service that can be discounted? No problem, that doesn’t mean you can’t take part in the marketing fun that is Black Friday, that just means it’s time to get creative. Some of our favorite Black Friday social media campaigns weren’t centered around screaming deals & all-time low prices, whatsoever. Remember REI’s famous #OptOutside campaign that launched Black Friday of 2015? It was centered around encouraging consumers & followers to forget the craziness that is Black Friday shopping, and opt to adventure outside. Leading 1.4 million users to do just that, while bringing viral attention to the brand. The campaign generated an incredible 1.2 billion social impressions. 

4.     Plan Your Hashtags

That brings us to tip number 4, which is to plan & strategize the hashtags you plan on using. We recommend creating a social media hashtag that is original to the brand & the campaign, like REI’s #OptOutside, but also doing some hashtag research into what is trending within your social media & follower demographics. This will help to organically optimize your posts’ reach. However, you also can work in more specific hashtags, opposed to just general & trending one’s that have been tagged with lots of posts. That way, your post will stay towards the top of the hashtag explore page for a longer amount of time.

5.     Utilizing Ads 

Prices of ads significantly increase around this time of year. Last year it was so back up, Facebook crashed the week of Thanksgiving and all marketers lost their minds! Furthermore, Facebook ads works like an auction, so during this time, everyone gets on top of ads so there is more competition. Increase the placement of ads, there are many spaces in Facebook world for your business to be found! Make your offer simple, it should be about 20% off minimum for your offer to be effective! Or add on something for free if it’s affordable! For example, we have seen supplement companies give away shaker cups. There will be an increase in ad spend, no doubt, so make sure you keep an eye on ad spend limits capping as this will shut off your ad if it’s hit! A great tool is the Facebook Holiday Marketing Guide.

The holidays can be a great time for businesses to make a significant profit. Remember, there are essentially 5 crucial days to drive sales! People are in a shopping state of mind, shopping for products/services to solve their problems. Make sure your business shows up and takes advantage of one of our favorite things: making money and getting your brand in the right hands!

Looking to have it taken off your hands? Fill out the form found here and we’ll get in touch as soon as possible!

Hey, all you cool business owners and digital marketing professionals ?, happy end of 2020! This year has been filled with LOTS of pivoting…to say the least. Did you adjust your content strategy yet? Did you even have one in place before all of this started? Not to fear if you fall in either of those categories because it’s never too late to adjust and create a meaningful and strong content strategy for your brand!

For starters, let me answer the question, “What even is a content strategy?” 

Good question! A content strategy is something that is WRITTEN OUT and serves as a strategic roadmap for ALL your digital marketing efforts. 

We often hear how important “strong content” is to grow our brand through digital marketing efforts, but it’s forgotten that content is useless in doing so, unless it has a mapped out and planned purpose. 

Make sense? Okay, cool. Now, let’s get to the fun part… How to create a content strategy that slays the game. 

There are 4 major steps for creating a strong strategy for your brand, that we went ahead and listed below.

STEP 1:   Create Buyer Personas 

First off, in order for your content to effectively target your ideal customer(s), you must envision them, so you then know how to reach them. Good marketers know that customer and the customer’s needs always come first. When you map out who your customer is, you can better meet their needs, by providing relevant and valuable content to them. Click here to download our free buyer persona template. 

 STEP 2:   Create a Customer Journey 

Secondly, map out the journey it will take for a customer to purchase your product and become a loyal advocate by creating a customer journey roadmap. Generally speaking, you’ll probably have about 5 stages in your customer journey roadmap. Those stages being, awareness, consideration, decision, retention, and advocacy. For each of these stages in your customer journey, you’ll want to create about 5 to 6 touchpoints your brand can offer through your digital marketing efforts, to help guide them down the customer journey road to success. 

STEP 3: Content Audit

This is step is crucial and oftentimes skipped completely. Once you have created your buyer persona and road mapped out the journey they will take, you want to run an audit. This will not only be an evaluation of your competitor and how they are targeting your audience, but also an evaluation of the collateral you have previously produced. What worked and what didn’t? How can you adjust your marketing efforts to give value to your ideal consumer? What platforms should you put your efforts into? How can you repurpose content that was successful and make it fresh for your audience? 

STEP 4: Creating Your Content 

Now to the fun part, mapping it all out. You’ll want to set a general framework of the content you plan to produce for the year. Why? So you can ensure that ALL of your digital marketing efforts are working together cohesively to funnel consumers. Determine what types of materials you want to focus on and the platforms you will use to communicate it. PRO TIP: For every content idea you come up with, make sure you ask yourself what is the marketing purpose behind this? If you can’t easily answer that question, then it’s probably not worth your energy, resources, and efforts. You want to create content that is intentional and has a purpose. Creating content in mass quantity, that lacks strong purpose-driven efforts, is how your content because stale. And, let’s be honest, it can be draining in many different ways. 

A few tools we use for our content and our client’s include: Canva, Plann, and Asana!Look for help to maximize your strategy going into this new wave of business? Fill out our Work With Us form to schedule a discovery call!

Can we be real for a second? Hashtags can be a pain… There. We said it. However, as much as many of us have a love-hate relationship with them, they are necessary. Hashtags can be extremely beneficial when trying to attract a cold audience to your Instagram page.

Hashtags should never however be something you ride and die by. Why? Well, because while they help bring new fresh faces to your page, they don’t help in nurturing the audience you’ve already established. Remember that it’s engaged followers, over tons of random followers, and bots – all day, every day. The ultimate goal of them is to help categorize content online.

How many do I need? Where do they go?

You can attach 30 hashtags to everything you post on the Gram. You can attach them to either your caption or the first comment of your post – different tagging methods work for different accounts. We have clients who have success when attaching them to the copy of the post and clients who have success when they are attached as the first comment, so make sure you figure out what is right for your content.

Next, you’ll want to do your research into figuring out your hashtag sets. When doing this, you’ll want to put yourself in your target market’s shoes and try to figure out what type of hashtags they’d be searching for to find your product/service, for inspiration, or community hashtags they would be scrolling through on Instagram.

The way the algorithm works, where you show up in hashtags depends on your overall engagement score and organic engagement on your post. Generally speaking, you’ll want to use hashtags mainly in the Micro set (explained below), unless you have a larger following and engagement rating score, that way you are competing with fewer posts, and your posts rank higher within the hashtag tagged. If you use hashtags with millions of posts tagged to them, you’ll have more competition, and your posts will spend less time towards the top of the hashtag search area.

Feeling overwhelmed? Let us break it down even further for you. Below is a breakdown of the different hashtag groups. Generally speaking, how many hashtags from that specific group should be tagged to each of your posts. 

Micro

These have anywhere from 100 to 60k posts attached to them. You’ll want to be sure to include at least 8 – 10 hashtags within this size to your post. If your account is smaller or maybe even brand new, this is most likely where people will find your post, so you might even consider attaching just macro hashtags to your posts at the start. It’ll take longer to get your optimal reach with these tags because they are less popular, but that also means your post will sit higher in each hashtag algorithm for a longer period of time and have less competition with larger more established accounts.

Macro

These are hashtags with anywhere from 60k to 600k posts attached to them. This is your sweet spot if you have a decent size account with a highly engaged audience. You’ll want to include anywhere from 15 – 20 hashtags around this size to your post. These are much more searched. You have a greater chance of reaching your ideal client and getting optimal reach, while still staying within a niche.

Mega

These are hashtags with 600k to Millions+ of posts attached to them. We honestly recommend only using 1 – 3 hashtags from this set in your post. Why? Because these are highly used tags. Competition is fierce. In the odds of your post reaching your ideal client through tagging these, is tough.

Woah, okay, that’s a lot! You still with us? Great!

If you aren’t already, join our FREE Facebook group – Your Social Project. Get all of your social media questions answered. Or, maybe you want to hand over your social media to us so you can focus on working ON your business instead of in it? Book a call here!

Reduce, reuse and recycle. Did you know that this applies to your social media content, too? We are big believers in repurposing older material that performed well. While you may think that this will be repetitive to your followers, think again! You have new audience members as a part of your community that hasn’t seen as much of your content as you think! Take a moment and imagine all of the content being put out daily! Repurposing content is a great time saver and we 10 out 10 recommend.

Not sure where to start, here are a few ways to revive your content!

1. Reuse graphics. Through apps like Canva (our favorite) you can take an old graphic and spruce it up. Change the colors, add new background. Don’t be afraid to take existing content and play around with it to create something new! Posts can become blog posts or vice versa, or even turn infographics into Reels! The ideas are endless!

2. Carousel. Take an existing caption and re-create it into a multi-image experience. Captions are a lot of work and sometimes people don’t even read them. Try re-formatting your caption into carousel graphics, allowing for a new and interactive way to share your information.

3. #TBT. We love a good throwback! Don’t be afraid to share a photo from the past.

4. Blog Posts. Incorporate existing blog posts into your captions and drive more traffic to your website, all in one. This is a great way to share a few lines from your blog and have people follow the link in your bio. to read the full article.

Next time you approach content creation, we recommend keeping the idea of ‘evergreen’ in your strategy. Evergreen content is content that is niche to what you offer and stays relevant for years to come.

If you’re looking for more marketing tips, follow along on our Instagram where we post different tips and tools to level up your marketing or check out our other blog posts here!

Hey, hi, hello, strangers… It’s been a hot minute, BUT guess what? We’re back on our blogging game, so virtual cheers to that!  

What goes together like blogging and quarantine? Well, Pinterest and profit of course, so no doubt our comeback post HAD to be about Pinterest and how your brand can use the platform to profit. 

What is Pinterest? 

Okay, first things first, friends… Pinterest isn’t a social media platform… IT’S A SEARCH ENGINE and online visual catalog, with more than 320 million active and highly engaged users. Pinners are active consumers, meaning they are scrolling on Pinterest looking to purchase products. In fact, 87% of users say they purchased a product because of Pinterest. 

You have 6 seconds to grab your audience’s attention via social media. Pinterest is the best platform to do just that! Why? Well, because it is the most visual & curated social media platform out there. 

Don’t know Pinterest is right to incorporate in your strategy? Consider these statistics.  

– Millennials use the app just as much as Instagram.

– The median age of Pinners is 40, but the majority of active Pinners are under 40 years old.

– 93% of Pinners use Pinterest for bookmarking future purchases.

– 87% of Pinners have purchased something because of Pinterest.

– 72% of Pinners use Pinterest to determine what to buy offline.

– Over 5% of all referral traffic to websites is from Pinterest.

Convinced? Okay, good let’s get started. 

STEP ONE: Setting Up Your Business Profile

Time to convert (or create) a business Pinterest profile. Why? Well, because a business account allows you to review your analytics, utilize promotional tools, and apply for Rich Pins. 

It’s fairly easy to do so, just follow the steps listed here if you are trying to create a new account: https://business.pinterest.com

OR follow the steps listed below if you are trying to convert an existing account into a business profile. 

1. Log in to your account.
2. Go to pinterest.com/business/convert/
3. Fill out your business name and website then select a business type.
4. Click Create an account.

STEP TWO: Optimizing Your Business Profile 

First impressions are everything on Pinterest. You want to make sure your profile is clear, curated, and enticing for users to follow the second they visit your page. 

Your Profile Picture- Choose an image that aesthetically communicates your brand and vibe. This can be a logo or a picture of yourself that gives a visual representation of the type of content you pin.

Your Bio- Link your website and contact information, so it is clear and easy to know where to head for help, more information, or how to engage more with your brand. Write a description that is a brief summary of your brand, the services you offer and give pinners an idea of what they can expect by following. Make sure your description includes commonly used Pinterest keywords that are related to your brand. Keyword phrases are key on Pinterest. Therefore, you should really take the time to locate the best keyword phrases, so you can utilize them in multiple places- including within your profile bio, board descriptions, and pin’s title/descriptions. 

STEP THREE: Creating and Optimizing Your Boards 

Utilizing the 5+5+2 method to create boards– Cleanout, or create boards utilizing the 5+5+2 method. That way your page is Pinner friendly, clean, and curated. You want your board names to correlate with your brand and be easy for the pinner to find what they are looking for. 

5 boards – That pair your product, service, or content with your user’s everyday lifestyle. Think of these boards as setting a vibe for how you can be a part of your user’s everyday life. 

5 boards – Of things, your target audience might be searching for on Pinterest, that aren’t related to your product or service, but relate to your brand/vibe. Think of these boards as a way to give your follower value. Ideas being, recipe boards, health and wellness boards, an OOTD board, motivational quotes that align with your brand, etc. PRO SECRET: Quotes always kill it on Pinterest- be sure this is one of your boards regardless of your brand. 

2 boards – That are set up solely to promote sales of your products or services.

You Are Ready To Get Pinning! 

Now that you’re business profile is created and optimized, you’re ready to get pinning content. Remember that consistency is key on Pinterest. We personally use the platform Tailwind, to help schedule and post our client’s and our own content. 

Sign up for Tailwind hereIf you’re looking for further help, apply for a 1 hour coaching call here!

Okay, we hear you. Instagram can be frustrating. There’s rumors going around about your posts being hidden, algorithm hacks, and other things to memorize. Stop listening to all the noise, here are the 10 ways to conquer Instagram to grow your business and brand!

It’s a storytelling platform, not a photo sharing platform!

Firstly, people want to hear stories! Instagram is the king of storytelling content, so be sure to leverage that. The brands who focus on storytelling are the ones who build trust with their audience and grow the fastest. Make sure to tell stories that tie into your mission, values, and purpose.

Figure out what your goal is with Instagram

Are you creating brand awareness, driving sales or building a community? Once you’ve narrowed down your goal, map out relevant content so that each post leads in some way to that endgame.

Provide value and don’t sell in every single post

Who is your audience and how can you help them? Ask your audience through polls or questions and figure out what type of content they enjoy. Use the 80/20 rule, 80% percent valuable content and 20% sales. Remember, it’s about your audience, not about you. It’s still OK to sell on Instagram, so long as it’s done in a tasteful way.

Work With What You Have

You don’t need fancy software or apps. Being authentic will take you farther than you think. There’s a debate as to whether to or not to make your feed perfectly curated and filtered. I personally believe that we’re stepping away from that and becoming much more real, showing up through photo and video in an unfiltered way to really connect with our communities. Include videos from your iPhone if that’s what you have! Some of the best ads and content have converted from iPhone photos and videos.

Stories, Stories, Stories!

This is where it’s at and where you want to be daily. Start off small. Most people don’t like being in front of the camera which is totally understandable, but even if you don’t post videos of yourself, remember that the aim is provide value through your stories. Add different stickers to your stories to encourage engagement, whether through polls, questions or even gifs!

Have a CTA (call to action)

Invite your audience to participate in your post! Ask them a question, invite them to tag a friend who might resonate with your message, have them check out the link in your bio or invite them to other spaces you’re in, etc. The options are endless. You’ll have to do a bit of testing to see what works best for your audience.

Moreover, I recommend you do your best to get them to your email list. You don’t own your social media accounts, but you do own your website and email lists, so the more people you send there, the more you can grow an audience and customer-base that will stay with you no matter what happens to Instagram tomorrow.

Analytics

Your analytics will tell you what type of content is popular with your audience. Pay attention to this. What types of posts are people liking, commenting on, visiting the links to, saving? Analyzing these trends and planning content around these popular posts will help your brand grow exponentially.

Engage

Most importantly, engage. I cannot stress this enough. If you want people to engage with your content, you have to go engage with theirs. Don’t just leave emojis or “cute skirt!”! Take the time to actually read their copy and leave a meaningful comment. Show that you care!

Hashtags

Go through relevant hashtags and engage with accounts that use them! Hashtags are a great way for people to find your posts and for you to find new people to follow that may be in your target market.

Also, for hashtags, it’s all about testing. Some accounts use all 30 hashtags, others use 10-12, and larger accounts may only use 2 to 4, if any at all. Find what works best for your through experimentation and analytics. There’s a lot of trial and error involved here, so don’t worry if one strategy doesn’t work! That just means it’s time to move on to the next.

Stop Listening to People About Algorithm Myths

Lastly, things like posts being “hidden” or shadow-banning, aren’t a real thing. Sure, the algorithm works differently than it used to because the amount of content being posted every second to the app. Furthermore, we follow hundreds, sometimes, thousands of people, it wouldn’t make sense for the algorithm to show content in chronological order. Instead it shows you posts you typically engage with and what it believes you want to see from what you typically engage with.

Bonus – Instagram isn’t an end all, be all. It’s only one small part of running a successful business. Above all, ask yourself, “If Instagram and Facebook shutdown tomorrow, would I still have a business?”. Give yourself grace and know that everything takes time and consistency. Keep at it and believe in your purpose, the right audience will too! Are we connected on Instagram? Or if you’re looking for more guidance to use Instagram, shoot us a message here.

When Instagram Stories first rolled out in August 2016, many IG users were trying to figure out the best way to use them. As we saw more brands intentionally using Instagram the last few years, we quickly learned that IG stories are a great way to connect with your audience.

Stories are something that should be posted everyday for your brand, which is overwhelming, especially when you want to be creative and do different things to keep your audience glued and coming back for more.

Stories are where your warm and hot audience lives! It’s a great place to not only showcase your brand, but also build trust, position yourself as an expert, and increase sales.

If you can, mix face to cam stories and trainings with graphics you have already created. Our best advice is to do this in advance by batching your content. That way, you’ll be prepared and don’t have to scurry around everyday to get content up for your brand!

We have put together a handful of story ideas to keep you organized and ahead of the game!

Give a BTS Look

Show behind the scenes of your work space, a project you’re working on, how you create your product or service, or how you plan your day! People are nosey and want to see and get to know the person or people behind the brand. This humanizes your brand and also connects with your audience on a different level.

Do a Mini Training

This can apply to both product and service based businesses. If you have a service based business, share a mini training on how to do something. Make it quick and applicable. While you may be worried that if you share mini trainings or how to’s, your audience won’t hire them because they’ll just do it themselves. This may be true in the short-term, but mini-trainings position you as an expert and most of the time, people want to know that you know what you’re doing. If you have a product based business, share how to use your product or how it will solve people’s problems.

Share Reviews/Success Stories

What better way to show off your expertise than to share your results or success stories from your clients/customers?! Share results or ways your products or services have helped people. Remember, businesses solve peoples problems, so share case studies with your audience! Your audience wants to know you have proven success in your methods or the quality of your products.

Ways to Work With You or Purchase Your Products

People don’t know what they can’t have. Share ways your audience can work with you or how they can purchase your products. If you aren’t driving sales and making money, you don’t really have a business. Driving sales through stories is a great way to increase revenue. Remember, it’s usually a warm or hot audience watching your stories!

Conduct Market Research

Yes, that’s right. You can conduct market research on stories. By asking your audience what they want to see for content, what they want to learn, or even what type of product or service they would like to see from you next. Your stories is a great place to gather information and serve your audience the best way you can!

Quotes/Wallpapers/Mood-boards

Anyone else a sucker for quotes or cute wallpaper? Create on brand quotes or wallpapers to share with your audience. Or even put together a monthly brand aesthetic wallpaper and encourage your audience to do the same and share it to their own stories!

Fun Quizzes

Whether you’re doing a this-or-that, fill in the blanks, or adding poll stickers to your stories, adding fun quizzes to stories is a great way to engage your audience. There’s a lot going on online and in the world, sometimes all people need is something fun to interact with.

So, this is your reminder that Instagram isn’t about you, it’s about your audience and what they want. At the end of the day, your audience is who will be buying from you or referring you to people they know.

Looking for more tips? Head over to our Instagram or check out our other blogs!