Category: Media

A successful social media presence needs a profound social media strategy outlining how you aim to reach your goals.

Social media have changed the way we make business and communicate with each other. They are valuable marketing channels for traditional businesses as well as for entrepreneurs and startups. Hardly any business can afford to skip social media because this is the place where your customers are.  3.81 billion people use social media worldwide! That’s almost half of the entire world’s population. No marketing channel has ever made it possible to reach that many people.

However, social media can boost or bust your marketing success. And just as any business venture without a business strategy is most likely to fail, your social media presence is doomed to fail without a solid plan.

Don’t just jump on the bandwagon, just because your competitors do.  Think about your overall approach before you start venturing into the world of social media.  

Successful social media marketing does not start and end with joining a social network, setting up a profile, loading your feeds with tons of content. It takes more to attract the attention of your targets and to keep them happy. 

It requires a consistent stream of valuable content and updates, as well as a real conversation with your followers. Without a lively presence and vivid engagement, your social media feeds will soon dwindle into lifeless streams.  

Here are 3 steps to set up a solid plan for your social media venture and to turn your social media strategy into action.

Step 1. Outline your social media strategy

The first step before tapping into the social media world is to have a solid social media marketing strategy in place.

So, start with setting up your goals and targets and tactics: 

• Goals & KPIs: What is your goal in using social media? Do you want to strengthen your brand and reputation? Do you want to gain likes and followers or gain sales leads? And how do you measure your results? 
• Targets & Channels: What is the target audience you want to reach? Which social platforms are most likely frequented by your target audience? 
• Tactics & Content Formats: Which marketing tactics and instruments can you apply on social media? Which content formats can you make use of?
• Time & Resources: How much time per day/week can be allocated for your social media activities? Who will be responsible for the social media presence and social marketing campaigns? 
• Reporting & Analysis: How do you measure your performance? What can you learn from your analysis to optimize your strategy?  

To help you explore the colorful world of social media and to avoid common mistakes, we’ve prepared a complete guide on the perfect times for social media posts for you.

Social media can suck up a lot of valuable time. A social media strategy will help you to focus on your goals and stick to your plan. 

Focus on content marketing

Don’t look at your social media accounts as easy advertising channels for your business or simply as another new shopping window for your products and services. Broadcasting sales messages won’t get you anywhere on social media. Boasting your products and services won’t attract new followers but will drive away existing ones.  

Valuable content is the fundament of any successful marketing strategy today. Social media users expect real conversation and helpful answers to the questions they have. Create valuable content that helps you elicit the correct response. 

Connect content marketing with your social media strategy

It is important to implement your social media strategy into your overall content strategy to create valuable content based on content that already exists in the knowledge treasure trove of your business.  

For example: 

• Sales: Your salespeople know about any concerns, worries, and objections your customers have, which you can take up and tear down by creating content with convincing arguments. 
• Customer Service & Support: On your social media channels you are most likely to be confronted with current service and support issues from your clients and prospects. Your support people know exactly about any problem your customers might have and how to solve them. This information enables you to quickly act and react by sharing helpful FAQs, tutorials, and how-to-videos. 
• Product Management: Get first-hand information on the launch and pre-launch information. 
• Public Relations: Get and spread current news from your company and products (adapted for your social media audience). 
• Marketing & Advertising: Select messages that are worth sharing with your social media community (However, don’t become too “salesy” on social media). 
• Blog & Copy Writers & Newsletter Editors: Your marketing colleagues most probably already create valuable content that is worth sharing and recycling on social media. 

Apply the full power of content marketing on social media

With an integrated social media strategy, which includes and collaborates with relevant members and teams in your business, you can: 

• make sure to stay consistent with your overall communication strategy, 
• create and share content based on real challenges, concerns, and questions of real customers,   
• add curated content to your streams to bring more variation to your feeds and reduce work for creating original content,
• help existing content to get in front of a wider audience and drive traffic to your blog and website, 
• respond quickly to requests and issues your followers are posting, 
• save valuable time and resources by reusing and repurposing existing content. 

Define social media guidelines and rules

Before letting your social media team work on the front, everyone needs to understand what you are doing on social media, what is acceptable social media behavior and how to handle crises.  

Once you are tapping into the world of social media you will inevitably come across internet trolls and critics. Social media guidelines enable your team to handle communication crises when worst comes to worst.

You will also have to deal with annoyed clients who express their dissatisfaction publicly on social media. Social media guidelines will provide rules for the professional handling of tricky questions, angry comments, and negative reviews.

Social media guidelines help to avoid costly social media mistakes. A transparent social media policy with an understandable set of rules can prevent communication disasters later down the road.

Social media guidelines 

• Empower your social media team to unlock employee advocacy to accurately represent your organization online. 
• Give your employees something to rely on when it comes to sharing content and answering questions from followers publicly. 
• Keep a consistent customer experience through all channels and employees. 
• Protect your company from legal issues and risks like privacy law and unlawful behavior. 
• Enable your team to handle communication crises and to turn angry customers into raving fans.
• Help to establish a transparent and credible image of your organization without disclosing proprietary or confidential information. 
• Safeguard a reliable, trustworthy identity for your company, brands, and products. 

A clear and understandable set of rules is the key to keeping your corporate communication consistent. Social media guidelines will help you to protect your brand credibility and keep your reputation safe. 

Step 2: Get your social media marketing into action

By turning your strategy into a workflow process, you can make sure everyone knows when to do what.

Select and customize your content

Having a social media strategy at hand will make it easier to select the content and applying the tactics that will help your organization to accomplish your goals.

Your content marketing strategy will help your social media team to capitalize on relevant content for your audience. Sharing your content across multiple channels will increase your overall reach. Existing content will get in front of a wider audience.  

However, each social network is different and each community reacts differently to contents and formats. And, each social network and community has different peak times for engagement. Customizing and tailoring content formats and comments for each community will increase the chance of getting attention and improve your engagement rate. 

With the knowledge of the target groups and by analyzing social media platforms and communities, your social media team will much easier harvest the full potential of each piece of content.

Set up a social media promotion plan 

Whenever you publish or share a post on a social network, only a fraction of your followers will ever notice your post. And, the lifetime of a social media post is very limited and this lifespan is different from platform to platform. Updating and re-sharing your content will extend the shelf-life of your current content and harvest the power of your evergreen content. 

To have an impact, every piece of created content needs to be put in front of your target audience multiple times and via multiple channels. Expect to spend 20% of your allocated time for content marketing on content creation and 80% on content promotion.  

A social media cross-promotion plan will help you to implement a profound seeding plan to promote each piece of your valuable content across all suitable marketing channels in the best possible way. And a social media plan will help you to save time for your promotion that you can re-invest into your content creation process.  

A social media cross-promotion plan helps you to define: 

With a smart social media automation tool, you will get your daily tasks of scheduling, sharing, and promotion done much easier and faster. 

Fill your editorial and social media calendar

A calendar will give your team an overview of which content needs to be created and processed for which date and when to be shared on which social media channels. It will also show which content has been created, shared, and scheduled and where your plan leaves space for adding content or re-sharing posts. 

A social media editorial plan and calendar will help you to: 

• Make it easier to follow your seeding plan for each new piece of content and for re-sharing your evergreen content.
• Plan your content creation process well ahead. 
• Leave enough breathing time for reviewing your content to ensure content quality.
• Create and schedule posts and updates hours, days, weeks and even months in advance.
• Schedule posts at the best times for each social media platform and community.
• Spot gaps that can be filled with current content and breaking news.
• Ensure a consistent stream of quality content across all social media channels.

Engage with your followers 

Social media is where the real conversation takes place. Where else do you have the chance to listen to millions of voices of fans and prospects. And where else do you have the chance to speak to millions of customers and prospects, that tell you how they really feel about your company and brand.  

Interacting with your followers’ comments will nurture your most valuable asset for your business and marketing. 

Responding to your followers will strengthen the reputation of your brand and customer service while realizing real sales opportunities:  

• 48% of followers are prompted to make a purchase, just by being responsive (Source: SmartInsights) 
• Responding to a complaint on social media can increase customer advocacy by as much 25% (Source: Jay Baer). 
• Customers are even willing to pay more for brands which are responsive on social media (Source: Social Media Examiner) 
• On the other hand, 30% of customers who are shunned by brands on social media are more likely to switch to a competitor. (Source: Sprout Social) 

Engaging with your followers

• enables you to learn the real challenges and worries of your customers and prospects, 
• gives you the opportunity to respond with the right arguments and answers. 
• allows you to help and convince your followers with valuable content, 
• strengthens your reputation as a thought leader, conversation starter, and as an expert in your industry,  
• provides you with new sales opportunities and boosts your conversion, 
• gives your brand a human voice. 

Respond in time

Social media is a real-time conversation. So, make sure you have a process of responding in time. 

Engagement with your followers takes time. However, if you have a well thought out social media strategy, workflow, and a plan to create and schedule your content well in advance, this will ensure to leave enough time each day to commit to engaging with your followers.  

Your social media guidelines and workflow process will ensure your team knows: 

• Who is responsible for social media interactions 
• What the deadline for responses is (for instance, in less than 24 hours) 
• How to handle tricky questions and who to turn to for upcoming shitstorms and crises 

Step 3: Analyse your results

Looking at the data is a key task to know what is or isn’t working. Otherwise, your social media marketing will be a shot in the dark, whenever creating, publishing, or sharing a new piece of content. Your performance data shows which types of content your audience really wants. And you can harvest the full power of your best performing content. 

For example, if a piece of content is performing well, you can repurpose this content in other formats and you can follow up on the content tactic you applied. You will be sure that intensifying your promotion and seeding activities will be a good investment of your time and money. You can follow up on specific aspects your readers have commented on, on questions your readers have raised, or you can invite your readers to add user-generated content. This will increase your reach and extend the lifetime of your content – and well-performing content will strengthen your reputation. 

If something isn’t working as you expected, you can simply discard it and shift your focus on other things, instead of wasting your valuable time and resources on underperforming campaigns.  

Look at basic social media metrics

Your social media statistics show the basics metrics like comments, likes, and shares. Your website stats give you the number of page views, the time readers spend looking at your content and the websites and media and tell you where your visitors came from. These basic metrics can help your team to review and improve your campaigns continuously.  

Basically, the data you collect from your updates (or campaigns) will help to make better decisions on: 

• WHAT to publish: the types of content your audience loves to see and to engage with. 
• HOW to publish: the specific aspects of your content, such as media format, keywords, the way of addressing your audience, . . .     
• WHERE to publish: the platforms where you are most likely to meet your audience.  
• WHEN to publish: the days and times your audience is most likely to engage with your content. 
• HOW OFTEN to share: the number and frequency of repeats and re-shares are appropriate to get more attention without annoying your followers. 

Based on these data you can adjust your overall content strategy, your promotion and seeding tactics. Performance analysis makes the content creation and promotion process much easier and saves valuable time you can better invest in engagement. 

Conclusion 

Using the information above will help you to save valuable time, money, and resources on social media. A social media strategy will enable you to make better decisions and put you on the right path to improve your productivity. And, it will give your team deeper insights into how professional social media marketing should work out. With the right social media and content strategy, basic guidelines for your team, forward planning as well as a basic analysis and review process will help you to master social media marketing in less time and with better results. Smart social media tools and plugins will help you with your tasks in even less time and with fewer resources. This will allow you to harness the full power of social media to boost engagement, leads, and conversion. 

Melanie Tamblé is co-founder and co-CEO of Adenion GmbH. She is an experienced expert in content marketing and social media.
Adenion GmbH specializes in online services and tools for bloggers, businesses and agencies of any size to support their online marketing and content seeding tasks on the web.

Blog2Social as WordPress Plugin and WebApp enable fast and easy auto-posting, scheduling and cross-promotion of blog posts, articles, links, images, videos and documents across multiple social media sites.
Social media posts will be automatically turned into a customized format for each social platform and auto-scheduled for the best time. Social media post can be previewed and tailored with individual post formats, images or personal comments – all in one easy step.

Every social network has its “best times”. These are days and times when your audience is particularly active on social networking sites. The time of publishing can play a decisive role in achieving as many likes, shares, and comments as possible as well as a wide reach. The following infographics will show you the best times to post on social media.

The best times to post on social media based on new research data for 2020

To collect the data for the “Best Times for Social Media Posts” we analyzed the posts of 60,000 social media users from all over the world. We looked at the posts in terms of posting time and engagement rate. According to these data, our analysis team evaluated the average best times for the most popular social networks: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Reddit, VK, Telegram, and Google My Business. The Blog2Social team has put together an infographic based on the results. Use it as a guide for your social media management to scheduling your posts at the best times for the most engagement on each of the major social platforms. 

Check out the following infographic for more details and share it with your community. 

>> Infographic: The best times to post on social media

 

Why are the best times to post so important for your social media management?

Social media are powerful communication channels for your content. In social media, you can reach new target groups, score likes, and shares, and engage with your community. Links from social media posts to your website, blog, or online store offer a significant added value in that they generate valuable backlinks and drive traffic to your site.

However, social media are subject to rapid changes. The average lifetime of a tweet, for example, is only 20 minutes before it drowns in the never-ending flow of content on Twitter.

Whenever you share a post on social media, only a fraction of your followers will actually see your post. The outreach of your post is depending on the level of activity in your community at the time you publish your post.

If only 10 % of your followers are online, only 10 % will get the chance to see your post. In reality, it will be even less. Most of your valuable content is likely to go down in the constant flow of social media streams. If you post your content on different networks at different times when your followers are online, your chances are much better that people will actually see your post. The right timing will determine the success of your social media post.

These are the times when social media users are most active on social networks

The best times for maximum outreach and engagement of postings vary according to each social network. Posts on Twitter and LinkedIn are most likely to get the most attention during rush hours in the morning and afternoon, that is before and after office hours. Posts on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest will most likely get the best traction in the afternoon and evening hours.

Try to figure out when your target group is active and develop a timetable to post your content at the right times. Our infographics provide you with the perfect starting point for the right timing. Use the suggested days and times for orientation. Please note that weekdays differ from weekends.

What are the best times to post on social media?

What are the best times to post on Twitter?

In the morning from 8 am – 10 am, middays from 11 am – 1 pm and after work from 5 pm – 6 pm

What are the best times to post on Facebook?

In the afternoon from 1 pm – 4 pm and in the evening from 6 pm – 10 pm. Make sure to post on weekends as well.

What are the best times to post on LinkedIn?

During office hours in the morning from 8 am – 10 am and in the afternoon from 5 pm – 6 pm. Your postings will generate the most interactions from Tuesday to Thursday.

What are the best times to post on Pinterest?

Around midday from 12 pm – 2 pm. and in the evening from 7 pm – 10 pm. Your postings outside working hours and on weekends will generate the most interactions.

What are the best times to post on Instagram?

Around midday from 11 am – 1 pm and in the evening from 7 pm. – 9 pm. Your postings and stories in the evenings and on weekends will generate the most interactions.

What are the best times to post on Reddit?

In the morning from 6 am to 9 am. Your postings at the beginning of the week or on the weekend will generate the most interactions.

What are the best times to post on VK?

In the evening from 9pm – 1am.  Your postings during the late evening hours will generate the most interactions.

What are the best times to post on Telegram?

In the morning from 10 am – 12 pm and in the afternoon from 5 pm – 7 pm. Your postings will generate the most interactions in the morning and outside working hours.

What are the best times to post on Google My Business?

In the morning from 9 am – 11 am and in the evening from 7 pm – 9 pm. Your postings in the evening hours will generate the most interactions.

Use your own social media metrics to adapt the best times to your communities

The infographic: “The best times for social media posts” is the perfect starting point for your individual best times. You can easily create your schedule for a few weeks or months based on the “Social-Media Schedule”. 

If you use the “Best Times for Social Media Posts” infographic as a guideline, you have already taken the first step towards more visibility and engagement on your social media networks. To even increase your visibility and engagement, you can take the next step to compare these data with your own social media metrics.

This is how you can evaluate your social media metrics

Start by making a plan for at least 4 weeks before you start analyzing. Evaluate your metrics once after one month, after 3 months, and after 6 months.

Basic social media metrics are available to you for free by the networks. You can usually find them directly in the profile settings under “Insights and Analytics”.

In the example below, you can see the Instagram metrics and how they can help you post your content at the best times and on the best days. You can see when your community is most active on each day displayed as a bar chart. In addition, the analytics will help you get a better overview of the age range covered by your community and whether you tend to reach a female or male audience. The analytics also help you to get to know your target group better.

This is how you can post at the best times for social media posts with little effort

With so many special features that need to be taken into account, social media marketing quickly becomes a challenge and can blow up personnel resources. To ensure that posting at the best times is easier for you, you can use a social media automation tool such as Blog2Social. This tool reduces your workload for scheduling and publishing social media posts. You can activate the pre-configured Best Times Scheduler to automatically apply the general best times for your posts as shown in the infographic. Or, you can enter your individual best times to create your own automatic best times settings. You don’t have to think about the day and time to schedule each post – the tool will do that for you. 

Social media automation helps you to ensure that your social channels are automatically supplied with a regular flow of content at the best times for your target group. Not only does this save you time, but it also gives you full control over your posts on all your social networks via a posting calendar.

You will find more tips and assistance in scheduling social media posts in the various networks in the free Social Media Guide:

The following infographic shows you the best times for your post on the most popular networks at a glance.

Share this image on your website and on your social media!

Please feel free to share this infographic or embed this code on your site:

<img src="https://www.blog2social.com/en/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/best-social-media-times-full.png" alt="The Best Social Media Times - Your Social Media Schedule at a Glance">

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Wrap up

Social media success requires consistent social media scheduling at the right times to engage with your active community. Use these guidelines as a starting point for your own experiments and analytics. And please share your results and recommendations with us and with others. We’d be glad to know what works for you and what doesn’t.

Other blog posts you might find helpful:

Melanie Tamblé is co-founder and co-CEO of Adenion GmbH. She is an experienced expert in content marketing and social media.
Adenion GmbH specializes in online services and tools for bloggers, businesses and agencies of any size to support their online marketing and content seeding tasks on the web.

Blog2Social as WordPress Plugin and WebApp enable fast and easy auto-posting, scheduling and cross-promotion of blog posts, articles, links, images, videos and documents across multiple social media sites.
Social media posts will be automatically turned into a customized format for each social platform and auto-scheduled for the best time. Social media post can be previewed and tailored with individual post formats, images or personal comments – all in one easy step.

Authenticity on social media can be a game changer for any brand. A study shows that 91% of people “are willing to reward a brand for its authenticity via purchase, investment, endorsement or similar action”. 61% of these people will either purchase or show “increased” purchase interest from authentic brands.

In this article, we are going to explore some practical ways to be authentic and increase engagement on social media.

What does it mean to be authentic on social media?

Authenticity on social media might have various definitions and implications. For generation X and Baby Boomers authenticity is seen more as “personal relationships with brands”. For Millennials authenticity seems to be more related to “personal attention”, innovation and social consciousness.

Whatever the definition, there’s only one end goal for social media authenticity: making you trustworthy. At the end of the day, everything you do to be authentic on social media is so you can be worthy of people’s trust.

Here are some of the ways you could be authentic on social media and gain people’s trust:

1- Humanize your brand

People tend to trust people more than companies. This fact holds true on social media as well. Humanizing your brand is a way to make sure that people understand you’re more than a self-serving money-making machine which most other companies out there are.

Research shows that people tend to interact more with businesses that show these human traits: human intentions, efforts, and authenticity. It would be wise to try and see how you can incorporate these three elements in your social media strategy.

• Intention: to show human intentions, use your voice to contribute to the values people care about rather than seeing everything as ROI and business growth. Shake Shack is a restaurant that partners with Coachella and the charity No Kid Hungry to contribute to humane causes alongside its business profits.
• Effort: it’s a good idea to let your audience take a peek behind the scenes in your company. Share how the processes are handled inside your company. This could mean sharing fun content about people in your company and the roles they have in tackling customer needs, or sharing case studies of what you go through to solve customer problems. Also, take advantage of modern technology such as live chat (like Facebook Messenger) to connect with your audience in real-time.
• Authenticity: Use personal branding alongside your company branding to see the maximum effect. The owner of the company or anyone with a key role in it could be the face of the company and get your audience more engaged compared to your company’s social media account.

Pro tip

Candybar does a great job in humanizing their brand by giving people a sneak peek at how things are done in their company. Alicja Olko from ReferralCandy explains:

“It’s quite hard for ecommerce brands, SaaS products or digital solutions to maintain a dynamic social media presence and keep it interesting. Social media marketing is usually not the most important channel, but it’s vital for overall branding efforts. At ReferralCandy we are using social media to showcase the most crucial part of our business- our clients. We share their stories, their struggles and successes, hoping they will inspire others on their entrepreneurial journey.”

Alicja Olko, ReferralCandy

2- Encourage user-generated content

Survey shows that consumers are 2.4 times more likely to consider user-generated content (UGC) authentic compared to brand-generated content.

UGC success is mainly accounted for by its strong ties with word of mouth. According to a 2012 study by Nielsen group, 92% of people say they trust “earned media, such as word-of-mouth or recommendations from friends and family, above all other forms of advertising.”

One other pillar of user-generated content is customer loyalty. Loyal customers tend to produce content to recommend your products more often. So the success of your UGC campaigns is in great part dependent on how many loyal customers you have. According to Chatra, loyal customers are cheaper to acquire or retain, have higher life-time value, refer more customers, and spend more on your products or services.

When Dune London started showcasing user-generated content from their Instagram on their product detail pages and saw a significant lift in their sales as a result:

“in the two weeks after customer and blogger content from Instagram was brought onto product detail pages, sales in which shoppers interacted with UGC rose by 82%.”

Dune London

Pro tip

A good way to encourage UGC is hosting a contest and asking users to post a photo, a story or a video with a special hashtag on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. This is how Upwork did it on Instagram.

Another way to encourage user-generated content is asking your customers for honest reviews and posting them on social media. But asking for reviews without seeming too self-promotional might be a little difficult. Check out Omnisend’s guide on asking for reviews via email without sounding too salesy or promotional.

3- Have genuine desire to help

If you’ve started your business for the sake of profit, you’re missing how the dynamics of business success works. It’s true that money incentive plays an important role in having a business but the ultimate goal for a business is offering a solution to a problem a lot of people have. This is the concept referred to as “product-market fit” in business jargon: “being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market.” Now if your product is not an in-demand solution to a common problem, it won’t be a good fit for that market, and obviously you won’t be able to make any money with it.

The bottom-line is if you want to sell more and be profitable, you’ll need to know how to genuinely help your audience solve their problem. Ironically, the more you engage with your audience and genuinely try to offer solutions to their problems, the more you increase sales.

When Close.com found out that their competitor, RelatedIQ, was acquired by Salesforce and no longer supported some countries, they jumped in through a Twitter conversation and offered an honest solution to the problem: they offered a product that can support international customers. Luckily enough it was their own product.

Chanty, a team communication and collaboration software, prioritizes its customers’ concerns on social media. Mile Živković, company’s marketing manager, explains:

We engage with our customers and anyone interested in our product whenever we have a chance. I would say at least 2-3 times per day is our standard, especially nowadays when we have lots of traffic coming in from Appsumo and similar channels. . . People don’t trust brands that don’t reply on social media. It takes just a few minutes and it can do wonders for your visibility and trust because others will see you replying to someone. I’ve seen lots of conversions happening because we were there to reply in time. A lot of time, people are on the brink of a purchase and they just want to ask that one last question. Be there and you’ve done something amazing.

Mile Živković, Chanty

Pro tip

Avoid hard-selling your products all the time and produce content that helps and educates your audience. Beardbrand does this in its Facebook ads. Instead of simply promoting their products in their ads, they offer video tutorials on beard grooming.

Speaking on non-product oriented posts on social media, one could think of supporting social/cultural/environmental causes as well. Everlane is a “socially and environmentally conscious clothing brand”. This is one of their Facebook ads that declared the company’s concerns about the world’s plastic problem.

4- Avoid shady techniques

It’s easy to use dishonest marketing techniques on social media. This could be posting false content about yourself or your competitors, using click-baits to increase the CTR, or using deceptive ads.

The truth is: Just as honest marketing techniques could increase sales and grow your business, dishonest and shady practices on social media could backfire. This could go deeper than losing people’s trust.

Famous brands such as Uber, Activia, and Volkswagen all were fined millions of dollars because of the deceptive ads. In 2014, Red Bull paid $10 to every US consumer who had bought the drink since 2002 only because they had the slogan, “Red Bull gives you wings” which was a false statement.

Some of the most repulsive deceptive ads and clickbaits are happening in mobile advertising. Chatmost placed a dirt mark on its banner ad so that people would try to clean it and touch the ad.

Kaiwei Ni, a Chinese sneakers manufacturer, used the same tactic for getting people to tap its ads. This time they placed a strand of hair on the picture in order to trick people into touching the screen.

The results of these tactics were nothing other than people’s distrust. In a short time these companies went viral as the examples of the companies using deceptive advertising. Lots of subreddits are talking about them and they got mentioned in big publications such as Adweek for their shady methods.
A better way to make your posts interesting and get clicks is making them visually appealing. Data visualization is one way to do so. Always create nice-looking visuals when sharing data on social media. Check out how you can create beautiful data visualizations with Venngage.

An oft-neglected key in authenticity:

Authenticity brings trust and engagement. But building trust and engagement on social media is a task that demands consistent work and dedication. You can’t just hop on and off social media and expect to be a blast. What you need to do is engage with people on social media and post authentic content consistently. Now to avoid spending all your day preparing and posting content on social media, you can use a social media scheduling and automation tool such as Blog2Social. It helps you organize all your social media accounts in one dashboard and get holistic insights on your content and audience. Consistent engaging your audience on social media is surely a great way to be authentic on social media.

Mostafa Dastras is a writer at The Digital Project Manager, a leading digital project management resource hub and community run by the indie digital publishing team at Black & White Zebra. His work has appeared on some top publications such as HubSpot, WordStream, SmartInsights, LeadPages, Sendinblue and MarketingProfs. Visit his blog, LiveaBusinessLife or reach out via social to connect with him.

 Save time and schedule your posts on Feed or Stories in 3 simple steps. It’s quick and easy!

Before you start:

Instagram currently divides accounts into two categories: Professional -which in turn is divided into Business and Creator– and Personal.

Each offers different advantages, as they also have different functions. The best option for you will depend on how you use Instagram. You can learn more about how to turn your Personal Instagram account into a Professional one here. 

On Postcron, you will be able to schedule and post automatically to Business accounts, without notifications or reminders. However, you can only publish posts in your Feed.

On the other hand, on a Personal account you must finish your posts through a notification sent by the Postcron app. This method allows you to schedule posts for both Feed and Stories, while still taking advantage of all the Instagram features when you finish the post on their app!

In other words, at Postcron, we divide the types of Instagram social accounts according to the posting dynamics: Business accounts will have automatic posting enabled and accounts linked as Personal will work with notifications.

You can add any type of Instagram account to post with notifications, the same way as a Personal account works on Postcron. But you can only add as a Business account the ones that meet the requirements for this type of account. If you are interested in posting automatically on Instagram, read more in this related article!

Why should you schedule Instagram posts with notifications?

If you still aren’t sure about the benefits of using notifications to publish Instagram posts with Postcron, here are some tips that may interest you:

• Save time posting and get more time to plan: take care of the consistency and quality of your content and how they impact your social media strategy.
• Post daily and at the appropriate times: check your analytics and schedule your post for the time span your audience shows more interest.
• Use Postcron’s Hashtag finder to increase the reach of your posts.
• Optimize the aesthetics and quality of your posts with ArtStudio, the ideal tool for designing your posts for all your social networks.
• Integrate WhatsApp to your social media strategy with Postcron’s free link generator.

How to add Instagram accounts on Postcron to post with notifications?

It’s very easy! With only two steps you can start scheduling and managing your Instagram posts. Click on the Instagram icon under “Add Accounts” and then on “Personal.”

Name your account in a way that will be easy for you to identify to which account your posts belong to when you post them (you don’t have to log into Instagram or give us your username and password).

When you get the notification on your mobile device, it will show the account’s name as chosen on Postcron; so we recommend that the name you choose is your Instagram handle (or a name that helps you easily identify which Instagram account the post belongs to), so you can know if you need to switch accounts on the Instagram app before posting (if you only have one account, disregard this).

You can also add your Business account using this method, as this would enable you to post with notifications as well, and schedule Stories!

Here are some things you need to keep in mind before you start scheduling posts on Instagram with Postcron:

1. Download the Postcron mobile App (if you haven’t done it yet): from the App Store or Google Play.
2. Make sure that on the Postcron App you log into the same Postcron account you are logged on the website.

Also make sure to log into the Instagram accounts you’ll be posting to on the Instagram App.

This is how you can switch between your logged in Instagram accounts on the Instagram app.

STEP 1: Create a Feed post or story for Instagram. From either the web version or the app.

1. On Postcron’s publisher, add the photo or video you want to post to Instagram
2. Type the caption for your post.
3. Click on Schedule and select the date and time you want your post to be posted.

STEP 2: Check and approve your posts from your mobile device

1.You will receive a push notification on your mobile device at the exact time your post was scheduled.

2. Before moving on, make sure to log into the Instagram account your post belongs to on the Instagram app. You will be able to preview to which social account your post belongs to on the notification (if you only have one Instagram account, skip this step).

3. Open the notification and check your post, then click on “Continue on Instagram”.

STEP 3: Finish your posts on Instagram

1. You will be redirected to Instagram and you will be able to choose to post to either the Feed or Stories.

1. Edit the post the way you want on the Instagram app.
2. The caption for the post will be in your clipboard, to add it just paste it on the text box.

When you are ready, click “Next” and then “Share”!

That is all! Easy, right? Now you can schedule and publish your Instagram posts, while also improving your content strategy. We hope our tools can help you grow your audience and to become a master of the number one social media platform! 

Frequently asked questions:

A. I’m not receiving the notifications

Check some frequent notification issues to make sure your Instagram posts arrive on time! If you created the posts from Postcron’s web version, make sure you are logged into the same Postcron account on the app! Go to the Notification Settings on your mobile phone and make sure you enable Postcron notifications. We recommend that you check more information on how to manage notifications on your mobile device:

B. How many Instagram accounts can I link to my device?

Instagram limits the number of accounts per device to 5. Within that limit you can quickly switch between them without having to login again. For more information, visit Instagram’s support page.

C. How are the push notifications?

You will see them as notifications on the mobile device with the Postcron app installed and that’s logged into your Postcron account. On them you will see which Instagram account your post belongs to. We recommend checking if you are logged into the correct account before opening the notification.

D. How many posts can I post per day?

With the notifications dynamic (Personal Instagram accounts) you can post up to 140 posts (Feed or Story) to each Instagram account per day. With direct posting (Business Instagram accounts) you can post up to 25 posts (Feed only) per day. 

Are you ready to start scheduling your Instagram posts? Start today with Postcron!

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Yes, that’s right! You can now schedule your Instagram content and Postcron will do the hard work for you: no notifications or reminders!

Now, first things first: 

Before you start scheduling your posts, make sure the profile you’re looking into posting to is an Instagram Business account as opposed to a Personal profile, as auto-posting only works for this type of account. If your account is a Personal profile, you can easily convert it into a Business account, which not only will allow you to post directly, but will also give you access to a lot of extra perks that we mention below.

You can also keep it Personal and use notifications to push your Instagram posts through. Or you can even have both options in hand, as scheduling Instagram Stories is only available through notifications. It’s completely up to you and you should definitely tailor Postcron options to fit your needs! 

Another thing you should take into account is that in order to direct-post to Instagram, you’ll need to link a Facebook business page to your Business Instagram account. We’ll walk you through converting your profile and linking it to a Facebook page below. 

Why should I have a Business Account? 

According to Instagram, having a business profile will help your customers easily connect to your business as it allows you to include additional information directly to your profile. You’ll be able to add a phone number, an email address and your business’s physical address. It’s mandatory to include at least 1 contact option. Once you add your contact information, a Contact button will be displayed near the top of your profile. When potential customers click that button, they’ll see options like Call, Email and Get Directions, depending on the contact information you provided.

Additionally, with a Business profile, you get access to Insights on the Instagram App. These insights will help you learn more about your followers and how they engage with your business. You’ll also have access to a Professional Dashboard, where you can track your performance, access and discover pro tools, and explore educational information curated by Instagram.

Converting from Personal to Business

• On the Instagram App, go to your profile and tap the Menu located in the upper right corner.
• Then, tap on Settings, on the bottom of the screen.
• Now, tap Account, click on Switch to Professional Account, and follow the steps.
• Make sure you choose Business instead of Creator to enable direct-posting.

Connecting your Facebook Page to Instagram

• To connect a Facebook Business Page to your Instagram account go to your profile on the Instagram App and select Edit Profile.
• Then, under Public Business Information or Profile Information, select Page.
• Now, choose either Connect Existing Page, or Create Facebook Page, if you’d like to create a new one, and follow the instructions.

This can also be done directly from Facebook. In that case, you should:

• Open your Facebook Page, select Settings from the left menu, and then select Instagram. 
• To add an Instagram account to your Page, select Connect Account.
• Enter your Instagram account’s Username and Password, and select Log in. If you do not have a business account, you will be prompted to convert your personal account.

If the page you’d like to connect doesn’t appear in the drop-down from your profile, refer to Instagram Help Center to troubleshoot it. 

Connecting a Facebook Page to your Instagram profile will make it easier to use all of the features available for businesses across the Facebook family of apps. Keep in mind that at this time, only one Facebook Page can be connected to your business account.

Now that you’re all set up, you just need to connect your Instagram account to Postcron, and you should be good to go! 

How to connect my Instagram account to Postcron for direct-posting:

On Postcron’s dashboard click on the Instagram icon under Add Accounts and select Business. If you haven’t granted Postcron the required permissions to post on your behalf, you’ll be prompted by Facebook to accept them. Once that’s done, you’ll see the Instagram accounts connected to your Facebook profile through your Pages. Select the ones you want to add to Postcron, and click on Add. That’s it.

Scheduling posts to Instagram with Postcron: 

Now that you’re all set up, it’s time to start scheduling. First select the accounts you want to post to on the account selector:

Then, attach either an image or a video to your post by clicking on the corresponding button. Instagram is a media-centric platform, so adding media is mandatory. To add a copy to your post type or paste directly into Postcron’s text box. You might also want to include emojis to your post’s copy by clicking on the emoji button. 

Keep in mind that Instagram allows you to include up to 2200 characters and 30 hashtags to your post, and you’ll find counters on the bottom right corner of the publisher to help you keep track of that. 

Once your post is looking good, you have three scheduling options: Post Now, Schedule and Predefined Times to set the date and time you want your post to be published and leave it to Postcron. 

How to create the best images to share to Instagram?

When designing images to share to Instagram, and other platforms, you might face two major difficulties:

• Knowing the ideal sizes for each social network.
• Making eye-catching, attractive images.

Both of them are essential and will definitely help your posts have a real impact on your audience! To achieve that without resorting to complicated tools that demand some graphic design expertise, you can try lifesaving photo editing tools like Arstudio. They will allow you to make interesting and good-looking designs in a matter of minutes! And the best thing? ArtStudio is completely free!

Maximize your income on social media, with a minimum effort! Get started with Postcron today, and schedule all of your Instagram posts. We’ll do the rest for you!

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Social media has grown so much over the years that today it is an essential place for advertising your products or services. However, entering this virtual reality world might get you feeling dizzy and even lost. There are so many different social platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest, Snapchat, TikTok… That you might ask yourself: Which ones should I start off with? How many times a day should I post? What kind of posts should I make? 

Many businesses already have a social media strategy running but they notice after a while that it doesn’t present them with the results they expected (that if they even measure them!). This might be the outcome of not setting a clear goal before starting your campaign. We’ve listed some goals you might have below, so you can begin by giving this a proper thought:

• Increase community engagement. Asking questions, using hashtags and posting user-generated-content it’s a great way to make your followers feel interested in participating in your campaign. 

• Generate leads and sales. Making sure to alert your customers about special discounts, new releases and updates. 

• Increase brand awareness. Your social media accounts must reflect your brand’s personality in a way that it’s easy to identify and that distinguishes your brand from others. 

• Expand your audience. It’s all about growing numbers in this one. More followers, more likes, more shares! 

• Boost web traffic. Adding your links to posts is the best way to make leads find their way into your website!

Whichever goal you set, once you’ve decided what you want, it will be a lot easier to define your content strategy! 

Aside from posting regularly, it’s very important to make an impact and to enhance the social media image of your company. And while it’s great to maintain an active presence online, it is ideal that it doesn’t take up much of your time. The best way to make sure you don’t end up sitting in front of the computer staring at a blank post is to plan ahead and organize your content.

This is why we’ve decided to share these four tips with you, so you can improve your campaign and make sure you have all the tools you need!

1. Social listening

We’re not just talking about hearing what your friends have to say about that new jacket you just bought. Social Listening means actually monitoring conversations people have on social media. It is searching for hashtags, keywords and mentions that might be relevant to your business. This is important because you want to be aware of what is going on in your surroundings to ensure your content is relevant by always posting useful and interesting information, and to follow your competitors strategies in order to gain wisdom from them. 

There are a lot of social listening tools out there. Pick the one of your choice and begin your research! 

In short, make sure to pay special attention to:

• Mentions of your product and/or brand

Or really any information going around on social media that you feel it’s relevant to your marketing strategy, and that could improve your content. It can be anything from a single hashtag on Twitter, from a discussion about your product on a random online forum.

2. Analyze what you’ve found… and use it!

Here it’s important to notice if what you found carries sentiment or feedback about your product. Are people saying good things about your service or complaining about it? Write it down, and even discuss it with your team. Listening to your customer’s suggestions might be a great place to start improving your brand, or making some adjustments.

It’s also important to notice which trends are going around. This might be just the inspiration you needed to launch a new product or service and to identify the new audience you are trying to reach. 

You also need to be on the lookout for new customers, so make sure to track phrases potential buyers would use. Are people asking or suggesting something specific? Again, report it back to your team. Make sure you are not missing any leads! 

Last, but not least, keep an eye open for any updates relating to the industry. Perhaps there is a new competitor in town, or perhaps your customers have come up with a new way to call your product.  Anything that should be on your next social listening is important to keep track of. 

3.  Update your Content Calendar and schedule your posts!

Here’s when you get to work with what you found. Set up your content for the week or month. If you have already done this step, this is when you can include new hashtags to your posts, proofread your text and make sure your visuals are ready to go. 

We know many starter businesses don’t have much time to work on their content, so remember you can also work with user-generated-content, memes and beautiful images created easily. On the last item, we recommend using our image editing tool, ArtStudio, where you’ll find several layouts and models to work with!

Once you get everything ready, you can easily set up a spreadsheet or .csv file with your posts and schedule them all at once using Postcron. You can literally schedule a month’s worth of content in a few minutes! And from then on, Postcron does it for you!

Depending on the size or niche of each enterprise, the daily number of posts and even the social network may vary. But until you reach your ideal combination, you might want to start with:

• Posting 3 or more times a day on Twitter
• Posting 2x a day on Facebook
• Posting 1x a day on LinkedIn
• Posting 1 or 2 times a day on your Instagram feed and up to 4 times on your Stories.
• Posting 5 or more times a day on Pinterest

4. Turn your customers into friends. Engage with your audience! 

Take some time to reply to your comments. Respond to questions, like and share posts of your interest. The more you engage with your customers, the more they will be interested in engaging with you. 

It’s really important to give your customers a positive experience, and a great way to do this is to communicate with your audience and to make them feel like a real person is engaging with them (even if you are simply using response templates to speed up your work). 

We strongly encourage you to do this, especially shortly after you’ve posted something, to keep your audience online and spark curiosity from other followers. 

In conclusion…

As you can see, it’s much easier to navigate through the social media sea when you know your headings. Hopefully, we’ve enlightened your journey with this article.

Once you set up your goal, organize your tasks and get everything ready, you’ll be able to put your social media game on the spot, where it always should have been.

We wish you the best of luck!

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A recent Local Consumer Review Survey revealed that 91 percent of 18 to 34-year-old consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. In fact, research shows that the purchase likelihood for a product with five reviews is 270 percent greater than a product having no reviews.

The importance of reviews to a brand’s online reputation cannot be understated. Reviews, positive or negative, build customer trust, convert visitors into leads, and boost a brand’s local search ranking. Further, customer reviews offer marketers valuable insight into what customers think about their brand. Simply put, your current and future customers care about online reviews. 

Emails have always been an effective marketing tool for businesses. An effective email campaign can be used to power a firm’s online review strategy. This is because a majority of customers prefer businesses communicating with them through emails. Refer to this chart. 

Source: https://theblog.adobe.com/consumers-are-still-email-obsessed-but-theyre-finding-more-balance/

What’s more? A Clutch survey of 1,000 online shoppers revealed that nearly one-quarter of online product reviews are prompted by email marketing. Emails make the review collection process outbound. So, rather than waiting for a review, you get to initiate the conversation and proactively ask your customers to leave you a review. 

Find out how you can take full advantage of email marketing to accumulate customer reviews and build a five-star online reputation. 

• Personalization Is the Key

Statistics reveal, on any given day, there are nearly 124.5 billion emails sent and received each day. So, there are chances your email may not even be opened. Not everyone you send a review request email to will respond. However, personalizing your emails can help you stand out in the customer’s inbox, improving your chances of getting a review. 

In a survey conducted by OneSpot, a leading individualization platform for content, marketers shared that they find dynamic and real-time personalization in emails to be the most effective review generation tactic. In fact, organizations personalizing their emails generated 17 percent more revenue from their campaign compared to marketers who did not.

Personalizing emails is one of the smartest tactics you can use to drive impulses and encourage customers review your product or service. Just mentioning their name or company name isn’t enough. Show how much you care about your customer’s choices by mentioning the specific product or service they opted for. Thank them for using your product and ask them how their experience was. 

Check out how HopScotch, an ecommerce app for kids’ apparel, keeps its email short, simple, and to the point while making the customer feel special.

Tools like HubSpot Personalization Tokens make it easy for marketers to add tokens that are personalized to the email recipients. Using this tool, you can add the recipient’s name and contact details, company, deal, or ticket properties to send personalized emails and request your customers for a review.

• Segment Your Customers Based on Their Email Activity

The needs and expectations of a first-time customer are different from those of a repeat one. Repeat customers are more loyal to your brand and may patiently share their views about the product, regardless of how many questions you ask. However, the same review format may not be work for a new user.   

Hence, it is important to segment your email list based on your customer’s location, age, purchase history, and the date they subscribed. Email list segmentation will help you introduce a targeted campaign to gain insightful customer reviews. Befriend email marketing services like GetResponse, Constant Contact, and MailChimp to segment your email list and send appropriate review request emails to customers based on their actions at your store or on your website. 

• Make it Easy (and Tempting!) for Customers to Leave a Review

One of the best ways to improve customer response to your review requests is to make the process easy for them. You can simply add a review link that customers can click on to leave product feedback. Alternatively, you can generate a Google review link that will take the customer to your Google My Business page, allowing them to post a review and know more about your business.

Check out how Sugar Cosmetics offers a link that customers can effortlessly click on to leave a review. 

Embedding the start or emoji rating in your follow-up emails is another way of persuading customers to leave a review for your business. 

Adidas sends emails with a link to their landing page which is highly interactive and visual, reducing click fatigue and making the reviewing process quick and easy.

An attractive incentive like a voucher code or a discount can give customers the push required to leave a review. This tactic also drives customers back to your website once a reviewing process is completed. Check out how Tower, UK’s leading kitchen appliances firm, uses this tactic to its advantage.

Customers love seeing how their reviews have been put to use. For instance, a customer testimonial page on your website, featuring real reviews from your product users will not only boost your reputation and customer engagement but also encourage new customers to leave a review. Bonus: You also get UGC (user-generated content) for your brand.

Carefully determine when you want to send a post-purchase email asking for a customer review. The timing of this email hugely depends on the nature of your product. 

For instance, ecommerce stores selling apparel or shoes can send a review request email within a week after the product is delivered. This is because, by this time, the customer would have surely used the product at least once. 

On the other hand, products like an anti-aging cream or health supplements warrant a longer time between the purchase and review request email. The same goes for electronic goods or books too. In these cases, the customer takes a few weeks to fully experience the product and write a detailed review. 

Understand how your customers are likely to use the product and fully engage with your brand and carefully decide the window when they are most likely to respond to a product review request. Use email automation to send relevant and timely emails to your customers. 

• Don’t Forget to Test the Effectiveness of Your Emails

You don’t know what type of messaging will work for which customer. Hence, it is important to test different emails with your target audience and assess whether or not they are successful in getting a review. A/B testing your review request emails can not only increase the chances of customers opening your email and leaving a review but also boost your website traffic and sales. 

Test your email’s subject line, length, word order, content,  visuals, and CTA to determine the top-performing email templates. Online tools like Campaign Monitor and Sendinblue can offer you useful insights about your email campaign, enabling you to write engaging review request emails. 

For instance, did you know that the subject line length can significantly improve your email’s CTR? A survey by Return Path shares that subject lines 61 – 70 characters long have the highest open rates. A/B testing your emails will point out to such factors and help you create winning emails that generate quality reviews. 

Summing Up

Customer reviews, whether positive or negative, offer insights into how your customers are perceiving your brand. However, the sheer thought of encouraging your customers to leave a review can be pretty overwhelming. 

Your email list is an excellent resource that can help you get valuable customer reviews for your business. When done right, effective email marketing can make the review collection process easy and less stressful. Consider the aforementioned email marketing tips to nail your online review strategy and strengthen your brand reputation.

About The Author:

Pratik Dholakiya is the Founder of The 20 Media, a content marketing agency specializing in content & data-driven SEO. Pratik has been featured on sites like Forbes, Moz, SEW, The Huffington Post, KISSmetrics, Entrepreneur and Fast Company to name a few.

Find him on Twitter @DholakiyaPratik for a quick chat. 
Linkedin – Pratik Dholakiya // Facebook – @pratik.dholakiya

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Instagram is one of the companies that’s at the forefront of encouraging the use of visual content as a marketing tool. With close to a billion active users monthly, Instagram is a powerful tool for promoting your business and reaching new potential customers.

It is a cost-effective platform that requires as little as 6 hours a week to increase recognition towards your business, sales and more traffic with almost no financial burden on you. Getting real Instagram followers should be a substantial part of every business’s marketing strategy. It is a key element for improving the success of any business.

Instagram has high engagement rates 

Instagram has the highest engagement rates of any social media network. In other words, your audience doesn’t just see your ads, they interact with them and are more likely to remember them than on any other social media channel.

The average engagement rate per account on Instagram is 4%. This will differ depending on the industry your company belongs to. For instance, the engagement rates of a shopping and retail account will be vastly different from that of a public figure.

Even then, Instagram still has higher engagement rates than all other social media networks. According to research by Forrester, ad recall from Instagram ads is about 2.8x higher than ad recall from other social media networks (ad recall is a more effective way of measuring the ad performance than the number of impressions).

Consumers are also 58 times more likely to engage with branded content on Instagram as compared to Facebook and 120 times as compared to Twitter.

New visitors to Instagram pages spend more time on individual pages than any other social media network, including Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest. This means that Instagram is more likely to attract new users and drive them to your website as referral traffic.

Increased brand awareness

Social media networks are by far the most effective method of increasing your brand’s visibility when it comes to digital marketing. Instagram gives you access to millions of users at a time.

Instagram makes it easy to discover new photos, make new friends and discover new businesses through hashtags, curated suggestions and Instagram’s handy Discover tab. To get started, create a social media profile for your business and start interacting with other people. Get employees, social media partners and sponsors on board by liking and sharing the content. Each post shared is a post opening the world to a whole new network of individuals who can then grow into potential customers.

By investing their time on Instagram, 91% of marketers claim having had positive results in terms of growing their following and increasing the exposure of their brand. Simply having a page for your social media network is more than enough to start bringing in new faces and having familiar faces come back.

Access to comprehensive targeting tools

When Instagram was first launched, it was quickly bought out by Facebook, barely a month after it was released to the public. For better or for worse, Instagram’s whole business model and fate are deeply intertwined in everything that Facebook does.

Aside from Google, Facebook is known to have the most complex and comprehensive ad targeting algorithms in the world. As soon as Instagram joined Facebook, it was slowly granted access to the same technology and started matching Facebook in terms of scale and capability.

Facebook gives you access to advertising your content by age, location, interests and general behavior. Instagram now gives you access to the same tools.

Michelle Thomson, a social media content specialist and an essay services writer says that when it comes to marketing, the more precisely you can define your target audience, the more likely your marketing campaign is going to be successful.

Instagram also has access to Facebook’s powerful retargeting capabilities. Cold targeting is reaching out to people that have not seen or heard of your brand before. They are cold leads and have to be warmed up to your ideas and products before becoming buyers, or better, recurring buyers.

Retargeting, on the other hand, means targeting people that have already heard of your brand to draw them towards making purchases. The most common way of achieving this is by targeting people that visit your website, subscribe to your newsletters, or respond to your CTA but haven’t made a purchase yet.

This is a useful feature to have because it allows marketers a lot of flexibility when coming up with an Instagram marketing strategy. You can create retargeting audiences based on features such as your Instagram account’s post engagement, custom email lists and other pieces of data you own. Integrate a strategy that has Instagram ads infused in it to achieve ideal results.

Instagram ads get great results

Having one of the highest engagement rates on the internet, paying for advertisement space on Instagram pays off quickly. Combining Instagram’s capable ad-targeting capabilities and the high user engagement rates, paying for Instagram ads increases the chances that your posts will gain attention, new followers and new customers.

Instagram gives you access to a variety of tools that can be used to drive businesses towards your website, your apps, or to text you on WhatsApp and Messenger if you prefer. Each campaign should have you outline what your goals are, defining the same using Facebook Ad Manager. There are nine categories to choose from.

One of the most effective tools within the Ad Manager is awareness-based objectives. As the name suggests, objectives that fall under the ‘awareness’ umbrella should be selected by teams that want users to see and remember their brand.

If the aim is for your ad to be seen by as many people as possible, regardless of the outcome, select ‘Reach’ as your objective. ‘Brand Awareness’ can be used to achieve the same thing, but also helps to make sure users remember your brand. It’s normally more effective than using Reach on its own.

Besides, paying for Reach means you’re paying for each impression. You can’t be sure whether such a user interacted with your post or will remember it in the first place.

Nearly half of Instagram users use it to make purchases

At the end of the day, what you want from Instagram is more sales. It may be relieving to find out that of all the social media platforms, none responds as well to marketing as do Instagram users.

According to a report, almost 1/3 of the most-viewed stories on Instagram belong to brands and businesses. Additionally, more than a third of Instagram users have used it to purchase a product in the past. In other words, an Instagram user is 70% more likely to buy a product online as compared to non-Instagram users.

What makes Instagram users even more desirable is the fact that 75% of them take action after it’s presented to them. For example, after coming across your profile, 3/4 of users will either visit your website or follow the CTA button on your profile.

If the ‘Shop Now’ button is backed up by content on your profile and the right engagement metrics throughout, 3 out of every four people that visit your profile will take advantage of it.

Build a connected audience

Instagram comes with all the paid features that Facebook offers but has a few unique capabilities of its own as well. The most crucial of these is in-built organic reach functionality.

Facebook’s algorithms are built such that building your fanbase or your follower count has to be paid for. In direct contrast, Instagram gives businesses a lot of breathing room, allowing you to achieve direct results without having to pay for them directly using advertising dollars.

Organic reach is desirable because it allows for a natural relationship to form between brands and followers. Ads can be considered the opposite of this because most people see it as an intrusion on their privacy. This personal touch to the relationship between brands and followers is important for maintaining loyalty and ensuring they return.

Following your brand on Instagram is a commitment. When a consumer follows you, they are showing a direct interest in what you have to offer. As a marketer, it’s your role to realize this and work to grow the relationship from that point forward.

Conclusion

Instagram is constantly in the news for having the highest engagement rates of any other social media network. However, depending on the kind of account you run and the niche you’re involved in, getting new followers may be a lot more difficult than others.

However, Instagram is the most advantageous platform for a business to be part of because it has access to advanced ad-targeting tools, and is the best place to generate awareness for your brand. The results you get will depend on how much time and effort you dedicate to splitting, testing, iterating and trying out new tactics to maximize your engagement metrics.

Author:

Isabell Gaylord is a Chicago based professional content writer, resume writer, journalist and content marketing specialist. She specializes in subjects of business management, career development, startups and economics and finance. In her free time, she works on her business blog, writes poetry and goes biking in the city.

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The following is a guest post by Andre Oentoro. Andre is the founder of Breadnbeyond, an award-winning explainer video company. He helps businesses increase conversion rates, close more sales, and get positive ROI from explainer videos (in that order). You can follow Andre on Twitter: @breadnbeyond or connect to him on LinkedIn.

Instagram DM (Direct Message) is arguably one of the most underrated marketing channels that you are probably not using correctly right now.

Content like social media videos, infographics, and slides are a great way to expand your business’ organic reach. However, engaging your customers directly through their inbox offers excellent potential for conversion and growth.

As many as eight out of ten people use Instagram to look up products and services, it’s only fitting that you meet your potential customers halfway by sliding to their DMs.

But before we talk deeper about leveraging Instagram Direct Messages for your business and marketing purposes, let’s refresh our memories on how DMs work.

Understanding Instagram Direct Messaging (DM)

Instagram Direct Messages allow users to chat directly with other users, which works similarly with Facebook Messengers. Facebook has released a unified inbox feature that enables you to manage Facebook messages and Instagram DMs from one place.

Using Instagram DMs is an excellent and personal way to increase your brand’s awareness, build relationships with potential customers, promote your products, and eventually close sales – all within one platform.

Whether you’re a solo entrepreneur or a small business, DMs can be a powerful tool to grow your business without building an online store or a website. Even if you run the marketing side of a massive corporation, you can still use DMs to personify your brand and add a personal touch to your marketing campaigns.

What’s more intriguing is that unlike content marketing, which is often subject to Instagram algorithm changes, DMs are not affected by external factors except you (sender) and your customers (receiver).

On top of that, the average engagement rate for a business account’s posts is a teeny 0.96% – which is not an ideal way to grow. Instagram DMs is a straightforward form of marketing that, if used correctly, can generate both conversion and customer loyalty at the same time.

Why You Should Use Instagram Direct Messages for Your Business

Instagram has a massive number of monthly active users, but that’s not the most appealing aspect of the Facebook-owned platform. It’s how addicted people are to using Instagram in their daily lives.

Ask yourself this: How many times have you sent a message to your friend on Instagram, even though you have their number?

The answer is probably between sometimes and every single time – but not never. Its users’ attachment is another factor that makes Instagram a great marketing platform.

On that note, there are also marketing-oriented reasons why you should use Instagram Direct Messages for your business.

1. Helps you connect with your customers

While the DMs are great features to connect with customers, what makes them so irresistible is their connection to the platform. You can share posts, stories, reels, GIFs, videos, and voice notes with your customers or leads, strengthening the relationship.

The various ways to communicate with others provide a whole new playing field that you could leverage to paint your business with the right image.

Even if you’re still using business-level formality to chat with your followers, the fact remains that you’re both talking on social media instead of the company’s email or call center.

2. Provides personal and engaged customer support

Not only does Instagram DM work well to boost your conversion, but it also offers up-close and personal space for customer support.

According to a survey by Sprout Social, 31% of consumers prefer to leave feedback about a product on a business social media.

Instagram has also launched a quick reply feature which allows business accounts to create several frequently used messages that you can send with just one tap. You can create new quick reply messages or set up an existing message as a quick reply option.

While the quick reply feature is an effective way to increase your account’s response time, it’s not entirely personal. After the initial reply, you can continue talking to your customers using various reactions, GIFs, images, or even videos to liven up the chat room.

3. Boosts your stories marketing engagement

If you’re using stories to share your content, Instagram DMs will provide you with double the benefit. Every reply to your stories goes straight into your DMs.

That means by setting up stories that your followers can reply to or react to, and you will open up a new way to start a conversation with them.

4. Exposes new and high-quality leads

Instagram DMs also allow you to reach out to other users who aren’t following your account. You can use various search filters such as locations, hashtags, and stickers to create a set of criteria to find high-quality leads.

By sifting through the results, you can score high-quality potential leads, which you can approach through Instagram DMs. If you can find them through the search feature, you can send them a DM.

It would be best if you kept in mind that DMs you send to private Instagram accounts will end up in the “message request” tab, which can be reported and marked as spam. In other words, the account reaches out with caution.

5. Your customers are spending their time on Instagram

In 2020, the average user spent at least 30 minutes a day on Instagram. This number increases from 26 minutes per day in 2019 – which tells us about the increasing retention time among Instagram users.

The more they spend their time on Instagram, the more likely they are to look up your business or product within the app. Whether they want to inquire about your service, buy a product, or complain about their previous purchase, a fast response time and digital presence are never a bad image for a business.

How to Use Instagram Direct Messages to Grow Your Business

Now that you’re convinced about using Instagram Direct Messages to grow your business let’s talk about how you can start doing it.

1. Start by setting up an objective

Any good marketing campaign always starts with a clearly defined objective. There are four types of marketing campaign objectives that you can execute through Instagram DMs.

• Promote new products: This campaign objective is pretty straightforward. You need to craft an enticing message about your new products and send it out to your followers. While this is certainly an achievable objective, the ideal recipient of promotion DMs should be your existing followers whom you have engaged in the past.
• Grow digital presence: Growing digital presence through Instagram DMs is simple. You can start by sharing your latest posts and updates about your business with your followers. But you should be mindful of the frequency since sending too many DMs might result in annoying your followers instead.
• Build brand authority: Sharing insightful content through your Instagram posts and stories is a great way to build authority. You can increase the impact by reaching out to those who comment or react to your posts and stories with a follow-up question through their DMs. Personal reach out will boost your authority and build a solid relationship that could increase your conversion altogether.
• Generate leads: Generating potential leads through Instagram DMs is a tricky task, but it’s achievable. You can start by compiling a list of followers who have interacted with your account, whether it’s through comments or DMs. Once you have a list of potential leads, you can start sending out product-related messages to see if they’re at all interested in a free trial.
• Reach new customers: You can also reach new customers by looking up posts related to your product or within the industry you’re in. If the accounts that uploaded those posts match your customer persona, you can start reaching out and invite them to follow you – don’t cold-DM them to buy your product.
• Build brand awareness: Instagram DMs also make a great tool to establish solid brand awareness. You can achieve this goal by regularly sending out updates or relevant posts related to your products or the industry.

Once you’ve set an objective for your campaign, you can start narrowing down which type of content to share and what kind of messages to send.

2. Set up Frequently Asked Questions with Instagram Direct Messages

Before you start sending out Instagram DMs and setting quick replies, you can create a set of FAQs to answer the inquiries about your business’ basic information like open hours, contact info, address, websites, etc.

You can follow these steps to set up FAQs for your Instagram DM:

• Head over to the Settings from your Instagram app, then tap Business/Creator, depending on your account type.
• Tap Frequently Asked Questions. If you haven’t set it up, it should have Off status next to it.
• Start by adding basic questions which will appear as suggestions at the beginning of the conversation. This is how FAQs will look like to your followers.

• If they tap the message, the response that you’ve set will be sent automatically.

3. Create a set of quick replies

Quick response time is one of the crucial factors that your existing or potential customers consider to measure the quality of your business.

As many as 47% of consumers prefer a brand that can answer customer service inquiries quickly over the ones that provide non-responsive customer services.

You can set a new quick reply message for Instagram DMs by following these steps:

• Open the Settings menu from your Instagram app.
• Head over to the Business option, and tap Quick Replies.
• Tap the plus sign on the top-right corner to create a quick-reply new message.
• Write your message, and assign a shortcut to use it. In the example below, we used the shortcut ‘services’ to answer inquiries about our services.

If you’ve written an extensive reply to an inquiry before, you can also set a previously sent message in your DMs as a quick reply message.

• Head over to the conversation, which has the message you’d like to use as a quick reply.
• Tap and hold the message, and you should see the option to save it as a Quick Reply.

• Instagram will automatically add that message to the quick reply column, and you’ll be able to edit and assign a shortcut to it.

Now the question is, how do you use one of the messages?

The Quick Reply feature is only available in Instagram DMs, and you can’t use it to reply to comments on your posts or reels.

You can use a quick reply message to respond to a DM. Start by opening a conversation that you’d like to reply to. If the question is related to one of your quick reply messages, you can type the shortcut that you’ve previously assigned to it.

Tap the triple-dot icon next to the Send button, and it will automatically change to the quick reply message.

4. Start a conversation from post and stories engagement

While you can certainly reach out to potential customers and offer them your products with zero context, that does not create the best image for your business. Instead, you can start a conversation by creating interactive stories.

Using polls and questions in your Instagram stories is a great way to start an interaction with your followers. Everyone who participated in the polls will show up under the story’s insight, which you can follow up by sending them DMs related to the content.

It’s an engaging and organic way to start a meaningful conversation instead of a business-oriented interaction. These polls can also serve as a market research tool and a beginning of customer-oriented content.

5. Provide value first

Once the conversation begins, it’s only natural to provide some valuable insights about the topic that sparked the interaction. Keep the conversation going naturally for as long as you can.

Organic conversation between a business and a potential customer is challenging to start through other channels. But since the initial engagement on Instagram starts from relevant stories, the topic’s already been set, and your job is to find a spot where your product can be the ‘hero’ to solve their problem.

6. Make your pitch with a special discount

Once the DMs chain has reached a point where you can throw your product into the conversation, don’t be shy about it.

Since the conversation starts organically, your product plug will not be as tacky as blatant and no-context promotion. The worst that they can say is no, right?

To make your offer even more enticing, throw in a special discount for people who signed up or purchased your product through Instagram DMs.

7. Rinse and repeat

Conversion is a numbers game, and you should be prepared to get 100 rejections for each closed sale made through your DMs.

There’s a high chance that most people won’t even reply to your DMs, but don’t let that discourage you.

If you’re trying to approach the CEO of your local shopping mall, they might not even read your DMs. But a tenant in that mall might be interested in your offer.

If you keep doing that for months or even years, you’ll pile up a bunch of experience that attracts bigger clients into taking a look at your portfolio. Before you know it, you’ll have multiple large-scale businesses as your recurring clients.

Ready to Start Using Instagram Direct Messages for Your Business?

While Instagram DMs are not as automated in lead generation, it offers a more direct and hands-on approach to growing your business.

Plus, not many people label Instagram DMs as a ‘marketing platform’ – so it can become a special place where you can impress your customers in a place where they didn’t expect.

Closing your first DM sale might be difficult, but it will teach you a lot in the process. Start making lists of what method works and what doesn’t – and double down on the effective ones.

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