Leveraging Instagram to Promote Your Product or Brand

Instagram is one of the most popular social networking sites on the internet; it is also a great place to have a virtual market stall! If you want to promote your products, services, and events, then you should invest some time and effort into promoting your brand. Instagram has been growing at a staggering rate in the past few years, taking over Facebook as the most popular social media site in the world. Stories in tools for Instagram are also trending. It’s also one of the most popular social media platforms with millions of users every day. Even if you have very little time to market your business, you can still create a compelling Instagram account to start your social media marketing journey.
For some time, Instagram was referred to as an ‘Instagram for the photo-only site. However, in 2017 it was reported that the feature has grown beyond the photo-sharing medium. Instagram now allows businesses to run live videos, while a few weeks ago, the feature was updated to allow the creation of video stickers. Instagram is an essential part of your social media marketing strategy. Posts creation is an essential part of using Instagram that without which Instagram is just an app and nothing else. Let’s review a few tips for creating better posts on Instagram:

Use the latest Instagram Analytics
If you are serious about social media marketing, you need to know which demographics are searching for your business regularly. This can be done by using the latest Instagram analytics tools. It gives you a better insight into your business and products and also gives you a better idea of creating relevant posts.
Tracking which geographical locations customers are searching for your business and how often they visit your website will give you a better insight into your customer base. While building a social media audience is critical for effective social media marketing, understanding your customer is also important.

Social Media Metrics
Not all social media networks use analytics, yet there is a lot of information available on each platform. While social media marketing is all about building an audience and converting your fans to fans, there is more to it than simply commenting on and replying to other users’ posts. For example, your competitors are creating amazing posts every single day and you need to follow them to stay up-to-date with the latest trends.
A great social media marketing tip is to add a poll to your social media posts. When people take part in a poll, they usually share the post and potentially make a few new followers. If you are feeling adventurous, try asking questions about your business and invite your followers to share their opinion.
This tip may be considered old-fashioned, but it can be effective!

Post at Predictable Times
Instagram operates a 24-hour news cycle, in that customers will often look at your Instagram account throughout the day. Therefore, you need to get your post out at a predictable time each day to get the most exposure from it.
Not all the content on your account will be worthy of a post, however, it’s all about producing content that resonates with your followers and that you can promote to your followers at any time.

Use Effective Visual Platforms
For the most effective Instagram marketing strategies don’t go overboard. Instagram is all about showing followers how you market your business. It’s about showing customers that you are a company that values the visual side of social media and that your brand will give your customers that extra bit of visual wow factor.
Visual images are the best way to connect with followers and show them what your company is all about. Don’t use Instagram to show followers how your company will solve their problems, this is the stuff that competitors can do better. Show them that your brand is beautiful, with a range of inspirational photos that they can admire and be inspired by.

Customized for Your Social Media Audience
Regularly, people can have a look at their Facebook and Twitter feeds and see a variety of posts from a range of different people. On Instagram, however, there are only a small number of posts that are a perfect fit for each individual.
As such, you must create your Instagram account in a way that you can maximize the audience for your posts. An easy way to do this is to try posting several different photos and then select the ones that work best for your audience.

 

 

Getting The Most Out of Instagram
Instagram provides numerous incentives for your followers. Some of the most effective incentives are to promote a product or a series of products in exchange for a follow. Other incentives are to share a post with a specific number of followers, which will help to attract their attention. It’s important to try to inspire your followers to share with a specific number of followers.

The Secret to Market Research-How to Find Your Killer Niche!

thinkingThis is where it all starts! The idea, the thought of going into business of your own. What are you going to promote or sell? Well if you already have an idea, that’s good. But if not-that’s okay too. Because with market research or niche marketing, I’m going to show you the secret of finding a unique brand or niche-to promote online with enormous success. Here’s how it works:
What Is A Niche?
A niche is define as a situation in which a business’s products or services can succeed by being sold to a particular kind or group of people. In other words it zero’s in to a specific group, making them special or exclusive. Weight Loss is a broad category for example, tremendous competition to compete with others. But if you can narrow it down to a special group or situation maybe like weight loss for post-pregnant women or overweight children under 12, then that becomes a niche under that broad category. And that idea will be your keyword and part of your website URL.
A killer niche is something really unique, something nobody has thought of-but you!
Market Research
Market research, or niche marketing, is simply a process of collection and analysis of data to find what people are looking for. What do everyday people want? How to create a new market, something different.
Where Do I Start?
Start by asking yourself: What is something you know about well? Something that you are passionate about? This is where you are going to start searching for keywords.
Yes the one key is keywords. The other is the competition. You don’t want to have to compete with a million other websites of your niche, and you certainly don’t want to have to compete with the “big dogs” either! So what are you going to do? Here are 4 methods that will aid you in an effective market research, to where you can find that one unique niche.
Google Ad-words
It use to be that one way of doing market research was just starting an Google Ad-word campaign with pay-per-click(PPC), and you would be able to determine what keywords is getting you good traffic, providing of course that your campaign was a successful one. With Google Ad-word you’re having to pay every time someone clicks on your ad. But the Internet is always changing and things isn’t what it use to be years ago. Now there’s a way to perform market research that is free!
Keyword Search
Once you have an idea of what your potential niche is going to be, then just do a simple keyword search. One tool you can use is Google Keyword Tool, which is a free tool. Just sign-in enter a keyword and it will show you a list of other keywords you can use depending on two things: The number of search, and the competition. You want the search volume to be high, but the competition to be very low. Once you locate a keyword with more than 1,000 searches per month or more, and at the same time the competition is at its lowest-then you may have discovered what I call a “potential website keyword.” In other words, a potential niche that you center an entire website around! But more on that later.
Amazon Bestsellers
Another market research strategy is the use of Amazon.com. Amazon has emerge to one of the biggest places online where you can find what people are looking for when it comes to information. So just go to the books section in Amazon, select a category, then select at the top the word “Bestseller.” Now you have an idea of what people are interested in. Take notice of something that you can use as a niche to promote as a product, service, or information to sell online. Now your potential niche becomes a keyword to do a keyword search as described above.
Trends.
What are the current trends? What are people talking or asking questions about? Trends can be an effective market researching strategy as well, if you can get an idea on what’s the next hot thing that people are going to want to get their hands on. Just remember, the Xbox, the iPod, and the Mac-book, as an example, were all just a trend at one time. Once you get an idea, again, do your keyword search. The best way to keep up with trends are websites like http://blogpulse.com/trend or http://google.com/trends. At http://boardtracker.com you can follow what people are talking about and  http://technorati.com keeps up with the latest technology in electronics.

Building A Site
Before you launch your site though, it’s important that you make your keyword part of your domain name. In other words you are going to build your whole brand around that one “killer” keyword, due to good research marketing. You can use your site to either sell a product, services, or information? Whatever you decide, I would suggest that you create a blog with your site and off-the-bat, write 3-5 articles on your niche-using your main keyword and start driving traffic to your new site.

Even though market research takes time and effort, it is all well-spent, because sometimes you may be surprise as to what you will decide on a niche. So get busy and go find your “killer” niche now, and be sure to leave a comment below please!

The Best Days and Times to Post to Your Favorite Social Media [Infographic]

best times to postWhen is the best day and time to post to the most popular social networking sites in order to reach the most people that happens to be online? Whether you are posting just for fun or involve in a marketing campaign, knowing the best days or time may prove to be helpful.
Timing means everything in social media marketing, or even if you’ll wanting to share some information you think others would enjoy. The fact that you are working in different social platforms, you have to be wary about the peak time. One social media site’s climax is different from the other due to demographic reasons and the description of a particular platform. Here are a few examples.

Daytime Posting

Social activity tends to happen more often during the daytime— clicks and sharing. The two entities are different and peak times are different, but happens at the same span. During this period, you can interact with Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. According to addthis.com, sharing happens in the morning while clicking reign in the afternoon hours. In addition to this, the site tipped that company should post in the afternoon to gain more clicks.

• Facebook Regardless of the day you want to interact on Facebook, daytime is best as work tends to slow down. However, if you really want to receive more engagement, then post your content on Thursdays and Fridays.Best Times Infographic-3
• Google+ Posting in Google+ is also best done in the morning. People usually visit G+ between 9 AM and 10 AM according to Hubspot. However, if you want more engagement to happen, update on Wednesdays.
• LinkedIn This social platform is inclined to professionals and businesses. If you want to receive more views, then post before the start of work according to Entrepreneur.com. Otherwise, you will not be able to make that impression. Nonetheless, the best days in posting are Tuesdays and Thursdays.best times to post
• Twitter For more views on your Twitter, then tweet around 1 to 3 PM from Mondays to Thursdays. If your tweet comes with a photo, the more it will incur clicks. A good tool to use for Twitter for best times to post is Tweriod.com.

Evening Posting

Pinterest is yet another social media site where you can share your work and other rich media. The users are more active during night time as they tend to wind down from their work.best times to post

Conclusion

People do not go online at the same time. This only makes sense that your social media marketing strategy should be geared towards the time where people interact the most. If you do, then engagement and brand impression can be maximized.

6 Social Media Tools to Simplify Your Social Media Marketing

Social Marketing Tools

How to simplify your social media marketing

 

6 Social Media Tools

 

We all know that having the right tools is essential to simplify or make any job easier-whether large, small, or just time consuming-would you not agree? The same is true with social media marketing! Are you using the right social media tools to simplify your marketing campaign?
It’s a demanding routine for a marketer or a business owner-not only that there is a lot of concerns to address such as the quality content to share with the prospect audience and right tool to use in sharing the content, but there is also the struggle against time. Nonetheless, the social media tools come into existence to shoulder the burden of these marketer just like you.

Presently, social media plays an important role for the effective online presence of businesses or websites. However, it cannot be denied that these social platforms are broad and powerful. On top of this, these networks are constantly expanding and becoming more complicated than usual. Thus, it consumes much time for a marketer or social media admin to manage the tasks on hand.
Although the social networks are upgrading with complexity, marketers can still get a hold of the advancement. In fact, there have been a number of social media tools that are created to cut down the time allotment and ease in the management of social activities. Here are just six!

1. Like Alyzer. Make sure you include in your marketing strategy a Facebook Fan page, then use Like Alyzer as a tool to provide assessment to your Facebook page. This tool will rate your page out of 100 for a free cost. Afterwards, recommendations are given for the improvement of your page.

2. Scoop.it. One of the popularly used social media tools to boost social media marketing is the Scoop it. When your social networks are connected with this app, you can publish wherever you are as you “scoop.” This only means that you are also posting on Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and tweeting on Twitter. On top of this, you can keep your audience inspired with a random of fresh interesting articles to use and post on your website, Facebook Fan page or both.

3. Post Planner. The Post Planner is one social media tool that you can install within your Facebook. It comes with a pack of features including automatic publishing of content per schedule, database of thousands update ideas, simple analytic s of people who have liked your post, add posts to your queue, and many more. With these features, Post Planner comes with a premium. However, there is a trial version available for you to determine its efficiency and usability.

4. Razor Social.  Get free juices on the social media innovations from Razor Social. It will provide you information relevant to social media tools available online to boost up your presence and reputation. Hence, cutting down the burden of managing social activity through knowledge application. Moreover, Razor Social is a community that continuously motivates its people to share significant and quality content.

5. Mention me. This is one excellent and efficient monitoring tool. The key to this application is the keyword at which will merit you to connect with other people or find potential businesses. Hence, the tool will alert you through your email or any other social media as it encounters particular keywords from various sites around the web. Nevertheless, Mention me comes in a free trial and paid versions.

6. Feedly. If you want to be updated on the news, Feedly serves the purpose. It will simply provide you with a myriad of posts at which you can subscribe to. Furthermore, Feedly can be integrated with Buffer that will allow you to share content with ease. This is because Buffer will be responsible for disseminating the posts. Furthermore, the articles that are featured in Feedly can be viewed with convenience using your very own computer or smart phone.

With the available social media tools online, workload is relatively lessened. Thus, it allows you and your website maintain credibility online. Furthermore, it maximizes your time for far more important tasks and duties.

I hope you can make use of these 6 social media tools to boost your social media marketing! Please leave a comment below.

Tips on Marketing Local Businesses With Social Media

Social Media for Business

 

social media for businessBusiness oftentimes is a local competition. Especially if it’s a brick and mortar storefront and you want to promote it locally online. To get into the game, you have to ride the craze in reaching out your prospect consumers. As a matter of fact, there are a lot of options to choose from— paid advertisement and social media.
In every marketing strategy, budget has always been the primary consideration. Paid advertising can be effective, but it can cost you an arm and a leg. Moreover, there is a loophole in this scheme. The impression that you will make on your prospect consumers will depend on how you formulate the plan and execute it. This goes the same with social media marketing, but on the contrary, it is not expensive as paid advertisement. Despite the difference in digits, it can also render you promising results.
Social Media in Action
No matter what your purpose is— brand awareness, online reputation management, website traffic, or communication with your audiences, social media always has a room to cater these needs. With your goal right before your eyes, your approach to social media will depend accordingly. Here are 6 tips to market local businesses with social media!
• Devise a social marketing plan. Given that you have analyzed your target audience and your competitors, it is about time to carefully think of a plan that will blow away your rivals. In this part, consider coming up with content ideas that will interest your audience such as tips on using your products and great deals.
• Go for quality instead of quantity. There is no use in posting many articles online if it is just fluffy. Always remember that people want to read something valuable and worth of their time. For example, if you are promoting food supplements, write articles that relate to your subject like its benefits to the user.
• Maintain an open communication. Technology paved way to what kind of communication the people have today. With this advancement, it is easier for businesses to get in touch with their audience. For instance, people can exchange or share thoughts on Facebook or Twitter. As this continuous, it creates a dynamic and lively environment for people to interact. Hence, it improves customer relationship.
• Social Media Platforms. Facebook and Twitter are just some of the popular social media platforms where people interact. Despite its orientation towards online interaction, you can also take advantage of advertising your products or company as its reach is multitude. Just make it a point that you will not solely use the platform for the sake of promotion, but also for interaction. Apart from these social media platforms, you can also use Foursquare for your business. According to Social Media Examiner, it is a location-based social network that has over 20 million users. In this platform, people use to check it for locations or shops that they have visited. As people checked where they have been, it can be shared with Facebook friends and Twitter followers. Eventually, your business is noticed.
• Offer promos and great deals. Customers love promos and great deals from a company. You can offer discounted products or services, buy one take one deal, and even a game of prizes. Doing these are a sure fire to delight your consumers.
• Dress your business professionally online. Reputation greatly matters for every business. It is one of the main ingredient for success. With this, keep your social business accounts in motion by sharing good content, promotions, and fabulous deals.
Mapping your business success with social media is indeed possible. You just have to cut out the appropriate moves to market your products and services locally. Hence, delve deeper on what every social media network can offer and gear it towards your goal.

10 Efficient Tips to Keep Your Personal Life and Still Be a Social Media Rockstar

I think we can all feel confident when saying “social media is here and here to stay.” What we probably are not so comfortable with is juggling our social media endeavors with our personal life. I’m sure social media doesn’t take away all of your personal life, but it can impose on it greatly if you aren’t careful. There are probably people who haven’t even begun to dabble in the social media
world for fear of not having time or it taking up too much time. Great point! However, at this point in the world, you really can’t afford not to be a part of social media. In either case, listed below are 10 tips to avoid losing out on life and how to manage your social media time.

1. Just Skim: When beginning a promotion, most of the first phase is conducting research and reading. Whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, blogs or websites, to cut down on time spent, just skim it. By doing this, you can pull what you feel is worth spending your time reading and not have to worry about the rest.

2. Use your RSS Feed: Be selective when subscribing to different RSS feeds, but definitely use it. Any information you want to catch up on will be listed there. These same rules apply to who you follow on Twitter and newsletters you subscribe to. Choose wisely and be sure whatever it is adding value.

3. Consider a Timer: If you’d really like to manage your online time, set an allotted amount of time dedicated for this. It may help to set a timer and when it goes off, you’ll know it’s time to move on to something else.

4. Automate whenever possible: Automating can be the key to your online happiness. When you have autoresponders or auto content generators in place they can save you scads of time. An easy and quick way to implement this might be your newsletter sign-ups. There are a variety of systems that will allow you to easily automate sign-ups. Even if you have a giveaway for signing up, the system can handle this too

5. Consolidate, Don’t Reiterate: If you are trying to keep up with everything, your Twitter, Facebook, Squidoo and a blog, there are ways to minimize updating them all. You can do so by doing it all at once. “How?” you ask. All of these programs can be linked together so when you update one, it will go out to all social media accounts. Many of these sites can be linked together and to a main site. This main site can be your blog, if you wish. Twitterfeed is a great place where you can update your Twitter, every time you update your blog. Your Twitter can be linked to Facebook and Squidoo.

6. Develop a Routine: Dedicate a specific time for social media on a regular basis and stick with it. It should be long enough to update your blog, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.

7. Stick to Essentials: The internet can be considered a great influence on “lost time.” One second you’re looking at a TV listing, and then something about how to make money online, and then possibly an ad for shoes we just have to have. Four hours later and you’ve found new interests in paranormal studies, cherry tomatoes and how to move to Alaska. Stick to what you were planning to do and then leave. Also, over time you will learn where to spend your time the best and it will get easier to stay on track.

8. Don’t be a Follower: Many people may give you their advice on which sites are the best for what. The thing to do is to decide which social media tool will benefit your needs the best. You don’t have to use them all, and if one isn’t working for you, go try a different one.

9. Plan: To make sure you’re spending this social media time wisely and to its full advantage, it may be good to make a simple plan. With your “dedicated social media time,” knowing to stick with the essentials and a routine put into place, developing a list of “to-dos” and goals around these should help you to stay focused. If you’re focused and determined, you’re bound not to waste any time.

10. Hire a Social Media Virtual Assistant: Ultimately, if you don’t feel you have time to even start a social media quest, or if you’ve tried and it’s just not for you but you still want to take advantage of all the awesomeness that it can bring, hiring a social media virtual assistant is another option and a fantastic idea. For example, https://regjackonline.com can help you quickly, effectively, and it’s affordable. Reggie at RTJ Online, can help create, manage and update all of your social media needs, which can be WAY more rewarding than doing it yourself if you feel like you’re in a crunch. So don’t miss that dinner date! Cruise on over to his website and see how many things he can do to help guide your social media presence, while keeping it updated and running efficiently.
By Dawn Pigoni of http://besocialworldwide.com

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