Social Media

The Method behind the Madness: How to Get the Most Out of Instagram for Your Business

January 29, 2014 by admin

Take a picture. Use a filter to enhance that picture. Add a message with a few catchy hash tags and then post it. This might be the common routine for people that use Instagram for personal purposes. However, if you are interested in using it for your professional growth and expansion, then you need to dig a little deeper to find out how to get the most out of this popular social media platform.

Focus More on Pictures than Videos

Even though it is great that Instagram now allows people to post 15-second video clips, studies have confirmed that posting product photos instead is still the best option of the two. Fifty-five million photos are uploaded to Instagram every day, equaling out to over 96 percent of the media that is published and posted through this platform. Even though the 15-second videos skyrocketed in popularity when they first became available, they have only been able to fill that 4 percent void, according to Buffer App.

Master the Art of Timing

You may have noticed that during certain times of the day, you are able to generate more likes and comments on your Instagram posts than during other times. Even though this might seem to be some sort of awkward coincidence, there have been case studies and reports that have confirmed the exact opposite is true. Based on a report compiled by TrackMaven.com, the most effective time to post an Instagram picture is between the hours of 9 PM and 8 AM (EST).

During that time period, the average number of interactions for every 1,000 followers is close to 34. The weekend comes in second place with 25 and standard workday hours comes in third place with 23. Therefore, if you are interested in generating the most buzz and interactions with your content, then it would be in your best interest to post your content on the weekend, late night or early morning hours. Otherwise, you stand the risk of having your posts get swept into oblivion right along with all of the other overlooked and neglected posts.

Find the Proper Balance in Content

With a personal Instagram account, you can post just about whatever you want. You can post random pictures of your meals for the day, your favorite scenes from movies, self-portraits, etc. However, when using Instagram as an effective marketing tool for your business, you need to make sure that you find a proper balance between images that are focused on business and other images that are focused more on pleasure.

If you post nothing but pleasure photos, your customers will not take you seriously and will eventually become disengaged. On the other hand, if you post nothing but business photos (i.e. advertisements, sales reminders, etc.) your customers will think that you are taking this platform too seriously and will become disengaged as well. Therefore, you need to find the proper balance between both sides of this particular spectrum. Choose some pictures that fun and captivating and others that are informative and appealing from a professional perspective, according to Social Media Examiner.

Build Your Following from Scratch

If you want to grow the number of followers that are associated with your brand’s Instagram profile, the best approach to take would be to connect all of your social media accounts directly to your Instagram profile, including Facebook and Twitter. Always remember to add at least one relevant and popular hashtag to every single image that you post. Do not overdo it; having three to four lines filled with nothing but hashtags can become visually irritating to your customers. Do not forget to follow other people and like their photos as well, because this will inspire them to reciprocate the favor right back to you for your profile as well.

The Method behind the Madness: How to Get the Most Out of Instagram for Your Business contributed by Hadley Glenn

This article was written by Glenn Hadley, a professional content writer for Nimble Media. Glenn has always enjoyed using social media platforms for communicating with his friends, but strongly feels that they will continue to evolve as the most powerful marketing and advertising tools

Survey: Marketers Spending More Online, Prefer Low-Cost Channels

February 13, 2013 by Ron McDaniel

Marketers are increasingly shifting spend from traditional to online leads channels, in large part due to the data available for tracking campaign performance. As legendary thought leader Peter Drucker once said, “What’s measured improves,” and that’s exactly what marketing professionals are after.

There’s just one problem. Many don’t consider the big return-on-investment picture, at least that’s what research firm Software Advice discovered in a recent B2B Demand Generation Benchmark Study. The report showed marketers preferring digital channels that produce the lowest cost leads. This included things like social media, email marketing to a house list and SEO.

While this strategy makes sense, it doesn’t consider the quality or quantity of leads. Even if leads from a third-party generator might be more expensive, the percentage of contacts that convert might be far higher. Or, even though social media might rake in a ton of new contacts, you might end up with a database full of people that will never buy from you.

This strategy also doesn’t consider successes other than direct monetary return, such propelling the contact down the sales funnel. A different channel, such as “live demos with reps,” might have a higher conversion rate; but the lead would never have advanced to that point had they not previously watched a video or downloaded a white paper.

Here’s a list of charts showing the full survey results.

Popularity by Leads Channel
The graph below illustrates the percentage of marketers that use each channel for demand generation. It is ranked from most to least popular.

Lead Cost by Channel
We asked marketers whether they would describe each channel as having a high, medium or low cost-per-lead. It is ranked from lowest to highest cost per lead.

Lead Quality and Quantity by Channel
The charts below show whether marketers described each channel as producing a high, medium or low quantity and quality of leads. They are ranked from highest to lowest quality, and highest to lowest quantity.

Lead Quality and Quantity by Content or Offer
The charts below show whether marketers described each content or offer as producing a high, medium or low quantity and quality of leads. They are ranked from highest to lowest quality, and highest to lowest quantity.

Popularity by Content or Offer
The graph below illustrates the percentage of marketers that use each content or offer for demand generation. It is ranked from most to least popular.

Spending Priorities by Channel
The graph below illustrates which channels marketers will spend more on next year. It is ranked from the highest to lowest percentage of marketers planning to spend more on that channel this year.

About the sample by industry, number of employees, marketing budget, seniority
We collected 155 responses from Sept. 26 to Nov. 12, 2012. Below is a breakdown of the sample by industry, business size, marketing budget and seniority.

Does Content Marketing Generate Leads?

February 11, 2013 by Ron McDaniel

What is Content Marketing?

Content Marketing is when the company creates quality content to educate perspective buyers and attract a bigger audience of perspective buyers through the publication of educational and interesting materials through a variety of channels.

How does Content Marketing affect Search Engine Optimization?

Content Marketing has a huge impact on search engine optimization. In fact, half of what search engine optimization is, is Content Marketing. Search engine optimization combines creating great content at targets particular keyword phrases and also develops and links back to that content with the intention of ranking higher in search engines. Content Marketing has similar goals with less emphasis on particular phrases and more emphasis on visitor engagement. However they are very similar strategies and helping each other when done well.

How does Content Marketing affect Social Media Marketing?

Content Marketing also has a big impact on Social Media Marketing. It is much easier to promote yourself on social media when you have quality content a link to. Instead of struggling to find something to say in your social media accounts you can simply link to your new content each and every week and people will be glad to click through and visit your site if the topic interests them.

10 Ways Content Marketing improves Lead Generation

Now let’s go into detail on 10 ways Content Marketing impacts your lead generation efforts.

1. Boost in Site Ranking

Your site is going to rank better in search engines if you have a consistent Content Marketing effort. The simple fact is that more content and more links from outside to your content is going to boost the ranking over time of your main website. This is true even if the Content Marketing is being done up side of the core site and only linking back. Search engines look at sites that are getting fresh links and fresh content and rank them higher. Search engine optimization is one of the lowest cost and highest quality lead generation strategies companies are pursuing today.

2. More Long Tail Traffic

Long tail keywords are phrases that may not have high search engine traffic volume but are very targeted and have low competition so you do not have a lot of other sites competing with you in order to rank well for the keyword phrase. The more content you create the more long tail phrases you will rank for. It is simple math.

3. More Natural Linking

Buying bulk links to your website can actually damage your search engine ranking. However, getting natural links back to your site through other sites that have high quality content as well as through social media will boost your ranking and improve your chances for generating leads from search engines. The more content you create that is of high quality and interesting to readers the more chances that people will link back to you without you needing to ask for it. This will boost your traffic and ranking considerably over time.

4. More Site Visitor Engagement

More content and better content improves visitor engagement. One thing that can affect your search if engine ranking is your bounce rate and the time people spend on your site. The more quality content you have on your site the longer people will stay and read more things. This helps you develop a better prospect and also is seen by search engines as an indicator that your site is of high value and should be rank better.

5. More Social Media Visibility

Creating more content gives you the opportunity to promote yourself more frequently and better in social media. It also gives other people more opportunity’s to promote you. This will happen when people repost your posts in social media and also when they interact with buttons on your site that link to their social media accounts. Each person that promotes you in their social media account is exposing your message to hundreds or thousands of new people. This has very high value even if all those people are not online at that time.

6. More Market Credibility

The more quality content you post the more you’re going to be seen as a market leader. As an expert in the field who publishes content regularly you will have more opportunities to promote yourself in different places and more people will want to do business with you. This can even lead to speaking opportunities and partnerships that you otherwise would not have gotten. Content Marketing is not just about driving more web traffic, but also about using quality content to interact with people in many different ways.

7. More Calls to Action

Your call to action is your request to a visitor to contact you, buy your product, or sign up for something. Each new page on your website, blog, or social media account get your call to action in front of additional people. If you do a good job of asking people to do things at the end of an article or in an ad in the side of an article you are naturally going to generate more leads. It is inevitable.

8. More Referrals

The more quality content you create the more people are going to refer others to you as well. Your contents helps you keep in touch with people better and when you do this you stay top of mind and get more referrals. It may not seem like referrals are a natural result of Content Marketing, but just think about how many more times people will see you and your message if you are putting out regular content on blogs, newsletters, social media accounts and more. Sometimes people in your audience are going to push your information to a friend that they know needs the information.

9. More Channels of Lead Generation

Content Marketing makes it much easier to produce content in many different channels. If you are only focused on writing content in one place and not promoting it in other places you’re not going to get as good of results. You should consider all the different channels where people go to find information about your topic. Video, podcasts, articles, news, social media posts, newsletters and the even reports are always people get information. The more different channels you use the broader your appeal to more people.

10. More Overall Traffic

When a Content Marketing strategy is executed properly it produces a lot of useful and engaging information and push is that information out through a variety of channels all resulting in increased traffic to your main website and lead generation for your products and services. Overall website traffic numbers will continue to go up the longer you keep consistently doing this strategy. This typically results in significant lead generation increases within months of execution when you are consistent about the effort.

We created Buzzoodle to help busy business owners do a better job of Content Marketing without needing to write often themselves.

While many agencies can set up a site for you, they often do not want to take on the role of being your online magazine editor and helping you promote your business consistently every week for many different channels.

Our goal is to build a targeted online magazine that is appealing to your target market and where you are the exclusive sponsor so that all leads go to you. What makes this Marketing strategy different is that we do everything for you and you simply contribute when you have time. To find out more check out our pricing page and fill out the form below it if you have any questions or think it’s a good strategy for you. I look forward to talking to you about having Buzzoodle help you with your publishing and Content Marketing strategies.