Instagram is letting select brands advertise via its 'Stories' feature
Importance: [rating=4] (For Social Media Managers)
Recommended Source: Instagram Blog
Instagram has just announced it is beginning the processes of letting advertisers make use of the large audience its newish 'Stories' feature has been able to generate since its launch back in the summer of 2016. Again taking the lead from Snapchat, it is introducing the ads in a mid-roll format- that is they will appear between stories the user has elected to see. In a way this is not dissimilar from TV advertising, where the user accepts the ads between content he or she wants to see. The format will however allow for the skipping of ads, so as to not degrade the user's experience.
Instagram reports that over 150 million people view stories content every day. Combine this with the fact Instagram users tend to be young, tech savy and have…
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December 27, 2016
Are you using hashtags correctly?
The discipline of marketing is filled with jargon, especially within digital marketing where constant technological change causes prevailing shifts in the landscape. Never have there been more three letter acronyms (TLA).
The elusive ‘hashtag’ symbol, which most people know from entering conference calls, still causes confusion amongst my clients and peers when used on social media platforms. Not so much what they are but when and how to use them. The approach laid out here is by no means an all-encompassing thesis study, merely a brief attempt to demystify the matter in my own subjective opinion.
Hashtags, although used in IT since the seventies in a different context, were popularised by Twitter in the late noughties as a way of clustering similar topics into easily retrievable categories, i.e. search #summer to find all conversations categorised as a ‘summer’ topic. This enables you to join conversations on topics that…
Example of how to harness Instagram to capture new audiences and convert that attention into sales
Instagram is one of the most effective ways to boost your e-commerce marketing. In a recent Yotpo survey of over 165,000 e-commerce businesses, 75% of them reported being active on Instagram. Customer research data is on their side. In fact, the research found that:
Traffic from Instagram is the most engaged: this means that visitors from Instagram stay on a site for an average of 192 seconds – that’s longer than visitors from every other channel, including Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter.
30% of Instagram users have bought something they first spotted on Instagram: meaning the potential for the browsing conversion to sales is high.
83% of Instagram users reported that they were influenced by friend’s posting about a brand on Instagram: meaning Instagram is a powerful megaphone for your brand’s messaging.
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Talkwalker shares their views on the trends to shape social media in 2017 and practical actions businesses should take to gain advantage from them
In 2016 we saw social media networks introduce many new features including Facebook’s live streaming, Reactions, Instagram Stories and major updates to Snapchat.
When the first social media platforms were launched they soon became more than just a place to chat with friends. Brands jumped on them for marketing purposes, journalists spread news stories, and politicians shared their manifestos and opinions as we saw recently with the Brexit in the UK and the US presidential elections.
Now we can see the big social platform offerings overlapping. Facebook Messenger is experimenting with Snapchat’s disappearing messages. Instagram Stories has also stepped on Snapchat’s toes.
So, what social media trends do we expect to see in 2017?
Trend #1 Increasing need to tie social media marketing to tangible results
The big social networks are giving…
These big trends will have a major impact on how we conduct social media marketing in the coming year
We are now in a social media dominated world, and marketers and businesses are taking full advantage of it. However, this means that trends and the way brands should best communicate with their customers are constantly changing. Brands need to ensure they keep up with the latest trends to ensure they can achieve their goals, whether that is to increase conversions or improve ROI.
The popularity of social media continues to rise, and 2016 was no exception. Facebook was the clear stand out social media platform and reached 1.79 billion monthly active users in the third quarter of 2016. This was followed by YouTube, which has 1.3 billion users. It is clear social media is here to stay, and businesses need to know what to do to capitalise on it and use the various…
How you can replicate the success of the most engaging brands on Instagram
When it comes to social media marketing, Instagram continues to be one of the most successful platforms available to brands. But with so many users and so many different brands using it, some more successfully than others, it can be difficult to stand out from the crowd. In this blog post, I’m going to share with you some of the best examples of successful brands on Instagram and what you can learn from them to improve your own Instagram presence.
Oreo: speed drawing
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Chart of the Day: Sainsbury's Stop Motion Animated "The Greatest Gift" races to 14 million views
Christmas is only days away - retail stores are competing for consumer attention with high profile multichannel marketing campaigns, all hoping that they can report a successful holiday period with increased sales in the new year. It seems that every year the competition to create the best Christmas advert - popularised by Coca-Cola in the the eighties with the Coca-Cola truck advert (still my favourite every year since) is getting fiercer. In the last few years the John Lewis advert has been the one that every other retail brand is trying to match - this year the retailer who is coming closest is Supermarket chain Sainsbury's with their Stop Motion Animation ad "The Greatest Gift" voiced by James Corden which tells the story of Dave, a hard-working and devoted Dad, who realises that the greatest gift he can…
Snapchat and Instagram battle over the future of online video sharing - marketers need to utilise the platform most relevant to their audience.
Marketers aiming to attract a millennial audience need to implement and actively engage with social media messaging apps to reach this active yet time-poor target audience. Millennials are those aged between 18 and 35 who have grown up as digital natives where they access technology at the touch of a button. Their time-poor nature means visual communications and particularly video is the format that can capture their attention quickly and effectively.
Video as a Marketing Tool
Video has become the single most important online format. According to Cisco it is predicted to account for 80% of all global consumer internet traffic in 2019. As a result, marketers have to constantly look at ways at integrating video into their social media marketing mix to keep up with the pace of…
Your LinkedIn and social media audience is an asset. Focus on nurturing relationships with them before you start worrying about how well you're managing your social media channels.
Between 75% and 97% of buyers are on-line, researching the type of services you provide right now and approximately 52% of them will buy something, immediately, as a result of this research. In fact, a recent study of social media demographics by author, marketer and speaker @WarrenKnight, indicates that 88% of all Pinterest users purchased a product they'd pinned. However, with many Pinterest users following big brands, it's not going to be easy for you to be included in the list of companies who benefit from this activity unless you've built and nurtured an audience.
There is a growing movement, on the web, of marketing experts, who are suggesting that even some of the most revered social…
Chart of the Day: Top 20 Instagram Mobile App Advertisers in the USA
This week saw Instagram release a bunch of new features to their increasingly popular Instagram Stories. They announced what they called 'the biggest update to Stories since launch in August'. The app now allows you to tag your friends and integrates Boomerang, so you can add the 'wacky' looping videos into your stories.
Notice how the Disney account has tagged the Mickey Mouse and Good Morning America accounts - Oh and Happy 88th Birthday Mickey.
A unique feature released just for verified users (the ones with the blue tick) is the ability to add links to websites. This has always been a downside for marketers and influencers using the platform to promote their brands. Before this update, you could only add one link to your profile unless you were willing to invest in advertising spots. This…
