Month: December 2016

How You Can Use Instagram Stories for Marketing

09 Dec 16 by Chris Jenkin

Just recently, Instagram introduced its newest feature called Instagram Stories. For everyone who’s been using their mobile device for the past few years, they can immediately connect this new feature as something similar to popular app, Snapchat. This is because Instagram Stories gives its users an avenue where they could share posts at a higher frequency. Instead of the typical Instagram photos being shared, Stories gives users the ability to share little moments that are not necessarily captured on a single photo. After all, there is only very little a photo can tell.

With Stories, Instagram hopes this would answer the common issue of overposting. Since these can be found on another space on the app, users can post as much as they want without worrying about taking over their friends’ feeds. As a marketer, however, how do you take advantage of Instagram’s newest feature? Find out below.

How Instagram Stories Benefits Marketers

Mostly speaking, Instagram Stories is greatly beneficial for marketers who have an active audience base on the app. If you already use Instagram to promote your products and services extensively, you’ll get the hang of using Stories. This is because this new feature allows you to create a light-hearted feed without necessarily starting all over again. You still get to relay your message to your followers but avoid oversaturating them with too many photos you shared.

Another advantage you have over using Stories is that you have more chance of being discovered by other users, particularly the ones you have not yet touched base with. Compared to Snapchat, you won’t have to continually promote your content regularly across other channels in order to be seen by people. With Stories, you have the help of hashtags, geotags, and even the Discover section on Instagram. These tools are specifically there to help increase your chances of being discovered by other users.

Will This New Feature Stick?

Looking at it from an overall perspective, Stories is an entirely different approach compared to Instagram’s photo sharing style. And considering there’s now a demand for transitory content (somewhat similar to Snapchat), Instagram Stories seems to be taking a shot on this new approach. Not to mention, there’s not much thought that needs to be put into Stories compared to a photo.

With this in mind, there’s no saying that ephemeral content would be going away anytime soon; especially since it’s an approach that has become such a success over the recent years. This gives each marketer a chance to take advantage of Instagram Stories as a new way to promote content.

What Type of Content Should You Publish?

As a marketer, you have to remember that the things you publish on your feed have a purpose—to sell your products and services. This is why you should remember to correlate this goal with the content you are sharing with your followers. Here are a few ideas on what type of content would be great to share on Instagram Stories:

  • Behind the scenes. Give your followers a look at what goes on in your office and how everyone works together to create a product. This lets your followers develop a deeper understanding of your brand.
  • Do a take over. You can partner with another establishment to document how you go about with their business and how they do with yours. This makes your audience interested in what goes on behind your business.
  • Poll on the next post. Include your audience in your decision-making process to make them feel more involved in your business.
  • Host a Q&A. Your followers love to hear what you have to say about a particular situation or topic. Indulge them.
  • Limited sales. If you are having a discount, you can highlight a particular product and let your followers know why they should purchase it.

There are plenty of other things you can post on Instagram Stories. You can try out new things and see whether or not they work for you. The important thing is that you determine your own brand and what works for your own business.

 

Content MarketingDigital MarketingSocial Media

What Your Audience Wants to See on Your Social Media Pages

01 Dec 16 by Chris Jenkin

As they all say, content is king! But how do you continue to provide the best content when the demands for content marketing continually change over time? How do you make sure that your content marketing efforts don’t go to waste? One good thing to remember is to pay close attention to your audience. Do you still know who your audience is? Are you giving them content that’s useful to them?

HubSpot Research recently made a remark on how 2016 initiated a new phase of technology, one wherein consumer preferences and new innovations are important factors to consider for every marketer. If you are trying to improve your content marketing practices, the key to doing so is to identify if you are providing your readers the right content. So how do you determine this?

Here are some of the latest trends as told by industry experts:

 Videos

Video has largely become a vital part of content marketing. As projected by experts, 80% of web traffic will come from video by the year 2019. This will represent an impressive increase in video content and especially the amount of time people spend watching YouTube and Facebook videos.

How to make use of video content for your advantage?

  • Keep videos within two minutes in length to ensure viewers watch the entire clip.
  • Add captions and animations to your video so it’s easy for viewers to understand the message, even without listening to anything.
  • Cover breaking news, since this is something more users are interested in seeing.

 Social Media

Social media is never going to die, at least anytime soon. As a matter of fact, its audience is only growing bigger every day. To date, there are 1.7 billion daily active users on Facebook, 500 million on Instagram, 313 million on Twitter, and 150 million on Snapchat. These individuals are consuming more content compared in the past. Because of this, content creators have started to make use of these channels to connect with their target audience.

How do you maximize social media for your brand?

  • Use relevant hashtags sparingly. It’s not good to use multiple hashtags that aim to increase Twitter engagement. You can use a branded campaign hashtag for your audience to easily find content.
  • Use social media for your videos to gain more engagement through likes, shares, retweets or replies.

 News Articles

Nowadays, more and more people are using the internet to stay updated with the latest news. Based on the findings of experts, readers want to keep up with news articles; however, they don’t really read these articles thoroughly. Many readers tend to skim-read the articles or even get the gist of the content through the headline of the article.

How to boost engagement through news articles?

  • Provide an accompanying video to a long article so that those who don’t have time to thoroughly read the text can use the video.
  • Maintain your reader’s attention by using bullets, images, and by breaking up larger text paragraphs. 

Research Content

Readers are also looking for original research they can easily consume and understand. An evidence of this is proven by how successful infographics have become over the years. Your readers no longer want to spend long periods of time trying to decipher the information you provide them. Instead, they are more likely to appreciate it if you spent some of your resources providing a visual element that could prove to be useful for the content they are searching.

How does one make the most out of research data?

  • Make sure to provide effective data visualization through an infographic.
  • Remember to use color in providing the information you have collected as this improves your content’s readership and the attention span of your audience.
  • Break up text in easily digestible images. Remember, people tend to skim-read now instead of reading the entire text.
  • Provide actionable content so your readers know how they can apply what they just learned.

Information provided through an infographic can be more easily remembered by an individual compared to their reading text.

Knowing these things can help you with your content marketing strategy. You no longer have to second guess your tactics since you already know what it is your readers are searching for. In this way, you know that your efforts won’t go to waste.

Content MarketingDigital MarketingSearch Engine MarketingSEOSocial Media