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Influencer marketing is one of the fastest growing channels in advertising, with our research estimating that $1 billion was spent on Instagram influencers alone in 2017. With brand dollars pouring into the space, social media influencers, whether established or aspiring, are vying for brand sponsorship deals. I founded Mediakix, a dedicated influencer marketing agency, in 2011. In the years since, I have witnessed a rise in these deceptive practices and wanted to draw awareness to the issue. These practices span the gamut of unscrupulousness and range from gaming Instagram’s algorithm with “pods” to purchasing fake followers and engagement to creating entirely fake personas and accounts. It’s difficult but not impossible to know whether an influencer has purchased fake followers and engagement. About a year ago, we were evaluating several accounts for potential campaigns and noted that one woman in particular had more than doubled her followers in less than a week. While rapid follower growth isn’t the only indicator of whether an influencer paid for followers, it does raise a red flag, especially if nearly every Instagram post is sponsored. We checked her rate afterwards and it had nearly tripled due to her boosted (fake) following....
In 2013, while sitting at a bar with a friend, Danny Nieves had a thought. He was helping a friend advertise his Cuban restaurant and told him that he would post his menus onto doors by rubber-banding them to doorknobs in his neighborhood. The idea was a hit. It garnered local attention and had business booming at his friend's restaurant. This bright idea spawned into the thought that, if it could work for his friend's Cuban restaurant, maybe other nearby restaurants would pay him to add their menus to doorknobs. Nieves got to work. Stapling together menu after menu, he began dropping them off on every single doorknob he could. The business idea saw explosive growth. Sales for those restaurants skyrocketed and he knew he was onto something. But he hated stapling together the menus and having to attach them one by one. However, it was at that bar, scrawled on a drink napkin, that he planned out his approach, detailing how he would saturate the homes with advertisements....
Many bloggers are active on Instagram, but not many have taken the plunge and tapped into the amazing advertising opportunities that Instagram offers. For as little as $1 per day you could be advertising your latest blog post in the Instagram newsfeed, and getting more clicks through to your website.
And because Instagram is owned by Facebook, you’ll be using the targeting power of one of the biggest consumer databases on the planet!
In this post I’ll show you how to set up your first Instagram ad and how to look at the results....
After passing the 300 million users mark a few months ago, Instagram is one of the most popular social media networks, second only to Facebook, which by the way owns Instagram. For everyday users, it’s an excellent way to build and grow an audience and showcase their creativity.
Businesses, on the other hand, can rely on Instagram for creating brand awareness, audience building and content marketing, as well as for selling.
In this post, I go over 8 different types of tools you can use to take your Instagram marketing efforts to the next level, whether you’re a solopreneur, small business owner or are part of a social media marketing team....
If you are marketing to teens (and college-age youths), the time has come to beef up your Instagram presence, as this recent SocialTimes article demonstrates. Here are tips for using Instagram to build your fan base and generate sales revenue, based in large part on what we learned during the successful launch of our sister company, Pro Stock Hockey.
A few quick stats on the company’s Instagram results to date: - 1,972 (highly relevant) followers
- 21,740 likes
- 260 likes/photo
- 99.9 acclaim value
- (BTW, Followers for Instagram is a great Instagram management app)...
n the Part One of Visual Marketing with Instagram series we talked about some facts about Instagram and how to get started with Instagram for your visual marketing.Just like any other social network out there, there are some best practices and right ways to use it and in this part of the series, we will focus on how to effectively use Instagram to make the most out of this platform...
Instagram ads are coming. We don’t know what they’ll look like or when they’ll arrive. But Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has promised that Instagram won’t be ad-free forever. The world’s largest brands are already using the photo-sharing app and its new video tool to pimp their products.
Facebook is betting big on mobile ads, which went from being a blip on the social network’s radar to accounting for 41 percent of the company’s ad revenue in just one year. The network reportedly plans to run 15-second, TV-style ads in users’ News Feeds, which could cost advertisers $2.5 million a pop. If that 15-second limitation—as yet unconfirmed by Facebook—sounds familiar, it’s because 15 seconds is also the cap that Instagram put on its new video tool.
Companies are familiarizing themselves with Instagram video as they prepare for the inevitable launch of video ads and seek to avoid angering Instagram devotees in the process....
“Instagram is so immediate and intimate that it creates this close connection with the user,” said Cory Haik, executive producer for digital news at The Washington Post. The Post uses Instagram to share photos, collect photos from users, report stories and have personal interactions with its audience. It’s a strategy aimed not at driving traffic but at building community. The Washington Post solicited Instagram photos of snow from readers. (Courtesy The Washington Post) “What we ask ourselves about Instagram,” Haik said by phone, “is ‘are we having a meaningful conversation with our users?’”...
Do you remember “show and tell” from your elementary school days? This is the exact approach social media business users should be taking. Too often businesses merely tell followers why their product or service is worthy of a purchase.... The second-best thing about Instagram is it makes extremely amateur “photographers” like me feel as though we’re capable of taking professional-quality pictures. The first-best thing: Instagram offers almost everything a business user could want in a social network, so much so, it’s (dare I say) the most effective platform out there. Here are the top four reasons why...
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In 2017, the industry's love affair with Instagram isn't showing any signs of slowing down. Digiday recently checked in with a number of fashion and beauty social media insiders at SXSW's Decoded Fashion and Create & Cultivate events, confirming that Instagram remains a top priority in their digital marketing strategies. "Instagram is always a priority for us," Rosi Sanchez, a social media strategist at Fossil, told Digiday. "We have more reach and a larger new follower group there, so it leads to more conversions. Until we get to 1.5 million or 2 million followers, it’s going to be our number one priority." Fossil isn't alone. Social media strategists from more established brands like L’Oréal USA, Shopbop, and Murad also indicated that Instagram was their top social media priority for the foreseeable future. Brands from any industry looking to level up their visual storytelling chops should keep a close eye on fashion brands for inspiration. To help get you started, we've compiled a list of 15 fashion accounts -- both big and small -- who are crushing the Instagram game. Take a look below, and start planning your next big Instagram push. For a deeper dive on how to build a presence on Instagram, check out our complete guide to Instagram marketing.
Jasmine shares one of her favorite quotes from author Simon Sinek, “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.” In her opinion, there’s no better platform than Instagram to showcase why you do something. She believes Instagram’s powerful storytelling components give you the ability to make customers loyal before a purchase has been made. If you can tell a powerful story in fewer than 87 characters (the caption limit), along with a photo that matches and elevates the storytelling component, you’ll win at Instagram....
If you do take Instagram seriously, it can open up a world of opportunity for your brand. Forrester has named Instagram the “king of social engagement,” citing the fact that top brands’ Instagram posts generated a per-follower engagement rate of 4.21 percent. That means Instagram delivered these brands 58 times more engagement per follower than Facebook, and 120 times more engagement per follower than Twitter.
So, you now know why your business should be on Instagram. Below, we tackle the “how,” walking you through the process of building an Instagram strategy, setting up your account, and best practices for brands. Read on for our beginner’s guide on how to use Instagram for business....
Instagram part of your social media marketing?
Do you want to run contests on Instagram?
Adding Instagram contests to your social media mix can quickly expand your reach.
In this article I’ll explain the different types, as well as how to create and run a successful Instagram contest for your brand or business...
Does your business use Instagram?
Is there a place for time-lapse video in your marketing?
It used to be that you needed expensive equipment to create time-lapse videos. Now you can create them with Instagram’s Hyperlapse app.
In this article I’ll show you how businesses are using Hyperlapse video to engage Instagram followers with short-form video....
Last year, Instagram announced it had over 150 million users, 16 billion photo shares, 1.2 Billion likes daily and on average 55M photos per day. TrackMaven, a competitive analysis firm, has released a study that exposes how Fortune 500s are using Instagram, and gives tips on how you can use Instagram to your advantage.
TrackMaven noticed some trends and patterns by tracking the accounts to identify what’s working and what isn’t with the Fortune 500. From the posting strategies, filters, and interactions, they uncovered some interesting secrets and findings in their report.
Sabel Harris, lead marketing maven at TrackMaven gave three tips for brands based on Instagram strategies employed by some of the top-performing Fortune 500s....
Vine's microvideos have rapidly waned in popularity following the debut of Instagram's competing service. But don't count it out yet. The competition continues...
The Twitter-owned microvideo service Vine has had better days. Earlier, Marketing Land revealed that user sharing of six-second Vine videos plummeted after Instagram debuted a competing service last week. But Vine isn't Internet roadkill quite yet. Marketing Land conjured data from Twitter-metric firm Topsy, comparing how many times people shared instagram.com links on Twitter against the frequency of vine.co links.
Its most stunning revelation: Sharing of Vine videos dropped by almost 40% on June 20, the day Instagram launched its video service. So far, there's no turnaround in sight....
...According to Instagram’s official press page, there are 100 million monthly active users, 40 million photos per day, 8500 likes per second, and 1000 comments per second. This flurry of activity shows that not only is Instagram one of the most popular social networks, engagement is also relatively easy, making it a great opportunity for companies that are willing to post regularly. ...Huge brands like Coca-Cola and major celebrities like Justin Bieber are using Instagram to connect with their fans and customers on a more personal level.... Just like the social networks that came before it, using Instagram as part of your overall online marketing initiatives helps you introduce new and existing products to your target market, build a sense of community with your customers, and gather more online exposure....
... But what about Instagram? The popular social media platform, acquired by Facebook in April 2012, has continually seen its use by B2B companies increase. It’s hard to imagine a social media marketing tool that has on average 40 million photos being uploaded every day and over 90 million monthly active users, not receiving any consideration as part of more companies’ social media marketing strategies. More B2B companies are making the most out of their company’s Instagram accounts by giving users exactly what they want — fresh, consistent content that visually engages their customers and prospects. They’ve made sure their content, images with short messages, is perfectly aligned with their brand’s attributes and that each new photo uploaded tells a story. As a result, they’ve utilized a new channel to engage with customers and attract new ones. Here’s a look at 3 B2B companies that are effectively utilizing Instagram as a component of their social media marketing efforts...
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Shop proved how easy it is to scam advertisers by creating ‘Amanda Smith’ and ‘Alexa Rae.’