Your Guide to Instagram’s Newest Feature, Guides

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Back in May of this year Instagram had rolled out a new “Guides” feature to only a select few influencers. This week they have now made this available to all users, giving everyone a new way to share themed content on their Instagram profile. 

Here’s everything you need to know. 

What are Instagram Guides? 

At its release, Instagram explained they wanted to offer a way for users to “easily discover recommendations, tips and other content” from their favorite creators, public figures, organizations and publishers. They in turn launched Guides, which allowed creators to share more long-form content in a dedicated tab on their user profiles. Guides make it easier for users to follow a curated flow of posts with commentary – which makes it great for almost “blog-like” content that incorporates text and visuals. See below:

Image Source: Instagram

Where Can I Find Instagram Guides? 

To access an Instagram Guide, visit a creator’s profile and you’ll find an icon resembling a newspaper next to the standard posts icon. 

Image from: Later

Users will also be able to share Guides via Stories and Direct Messages, expanding their possible reach even further. Guides will also be available in users’ Explore tab. 

How Do I Create a Guide? 

To create a Guide on your Instagram profile:

    • Head to your Instagram profile and tap on the ‘+’ icon at the top left of screen
    • From the ‘Create’ menu, select ‘Guide’
    • You then select which type of Guide you want to create – ‘Places’, ‘Products’ or ‘Posts’
    • From there, you select the posts you want to add to your Guide (either yours or content from other users) and put them into your collection
    • You can then add a title and description, and change the cover image if you wish

Additional Updates 

Instagram announced another new update that will be very valuable for brands. Before, users were only able to search names, usernames, hashtags and locations. With today’s changes, users will now be able to search keywords to find content relevant to their interests, mirroring a standard search engine. 

Instagram says their ultimate goal is to allow users to continuously browse without having to leave the app. 

Final Thoughts 

This feature can be easily utilized for brands across all industries. If you already create a blog for your website, you can easily re-curate that content and optimize it for Instagram Guides. Not only will this expand your reach, but it will also increase your content engagement due to the face that users no longer have to leave the app to read your blog. Instagram Guides bring a whole new way to curate and consume content, which opens up huge opportunities for e-commerce, story-telling, educating and just creating brand awareness in general. 

More from Onimod Global 

We’re experts in everything from social media marketing and content creation, to SEM and SEO. If you need assistance in any area of digital marketing, we’re here for you. 

Learn more about who we are and what we do, and contact us here today. 

We also release the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here.

Influencer Marketing Tips: Finding the Right Influencers for Your Brand

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Influencer marketing allows brands to easily break into the consumers’ circle of trust in a way that feels more organic and welcomed. It’s relevant, reliable and relatable, making it an extremely effective marketing tool for brands. 

Are you looking into influencer marketing but not sure where to start? Here are our top tips to help guide your search and create a successful campaign. 

1. Know the type of influencer campaign you’re going to run. 

As you begin mapping out your marketing plan, identifying the specific type of influencer campaign you want to run is crucial. This will in turn help you connect with the best influencer and help you reach your campaign goals. Different types of influencer campaigns include: 

  • Gifting. This entails giving the influencer free products in exchange for shoutouts, mentions, posts, etc.
  • Guest posting. The influencer would get to create a post for you that you would then be shared directly on your page.   
  • Sponsored content. You would pay the influencer to share your content or create content that is somehow tied to your brand. 
  • Contests/Giveaways. Using contests as an incentive to get influencers to mention your product, brand or share your content. 
  • Takeover. You would be allowing the influencer to completely take over your social media page for a set amount of time. 
  • Affiliates. Share affiliate codes with influencers so they can earn money each time a user comes through their funnel and purchases from your brand.
  • Discount codes. Allowing influencers to give discount codes for your offerings to their own followers. 
  • Brand ambassadors. Partnering with an influencer who would then regularly promote your brand in exchange for discounts, deals and additional perks from you. 

2. Research influencers relevant to your niche. 

A great place to start finding influencers is by looking at famous, well-known or respected figures in your industry. This will not only increase the reach of your message and build more brand awareness, but drastically enhance your authority within the industry as well. While this can be difficult for smaller brands, it’s not impossible. You just have to prove why you stand out from others in your industry and get in contact with the proper people. 

To support this strategy, set up Google alerts for industry terms to see who is regularly writing content about important topics in your industry. You can also try browsing forums to see who might be regularly answering questions related to your industry. 

3. Research competitors’ influencers. 

It’s not uncommon for influencers to work with two competing brands, as long as both brands agree to it. So, to find influencers that are likely to work with your brand, look for those who are already working with brands like yours. Another benefit of this is that since they already create content or write about others in your industry, you won’t have to do much educating on your niche. 

Finding these influencers should be fairly easy. You can browse industry-related hashtags on different social platforms to see who is already sharing content and engaging with competitors. You can also look through competitors’ pages to see if there are any influencers working with them that look like they would be a good fit for you as well. 

4. Find influencers that already share your audience. 

It’s not necessary for an influencer to be directly tied to your industry to be effective. Influencers who share your audience can provide just as much value. Actually, working with influencers in an industry that overlaps or is complimentary to your own can help you extend your reach even further. It also connects you to your audience in a space that isn’t already saturated with messages from your competitors. 

To find these influencers start by doing a target audience analysis. This will help you to fully understand your ideal audience, their needs, interests and other sites they frequent. This can help you to then identify other non-industry-related influencers that your audience already follows. 

5. Audit potential influencers’ following, reach and engagement metrics. 

Once you’ve identified a few different influencers you’re considering, start evaluating their authority. Or in other words, determine if they have a large enough reach to help you accomplish your campaign goals. An influencer analysis consists of looking at factors such as: 

  • Number of followers 
  • Engagement rate of their followers 
  • Type of regular content 
  • Quality of content 
  • The depth of niche coverage 

Final Thoughts 

A strategically planned influencer marketing campaign that leverages the influencers most relevant to your goals, audience and niche can lead to big results for your campaign and brand as a whole. 

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

The Top Instagram Updates of 2020

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Instagram is full speed ahead with the monetization of their platform and shows no signs of slowing down. But are you up to date with all of the latest and great changes that have recently come to Instagram?

To help you stay up-to-date with the latest Instagram updates that rolled out during 2020 and adjust your business to them, we put together a list of the latest updates you may not know about and how to make them work to your business’s benefit.

New Tools for Shops & Increased Checkout Rollout

Coming as no surprise, shopping features have been a huge priority for Instagram in 2020. There is now an in-app checkout feature, and creators are also allowed to tag your business’s products. This means you never have to leave the app in order to buy the new pair of sunglasses you saw on your favorite influencer. The checkout is streamlined and takes advantage of the secure and convenient Facebook Pay.

It is now also possible to open a shop directly on Instagram without connecting to a larger e-commerce platform like Shopify or BigCommerce.

Live Shopping is also an upcoming Instagram update, which allows people to directly purchase items that they’re viewing from a Live in real time.

IGTV shopping is also now available! This way, when Instagram users are watching IGTV and see something they like, they can click on the product and will be directed to the retailer’s website to purchase it.

Automatic Closed Captioning on IGTV Videos

An incredible asset in general, closed captioning expands access to an even larger audience while also promoting inclusivity. Plenty of users also choose to watch a video with the sound off, which is how it typically starts on auto-play. When you upload your video, you’ll be able to choose to use “auto-generated captions” by enabling a toggle bar quickly. 
instagram updates 2020

Reels Time Upgrade From 15 to 30 Seconds

As you know Reels, or Instagram’s successfully borrowed version of TikTok, used to be only 15 seconds of content. Luckily the recording time has doubled, so with the latest update creators can record up to 30 seconds of video. TikTok videos also started up to 15 seconds long, but the company recently extended the limit to 60 seconds.

Stay tuned to see if Instagram will follow the same practice!

Contact Onimod Global

Looking for an agency to increase Instagram engagement and turn your Instagram business into a customer converting machine? Reach out to us here!

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

The Best Times to Post on Social Media for Your Business

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As a business, the goal of posting on social media is to generate brand awareness, engagement and drive more traffic to your website. To optimize your social media marketing strategy, the times you post on social media does matter. A well-timed post can lead to greater reach, more likes, comments, shares, etc. It is important to note that optimal times do vary based on industry and user trends. But in general, there are times of the day users are more engaged than others. We’ve put together a guide for the best times to post on each social media platform, making it easier to find your sweet spot for optimal performance in your specific industry. 

Facebook: 

Reaching people on Facebook isn’t as easy as it once was. Organic traffic has been on the decline over the last few years due to it becoming mostly a pay per click platform. That doesn’t mean it should be ignored, however, as there is still massive opportunity. 

During the week, the best time to post on your business page is between 1pm and 4pm. This is likely because it’s the time of day when users have some downtime at work are browning their desktop or scrolling through their phone screens. 

The best days of the week to post on Facebook are Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Weekends in general show the highest levels of engagement. And Sunday at 3pm is the single best time to post on Facebook. 

Twitter:

With Twitter, timing is everything. The lifespan of a tweet is only 18 minutes so you only have a short period of time to make sure you’re reaching the right people. 

The best time to tweet has shown to be between 12 and 1 pm. Workdays seem to drive the highest engagement, with Wednesday being the single best day. Tweeting during lunch every week day can help increase your general social media engagement. Additionally, the weekends have shown to be the worst days of the week to tweet, driving the lowest engagement. 

Instagram: 

Instagram has recently changed its algorithm for how the platform ranks posts on users’ feeds. In general, it has made driving traffic and engagement difficult for pages with small follower numbers. It favors “recency,” but does not use chronological order. It shows users posts they believe they will be more likely to engage with. This makes it even more important to post during the time your followers are most engaged. 

If you’re marketing or selling products, the best time to post on Instagram is 11am to 1pm during the week or evenings from 7pm to 9pm. Because Instagram is favored on mobile, most users tend to avoid it during the work day. When it comes to days, the best performing are Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, with Wednesdays driving the highest levels of engagement. But the single best time to post on Instagram has shown to be Saturdays at 5 pm. Overall, Sundays are the worst days to post. 

LinkedIn: 

LinkedIn’s algorithm is very different from all other social media platforms. Oftentimes, it will show posts from weeks ago. This makes it even more important to create compelling content that will stand out amongst the crowd. 

Considering most LinkedIn users are business professionals, the best times to post are between 10am and 11am on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Weekends and after office hours tend to be the worst times to post. 

Final Thoughts

It’s important to note that this is all a general guide. To be successful on social you really need to know your own audience. Consider their age, their location, their challenges, pain points, etc. It’s also essential to continue to test and optimize. You never want to get complacent because things are constantly changing, especially when it comes to social media. 

If you need assistance with social media marketing, we can help. We’re experts in everything from SEO and SEM to social media marketing and website development.   To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here. To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here.  

 

Instagram Story Best Practices for Businesses

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With over 500 million daily users, Instagram Stories are a great way to reach potential new customers while building a stronger connection with your existing ones. Instagram stories were first introduced in 2016 and have since become a powerful tool for businesses. 

Stories have continually changed and evolved over the years, now including many engagement-boosting features such as polls, reaction stickers, question stickers, quizzes and chat options. If you’re not regularly posting on your business’s Instagram Story, you could be missing out on a big opportunity. Let’s go over what your business can gain from posting Instagram Stories, as well as best practices for doing so. 

Benefits of Instagram Stories 

1. Regularly engaging with your audiences.

Millennials and Gen Z make up the vast majority of users on Instagram and it can be difficult to effectively engage with them. With social media users having access to endless amounts of content, it takes time, commitment and effort to get and keep their attention. Instagram Stories have a number of features that allow you to do this easily. You can now: 

  • Set up polls.
  • Ask your followers questions or let them ask you questions.
  • Tag others.

2. Driving traffic to your websites.

You can effectively use stories to create content that drives traffic to your website. If you run a retail or e-commerce business, you can direct your followers to shop products on your website. A recent study actually found that 1 in 3 users were more interested in a brand or product after seeing it on an Instagram Story. There are now features enable businesses to:

  • Utilize the shopping bag notification. This allows users to click on select items on your story and shop the items on your site. Product stickers help people access product information seamlessly.
  • Incorporate the swipe up feature. This helps drive traffic to your website by directing your followers to landing pages, blogs, etc.

3. Growing your audience. 

As we previously mentioned, Instagram has over 500 million daily users, making it a great place to increase your brand awareness. There are now many story features that makes this even easier, such as: 

  • Location Tags. Using geographic location tags on stories can help make your business more discoverable. Whether it’s a specific location, city or even a country, it can help reach a variety of demographics.
  • Hashtags. Including hashtags helps increase the searchability of your profile and its content among Instagram communities.

 

Instagram Story Best Practices 

1. Point your followers to your stories. 

Even with Instagram’s huge user base, not everyone regularly checks stories. So, if you’re posting fresh content, don’t be afraid to let your followers know. You can include it in your regular content caption from time to time, such as this: 

2. Make it visual. 

With stories, you have a very short window to grab users’ attention. You can make your stories more compelling by:

  • Using bright contrasting colors.
  • Including a person to make an emotional connection. 
  • Capture interesting or unique settings. 

3. Post consistently. 

The more consistently you post on your story, the greater your chances of reaching more users as they tap through their feed throughout the day. With every new story you get bumped to the top of your followers’ story feeds. 

4. Create shareable branded assets. 

Visual and shareable assets on your story can help boost your Instagram virality. For example, content creator Kelsey in London, regularly shares templates on her Instagram Stories that can be screenshotted and personalized. 

Data visualisations, Q&A’s, recipe cards and how-to’s are great content types that are most likely to generate re-posts. Be sure to always make your branding clearly visible, so you benefit from every share. 

Final Thoughts 

Stories have become an integral piece of so many brands’ Instagram presence lately. Given that Instagram is focusing so heavily on Stories and the format only appears to be getting bigger, brands should get on board with them ASAP. By understanding the best practices above, you can stay ahead of the curve and keep your followers engaged via Stories without missing a beat.

More from Onimod Global 

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

Choosing The Right Social Media Platform For Advertising

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Social media advertising is a powerful tool that can really take your online presence to the next level. Now is the time, as so many companies have taken to digital to promote and sell their brand. However, it is not necessary to advertise on every single social media platform. In fact, advertising on certain platforms may drive your profit margin in the opposite direction. So how do you go about choosing which social media advertising platform is the right choice for you? Learn from the experts at Onimod Global to discover the first steps your company should take.

Identify Your Audience

The first mistake lots of companies make is looking at the amount of advertisers on each platform and choosing in this way. For example, 3 million people are advertising on Facebook, so you automatically choose this platform doing no further research. While the amount of people is very telling as to what can be successful, it is better to identify your audience and which platforms they are the most active on.

Write down the following questions:

  • Who is your typical customer?
  • How old are they?
  • Are they male or female?
  • What is their income and education level?
  • What are they interested in outside of your product and service?

Use the answers to these questions in order to build out your audience profile.

Define Your Goals

This is an important step, because each campaign can be better optimized on certain platforms than others depending on how you want customers to convert. There are also several different types of campaigns on these platforms. For example, say your headhunting company wants IT students to fill out a form on your website applying for interviews. Your goal and your audience must match up with the specific social platform. If you aren’t sure where to start with setting an action goal for your target audience, try starting with a brand awareness campaign. Brand recognition always proves to be an important topic for online shoppers.

Find The Audience

Now that you have your audience and goals defined, it’s time to see which social media platform your potential customers are the most active on. To do this, you’re going to determine which platform your audience uses by looking at the demographics of the users on each platform. For example, the younger age demographic is on both Facebook and Instagram, but they are more active on Instagram. Besides demographics and engagement, you’ll also want to look at how individuals use the platform.

Contact Onimod Global

Onimod Global can help take your social media advertising to the next level. Digital Marketing across multiple social platforms allows us to create visibility for your company in the places your customers are searching, interacting and engaging on social media properties.

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

Tips on Managing Negative Social Media Comments

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Social media is a unique public environment that has its own culture and expectations. And at some point in social media managing, you’ll have to deal with negative comments on your brand’s page or posts. While some of these comments may be from blatant trolls, others will be clear criticism of your product or service. It’s important to know how to effectively deal with these comments. Here are 5 tips on how to manage negative comments on your social media. 

Don’t ignore or delete. 

The worst thing a brand can do is ignore their negative comments. This can aggravate the commenter even further and may lead them to continue to leave negative comments in more places. This can also look bad to other users and existing customers. You want to remain transparent with your audience. Deleting messages rather than addressing them head-on conveys that you might have something to hide. 

It’s important to note that this doesn’t remain true for all negative comments. If a comment is inappropriate, offensive or derogatory, it should be deleted. To make this decision, exercise your own judgement or refer to your organization’s code of conduct. 

If it’s your fault, apologize sincerely. 

The saying goes, “the customer is always right.” Even if you disagree with their point of view, it’s still best to apologize. This is the first step in resolving a conflict. Keep a calm, cool and sincere tone throughout the conversation. When someone is bashing something you’re passionate about, this can be difficult, but it’s crucial to not let your emotions get in front of professionalism. 

On the other hand, you don’t want to admit fault for something you had no control over. If that’s the case of the complaint, lead with something like, “We’re sorry to hear you weren’t satisfied with your experience.” This shows you still care, but doesn’t recognize that you or a team member did anything wrong. 

Take offline if necessary. 

It’s best practice to resolve the conflict privately. Try to shift the conversation off of social media to another place. Whether this be through direct messenger, email, over the phone, etc. After you apologize, close the response by asking the customer to contact you through one of the mentioned forms of private communication. You never want to get in a further argument in the comments for others to see. Depending on the issue, the customer may write dozens more negative replies, which can reflect poorly on your brand. 

Be personable. 

No one likes their frustrations to be met with automated replies. This also looks bad to anyone else that reads the conversation on social. It’s beneficial to have a plan for negative comments, but you want to personalize the message as much as possible. This shows real empathy, authenticity and sincerity. You want to show that you really do care about your customers. See the following conversation between Delta and a customer. 

source:https://www.socialpilot.co/

It’s evident that these messages were written by a real person and are not automations. They effectively communicate with the customer and show that they genuinely want to help. 

Be timely. 

Timeliness is key with negative comments. Most users expect a response within 2 hours. If necessary, follow up with the relevant departments to give your customer a satisfactory answer. Word travels fast on social media, which is also why it’s so important to respond quickly. A slow response can make it seem like you don’t care or are ignoring the complaint, both which can quickly damage a company’s reputation. 

Be sure to consistently monitor your reputation throughout the day, whether it be through Google Alerts or other social listening tools. This will help to ensure no negative messages go unnoticed. 

Final Thoughts

Negative comments are unavoidable, but if managed the right way they can actually do more for your brand than positive ones. Responding to positive comments is easy. Dealing with negative comments is how you show company integrity, sincerity and personability. This is where long-term customer loyalty stems from. So if you want your company to succeed, watch what people are saying about your brand on social media. React to all the comments you get and be attentive to the problems of your customers.

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

How To Design Facebook & Instagram Ads That Convert

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There are over 7 million active advertisers on Facebook, according to Statista. With this impressive number, you may be thinking that increasing your Facebook and Instagram ads budget is the only way to outperform your competition. The experts at Onimod Global are here to tell you that is not always true. It is possible to achieve a great ROI when advertising on a budget.

Are you considering Facebook and Instagram as advertising platforms, but you’re not sure where to start? Our Onimod Global team is sharing our best practices for creating Facebook and Instagram ads that convert.

Facebook Desktop

Use square format. On the Facebook and Instagram platforms, square videos fill the screen more and will be more engaging for viewers on both desktop and mobile devices.

Create a visual hook. The more you can get your ad to look like it blends into your customer’s feed, the better. However, you also want to make sure that your content stands out. Use bright, cool colors.

Don’t overuse branding. Advertising is typically a major turnoff for all customers. The less they feel someone is trying to sell them something, the more likely they are to interact with your ad.

Facebook App

Avoid too much detail in images. In this case, less is definitely more. Make your graphics straight and to the point. Too much detail will either confuse or bore your audience.

Write short copy to fill the space. Do your best to avoid the “read more” button on any of your ads. The ad copy should also be very straightforward, with just enough detail to entice your customer but not information overload.

Choose graphics to blend in with news feeds. Similar to how you would choose an image for an ad optimized for Facebook desktop, you want to ensure your ad doesn’t stand out as an advertisement. The more it blends in, the better interaction you will have.

Instagram App

Don’t use landscape images. A bothersome feature about Instagram is their vertical layout of the app. Always use portrait style images and videos for the best look on your audience’s feed.

Describe how people can use your product. For example, let’s say you’re selling LED signs that can be used for all types of home decor. Show the product in action by taking a video showing the light in different areas of the house. Low production costs and the video will blend perfectly into the audience feed, which translates into better interaction on your ad.

Avoid using too many words on your visual. Instagram gives you so many ways to be artsy and creative in your ad. Make sure you’re not overdoing it on the text and emojis, and really let the media visual that you chose speak for itself.

More From Onimod Global

Following these best practices for Facebook and Instagram ads will help you reach success on a budget. Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

How To Drive Event Engagement With Social Media

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Social media marketing can be a fantastic tool to use in a variety of campaigns, especially in event promotion. This tool has not only changed the ways people promote events, but it has also changed how influencers and consumers can engage with brands and events associated with them. Social media marketing strategies allow for an open conversation between a brand and the consumer, and this is one of the most crucial steps in ensuring a successful event with high engagement.

Whether your event is a corporate event, an influencer party, a festival or concert, social media marketing can be a driving factor in your success if used correctly. Here are several ways you can use social media to drive engagement before, during, and after your event.

 

Pre-Event

 

Content Strategy 

In the initial stages of event planning, you will want to have a rough outline of social media content for the months, weeks, or days leading up to your event. Your company may already have an existing content plan in place for event management, but it is always in your best interest to customize the strategy to your specific event.

Social media content should be centered around the concept of your event, and all of your posts should match the tone, whether that be serious or more creative. Anything you create should also drive consumers to a landing page for sign-ups, donations, or anything related to the promotion of your event. Be sure to include educational pieces about featured speakers, sponsors, and any topics the event will be covering.

 

Influencer Involvement 

Get your sponsors and speakers involved! Most times influencers will be excited to help you push your event on social media, especially if they are a featured speaker. Create graphics and other messages that are easy to share on all social platforms, and also create content specifically related to sponsors that they can easily share as well.

Sharing, in this case, is caring for the success of your event. Be sure that any social content you post and push to consumers is readily available to share among event attendees. Don’t under-estimate the power of social share, this will increase your visibility with little to no cost associated.

A great strategy would be to invite a sponsor or influencer to take over your Instagram account or do a Facebook Live feed. It’s a place for your own followers to get excited about the event that you’re hosting, and it also gives the fans or followers of the influencer a chance to be directed to your page for more information on what they are sharing.

 

The Day-of

 

Vlog

Especially if this is event is annual, creating excitement around the event for years to come will be based out of any content and footage you have from years past. Occasionally, this may not be allowed depending on the privacy or overall tone of the event. However, if your company allows you to do so and it makes sense in your content strategy to create footage for the upcoming years, we absolutely recommend filming as much as possible.

 

Live Stream or Social 

This is an example of a live Twitter feed wall shared by Social Media Today, which are typically big hits at any conference or event. Common tools that will help you build a live-feed for your event are: TweetBeam, Twitterfall, Twubs, and HootFeed from Hootsuite.

 

Live Updates On Your Social Networks

Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat are perfect platforms for this strategy. A unique content idea you could do at a convention would be to interview guest attendees on your company Instagram or Snapchat story. Tweeting live updates from the event is also a great way to interact with any attendee using the event hashtag that you create. This will allow you to retweet easily, and Instagram also has the new feature of being able to share photos on Instagram stories with credit to the user.

 

Post-Event

 

Gratitude Via Social Platforms

The content strategy doesn’t end at the event, the really successful conventions and events will always take it one step farther. Here are where the opportunities to engage with your attendees with give you the maximum value of social media marketing. Starting with gratitude, it will always go a long way to thank speakers, sponsors, and guests via social media to ensure they know that their presence was appreciated by your company. This will in turn help you build bonds and gain lifetime customers.

 

Creating Promotion For Next Year

Now that you have all of this material and content, it is time for your social team to get to work on compiling a promotion video or more social content for next year’s event. This can include testimonials from this year’s attendees, quotes from speakers and sponsors, and any footage of your guests having a great time!

 

More From Onimod Global

We would love to work with you and help you optimize your social media strategy for any event your company is hosting. To contact our experts or request a quote, please click here. We can’t wait to hear from you!

5 Tips for Your Instagram Advertising Strategy

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More than a year ago, Instagram made a huge change to their algorithm. This change resulted in switches from chronological posts to more relevant posts that users were more likely to engage with.

Many users expressed their discontent with the change, and many advertisers did as well. It was believed that the switch made it more difficult for brands to interact with their audience, and with frequent tweaks still being made to the algorithm it can be hard to know what type of strategy will help or hurt your brand on Instagram.

Insta Basics

First, it is crucial to know the key influencing factors that the platform’s algorithm takes into account:

  1. The relationship between you and the person (or company that) posted the photo: The more that users regularly engage with your content, the more the algorithm will highlight your new content to those interested users.
  2. Timing: Even though the new algorithm is not in chronological order, Instagram will still take timing into account to make sure that it is showing content that has been posted fairly recently.
  3. Likes and comments: Although the platform said that the new algorithm will not result in a “popularity contest” it is still making efforts to push content that possesses many different engagement factors such as likes and comments. The more interaction your post receives, the better!
  4. Direct shares: Instagram will also be taking note of posts that you share with others since this is another type of interaction that clearly shows a user is interested in the content from a particular brand.
  5. Profile searches: Recent searches will also prompt the platform to suggest new users to follow, or if you currently are following them then even more of their content will be pushed to the top of your feed.

Primary Focus

The entire point of each and every one of these factors is engagement. The more that users engage with your content, the more that the algorithm will make sure to update users when new content is available.

Much of the idea behind the algorithm can be related to the same operations of search engines like Google. The most important aspect that Google’s algorithm considers is relevancy. In this same respect, Instagram’s algorithm is trying to ascertain whether or not users will find your content interesting and relevant, which can be judged by how often they show interest in your brand through likes, comments, searches, etc.

Additional Suggestions

When optimizing your content for Instagram, it is absolutely necessary to make it as interactive as possible. Utilizing unique forms of motion based content can help to increase interactions by posting a video, story, or Boomerang.

Adding hashtags to your post can significantly boost its impressions. In fact, Adweek states that adding even one hashtag can increase engagement by an average of 12.6%.

It is also worth including some advertising dollar in your Instagram strategy in order to make certain that your content is being pushed to target users. In light of Facebook’s recent organic content changes, it would not be out of line to suspect that Instagram may also adopt a similar strategy when it comes to sponsored content versus unpaid posts.