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5 Reasons You Must Create Instagram Stories for Your Business

19 June 2019June 21, 2019Ann Mills8 Comments

Social media content is rapidly evolving.

Back in August 2016, Instagram launched Stories to compete with Snapchat Stories. Stories were meant to help capture the daily activities of Instagram’s now more than 1 billion users worldwide, and unlike posts, Stories are short-lived–disappearing in 24 hours.

By January 2019, Instagram stories had grown in popularity to over 500 million daily active users (DAU), meaning half of Instagram’s daily users are on Stories every day. With important, interactive features and a less formal type of content, Instagram Stories have become essential for businesses that use Instagram marketing.

Here are 5 reasons you must create Instagram stories for your business:

Reason 1: Instagram Stories have interactive stickers

With Instagram Stories, you can add a sticker. Unlike Instagram posts, stickers allow users to tap and interact with your Story in creative ways. There are many types of stickers available including:

Donation
Quiz
Countdown
Questions
Music
Poll or Emoji Slider
Location
Hashtag
Current Time or Weather
Selfie

As an example, suppose you are thinking about keeping your business open late one evening of the week. You wonder whether your customers would come. You can create an Instagram Story and add an emoji slider with a thumbs up emoji. Ask, “Do you want us to stay open late one evening?” Customers that see your Instagram Story can slide the emoji to the right if they like the idea, and you get feedback directly from your customers.

Reason 2: Instagram Stories are more informal than posts

There is an analogy used by Bella Vasta, a Facebook Group keynote speaker, which she uses to explain the difference between a Facebook page and a Facebook Group, and the same analogy applies to Instagram posts and Instagram Stories. Bella equates a Facebook page to the front yard of a house–formal and public. Similarly, Instagram posts have a more formal, curated look and feel.

A home’s backyard is the Facebook group – a gathering of people with something in common, informal, more personal and friendly. Likewise, Instagram Stories are the backyard–informal and personal.

The value of Instagram Stories is they give a business tremendous versatility in how it can present content with some reserved for the more formal Instagram page and other content posted in Stories. Another unique feature of Stories worth mentioning is that unlike posts, you can add to your Stories. So, if your business is attending an event, your followers can watch a Story and see new additions to the Story while you are there.

Reason 3: Instagram Story Highlights can help cultivate unique audiences

According to Instagram Business, 80% of Instagram accounts follow a brand. Not surprisingly, Instagram users look for Instagram Stories shared by their favorite brands, and Stories have a feature called Highlights – the circles that appear across the top of an Instagram page. These Highlights can be divided into content-related categories that are relevant for your business, and when Stories are added to Highlights, they do not disappear in 24 hours. One of our favorite Story Highlights categories is “Inspo” because we like to see what people in a company are reading, thinking about or doing for inspiration.

Here are some Highlights examples:

A hair salon may highlight different haircut styles
A retail store may highlight different seasonal clothing styles
A blogger may highlight different blog categories

Businesses should establish relevant Highlights categories so followers can discover new content in their areas of interest. Whereas Instagram pages do not allow partitioning of content by topic, Stories do via Highlights. Using Highlights effectively will allow a brand to cultivate unique subsets of their audience based on their content preferences.

Instagram describes its stories product as a way to promote the sharing of moments that don’t meet the higher bar of a traditional Instagram post. –The Verge

Reason 4: Instagram Stories re-enforce the business brand

An Instagram Story can serve as an extension of a brand’s footprint on Instagram. As with websites or social media posts, Instagram Stories should have a hint of the company’s brand guidelines – colors, fonts, tag lines. People that see Instagram Stories should recognize familiar aspects associated with the brand. Whether it’s a cameo of everyone’s favorite furry mascot in the office or a behind-the-scenes look at the setup for an event, Instagram Stories give people a feel for the soul of the business while subtly reinforcing the brand.

Reason 5: Instagram Stories focus on moments and encourage sharing

An Instagram Story can reflect the little moments that occur throughout the day, and people love to feel part of someone’s journey. Instagram posts, on the other hand, allow businesses to build their brand’s presence in a more systematic way, include thoughtful written copy, tags, and imagery. When it comes to Instagram business pages, viewers expect a carefully curated feed that looks aesthetically pleasing.

Stories, in contrast, are spontaneous and current. The concept behind Stories is that people will want to capture moments and share them. Stories are ephemeral, and Facebook, which owns Instagram, hopes users will actively create content that is personal, relatable and captures the moment.

Great for branding, audience targeting and connecting with your tribe, Instagram Stories are a must for your social media marketing toolkit. If you’re interested in creating an Instagram Story strategy but don’t know where to start, contact us.

Leverage Your LinkedIn Profile With These 5 Tips

25 January 2019January 25, 2019Ann Mills2 Comments

With close to 600 million users, LinkedIn is a social media platform business professionals and owners cannot afford to ignore. It’s atypical for a social network in that LinkedIn is not geared towards purely social connections but rather strives to give people a means to connect with other professionals. In addition to the large and growing user base, some 260 million LinkedIn users are actively logging in monthly, and recruiters and companies looking to hire also search LinkedIn.

Like so many platforms in the digital space, there is much more to a LinkedIn profile than meets the eye. If you’re simply filling in the fields in the hopes that you’ll get noticed, you are missing an opportunity to leverage LinkedIn, connect with your peers, and grow your personal brand.

Take the time to professionalize and leverage your LinkedIn profile with these 5 tips:

LinkedIn Tip #1: Start strong

The first three sentences of your Summary Section are the most important because when people view your profile, it’s the only part of the summary they see at first glance. To see the rest of your profile demands a click of the Show more tab.

DO state your professional passion right upfront in these three lines.
DON’T repeat your title and company name in the summary opening lines. Put your title and company name in your Headline section.

LinkedIn Tip #2: Add keywords

LinkedIn is a digital platform, and it is keyword-driven. As noted in LinkedIn Tip #1, the first three lines of your Summary Section are critical, so populating these lines with your essential keywords is not easy logistically, nor necessary. At the end of the Summary Section and out of view, add a section called Areas of Expertise and list your areas of expertise using your essential keywords.

By adding a paragraph that includes your keyword-driven areas of expertise towards the bottom of your LinkedIn Summary Section, you achieve the goal of infusing keywords in your summary without cluttering up the precious first few lines.

LinkedIn Pro Tip: When people are searching LinkedIn, LinkedIn tracks what keywords they have used to land on your profile. On the bottom of the Weekly search stats page is a section called Keywords your searchers used. If the terms listed don’t align with your skill set, your keywords are off, and you should review them in your Summary Section.

LinkedIn Tip #3: Differentiate yourself with imagery

Behind your profile photo is a banner space that will accommodate a 1584 x 396 pixel-sized image. This landscape-oriented banner is the perfect opportunity to tell people visually something interesting about you. What’s your favorite city or personal passion? What makes you unique–maybe a hobby or interesting volunteer experience.

DO use the banner to personalize your profile and make it about you.
DON’T use the banner to promote your business.

LinkedIn Tip #4: Use Your Technology

What if you start to build out your LinkedIn profile, and you don’t know what keywords to use? Or maybe you can think of a few keywords, but you would like a few more to flesh out your Summary Section. To build a strong keyword list, here’s a:

LinkedIn Pro Tip: Identify an influencer or colleague on LinkedIn that is in your industry, and mirror his or her keywords. Here’s a quick way to find out what those keywords are:

Select and copy the text in a person’s LinkedIn profile.
Paste the copy into a word cloud application. Word clouds are visual representations of words from the text used to create the cloud. The more often the word is in the text, the bigger and bolder it is in the word cloud. There are many different word cloud generators too. Read this Poll Everywhere article for inspiration.
Choose keywords from the word cloud that are relevant to you, and use them to update your LinkedIn profile.

LinkedIn Tip #5: Highlight your skills

Because LinkedIn is data and keyword driven, make sure to fill in the Skills & Endorsements section of your profile. You can Add a new skill yourself by clicking the pencil icon for the section. You don’t need someone else to endorse you for a skill to add it to your list.

DO make sure all of your key areas of expertise from LinkedIn Tip #2 are listed in the Skills & Endorsements section, so people looking at your profile know your proficiencies. Order them by using the pencil icon to edit.
DON’T forget to remove skills that are no longer relevant from time to time which you can do via the edit feature.

Optimizing your LinkedIn profile is a strategic and essential part of managing your personal online brand. Be mindful of how you update your profile and remember–LinkedIn is a social network driven by data. More broadly, when Linkedin is used with consistency across an organization, the impact of leveraging properly constructed LinkedIn profiles can have a ripple effect and strengthen a company’s brand.

If sorting out LinkedIn is on your management team’s bucket list, contact us to learn more about our LinkedIn training sessions for corporate executive teams.

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Thanks to Oliver Schinkten, staff instructor for LinkedIn, who inspired this post. I recently had the privilege of attending one of his training sessions.

Not Just Boat Poses and Downward Dogs: How A Yoga Studio Leveraged Social Media to Grow Its Brand

5 October 2015May 3, 2017Ann MillsLeave a comment

By Kate Goldberg, guest blogger for Resourceful Business

“Pull over and let me out,” I beg. We are navigating some pretty tricky roads through the Berkshires in a driving rainstorm, but for me, this is the perfect moment – and backdrop – to capture and post my yoga pose-of-the-day.

Semi-dramatic scenes like this were part of my daily routine in July when I participated in a month-long social media campaign run by Powerflow Yoga, a New Jersey yoga outpost with 10 locations. Contestants like myself eagerly awaited the studio’s daily morning post on Instagram with a specific pose to recreate. Students had until midnight every day for the entire month to upload their own interpretation of the pose to Instagram while using the hashtag #SummerofPower, as well as a basic tag to @powerflowyoganj. The reward was a free month of unlimited classes to all who completed the challenge.

In today’s digital environment, many businesses use social media contests as a marketing tool. This approach allows companies to interact with consumers in a more casual, and entertaining way. The content may be unconventional, but if run effectively, social media campaigns like #SummerofPower can be even more successful than traditional marketing strategies at a fraction of the cost.

Social media campaigns like #SummerofPower can be even more successful than traditional marketing strategies at a fraction of the cost.

Here are four digital marketing insights I gained through Powerflow’s challenge that demonstrate the value of an effective social media contest:

1. Social media marketing builds brand loyalty

Throughout the month, I often logged on for the pose-of-the-day before I had even poured my morning coffee! I became extremely passionate and dedicated to the challenge, and I was always looking for unique scenery where someone could take my photo. I did a backbend on a cliff, a crow pose while crossing a footbridge, and a forearm stand overlooking the ocean. It made me feel great about my practice, and motivated me to get back into the studio whenever possible. The buzz surrounding the contest was palpable in classes, and I quickly learned that most people had an experience very similar to my own. This social media challenge was successful at creating a positive vibe, both in-studio and on Instagram, which in turn made everyone feel good about the Powerflow brand.

2. Social media brings exposure to untapped audiences

In a Pew Research Center Social Networking Fact Sheet, researchers found that 74% of online adults use social networking websites. Powerflow capitalized on that trend with their contest. By requiring students to use Instagram in order to participate in the challenge, current customers who were not already following Powerflow now had to do so. In addition, through the several hundred contestants sharing a total of 8,440 photos and tagging the studio each day, they were able to gain exposure to a previously untapped audience. As a result, Powerflow added 700 new followers, and according to VP of Operations, Alison McCue, it was the studio’s “largest and fastest digital growth” since they’ve been online.

“#SummerofPower was also used to promote all of our free outdoor classes…and the response was overwhelming,” said McCue.

3. Social media contests can lever the marketing of other events

There is no doubt that the Summer of Power yoga challenge gave Powerflow a captive audience that used Instagram to track the studio daily. Powerflow Yoga maximized this opportunity with a contest hashtag and leveraging the marketing of other studio events taking place during July. “#SummerofPower was also used to promote all of our free outdoor classes…and the response was overwhelming,” said McCue. Evidently, the social media campaign built some serious in-house momentum, along with the potential for a new client base.

4. Contest prizes incentivize social media sharing

Powerflow did a great job designating a reward that would keep people sharing photos and tagging the studio day after day. A free month of yoga is worth a lot of money to anyone who practices, and the promise of that at the end of the month was certainly enough to keep me going! A business needs to know their patron, and understand what will entice them to follow through with any type of social media contest. Whether it is a free tee shirt, a complimentary membership, or simple bragging rights, different incentives work for different consumers.

Social Media can grow a company’s brand and audience reach

Social media contests are an innovative, cost-effective way of reinforcing a company’s brand and have the potential for exponential reach. Many of the Summer of Power participants purchased packages after completing their free month. Another boon to the Studio, of the 223 people who completed the Powerflow Yoga challenge, 22 gifted their free month and 7 of those gifted purchased some type of package offered at Powerflow Yoga.

A recent marketing Infographic projects that social marketing budgets will double over the next five years. In order to stay ahead of the curve, businesses will need to follow the Powerflow Yoga lead and build and maintain a social media presence using everything from Instagram and Facebook, to Twitter, LinkedIn and beyond. The Summer of Power is a great example of a creative and savvy social media strategy that resonated with an audience and inspired them to come back for more.

Interested in talking social media strategy? Contact us.

Why You Must Fix Your Company’s Social Media Imagery and How

25 October 2014May 4, 2017Ann MillsLeave a comment

When you look at your company Facebook page or Twitter banner, do you feel uninspired? As you scroll down the content, do you see images that convey a totally different feel than what you would like your company’s digital presence to be? Is your content full of free stock images or perhaps lacks images altogether? These problems are just a few signs that it is time to overhaul your company’s social media.

Pictures make a huge difference to the success of your social media strategy. They drive engagement and ultimately referrals back to your website. The problem is that setting up social media accounts is just plain time consuming; and some aspects of it, such as understanding image size requirements, licensing and file types are fairly technical. Social media without great imagery, however, is an opportunity missed. Regardless of the social networks you choose for your business, here’s why you must fix your company’s social media imagery and how.

Images are branding opportunities

Every social media network has different image options and layouts which allow you to customize your company profile page, and these present branding opportunities. There are places for logos, banners and backgrounds, all of which can showcase your brand and great imagery. Pictures can show your company’s products, conjure up thoughts that inspire a consumer to want your services or just be clever and eye-catching. Captivating imagery will reinforce your brand and keep viewers on your page where they can learn more about your company.

For a simple fix, first look up image size requirements for the social network you are using or use a guide such as Hubspot’s Cheat Sheet, and upload custom imagery for your cover photos. Make sure you include your logo in some creative way. If you are not proficient in tools like Photoshop, there are numerous free apps which have social media templates you can use. Hubspot offers a set of PowerPoint templates, so there is no expensive software required, and you can download your finished cover photo once complete.

Images lead to higher engagement

According to The Social Media Examiner, photos have an 87% engagement rate on Facebook, far more than text posts of any length. Similarly, in What Fuels a Tweet’s Engagement, Media Blog shows that retweets are boosted by 35% when there is a photo attached. Tweets with images take up more visual real estate and are more likely to grab someone’s attention. As the old adage goes, “Pictures are worth a thousand words,” and if your posts lack images, your social media engagement will be lacking too.

Images provoke the imagination

Powerful marketing utilizes imagery for a reason. Pictures can tease the imagination and make us dream of going somewhere exotic on vacation, winning the lottery or even looking younger. Imagery is far more likely than text to capture someone’s attention and inspire them to click-through to learn more.

As well, colors can affect the decisions we make. For example, blue is often associated with trust, green with wealth and pink with romance. Colors are emotive, and therefore, another powerful tool that can be used with imagery to spark the imagination.

Images drive sales

Not surprisingly, fantastic product pictures can lead to product sales. According to Jeff Bullas, a prominent social media strategist, “In an ecommerce site, 67% of consumers say that the quality of a product image is ‘very important’ in selecting and purchasing a product.” Social media is a perfect platform to post high quality product images and link them directly back to your ecommerce store.

If you are concerned that a product photo shoot is beyond your budget, purchase a portable box kit which includes photo diffusion panels, color backdrops, a camera mount and lights. They are available for around $50 and will give your pictures a professional look.

Images can tell a story

People love a good story. Pictures and videos can tell your product, service or company story far more effectively than written content. If you are able to convey a compelling story with images, consumers will want to be a part of it. Plus, pictures are more easily consumed and they are universal, so a critical tool for large global brands.

Not surprisingly, short videos have much higher user engagement than longer ones. In “The optimal length for video marketing content? As short as possible,” Yoav Hornung explains that the shorter the video, the more likely that someone will hit PLAY. With a number of free editing apps for smartphones and tablets available, it is easy to create and add some product or service videos to your social media.

Free Image Sources

If you’re sold on the leverage that images bring to social media, but not quite sure how to begin, start by bookmarking a few free image websites. Here are three of my favorites: Unsplash, Jay Mantri and Picography. Another option, Google Images, allows you to specify usage restrictions, so you can search for images on the internet that are free to use or share and in the public domain. Also, keep your smartphone with you, and if you see a photo opportunity, take it! Build your own library of images. Then create social media posts with pictures and begin to monitor what types of photos engage your audience best. To customize the pictures, use a simple photo editing app like Canva.

Spending the time and energy adding pictures to your social media will boost engagement and convey your message in a compelling way. If you still need some assistance getting started, the Resourceful Business can help energize your social media with images and guide your social strategy. Contact us.