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Posting on Instagram Every Day | Resourceful Business

Social Media: What I Learned By Posting on Instagram Every Day

11 September 2019February 3, 2022Ann Mills6 Comments

At the beginning of April, I set myself a challenge.

For one year, I decided to create a daily post on our company’s Instagram page. The post could be an image, video or carousel, but it had to be custom-created and relevant to our industry–digital marketing. To keep it simple, I decided to focus on only one social media platform, Instagram, but I would also add the post to Facebook. I chose 7 pm each evening as the posting time, and I decided there would be absolutely no social ad spend on the post. Any engagement would be strictly organic.

I have been surprised at what has happened since I began posting daily on Instagram, so I thought I would share. My experience confirms what we all have long suspected or perhaps known. When it comes to social media, consistency is of the utmost importance and posting consistently has ripple effects well beyond social media.

With five months of daily Instagram posts under my belt, here is what I learned (so far) by posting on Instagram every day:

1. I found my voice

When you have to put a post together every day, you stop overthinking the creation process. If you know your trade, there are plenty of topics your audience or clients want to learn. I stopped considering whether my post was interesting enough, creative enough, colorful enough. I found my voice when writing copy each day and just presented something simple, interesting and business-related that I was thinking about or had recently read.

2. I learned and learned and learned

One of my favorite concepts, pioneered by Gary Vaynerchuk, is “Document, don’t create.” When you are producing a lot of content–as you will when you post every day–you can’t make it up. If you are a practitioner in social media, you are immersed in your field each day. Documenting something interesting or valuable that you are working on or thinking about is not hard. Trying to come up with a creative post when you don’t have the background to talk about the subject matter is hard.

3. I thought about my business every single day

It may seem counterintuitive to suggest that business owners don’t think about their companies each day. Certainly, they do. However, putting a post together about your industry or field each day is a different type of mindfulness. It’s not about whether you ran your payroll. It’s about a challenge you may be facing, a thought-starter that made you pause or something that keeps you up at night.

4. I put myself in my clients’ shoes

Creating a social media post each day made me really think about our clients. I put myself in their shoes. What would they want to know from me as someone who is involved in social media each day? If we were sitting in a meeting, what questions might they ask me or struggles would they tell me about in their day-to-day business? I tried to think about whether my post for the next day would have practical utility and value-add for them.

5. I learned a new video marketing tool

One tool that I needed to learn which was on my to-do list was wave.video. Canva had always been my go-to tool, and it offers a simple video creation feature. However, given that I had 365 posts ahead of me when I started in April, I decided to tackle wave.video because it would allow me to create more complex videos for our Instagram feed. The versatility of wave.video was such that I was able to cancel the subscription my company had to a paid stock photo library. Wave.video has its own library of images and stock videos. Plus, it has a user-friendly video editing tool. You can even add music to your videos, and now I have learned it and can tick off that box.

6. I discovered interesting people and businesses to follow on social media

I love podcasts. I have a full library of regular programs I listen to about digital marketing. Knowing that I had to create a social media post each day, I became more disciplined at listening to a variety of podcasts. After each one, I would follow the person that was featured or interviewed. I discovered so many talented people in my field and thought leaders. Now, I follow these people and learn via my own social media feed as they put up their posts on their feeds.

7. People started visiting my LinkedIn profile

In following more people in the digital marketing space on social media plus posting more on Instagram, I noticed that many more people started viewing my LinkedIn profile. Not only that, but the seniority of people in the industry that were looking at my LinkedIn profile went up too. So, both the quality and quantity of LinkedIn profile views went up for me.

8. My website blogs received more views

Similar to the increased visibility on LinkedIn, our company blog saw more views and engagement on our website. Now, there are more regular comments on the blogs. Even older blogs seem to be getting some renewed attention. The quality of the comments is interesting too. Posting regularly on Instagram attracted a focused audience, and in fact, exactly the type of audience my company would want.

9. I began to understand the value of Direct Messages (DMs)

It dawned on me that social media opens up an entirely new level of connectivity. In following more people in my field, I had questions on occasion based on a podcast that I had listened to or article I had read. Instagram Direct Messages, or DMs, allow the sender to message another person on Instagram. Think how challenging that task would be before DMs were around. I learned to DM industry thought leaders if I had a question they may be able to answer, and it was neat to be able to ask other professionals for their insights even though we had never met. Plus, they answered me.

10. I learned about Instagram Stories

Across the many social media platforms my company utilizes for clients, I don’t think there is anything quite like Instagram Stories. The sticker feature, which allows you to interact with people who have seen the Story, is unique. Stories have the right balance of authenticity, brevity and creativity. It’s no wonder they are so popular and fun, and I became facile at using them alongside my daily Instagram posts.

So, now you have 10 things I learned while immersed in my personal challenge of posting on my company’s Instagram page (@resourceful_business) every single day. It’s been 5 months, and I still have 7 more months to go. I am sure I will have 10 more things to share when I am over the finish line.

How Growing Your Website Traffic Can Drive In-Store Foot Traffic

22 September 2017July 11, 2022Ann Mills2 Comments

For a business owner, it’s pretty simple, really.

Marketing dollars need to drive foot traffic and sales, otherwise, those dollars are not worth spending. Most managers can actively engage in conversations about growing in-store sales or revenue, but discussions about website traffic don’t come quite as easy. While they certainly recognize there is an interdependence – it can be difficult to connect the dots. The importance of the relationship is not lost on companies like Facebook who only recently rolled out a Store Visits campaign option which attempts to track whether someone visits your store after clicking a Facebook ad.

The reality is that growing your website traffic does drive in-store foot traffic and sales. Websites are powerful digital marketing tools, and aligning what consumers experience on the Internet has become an integral part of the bricks and mortar buying experience.

Here are 5 ways growing your website traffic drives your in-store foot traffic too:

1. Websites inform and underpin purchase decisions

Websites drive product awareness, and a rich online consumer experience can include graphics, animated GIFs, photos, video, and tiers of product information. Not surprisingly, the tremendous growth of video is due in large part to the fact that according to Animoto, seventy-three percent of consumers are more likely to purchase a product or service if they can watch a video about it first. For consumers, websites offer 360-degree product views and the ability to zoom in and look at product detailing. User-friendly websites inform consumers, offer video clips that engage the imagination and ultimately underpin the buying decision.

2. Online maps provide location information

If consumers are in search of a restaurant, retailer or other business, smartphones are a go-to resource for location information. With an integrated Google map on your website, customers can bring up directions, get a view of the surrounding area or locate parking. If you have location tracking activated on your smartphone, search queries will prioritize locations that are physically closest to you when you search. You can use the Internet to check business hours, find the correct address, phone number, and the closest store if there are multiple locations. Restaurants can further integrate the value of their online presence with reservation-booking apps like OpenTable that will provide directions and calendar reminders.

3. Websites push real-time information and propel foot traffic

An L2 Daily article noted, “…73 percent of respondents said they would be likely to go into a store if relevant products were shown as available online — versus just 18 percent who said they would head to a store if a website had no information on inventory availability.” Whether it is inventory levels, holiday, weekly or limited time offers, websites provide a platform to deliver real-time information. Marketing campaigns can utilize push notifications, email campaigns that link back to the online store or eye-catching graphics to get timely, pertinent information to the consumer. If the information is contextualized by consumer interest or location, it can give in-store traffic and sales an added boost.

4. Internet drives search queries

The first step in the process of buying something from a business is finding it, either physically or online, and the number of search queries done on Google alone is stunning. There are approximately 3.5 billion search queries on Google daily, an average of 40,000 queries each second, according to Internet Live Stats. With free business listings on Google My Business, companies provide important location information, photos and even collect online reviews from consumers. Now, there is a new messaging feature, so you can activate chat via the Google My Business portal and allow customers to send you a text. This type of easily accessible, relevant information will continue to propel Internet search queries.

5. Website traffic can grow your mailing list

There is nothing quite as valuable as a potential customer that wants to be on your mailing list. If website visitors opt into your email list via a contact form on your site, they want to hear from you. If you have an e-commerce site, your website will also capture purchase history and contact information. Using this customer information collected by your website, you can grow your mailing list. Email list in hand, a business can target subscribers with timely information about their products or services and drive customer foot traffic back to the store.

From providing timely, contextual information to consumers to facilitating search queries, email lists, and online reviews, marketing savvy websites are no longer nice-to-have, but rather a must-have. Leveraging them will grow your website traffic and drive in-store foot traffic too.

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Not sure if your website is driving foot traffic to your business? Contact us for a site audit; we’d love to help.

5 Simple Reasons Your Business Needs an Explainer Video

27 October 2016May 3, 2017Ann Mills6 Comments

What if –

You could increase your email click-through rate by 200% to 300%,
Raise the understanding of your product or service by 74%, or
Condense 1.8 million words of a marketing pitch into 1 minute?

Chances are, you would – and you wouldn’t be alone.

All three of these statistics describe one of the most important mediums around – video. At Resourceful Business (RB), we’re big fans of explainer videos, in particular, videos that cleverly explain or grow the understanding of your product or service. But, don’t let the animations or whimsical drawings of an explainer fool you. They are powerful marketing tools and much in demand.

Here are 5 simple reasons your business needs an explainer video:

1. Explainers work hand in hand with social media

Businesses continue to push into social media, now an essential part of multi-channel marketing. Facebook and Instagram are two of the most popular social networks with 1.71 billion and 500 million active monthly users, respectively. On Facebook, videos can be up to 120 minutes in length, and Instagram permits videos up to 60 seconds. Explainers often run about one minute, and therefore, work well on both platforms, and the statistics are mind-boggling. The amount of average daily video views doubled on Facebook from 4 billion to 8 billion between April and November 2015.

2. Videos can amplify your brand and define your value proposition

While a host of facts and figures can make a pretty tedious article, sprinkled into an explainer, they promote a company’s strengths and brand in an engaging and memorable way. Key points can be weaved into the script, and in fact, we believe there are four must-haves in an explainer video script:

A clear description of a problem or pain point
The value proposition – how your product or service solves the problem
Differentiators – strengths which make the product, service or approach unique
A compelling call to action

With these components in place, an effective explainer video can get the desired message across, boost a company’s brand recognition, and define the value proposition in a persuasive way.

3. Explainers can simplify difficult concepts

In any industry, there are complicated ideas, workflows, and products. Explainer videos are an excellent way to help customers visualize what a product or service can do. They can take the viewer from point A to point B without large chunks of text, and explainers have an added benefit – people remember video. According to the Online Publishers Association, 80% of Internet users recall a video ad they watched in the last 30 days.

(Image Source)

4. Videos give websites an SEO boost

If your business has a website, no doubt you are familiar with search engine optimization (SEO), strategies used to drive visitors to a site. Explainer videos give websites an SEO boost in several different ways. As examples, video increases the amount of time visitors spend on a website, and it also lowers the bounce rate because people often visit other pages beyond the original landing page. Multimedia content such as video can also be viewed by search engines as indicative of content quality, so varying the types of content on a website to include video is a helpful optimization strategy too.

5. Video has massive audience reach

YouTube has over a billion users, and the demographic profile of video consumption in the US skews towards Millennials and Generation X, peak consumer spending years. The advantage of an explainer video is that in addition to being on a company’s website, it can be hosted on video-sharing sites such as YouTube or Vimeo. Video-sharing sites have an expansive reach and even extend to international audiences; 70% of Vimeo users, for example, are outside of the United States.

So, don’t underestimate explainers; they are powerful digital marketing tools. Video can tell a brand story or simplify complicated concepts, broaden audience reach and help boost website page rank. Engaging to watch, sometimes animated and playful, explainers are nevertheless a must-have digital marketing asset for business.