“It is the HOLIDAY season, and the fun has begun!” To make everything easy for the marketers we bring you the best holiday marketing ideas which include all the social media marketing for holidays that will make customers go buoyant.
The onset of festive season fills everyone with ecstasy and frenzy. People wait for the season, loosen their purse strings and go on a shopping spree. Similarly, the marketers crave for the best holiday marketing ideas which make the users crazy. Shopping, these days is nothing less than a marathon. All the brands – big or small vie for this and compete, trying their best to make the marathon easy for the people by making everything available to the customer in the easiest possible ways. People, being shopaholics, find it difficult to resist their urge to buy the products and easily succumb to the fanfare and influence of advertising campaigns, that is so very enticing, they just can’t be ignored.
HOLIDAY SEASON
Online marketers are gearing themselves up as the two major festivals – the Black Friday and Cyber Monday are just around the corner. The opportune time to grab the chance, become a maniac and make some money.
In this article, you will get to know some of the most alluring and insane ideas to drive a lot of traffic to your website and increase the sales of your brand. Do every possible thing that will bring you profit and propel the customers to buy exclusively from your brand. Who knows, maybe this is your chance to make your mark in the market!!!
After conducting a thorough research, we made a list of marketing ideas – tried and tested, which, if implemented in your business, are sure to usher in immense business and positive result:
LANDING PAGE
If you have an e-commerce business and everything works online for your business, the most important thing in a festive or holiday season is the landing page of your website. Yes, because this is the first thing that a customer will see after logging into your site.
(Source: invescro.com)
First and foremost, having a long and amazing landing page transforms your viewers to customers and your customers to loyal subscribers. Customizing your website according to the viewers and subscribers is very important. Always keep yourself at the place of your customers, view things from their perspective and design everything as how they would want it to be. Check for all those things which a customer would need in this festive season; giveaway all the deals on those products and flash out the items on your landing page.
(Source: invescro.com)
However, when it is the holiday season, the landing page must be very attractive for showcasing all the discounts, coupons etc., being offered on various brands. It is also important to remember that the landing should be decorated or made according to the festive day. For the upcoming holidays, i.e. the Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Christmas, which are knocking at our doors, these ideas will work wonders.
PROMOTIONAL EMAIL MARKETING
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An email consisting of some gift guides to customers is bound to increase the sales by 48%. Woo! With Black Friday and Cyber Monday on the cards, it is a great chance to lure the attention of people to your brand. Unmissable, Isn’t it?
(Source: Pinterest)
To add a boost to the already existing subscribers’ list or the already existing list of trusted customers, go for this technique. Try to create a scenario of urgency among the people and make them feel that if they lose this opportunity, they might not get another one. “Buy it from us…Buy it Now” kind of an email marketing. This will induce them to buy the products immediately from you. In an analogous way, improve the offerings for your brand by creating this feel in the minds of your customers. Whenever they have a look at your offers, they would feel “Oh My God! What an amazing offer. I cannot afford to miss it.”
(Source: Pinterest)
Boosting the subscriber’s list or already the trusted customer list is very important. Always create an urgency among the people and make them feel that if they lose this they will not be able to get another. Show the urgency to people and make them feel they will lose something if they don’t buy from you, in a similar way improve the offerings for your brand through when the customer will take a look at it they will feel “How can they miss it!!!”
(Source: Pinterest)
You can use emails to target various people in various methods. For example, if you run a clothing, cosmetics or footwear business, you can target separately for both genders. Like, you can send discount coupons on cosmetics, clothes, accessories, footwear etc. to women, or provide discounts on brands – exclusively the brands’ women go crazy for. Similarly, for men, you can offer discounts, coupons on products like clothing, footwear etc. If you concentrate specifically according to the customers’ choice, the results will be quick, huge and profitable.
SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGNS
This is a digital world and social media is an indispensable platform that plays a key role in building up the reputation of your site in the digital world. You only need to make judicious, effective and wide use of this platform to reach out to most of the people, thus enhancing your outreach and getting in a lot of positive clients.
80% of the consumers active in the digital media are always on the lookout for the latest trends. They keep a constant eye on the discounts, coupons, etc. is offered. It is quite easy to catch their attention and attract them to your website.
Facebook
(Source: Facebook)
(Source: Facebook)
(Source: Facebook)
The above are just a few of the examples of the Facebook campaigns. These ideas can be adapted to draw the attention of your valuable audience. Video content is another feature that can work magically in Facebook marketing, because people, rather than browsing the contents of the offers, easily get attracted to video content that is much more appealing to the eye. You can personally reach out to your exclusive customers, who, you feel are the main target audience of your business and draw in a lot of business.
Instagram
(Source: Instagram)
(Source: Instagram)
“Pictures speak a thousand words”. The best place to promote your brand using pictures is Instagram. Gif’s, pictures work like magic on Instagram, and Instagram stories are not only easy to upload but help a lot in improving your brand and spread the word. People these days are much fascinated by Instagram stories, which are a rage, especially with the younger generation and a great tool for improving business. Summing up everything we can say that Instagram helps imporving the business.
(Source: Instagram)
Twitter
(Source: Twitter)
(Source: Twitter)
Twitter is an online news and social networking service, wherein people post and interact with one another through messages. These messages or so called “tweets” surface around a lot of topics ranging from entertainment to news, from sports to politics. People browse twitter hashtags to get complete stories on the latest news, events or trends, and even to find people, photos and hashtags on any topic under the sun.
This is the best place where you can flaunt your advertisements for free. Contests and campaigns in twitter reach out to a huge audience base. People’s tweets and retweets reach all over the world and most importantly, you can target the people you want.
Pinterest
(Source: Pinterest)
(Source: Pinterest)
It is another social media platform which has been gaining popularity, with a lot of users turning towards it. According to statistics, the maximum number of users on Pinterest are women and it is also found that before buying anything on the e-commerce site or elsewhere, people visit this social media site and then decide to make a purchase from any of the places.
(Source: Pinterest)
HASHTAGS
Hashtags are very important in social media campaigns. Use hashtags that are related and try to create your own hashtags. The hashtags you create will have a wide outreach. Hashtags help in getting your advertisements and contents across to your viewers and are very popular on Twitter and Instagram. Using hashtags is highly beneficial for the growth of your business.
The popular hashtags that you may use are #BlackFriday #BlackFriday2018 #CyberMonday #Christmas #Christmas2018 #wishlist #HolidayShopping etc. These hashtags are used by a lot of audiences during the holiday season and if used well, can promise to gather a lot many viewers.
HOURLY DEALS
Hourly deals in the e-commerce platform give thumping results. People like to shop a lot during these short periods of time and the rush is huge when offers are made on an hourly basis. For example, you can offer three different deals in three different timeframes. Like, in the first hour, you give deals for electronic goods, then the next hour, you give deals on clothing and then, on the third hour, you give deals on kitchenware. This works like magic and paves way for a drastic increase in sales. The crucial thing to remember here is to offer this facility to your exclusive subscribers. In this way, you can increase your subscribers, as well as your sales. The number of sales is sure to touch the sky.
(Source: express.co.uk)
You should also make sure that you connect with your subscribers at regular intervals of time and make them aware, using emails. Preserving the mails of the subscribers and users comes in very handy here, as, during the holiday season, you can convert these leads to customers and the customers to subscribers. This will immensely help you extend the horizon of your business.
(Source: Dell)
DEALS EXTENSION
Extending the deals past the holidays is a tried and tested method and gives the best results. For example, if your deal is until Cyber Monday, try to extend it for a few more days, not necessary until Christmas. All the same, it can be extended by a day or two. This way, you would extend your reach to customers who have missed the deals and the deadlines and are thus left disappointed. They would only be too glad to grab the second opportunity. Thus, your business is also happy
(Source: Shopify)
Usually, there is always a huge rush during the festive season. If you extend the deals by one to two days, the customers would feel happy and you can get customers post-holidays too. People normally skip a lot of things just because of the festive rush and their busy schedule, if they find deals lasting long, this will add a lot in converting the leads to subscribers or loyal customers.
This will help you maintain the scarcity and exclusivity of your promotions and people will feel the difference and consider you to be unique and exclusive. Give the stress and make it look catchy on the days which you have extended.
(Source: Studio Yoga)
Thus, the customers who have missed the sale and the amazing deals can still shop. This would make the customer feel they haven’t lost the chance to buy the products with the same deals, discounts etc. As mentioned this, will make you the talk of the town and make your brand a known brand in the mindsets of the viewers, and people will remember you for a long time.
VIP DISCOUNTS, GIFT CARDS, AND HOLIDAY COUPONS
VIP Discounts are for those who are your Pro-Subscribers or who make a lot of purchases from your online websites. These are your most prized, valued and loyal customers. Make them feel more special and provide them with extra discounts. This can make them feel much exclusive and, there is an increased chance of such customers buying more than the quantity they had planned in their minds – maybe even double, for personal use or for gifting purposes.
(Source: Canoga Park)
Give such exclusive discounts only to the top-end buyers and not to everyone. This would make them feel special and stick to your brand out of loyalty.
You can even surprise the top buyers with gift cards – virtual, physical or even both. This works like wonder. Not only do you gift them, but instead motivate them to gift to their near and dear ones in the festive season. Make them realize that these are the best gifts which they can gift to their family, friends or anyone special to them in these holidays.
(Source: Fanjoy)
Who says we can’t apply the offline tactic online? Of Course, we can. Other than normal coupon codes for discounts, you can go a step forward and gift a holiday trip. You can make a list of your active customers and encourage them to buy and grab a chance to win holiday tickets. Holiday season and holiday tickets? What more would one want? You can even select your top loyal customers and offer them a free holiday trip, with a written personalized note to make them feel even more special. This might not show an immediate result but would be cherished by them for a long time and thus give you a long-lasting output in the long-run.
KEYNOTES
More than these, the human touch – a peppy greeting, a wish from the heart, and a beautiful smile would go a long way. Don’t forget to greet them or wish them this festive season. It will delight them. Always try to make your customers happy with your creative ideas. By this, not only would you make your customers happy and gay, you yourself will stand to be benefitted and gain profits. Make sure to implement all the ideas wisely.
Happy Holidays!!!!
Enjoy it with loads of Fun, Laughter, Celebrations, Gifts, and Smiles. ?
Twitter hashtags are one the crucial and omnipresent thing used in social media platforms nowadays. These had their humble beginnings from Twitter, but have now become quite trending. People, these days even talk using these hashtags. Every tweet, every post in the current scenario, contains hashtags in it. Hashtags render people more active in social media. These hashtags, may, at times, result in providing the required engagements, but not at all the times.
By using Hashtags, you can organise everything in social media. You will also get an opportunity to know who is talking about similar things as the ones you are talking about. A person should know: when to use hashtags, where to use hashtags, and also the hashtags one should use? Most importantly, how will these hashtags help you leverage your brand and company in the social media.
What are Hashtags?
On Social media, mainly Twitter, when you use “#” and continue writing the words without any spaces, then the phrase is a “hashtag”. When we write a hashtag for a tweet, it gets linked to all the other people who use the same hashtag. One more advantage is that these hashtags also increase the visibility in the masses. It can even increase the conversation to last for a longer period of time.
When you add “#” with any phrase, then the resultant hashtag will act as a link. Whenever someone clicks the hashtag, that person is redirected to the place or people who use the same hashtag. You can see and know the range or people who use the hashtag.
Hashtags are tags that anyone can create. In fact, anyone can use these, but one can’t restrict people from using them. Sometimes, the hashtags can trend organically without including any popular brand. Hashtags grab people’s attention and encourage them to read the content. In this way, you can increase the engagements and viewers for your page in Social media.
Keeping all these things aside one more crucial thing that comes up on everyone’s mind is:
Would I be able to enroll my hashtag?
The answer to this is “YES”. Anyone who has created his/her hashtag can enroll it. The only thing they can’t stop people from using it, unless the hashtag is promoting a brand.
It clearly means, you can register a hashtag as yours but you can’t own it as you do in case of websites created by you.
Why should we use Hashtags?
Hashtags usually ease the process and make your brand visible to the audience. When people search for the hashtag, each and every post which contains the hashtag will pop up all the results. Using the hashtags, you can reach the audience who are the target customers for your business. This makes things easy for you, because people themselves will search for your business, using the hashtags and will find you. Hashtags are also used to create an action because people use it and automatically get attracted towards it.
If your hashtag is relevant enough, then people will be automatically get enticed and spend more time on your social media page. After some time, you can redirect them to your official website. In this way, you can increase the number of engagements. Hashtags are also used by various social media platforms except Twitter. This somehow affects the use of hashtags in social media. It also impacts the use of Hashtags as the amount of information given increases and puts everything on the front page, while you search in the social media.
The Hashtags created give only the distinctive results. For people, who are active in social media, it becomes easy to find all the information for the users in the social media platform. If a hashtag is unique and you combine it with the content, then it makes the whole content unique and makes your post stand out amongst the social media users. The users can also find it useful and valuable and will also copy your hashtag.
How to use Hashtags on Twitter?
The series of hashtags started from Twitter only. Hashtagging has a major impact on your Twitter account, when you start considering the follower count. Using the general and non-specific hashtags doesn’t drive the required traffic. If you use some of the hashtags which are trending and most of the people are using it, then such hashtags will attract a lot of people. Below are a few similar kinds of hashtags:
Hashtagging in twitter encourages people to take part in various activities taking place in the social media platform. Always make sure that all the hashtags that you create and the tweets you tweet in the twitter aim at grabbing more audience, or you can say, followers. This is useful, even if people don’t follow you.
If you have a good content with unique and grabbing hashtags, people will automatically start engaging in your posts. From the next time, people will automatically consider you to be effective and your work to be amazing and they will start following you.
How to do Campaign in Twitter using effective Hashtags?
For any digital marketing company or organisations who are selling their products on the digital platform:
All those companies for whom the digital platform is a business, have to make their presence felt on the online platform. Grabbing the attention of the people is the main motto of any company. The audience, most of the time, gather in social networking because many people stay active on the social media platform and people communicate with each other here. Social media has become a part and parcel of everyone’s everyday life these days.
Coming to the Twitter, it is one if such platform where people are always active. There are a lot of biggies, companies, celebrities, social activists who use this platform, almost incessantly. Most of the people all over the world follow these people. Not only the people, but celebrities are also interested in various activities that go on in the social media platform.
To promote your brand amidst all these is a major challenge and grabbing the attention of the people becomes a bit difficult. To overcome this challenge, companies do campaigns on different occasions. Being a digital marketing agency, we also embarked on digital campaigns. Having a sound knowledge of Twitter and its use, we too started campaigning.
CAMPAIGNS
Independence Day
Our first campaign on Twitter was the Independence day campaign, in which we made a video about giving up plastic flags and use flags made of fabric or paper. Indirectly, we were requesting our viewers to stop using plastic and turn to use biodegradable materials. This was to highlight the adverse effects of our addiction to plastic, resulting in pollution and killing of land animals and marine mammals, the resultant plastic pollution and the interminable loss to the environment.
This was our very first campaign in Twitter. A maiden attempt by us, we just used trending and relevant hashtags. We didn’t use or make our own hashtag. Our main motto was to reach the masses by hook or by crook, and create awareness. It truly was a boon in disguise, and proved a boost for using social media as a viable platform for sharing our ideas.
Our second campaign was on Raksha Bandhan, a festival signifying the bond between a brother and a sister. The festival is characterised by the sister tying a Rakhi or the sacred thread on her brother’s wrist. The brother then takes a vow to protect her lifelong. On this day, we planned a campaign and made a contest with hashtag #IamwithYouSister. The campaign ran like this – the brother and sister had to take a selfie, with the rakhi tied on the brother’s wrist. People had to take the picture and use the hashtags #IamwithYouSister and #RakhiAtSoftscripts. Gift vouchers were given away to randomly selected participants.
The outreach of this campaign was moderate. Here also, we neither created our own hashtags, nor used or framed our own hashtags. The response was not very encouraging.
Our learnings:
It is not necessary that every campaign will grab the audience’s attention. Some campaigns might be a huge success and grab a lot of response, and yet a few might not be upto the expected level. This is a fact that must be accepted with grace. We should never give up and stop, but should move on.
Ganesh Chaturthi
Ganesh Chaturthi or Ganapati Puja, as it is more popularly known, is one of India’s famous festivals, celebrating the birth of Lord Ganesha – the elephant-headed God. Every house is adorned with Ganesha idols made of different materials – Tumeric, mud, or the idols made from metal. We collaborated with another company that produced eco-friendly idols of Lord Ganesha, which could easily dissolve, and started our campaign.
We shot a 30 second video that displayed the idea of stopping usage of Idols made up of POP or Plaster of Paris. Instead, it showcased the usage of Green Ganesha or biodegradable idols. For this video, we received 1,146 organic views and the people not only viewed the video but gave positive response and engaged themselves actively. Hence, we need to upload good and relevant content such that viewers can be easily attracted.
Collaborating and doing campaigns also saves a lot of time. This is always a win-win situation, you can increase the number of users by attracting and retaining your own viewers, and also by gain the users of the collaborated company.
MORE ABOUT THE CAMPAIGN
On the same occasion, we also ran another campaign – selfie with eco-friendly Ganesha. That was when we started using our own hashtag, that is #SelfiewithEcoGanesha. People participated enthusiastically and came up with their unique selfies with biodegradable and environment-friendly idols of Lord Ganesha and posted them, using the #SelfiewithEcoGanesha. It was mandatory to have the selfies only with Eco-friendly Ganesha. Selfies with other forms of idols were not considered. The top 5 contestants were awarded gift vouchers.
The campaign was live on all the 10 days of Ganesh Chaturthi and a lot of people participated with their amazing selfies. They also came up with different ideas on celebrating the eco-friendly Ganesh Chaturthi. The response was overwhelming and we had, by this time, gathered a group of loyal followers and people who follow us regularly. They are still with us!
World Tourism Day
We not only concentrated on the local or national events. In fact, we tried to cover almost everything that was going on in the whole world. We mostly concentrated our campaigns on trending topics. For instance, we conducted a campaign on World Tourism Day too. However, here also, we didn’t create any hashtag of ours. Yet the campaign was successful with a huge crowd of people who visited the campaign. The people who had participated in our earlier campaigns, now became our trusted audience. The campaign was all about sharing their travel pictures.
In this campaign, we gathered a decent number of comments and retweets, where people posted their travel pictures in India with the hashtag #WorldTourismDay.
Our motto was not only to promote our brand. We had the vision of promoting our brand along with the concept of improving the Indian Tourism on a worldwide spectrum. Our efforts bore fruit and we landed up getting thousands of lovely pictures with nature at the backdrop.
Indonesia
We did not restrict our campaigns exclusively to promotion of our brand, instead, we also focussed on the current scenario and the present world conditions. For example, we created awareness, empathy and sympathy in the minds and hearts of people when Tsunami struck Indonesia. This was for a social cause and with the noble idea of helping people in distress.
Gandhi Jayanti
Considered to be a national festival in India, Gandhi Jayanti is celebrated to mark the birth of the father of our nation – Mahatma Gandhi – our great leader who freed India from the shackles of British supremacy. We created a campaign to accomplish his vision of keeping India clean and green. We also supported the Honourable Prime Minister’s vision of #SwacchBharat. Here, we created a Hashtag #WeSupportBapusdream. In the campaign, people had to post their images supporting the #SwaachBharat campaign and how they are contributing their bit in keeping the country clean.
The top participants got away with alluring Gift Coupons, sponsored by us.
Most of our campaigns are aimed towards social causes and also make people aware of the present day scenario in our country.
Indian Air Force Day
We created a campaign on the Indian Air Force Day to support our Sky Warriors and make people realise the fact that it is because of them we are safe and sound inside the comfort of our home and have a happy sleep. After this, we asked people to write 2-3 lines about these real heroes whom they know. We created our own hashtag #HumVayuSenakeSaath, which means “we are with the air force” We also promised to give Gift hampers at the end of the campaign. A huge number of people participated in it, and came up with a lot many stories – told and untold of these real heroes.
Dusshera
This was our latest campaign which ended with the culmination of Dussehra – a 10-day long festival or Navratri, where people worship Goddess Durga. The festival signifies the victory of good over evil. Our idea was to support women and the concept of women empowerment. We created a hashtag #HumNaarikeSaath which means “We support women”.
In this campaign, we encouraged people to tag their friends and family, whomever they wanted to gift this festive season. For this, they had to use the hashtag #UtsavKaMausam which was created by us. At the end of the festival, some randomly chosen participants were given Gift Coupons.
KEY THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND
Always giveaway the prizes and gifts which were promised in the campaign. Never ever try to bluff people, because if you do so, people will not only feel cheated but would lose their trust in you and eventually leave. Your campaigns will be considered fake and you will lose your integrity.
Conduct the campaigns according to your budget and limit yourself till the point your budget permits you. It will only be stupidity if you promise something and struggle hard to fulfil it.
Have some guidelines for each and every campaign. Ask the contestants to follow the guidelines and make everything fair for the audience. This will reduce your stress levels, while selecting the deserving persons as winners of the campaigns.
These are some of the things that, if meticulously followed, will yield good results and positive outcomes, in the twitter campaigns.
This article throws light on how hashtags help promote twitter campaigns.
Hope this gives you a good idea about campaigning on social media.
If used properly, Instagram Story can be a powerful weapon in the advertising world, but if not, all your efforts can go down the drain with a single tap. It takes a user less than a second to tap on your story, which means, if you don’t get their attention instantaneously, your story and all the resources you’ve invested in it, will be pointless. Here are a few tips which will help reduce the bounce rate on Instagram stories.
The plus side of Stories is the possibility of getting a whole new audience, boosting your brand awareness, and ultimately improving your business. However, this might not be as easy as it sounds. It’s not like, you can just upload Stories or run Story Ads without any guidelines or, without much effort and expect great results.
Instagram Stories aren’t magical
Even so, Stories can work magic for your business, but only if done right. You can’t overdo it, but you can’t slack on it as well. There is a fine line which you have to delicately balance if you want people to really see your Story and to see it through till the end. Today, let’s see where exactly that line is.
Run Story Ads
The first thing here is to run Story Ads. Even though, you can simply use your business profile to upload Stories, ads are a great way to build a stronger follower base and drastically upgrade your business.
At first, Story Ads were reserved for huge brands like Nike, but have quickly become available to everyone who wants to run them. The reason why Story Ads are gaining such a huge popularity, is that News Feed and other digital channels have become polluted with a lot of clutter – an overdose of information that sometimes makes you miss things, without even realizing. On the other hand, advertisers are exceptionally slow in adopting Story Ads as a method of advertising, which means, more space, and the audience is left for you.
Furthermore, one-third of the most viewed Stories come from businesses and one in five Stories get a direct message from the viewer. If you top that off with a bit of creativity in your ads, you can engage people in new and interesting ways for as long as you can stay creative.
Add a Call-to-action
If you want your viewers to actually do something after watching your ad, you must add a call-to-action. Otherwise, they will be amazed but confused, left there wondering what was the point of it all and what they are expected to do next.
A call-to-action is supposed to direct your followers and it should tell them exactly what they need to do next, which is why it has to be clear and strong. There should be only one call-to-action, so your viewers won’t be confused. It should create a sense of urgency and even a fear of missing out on whatever it is that your business has to offer.
There is nothing more tempting than a limited period offer, an exclusive deal or a one-time opportunity, and by offering any of these in your ads, you can expect viewers to turn out to be visitors, and in many cases, even customers. Of course, you can’t place call-to-action anywhere you want. Even for your Instagram stories, you have to measure your metrics from other Social Media channels, and think about efficient content strategy and coordinate with your digital marketing strategy.
As one of the most powerful tools, you can use this in your Instagram Story Ads. call-to-action is a must if you want your ads to pay off.
Experiment With Video
Before choosing video as your ad format, you have to think about whether or not it is the best format for that particular idea. This is especially difficult to do right because there is not a single rule that dictates when you should use video, when you should use a carousel and when you should use a simple picture. One format is not necessarily better than the other, but for a specific case, a particular format might provide better results. As usual, you will have to test all of these options or read articles about making content mistakes to avoid making beginner’s mistakes.
A video is not necessarily better than pictures, but in some cases, it simply is a better way to go. to go. Videos can be much more creative than a single, still picture and you can engage your audience in better ways than pictures could ever do. You can fully express your creativity and find new ways to interact with viewers, with every single ad.
Videos in your ads are a great way to express your creativity and to show your viewers what your brand is all about. Even so, getting a video to work in your favor can be a tricky task, which is why there are professionals out there, specializing in this kind of work. You should always get a professional help, if you choose to do a video ad. So, before embarking on this endeavor, do your research, find helpful reviews or ranking lists, and simply choose from the listed agencies the one that you think will fit your business the most.
Interact With Your Audience
There is no better way of getting someone’s attention than to make them interact with your ad and what better way to make someone interact with your ad than to ask them for their opinion.
People love to share their opinions and they love to bask in the thought that their opinion matters. Moreover, you can use that to find out what your followers want, what kind of content they would like to see in the future, and even what they think about your brand.
Usually, you can get better information if you let viewers pick between two options than if you simply ask a ‘yes-no’ question. You can always ask them if they going to be interested in the next theme of your stories, and announce to them about these.
Stay In Harmony With Brand’s Aesthetics
Your image is the most recognizable feature of your company, when it comes to your followers. They know your logo, they recognize your style and they can identify your product from afar. This means that they have to recognize your ad as well as connect the story to your brand seamlessly, and all this in a fraction of a second.
Not only does your Story Ad have to fit perfectly in your overall Instagram aesthetics, but it also has to fit in your overall company aesthetics, i.e. your image. For example, you can’t just polish and decorate the hell out of your ad, only because you’ve seen it work elsewhere and if that doesn’t look like you. Simply put, you have to adjust your ad to what your viewers are expecting to see from you. You can do that just by using colors of your brand in your stories, or the same font. For now, there are just a few fonts you can use in Instagram stories, but you can customize images that you want to upload before using Instagram. Use Adobe Illustrator or
Photoshop to polish your stories, and then add some gifs or pools to make them more interactive.
All in all, it’s all about keeping your audience engage by discover the fun and interactive ways to reach out to them. Even though a few are listed above, new ways of utilizing Instagram Story Ads are invented daily, which means that it’s just up to you and your creativity to make things work.
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Do you, want to create an Instagram Story to give a kick start or boost your business? Are you curious to know how Instagram Algorithms work?
Well! Here, you end up with a full guide which will help in every essential aspect for a successful Instagram Story for business. Now, the time has come for people to think about Instagram, and using Instagram stories for the purpose of business.
Instagram Stories are not just random stories developed for fun and adding creative stuff. These stories should be efficiently used for promoting a business brand, engaging people, grabbing their attention towards your brand. It is even helpful in impacting the sales for any e-commerce site.
WHAT IS AN INSTAGRAM STORY?
This is one of the features offered by Instagram, in which people can upload images, videos, gifs etc., that appears as a slideshow. This slideshow disappears 24 hours after the images get posted. You can even say that the Instagram story is a brand new and authentic way of grabbing customer attention. There is no denying that the regular feed is also very good and amazing for creating wonderful and long-lasting or authentic posts.
Stories create a feeling of togetherness and intimacy, the reason why people love Instagram stories. They bring in enormous results while you have some events going on, or some business functions s coming up. Taking a video of your viewers or behind the scenes or about the brand or the event going on is always a great idea. Showing these behind the scenes sneak-peeks always help to connect with your audience. This attaches the feel of importance to them and they feel distinct and enjoy the sense of exclusivity. The audience also get a chance to know who you are as a person, in your personal lives, apart from on-screen and projected images.
Why should we opt for Instagram stories to promote business?
This new feature of Instagram got updated last year in August. In fact, almost all the people using the Instagram, were shocked when they found this feature. How did Instagram efficiently copy it from SnapChat? This was the thought that first popped-up in everyone’s minds. Whereas, people were under the impression that it was just a trick to steal the market value of the SnapChat. Instagram made its presence felt in the market much more than the then prevailing SnapChat.
While looking at the above Statistic, we can sum up that Instagram is not just a copy of SnapChat. In fact, it is a much better version of SnapChat. This transient tool for posting photos, videos and gifs can be effectively used for any business purpose. It maintains the customer and brand relationship , ithout ruining the joy and enjoyment of people.
Instagram stories a wide opportunity that contains the themes and tools which never bore the people. The channels make it interesting both for business segment and the common users. It equally supports both the groups. You can use Instagram in myriad ways, for enjoyment, for its light-hearted content, or for any business purpose viz. branding of the business, e-commerce sales etc.. All this, and more, is being done with with the help of Instagram Stories.
How to use Instagram Story For Business?
You can get a lot of features in the Instagram story. These useful features, help compile your posts, and these enable you to generate the content in a hassle free manner in the editor. Not only, this you can upload the data that is present somewhere else too.
Steps to use Instagram Story:
When you open your profile, click on the camera icon or the ‘+’ symbol present of the profile picture. It can be clearly seen, when seen in the option “Your Story”.
You just have to tap the ‘+’ symbol, it will directly take you to your gallery. From here, you can share photos, videos, gifs – anything you want to share. You only have to choose it from the list of your gallery.
It will even show an option of editing where you can choose different editing features.
Post editing, you can post your story but here also you will get two options, one is public, which means you can showcase it to all the people. The other option is the private mode, which means your story can be shared with only a limited number of people whom you have selected.
This is much different from the profile picture or the pictures that you upload. It doesn’t have the standard Instagram box, where you can post the stories which are vertically shot. But in this, you can store miscellaneous images, videos or photos, but the mandate is it should be having 1080 pixels width and 1920 pixels height.
After this, in March 2018, Instagram updated its version and released in the market. With the new upgrade, one could pinch the mobile screen and resize the photos, videos etc according to one’s choice.
Keeping aside posting of photos and videos, there are a lot many features present in the Instagram.
Extra features of Instagram
Typing Post: The posts that are typing based. While you can also give different backgrounds, that may be colourful or designed per your taste.
Boomerang: These are looping videos which last for 1 second.
Instagram Live: This is the live streaming on Instagram. It is the in-moment real-time streaming. Here, your viewers can comment on your posts instantaneously, when the streaming starts, and you can answer them in the videos. You can, later post the live stream as your story.
Hands-free recording: Without having to hold the record button, you can record the video hands-free.
Super Zoom: From far away ,you can zoom in easily on the focused object. There are various humourous filters which you can use like Paparazzi or Suprise.
Focus: You can find one of the most required filters that is Portrait. Using this, you can take the picture in which the main picture gets focused and the rest of the picture stands blurred out. The subject focuses only on your face and nothing else.
Rewind: This means playing everything in a backward motion.
Tools for Instagram content
Using these all options is very helpful in creating content that is not only catchy, but adds to the fun. There are some tools available on the online platform like Canva which helps in creating these wonderful cards for different social media platforms.
Source: Canva
There are a plethora of ready made templates to choose from. All you have to do is select a template of your choice and edit at your end. After editing, you can post it on Instagram. This serves as an introduction, or call to action or acts as a single slide in the story. All these features make the viewer feel exclusive and special. They look and feel unique.
You can wear your thinking hat and get as creative as you want in the Instagram Stories. You can even experiment a lot of things by using all these creative ideas in the Instagram story and bring life to your Instagram Campaign. Combine all the texts, pictures, videos, boomerang, doodles etc to attract people’s attention.
How do the Instagram Algorithm works?
Instagram had a huge hype during the early years of its release and during the Instagram story upgrading. After this, the hype of Instagram gradually decreased. The exposure, even in the Instagram Field has been decreasing. Statistics now say that only 10% of the people show interest in brand promotion using Instagram stories.
This condition is very frustrating as people are keen on viewing the posts uploaded by their family, friends, loved ones, celebrities etc. This badly impacts on the Business people, as their aim is to reach a lot of people. Just because of the reducing exposure, the business people are getting badly impacted.
As we all know on Instagram, the algorithm basically depends on engagement and we get that from the Likes, Shares, Comments, Direct Message, posting different things like Videos, pictures, Gifs etc. All those ways which help in interacting with the people and engaging the people on your Instagram page.
When the news of the New Instagram Algorithm came up, it said:
Order of the Videos and the photos in the Instagram Profile will depend on your likelihood. Like the interesting option will come up first. It will also check the connection with the person and the timeline of the post.
Below are some of the tips and tricks that will help in engaging people in the Instagram story.
POST MORE INSTAGRAM STORY
Posting Instagram stories is one way of engaging and grabbing the attention of people. Instagram Stories have dominated the 2018 digital strategy and has become a crucial part in a successful Instagram campaign building. It has more than 300 Million active users in Instagram and looks for good Instagram Story which is twice as popular as snapchat.
This Instagram Algorithm keeps changing with the time and creates an impact on user engagement. Whereas, a number of users spend their time on Instagram Stories, not checking the feeds. The algorithm checks all the details present in your account -all the interactions, Instagram stories, messages sent etc.
More the people interact with your Instagram stories, the more frequently the feeds will show up on the user’s profile.
At times, the Instagram Algorithm even rewards you for interacting with more number of people. Not only is it good to note that the posts with higher engagement get priority in Instagram, but also the fact that It checks everything and can even restrict the users based on their engagement with the people.
Year by year, the number people getting engaged in Instagram is increasing and it becomes very important for the businesses to stay on the top. Especially in the first hour of posting, it reaches the people, else the post visibility may gradually decrease.
FIND THE ACTIVE AUDIENCE AND THEIR ACTIVE TIME
Know the best time to post things, because that is when you will have a huge crowd on the platform. To overcome these things, there are a lot of tools available which will help you in the Instagram Marketing Campaign like iFluenz, Instabrand, AspireIQ
Source: Instabrand
Source: AspireIQ
Source: iFluenz
All these tools calculate the time and select the best time when the users are online. These indicate the right time to post something on the social media. These tools are very helpful.
Similar to Facebook, Instagram also checks the time that a user takes to interact with the people. Else, we can say, it calculates the time taken by the marketers to interact with the users. It determines the popularity of a brand by checking the time spent by a user in viewing a post.
ATTRACTIVE INSTAGRAM CAPTIONS ATTRACT PEOPLE
Having a great and attractive Instagram caption is what makes the people stay in your post and help you beat the Instagram Algorithm. If the cation that you give is more engaging, then there is a 100% chance that people will click on the more option.
That extra second which people spend on your post has the potential to break or make your Instagram Campaign successful, so it is always recommended to spend time on making of the Caption. The above-mentioned tools will also help in writing captions.
My suggestion is to use the human brain because it is more creative. Write the caption for the post. You can even write the captions manually before posting anything as it will save you time.
Instead of opting for Caption, you can even go for the Videos because people find it more interactive and connecting. And people spend a lot of time watching a Video.
Instagram Algorithm rates you on the basis of Hashtags used. This is important, because the hashtags play a crucial role in improving the people engagement. The Instagram algorithm always bears in mind the hashtag and gives more relevance to the hashtags.
Recently, Instagram has removed the hashtags following. Instead, it came up with another aspect in which,
People can mark your content or the hashtags that they don’t want to see in future. They will have an option that they can opt which says “Don’t show for this Hashtags”.
All this throws a challenge to the marketers and makes the work difficult. So, this indicates that the Instagram marketing should be carefully done.
IMPROVE INSTAGRAM STRATEGY
People caption more hashtags then just giving normal sentences. The tools mentioned above makes it easier for you. As it adds the Instagram posts all by itself and you just ave to add the scheduled Instagram post. Rest everything is taken care of by the bot. There are a lot of templates available with mostly used hashtags. Just select the hashtag that suit your content and post it.
These are the effective hashtags that should be according to the campaign you are running. We can even consider another example given below:
The hashtags should vary according to the campaigns used. Instagram rules keep on changing and the main aim of it is to improve the engagement for a certain post. Whereas, the Instagram Algorithm is present to check such things only.
Now Instagram is considering putting an end to the automated messages like the “Nice Pic” “great” “Very good” etc. All these feed come from an automated bot.
Content marketing strategy and SEO strategy are two different things. People usually think SEO is all about content marketing or developing a content marketing strategy. Which is not true it has a distinctive difference in between. The words such as “Versus” or “are Same” can be easily found while connecting both SEO and Content marketing. While the digital marketers and writers are the right person’s who can say what is SEO? And what is a content marketing strategy?
The public has been mistaken and is in misconception- thinking that “Content marketing is taking over the SEO”. Because content marketing and SEO work hand in hand or together. To bring the required results they can overlap on each other but are not completely taken over by one another. There is no way SEO can be taken over by Content Marketing. As SEO it that gimmick which brings the readers to the Blog or website to read the content.
For a smart digital marketing campaign, you should have either of the specialists. A smart digital marketer will always keep these 2 key role players in the organisation. Both the content marketer and the SEO specialist are the gems in their work and whose main focus is the marketing and branding of the company. Filling up both the areas is what a marketer does. Because they play a vital role in the branding of the company. An effective and ethical Search Engine Optimisation can’t happen without the best and optimized content marketing strategy.
WHAT IS SEO?
Search Engine Optimisation or SEO is the process of improving the traffic quantity to a website. Increasing the visibility of the website in the web search in an organic way. That will increase both the quantity and quality of the traffic.
In general, we can say that while someone will search for something that is about your business. The number of times your website comes in the search listing, that much more users will be engaging to your website. Later, on these people turn into trusted customers. All these things are being done by the SEO.
The 3 main works of SEO:
Attracting the quality traffic in the whole world. Quality traffic here means attracting those customers who more interested in your business mostly the products that you sell. Instead of attracting random people who don’t even know what your business is all about.
Gathering more amount of traffic. When people start visiting your website and start admiring your website by clicking on the search engine results page, more traffic comes up.
Getting more organic results. For generating more SERP results ADs are very important. Organic traffic is a way in which people come to your website organically without any requirement of payment.
WHAT IS CONTENT MARKETING?
Content marketing is the type of marketing strategy in which content is being developed, written, published about a particular topic to drag the attention of a particularly interested group of people. The top marketers even symbolize content in the phrase “Content is king” for any marketing strategy.
Marketers have to do a lot of things to improve their brand value in the market. Starting from talking with customers, meeting the clients, connecting to readers it includes everything. Content is the important thing that convinces them to chose the company and its business. Because the first and the foremost thing a person does before trusting a company is checking its website and knowing what the company does. Nothing else can define it well than an effective content.
The things that should be given emphasis are:
Grab the customer attention and create the leads.
Increase the number of customers gradually.
Generate the online sales and try to increase it.
Create the brand awareness in the customers.
Try to engage the users in an online community.
So in simple words, we can say content is something that helps in increasing the brand name of the company and meeting all the targets of the organisations. This involves various things like the accession of the present customers, retention of the existing customers, and making more people aware of the business that you do.
CONTENT MARKETING AND SEO OVERLAP
The content is being created to support the objectives of the organisation. If you are doing it in a true and wise way then the optimisation of your content is one of the major content marketing strategies that can be reached with the help of SEO.
They even have the same kind of mechanism and the sole aim of this is to attract a lot of audience in various ways and accomplish the company goals.
OPTIMISATION OF KEYWORDS IN CONTENT
Optimising the keywords while a content is being published. Here the mediator is the content because whenever you write a new article that means a new keyword that Google has to check. A number of keywords mean that easier you can attract your target audience.
GOOGLE INDEXING OF CONTENT
The number of pages in the content will increase the ranking in the Google listing. The increase in the number of content means an increase in the Google Search Engine listing. Giving Google more chances to do indexing. Whereas quantity is not enough, targeting the potential audience and identifying the relevant keywords also has the same importance.
CONTENT AUTHORITY BY SEO
You can easily increase the content authority if you have an effective and attractive content. It even helps in increasing the Google search rankings. Descriptive content that contains the inbound links, keywords, infographics etc. Increase the user experience which will automatically increase the Google search metrics.
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CONTENT MARKETING AND SEO
SEO attracts the users by making them see their brand in the search engine. Later helping the company to climb up on the Google search ranking list. Whereas by using the content marketing strategy users get the direct appeal that means direct targeting of the users. Which requires backing up by the SEO.
The primary focus of the SEO is search engine visibility and ranking. Whereas, the main focus of the content marketing is to give the best customer experience.
Below are some important differences that are present between Content marketing and SEO.
VIEWER EXPERIENCE
The viewer experience doesn’t affect the search engine rankings but the optimising the reader experience is the domain preference of Content Marketing. If you are fabricating a content with the users in your mind and without caring what the search engine wants from you. This is where you became a full content developer leaning completely on the content which is also known as the passive content making.
TECHNICAL SEO
This is the area of the SEO which doesn’t require developing a content marketing strategy. It just includes the things like optimisation of the website according to the device used like mobile phone, desktop, tablet etc. This also helps in improving the website speed, the creation of the sitemap of XML and submitting it, doing the site navigation by optimising and organising everything. It also does some other works like finding the crawl errors and removing the duplicate content. It involves a little content part for a certain area only. But the role of content marketing strategy is inactive here.
CONVERSIONS
SEO can only generate the effective traffic to one’s website but can’t secure those conversions immediately. On the other hand, the content marketing strategy does a lot more than this. Because once a lead comes to your site content has all the potential to convert that lead to an effective customer. Just making them learn what your company is about? and what you actually do? Which actually motivates them to buy something from your brand.
INBOUND LINKS
Content marketing can target the links manually, we can’t control it. Whereas, if you start taking the natural links to do an effective link building by your self. Whereas, this work the SEO should do. The referral traffic should generate the inbound link building. But the important source that involved here to generate links is the Authority- that very essential to rank high in Google search engine rankings.
Content Marketing Strategy is not just for only one field “software”. It is for every business person who has his own business. Making his business active on the internet platform has become mandatory. Whereas, developing a content marketings strategy that is the same in every sector is not the thing. Various sectors have their different and own marketing strategy. Below are some of the important sectors and the content marketing strategy to be followed.
Content marketing strategy for B2B
B2B content marketing Strategy means that you not targeting the common people to visit your business. Instead, you are targeting those who have their own business. These are the people just like you and are the decision makers of their own company. To build up their company they must have read a lot and are active on the online platform. These people are tired of the robotic writing and are looking for something new and good.
It is always recommended to impress them with something which is unique, maybe in a humorous way rather than sticking to the old methods of using complicated vocabulary and professional language. Try to tell the things like storytelling but with added humour in it.
When it comes to B2B marketing email is the most effective way. A business person relies upon and uses emails more. The survey even says that in B2B marketing- proceeding through email marketing is the best thing that you can do. Even 53% of the b2b marketers claim that email is the most reliable and can help generate more leads.
Having a personalised email marketing list for every business person and using it to segment the list is the key to win in email marketing strategy. Creating the specific groups and introducing new and customised things to impress the B2B people. Target different people in different roles this helps you generate leads covering all the roles.
Content marketing strategy for e-commerce
Having a great content is the valuable thing in the internet platform. When it comes to e-commerce and selling products on the online platform content is vital for e-commerce. Whereas, content alone can’t drive a lot of people to your website. If you think that you can drive a lot of customer’s- yes! you can but just the passive customers to your account.
If you want all the active customers to your site then it means using the essential tools, and communities to drive the targeted customer’s. Try to create the interactive and exciting experience for your viewers. You should follow the things like:
Use the blogs on the website to write about the different products and its usability. Because Blogs are the thing in which you can write about your product in details. Not only about the product it even increases the pages while Google indexing and this helps in improving the search ranking.
Checking the reviews is a great quality of an e-commerce person: Checking the reviews which are bad and trying to overcome it. Always put yourself in the shoes of the public and let the public judge you. It becomes very important to respond to the customers’ feedbacks which can be both positive and negative. Because this action will show that you are interested in their queries.
Make everything easy for the customers by giving them the right guidelines at the right time.
Content marketing strategy for real estate
Content for the real estate marketing doesn’t just require the words. It requires all types of the content that is: Written content, Visual content and Video content.
In the written content you should add all the things about your business like from where you have started? The story of your brand. What made you so passionate about the real estate business? Not just that you can also add the client list and the projects that you have accomplished including the detailed customer experience.
Keep your partner’s list and their story behind, the challenges they faced to come to this point. Success stories always impress the viewers. Apart from this add the geographical location and describe the services and facilities that you provide. Share the trending industry news and day-to-day varying price in the real estate business.
While going to visual content- infographic is the crucial thing. Highlight you recent survey by using the infographics. Property photos that contain the business statistics and staff photos and their area of specialisation. Slideshows of your projects done and market information and marketing guides.
Video content is the best for the real estate business people. You can open your own Youtube channel where you can have different video content. Can add the videos of the homes that you have build like the “virtual tour of home” which attracts the people. Interview with the happy clients and staff member attract the audience attention.
Below is the search matrix for developing a content marketing strategy for different sectors
(source: Smart Insight)
Content marketing strategy for restaurants
Content marketing done rightly for the restaurants will drive customer’s- if we provide them with the things that they like and value, which people will remember for a long time. By developing a content marketing strategy you can develop a relationship with your guests and you will become one of the trusted resources. This helps your restaurant to become just more than a logo and some coupons in the mail.
Start writing a blog it helps in empowering your reputation on the market. It creates a pathway for the traffic to come to your business. Write about your self how you started, your success story. Not only concentrate on the business, news, upcoming events etc. In the blogs sometimes try to share the content like the recipe of secret sauce, new recipes and secret ingredients that keep the people stuck to your website.
Try to create the cooking videos with new recipes. Which is not much long just 30-60 seconds and every time with new recipes and tips and tricks. Getting personal with the people is the key.
Content marketing strategy for Healthcare
Content marketing in the healthcare industry includes different type of contents to be written just in one Genre. Whereas, most of the healthcare companies don’t know where to start from, how to start and what should they write about.
The first and foremost thing is having the web pages that are data-driven. Being a healthcare service means the hospitals and hospital usually have all the data of the patients and their health history. You can use this data in your blogs to support the claims and help the people understand it better. Because people will understand easily if the content is being related to a case study.
As it can be said:
“If a content has the potential to drive thousands of audience then an Infographic has the potential to drive Millions”
These visuals give a rich and an attractive look. It delivers a lot of information in just an image in an easy way. Not just the infographics even the video contents these two things support the written content a lot. Videos are very engaging and attract a lot of people.
These steps look very complicated but while executing it is very simple and easy.
(source: Smart Insight)
