Abilene, Texas-based Jemully Media has been named as the preferred marketing partner of Dallas-based Perspectivity International, marking the latest growth step for Jemully, which has booked considerable new business in the third quarter 2017.
Jemully is already supplying digital marketing services for selected clients of Perspectivity, and has added Perspectivity itself to Jemully’s roster of clients. Jemully has added five new clients in the past two months.Continue reading
If you had told marketers and social media managers in 2010 that the newly-released Instagram app would be one of the fastest growing platforms in 2017, they might have laughed. We’ve come a long way from the days of over-saturated filters and duck faces. But the numbers don’t lie: 700 million monthly users, 300 million daily users, and 8 million businesses with profiles exist as of this writing (The Motley Fool). Top accounts on Instagram are boasting an average engagement rate of 4.21% as opposed to the 0.07% of Facebook and 0.03% of Twitter (Forrester).
Despite all that, only 36% of marketers are on Instagram versus the 93% that are on Facebook. This is a unique advantage of Instagram in itself. While others are focusing their energy on platforms that are providing little engagement, you can be on the front lines of the one that can potentially net you 60-times more likes and comments, without having to fight as hard for the extra attention.
Clearly, Instagram is the place to be in 2017. And with the most recent Instagram updates over the last few months, promoting your brand has never been easier. Curious about what these new features can do for your profile? Below are three ways you can take advantage of Instagram’s new tools to grow your business.
With the rollout of the new “Stories” feature on both Instagram and Facebook, businesses will have a new way to get their ads in front of potential customers. On Instagram, users see Stories from their friends at the top of their feed. In between pictures of their cousin eating brunch and a distant acquaintance on vacation, video ads might pop up as if they are part of the Story. This makes it super easy for brands to reach users they might have otherwise missed by simply entering the scrollable feed.
Story ads are easy to manage in Facebook’s Ad Manager or Power Editor. Like Facebook ads, they can be specifically targeted to a region, demographic, or interest. By selecting “Instagram Stories” as the location for the ad placement, some of those 300 million daily Instagram users will be seeing your ad in no time!
What once was a safe place for shopaholics has now become a minefield. Instagram will now allow retailers to sell their products directly in their posts through shoppable tags. Much like the tags that can be used to identify Instagram users, these shoppable tags offer information such as the product name and price. Users can then click through to the product’s landing page, where they can make a purchase.
This tool revolutionizes Instagram for retailers. Rather than the clunky “click on the link in our bio” call-to-action, brands can make sales with each and every post. While this feature has only been rolled out to larger brands as a testing phase, we anticipate that this will be a platform-wide update before too long.
The final Instagram update is one that bloggers, retailers, and just about everyone can benefit from. Users will now be able to create Stories that link to webpages with a single swipe. This means that Instagram can now be used to drive substantial traffic to your website, a feature it’s really never had before. While previously the only spot for a link was in the user’s profile, this new update (along with the shoppable tags above) will allow for potentially unlimited links using the Stories feature. This is a big deal for businesses, and while it’s currently only available for accounts with ten-thousand or more followers, we can’t wait for it to be rolled out for accounts of all sizes.
At this point, it looks like Instagram is here to stay. Or, rather, it’s here to stay AND force everyone else to leave. If you haven’t hopped on the Instagram train yet, now is the perfect time to do so. Armed with these tricks and tools, you can make your business unstoppable.
Amidst the low quality selfies, hilarious pet videos, and mouth-watering cooking tutorials, social media users in recent years have found a new kind of post on their feeds. This post, if done right, simultaneously advertises and entertains, capturing the user’s brand loyalty as well as their spending dollars. Brands, realizing the opportunities that come with social media, have pounced on the chance to put their products or services directly in their customers’ news feeds. With 78% of consumers relying on companies’ social media posts to help them make purchasing decisions, according to a study done by Forbes, it’s not all that surprising that people would choose to mix their social sharing and shopping research on the same platform. But what compels a user to follow a brand in the first place?
As much as we’d like to think that consumers are following our page for a good laugh or the informational content we spend hours producing, it turns out there is a little more to it. Before they can become a loyal and engaged user, there has to be good reason for them to click the “follow” button. A whopping 56% of social media users surveyed by MarketingSherpa said they originally followed brands to see promotions or coupons regularly. In a similar vein, 44% said they followed to enter a contest, get a discount, or win a gift card. Evidently, many are most interested in what companies have to offer them.
Incentives really serve two purposes. First, they attract new users to follow your account, buy your products, or (ideally) both. Second, they keep loyal customers coming back again and again – an equally important task. Discounts or promotions serve as reminders to consumers, positioning your brand at the top of their minds.
According to the same Marketing Sherpa survey, less than half of all consumers (38%) follow a brand for their informational content. Those how-to posts, reviews, and tip sheets you slave over? Apparently they’re not as alluring as the twenty-percent-off coupon that takes you a few minutes to throw together. Even fewer (31%) follow for entertaining content such as funny videos, memes, or bits of pop culture. But don’t let this discourage you, as informational or entertaining content serves its own purpose in attracting and keeping the right customer. As we discussed in our 80/20 Rule of Content Marketing post, all of your social media efforts are in vain if you are not aware of and catering to your target market. While a discount will get you a new follower, your content is ultimately what will determine whether or not they stick around after the promotion is over.
Good content is what turns your brand’s account from a bulletin board of coupons to a social page where users can stay engaged.
In the delicious and complicated soup that is social media marketing, it’s important to remember that each ingredient gives your social platform a different flavor. Pushing out too many incentives can make your brand seem impersonal, but too much informational or entertaining content might allow customers to forget that you have something to sell them. Striking a balance between the two gives you the best chance of accomplishing the dual goal of attracting a large following and keeping them coming back for more.
Before a social media campaign’s frequency, quality, and creative services can be determined, a strategy must be developed. How detailed should your social media strategy be? Social media strategies begin with determining the specific target audience, selecting the right platforms to reach that audience, and then defining the goals, how you will measure success, and actions are considered a conversion. These aspects can be as general or as highly detailed as you see fit, but they must both be in place to effectively determine your social media costs. In our experience, we believe the more detail in your strategy and plan, the better your execution will be, and the better you can control the social media costs in the future.
With marketers continuously looking for new ways to leverage their content marketing strategies, all developments in publishing platforms must be evaluated. Facebook is a social media giant and an influential marketing platform. Despite its ubiquity, Facebook offers features that are undervalued for content marketing purposes. Those features? Facebook Notes and Facebook Instant Articles. First, let’s very simply define each tool. Then, we will explore the highlights with pro-con lists.Continue reading
