Month: January 2021

Instagram is one of the hottest social media platforms with a whooping user base growing by the day. Instagram has over 1 billion active monthly users, a number too big for any brand or marketer to ignore. Instagram has about 2 million monthly advertisers and 44% of Instagram’s active users use the platform for researching and discovering brands and a good 53% of Instagram users follow their favourite brands on the platform.

Today we look at some of the key features to not miss if you are making your business out of Instagram or even if you just have a brand presence on this influential platform.

Instagram Stories Rule

Instagram Stories have been fast-growing and IG is making it easier to share your stories with more and more people with the option to share all IG Stories to Facebook automatically. Instagram also has many great features to add excitement to your Stories like music to make them interactive, animated stickers and more. The multi-photo Layout collages are also very popular and was a great addition to the platform.

What to do

• Fast and real time story content.
• Updating your Stories daily.
• Cross-promote content to your Facebook Page.
• Use tools in Stories, like fonts, coloring tools, Boomerangs, stickers and more.

IGTV for the win

Although IGTV had a troubled start, a few changes has this feature changing the Instagram platform as a whole, and IGTV continuing to rise in importance as we step into 2020. Instagram has also added an IGTV tab to their Explore page giving users more opportunities to find videos and content creators of interest. The ability to add previews of IGTV videos in user’s regular feed is another boost helping people discover accounts they follow, that are also creating long-form video content. The platform also paved the way for landscape video content, making it even easier to share existing video content your brand has already created.

What to do

• Definitely consider adding IGTV to your Instagram.
• Share existing video content to reach a greater audience.
• Create vertical video content.
• Share IGTV video previews to your feed to reach more viewers

Tweets and memes?

Instagram doesn’t always about having that carefully curated appealing imagery anymore. With several accounts dedicated to memes that have huge followings, brands are also bringing them into their marketing strategy. The trend of sharing screenshots of tweets on IG posts and Stories is going strong this year too and brands can leverage relevant content to their advantage. These can be your own tweets or another user’s tweets, but make note to give the creator credit or you may come under the scanner and you don’t want to, on social media.

What to do

• Create a pattern in your feed for tweets and memes.
• Share thoughts relevant to your industry.
• Bring a casual feel that still sounds like your brand

Interactive content

Interactive content is huge for brands on all channels and so also on Instagram, IG Stories includes features like polls, quizzes, questions and more to give your audience the opportunity to interact directly with you and your content.

What to do

• Create a countdown to a giveaway.
• Add a poll or question sticker.
• Test your audience’s knowledge of your product with a quiz.
• Private Q&A chat with your audience.

Revenue with Instagram shopping

Tap on the popularity of IG with the new shopping features that the platform has introduced, which by itself can almost be an entirely new revenue stream for your business. Stats say that over 130 million users tap to view IG shopping tags on photos by the month. So, if you are an online shop, you should positively get in on it. The features for shopping include the ability to tag products in your posts, tagging products in your Stories, and even checking out and completing entire purchases on the platform.

What to do

• Tag a product anytime in an IG post or Story.
• Enable in-app checkout for easy buying

Authenticity

Instagram was all glamorous and flawless pictures but now it is veering to real life, and what things really look like kind of content especially in stories. Some still stick to photo finished feeds, but more and more users and new age brands are posting photos of real life, behind-the-scenes photos, untouched photos etc. Brands are starting to incorporate this style of authenticity into their own strategies as well.

What to do

• Use untouched photography.
• Share real, behind-the-scenes content
• Try connecting with your audience through your feed
• Carousel post to keep your feed beautiful and also show behind-the-scenes images on swipe.

In one of his exhibitions at Moderna Museet, Sweden, the famous American artist Andy Warhol predicted that in the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes of short-lived media fame and publicity. But with the popularity of short video platforms like TikTok, even 15 seconds is far enough to transform a content creator into an overnight sensation!

Mostly favoured by Generation Z, comprising the youngsters and teenagers, TikTok has managed to surpass Facebook and WhatsApp to become the world’s most downloaded non-gaming application. It’s time to leverage the potential of influencer marketing with TikTok for bringing more engagement and vitality to your brand. But there are certain things that marketers should keep in mind.

TikTok Influencer Marketing

Just like other social media platforms, executing a TikTok influencer campaign is structurally pretty much similar, but creatively it’s quite different. Even though the skeleton is the same, the approach needs to be different. The platform is basically nascent and influencers or the content creators represent a relatively larger talent pool. The content creators who already know the potential of influencer marketing are genuinely enthusiastic to be approached by brands.

The users of TikTok are Gen Z. They are acclaimed for avoiding traditional advertising. A significant number of millennials are also part of the system aging around 35. You can expect them to be novice upfront and it is ideal to give coaching if required. Experiment with the influencers to understand the potential reach of the platform influencers. It is equally important to couple experimentation with the right content strategy to make a good impression among the audience.

Here are the basics of a TikTok influencer marketing strategy.

Understand your demography
Brands need to clearly understand the demographic of your target audience and their interests. If your brand is having more of the youngster segment audience, communicate it with the lined-up influencer partners. Don’t try to push too much of products or services upfront; just showcase minimal features of the product and how it will benefit the audience. Bombarding with products straight away will hinder your success in TikTok. The right method would be to keep them engaged in the right proportion.

First-time influencers
Your brand might have already been associated with influencers on other social media platforms. The same influencers may tend to have reasonable fan followership in TikTok as well. But the first time influencers in TikTok tend to have more engagement rates than the existing influencer in other platforms. These influencers will be cost-effective than established influencers as well. These native novice content creators will have a better understanding of handling viral and engaging content.

Be consistent
The algorithm of TikTok leads to much greater volatility than other social media platforms. Take a look at the opening dashboard itself – unlike other social media platforms, TikTok doesn’t have too much of a load on the first page. The algorithm just pushes new featured short videos for the users, rather than pushing the following or popular contents. What really matters is the results. For better results, brands need to create engaging content consistently and creatively.

More creativity
TikTok is all about creativity applied in the simplest formats. It covers almost all business segments – ranging from food to pranks and pets. It was a perfect fit during the lockdowns, when many of us were confined to our homes and we were in need of some desperate fun. Brands need to focus on adopting creativity in making the content for TikTok. What worked for Facebook or YouTube doesn’t work for TikTok. So give more wings to your creativity and understand the nuances while making the content.

Get influencer advice
Playing with an emerging platform is about proper planning. In the case of TikTok, the best experts can be the influencers themselves who are already part of the platform. They will be more familiar with the platform, know what will work for them or not, and help in creating an engaging and authentic brand message, rather than just being too corporate. Brands need to give freedom to influencers to share their thoughts so that they can actively collaborate for brand success.

In the constantly changing and content filled digital media, what makes you stop scrolling and actually look into the details? It’s usually a picture that makes it stand out. But making your images rule high all the time is problematic especially because what works today or for a couple of days may not work later. It may work for one person but for someone else, even if their businesses look similar it may not. There are a few things though that can help even if the trends or algorithms keep changing and one of them is colour.

Let us look at what works from a design and aesthetic perspective and what works on different social media platforms.

Context

When designing visuals for social media you always need to think about the environment your design is going to be on display. Your visuals are seen in the context of your brand, as well as that of the particular social media platform, where you can’t control what will surround them.

From the point of view of your brand, your visuals should be consistent and have the same overall style, theme, atmosphere, and possibly a harmonious colour palette throughout. But for your audience, your visuals must stand out in their social media feed. Some small tricks in accordance with the platform can work wonders. Eg: colours like blue and white don’t stand out so much on Facebook, because it’s colour scheme is blue and white there. Look at your competitions’ content and it’s a good hack to avoid typical colour trends of your industry to keep from industry clichés.

Colour harmony

Keep in mind that a limited colour palette always works better than using all the colours and that applies to photos, graphics, or drawings and paintings. Also, keep to colours that work with each other and shouldn’t be random colours. Putting together a harmonious colour palette need trial and error and with a bit of taste, and online tools you can work out your fit.

Contrast

Contrast is the difference between colours, the degree of ease with which you can tell them apart. Images with higher contrast always catch attention more easily than other combinations of colours or colours closer to each other. This strategy can be used to call out attention such as a Facebook ad or when doing offers and promotions.

What works on different platforms

Research says, “Brightness, clarity, liveliness and ingenuity of images are positively reflected in the number of Facebook Likes.”

So, to stand out on Facebook, and Facebook ads, employing bright, vivid and warm colours is a shortcut that you want to take but don’t overdo it to make it look messy and cluttered. Use white space and neutral tones to make bright colours pop. For Instagram, light colours, texture, and white space are colour schemes to look into. Lighter images work better than darker ones and pictures with a higher background ratio usually work better on this platform. Images with a blue tint get more likes than reddish undertones. Low saturation works better than vibrant shades here as well as textures fare better than smooth images.

Instagram is also the only platform where people see all your images in one place — your grid is the first thing they see when they check your profile. That’s why it’s important to consider the images and their colours in the context of your feed.

But in case of Pinterest, it would be warm, feminine colours like red, pink and purple that works best to catch attention. Images with less white space work better here. This is a distinction from the guidelines established for Instagram.

White space

White space or negative space is the “empty” space between design elements (text, shapes, objects, etc). White space needn’t be white, it can be of any colour. White space helps other elements stand out and puts them on a pedestal. White space also allows some “breathing” room for the eye, especially on Instagram where its images in grids and helps you achieve an uncluttered, harmonious look. Designing your optimum white space takes some practice, and may be used as required.

Conclusion

It is always best to create images specifically for each social media platform but it may not always be viable. One could try to slightly tweak the colour scheme to match with the platform that you are focusing on. Each social media platform works in a different way in engaging with consumers and even in how it appeals to them, that’s why the use of contrast, number of colours, white space, and choice of colours work differently on different social media. Social media images don’t have any hard and fast rules so experimentation is also key. Keep these tips at the back of your head when designing a creative. OnPageOne brings you solutions that help improve and make your social media presence more interactive and exciting. Call us today!

As a marketer, social media is a powerful tool and there are many options for you to try out and see what works for you. Various strategies are employed to get the most attention to your brand on social media, thereby driving sales. Social media, email, search engine optimisation (SEO), content marketing, visual content marketing and mobile marketing are all part of the game but it takes a bit of tweaking and study to find out what works and what doesn’t for your brand.

We look at some of the social media tricks and tips to optimise your brand.

1. How many channels?

Is there a number to the amount of social media channels marketers should participate on? Social media visibility is vital and participation itself is a great start. Brand awareness, lead generation, trust, credibility and sales are the expected results. It is found that people need to hear or see something regarding a brand 3-5 times to believe its authenticity. Thus, it only makes sense to place your content on multiple social networking pages that will boost your visibility and trust among followers.

Social media participation level stats

People on 3 social networks:23%
People on 4 social networks:25%
People on 5 social networks:16%
People on 6 social networks:10%
People on 11 or more social networks:3%
But figures itself can’t speak since each social media platform is different and effectiveness will vary for different brands and products.

2. Goals

An important finding is that most companies run their social media not solely or even primarily for sales but with the aim of gaining followers (20%). Follower building is being rated “very important” for business marketers. Social media’s biggest direct benefit to businesses is engagement with customers and followers in general. This is the first step and in time translates to resulting sales and a brand identity.

So the motto has to be “engage first and sell after“.

3. How many posts?

The frequency of posts can be a determinant factor in your social media presence. Posting frequently isn’t enough; it has to be relevant too. But pacing posts is a good scheme to keep your audience constantly in touch with your brand. If you look at the stats, we see that 70% of brands are posting to social networks at least once a day.

Media posts on all platforms don’t have to be unique content the same or on the same lines can work as well. A blog post, published on Facebook can be used on Instagram, Pinterest and even LinkedIn.

4. Optimisation tactics?

It’s not enough that you have good content; to get it to a larger number of people a bit of streamlining is required. These tactics help generate more chances for your posts being shared and therefore reach your optimal results in marketing. But how effective are each of them, let’s find out.

Visual content – 50%
Hashtags – 35%
Targeting audience – 33%
Call to action – 27%
Image size optimization – 23%
Videos – 20%
As it is evident, visual content, with emphasis on videos is at the top and must be the first go-to social network marketing optimisation.

5. Plan in advance?

Having a posts plan is best if you want to keep social media flowing smooth. A publishing schedule is used commonly today. A study hasn’t shown that 65% scheduling their posts at least one day prior with 41% plan almost a week in advance. A plan gives you the leeway to steer your posts in the direction of growth.

6. When to post?

This factor comes into play because your posts should reach people when they are up and on social media or else it gets lost in the many posts that appear on their feed.

There are many methods to optimise this including

Trial and error
Tools
Industry reports
Optimising your social media is important to keep your brand relevant and boost sales. Content, planning and utilisation of social media platforms is vital to keep your brand connected with the audience. At Onpageone, we help you tailor your social media just right to up your following and sales.

It’s almost the season to be merry, and the days building up to the holidays in terms of marketing can be exciting and also demanding at the same time. It can be tempting to go full throttle to get your ad to be noticed. But one cannot compromise the long term reputation of your business for a quick seasonal hit that may die down just as easily. Striking a balance is key since social media will be flooded with seasonal creatives.

It shouldn’t be forgotten that the general public are in a buying mood, and a good marketing strategy may work in your favour to tip the customer your way without sounding too artificial.

Real rules the reel.

Seasonal marketing is usually light and cheerful but straying too far from the core brand personality and mission can be detrimental. If your brand keeps a serious corporate voice in marketing, stay true to it and don’t make the holiday post way too colourful or humourous. Meter your wishes and it’s safer to go with a gentler and sincere message. If your brand is uber, fun and lighthearted, you can easily indulge in humour that cut through all the digital noise this time of the year.

Start early

Don’t wait for the season to hit. Advertise offers and promotions subtly or build up to it in the months before to give a sense of curiosity to the deal. If you are looking at holidays to generate a heavy revenue, then this strategy is quintessential. Also curated ads and a broad campaign planned ahead can keep you out of rush once the holiday season so on.

Milk the merriment

Everyone is excited about the holidays and shopping is a big part of it, with people especially on the lookout for offers and steal deals. Particularly for small businesses, maximising ROI for physical holiday products and branding is key which can often be an opportunity to get your brand noticed. Eye-catching Christmas packaging and campaigns can help attract new customers shopping for gifts, but it does have a limited shelf life. Keep the campaigns broad to appeal to a wider audience and include a sense of exclusivity around a limited edition but which can easily glide in to promote any stock not sold currently into the following months.

Charitable ventures

People are more on social media nowadays, which is like following the brand around. It is therefore important to showcase the real side of the brand and when it is a charitable venture, people tend to relate to it and grow closer. It is also a great trust building exercise. Volunteering tasks are also an easy way to give back, to engage and portray your staff and make everyone feel good about buying from a company that supports philanthropy.

But pitch it gently, since over-advertising makes it look tacky and pompous. Find a way to link your charity work with your business values. It’s easier than you think, you’re a web design company, maybe offer services to local self help organisations or groups doing charitable work in your area.

Developing interesting content that can guarantee a far reach while being popular with the masses can be quite an ordeal. Getting started on creating engaging content can be quite intimidating and hence, let’s take a look at some tips and tricks to float some good content in the market and stand out.

Before we start, let’s understand what 10x content is. It refers to content 10 times better than the highest ranking result for a given keyword(s).

Some of the features possessed by 10x content is- high quality reliable content that’s either useful or interesting or ideally both, able to evoke an emotional response from the reader and should have its own unique style. Care must be given to ensure that it has great UI/UX on as many platforms as possible.

Let’s dive deeper and build a foolproof strategy to generate good content.

#1 Extensive insight on the topic
It goes without saying that you must know the topic you are addressing inside out. You must be able to analyze the audience, the relevance, how it can impact readers etc and spin an article catering to the exact requirements. Otherwise your article ends up being an unorganized bunch of data which cannot capture user attention.

#2 Creating uniqueness

There might be hundreds of articles already out there addressing the topic you have chosen. You must brainstorm ideas to think out of the box and present the idea in an interesting angle. Dishing out information bluntly has lost its charm. Devise ways to present content in an exciting or attention grabbing manner. It could be something as simple as an eye catching style of presentation.

#3 Powerful presentations
Interest is in the eye of the beholder and thus, the more exciting your presentation looks, the better attention it gets. You don’t have to resort to texts and articles always to get your point across. For example, statistical representations are a great way to tell people the same thing but in a more visually appealing way. It might help them comprehend data better than reading paragraphs after paragraphs.

Well those are the three key points you can rely on to create an article that is sure to grab eyes your way. Trials and experimentations are the only way forward here so start thinking differently from today!

Optimizing your Google ADs by rightly tapping and aligning the potential of SEO and PPC disciplines helps you have an overall beneficial Google marketing experience. Let’s take a look at some of the common errors to steer clear of when it comes to online advertising.

THE RIGHT QUANTITY OF QUALITY KEYWORDS
Granted keywords do play a key role in taking your content forward but, too many keywords stuffed in a diffused and disorganised manner will have detrimental effects than launching your marketing strategy forward. The idea is to place the right keywords of a set tone and to stick to a particular theme throughout. Try and approach a specific range of keywords, targeting a specific category of audience rather than a broad category of both.

EXPERIMENT WITH ADS
Most people stick to placing one AD per category and expect it to work wonders. Ideally, finding what AD works for you or your brand is purely a matter of trials, and inferences from the results of those trials. One proven way to increase the engagement with your advertisements is to carefully pack an emotional element to it. Your audience should be able to relate to it on an emotional level, thereby making them take an action on behalf of it.

A CLEAR CALL TO ACTION
Now that you have a well planned out content with the right keywords in it to place you on the map, an alluring advertisement that portrays what you can do for your clients clearly, the next and important step is to ensure you have implied the call to action explicitly. Be very specific and basic what you want your audience to do after getting their attention hooked to your marketing strategies. Tell them what is the next step as simply as possible.

SMART USE OF EXTENSIONS
Extensions are a great way to ensure your advertisements stand out amongst the competitors, within the limited space available. Extensions are pretty much those super useful snippets of information that can expand the utility of your ADs. Done rightly, this can launch your campaigns to meet your business goals perfectly.

These are our top tips to keep your AD campaigns run smoothly and derive desired results. A smart approach is essential here else you’ll be making Google more money than for your brand. At the end of the day, an advertisement is to get your figures soaring.

Especially a staple in the fashion and beauty industry, Instagram today, is the place of business and brand visibility. Instagram’s photo-based style and the numerous updates lately have made this platform a hotbed for brand promotion, collaborations, and even sales. Find out how to outperform your Instagram game this year!

Know Thyself

Your profile picture, as a business, should be your logo that communicates about your brand to the audience at all times. People must be able to identify your brand when visiting your Instagram profile, other social platform or a physical billboard in an instant, which increases their chance of remembering you.

Set your Instagram name as your business name, including a keyword in your business name such as “Sam’s Boutique” instead of simply “Sam’s will help people find your profile through Google and other search engines and also understand who you are at a glance.

Optimize your Instagram bio, which is the brief lines of text under your profile picture, name, and category, to quickly explain to visitors who you are and what you do. This is where you can show your brand’s personality, and also including some keywords can work great too.

Link any branded hashtag of yours in your bio. A unique branded hashtag help people view all the posts in this hashtag. Also push a call-to-action(asking visitors to do something/take action) to initiate a visitor response.

If your account is a personal one, make the switch to a business account, so that you can take advantage of many advanced features. Go to settings (on your profile), tap on “account,” and you can easily upgrade to a business account.

This will allow/prompt you to choose a category to best describe your business after which you can list your email, phone number, and address and then you can start running your paid campaigns with ease.

A brand image is what your customers and potential ones think of you. It’s important to have a lasting brand image that is consistent across all platforms to increase your brand awareness on the whole.

The first step is to choose an Instagram theme and a colour scheme. Make sure that your logo and profile picture match the colour scheme in the posts to adhere to the brand image. The easiest way to do this is to make use of filters and editing to achieve the perfect theme throughout your photos. Presets and tools like Lightroom can also help achieve this goal.

Highlights are genius

Stories are huge on Instagram right now but they only last a day. Highlights lets you capture Instagram stories into highlights where visitors will be able to see your stories even after the 24-hour periods that stories last. You can sort highlights into categories to better help user viewing.

Mix of Content

Product shots on Instagram business profile usually follow some common styles like images of the details of a product or of a model holding/adorning it and flatlays, where the products are aesthetically laid on a flat background). You can also use creative posts and non-product shows that talk about the product without showing it directly. Mix photos, videos, GIF content and also IGTV videos.

Push User-Generated Content

Rather than keeping to original content, curated user-generated content is a top trending tactic used by brands on Instagram. UGC is images taken by your customers that you can repost and share on your platform. Elevate it with a branded hashtag and promote it, so that potential customers see a relatable face, further vouching for the authenticity of the brand.

Informative Content Works

Help your Instagram following learn something new about your product, something relevant in the world or anything educational related to your brand. Interesting captions and images can make your page look more interesting than completely promoting your products.

Employee In Frame

People love to see who really puts the work in to make their products. Shooting behind-the-scenes pictures or interviews with staff members boosts trust and transparency of your brand. Photos of faces work great on Instagram if appended by a splendid caption. Talk about some things that make him/her unique and fun to further amp up the post.

Tweak those IG Stories

Instagram is loaded with features to make posts interesting and even more interactive. Brands have been keenly shifting from posts to stories to step up their presence on social media.

The “swipe-up” feature on Instagram stories is a fast and convenient way for your followers to purchase or learn more about products on your website. It has worked great in getting more web traffic and sales.

Live videos are especially popular with 80 percent of users watching live to reading blog post, and 82 percent preferred live videos to social media posts. Live videos work best to announce a new product or show the behind-the-scenes at the office.

Polls are also trending and help know the opinion and preferences of your customers before any launch. It also serves as an excellent way to get more engagement and helping your customers feel like friends. It, therefore, boosts the feel-good appeal of the brand.

Chat stickers and quizzes are also hugely popular with influencers resorting to them when they run out of content. By this sticker, you can also create a group DM chat which is a great tool for small local businesses.

Are you on the lookout for digital marketing solutions that go beyond to make your brand look impressive? Get in touch with us at OnPageOne today!