Before the industrial revolution, no one would have imagined a world ruled by social media. We have undergone a fundamental shift in the way we do things, especially marketing our goods and services. Although print media has a role to play, social media giants like Instagram are here to stay.

As social media becomes an integral part of our lives, influencer marketing has skyrocketed. Instead of using print media or traditional ads, research has proved that people are more likely to take a recommendation from a familiar face.

To make a buying decision, people are now turning to their favorite Instagram stars, Twitter personalities, and even YouTubers for guidance. In this article, we’ll expose some insane Instagram statistics that will blow your mind.

1. 71% of all American businesses use Instagram

Recently, Instagram dethroned Twitter as the best app to promote businesses, and the reason couldn't be any more glaring. Large corporations, as well as professionals, are finding great success promoting their goods and services using Instagram.

If 71% of businesses in the US use Instagram, why shouldn’t you? Many believe that Instagram marketing is now the holy grail of marketing, due to the number of potentials it has in the promotion of a business.

2. 2 million monthly advertisers

Another Instagram stat that will blow your mind is the fact that over 2 million advertisers use the platform every month to promote their business. You probably have seen them in action as you scroll past these sponsored posts on your feed.

Instagram is inarguably one of the best marketing channels at the moment, and you can get your offers to your ideal audience without breaking a sweat. With 2 million advertisers, what are you waiting for to join the wagon?

3. 70% of teens trust influencers more than traditional celebrities

We’re now in the era of influencers, where more and more people are getting drawn to mid-influencers due to their expertise and experience compared to celebrities. For this reason, businesses are utilizing influencers when it comes to getting their goods and services out there.

Think about it, 4 in 10 Millennial subscribers believe that their favorite influencer is better than their friends. With this amount of trust, there is no doubt why brands are spending billions yearly on influencers marketing.

4. Increase spend on influencer marketing

When you get results from a marketing strategy, it is pretty normal to try it again and again. Most brands and marketers are getting incredible results from influencer marketing, and they are not backing down any time soon.

About 71% of marketers are planning to increase their budget in the coming 12 months, both for creating awareness, and customer acquisition. If you’re yet to tap into the mind-boggling power of Instagram, waste no further time. Get in touch with an expert by calling right now, or perhaps fill our contact form to begin.

Building your brand around a Facebook group might seem like a daunting endeavor, but the benefits exceed the stress in the long run. However, some brands reason that they don't need a group since they already have a page. But a group comes with its special perks, and you will be making a mistake overlooking building a Facebook group for your brand.

Unlike a Facebook page, a group help deepen the connection and bond you have with your target market by creating a community of people who share the same interest. Going forward, you’re able to imprint your brand in the mind of your customers.

Here is how you can build a Facebook group around your brand:

1. Determine the purpose

Before you create a Facebook group, you need a focus, a purpose - something that the group will center on. Nothing in this world is without purpose, and neither is your Facebook group. The first step to creating a formidable brand using a Facebook group is to grace it with a unique goal.

When you have determined the goal of your group, only then will you attract like-minds who interact with each other daily toward a higher goal. The stronger and better the community, the more your business grows as a brand.

To determine the purpose to pursue, some questions you need to answer includes:

• What is your niche?
• Will you use your group to promote your products and services?
• Do you want your group to solve a specific need?
• How do you plan to market your group for more members?

2. Understand your audience

You probably have a detailed idea of your customer persona. That is, who they are and where you can find them. With this, promoting your group becomes easier since you know the ideal medium to attract them.

There are numerous ways to reach your ideal audiences, such as your Facebook page, cross-promotion with similar groups, a simple invite, newsletters, LinkedIn bio, influencer shoutouts, Facebook ads, and even incentive programs.

3. Content, Content, More Content

At the growing stage of your group, you need to set the pace by keeping your audience engaged with quality content. Only the right content will help you build a healthy community that will grow organically.

However, you must create original content, as lifting posts from other sources can dent the reputation you’re trying to build. As your group groups, don’t forget to monitor the metrics as they help you understand what works and what doesn’t.

If you’re able to offer value to your audience and remain on course, your audiences are more likely to take the cue from you and contribute value. To know more about building your brand using a Facebook group, talk to an expert by calling or filling our contact form.

“How often should your business post on social media?”

It might seem like a pretty basic question, but becomes complicated when you dive into the activity. In this post, you’re going to learn how many social posts a day your business needs to improve engagement and conversion.

Since social media is part of the core of the internet, it makes sense not to overlook this medium when embarking on any marketing endeavor. Posting too often will overwhelm and repulse your followers while posting too little might not give you the needed exposure your brand needs

To hit a sweet spot, there is a need to look at a few studies to uncover the ideal number of times your business should be posting on social media. Take note that the frequency of posts varies from one social media to another since they all have what makes them distinct from each other.

How often to post on Facebook?

Facebook is inarguable the giant of social media and could be used to pull in insane traffic that translates to sales. But, how often should your business post on Facebook? Some markets may argue that two posts a day is the sweet spot, but the data tells us otherwise.

According to a study by Hubspot, brands with more than ten thousand followers saw an increase in clicks when they posted more than once a day, while brands with less than ten thousand followers received 50% fewer clicks.

However, brands that post one to five times a month saw a double increase in engagement. A logical answer when posting on Facebook is to stick to one post a day, or five posts per week for the best result.

How often to post on Twitter

When it comes to Twitter, the game changes a little bit, and the reason is this - the average lifetime of a tweet is fifteen to twenty minutes. After this time duration, your follower’s feeds are likely to get tons of other tweets from their friends or other favorite brands, pushing your sweet little tweet down into oblivion.

The trick when it comes to Twitter is posting periodically throughout the day. Moderation is key, cause overwhelming your followers with tons of tweets might even cause them to unfollow you. A sweet spot as long as Twitter is concerned is three to five tweets a day.

How often to post on Instagram and LinkedIn

Instagram is another different ball game and can be somewhat intimidating for brands since it’s visually centric. What determines how often you post on Instagram is your audience size and expectation.

Some brands only post an average of 1.5 times a day. Neil Patel, however, believes that the key to Instagram engagement is consistency. LinkedIn, on the other hand, performs best at one post every business day.

To know more, or perhaps work with an expert on social media marketing of any sort, give us a call, or fill our contact form to begin.

Social media is a rapidly growing marketing medium that is on the verge of becoming more significant to the average consumer than search engines. While platforms such as Facebook are not in any imminent danger of putting search engines like Google out of business, it is interesting to note that more and more people do their informational searches on social media platforms these days. How did we get here? What is the condensed history of the social media medium?

The Beginning Of It All

In 1997, the first ever social media platform called Six Degrees was started. It lasted until 2001, and laid the foundation for social media platforms of the future. Users could register to have an account, but even people who did not register for accounts could see and interact with user posts. It is said that the rising popularity of chat platforms helped to bring an end to Six Degrees, but social media was only getting started.

MySpace

The first massively popular social media platform was released in the early 2000s and it was called MySpace. Users seemed to love the idea of being able to communicate with each other and personalize their profiles with pictures and colors. At the same time that MySpace was getting underway, LinkedIn was created as a social network for business professionals. MySpace eventually lost its popularity and has since become a social network for musicians, but LinkedIn remains popular with its original format to this day.

Facebook And Twitter

In 2004, Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg released a social media platform he called Facebook, but it only existed on Harvard's university computer network. It did not take long for Zuckerberg to realize that he could increase the popularity of his website by making it available to the public, so he did. In 2006, Twitter was released with the idea that people could convey their ideas with either images or text messages that were only 140 characters long. Facebook brought the world together, and Twitter became an important source for the latest information for millions of people.

Images And More Images

The popularity of images on Twitter helped to spur the creation of a series of new social media platforms around 2010. Flickr and Instagram got their start at the very earliest point of image-centric social media platforms, and both are still very popular today. The popularity of niche social media platforms such as the image-centric ones inspired other niches such as food reviews, music, and home improvement and crafts.

Today, there are many new social media platforms being introduced that all seem to be breaking down the idea of social media into endless small niches. Over the past few years, the growing number of social media options for users means that social media platforms are starting to develop dedicated target audiences that are making it easier for marketing experts to formulate social media marketing plans that work.

The two biggest problems companies have with social media platforms are a lack of activity and a lack of consistent website traffic. It is expected that reaching out on a platform that has millions of people in your target audience already participating should bring in big results. But as marketing experts have learned over and over again, nothing happens by accident. There are solutions to these two big social media platform problems, but they are not necessarily easy solutions.

Add Focus

Most business owners, when explaining their social media strategy, cannot get past the part where they want to get lots of people to like or follow their company's page. In marketing, nothing happens without a plan and every individual marketing goal requires a plan of its own. If you have no stated purpose for using social media, then you will not get any results. If you are not using focused marketing tactics on your social media pages, then you are not going get the kind of web traffic you want.

Add A Human Touch

More and more companies are buying into the idea of using online bots to scout social media and respond to posts. The problem with bots is that they are unable to engage in a meaningful conversation, and many social media users are able to sniff out a bot in a second. When a company uses a bot to try and interact with its social media audience instead of people, the results will suffer.

Interact More

You will get more out of your social media platforms if you talk to the people you are marketing instead of at them. The companies that are getting great social media results are the ones that ask engaging questions and use the information they get to improve their social media presence. While it is perfectly fine to post marketing pieces on your social media pages, you should also have plenty of real interaction going on with your audience as well.

Be Consistent

If you consistently post interesting information on your social media pages and become known for directly interacting with your audience, then your social media influence will grow. But if you are on for a day and off for a couple of days, then people are not going to feel like you are putting enough effort into staying in touch with your target audience. If social media is going to work, you need to have a consistent amount of contact every day and maintain a schedule for releasing information that your audience can rely on.

The ideal solution for solving social media problems is to hire a professional social media marketing manager through a digital marketing agency. The truth is that even the smallest company does not have the time to properly maintain and grow a social media presence. With the help of an experienced professional, your social media pages can start to generate revenue and help to consistently grow your customer base.

The idea of labeling conversations with hashtags became popular on the Twitter platform and has since moved to most of the major social media websites. A hashtag is a short marketing message done in one word and identified with a hashtag or pound sign. If Bob's Bakery wanted to create a hashtag to promote his new wedding cakes, then that hashtag might be #bobsweddingcakes.

How To Use Hashtags

When you put a hashtag in a conversation, people can click on the hashtag and follow the conversation about the topic you have created. For businesses trying to build a buzz about their new product or trying to enhance their branding, a hashtag can create an ongoing conversation that will hopefully get others engaged.

To use a hashtag, you simply create one as we outlined earlier and then strategically place it in your posts. When someone clicks on the hashtag, it will take them to a listing of all of the posts that make up the conversation.

Where To Place Hashtags

It is always best to place hashtags in parts of the post where they can seem like part of the dialogue. The structure of a hashtag makes it difficult for it to look like it belongs in a sentence, but when used properly a hashtag can be very effective. For SEO purposes, it does not matter where in your post you put your hashtag.

Structuring Hashtags

If you want to create an ongoing conversation about your company's new line of widgets, then you can create a hashtag such as #bobswidgets. Every post you put that hashtag in will appear in the ongoing conversation. The best use for hashtags is to be very specific about the topic it refers to and always make sure it references your company in some way.

Going Viral

Your company will never be penalized for creating hashtags, so create as many as you want. The point to hashtags is to create an engaging conversation that starts to draw in a lot of people and goes viral. If your hashtag conversation is trending on Twitter or some other social media platform, then your business name is getting seen by a lot of people.

When your hashtag goes viral, you can start throwing in your company's website and even a specific link to the product in question. You can interact directly with people who show interest in your company and you can build brand strength by acknowledging your customers as well.

You should experiment with hashtags on as many social media platforms as you can to see if you can start getting people engaged in your conversations. While using hashtags is a powerful marketing tactic, it can also be a lot of fun if you can get a conversation to catch on with a large group of people.

If your business relies on customers, then there is a good chance that most of those customers are already on Facebook. With most of your customers in one, neat little place, it makes sense to offer a way to organize your customers under your company name and offer specializes service and communication. A private Facebook group is the ideal solution because you can focus on a group that consists of only your customers, and you can use the group to continually grow your business.

Start Your Group

All you have to do to start a group on Facebook is click on the down arrow in the top right-hand corner of your page and then choose to start a new group. As you set your group up, you can choose to have a secret or closed group. A secret group cannot be seen by Facebook users at all unless they are members. A closed group can be found in Facebook searches, but you have to be approved as a member to join. For business purposes, closed groups are better because they can attract members on their own.

Have Criteria

A closed group is unique because only the members of the group will see any group activity. Even though the group can be found in a Facebook search, group activity will only be seen on each member's wall by the members of the group. This allows you to communicate in privacy with your clients and grow your business.

You will need to have some sort of criteria to use to allow people to be a member of your group. While you can never be sure who is telling your the truth, you are going to have to take people's answers to your criteria questions at face value. Some criteria should include an owner of your product, someone who is considering buying your product, and someone who would like to help develop new features for your product. When people have to pass a criteria test to be part of a group, they usually value their membership in that group more highly.

Create User's Guidelines And Stick To Them

On top of needing to meet a certain criteria for membership, you will also want your members to carry on in the group in a civil and productive manner. You should develop a list of user's guidelines and then make sure each new member reads them. It takes time to build a group, and your guidelines will evolve over time. For example, you may learn early that banning members who get into arguments with other members is not always the best approach. Sometimes muting an unruly member for 24 hours will give them a chance to see the error of their ways and conform back to your community rules.

A professional digital marketing agency can build up your closed Facebook group into thousands of members that will help you to grow your business. The more your closed group grows, the more people you will have to present new products to directly, and the more consumers you will have to get feedback from on your current product offering.

The saying "keep your friends close but your enemies closer" was made famous by the movie The Godfather and has become part of the American business vocabulary. Competitive analysis is an obsession in the business world and the dawn of the Internet age has brought us a whole bunch of new tools we can use to spy on the competition. Social media is becoming a great way to check out the competition because that is a platform most companies use to be as boisterous and impressive as possible. There are plenty of good reasons why you should be following the competition on social media.

Their Conversational Tone

As you compare your competitions' social media platforms, you will notice that some platforms are more active than others. One point of comparison can be the manner in which each company addresses its audience. Social media is a personal platform and you will find that most consumers don't want to be sold on social media. You should monitor the way in which the competition addresses its social media users and do what you can to emulate the more successful conversational tones.

The Information They Release

Some companies use social media as a way to entice consumers to check out websites, while other companies go directly for the sell on social media. The easiest way to determine which method works in your industry is to watch how the competition does it and then try the most effective methods yourself.

Since social media is a more personal platform, many companies like to try and enhance the emotional bonds they have with their customers by putting personal information on their social media pages. This is a risky tactic and can sometimes backfire. By monitoring the competition, you can see how your target audience reacts to personal information on social media and adjust your social media approach appropriately.

Their Customer Service Approach

Social media is the ideal platform for you to see exactly how your competition handles difficult customer service issues. Consumers have no problem venting their anger and frustration at a company on that company's social media feeds. You can pick up plenty of good customer service tactics and see bad tactics fail when you monitor the competition's social media pages.

The Overall Consumer Trends

While your social media feeds get plenty of criticisms and opinions from customers, you want to compare the comments you are getting to what the competition is getting to develop a feeling for overall consumer trends. Are your competitors getting the same complaints you are, or is there something the competition is doing to keep clients happy? A company's social media page is also a great place to find out why consumers buy from certain companies but not from others.

Social media is a great marketing tool that your company is using to bring in more paying customers. But it is important to remember that the competition is using social media as well, and you can tell a lot about your competition from the interactions it has on social media with consumers and by the information the competition chooses to release to the public through these powerful communications platforms.