Images can be powerful communicators. They have the capacity to evoke emotion, convey a message, and tell an emotional story… which is why images are integral to your digital marketing strategies.

More than just prettying-up your posts and emails, images elicit emotions. You can use them to strategically put your followers, readers, and visitors in certain states of mind, to push them toward certain actions, whether it’s downloading a content offer or purchasing one of your newest products. You can even use images to tell your brand’s story.

While it’s true that images can be a driving force in digital marketing, you have to know how to use them if you want to maximize their power.

In this post, we’re going to run down a list of ways to put your images to work for you ESPECIALLY if you’re paying for stock photos or partnering with an influencer to create UGC for your social feeds.

A Few Expert Tips for Using Images in Emails and Across Social

#1 Correctly Format Images for Social Media

Social networks like Facebook and Instagram are awesome platforms for showcasing your brand with visual content. To get the most mileage with your visual content, it’s important to upload that are formatted correctly for the platform you’re using.

Here are the recommended upload sizes of the different images seen on Facebook.

FACEBOOK

• Cover photos – 800 x 312 pixels

• Profile photos – 180 x 180 pixels (although the maximum display area is 160 x 160 pixels)

• Shared images – 1200 x 630 pixels

• Shared links – 1200 x 628 pixels

• Event photos – 1920 x 1080 pixels (with a (16:9 aspect ratio)

Meanwhile, Instagram recommends these image sizes.

INSTAGRAM

• Profile photos (1:1 aspect ratio) – 180 x 180 pixels

• Feed photos – 1080 x 1080 pixels

• Thumbnails (1:1 aspect ratio) – 1080 x 1080 pixels (Instagram automatically crops photos with higher aspect ratios)

Now, when it comes to choosing the right image size for email, things get a little trickier. A one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t always make for great formatting.

Take a look at this above-the-fold screenshot of KeVita’s home page (with my screen zoomed to 90%) compared with the way KeVita’s home page shows up on an LG with a 6.2-inch screen.

Source: KeVita.com

To get the best results for using images in emails, just keep in mind that most desktop devices today have a resolution higher than 1024 x 768 pixels.

But more than half of email opens occur on mobile…

So, you also have to consider how your images scale for mobile devices.

#2 Make Your Images Contextually Relevant

Regardless of the kind of campaign you’re running – whether it’s asking your audience to help you support a worthy cause, informing customers of updates in your business, or promoting a new product – it’s important to choose images that fit the overall context of your message. In essence, the image you use has to be related to your specific campaign.

Let’s say you want to promote your restaurant’s new menu. If your goal is to entice customers in to take a look at this menu, a good way to do that is to include in any emails you send to subscribers a grid of high-resolution pictures that best represent the appeal of your new menu items.

If you’re announcing the new menu lineup on social media, you could run an influencer campaign that features pictures of a handful of local micro influencers enjoying some of those new menu items at your restaurant, OR just post great-looking pictures of the new menu options. #foodporn

Uhh… is that fancy ramen or is that fancy ramen? Source: The Flatiron on Instagram

Of course, you dont’ want to use pictures of food that aren’t on your menu. You probably know what it’s like to go into a store to buy something the store advertised only to find out the product is sold out. Or worse, that the store never actually had it.

Don’t be that guy.

The takeaway here is a time-tested marketing tactic is to show a product in action. A great picture can help you do that.

#3 Use High-Quality Images That Support Your Brand Story

For your audience to fully appreciate the beauty of your images, you have to get great-looking photos. Not only should they be high-quality images, but it’s also a good idea to let your images tell your story.

We included Kate and Jade’s Instagram feed (@panaceas_pantry) in a recent roundup of health food influencers, and one of the things that was pretty cool about that feed (other than the high-quality food photography) is that their overall feed had purple threaded all through it.

What comes to mind when you see purple food? Probably sweets? Rich, indulgent, decadent flavors.  A really smart idea for a feed that’s full of healthy vegan desserts and treats.

Source: on Instagram @panaceas_pantry

People spend way too much time looking at screens to want to see anything blurry. Trust us when you say, you’re going to IMMEDIATELY lose your audience if they’re having to fight to make sense of your picture.

Low-quality images are just going to turn your customers off, causing them to unfollow you on social media or unsubscribe from your newsletters.

#4 Use Pictures of Faces. We Just LOVE Pictures of Faces!

If you’re trying to drum up engagement, nothing trumps featuring people – and specifically faces – in your post. We love looking at one another.  According to a study of more than one million photos on Instagram, images containing human faces received 38 percent more “Likes” than those without. Furthermore, the images with faces were 32 percent more likely to get comments from viewers.

If you use Instagram and have liked or followed an style-related accounts, the chances are pretty good that you have seen the Shapermint ads. Most of the ads are content from Shapermint users. They video quality isn’t always great, but they are always high-impact, in large part because they feature videos of regular women.

The data gathered in the study may have been isolated to just Instagram, but the logic applies to other social media platforms and even email as well. This is because email and social media share a common goal: to drive engagement with audiences.

So if you want to engage with your followers or subscribers, make it a point to use images with human faces.

#5 Personalize Your Images So They Resonate with Your Audience

Stock photos are everywhere in the marketing world. But you don’t really HAVE to use stock images just for the sake of having an image, especially if your stock image options suck or are outdated.

Hey, folks… stock images can get outdated! Images communicate messages, and the conversations going on in the business world 10 years ago are very different from the ones going on in the business world right now. SO stock images have an expiration date.

Remember these kinds of stock business photos? This one has been optimized for the search terms “Men employees suit work greeting” …

: /

Stock photos are only as effective as their ability to “speak” to your audience. And the only message I’m getting from that picture above is “stock photo”. But, if you just search a little longer…

…. Work pictures like this one from the LinkedIn Sales Navigator look a little different, a little more interesting, a little more relatable, a little more current.

Personalizing images like these can make them more relevant to your audience. Doing so not only helps humanize your content, but it also makes your customers feel like you’re talking directly to them.

By “personalizing”, we mean basing your image choice on the type of subscriber data you have.

For instance, if you run a travel and hospitality website, you can survey your most frequent customers and ask them which places they’d like to visit next. You can then send them images of those places the next time you send them offers.

#6 Add Alt text to Your Images to Support Your SEO Efforts

Images can and should be optimized. Google image searches account for one-third of all Google searches. That’s 1.1 billion image searches a day. Just on Google.

So, using alt tags to optimize your images can go a long way toward helping your content, brand, and products get found online.  Not only that, but it’s important in email marketing as well. Images in your email can be blocked by certain email clients. Including alt text in your images solves this problem, because it provides context for the image.

You’ve seen these little gray boxes in your email, I’m sure.

If a subscriber’s email client blocks images, using alt text to describe what your images are will encourage the subscriber to turn off image blocking. This enables them to see your images and have a more positive experience reading your emails.

(Source)

Regardless of what email service provider (ESP) or content management system (CMS) you use, adding alt text to images is pretty straightforward. Just look for the “Alt text” or “Add alt text” on the platform you’re using, and type in the appropriate alt text. Simple, isn’t it?

Wrap Up

No matter what digital marketing campaign you’re running, images are an important part of it. By using high-quality, relevant, and well-positioned images, you can improve engagement with your audience, encourage social sharing, and even boost your revenue.

Follow these tips, and leverage the power of your images.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kaitlin Westbrook is a Content Specialist at Campaign Monitor. She is also a film aficionado and has written several screenplays.

How to Keep the Rights to the Content You Pay Influencers to Create for You

In the wonderful world of social media, user-generated content is a valuable resource for marketers. It helps address content production gaps, it increases follower engagement, and it’s an effective method of word-of-mouth marketing.

But with the multiplication of user-generated content on social media, there also come a barrage of questions about who owns the content, especially in the world of influencer marketing, where UGC is every creator’s bread and butter.

The truth is brands should NEVER be in a position where they have to FIGURE OUT who owns the rights to their sponsored content (even though they often are).

This is super important.

Content rights determine who has the legal right (the brand or the creator) to use and share the content a bloggers, influencer, or social media user creates. This is true even if a brand has paid a creator for the content and it features a brand’s products or services. A brand’s UGC rights still have to be established IN WRITING because in the U.S., copyright are automatically assigned to the content’s creator.

So, in this post, we’re discussing what you as a marketer need to know about the UGC rights, the challenges brands face with UGC campaigns, and tips for structuring content rights for your next UGC or influencer campaign.

The 411 on UGC

So, we’ve talked about UGC quite a bit over the years in different respects….

…. how to drive sales with UGC

…. how to get AMAZING UGC (cause all UGC ain’t amazing)

…. the 5 BIG benefits of UGC (and why brands clamor for UGC)

If you missed our prior memos, we’ll make this explanation short and sweet – user-generated content is the lifeblood of social media and influencer marketing. It’s the content created by contributors (whether solicited or unsolicited, paid or unpaid by the brand) and made accessible to the general public via social media. It includes both sponsored posts AND the stuff users post to their social media feeds about different brands – images, captions, videos, blogs.

At The Shelf, A LOT (like, MOST) of our clients are expecting great UGC from their influencer campaigns. Some brands run campaigns almost exclusively for the UGC.

In general, UGC is a good way for brands to get consumers involved in the content-creation process. It gives customers a chance to share honest feedback on the products. Plus, it creates a TON of content (some of it even great content) for brands to reuse across their own branded social channels (with permission, of course).

Not for nothing, but this form of content creation and word-of-mouth marketing is super effective. That’s the beauty of UGC.

Okay, So Let’s Take a Look at a Few Brands That Are Really Good At the [Free] UGC Game

You know we had to do it because we love examples, and color, and screengrabs that prove our point. So, we put together a quick-and-dirty list of some brands (our go-to UGC examples, no doubt) who are successfully integrating UGC as part of their normal content marketing strategy.

Coca-Cola

This legacy company kills it at creating user-generated content with their “Share a Coke” campaign. Coca-Cola first launched the “Share a Coke” campaign in the summer of 2014.

The campaign originally involved users posting about finding their names on bottles of Coca-Cola, and it worked famously well. Who wouldn’t want to share a personalized Coke? It makes us feel special and happy almost instantly.

The campaign has since evolved around the idea that when customers #ShareACoke, they’re sharing an experience with the people around them. You can go online and buy personalized Coke bottles, so none of your friends ever feel left out of the picture.

Running every summer in the years since its launch, the Share a Coke campaign is now a memorable marker for Coke drinkers around the world. “Once the campaign ends, people want to hold onto the memory,” says Jaideep Kibe, vice president, Coca-Cola Trademark, Coca-Cola North America.

Aerie

Aerie is an intimates brand connected with the larger retailer American Eagle. In the mid-2010s, public scrutiny around photo-retouching of women increased. Aerie made a name for itself by pledging to stop retouching the models in their product photo shoots.

On top of eliminating retouching, Aerie began the branded hashtag campaign #AerieReal. Aerie asked that women post un-edited photos of themselves in bathing suits using the hashtag #AerieReal, and in return they donated $1 to the National Eating Disorders Association for every photo posted.

Aerie tapped into the very real emotions of women around the world to not only highlight their swimsuits on real “models,” but also spark a change in the online fashion industry.

Wayfair

Wayfair is an online dropshipper that has become a staple of all things home décor. Much of Wayfair’s legend can be attributed to social media and UGC. Wayfair encourages customers to share photos on Instagram of their products in the customer’s home using the hashtag #wayfairathome, or in our case, #wayfairprofessional

For brands like Wayfair, allowing users to showcase interior design chops in its feed provides Wayfair with several powerful benefits.

First… It gives Wayfair access to a never-ending source of really great social media fodder. People who love Wayfair LOVE it, and they are more than willing to share the results of their deocrating projects with Wayfair’s massive audience.

Next… The UGC is a powerful method of social proof. It’s a great way for the brand to feature how its décor items can fit into any home or office décor style WITHOUT looking like a sponsored post.

Plus… Wayfair’s feed doubles as a sort of home decorating “look book” that people will follow and access as needed for design inspiration.

It’s win-win-win.

The Challenges with UGC Rights Brands MUST Address

Remember that one guy who said he fought the law and the law won? Assume that’s gonna happen if your UGC ducks aren’t in a row.

Creators Own the Rights… Accept That

We published a post not too long ago on the three social media laws brands and marketers need to know to do business in the influencer marketing space. You can read that post here.

Here’s the thing – with something like UGC, your brand is dealing with the creative output of another person or organization. By default, the U.S. Copyright Law grants ownership of any intellectual property to the content’s Creator – this is true EVEN IF YOU PAID FOR THE CONTENT!

For UGC (and any copyright issue), ownership rights MUST be transferred from the Creator to the brand in writing. At the very least, there should be something in place to outline how content rights will be shared between the Creator and the brand.

Creators like bloggers, foodies, photographers, and videographers (not an exhaustive list) want credit for what they create, and they should get it. A lot of brands understand intellectual property laws, but don’t readily equate social media content with intellectual property.

It is.

Here’s the takeaway that most of us learned as children: Ask for permission before you mess with anyone else’s stuff.

Getting Consent for Unsponsored UGC

Into the nitty-gritty for a second. Bare with us — you’ll appreciate it when you know how to get consent from your audience and avoid the possibility of a crazy lawsuit.

There are a few ways to go about getting consent. Let’s be real — nobody has the time and resources to reach out to EVERY individual whose content you want to use.

There are two types of consent brands can get before utilizing user-generated content:

1. Implied Consent

2. Explicit Consent

Explicit consent means the Creator explicitly gives you permission to use their content. For influencer marketing, the details of how content can be used is included in a contract.

For unsolicited, unpaid UGC, brands will often DM a Creator and just ask if it’s okay to use X piece of content for Y specific purpose.

Operative term there being specific purpose.

According to industry analyst Susan Etlinger, “Organizations must be honest with the user about when and how the content will be used, and whether it will be syndicated to other publishers or organizations.”

The copyright (which legally gives someone the right to publish, copy, edit/modify, sell, make derivative works from) belongs to the person who created the content. If you seek out their content and intend to use it, you better be clear about what you want to do with it and get permission first.

On the flip side, brands can obtain implied consent. Implied consent is good for brands that want to compile a huge library of UGC since you don’t have to reach out to individual content creators to ask for their permission. Score!

Implied consent is the type of consent associated with social media and things like hashtag campaigns and contests. It’s the notion that, by using a branded hashtag or tagging (not just talking about) a specific brand, a user is agreeing to the brand’s use of their related content.

You know what I’m talking about. I bet you see branded hashtags contests and campaigns on your own Instagram feed almost daily. These types of user-generated content campaigns are everywhere and they are GREAT at creating awareness around a product, brand, campaign, or idea.

If you decide to run a branded hashtag campaign on Instagram (as thousands of other brands do), you’re assuming that a consumer is implying their consent to the use of their content by using the hashtag needed to enter and sharing campaign-related content with their own networks.

Branded hashtags are HUGE for brands. Most of the hashtags used on Instagram (like 70 percent of them) are branded hashtags. Instagram posts with hashtags get 12.6 percent more engagement than those without, so many brands incorporate branded hashtags as a core part of the marketing strategy. Often, when we pitch clients, we pitch ideas WITH branded hashtags.

Final thought here… If there is ever a question about who owns the content – and that’s always the case when there’s no contract in place that explicitly lay out who owns what and how content can be used – ask before using someone’s content.

Tips for Structuring UGC Rights Policies for Influencer Campaigns

We know it’s not fun and it sounds pretty boring, but you have to have a UGC rights contract in place for any influencer campaign.

We typically negotiate rights for campaign content to be used by the brand as they see fit, across their social media channels. But the larger the influencer, the more likely you are to have resistance from the Creator. Sometimes that takes the form of an expiration date for the content, or the Creator being able to delete sponsored posts from their feed after a certain amount of time… it can get a little weird and a little complicated.

Still, it’s crucial that you iron out those types of details in a written contract because influencers are well within their rights to ask a brand to take down a post that was part of a sponsored campaign the brand has ALREADY PAID FOR if reuse is not clearly defined within the contract. In an absolute-all-out-worst-case-ever scenario, the influencer could actually sue for copyright infringement.

And FYI, if an influencer is repped by an agency, you can bet there are going to be content rights issues. Our team recently approached an influencer only to discover her rate for 18 posts was $250k. PLUS, the brand would have to pay an additional cost of $2,000 PER WEEK for any image it wanted to reuse in ads. #Facts

Clarity and Transparency Are Crucial

You ever see that episode of Friends where Joey takes a job as the spokesperson for City Free Clinic and ends up with his face plastered all over New York City (including Time Square) on a poster for VD?

THAT’S an influencer’s worst nightmare when it comes to sharing the rights to content that contains their likenesses. You have to remember Creators are working hard to build their brands just like you are… they want to protect their reputations, their audiences, and their future as influencers.

Source: YouTube.com

Clarity and transparency are KEY in negotiating UGC rights, both for brands and Creators. Creators need to know from brands exactly how sponsored content and other UGC will be used and how long it will be used for that purpose.

Contract Elements to Include

Now, like we mentioned before, the rights (and scope) of use for influencer-created content has to be negotiated in your influencer contract.

Think of influencers as their own companies. They are brands in-and-of themselves. So, influencers are looking to participate in campaigns that align with their brands. That said, the use of the content created during a campaign should also align with the influencer’s brand.

How much control will creators have when it comes to conceptualizing ideas and creating collateral for your campaign?

Is your influencer going to be posting directly to their social media channels or is this more of a takeover type of situation? We actually published a pretty comprehensive piece on takeovers that you can read:

1. The Flawlessly Executed Instagram Takeover

2. Four Epic Instagram Takeovers and Why They Worked

The Shelf platform includes a dashboard that allows brands to preview and approve sponsored content for influencer campaigns before it goes live.

Brands often leave creative control up to the influencer, but it’s also important for brands to set up strategies and the message before hiring influencers for their campaigns (that’s largely because the strategies you use and your message will play an important role in your influencer selection process).

Influencers have mastered the art of reaching THEIR audience, not really yours. So, it’s important that the influencer’s audience and the brand’s audience overlap to some degree.

Influencers can be particular about the content they leave on their feeds. If you’ve ever looked at an influencer’s Instagram, you know that they’re selective about how much sponsored content they have on their page. And duh! This makes sense. You don’t want to see sponsored post after sponsored post — it will ruin their authenticity with their audience.

Brands, on the other hand, also need the authority to take down or remove content that doesn’t meet the established brand guidelines. You can’t have bad or misaligned content that you paid for hanging out on the internet.

Include a section in your influencer contract outlining when an influencer can take down sponsored content, and clearly state that you reserve the right to remove any content an influencer produces for your brand.

It’s important for brands to get enlisted influencers to agree they won’t infringe on any other person’s rights, including copyright. Influencers should not incorporate the pictures, content, audio, or video of another creator’s work into any campaign. That’s uber-important.

To ensure you get what you paid for, we always list a set of DOs and DON’Ts because influencers (bless their hearts) will inevitably do weird things. So, you need a record of the hashtags to be used, any people or things that need to be mentioned in sponsored posts and the length of time the post is to stay published to a creator’s site or social channel.

Contracts also include things like confidentiality clauses that require influencers to keep your super duper top secret secrets a secret… and indemnification that keeps you out of court in the event a zombie apocalypse, Yeti appearance or freak accident happens during the creation of the sponsored content.

Contracts are crucial, and the details you include in your contracts can save you time, reputation, and tens of thousands of dollars in litigation. Our iron-clad contracts allow our clients to have stress-free campaigns…but trust us when we say every clause in our contract was the result of a hard-learned lesson.

Final Thoughts

Content rights are actually pretty straightforward – Creators own the content until they agree that they don’t.

For brands that want to include the use of paid or unpaid user-generated content in their marketing campaigns, you can avoid the headaches that will inevitably arise with UGC rights by getting permission to use the content ahead of time.

Not to toot our own horn here, but we’re pretty good at negotiating content rights for brands, and our platform has a built-in transparency that just makes the whole UGC/ post approval process super simple to navigate.

SEO plays a major role in how often people are able to find your blog and especially your online store or boutique in search. As a main driver of traffic, and therefore potential followers and customers, it’s critical that you don’t get lost among your competition. So, when it’s time to update your site (and that times rolls around more frequently than you probably think it does), there are some important search optimization things you need to consider… like page speed, image optimizations, and blog content, ALONG WITH the technical updates to page and site structure.

The good news is every one of these small updates can help get your blog or store in front of the people who want to buy your products and keep you on their radars. So updating is CRUCIAL to the success of your business.

5 Ways Bloggers and Fashion Affiliates Can Optimize Their Blogs and Online Stores to Get Better Search Rankings on Google

Update #1: Site Speed

People aren’t super patient when it comes to waiting for web pages to load. So, a slow site often results in potential customers clicking away from the page – even when they’ve already clicked a link – before they can even make a purchase.

In fact, on Mobile, Google found that at 3 seconds, the probability of a bounce is 32 percent, and at six seconds, that increases to 110 percent.

While page speed has been a critical ranking factor for e-commerce sites on desktop, it’s now being given even more weight from Google when indexing sites for mobile search. Your goal should be for the site to load in less than 2.5 seconds on Mobile—see the screenshot below for the load time and score from Google’s Test My Site tool.

To test the speed of your site’s pages, start with a speed test tool. Google’s pagespeed tool is the go-to for marketing professionals and provides clear and actionable tips for speeding up your site for both mobile and desktop.

Instead of aiming for a load time, in this case, you can aim for getting as high of a score as possible. The report will give you a score out of 100 and tell you what changes you need to make, like improving caching, reducing the load of time-intensive features, or eliminating render blocking resources.

Once you’ve made changes, you may expect to get a 100/100 instead of an 80/100, for example, but this isn’t always possible—or necessary. In their Google PageSpeed Insights guide, experts at Kinsta explain not to obsess over getting this perfect score, especially as an e-commerce site:

“This might not even be possible in all scenarios, depending upon how your WordPress site is set up. With a lot of multipurpose themes, e-commerce, and memberships sites, you simply will have an almost impossible time trying to achieve a perfect score. Which is perfectly okay.”

Update #2: Product Description Optimization

Okay, so you’ve probably been in enough online stores to know that product descriptions are much more than just a list what a product does or its many features. First and foremost, descriptions need to be written for the user. This means you need to start by writing them in-house; don’t take them from the manufacturer website.

Next, optimize all your product descriptions with some basic SEO updates:

• Use long-tail keywords in descriptions (instead of “cute blouse”, you want “pink keyhole puff sleeve floral blouse”).

• Include internal links to other products or pages.

• Use headers to separate sections and include supplemental keywords.

Finally, and most importantly, avoid duplicate content. This may feel next to impossible, but with some technical help, you can tackle the issue. Outside of simply writing the same content on each page, which needs to be avoided, it often comes down to details like tracking users, setting up a no-index for certain pages, and creating different URL paths. Use this technical guide from InFlow to tackle this potential issue.

Update #3: Image Optimization

Image search is an especially important opportunity for e-commerce companies. Google images search accounts for more than 26 percent of all search traffic—you already have the images, you just have to make sure they show up when a potential customer is ready to buy. Luckily, there are a few simple ways to optimize yo ur product images for search.

• Reduce image size—this goes back to page load speed. Large images will slow down page load time. If you use WordPress, you can use a tool like WP Smush It to compress all images.

• Title the image with the name of the product.

• Update the alt tag to reflect the product name; use keywords naturally—don’t stuff. If it doesn’t make sense to inc1lude one, then don’t; in many cases, however, the product name will include the keyword in some way. I.E. “adidas pink sneakers 2019.”

• Update alt tag for each image angle. I.E. “adidas pink sneakers top,” “adidas pink sneakers left,” etc.

Update #4: Mobile Optimization

As of 2018, Google’s Mobile First index started prioritizing mobile versions of a website over desktop. With 79 percent of consumers using their smartphone to make a purchase, you want to make sure you show up in search when they’re looking for products that you sell. Luckily, getting your site mobile optimized likely won’t be a large project. In addition to site speed, you may also need to make the following changes and updates, according to Moz:

Optimize titles and descriptions:

• Use schema.org structured data

• Optimize for local search: “Standardizing your name, address, and phone number and including your city and state name in your site’s metadata.”

• Use responsive web design

Update #5: Compelling Content

While direct, on-page optimizations are crucial for driving traffic to your online store and product pages, blog content is another important traffic-driver and SEO-booster. Writing blog posts allow you to target a wide range of keywords that are related to your brand, without cluttering your critical product pages. Not to mention, it’s a sales-driving tool, allowing you to direct potential customers to the pages you care about most—even if they didn’t come to your site to buy.

First, however, you need to get the SEO right and there are a few steps to do exactly that in Blog SEO: A Foundational Guide.

• Submit your XML sitemap (if you haven’t already)

• Keyword optimize your blog topics, choosing high search, low competition keywords

• Optimize each post with the help of tools like Yoast

• Update title tag and meta description for your blog and all blog posts

• Add image alt tags with the keyword

• Create high-quality content (think: long, thorough, and using images and internal and external links)

You may have noticed that much of the work to do for your blog is similar to that which you need to do for your product pages. Learn it once and apply sitewide to improve SEO across the board.

Conclusion

You have great products, but if you can’t be found when potential customers are looking for them, you miss out on traffic and sales. Use these SEO updates, from page speed to product page optimization, to capture as many potential sales as possible.

By now, we all know just how powerful a tool Instagram can be to help boost a brand online. But one thing that still often manages to elude many of us is how to achieve consistent engagement. After all, the proof of real influence is being able to move people to actually take an action in response to your posts.

There are influencers who are absolutely crushing it with engagement, and we know our clients and other brands use the quality of an influencer’s engagement as criteria during the influencer selection process.

11 Powerful Strategies Anyone Can Use to Boost Engagement on Instagram

Truth bomb: It takes hard work to drum up that kind of engagement consistently. Both brands and emerging influencers are always on the hunt for strategies that will help boost their own visibility and influence on Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat. But it’s not impossible. Work? Yes. Rocket science? No.

There are a handful of simple strategies that anyone can apply to their own account to help boost engagement, and we’re here to show you just how to do that. With these strategies, you’ll be able to improve your engagement rate, boost customer interaction, and see your brand grow on Instagram.

Why is Your Engagement Ratio Important?

Remember back in the day (like, two years ago), follower count was everything. The more followers a social media user had, the better he or she looked to brands, and the more they could charge for sponsored posts. So, it makes sense that people were doing whatever was necessary to achieve the status of influencer… even if that meant paying to artificially boost follower numbers.

Whereas brands formerly mistook high follower numbers for influence, they quickly learned through failed influencer campaign after failed influencer campaign that follower count is not a primary predictor of influence. Instead, since influence is the ability to have an effect on another person’s thinking and/or behavior, it made more sense that the ability to create content that consistently moves people to Like, comment, share or save is a better indicator of influence than just having the numbers.

Engagement ratios gauge how effective a person is at reaching and communicating with an audience. By tracking the percentage of audience members who engage with posts, how often they engage, and the types of content with which they engage, brands and marketers can see how influential someone really is on social media.

Take these two example accounts as a comparison:

If you notice, the first account actually reaches more people with every post. But the lower engagement ratio will drive up the cost a brand pays per engagement to use this influencer in a campaign. their cost per engagement is much higher than the smaller influencer. So, really, you’re getting less for your money, instead of more. And, if we’re being honest here, we all like anything that helps to keep these costs down.

“But, Account 1 reached more people, that has to be better for our campaign!” That’s true. But social reach is just one part of the puzzle, and how big or small that piece is depends entirely on the campaign you have planned.

The reach of your post tells you how many unique users have seen your content – not be to confused with impressions, which tells how many times your content has been seen… by ANY user. For example, one user might keep coming back for more, leaving you with a higher number of impressions than reach.

So, the bottom line? Even if awareness is your primary goal and your goal is to get your brand in front of as many people as possible, without engagement – the ability to influence their behavior – converting that audience will be difficult.

Now that we know how important engagement rates are, it’s time to get to the good stuff. Some actual implementable strategies that you can use to boost engagement on your own account – whether you’re a business, a blogger, or both.

11 Ways to Maximize Your Engagement on Instagram

All of these strategies are fairly easy to implement, and should all help you to see a boost in your engagement rates. While all of these strategies apply to any account on Instagram, some will help businesses more, and some will help influencers more. That doesn’t mean that should just scroll past them though, every strategy on here is useful, and will boost your performance. Pinky swear.

1. Develop Your Instagram Brand Look

We recently published a post (this one) on developing a cohesive Instagram brand look. Instagram is, first and foremost, a visual platform. So, for brands and bloggers, it’s important to create a visual Instagram identity that mirrors your actual brand identity.

One of our all-time favorite influencers is Amy Roiland (on Instagram @afashionnerd) – one of the coolest IG feeds you’ll ever see. Amy is a Los Angeles blogger and designer of fresh, feminine, fun custom eyewear.

A couple of things you will notice about Amy’s feed…

She’s often photographed or filmed sporting different pairs of glasses or sunglasses with her colorful outfits of the day. And whether she’s doing a close-up headshot or a full body shot, her pics are playful, pink, and just a bit offbeat.

By looking at Amy’s pictures, you can tell a lot about Amy. More, the consistent use of natural light (and lighting that makes it look like she’s in natural light) and shades of pink thread the pics in her Instagram profile together in a way that makes her feed interesting and aesthetically pleasing.

2. Use the Right Hashtags

This seems basic enough. Use the right hashtags. Posts with at least one hashtag generally see 12.6 percent more engagements than those without hashtags.

We’re not just talking about sticking a hashtag in front of a witty phrase. Here, we mean use the right hashtags for your audience and peers to find you, and for your content to get catalogued under the most relevant categories.

Choosing which hashtags to use… and how many hashtags to use on each of your posts has a bit of a learning curve at first. You’ll often find macro-influencers stop using them or only use a few of them while smaller accounts use the maximum amount of 30. When you’re just starting out, it can be tempting to cover all your bases and flood your posts with every hashtag imaginable. But, 10 to 12 targeted hashtags.

A popular hashtag like #sorrynotsorry (currently showing up in 12.5 million posts) is relatable, and helps your audience to get a better idea of what you’re about… but it’s not topical.

By that I mean #sorrynotsorry is a hashtag that Instagrammers use to punctuate posts about everything from binge watching Game of Thrones to landing the biggest client your firm has ever had. Using a hashtag like that to express a sentiment that many people can relate to is smart, but it’s only part of a good strategy AS LONG AS you couple it with topical hashtags that will help your target audience find you.

Also, avoid hashtags like #followme or #f4f (follow for follow). These will NEVER attract the kind of valuable accounts you’re looking for. Also, if you’re an influencer hoping to work with brands in the future, that kind of behavior will raise red flags all over the place. It’s just not good practice. FYI.

And unless you already have millions of followers, using the big hashtags out there like #selfie or #travel won’t actually bring you the benefits you imagine. Take #selfie for instance, there are 370 million posts using this hashtag as I’m writing this. Even if you’re putting out the best content the platform has ever seen, it’s highly unlikely that your posts will even be visible just a few seconds later.

You need to know how to target your hashtags. The screenshot below is a result listed under #foodstagram, a popular hashtag foodies, chefs and food bloggers use to help people find their content online.

Source: On Instagram @rainbowplantlife #foodstagram

If you notice, @rainbowplantlife added 30 hashtags to this post as a comment. Smart. Because many of the hashtags used in this post like #veganbombs, #veganfoodie, and  #foodblogger are targeted hashtags that will help people who are interested in things like vegan food, fat bombs, recipes, and food photographs find one another on Instagram.

Spend time searching for hashtags that have a smaller number of posts so that yours have a better chance of being seen. To this end, you’ll also want to try some more targeted hashtags – instead of #travelblog (which has 32.9 million posts), go for #femaletravelbloggers (with 206k posts).

If you’re a business user, you should also consider creating and using a branded hashtag. Brand-focused hashtags account for 7 out of every 10 on the platform. They’re not always super obvious either. It doesn’t have to simply be your brand name on its own, use a bit of imagination, and you might even see your branded hashtag spreading further than your own campaign, helping to spread your name even further.

3. Be on at the Right Times

While Instagram switched things up and did away with a chronological feed, the time and day that you post your content is still vitally important. Getting your content out so it’s around for peak activity times is your best chance for grabbing those engagements.

The optimal time to post will differ from social platform to social platform depending on when users are most active. Studies on the best times to post demonstrate there are overlaps in the best times to post across different platforms.  For Instagram in particular, global engagement peaks Thursday afternoons. Users are most engaged Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays.

Source: Sprout Social

It’s worth investigating the times when your account experiences the most engagement. If you have a business account on Instagram, then this is easy to do. In your own analytics tab, there will be simple graphs to show you the best days and times for your account. Depending on your audience’s age, jobs, and location these times could be very different from the average statistic.

And, this doesn’t just go for your in feed posts, the timing for your stories is also paramount.

4. Show Your Face and/ or Product

This one can be tricky for products. While trying to be creative and share something new and exciting is a great goal to strive towards on Instagram, many of us forget that sometimes the simplest content is the most relatable and interesting.

People like an element of transparency on social media, especially now that they’re much more clued up when it comes to filters, influencers, and “doing it for the ‘gram”.

One of the easiest ways to do this is just showing up in the posts. This simple act can help your engagement soar. Don’t believe us? Check out this stat. Sixty-eight percent of the top performing posts on Instagram prominently feature a product, and images that contain faces achieve around 38 percent more likes than those without.

But remember the 80/20 rule when it comes to self-promotion. If every single one of your photos is pushing your products directly, then people will quickly get bored. Instead, you should make sure that 80 percent of your content is working to entertain, educate or inspire your audience. The other 20 percent you can use to advertise the product or service you’re offering.

This is the same strategy social media marketer Gary Vaynerchuk even champions his book Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook.

Showing faces doesn’t have to mean your face. It can mean:

• Models using/ interacting with your product

• Real customers and their reactions to your posts

• Video reviews of your products

5. Create Multimedia Content

While Instagram has always been a great place to share photos, the capacity for sharing videos has grown in recent years. In fact, a quarter of all ads on the platform are now single videos. Having some video content allows you to more easily show off what your product can do in ways a static image just can’t do.

Thanks to Instagram’s Stories feature, you’re not confined to the traditional in feed posts any more. So, let’s take a look at how you can use video to your advantage.

In-feed videos

One of the fastest growing types of Instagram ad is the In-feed videos. These 60 second maximum movies can help you to grab the attention of those perpetual scrollers and show off what you have to offer. Want to really grab them though? Studies have shown that attention drops off incredibly quickly on this platform, so even though you have those 60 seconds, you don’t need to use them all. Grab them in the first 30 seconds, and you have a much better chance of conversion.

Another thing to consider is how many people will actually listen to your videos. We listed this stat in our step-by-step holiday social media strategy (you can download it here): 60 percent of Stories video ads were viewed with the sound on in 2017, compared with 7 percent of Facebook video ads.

That said, including subtitles on your videos is paramount if you’re going include any kind of sound. Or, make it easier on yourself and keep it entirely a visual affair. That is what the platform is best known for after all.

Video Stories

If you’re not using Stories yet, as an individual or a business, you are sorely missing out on the best features of the platform. These ephemeral images only stick around for 24 hours and they can be a great way to showcase less polished content and behind the scenes images. You also have the chance to go live, which is perfect for big announcements, unveiling new products, or interviewing guests.

Stories can also include hashtags, mentions, and location tags like any ordinary post, so make sure you’re really utilising all of these features when you post. Of course, you don’t want your stories to be littered with hashtags, but one simple trick to get away with this is to make the text so small that you can hide all of your chosen hashtags behind a single emoji or GIF.

If you simply can’t let your stories disappear after their 24 hours is up, then you now have the option to create a “highlight” with them. These highlights live on your profile, and allow your followers to see stories months after you first posted them. By organizing these into groups, they can be a great additional tool for your account. They give easy access to categorised content right there on your profile. The categories you choose to use would depend on your account. For example, if you’re a travel blogger, you can use a highlight for each country you visit, one for travel tips, one for a Q&A, and one for airport selfies. Get creative and use what your followers will love.

6. DM People

The weird thing about social networks? They seem to be getting less about being social every single day. A lot of the social interaction we experience on Instagram is in the form of comments from people we don’t know saying in-depth message like “Nice shot” or a single red heart emoji. So many of us overlook the power of the direct messages, especially when trying to grow our accounts.

A common method used by “growth hackers” is to connect with other influencers in the space through direct messaging in ways that will benefit them. Want to try this for yourself? Here’s how you can do it too.

Find influencers in your niche

Whatever area your business or personal account is in, you won’t be the only one there. Find the other influencers in your niche and start reaching out to them. Ideally, you’ll want people with more followers and better engagement than yourself, but shoot too high and you might be lost in the noise.

If you have a smaller account, then it’s a good idea to seek out influencers of a similar size, but with a following that is just to one side of your own. Check out their follower list and compare it to your own, or find someone who has a slightly different style to your own. The point of this exercise is to find new people to follow and interact with your own content.

Reach out, but personalize it

Once you’ve found some influencers to reach out to – no maximum here, make as many connections as you can – it’s time to bite the bullet and reach out to them. As you’ll be sending out multiple messages, it’s a good idea to work with some kind of template in order to save time and avoid mistakes. But, be careful not to sound too much like an automaton.

Every message you send out should feel personal to every influencer you reach. Nobody wants to feel like the recipient of spam mail. Use their name, include a specific detail, and tailor each template as well as possible. For example, you could say; “Hey Bri! First, I just have to say how much I LOVE your adorable dogs! So jealous that you get to travel the world with them – it sounds like a dream. I’m reaching out to you because…”. Having an opening like this makes the recipient feel valued.

Get to the point

Now it’s time to get down to the details. The reason why you’re reaching out. You want them to check out your profile, tag you in their story, comment on your posts, regram your content – whichever would be most effective from this particular influencer. Of course, you’re more than happy to do the same for them. Quid pro quo, as it were.

Not everyone will be interested in this kind of deal of course, but when you partner up with influencers like this, you can see some amazing results. Make sure you hold up you end of the deal though, and don’t overpromise. Once you get a reputation like that, it’s almost impossible to shake it.

Every time you partner up with another influencer like this, you’ll be harnessing the power of their own individual followings. It’s like influencer marketing inception.

7. Grab Some UGC

While this tip is primarily for businesses and brands on Instagram, it can work with individual influencers as well, so no scrolling past!

We actually wrote a post on the five BIG benefits of UGC within an influencer marketing campaign before, but here’s a quick refresher. When someone who loves your product creates any kind of content about your product, they’ve created the perfect piece of UGC that you can repurpose for your own feed. Of course, you will need permission first, but once you have that, you’re good to go.

User-generated content is great because it saves you time and resources you would otherwise spend creating the content yourself, but more important than that, word-of-mouth endorsements like the types provided in influencer marketing and UGC typically convert at five times the rate of regular branded content. Ninety percent of consumers trust recommendations from friends, family and even influencers more than they trust branded content like websites and commercials.

creating the content yourself kind of content is great as it not only saves you time and uses a fresh eye, it’s also really great for your engagement rate. In fact, this kind of user-generated content has a 4.5 percent higher conversion rate than regular, brand-produced content. Consumers prefer seeing posts from a person over a brand, that much is clear. If they are convinced to interact with that UGC post, you’ll see that conversion rate rise to 9.6 percent.

8. Edit

While strategic posting, analytics, and hashtag choices are important, the actual content you put out there has to be an important factor as well. Making sure that your images and videos look clear, bright, and high quality will always be a key factor in attracting attention on Instagram.

And, you don’t have to be a pro to make your images look great anymore. Even the in-built editing tools on Instagram can turn most every day snaps into something more intriguing. While the pre-built filters on the platform might not be the best solution.

Source: Canva.com

Clarendon has proven to be the most popular by a long shot. Clarendon is a filter that instantly brightens your image and intensifies both the highlights and the shadows. It’s also the first choice after Default. So, artistic or lazy, people seem to like it.

Whatever style works for your brand, keep it consistent. The best business accounts out there are almost instantly recognizable when they post something new, as they’ve established a consistent brand image. The same advice holds true for your account. Choose a simple color palette, create your own preset, or simply use the same filter every time. Soon, your brand image will start to form, and people will know it’s you, making them more likely to stop scrolling and start a conversation.

9. Know Your Audience

More than a third of all US adults are now on Instagram, so there’s a good chance your audience will be there. But understanding who your user base is will help you tailor your campaign strategies.

Seventy-one percent of businesses use Instagram, so you’re not the only one trying to get a slice of the social pie. Thanks to the array of features available to business accounts, this number has been growing year over year, and small businesses make up most of this number.

Eighty percent of Instagram users are located outside of the US. This is incredibly important to bear in mind if you’re not offering a product that can be shipped internationally, or even if you’re only targeting a US market. Offering some form of international option, or using influencers from outside the US can be a great way to tackle this.

Fifty-nine percent of 18-29 year olds use Instagram – when I first saw this statistic, I’ll admit I was a little surprised. Like many others, I assumed that all of this age group were on the social media site, turns out, I was wrong. Still, this age group does make up the largest percentage of users on Instagram, so you’ll want to make sure that your content appeals to this demographic. We’re talking Millennials and Gen Z.

10. Use ALL of Instagram’s Features

Instagram is more than just a platform to post selfies and cute pictures of dogs. There are a wealth of features on the site that allow users to create engaging content, many of which go unused by the average user. And, while nobody is totally sure what their algorithm gets up to behind our screens, it is widely believed that the more of the platforms features you use, the more your content gets seen by your followers.

Take location tagging for instance, posts that use this feature receive 79 percent more engagement than those that don’t. Such a simple step to add into each image, with such impressive results. Aside from location tagging, you can use hashtags, tag people in your post, share to other platforms, use stories, or go live from your account. All of these features help to make your account more interesting, and attract more engagement to your account.

11. Skip the So-Called Growth Hacks

There are so many tactics floating around out there that claim to help you grow your account by thousands of followers in a matter of days. And, while they may well deliver on that promise, it’s doubtful that those followers will be the kind you really want. And, they most likely won’t want to engage with your content.

Also, steer clear of so called “engagement pods” where a group of influencers team up and comment on each other’s posts. While you will see your engagement rate rise with all these new commenters, they’re not REALLY interested in your content. They won’t convert in sales, they won’t recommend you to anyone else, and if you’re an influencer hoping to work with brands, they can spot this kind of behaviour a mile away.

And please, promise us, right here and now, that you will never – I repeat NEVER – buy likes from anywhere. No matter how the site tries to sell them to you, they are fake likes, they look fake, and they won’t provide any real value to your brand. Avoid them like the plague.

So, there you have it. Our 10 powerful strategies to help boost your Instagram engagement. Let us know if you apply any (or all) of these, and how they work for you on your account!

Why User-Generated Content is Influencer Marketing’s Pot o’ Gold

In the world of influencer marketing, user-generated content (UGC) is marketing gold. It is the influencer’s raison d’être. It is the one part of the campaign where an influencer proves his or her value to your brand. And frankly, it’s the reason you hired an influencer in the first place.

Of course, UGC isn’t limited to the framework of an influencer campaign. Brands have leveraged the power of handwritten product reviews, service testimonials, and video reviews for years. If you’re old enough to remember life before the Internet of Things, you may remember filling out an employment verification or rental application that required you to provide a list of references. These were living, breathing folks who had knowledge of your abilities and behaviors, and could confirm or deny the accuracy of whatever sales pitch you laid on the decision makers during your interview.

Who among us can deny being swayed one way or another by the presence of five little yellow stars lined up below a company’s name? We have been groomed to see and heed those stars, and back away from any product, service, or brand that falls below a 4-star rating.

Unless we REALLY NEED what they sell.

All of that – the reviews, the testimonials, the videos, the phone calls, the yellow stars – is user-generated content. So, what is UGC?

What is User-Generated Content?

Techpreneur and branding expert Hajj Flemings says branding is the experience people have with your company or product. User-generated content is the content an existing user, customer or social media follower creates to document that experience. For the sake of this article, we will focus a lot on influencer marketing campaigns. So, UGC includes the content your influencer creates during a marketing campaign to promote your product, brand, or service.

This content is not only crucial to the success of your influencer marketing campaign, it’s also an asset you can repurpose and use on your own social media channels and branded properties for years to come.

User-Generated Content vs Online Ads

I could sum up this entire section with six sad words: Most adults don’t trust online ads.

Online ads have somehow made their way into the same classification as fake news, according to a study from Rakuten Marketing. Americans are a bit more trusting when it comes to online ads, but in the UK and Australia, online ads get a bad rap.

Marketing Sherpa reports that traditional methods of advertising such as print, TV, radio and outdoor ads are seen as far more credible than search ads, online banners, or mobile ads.

The Nielsen Global Trust in Advertising Report surveyed people in 60 countries and found that respondents consistently viewed earned media (online reviews and publicity) as more credible than owned media (media owned and managed by brands). Eighty-three percent of respondents trusted recommendations from people they knew. Sixty-six percent of respondents put their trust in online reviews.

UGC is an Endorsement

Think of positive user-generated content as an endorsement. Unlike ads, which are tiny sales pitches from brands that want to sell things, user-generated content relies on an endorsement model. People view positive, objective reviews more as product information than an ad. For influencers, their endorsements – even paid endorsements – are often seen more as helpful tips and good advice than product pitches. I’ll get into why that is in a bit.

UGC Humanizes Your Brand

At its core, an endorsement is essentially one person saying to another, “Hey, I know that guy. I survived my interaction with him. And you know what? I’m better for having met him.” And that’s what you want – someone to vouch for your goodness, your usefulness, your smarts, and your benefits.

Your customers are far more likely to trust someone’s endorsement of you than they are to trust the content on your website. User-generated content helps you to forge a connection between your brand and your prospect by humanizing your brand to make it seem relatable and accessible. UGC is a necessary inroad into the lives of your target audience.

Remember when this brand finally got a face?

You probably remember Blendtec’s now legendary Will it Blend? campaign. These videos were a YouTube sensation just a year after the platform debuted. Before the Will it Blend? promo, Blendtec was a faceless company with an unsexy name that manufactured pricey, commercial-grade blenders.

When the CMO got the idea to actually film and release footage of the company’s normal testing process, that’s when things changed. Blendtec’s first YouTube went live October 30, 2006. It was a video of CEO Tom Dickson blending a bag of 50 marbles. The next day, the company published videos of the CEO blending a rake handle, then an Extra Value Meal, Cochicken (a whole rotisserie chicken and a 12 oz can of Coke). The videos went viral, garnering six million views in the first week of being released.

What was the secret to their success? Besides the novelty of seeing a rake being turned into a smoothie by a kitchen appliance, people liked the Tom Dickson. By getting in front of the camera, Dickson gave Blendtec a face.

Today, Blendtec’s YouTube channel has more than 285.5 million views and more than 884K subscribers. And the videos increased sales by 700 percent.

The 5 Big Benefits of User-Generated Content

If you are among the countless brands trying to figure out how to churn out enough high-value content to stay top-of-mind with your audience, you’re not alone. Between publishing to your blog, guest blogging, publishing videos, creating memes, testing ads, and being sure to Tweet, Retweet, Like, Follow, Comment, and Repost, content development and distribution can become a full-time job.

We know you’re not looking to push out 10 posts an hour like Huffington Post (that’s a real number, by the way), you just want to stay in the game. Well, integrating user-generated content into your content marketing strategy allows you to delegate some of the content development responsibilities, and provides you with benefits to which you may not otherwise get immediate access.

#1 Stellar User-Generated Content Will Boost Your Visibility and Traffic.

You may not immediately connect influencer marketing with SEO, but they are connected. Years ago, SEO experts began referring to social as the new SEO. Social media provides a way for people to sort of “vote up” content they like from brands they trust by including links to that content in their social media posts. Search engines aren’t blind to these endorsements.

Have you ever researched a topic only to find Tweets and YouTube videos included in your top search results? That’s the intersection between search engine optimization and social media marketing. Your brand can benefit from it by recruiting influencers who are experts at creating engaging, shareable content for your brand that looks more like another great post than an ad. High-value social media content can generate valuable inbound leads for your organization. I wrote an article on influencer marketing and SEO that you can read here.

#2 Good User-Generated Content is Shareable.

People are twice as likely to share user-generated content with their friends and family members than posts directly from brands. We already established that more than 80 percent of people trust product recommendations from their friends and family.

For influencers, the frequency with which their content is shared outweighs the size of their audience. Followers share content that interests them. Choosing the right influencer means choosing an influencer who knows how to create brand-sponsored content that RESONATES with their audience.

An influencer who figures out how to craft posts that impact his or her target audience will have a pretty good idea of how to generate content for your campaign that will also resonate with followers. This is the kind of content you want influencers to generate because it helps your credibility.

#3 Effective User-Generated Content Shows How Your Brand is Relevant and Makes It More Relatable.

User-generated content sparks conversations about your brand, and it encourages engagement, which can immediately boost brand awareness and increase your follower count.

Two of the most popular reasons people go to a brand’s page is to address product concerns with a brand’s customer service team (35 percent of the people who go to a brand’s page are there for customer care), and to get access to announcements about deals and promotions.

The CrossFit box near me has a website, but I Liked their page before I checked out the website. I’m thinking I’ll find out the real deal about that particular box on their Facebook page, and I’ll find out the basic stuff – hours of operation, pricing, packages – on their site. The Facebook is living, it’s dynamic. It’s always being updated with posts from the box members and people like me who are curious about CrossFit. The website is static. Who knows when it was last updated?

But I’ll tell you one thing – this particular box gets BONUS POINTS for even having an active Facebook page with recent pictures and an engaged set of followers. That’s everything. And it will ultimately play a big role in determining whether I choose this box or another for CrossFit

#4 Positive user-generated content builds your credibility.

Positive user-generated content can boost your brand’s credibility, and that’s what you want. UGC isn’t a one-and-done promise to deliver clicks and active carts to your campaign. It takes multiple times seeing your brand out in the world to move your prospect from the discovery stage to the buying stage. But each positive experience a person has with your brand moves them closer to opting in, buying, or completing the action you want them to take.

Of course, the opposite is also true. Even for the biggest brands in the world, negative UGC can be devastating.

How 2 High-Profile Burns in a Month Helped Snapchat Lose About a Billion Dollars

“Sooo does anyone else not open Snapchat anymore? Or is it just me… ugh this is so sad.” That’s what Kylie Jenner tweeted on Wednesday, February 21st of this year in response to Snapchat’s redesigned app. She wasn’t the first to express dislike for the app’s new design. In fact, within days of it being released, over 1 million people had signed a Change.org petition insisting Snapchat ditch the new design and go back to the old one.

However…

Jenner had tens of millions of followers on Snapchat, and by Friday, February 23rd, the media was reporting Snapchat stocks were down 6 percent and the company had lost about $1 billion of its value in the wake of the redesign and Jenner’s now-infamous Tweet.

A month later, Rihanna publicly blasted Snapchat for running an ad on the app for a game called Would You Rather, which poked fun at a 2009 incident that resulted in R&B singer Chris Brown pleading guilty to assaulting then-girlfriend Rihanna during an argument. By the end of the day, Snapchat had lost another $800 million in value when the market reacted swiftly to fears users would uninstall the app.

Well-crafted, brand-building UGC can make all the difference in the world. The Q2 2016 Sprout Social Index says buyers are 70 percent more likely to buy from you after a good interaction. Not only does will a good experience with your brand move your customers farther along the path to buy, but 75 percent of them say they will share a positive experience with a brand.

#5 The Best User-Generated Content Can Drive Sales.

Customers who engage with a brand indirectly through user-generated content are more likely to buy, according to research conducted by Gartner L2. L2 also finds that conversion rates increase by 4.6 percent when customers see user-generated content as they’re shopping. If they engage with this content in any way, it boosts conversions by 9.6 percent.

We know people tend to trust the recommendations of their peers, whether those peers are friends, family, or strangers online. And we know these recommendations can play a big role in solidifying a brand’s credibility.

Starbucks seems more like an institution and symbol of the hustle and grind culture than a brand trying to get sales at this point, BUT I noticed something curious about Starbucks’s Instagram page. If you notice, the brand’s page has 16.4 million followers, and the brand has published just over 1600 posts, as of this writing. I can see the company posts two or three times a week.

Here’s the interesting part. The company’s Frappuccino drink has its own Instagram page, with another 1.4 million followers and 791 posts.

But there are 3,775 posts featuring the hashtag #smokedbutterscotchlatte

And 482 posts using the hashtag #triplemochafrappuccino

And 4,750 posts using the hashtag #blondeespresso

And 29,747 posts about my FAVORITE, the Green Tea Frappuccino.

1,542 posts include the hashtag #shakentea

115,936 posts include the hashtag #whitechocolatemocha

3,878 posts include the hashtag #skinnymocha

1,355 posts include the hashtag #strawberriesandcreamfrappuccino

Why People Talk About Brands in the First Place

As it turns out most people are opinion-givers. Okay, that’s not a newsflash. Try this one on: According to Talking to Strangers: Millennials Trust People Over Brands, a white paper released by Bazaar Voice, 84 percent of Millennials and 70 percent of Baby Boomers are directly influenced by the UGC on a company’s website.

According to the report, there are purchases Millennials tend not to make without first reviewing user-generated content on the product they’re researching:

• 44 percent of Millennials won’t buy major electronics without user-generated content

• 40 percent won’t buy cars

• 39 percent won’t book at a hotel

• 32 percent won’t book travel accommodations

• 29 percent won’t get credit cards

• 29 percent won’t buy insurance from a company without first reviewing user-generated content

Signals and Symbolism

Starbucks customers have managed to generate hundreds of thousands of pieces of content, each piece is posted to the customer’s own Instagram account, and generating engagement separate from the watchful eyes of the Starbucks CMO.

Come to think of it…

That’s my daughter on her first trip to Starbucks. She had a cake pop, and now thinks Starbucks is THA TRUTH!

This is another post from me – a stock image by Adrianna Calvo that I captioned and posted. But the post isn’t about Starbucks. It’s about what Starbucks represents. The image signals productivity and small business culture, with “a hearty nod to” the people who grind everyday and drink coffee for fuel – with or without the grass-fed butter.

My point is the sheer number of users (like me) who are basically leveraging Starbucks as proof of their success in business and enjoyment of life. These kinds of posts – and Starbucks has TONS of them out there – push repeat customers to go back to the store (and document their experiences), and persuades future customers to give Starbucks a try.

Self-Identity and Belonging

Creating content as a byproduct of living your life results in branded content. It just does. People like sharing info about the things, products, brands, and companies they support. For some, that means sharing pictures of the work site as they build single-family homes with Habitat for Humanity. For others, it means taking a picture of that famous green and white paper cup from Starbucks.

Occasionally, people create branded content to be recognized by the brand. More often than not, you will find branded content is an outgrowth of self-identity. People just like letting other people know what they’re into.

I Will Conclude with This

The art and science of developing high-impact UGC that your influencers can use in your campaigns depends on you being able to clearly articulate:

• What your brand is about

• The message (offer) you want to send your target audience, and

• The outcomes you wish to see

This is the information your influencers will use to create content that is authentic to both your brand and theirs, and that impacts the members of their followership who are also members of your target audience.

The value of the influencer is that he or she knows how to talk to their audience. It’s important to provide influencers with enough experience with your brand and products that you remove the guesswork from the content creation process.

User-generated content is the primary value you get with influencer marketing. Because even the best marketing departments will consistently fall short of crafting an ad that makes a greater impact on your customers than what people are already saying about your company online.

What Influencers Are Doing To Launch Awesome IGTV Channels So FAST

Instagram is officially in the video hosting businesses. IGTV is here, and its arrival stands to transform each of Instagram’s 1 billion monthly users into creators and owners of their very own long-form video channels.

It’s been a busy month for Instagram. The first week of June, the company announced @mention sharing, which gives users the ability to share into their own stories any stories in which they were mentioned. Nice.

The second week, many-a-dream came true (including mine) when shopping came to Instagram stories. When users watch stories that have the little shopping bag icon on the screen, they can click the bag to get more information about the product. Genius. I can’t be the only one who whips out her phone to look at screenshots of cool outfits when shopping.

Last week, Instagram announced the release of IGTV, a standalone video platform that allows Instagram creators to publish videos ranging in length from 15 seconds to 10 minutes for new accounts, and the ability to go as long as 60 minutes for larger, more established accounts.

A replay of the live announcement from Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom (@kevin) at an IGTV launch event in San Diego was posted to Instagram a few days ago (which you can see here). The event included appearances by Manny Gutierrez (@mannymua733),  Lele Pons (@lelepons), Lauren Godwin (@laurengodwin), Bryce Xavier (@brycexavier) and a handful of other social media influencers who are icons in the space.

Here’s How to Make Your Own Smooth Transition to IGTV

Getting Started

Getting started on IGTV is as simple as updating your Instagram app, or downloading the IGTV standalone app.

I did the latter. Hours after Systrom’s announcement I watched a tutorial that showed up in the top Google search results that was supposed to walk me through the installation process. Initially, I thought all I needed to do was update my existing Instagram app.

That didn’t work.

I had to download the standalone app to get IGTV to work.

When I updated Instagram, the only new thing that appeared on my screen was a Facebook icon, that when tapped, takes me to Facebook‘s mobile site.

So, I installed the standalone IGTV app from the Google Play Store, which automatically integrated with Instagram to give me access to IGTV through the main Instagram app. Of course, I now also have the standalone app.

Once there, the first thing I noticed was a string of videos from folks I didn’t know or care about. The For You recommendations are usually waaaaay off for me, but I eventually came across my tribe.

Some of my faves on IGTV include actress and fashion / style influencer Tracee Ellis Ross.

It really didn’t take long for early adopters to populate the IGTV feed with content. Meanwhile  I’ve been trying to decide if the Facebook video I created for my Facebook page for work-at-home moms (sans makeup) could be re-purposed for Instagram EVEN THOUGH I was fresh-faced and my top was a little crooked.

Unsure.

The good news for me is I make most of my videos vertical by default, not just because I’m cool, but because I forget to do it the other way.

But from days of tinkering around on the app, here are the four tactics I consistently see executed by influencers who have already made IGTV their own that will help you successfully onboard the video app yourself.

If you want to work with influencers in 2018, you’re going to need a strategy

The Shelf is an influencer marketing company that designs and implements the highest performing campaigns in the lifestyle space (fashion, beauty, mommy, food, travel, home, DIY, health, and fitness). If you’re reading this post and wondering how to use IGTV to breathe new life into your social media marketing, we’ve got you covered. Sign up for a demo to get your custom proposal.

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Tip #1: Repurpose the BEST of Your Existing Content

The easiest way to start on IGTV is to use some of the great content you already, operative word there being “great”. One of the first videos I actually watched on IGTV was from Gary Vaynerchuk (@GaryVee), and the video I watched was actually about two years old .

Gary Vee’s first videos published to IGTV included repurposed content.

There are 300 million people watching Instagram stories every single day. I can tell you with some certainty, if you’ve produced video content for Instagram in the past, there’s a good chance you already have content you can use on IGTV BUT…Make it your best stuff.

Tip #2: Be Sure to Adapt Existing Content to Vertical Video

I’ve already seen videos on IGTV that weren’t properly edited for vertical video. Sideways videos are hard to watch, especially in long-form, so if you’re publishing your existing content to IGTV, adapt it for vertical.

According to Idea Rocket Animation’s Vertical Video Guide, the aspect ratio for vertical video is 9:16. If that looks familiar, it’s because you’ve spent the last few years creating videos with a 16:9 aspect ratio.

Seriously, if you don’t want to be the creator that’s making sideways videos, take the time to do the necessary re-edit of your older videos you shot in HD widescreen.

Of course, my one year of cinema classes taught me a little something about sideways videos that I and every other beginning film buff knows – scenes shot sideways can help drive home a point, like in this scene from Marvel’s Black Panther.

This is the scene of the film villain, the appropriately-named Killmonger taking the throne after defeating the benevolent king T’Challa in ritual combat. His arrival signals a new day for Wakanda, as the newly-crowned king prepares to launch war on every existing government.

Powerful stuff. BUT the entire scene is just a few seconds long.

Tip #3: Bring Your Brand and Persona to the New Platform

Use IGTV as an extension of your brand, and meet (and possibly exceed) the expectations of your existing audience.

During Instagram’s launch event for IGTV, mega influencer Lele Pons talked a bit about what it took for her to perfect the one-minute comedy skits she’s known for posting to Instagram. Her new content plans for the long-form platform include starting her own competitive cooking show because she likes to cook, but she’s not very good at it.

A competitive cooking show created, hosted and judged by a competitor who isn’t a great cook. Sounds like antics should ensue. The idea sounds like it would be a good use of long-form video while maintaining the cleverly outrageous comedy for which Ms. Pons has become known. It’s smart.

Between the time I thought about writing this post and the actual publication (the weekend), beauty powerhouse Huda Kattan (@HudaBeauty) went from one piece of content on IGTV to three, with one of the videos extending past the one-minute mark.

Hilarious as they are, each of Kattan’s three videos is beauty-focused, from time hacks to the gym makeup fail – when your makeup rubs off on your towel at the gym and you’re left with a face full of smeared makeup.

Screen shots from “Gym Makeup Fail”, @HudaBeauty’s first video on IGTV.

Tip #4: Use the “Extra” Time As a Resource

Use time as a resource, if you need it. I’ve already come across lots of videos of people talking for an hour about topics that are probably important to them, but not really all that engaging. The result, I click away after a few seconds.

To celebrate the arrival of IGTV, Netflix re-released a 1-hour version of this popular 1-minute video of Riverdale’s Cole Sprouse (Jughead!) eating a burger.

Some of the most engaging content that has shown up on IGTV so far reflects creators that used the extended time to create a more compelling video. Much of the new content on IGTV doesn’t get anywhere close to the time limit, and for good reason.

The approach for the most successful creators is to figure out how to create a video their audience will love and use time as a resource to get it done. Netflix’s video of Cole Sprouse eating that burger notwithstanding, smart creators aren’t just maxing out the time on their videos because they have it to spare.

Big brands already have their agencies on deck, coming up with strategies to best use IGTV to raise brand awareness (which this platform would be GREAT at doing) and convert swipers to raving fans.

With the recent ability to shop Instagram posts and the ability to integrate @mentions into multiple stories from different users, you can bet monetization is only days away.

Get ready!

Here’s How to Land the Absolute Best User-Generated Content for Your Influencer Marketing Campaigns

You have the whole marketing team holed-up in a meeting room powering through another brainstorming session, trying as hard as possible to come up with something fresh and exciting for the next campaign. “We could use cute animals?” – but you did that last spring. “Maybe we could find a celebrity to tout the product?” – there’s no way your budget would cover that.

Don’t despair! There’s one option you still haven’t looked into yet, and that’s tapping into your consumers, and taking advantage of some killer user-generated content.

What Is User Generated Content?

User-generated content is content created by users who are outside of your brand. This covers everything from product reviews, to recommendations, to original influencer content. And it can work wonders.

There are instances when using user generated content (UGC) can be beneficial for you. UGC gives you a more authentic voice, it lends credibility to your brand, and it saves you the time, energy – and let’s face it – the hassle of creating content in-house.

The truth is simple: People don’t trust brands like they used to. Authenticity is more important to your customers than your polished and cleverly-presented marketing messages. The path to purchase isn’t a straight line anymore. It isn’t even a squiggly one. It’s a Six Flags-styled thrill ride with dips, turns, loopty loops and vertical drops that can wipe your brand from a prospect’s mind if you’re not prepared to meet your customers at each pivot point.

For instance, according to Talking to Strangers: Millennials Trust People Over Brands, a white paper released by Bazaar Voice, 84 percent of Millennials and 70 percent of Baby Boomers are directly influenced by the UGC on a company’s website.

We published a stats-heavy post on UGC to LinkedIn Pulse earlier this month that reported Millennials tend not to make without first reviewing user-generated content on the product they’re researching:

• 44 percent of Millennials won’t buy major electronics without user-generated content

• 40 percent won’t buy cars

• 39 percent won’t book at a hotel

• 32 percent won’t book travel accommodations

• 29 percent won’t get credit cards

• 29 percent won’t buy insurance from a company without first reviewing user-generated content

My friend, you’re going to need a little user-generated content to win some fans, and that’s just all there is.

Brands That Are Crushing It with UGC

Aerie

One of the most successful UGC campaigns right now is being run by fashion brand Aerie. Their campaign #AerieREAL asks for customers to post un-retouched pictures of themselves in their Aerie swimwear using a branded hashtag. For every picture posted, they pledge to donate $1 to the National Eating Disorders Association.

This campaign has been successful, in large part because it taps into the “authenticity” factor. People – especially women- are sick of the pressure to be “bikini ready” from the perfectly photoshopped images of models splashed across the media. The Aerie campaign is working to combat this trend by promoting healthy, natural body types instead.

So, not only does Aerie’s get a boost in authenticity from more than 116K posts on Instagram alone now using the hashtag #aeriereal, the campaign is also making a big social impact.

Source: The Aeriereal feed on Instagram

Buffer

Another brand that really has a way of leveraging user-generated content is the social media scheduling app Buffer. The challenge for a brand like Buffer usually centers around not having a sexy product that would be ideal for Instagram. I mean, it’s an app.

Still, Buffer’s Instagram feed is made up almost entirely of user-generated content from their community. Using the #BufferCommunity hashtag, customers from all over the world are posting pictures of beautiful landscapes and exciting adventures, all being used to promote the message that by using Buffer, customers will have the time to relax and explore the world by automating their social media marketing and brand-building campaigns..

Source: The #BufferCommunity Feed on Instagram

When User Generated Content Goes All Wrong

Not every campaign goes as planned, and asking your users to generated content for your brand carries with it considerable risks. You’re effectively handing over your brands reputation to an untrained group of people and hoping for the best.

There have been a number of brands who have tried their hand at UGC focused campaigns and had it blow up in their faces. Let’s take a look at a few of the less successful campaigns out there and learn from their mistakes.

McDonalds

One of the more well known UGC disasters was the #McDStories campaign back in 2012. The fast-food chain asked consumers to share their memories of McDonalds over the years by posting to Twitter using their designated hashtag. A lovely sentiment which could have resulted in some heart warming and positive stories.

Unfortunately, what actually transpired was a lot of unhappy customers sharing stories of puking after eating there. Some even posted about instances when they had found things like fingernails in their food! Not exactly the content the marketing team was hoping to get.

What can we learn from McDonald’s? Be specific. Making the “rules” as clear as possible means you have a little more control over what kind of content is going to be produced on your behalf.

Bic For Her

Worldwide stationery company Bic, recently launched a brand new style of pen that was targeted specifically at women. Of course, men and women don’t actually need different styles of pens, so the campaign was not quite so well received.

The reviews left by many on online stores were comical and mocking of the “Bic for Her” range, and did nothing for the brands reputation. Nowadays, reviews are the backbone of online shopping, and many people don’t feel comfortable buying something without checking them out first. These reviews still count as UGC, even if you didn’t run a specific campaign to get them.

What can we learn from Bic?  Take the temperature of the market before launching a new product. One of the hottest topics then and now is gender equality. Use social media to speak to (and listen to) your consumer base to see what they want, instead of blindly going into something. Once it’s on the internet – it never goes away.

Here’s Why UGC Matters

UGC Makes Brands Seem More Human

All the recent algorithm changes on Facebook and Instagram have seen social media moving to a more authentic space than ever before. Thanks to the increasing problems with “fake news”, these platforms have been shifting their focus away from businesses, and back toward users.

But that’s good news for influencer marketing. The trend toward brands relying more on UGC will strengthen influencer marketing as a whole, with experts predicting  the $2 billion influencer marketing industry will more than double (and possibly even quintupe) in the next 18 months.

Credibility and Authenticity

Consumers crave the convenience of automation, the innovation of AI, and the connection of human-to-human interaction. We’ve gotten to the place where we can spot an automated message from a mile away, and we don’t particularly care for them EVEN THOUGH we’ve come to expect an immediate response to all of our queries.

UGC does a great job of helping brands to automate the content creation process, and it lends itself rather nicely to fostering human connections.

According to a recent Nielson Global study, 42 percent of consumers are more likely to trust a recommendation from another person (even if they don’t know them personally) over branded content.

Going Against Traditional Advertising

With nearly 1 in 3 people on the planet now online (and a large number of their pets, too) traditional advertising is not as effective as it once was. Users are installing ad blockers to keep themselves from seeing ads (it’s cable television all over again) and our BS detectors have become fine-tuned, noise-canceling instruments. The solution for brands has been directing more resources to SEO, social media, and content marketing in recent years.

A More Creative Approach

Creativity really should be one of the defining traits of user-generated content. But the truth is sometimes sponsored content sucks. Brands skip the research Handing over the creation of your content to the users also expands the amount of creativity in your marketing. While marketing teams are, of course, valued for their creativity, gaining content from an outside source can be even better.

People love seeing something new and inventive when hit with marketing campaigns – at this point, we’ve seen a lot of ads in our lifetimes. So, creativity is key! And, keeping in mind that 86% of millennials think that UGC is a great indicator of a brand’s quality – you’ll be winning either way.

BOOST KPIs

Of course, the most important factor in any marketing campaign is how it positively affects your brand or business. UGC is a fantastic tool for boosting your KPIs throughout your digital marketing efforts. From social media, right through to inbound marketing – utilising this type of content can be awesome for your brand.

Social media stats

The importance of authentic and interesting content in social media marketing cannot be stressed enough, and many marketers pour a lot of effort into producing this. But, no matter how creative they are, marketers know that they need to be working on those numbers too if they want to succeed.

Luckily, 45 percent of marketing professionals agree that UGC can help to boost those all-important social media stats.

For most marketers, content engagement is one of the most important key performance indicators (KPIs) – and UGC is a powerhouse for engagement. Follower counts are no longer as important as they once were. Especially with all the algorithm changes holding back your reach.

Higher engagement means more people are invested in your content. More engagement means more leads. And that’s what it’s all about folks! By using UGC, especially at the first customer touch points – which for most of us, is social media, can be a super effective strategy.

In fact, some recent research by ComScore says brand engagement increases by 28 percent when consumers are exposed to a nice mixture of both professional and user generated content.

Time-saving for your team

How much time do you usually spend planning, creating, and editing content for your brand? Trust us, we know how time-consuming this can be. And while it’s always worth it when you get to create an awesome campaign and see it succeed – sometimes you need to get a lot of content together, without a lot of time.

This is where UGC really comes into its own. Essentially, it gives you a huge pool of resources created by people who genuinely love your product, and want to contribute to its success. Your team will still need to sort through the content and choose the best pieces to really push out there. But, you’re still going to be saving a whole bunch of time this way.

Inbound marketing magic

Traditional advertising just doesn’t really cut it anymore (but more on that later). So, if you’re trying to capture those leads – you need to be thinking outside the box. Using UGC gives your content an authenticity that you just won’t find anywhere else. And authentic content in itself is unique!

By showing consumers right from the start that people love your product so much they’re creating their own content for you is like gold. You’re making possible customers feel secure and confident in your product right away. And confident customers are much more likely to spend their money with you.

UGC in Influencer Marketing

Now UGC being awesome is all well and good, but you’re probably here because you want to invest in some killer influencer marketing. Well UGC and influencer marketing go hand-in-hand. There is no influencer marketing without UGC – not effective influencer marketing, at least.

The downfall of traditional advertising

Raise your hand if you have an ad-blocker installed in your browser?

In case you were wondering, the hands of 30 percent of all internet users just shot right up. That’s a lot of blocked ads.

Traditional advertising is dying a death right now, and as marketers, we need to stay ahead of the curve. Between ad blockers and algorithm changes, getting your marketing campaigns seen is harder than ever.

This is where influencer marketing comes in. Working with an influencer means you get to tap into their already existing audience that trusts your influencer’s judgments. Consumers are now the best brand advocates you could hope for. People will ignore paid ads to consume content about your brand post by your actual customers.

User generated content or influencer generated content?

You may be wondering why you would want to spend money on influencer generated content, rather than just mine the free world of UGC. Both are valid options for boosting your content pool, and they both have different bonuses to their use.

Smaller brands

If you are a smaller brand, or just don’t have a huge consumer base to tap into, trying to gather enough UGC for a campaign will be tricky. In order for a UGC campaign to be successful, you need to be able to make the most of your existing audience. If that audience is not there, then the campaign is not likely to bring in the kind of results you want.

Instead, you might want to engage an influencer to create some awesome content for you. This way, you’re able to tap into the influencer’s existing audience. And, if you’re doing influencer marketing right, then that audience is already going to be pretty interested in what you have to offer as a brand. Sometimes you’ve got to spend money to make money, guys – and this is one of those times.

Quality over quantity

Another huge benefit of using influencers to generate content for you is the fact that these guys actually know what they’re doing. Now, don’t get me wrong – some UGC can be pretty amazing. But, when you work with untested creators, you’re really rolling the dice for what kind of quality you’re going to receive.

While users may be huge fans of your brand, they usually won’t have marketing experience. So they may not be well versed in terms of camera angles, lighting, and photo composition. Influencers, on the other hand, have built their careers on this skill set – so you know your brand will be in good hands.

Keeping control

Finally, when working with influencers, you’re able to retain a modicum of control over the content they create. Since you are entering into a professional relationship with the influencer, you can install brand guidelines for the content, and even provide feedback and choose your preferred pieces.

On the other hand, when you cast the net out and ask consumers to create content for you – you have no idea what you’re going to get. And like we mentioned earlier, there have been some pretty disastrous examples of this happening in recent years. Giving the general public free reign with a brand hashtag can work wonders for you – but it can also open a can of worms as people use the opportunity to air their concerns and complaints.

Conclusion

Like every marketing strategy, UGC has its benefits as well as its drawbacks. Building trust with your consumer base is essential nowadays, and this can be a great way to help you achieve that. Whether you utilise the power of a good review, run a targeted UGC campaign, or invest in some influencer marketing, just keep one thing in mind – you’re going for authenticity. So don’t pay people to write fake reviews to boost your rating – people will know. Use real content created by real consumers, and you’ll soon see the positive effects this can bring.

A Game Plan to Help You Organize and Host an Epic Instagram Takeover

Instagram takeovers first got on our radars five or six years ago when brands began allowing other “Instagrammers” to post social content directly to their feeds, usually over the course of a few hours.

These “guest hosting” opportunities were a way for brands to partner with Instagrammers who could create content for the brand (which is A LOT of work, we know) while simultaneously getting the brand in front of the Instagrammer’s audience. In exchange, brands provided some form of consideration to the Instagrammers, whether free products, greater exposure, or money.

As Instagram has added features, the ways in which Instagrammers – and especially influencers – are able to create interesting branded content has increased, along with the platform’s reach. So, marketers have multiple free and paid strategies they can use to engage their current audience, and to get their products in front of a wider audience.

In the last post, we used five case studies to show you the results four brands were able to generate with Instagram takeovers (we included two cool wins for the beauty brand Sephora).

Today, I’m going to show you how to host a successful Instagram takeover for your brand. But first…

Is An Instagram Takeover the Right Strategy For You?

Instagram now has more than 600 million registered users, having added 200 million users in just the past 18 months. Not only that, but the social app – which leverages Facebook’s unbelievable targeting capabilities – now has a million advertisers, up from 200,000 advertisers in February 2016, according to CNBC. I think we can all agree that Instagram is experiencing amazing growth.

As a marketer, if you are considering running paid ads on Instagram, you have more than one option. Just about any ad you can run on Facebook, you can now run on Instagram. It’s important for me to point out that the one thing too many brands skip over when planning their marketing strategy is fit. They don’t take the time to determine if their marketing method is really the best use of time, money and other resources to get the results they want to get.

Marketing is not one-size-fits-all. That means, an Instagram takeover may or may not be the right marketing strategy for you. A takeover is not a guarantee that members of your target audience will take the action you want them to take, whether that’s making a purchase, downloading a book, or even double-tapping a picture.

Too many marketers try to use an Instagram takeover as a way to sell products. More often than not, a takeover is the first step in introducing another segment of your target audience to your brand, not necessarily making a fast sale. Marketers should understand that long before they begin planning a takeover.

While forming a partnership with an influencer will expedite the process of getting people through your sales funnel, an influencer partnership doesn’t eliminate the need for a sales funnel. So, if your goal is to use a well-publicized Instagram takeover to boost sales immediately, this may not be the strategy for you.

The 9 Key Elements of a Successful Instagram Takeover

1. Know Your Starting Point

I’m sure the series of thoughts that preceded your decision to host an Instagram takeover had much to do with where you are now versus where you want your business to be. That’s important, because you do need to have a good idea of where you presently are in your marketing efforts and what you would like to see happen.

Knowing your starting point means assessing both your stats and your metrics. Take a snapshot (or screenshot  that’s what I do) of you current total number of followers, posts, like, comments. But also take note of the rate at which you are adding followers, how frequently you post, and the average number of likes and comments you get per post.

What are your top-performing posts? Are the same people liking your posts over and over again? Which hashtags (or groups of hashtags) seem to work best with your target audience? Are any of the people following you currently part of your target audience, or were they just added from your Facebook contacts when you started your Instagram account?

What is your current rate of engagement? To find out, divide the number of likes per post by your total number of followers. How are you ranking in terms of engagement? For фmicro-influencers with fewer than 1,000 followers, the average engagement per post is somewhere around 8%. Influencers with 1,001 to 10,000 followers have an average engagement rate of about 4%, while top influencers are able to engage about 2% of their audience on a regular basis.

Take your numbers and measure them against the performance of your top competitors. It will sometimes be the case that your competitors are outranking you in one or more areas. Maybe you have more followers, but they have better engagement (likes, comments, views, direct messages). Maybe you have more engagement, but they are outpacing you when it comes to adding content and getting followers.

If any of your competitors have hosted takeovers in the past, review what they did to determine what worked and what didn’t work before proceeding to the next step.

2. Set a Goal

The second step in hosting a successful Instagram takeover is having a clear (and realistic) idea of what you want to accomplish with the takeover.

An Instagram takeover, like any other marketing strategy, should be orchestrated to fulfill a specific marketing goal. Since the launch of Instagram advertising, marketers have been able to get Instagram’s 300 million active daily users to take more than a billion actions such as clicking a link, liking an image, following a brand, or adding an item to a shopping cart.

Most brands identify one or more of the following as their campaign goals:

• Build a strong online community by boosting the total number of followers, views, and mentions. This method works across social channels, with each channel supporting the others to help build brand awareness.

• Get followers more involved and more engaged by giving community members something interesting to talk about. It’s not unusual for an Instagram community to grow cool as they get accustomed to your style of online conversation. Perhaps your Instagram takeover can be all about rebooting engagement among your followers, and/or starting a conversation with new followers.

• Promote a new product, a hot event, or a great deal to drive traffic to your website, boost the attendance at your event, or generate quality customer leads. When Sephora allowed Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen to take over its Instagram account for one day to promote their fragrance, Elizabeth and James, not only did it get a fantastic response from Sephora’s followers (Mary Kate and Ashley aren’t public social media users), but it introduced the whole world to Elizabeth and James.

3. Set a Budget

After setting a goal, set your budget. Admittedly, partnering with an influencer is not as easy today as it used to be. Influencers have become more attuned to the fact that their social savvy is a business opportunity; they are in demand and can make demands.

Budget is one of those areas that can be difficult to navigate on your own. Most marketers just getting into influencer marketing have no idea how to set a budget for their campaigns, or how to align ROI with their budget. But it’s  a necessary part of the process.

Though they have sway with small, niched-down audiences, micro-influencers can often provide more bang for your buck. A top influencer has access to more people, but as I said previously, the engagement numbers are low. So, it is possible to spend three or four thousand dollars on an Instagram takeover campaign with a top influencer and see very little engagement, and almost no conversions.

On the other hand, you could probably enlist the services of a micro-influencer for $150 to $1,000 and get better engagement. A current trend is for marketers to secure the services of multiple micro-influencers instead of a top influencer in order to get access to different niches within their target audience.

Whatever your decision, it’s a good idea to plan for multiple Instagram takeovers over the course of several months, and not just one big campaign that may or may not produce the results you anticipate.

4. Put Tools in Place to Measure Your Success

When the Sheffield Hallam administration decided to host its Instagram takeover, the goals were to boost followers and increase engagement. As part of the tracking method to determine whether the campaign was successful, Sheffield Hallam created a branded hashtag to track engagement during the takeover.

An important part of hosting an Instagram takeover is having a way to track the campaign’s success. That’s why it’s so important to take a snapshot of where your numbers are before the takeover so you have a way to determine your growth after the campaign.

Most marketers will track a campaign’s success through:

• Number of times the branded hashtag occurred in a user’s post

• Number of new followers added during the campaign, and in the day or two after the campaign

• Number and frequency of likes and comments during the campaign and in the 36 hours following the campaign

• Number of times users took an action like visiting your site or landing page, or downloading a book during the campaign and in the 36 hours following the campaign

• Occurrences of your hashtag, or mentions of your brand across other social media channels

5. Identify Your Target Audience

The crux of marketing through Instagram takeovers is getting your brand in front of a segment of your target audience to which you may not otherwise have direct (and somewhat intimate) access. So, you should have a very clear idea of who it is you’re targeting.

A common practice in Internet marketing is coming up with what’s called an avatar. An avatar of your target audience means creating the personification of your audience’s demographic and psychographic profile. While the avatar is not a necessarily a real person, the avatar will embody key qualities of the individual members of your target audience.

This is an important step in your Instagram takeover, because it ultimately determines how you select an influencer (or select influencers) with whom to partner.

6. Research and Find an Influencer to Help You Reach your Target Audience

Now it’s time to find the influencer, or group of influencers, who will take over your Instagram account. Keeping your budget and your target audience firmly in mind, you can search for an influencer directly if you know of one you think would be a good fit for your campaign. Many nfluencers keep their direct contact info or booking instructions right in their bio.

You can also search popular hashtags that are in line with the main interests of your target audience. Then see what the top posts are on that page.

The see what the top posts are for the hashtag.

One good thing about conducting these types of “cold” searches is that birds of a feather flock together, meaning top influencers in a specific niche are often followed by micro-influencers, as well as top influencers in related niches. Keep your avatar in mind so you can make educated guesses of what hashtags to search.

Whenever you identify an influencer from a particular niche, go through their posts. See what kind of content he or she posts (for simplicity sake, I’ll refer to this theoretical influencer as “they”) and which posts have performed best. Do the same thing for multiple influencer or micro-influencer accounts and see if you can find commonalities between the posts and users’ responses to the posts.

Partnering for Social Proof

As we saw with the Sheffield Hallam case study, boosting brand awareness doesn’t require you to partner with the Kim Kardashian of college life. Depending on your goals, your audience, and your brand, you could get great results by aiming to establish social proof by letting members of your team or even satisfied customers take over your Instagram account, in lieu of a social influencer.

Influence is not limited to people with 10,000+ followers.  Your CEO, or the barista who has been witness to your daily hustle, could be the most persuasive voices in your campaign if properly positioned. There are three common types of non-influencer guest posters who are generally very effective at influencer campaigns – employees, peers, and customers

Employees and team members

For businesses that are active on social, the goal is usually to create a branded message that moves seamlessly from one social channel to another. In crafting your perfect message, the human element can get sort of lost in the shuffle. Meaning, your IG community can forget that your company is made up of actual people.

Allowing employees and team members to take over the company Instagram account for a few hours can endear you to followers. They get a day-in-the-life sort of sneak peek at your company’s employees and your company culture. This strengthens your brand and makes you more relatable to your target audience.

Customers

No one provides social proof quite like a satisfied customer or community member. Having a customer take over your Instagram account is a fantastic display of mutual trust and respect between you and your customers. Customers can feel free to share the experiences they had working with you, or patronizing your establishment.

It t takes a certain level of professional pride and an immense amount of courage and transparency to give one of your customers full access to your social media account. One of the other benefits here is the opportunity that exists for your customer to supply you with user-generated content  the holy grail of social proof.

7. Create a Timeline for Your Campaign

Next, create a timeline for your campaign. Try to plan your campaign at a time when your takeover will be the biggest thing happening in your followers’ feeds, or at the very least, your campaign coincides and integrates seamlessly with the conversations already happening online.  Use national, cultural, branded, and hashtag holidays to help you map out your campaign strategy.

For instance, if you run a doggie boarding house, National Puppy Day is a great time to promote a spring break doggie hotel sale where owners who book for spring break or summer break receive 30% off. Or, if you’re not ready to promote anything, maybe take the day to introduce followers to not just your team, but the current guests in your kennel.

The timeline should also include the length of the takeover – whether one person taking over your account for a few hours, or several people taking over the account for several days.

Promotion

Plan enough time into your campaign’s timeline to effectively promote the takeover well ahead of the big day. Announce the takeover across your social media channels as much as two weeks in advance to drum up as much interest as you possibly can – Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. Encourage your host to do the same. That way when your Instagram takeover begins, you have already built-up some anticipation.

8. Outline the Content You Want Create for the Takeover Campaign

Next to finding the right influencer to take over your account, content planning is perhaps THE most important part of this entire campaign planning process, and perhaps the most time consuming.

Work with Your Influencer to Develop the Right Content

Influencers know their audience better than you do. So, be sure you work together to create content to which the influencer’s audience will respond.

Your goal, budget, and target audience dictate your content. But the influencer is the one who should shape the content. Influencers know their audiences better than anyone. And while you may have a specific message that you want to relay as a brand marketer, you should, in no way, assume you know best when it comes to relaying that message to your influencer’s audience.

First, influencers work really hard to grow their audience over time. Most influencers prepare carefully curated content created specifically with their audience in mind.

Think of it like a mother feeding her family. A mom knows exactly how to prepare vegetables to get her toddler son to eat them, which may be different than how she prepares them for her teenage daughter, and spouse.  But she knows what works for each member of her family because she’s spent years cooking for them and eating with them.

It’s the same concept with influencers.

Plan a Visual Story that Makes Sense

If an influencer is posting multiple pieces over the course of an hours-long or days-long Instagram takeover campaign, plan, plan, plan.

Try to build out a visual storyline that makes sense and is aesthetically pleasing. Make sure the captions resonate with the audience reading them. A millennial audience will respond to images and captions differently than older Gen Xers. Craft messages specifically for the audience you’re targeting.

Frequency

Determine ahead of time how often the influencer will post to your account. You may find you want them to post multiple times during the campaign; you may arrive at the conclusion that once is enough. If you’re going for multiple posts, try to have a mix of pre-planned content as well as candid shots. As well, think about mixing up the type of content – whether images, photo carousels, videos, or boomerangs, or Instagram stories.

Hashtags

Talk about hashtags. You will probably decide to create a hashtag for your campaign as a way of measure its success. But your influencer may not know that a popular hashtag was actually coined by your number one competitors. If you can, agree ahead of time which hashtags will carry the most impact, and which hashtags best support the story you want to tell and the message you want to send to your audience. Leave nothing to chance.

9. Work out the Logistics

Finally, work out the logistics of the Instagram takeover. Make sure you set clear expectations so your influencer knows your end game and understand exactly how they fit in the picture. Your influencer should know as much about the campaign as you do.

At this point, you also need to decide how your influencer is going to access your account, whether you will give them direct access to your Instagram account, or use a third party app like

Decide if you’d like the influencer to have direct access to your brand’s Instagram account or if you’d rather have them upload content to a platform like Buffer or Hootsuite for you to review / sign off on.

Instagram doesn’t allow posts from third-party apps, so your influencer won’t be able to bypass you and post content directly to Instagram. But if you’re going to use a tool like this to queue-up posts for the Instagram takeover, make sure someone is monitoring this account and getting those posts out quickly with as little delay as possible.

Again, think of an Instagram takeover as a way to increase awareness of your brand, and consider planning multiple takeovers throughout the year, perhaps in support of a new product, to promote a live event, or even just to re-ignite engagement within your Instagram community.

Now, you have quite a bit of information to mull over. If you need help connecting with influencers or building out your Instagram takeover campaign, we can help.