Unless you are an incredibly well-connected Solopreneur who is making a killing and maybe even turning business away, social media will play a role in your branding and marketing strategies. Each platform has its cohort of devoted users and will be a good fit for some businesses, but maybe less so for others.

The platforms are free of charge, aside from the time it costs to keep your content up-to-date. No matter how responsive to social media marketing your venture is, time will not allow most Solopreneurs and business owners to maintain a presence on all platforms, unless social media management is outsourced. If the ROI positively impacts sales revenues, then the investment will be worthwhile. Let’s take a look at Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.

Facebook

The most popular social media platform has 2.19 billion users (Statista, 1Q 2018) around the world. There are somewhat more female users than male and the bulk of the age demographic is 18-44 years. Forbes Magazine data indicates that 47% of Americans report that Facebook is their primary influencer when it comes to making purchases.

Facebook often delivers excellent ROI for B2C enterprises (somewhat less for B2B). In-store events and promotions, speaking engagements, your workshops and other events can be announced to Facebook Friends. Content provided in text, photos, or video can be uploaded. You can create groups and build communities, or post a customer survey. Share behind-the-scenes information about your business and what it takes to do what you do and in the process, you’ll engage customers, strengthen your brand and build relationships.

Does that sound like too much work and too much sharing? Then create a Fan Page and limit your presence to basic info and a good call to action. Be aware that your presentation of text, photos and other content should be relaxed and welcoming, to create a personal feel (but remember that business is the context).

Instagram

You’ll find 1 billion users (Statista, June 2018) from around the world and 80% are outside of the U.S. 95 million posts are shared daily, with many accessed on a mobile device. Approximately 59% of U.S. users are 18-29 years. As of 1Q 2018, there are 300 million daily Instagram Stories users and 30% of users have purchased a product.

Visual storytelling, behind-the-scenes photo montages, social selling, brand awareness, engaging with customers and creating relationships are good uses of Instagram. If you are in public relations or special event/conference planning, then you will find worthwhile B2B use, otherwise it’s B2C as far as I can tell.

Photo sharing, brief video trailers and concise text postings that include a hashtag # to better distribute your content are ideal content. Add a link to your profile bio. Decide if you want a public or members-only account. Links cannot be shared.

LinkedIn

Considered the gold standard B2B social media platform, LinkedIn has 500 million members globally (Statista, January 2018). Business ventures large and small, Solopreneurs, corporate and nonprofit leaders, physicians and dentists, any employee who harbors professional aspirations and most college students maintain a profile page. Recruiters use LinkedIn to identify potential candidates for job openings. LinkedIn ProFinder helps Solpreneurs find project work.

LinkedIn is an excellent platform on which to build a community of professional colleagues through your connections and share with them your professional story, successes, highlights and other updates that support your personal brand. My B2B blog posts to my LinkedIn page and my connections receive notice of its arrival. Your connections will also share their stories and there is great opportunity to be in touch and nurture relationships.

Professional portfolios, videos, white papers, newsletters, blogs, infographics, SlideShare presentations and podcasts can be featured on your profile page to add depth to your brand story. Links to articles or studies that might interest your connections can be posted. Recommendations and endorsements let others verify your professional bona fides and you can return the favor.

In the Groups section, you’ll engage with colleagues within your industry, or with alumni of your school. Topics of interest are explored through posted questions and group members can respond and in the process get to know one another and possibly, forge relationships that lead to doing business.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Influencer Marketing, the process of identifying, engaging and supporting the folks who create the promotion which has the most impact on your brand, products, and services. Influencers are likely to be customers because they also testify what you are promoting, or, we could also call them as recommenders of your products and services, because introduce and recommend your product to the crowd or their audiences. So, choosing the right influencer is essential.

The growth of Social media has a huge impact on the growth of influencer marketing. I can say, YouTube is one of those huge social media places where we can get the right and effective influencer for your brand, YouTube Influencers has their different promoted products from different brands, in different and according to the niche that they are in. This social media has 100 hours of video uploaded per minute and six billion hours of views per month, this social media is a really huge place that is right for your business. This means that YouTube is to be highly considered when it comes to marketing your product.

YouTube Influencers compared than mainstream celebrities are more popular among teens, largely in the U.S., Companies are now recognizing the pros of investing in YouTube Influencers and their marketing power. There are some ways you can find, identify and connect with YouTube Influencers to associate on your brand campaign:

Multi-Channel Networks. A lot of talent management agencies who can recruit YouTube Influencers that could help set up your brand campaign. Some of these companies reach out to network of YouTube channels, finds available talent, helping to target the best influencers which fit your brand and making deals on your brand.

Sometimes, channel owners won’t get back to you directly, especially for those larger channels, so sometimes, you will think that agencies are the way to connect with the desirable talents, but, there is a disadvantage in it, often agencies do not intensely understand the nature and specific needs of your brands, which ends up to give you offer of partnerships with popular channels, which are not suitable for your brand or is not your bet.

Influencer Platforms. Using platforms that act as a Virtual Marketplace for connecting brands and influencer is an another excellent solution. Just like an outsourcing platform UpWork, they are very similar to each other, the difference is, UpWork gives the people an opportunity to submit and get proposals from freelancers, these influencer platforms allow brands to drop-down their expectations for campaigns and receive proposals directly from influencers.

Reach The Talents Directly. Brands could possibly connect to Influencers directly on YouTube. Most of YouTube Influencers publish their business emails in their channel’s “about” page, there is also “send a message” box available. If you do not hear back from the channel owner, you could follow up through other sources such as Facebook Twitter and Instagram. YouTube talents are receiving hundreds or even thousands of emails daily, so your email could not easily get noticed or might be placed in the spam folder.

Measure the Results. If you have found the right YouTube Influencer, plan the performance evaluations, put tracking in place. Track the campaign CPA and CPC by measuring clicks and conversions, but you need to create tracking links. Ask the influencer to use your tracking link within the video description and video annotations. You might want the link to look clean so it is recommended to use URL Shorteners.

Influencer marketing can be considered as an effective strategy to attract and engage with the potential and existing customers. Read on the article to find more information about social media and influencer marketing.

You can no longer question the significance of social marketing. Each and every one is using the social marketing agency or channels for personal and professional purpose. Recently, business organizations are taking advantage of social networking sites to increase their influence and stand out in the competitive market. More than just having an online presence, businesses needs to extend their digital storefront to social marketing networking sites in order to take advantage of this powerful technology fad. Majority of the marketers place high hope and value on social marketing optimization and marketing. Not only social marketing features levels the playing field, but also brings more attention to your business.

Rise of social networks have reignited the interest in influencer marketing. In the digital age, celebrities are not only the influencers services, but also a popular blogger or an industry expert can have the strongest influence on buying decisions of consumers. Any individual with an established credibility and large audience can be an influencer. Their trustworthiness, expertise and authenticity can persuade the consumers to engage with your brand. And that is why it is recommended to establish a potential relationship with them and orient your marketing activities around them.

Tapping into the emerging marketing tool is not easy though. Choosing the right social marketing channel is a crucial yet challenging task. The problem is that you can find an overwhelming number of social media sites. Even though they might share similar features, each site demands a unique strategy. Most of us will think about the popular social medias such as Facebook, Reddit and Twitter marketing services. But there are other networks that you should take advantage of such as YouTube. Flickr, Instagram, Tumblr and Pinterest for business marketing. According to the latest facts and figures, Pinterest, Google+, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Tumblr are the fastest growing social marketing sites. Pinterest, being a leading referral source for organic traffic, is an impeccable choice to achieve higher search rankings and returns. Carrying out a detailed research and analyzing the objectives can help you pick the relevant channels that best suit your brand. No matter whichever industry you are in, make it a point to use social media to your advantage.

Marketing music through snapshots? Sell music online by taking photographs? Meeting new fans with a click of the digital camera? It’s possible and actually happening RIGHT NOW.

With the iPhone app Instagram (it’s working on an Android version as we speak), artists and bands alike can maximize their exposure by letting in complete strangers to look at their personal photos and ultimately, have them buy their music. How?

Currently, Instagram has 14 to 15 million users and is one of the easiest apps that could post pictures directly to your favorite social networking sites: Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Flickr, Posterous, and Foursquare. Hit Connect and online music promotion begins.

Who are the perennial users of Instagrams’s capability to sell music online / albums and gain fans? Indie bands such as: The National, Shiny Toy Guns; dance impresario Moby; rockers Deftones, and media darling Zooey Deschanel. They post a myriad of photos and fans are forever hooked.

Here are tips on how to do music promotion and sell music online on Instagram:

1. Pick A Great Name

Your artist/band name is of the utmost importance. Don’t go crazy cryptic or flamboyant, keep it simple. You want your fans to find you and in the end, follow you. Finding you should not be a treasure hunt.

2. Make Photos Interesting

You can come up with a photo series; pick a subject and have it star on your photos, like it’s a story. Have you seen the film ‘Amelie’ with the traveling gnome? Pick a toy or any item and copy it. You may also take an artistic shot and put a reflective caption.

3. Make Photos Simple

Don’t get caught up with yourself; you wouldn’t want to be pretentious. Even an ordinary photo of you eating at a meal or walking the dog could incite ‘aww shucks’ reactions. You give off a vibe that ‘you’re one of us!’

4. Use Hashtags

What world do you live in if you don’t know how to use hashtags? The words after every end of a post can help you maintain your online presence. A hashtag of #bandname could let your fans click said word and find a variety of limitless photos, satiating their appetite to see you. So in every post, don’t forget hashtags.

5. Be Viral

The band OK Go is a viral video success story. They’ve done it multiple times on YouTube with millions of hits. Now do it on Instagram. Your photos should reflect the personality of your band and it should have an interesting concept as well. Time to crank out the creativity and get noticed for it!

For top-notch music distribution to help you sell music online and could also help you get a headstart in music promotion, choose a digital music distribution partner that has a reach of over 750 retailers and mobile partners across 100 countries.

Holidays have become a conquest for having the most likes on Instagram. It starts out by stopping everything that we’re doing, pulling out our phones and taking a dozen pictures from all angles possible. We then spend another ten minutes contemplating a caption. Should I go with lyrics from Beyonce’s new album or should I stick to emojis? Now it’s time for a filter and God knows how long that will take.

An hour later, we put our phones down only to pick them up again and check how many likes our last post received. By then, that beautiful sunset which we should have been watching is long gone and the thunder clouds are rolling in.

We had the perfect moment but we didn’t savor it because we felt the need to show it to others.

Most of us social media users have a slight obsession with sharing everything; our brunch squad, the surprise dinners our partners make for us, the view from our hotel rooms. We have all been this person at some point in our lives or we have been sitting across from one. And it’s frustrating as hell. Aren’t we here to talk and catch up? Then why are we ignoring each other and hunching over our phones instead?

Do our followers really care about where we are and the hashtags that come with it? Ask yourself this: do you care for these things when you see them on your feed? Sure, some pictures are great but they don’t make you contemplate about them on a deeper level – after all, isn’t that the purpose of the scrolling feature?

We don’t need Instagram to validate our happiness; the increased number of likes do not equal to increased levels of happiness. Sure, some people look ecstatic in their photos and their holidays look like something taken out of luxury magazines, but are they as happy as they look? Or did they just get into a huge argument with their family? Was the food that good or was it super bland? These are things that pictures don’t convey to us.

Worst of all, our Instagram feed has become a battleground, a field of major competition. We become intimidated by other peoples’ pictures and we feel the need to ‘up our game’. A sudden sense of insecurity begins to develop as we feel urged to validate our happiness with others.

What we could do instead is feel comfortable with ourselves and develop the mentality of I know I am happy and I don’t need anyone else to tell me that I am. We need to enjoy the moments life offers to us because the best ones come without any consideration and are amplified with a worry free attitude. Why make time for checking Instagram every ten minutes when you could be sipping another margarita by the beach?

Now don’t get me wrong; I love taking pictures and my summer destinations are no exception. They act as reminders for the great times I had, especially on days where I am stuck in the office. And yes, I am also guilty of uploading a photo or two as I bask under the tropical suns. But I am looking to change this last part.

Of course, this will not be an easy task but I am going to take baby steps in achieving this. Maybe I will start out by waiting until the end of the day when I am cozied up in my comfortable hotel bed to upload something. One thing for sure though is that I refuse to waste precious moments by fretting over how I look to my Instagram followers.

We don’t need to tell people how happy we are nor do we need to feed their curiosities. We don’t need to fulfill their expectations of us, because if anything, we should be enjoying our vacations for ourselves.

Social media has become one of the most important platforms to engage with current customers and reach new customers. Having a social media account for your business is essential. Creating a marketing plan to reach your business goals can be challenging. Here are some steps to create an effective social media Marketing Plan.

1. Set a Goal

• What do you plan to accomplish

• Quantify your goal. Example: Engage a 15% more a month with current Instagram followers.

• Be clear with what you want to accomplish. No more than 2 sentences.

• Be realistic. Don’t set goals that you know are way to hard to reach.

• Have a set budget of money you are willing to invest.

2. Set Objectives

• Here you are going to be more specific and explain more detailed what your goals are.

• Quantify your objectives. Always talk numbers. Example: Growth of 10 followers per day.

• Each objective is one short sentence. DON’T WRITE A PARAGRAPH!

• Use bullet points for each objective.

3. Know your audience

• Who is your primary Audience?

• Who is your secondary Audience?

• Who is your target market?

• What social media platforms do your target audience engages with the most.

4. Strategies and Tactics

• Write down every objective

• Describe how are you going to accomplish each objective

• Use bullet points to explain the strategies and tactics that you are willing to use.

• Be detailed.

• Estimate how much money you need to accomplish those goals.

Your marketing plan should not be longer than one page. After you have created a plan, now you are going to create a calendar or checklist to monitor your posts, and write down the stats and results of your progress. One good free website to get information of social media stats is fanpagekarma.com. Other helpful paid measuring tools are Hootsuite, Sprout Social, Buffer, and Simply Measured.

What should my social media calendar have?

1. Create different columns

• Date

• Social Media platform (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram)

• Post/Content

• Engagement (%)

2. Create a whole month in advance.

• Set the pictures you are going to use.

• What are you going to write each day?

• Use inspirational quotes or fun facts.

• Give out incentive prizes to engage with your audience.

• Schedule your posts using Hootsuite or other similar helpful tools.

3. Results

• At the end of each month write the results.

• Where you started and where you finished.

• Page growth (%)

• Engagement (%)

Analyze your data and your posts. See what worked best for you and what did not work. Keep doing what worked for you, and find a way to modify what did not work to make your social media marketing effective.

1)PicsArt – Photo Studio – This app has a 4.7 rating out of 337,513 user reviews. PicsArt is said to be a combination of photoshop and instagram. With PicsArt, you can add photo effects such as stenciler, cartoonizer, sketcher, Orton, Lomo, vintage, cross process, HDR, fattal, pencil, Holgaart, contours, comic, watercolor, neon, old paper, gouache, pastel, red eye remover and many more! You can add drawing effects like sticker mode, callouts, artistic brushes and text styles!

You can directly share your great artwork with social networking sites such as Facebook, Picasa, Flickr, Dropbox, Foursquare, Tumblr, Blogger, and WordPress.

2)Pixlr-o-matic –This app has a 4.7 rating out of 69,846 user reviews. With this you can turn your photos into a vintage photo by adding a retro look. You can add more than 100 effects to your photos. The greatest feature of this is the randomizer feature, randomizer adds a random effect to your photo with a single touch. This saves the trouble of browsing and choosing from several photo effects.

3) Instagram –Instagram is undoubtedly the most downloaded photo manipulation App in the android market. It has a 4.6 rating out of 1,779,313 user reviews. With Instagram you can add many photo effects to your images and share it with your friends within Instagram photo stream. You can also follow your friend’s photo streams. Instagram effects makes your photos more vibrant and brings out the details of your images.

4) Cartoon Camera – With this fun app you can convert your photographs into cartoon. It has a 4.5 rating out of 98,919 user reviews. This app has 12 effects like Cartoon, Color Drawing, Sepia, White Strokes, Dark Strokes, Colored Edges, Pencil Sketches etc. with this app you can adjust edge sensitivity, auto focus, Adjustable color sensitivity / saturation, front camera, camera flash. This app installs in SD card and save your precious internal memory.

5) PhotoFunia – PhotoFunia is a very funny photo manipulation app to impress your friends with your imagination. PhotoFunia has many stock scenes and you can add your own face into that stock scenes. For example, you can add your own face in place of MonaLisa smile, a bodybuilders body, become a Superman by putting your face on Superman’s costume or become a cover page model of popular magazines. This app has a 4.5 rating with 61,529 user rating.

6) Little Photo -Little Photo is an excellent app for enhancing your photos for better brightness, contrast, exposure, skin smoothing, front camera etc. This app has a 4.5 rating with 41,389 user reviews. This is really a nice, easy-to-use photo editors within your android mobile phone. This is very lightweight and takes about 338K internal memory.

7) Photo Art – With PhotoArt you can apply 31 different colour styles to your images. This app has a .1 app rating out of 13.022 user reviews. You can apply sepia, grayscale, black&white, tint, colorize, mosaic, solarize, brightness/contrast, exposure, negative, thermal, posterize, saturate, blur, spread, emboss, noise, dilate, sharpen, erode, smear lines, smear circles, heatmap, smear squares, pixelize, edge detect, laplace, sobel, smear cross, solid color, flip and many more. You can apply these effects on the whole image or on part of the image.

8) FxCamera – This is another great app to apply photo effects. FxCamera has a 3.3 rating with 114,392 user reviews. You can add great effects like Instant-ToyCam, Fisheye, Symmetric, Poster etc. It cab also Auto enhance your photo very easily.

9) Camera360 Ultimate – This fantastic app has received one of TOP 100 technology products by PC World. This app has a 4.4 rating with 83,493 user reviews. You can add HDR, LOMO, Retro Effect, Dreamlike Effect, Art of Black and White, Back to 1839 and Night enhancement, Scenery Mode and Tilt-shift effects.

Before you plan your next post, start using these easy engagement tips to set your pages on fire!

Read on for our favorite social engagement ideas to boost everything from page likes, post likes, comments, shares, followers, to full-blown stark raving mad fans!

1. Instagram – Boost Engagement & Conversions

50% of Instagram users follow at least one business, the app has continued to grow in popularity since being purchased by Facebook in 2012. Making Insta ideal for communicating your brand’s message using visual content – however posting pimped up images is only one part of the equation. If it’s engagement you’re after (and it is… ), it’s important to pimp up the captions that go with those awesome pics!

I’ve curated the main tips below; if you’re after the real nuts and bolts see Aaron’s full article at Social Media Today.

Write With an Authentic Tone of Voice – Instagram users aren’t expecting a serious tone of voice – they’re generally using the app in their free time to look at cool visuals and be entertained.

Include a CTA (Call To Action) – 65% of top-performing brands post on Instagram feature products. Directly instructing people to check out your product or make a purchase can work well on this platform.

Utilize Hashtags – Instagram posts with a minimum of one hashtag generate 12.6% more engagement than those without. Also, I like to use this quick link shortener tool for posts on the fly!

Include Emojis – Almost 50% of captions and comments on Instagram contain at least one emoji. While there’s a range of emojis at your disposal, the most popular one is the heart.

Mention Other Instagram Users – It’s important to remember that Instagram is a social network. Brands that relentlessly self-promote with little regards to community never do well.

Place Important Content at the Beginning – In a user’s Instagram feed, captions are cut off after the first few lines. To see the entire post, they have to click the “View More” button – which they won’t if the first few lines are unappealing.

2. Facebook – Boost Engagement, Leads & Sales

Explore 11 of the most effective strategies for enticing your Facebook Followers to get enthusiastic about your page and start encouraging likes, comments, and shares with their closest friends. Facebook is the perfect platform for small businesses to build a relationship with their customers and many are outperforming their big-budget competitors by employing a personalized social media approach.

I’ve curated the main tips of Andrea’s case studies below; if you’re after the real nuts and bolts visit Social Media Examiner for her full article:

Move Your Audience to Action – Litographs came up with a fun idea to create temporary tattoos of sentences from Alice in Wonderland. They invited 5,000 people to join the world’s longest tattoo chain. This kind of idea is a great way to mobilize your audience and make them part of something special.

Host a Facebook Party – Mamavation is a website that teaches natural wellness and nutrition and champions GMO-free food and products. They have held fun Facebook parties to give away gift certificates and discounts to people who engaged with each post.

Show Personality – Through a Dog’s Ear is a small 7-year-old company that makes music to help calm anxious dogs. Their Facebook page is filled with personal photos of the founder and her dogs.

Incorporate Humor – Cool Mom Picks is a website that curates gifts, gear, tech, and resources for moms. They have great video tutorials and they bring together interesting finds in blog posts. They also use humor and show some personality in their posts.

Have Fun – think about using Facebook as it was originally intended: a social site where you let people know what you’re doing. Author Erica Spindler does a great job of getting personal and having some fun. Share things that you find funny or you feel are important for people to know.

Be Responsive – Make it a habit to respond to comments and your messenger inbox quickly.

Create a Facebook Event – If you have events on Facebook, re-share them, post in the events to get more visibility and encourage people to join them.

Post to Your Page and Profile – David Newman of Do It Marketing uses his Facebook page and personal profile to market his business, which helps speakers get more opportunities. He’s connected with many speakers personally, so it makes sense for him to get extra traction by posting about his business on his personal profile. If you occasionally share your business page posts on your profile, you can extend your reach.

Invest in Videos – Videos are huge on Facebook and Learn Cake Decorating Online uses them effectively on their page. They have a featured video and regular quick videos that get lots of views and engagement. The company also uses the 22Social app to give away a free video class to build the email list and then offer a membership to people who sign up.

Provide Great Local Content Realtors sometimes find Facebook a challenging place to market. Posting images of houses is great, but Realty Austin offers great local content, too.

Go Behind the Scenes – Getting personal on Facebook is a great tactic, but so is giving your community a sneak peek at something no one else can see. The Celtic band Barra MacNeils literally takes people behind the scenes during their shows.

3. Twitter – Boost Engagement & Attract Followers

Social Engagement on Twitter helps to build and nurture a relationship between you and other industry peers and experts. Hearting, retweeting and commenting on each other’s quality posts build peer relationships and industry street cred for your small business. Clicks on content you post can drive traffic directly to your site, increasing leads, visitors, and sales.

I’ve curated the main tips below; if you’re after the real nuts and bolts visit Adesspresso for Ana’s full article:

Engage with Other Users Content – If you want other users to engage with your content, a good way to start is to always interact with their first. Like, respond to, and retweet your users content when you can, and following them can also help.

Retweet Other Users’ Tweets – You want to do this early and often. I’m singling out retweeting as engagement because this is what most users value the most; not only are you liking their content enough to confirm it, but you value it enough to share it.

Keep Your Tweets Brief – We are all forced to keep our tweets relatively brief automatically, with Twitter limiting our posts to 140 characters. This is challenging enough as it is, but limiting our posts just a little more can actually increase engagement.

Share a Variety of Links – If you want to get clicks to your site, the best way to do so is to put links in your Tweets. Also, I like to use this quick link shortener tool for posts on the fly!

Respond When Someone Tweets to You – This is particularly challenging for large brands or brands that have a large amount of engagement (even if it’s just when major content goes live), but doing your best to respond in some way when a user tweets to you can go a long way.

Know Your Peak Hours – Just like with Facebook, there will be certain times of the day or days of the week when more of your users will be active on the site or more likely to engage with your content. By being able to find those peak hours and posting them, you’ll get more views and you’ll be more likely to increase engagement and clicks on your post.

Use Twitter Ads – When you’re looking to best engagement quickly, Twitter Ads are a good way to do so, especially if you don’t have a lot of followers or followers that often engage with your content. Twitter Ads do cost money (and are more expensive than Facebook Ads), but they can still help increase engagement when you need it. Promoted tweets work best for this purpose.

Always Provide Value – Social media, for many, has become an environment where many users will share every thought that pops into their heads. While non-brand users can get away with letting the world know that they can’t decide if they want a coke or a lemonade, brands definitely cannot.

Always Use Hashtags – Hashtags are an essential part of Twitter usage; just like with Instagram, you pretty much expect a Tweet to come with at least one hashtag attached to it. Not only do hashtags offer the benefit of helping a relevant audience find you when they search the hashtag you’re using, but they can also increase engagement.

Share Images – Images are an important part of social media; this is particularly true when we’re limited to 140 characters.

4. LinkedIn – 5 Ways to Increase Engagement with Your Content on LinkedIn

Fast approaching 400 million users, LinkedIn has become more than just an online resume platform. Learning how to use LinkedIn marketing tips is essential for any small business. LinkedIn is still drastically underutilized making it an easy opportunity to make a splash if your target market is hanging out on this professional platform.

I’ve curated the main tips below; if you’re after the real nuts and bolts visit LinkedIn Business for Pearce’s full article:

Keep it concise and prompt an action – Drive higher engagement by keeping description copy <70 characters and feature a call to action. Keep in mind that copy will get truncated on the desktop after 100 characters and likely adversely affect your engagement rates.

Don’t just report the news, analyze it – Yes, your audience wants to stay up to speed on industry news and trends. But they also want to know the impact it will have on them. On top of reporting key industry news and trends, take it a step further and offer key insights, takeaways, and your unique perspective.

Repurpose compelling 3rd party research – Creating great, in-depth content is time and resource intensive. Find a 3rd party source that is already developing the type of content that aligns with your audience’s interests.

Use the power of video to tell your story – YouTube, Vimeo, and SlideShare videos play natively within the LinkedIn newsfeed. This allows you to engage your audience without disrupting their experience. It also allows you to tell your story in a much more vivid, creative format.

Professionals are people too – While it’s always an effective strategy to aim to create content that helps solve your audiences’ business challenges, keep in mind that they are also people too. Human interest stories help prove your brand in an engaging, less overt way, as well as diversify the type of content you are publishing.

5. YouTube – Boost Visitor Engagement & Channel Subscriptions

Using YouTube to market your small business, involves creating videos with content your target market will find engaging on some level (entertaining or educational) are the most common formats. While social platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have a strong focus on creating, posting, and sharing different types of content, creating content for YouTube means you’ll be investing your time in video production and video production only. Learn how to set up and create valuable and engaging content on your YouTube channel to attract an engaged fan base of subscribers to your business.

I’ve curated the main tips below; if you’re after the real nuts and bolts visit bplans for Briana’s full article:

Set up your YouTube channel – Setting up a channel couldn’t be easier; in fact, if you already have a Google account, you technically already have a YouTube channel, even if you don’t know it.

Add a banner and create a trailer – Before you start focusing on putting out video content regularly, it’s important to make your page on YouTube visually appealing.

Create videos that show off your brand – Is your brand serious and formal? Prank or joke-style videos are probably a bad fit. On the flip side, if you’ve built your brand tone around a light, conversational style, don’t create video content that feels stuffy or overly professional.

Post your video’s on your blog – With YourTubePlayer you can easily generate and customize YouTube embed codes from the video ID or URL with options like autoplay, loop, hide controls, eliminate related videos and much more.

Focus on informational videos, how-to style content, video series, or vlog content – If you have a product or service, feature videos of your product in use. Similarly, if you offer a service, show how your service benefits customers. Informational videos are a great place to showcase your product or service in “the real world,” to give customers a sense of what’s in store for them if they buy from you.

Feature client testimonials or other customer feedback – When brainstorming what kinds of content you can feature on your new YouTube channel, you may want to look to your satisfied clients and customers. What can they say about your business that would make a valuable addition to your video content?

Pay attention to title keywords – Much of your organic traffic will be search-driven. That is to say, if someone is searching “braided updo tutorial,” and you just happen to have those keywords in the title of your YouTube video, there is a higher chance that searchers will find your video.

Subscribe to similar channels and interact with them – One of the best ways to get your YouTube channel out in front of a potential new set of viewers is to leave a thoughtful comment on other YouTuber’s videos (ideally, on a YouTube channel that produces content similar to your own). Hopefully, your comment will be upvoted by other viewers, increasing its visibility and therefore potential clicks back to your own channel.

Interact with your viewers – Once you start getting engagement on your own videos, make sure you are reciprocating! Respond to your YouTube comments in a thoughtful way that makes it clear you are tailoring your response to each commenter. Make sure you avoid responses that sound canned or insincere.

Include a call to action and track your success – What is your goal with creating YouTube videos? Is it to increase brand awareness, build up a more comprehensive social media presence, drive viewers back to your site? There are plenty of different goals you could have, and be clear what they are early on. Including a call to action in your YouTube videos is a great way to push people to take the steps you’d like them to take that coincide with your chosen goal.

Finally, remember the goal here is to create a raving fan base. In order to capture and convert all the traffic, your highly engaged posts have generated, you will need a responsive Lead Capture Page.

Instagram is a mobile app that allows users to instantly take and/or upload photos and quickly edit them using a unique set of filters and a branded tilt-shift feature (3-D effect) that sets them apart from the rest. It’s taken off in popularity faster than any other mobile app and is most likely the reason the person standing in line next to you at Starbuck’s is taking a picture of the pastry case for no apparent reason. Instagram is addictive and it has a whole nation of iPhone and Android users hooked. And where the public goes, your business should follow.

If you’re the owner of your company and/or the person responsible for branding and social media, you should be privy to the 6 Reasons Instagram is perfect for your business:

1. Instagram is Instantaneous

There is no waiting around until you get back to your home or office to take full advantage of Instagram for brand building. Using your iPhone or Android, you snap the photo, edit, upload, add a comment (remember to #hashtag keywords), and share from your brand’s profile within seconds.

2. No Duplicate Accounts Needed

Unlike Facebook and Google+ where you’re required to set up a lengthy personal profile before you can set up a brand page, you are allowed to jump right in as a brand on Instagram without any consequence. It’s a fairly easy set up process.

3. Everyone Has an Inner-Photographer

Many business owners are at a loss when it comes to using social networks to grow their customer base for the most part because they do not have a way with words or know how to hone their creative juices for content marketing. But everyone likes taking photos and let’s be honest – almost every one of us feels like we have a knack behind the camera. While darkroom results often prove otherwise, the ease and foolproof editing of Instagram will in fact turn you into the Herb Ritts of your product/service content marketing.

4. It Makes Your Brand Look Interesting

This is the great thing about using Instagram to showcase your product/service. Instagram filters make office supply suppliers, garbage removal services, and even internet marketers look cool. Use Instagram to show off your product/service and even your corporate culture by capturing candid office moments. Instagram albums give personality to brands in a manner that no other sharing network has been able to accomplish thus far.

5. Create a Location Page for Your Business

Google Places and the new Google+ Local Pages for businesses have proven the importance of having a physical location attached to your brand’s online presence. Instagram’s integration with the Foursquare location database allows you to Geotag the location the photo was taken from (i.e. your place of business) which allows it to be added to the location page on Instagram. If users are browsing photos based on location and see a product of yours that appeals to them within their area, you may have a new customer. If a location is not listed, you can add your business to the Instagram/Foursquare database.

6. It’s Easier to get Followers

Because you can’t post links on Instagram, the public won’t feel like they are being bombarded with SPAM when following your brand account. If you frequently post interesting images that feature your product service on Instagram, customers are more likely to follow you there than on any other Social Network. It will be easier for you to build brand recognition with a bigger fan base. Because Instagram easily links to your Facebook and Twitter accounts, it helps those social networks grow for you as well. The same rules of social network marketing apply though – interact with (comment and “like”) and follow your customers FIRST. On Instagram, they actually follow back.

Conclusion:

While it doesn’t provide the linking opportunities that many internet marketers are overly obsessed with, Instagram is the easiest and most fun-to-use social sharing network out there and it can be a tremendous tool in developing your business’ brand persona and in gaining brand recognition with your online customer base.

When forming your social media strategy for your business, Instagram is an excellent mobile marketing app that can effectively carry over your companies marketing strategy. While Instagram is not the only tool that has been proven effective for businesses, it is hard to ignore as it is currently valued at One Billion dollars and 80 million+ users. There are many ways that Instagram can be a huge benefit when promoting your businesses: marketing strategy, philosophy, and brand image. Here are a few key tips to keeping your Instagram account consistent with your marketing strategy

Create your own unique hashtag

Creating your own unique hashtag is a simple way to build a loyal following on your businesses Instagram. Once you establish a name for your hashtag, make sure that you are promoting it to your audience by posting it across all social networks and as a caption on every Instagram post. Instagram also makes it very convenient to monitor which followers are actively using your businesses hashtag. I recommend engaging with the users who post your hashtag by either thanking them personally or re-posting their photo, and tagging them. By recognizing the users who are actively using your hashtag, new users will be encouraged to post as well.

Geo-Tagging Your Photos

Geo-Tagging your photos on Instagram, will allow your business to involve your community on a completely different level. By Geo-tagging photos, your followers will be able to view the location(s) of your business if you happen to be a: retail store, restaurant, or office location. Geo-tagging is another great way to build your businesses following. If you and a co-worker go out to lunch at Chipotle, you can geo-tag your photo at the location you are dining at. By doing so, Instagram users who also geo-tag this same location will be able to see your photo, which will hopefully encourage them to follow your businesses account.

Encourage Employee Posts

Some of your most loyal promoters should be your employees. Encourage your employees to be actively involved in posting photos on your businesses account a few times a week. By having your employees on board, users who are following your account will appreciate the ability to get to know more about your company’s employees. As long as you set clear guidelines of what is appropriate to post, you should gain a following rather quickly due to the variety of different types of posts your account will consist of.

Connect your Social Media Accounts

Be sure to sync all of your businesses other social media accounts to your Instagram every time you post a photo. Having all of your social media accounts connected, your audience has a high potential to expand, because not all of your fans and followers will follow your other accounts such as: Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Flickr. Syncing up all your other social media accounts not only allows for additional content but an opportunity for more frequent posts.