We live in an age where social media is allowing us all to engage and share in a way that has never been possible before. We can all instantly see what others are doing, keep our eye on the markets and get ideas on absolutely anything we need or want. It is almost impossible to imagine a time when the internet wasn’t part of people’s lives, if you are old enough to have experienced that time, you will appreciate the impact it has had but for younger generations, it’s the real world and everything has always been this way.

If you have a small home business and want to make the most of your social media it isn’t hard to sign up and have Facebook, Instagram and Twitter account, but surprisingly many of us don’t use them in the correct way especially when it comes to business owners. One of the most important aspects of social media is linking your social media accounts together, this ensures when you post, you don’t just post to one site, you post to all of them at the same time ensuring your have maximum coverage. It is reported that Instagram has a 15 times higher rate of engagement than Facebook meaning small businesses and work from home businesses must make the most of its every use.

Instagram works very quickly with users having thousands if not more followers at one time, you only have a certain amount of time to make an impact so keep your videos short, but to the point. Whatever your business is or provides, give your audience what it wants, there is no one that understands your business like yourself, hold onto the thought and post pictures that interest your followers and keeps them engaged.

Always stay aware of your market and what interests them the most, take a look often at the photos and videos you have posted and the reactions they have been given and focus on the ones that are the most popular. Always stay consistent and post regularly you will start to gain a following and see how Instagram can help launch your business and keep it in the spotlight.

If you have a home based business or are thinking of starting a business always use social media as a platform alongside your website and blog pages to launch your products. Share pictures on Instagram and stay consistent and true to your brand, this will enable you very quickly to get your product or service out there and gain a loyal following.

Photo sharing has been given a major social upgrade thanks to introduction of Instagram. The Instagram platform has become hugely popular with more than 80 million users, who enjoy altering their photos with special effects and cool filters before sharing them with friends and followers.

Businesses can start using this new type social media as a way to market their company and build up a following. People love strong visual images, so posting pictures of products and even employees will make them feel closer to you. This type of marketing is what helps forge brand loyalty.

So how can your business use Instagram for marketing? Here are some examples:

Geotagging

In Instagram’s latest update, users now have the option to tag a specific location with their images, which are saved to a personal photo map. These can be shared with your followers.

This is great if you have a physical location or even if you travel around the city, state or country. If you have booths at local craft fairs or other vendor events, then you can snap a photo and tag your location to let your followers know where you can be found.

Inside Look

The whole idea behind social media is sharing. Your fans and followers are giving you a chance to reach them on a more personal level so make sure you are giving them the same. Take pictures of the staff in the office. Snap shots of upcoming products to give them a sneak peak. If you’re on the road, take some pictures along the way. Give followers a real sense of how things are behind the scenes to help them feel like a part of the brand.

Use Hashtags

If you use Twitter, you know how effective hashtags can be at sharing. You can use the same on your Instagram photos. Use hash tags that relate to your business or industry to make it easy for people to find you. For instance, if you make jewelry, you can use hashtags like #rings, #customjewlery, or #necklaces. Look up popular hashtags that are being used by similar brands and add them to your images.

Encourage User Images

People who are already using your products should be encouraged to snap a photo of themselves using it and tag it with one of your hash tags. This will show people how to use your products and show how many people are happy with your company.

Hold Contests

People love a chance to win prizes and using Instagram to hold a photo contest is an exciting way to give them what they want. You can ask fans to send in a picture of them using your product and then choose a winner from among them. You could also go a different route by asking them to send in a picture that demonstrates something more abstract, like what represents summer to them.

There are any number of ways to get creative and get more followers by holding a contest using Instagram. Your followers will share with their friends who will also want to join in the fun.

Market Your Events

If you are going to be at a trade show or convention, take pictures and tag your location to let your followers know what is going on for your business. If you are holding a big sale, snap a shot of your sales flyer for your followers to see. This is also a good way to make your followers feel more special because you can offer them a VIP discount that only Instagram users can get. Get creative with them!

Instagram was acquired by Facebook for about $1 billion. That is a sure sign that this is an important part of social media. When you implement it in your marketing strategy, it is one more important tool to have.

People love getting involved and sharing with the businesses they love. Take part in this era of sharing and you can broaden your reach and strengthen your branding with a few snaps of the camera.

Are you signed up with Instagram yet? What are you doing to market your business with the latest social app?

The first time I tried Instagram, I must have spent an hour going through all the different ways one can touch up a pictures. I sampled a photo against all the available filters, with and without frames, and tested how I could share my posts through other social channels. It amazed me, too, how quickly I gained followers after a short time, and of course the social media strategist in me wondered how I could utilize this neat tool for clients.

If you are not familiar with Instagram, it is an application that works exclusively with mobile as a photo sharing program. Users may download the app and post pictures – untouched or enhanced with filters that give the photos a retro look – to a public feed. As with most social networks, users can follow each other and like and comment on pictures. While one can access Instagram feeds through various websites, users can only add new photos through the app.

Since launching in late 2010, Instagram can claim over 30 million registered users and the interest of Facebook, which has bid to purchase the company for one billion dollars. Numerous services that allow users to turn their Instagram photos into postcards, stickers, and magnets have also launched in the last two years, further solidifying Instagram’s influence in mobile.

As a business offering product or services, you may wonder how you can use Instagram to your benefit. The app is used for sharing photographs, so naturally your first inclination is to populate your feed with relevant photos and encourage likes and comments. The one challenge with Instagram is that one cannot link a photograph to another site, so you can’t count on it for site referrals. You can, however, use the app to get people involved in sharing your brand.

Instagram users, like Twitter users, may often tag the photos they upload. One idea to promote your company would involve contests where users can tag a themed photo according to your contest rules. Not only have you branded yourself on the network, but you present the opportunity to go viral as followers of entrants pick up on the tag and the feed.

It’s important to note, too, that Instagram may be integrated into Facebook pages and multi-purpose Web applications. You can set up an Instagram tab on your Facebook page to pull in pictures with a specific hashtag, and encourage users to tag their photos so they show. People who use Hootsuite, for example, can easily share Instagram photos through Facebook and Twitter profiles. Present the opportunity for people to share your photos – it makes for a nice contest that can go viral.

As people turn more to mobile application to communicate, your business needs to think outside the box and use social media to reach people. Play around with Instagram and see how it can benefit you.

There are two kinds of video content: traditional and vertical

You view the first as you would a TV while the second on your mobile through IGTV, a standalone app on the Instagram platform that allows users to watch and upload hour-long videos.

Instagram’s answer to YouTube was designed with mobiles in mind, as practically everybody these days rely on their mobile phones for everything-from shopping and bill payments to following friends and celebrities on social sites-so every single video that is played on it is in vertical format.

After all, who doesn’t naturally hold their phone upright? Everybody does unless, of course, they’re on a platform where videos are designed to look like typical TV programs.

Although Kevin Systrom, co-founder and CEO of the popular photo-sharing platform, did not directly hit out at YouTube during the launch of IGTV, he remarked:

“The tools we use to watch videos are old and out of date. Think about it. Today we still watch videos formatted for a TV on a vertical screen, which means we either have to rotate our phone awkwardly or watch a tiny version. And that doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it?”

Who would’ve thought 10 years ago that we’d be treating our cell phones like television sets if not more.

Built on three principles-namely, mobile first, simple and quality-the new video platform addresses how people consume video content these days.

“Everything is made for how you naturally hold your phone. Videos play on full screen and there’s no wasted space and they aren’t restricted to the same one-minute limit that you’re used to on Instagram,” said Ashley Yuki, the company’s product manager.

Target One Billion Users

It seems that Instagram have the best interests of eCommerce businesses at heart with their latest undertakings.

First, they introduced ‘shoppable posts’, which allows online sellers to tag their products and direct users to their online store, and now IGTV which can potentially turn one’s followers into paying customers and increase their sales.

At least the company is aware that theirs is a platform leveraged by businesses of varied interests and markets.

Traditional media may still be effective in increasing your customer base, but only to a certain extent.

There’s no denying the strong influence of videos; teens are watching 40% less TV now than they did five years ago because they’re glued to online videos, according to Systrom.

Although YouTube is a more established platform for video content, Instagram said that their new offering focuses on not only what and how people watch on the Internet these days, but basically how they manipulate their mobile devices.

According to the Facebook-owned company, Interneters are relying less on desktop computers as they can keep up with their favourite social media influencers even while on the go.

Systrom said the public has been watching 60% more video over the last year, so video marketing is no doubt a route worth taking to expand your market reach.

What with Instagram hitting 1 billion monthly users, you definitely want to consider it as a vital aspect of your business strategy.

Do you think IGTV is worth a try, or you’d rather stick with YouTube?

Instagram is increasing in popularity among brands as a powerful social marketing tool. People today enjoy being visually stimulated, which makes a social network that is solely based on image sharing so effective.

When you use social media to share images that relate to your business, you will forge stronger relationships with your current fans and customers plus broaden your reach to find new ones. Not only can you share pictures of your products and the people who work hard to keep your business running (even if it’s just you and your pet ferret!), but you can encourage your customers to submit their own pictures of your products being put to use.

It is easy to lose track of time when you log in to your social media accounts. This is especially true with Instagram, where you can easily lose an hour just scanning through the wide variety of images in your stream.

Spending time online is important for your business, but if it’s not productive time, then it is simply time wasted. Wasted time does not help bring in new sales. This is why you need to have daily goals for each of your social network activity like when you log on to Instagram.

Before you start your day, know how much time you want to allot to social media and each individual network. Stick with that time limit so that you can be sure you are getting the most important tasks done in your time frame and don’t allow yourself to get sucked in to the rabbit hole that is the Internet.

Each time you log on to Instagram, make sure you are doing these three things to maintain a high level of efficiency to grow your brand presence:

Add to the number of people you follow

Give yourself about 10-15 minutes each day to start looking for Instagram users in your target market. You can do this by looking at who is following your competitors. Find people who are more engaging with the brands they follow since they are more likely to engage with you as well. Are they leaving comments and liking photos often?

Since social media is all about give and take, make sure that you are following a good number of other people and businesses and bloggers. Do your own fair share of liking and commenting as well.

Share your own content

Take 10 minutes a day to add new unique content to your own Instagram account. People want to see that you have a good amount of interesting content for them to look at if they are going to follow you. If they look at your stream and only see two pictures and nothing new added in the last month or more, they aren’t going to see a reason to become a follower.

If you don’t have any unique content to share, set up a time each day to simply focus on taking pictures to share. It can be shots of your products, your office, employees, etc. If it relates to your brand and business, take an interesting shot of it and edit it to your liking and share.

Be interactive

It’s no surprise that when you have a social media account, people expect you to be, well, social. Don’t simply sign up for an account and then wait for people to start following you.

To be successful in your Instagram marketing, you need to be actively engaging. Reply to comments left on your images, even if it’s a simple thank you. Ask questions and encourage a dialog with your followers.

Visit your followers’ streams and those of the people that you are following and like images and leave comments. Showing that you will be interactive with other users will go a long way in building your own brand’s following.

Instagram will be around for a long time. To be the most effective, you need to be ready to spend time with your account and be productive with that time.

Is your business using Instagram to market your brand? How is it going?

Fake it until you make it, or so the saying goes. But buying fake Instagram and Twitter followers is cheating, and you are eventually going to get called out for it.

During the last New Zealand Fashion Week, I researched into some of the so-called fashion bloggers. Most had an astounding amount of fake followers on Instagram and Twitter. Fake fashion bloggers hack me off more than most. It could be because of they lack any real style or the fact that they arrogantly prance around these industry events, taking selfies and posting to their tens of thousand fake followers. They are not adding any real value if they have no real influence.

Fake Instagram and Twitter followers, by my definition, are fake or dead accounts, and also real accounts from users in countries that have no influential value to the profile. Both of these types of followers are easy to buy.

There is no point in having tens of thousands of followers if they are meaningless. The value of someone’s social reach should be measured by their engagement, not by the total amount of followers they have. Quality, not Quantity!

SPOTTING FAKE INSTAGRAM AND TWITTER FOLLOWERS

Look at how engaged the user’s followers are. Are their followers commenting and liking posts? Are their followers part of the cohort you’re targeting?

There are a few ways to tell if someone has fake followers.

A SUDDEN SPIKE IN FOLLOWERS

Unless you’re Lorde and have shot to stardom in a super short amount of time, an unusual spike in followers can only be the result of a buying spree.

LOW INTERACTION WITH FOLLOWERS

I’ve seen Instagram accounts with over forty thousand followers, but each of their posts is only getting around 100 likes. The low engagement percentage shows that their influence on their followers is super low, and they most likely paid for the majority of their followers.

FOLLOWERS WITH NO PROFILE PICS

Another dead giveaway is followers with no account activity or profile pic. These accounts are ‘dead accounts’.

CHECKING FOR FAKE INSTAGRAM AND TWITTER FOLLOWERS

There are more and more tools coming out that help you see through the fakes. Here are ones I have found:

https://fakers.statuspeople.com/

http://twittercounter.com/

Don’t be tempted to buy followers. They bring you no value and you will be caught out!

Fake followers are easy to buy and very hard to get rid of.

Increasing your social reach should be part of your marketing strategy. Feel free to contact me if would like to discuss how to increase your social reach in a meaningful way.

Businesses using Instagram to promote their products, services and offers now have an even greater opportunity to market their wares to a super targeted audience. With the backing of Facebook, Instagram has recently launched its advertising platform that integrates with Facebook’s amazing targeting capabilities and businesses are taking full advantage. Businesses know that users are watching their news feed. As a result, Instagrammers are 2.5 times more likely to click on newsfeed ads than ads on any other social media platform. So running Instagram ads for your business open up a world of opportunity.

Mobile advertising has surpassed newspaper advertising for the first time in history and large and small businesses alike are achieving measurable results with social media advertising. Instagram advertising has already generated more than half a billion in revenue and is projected to double within a year, which is proof that many business owners are putting their money where their mouth is.

More importantly Instagram’s ad platform is easy to use, it’s fun and bubbling over with passionate and enthusiastic users. It has excellent metrics and is still affordable for small businesses. If you are already advertising your product with social media ads or trying to build your list then integrating Instagram ads into your marketing mix is essential.

Here are five tips to consider before running an ad on Instagram to grow your business brand reach, engage your followers, or attract your target audience to your offer.

1. Get the basics right. Make sure to fill out your business profile and bio on your business Instagram account. Make sure to use a clear, crisp version of your company logo as your profile picture.

2. Tell users WHY you are on Instagram. Since this is your business account, keep it business, not personal. Help users identify with your brand and just make sure not to be too salesey.

3. Start with a plan. Strategize your Instagram (and all your social media) promotions by planning them out. Create a calendar for implementation that leads to your goal. Not having a plan is the main reason why businesses fail on social media, so do this before you start posting randomly or paying for traffic!

4. Don’t let your hashtags be your voice. Instead, lend your business voice to your hashtags. Customize hashtags for branding purposes and for everyday posting, keep them relevant and searchable. It’s great to use hashtags, just make sure to not lose control and generate too many in one post – deliver quality over quantity.

5. Upgrade your look. Images are everything on Instagram so make sure your images and video look GREAT. Savvy Instagram users want to see “beautiful” or read “funny” or relate to something meaningful. Use apps and other image/video tools to upgrade the look and feel of everything you post on Instagram.

Those are just a few tips to consider when using Instagram to market your business online. If you need more ideas about how to add your own flair to your Instagram posts without having to be a designer or photographer – check out my 6 Instagram Hacks for Small Businesses. There’s a link provided below.

While Instagram continues to grow in popularity, and so many easily accessible customers just waiting to like your image, it only makes sense for businesses to become active on this social media platform. Some businesses may think that all they have to do is post an image and wait for followers to comment and like their image; however it does require a little more effort than that to benefit from the marketing advantages that can be gained through the website.

One of the first things that a new user should do is to take full advantage of the Bio section that is featured on the top of your profile. This valuable space should be used to identify who your business is, what you do, and your website information. You should also make this space entertaining for visitors, include a little personality that will show you are not just another boring business trying to jump on the Instagram bandwagon. You should also link all of your social media accounts to your Instagram account. This will enable you to share images and videos that you have shared. This is a great way to increase traffic between all of your different social media accounts. If your business has a Facebook page, you should include links to your Instagram account.

The images that you choose to share on your Instagram account should be personal and not purely promotional. If you feature images that are more personal in nature and not something that can be found in a magazine, you will begin to build a presence that is more personable and approachable. These are the types of images that followers can relate to and enjoy on a regular basis. You will also notice that these types of images often experience the most comments and interaction among followers than other images that are often posted by other businesses.

To ensure that your images can be discovered by interested parties, you should include hashtags. Carefully chosen hashtags will ensure that your images show up in search results and get the attention of the individuals you are trying to reach. It has been shown that users who use at least five hashtags received the most interaction from users. If you have established a popular hashtag on other social media websites, you should continue to use that hashtag on Instagram as well.

Instagram has a lot to offer businesses as a marketing tool, but only if it is used in the proper manner. If you utilize some of the techniques that we have listed above, you should soon begin to notice an increase in followers as well as interaction among users. If you haven’t already created an Instagram account, you may want to do so as soon as possible.

With its recent launch on Android last year, Instagram has seen a steadily growing popularity as a social network. It is an easy way for fans to engage with their favorite celebrities and brands in addition to their own friends and followers. Data from Instagram’s press page shows that there are 1,000 comments and 8,500 likes every second and its 100 million monthly users are posting 40 million new pictures every day.

As a business, including Instagram among your social networking cache can be a huge boost in forming bonds between your brand and your fans. You can use it as a platform to introduce new products and promote your existing ones to your target audience.

There are several ways that you can use Instagram to help market your business in order to grow loyalty from fans and gain more exposure for your brand:

Photo Contests

If you want to see a quick spike in followers on Instagram, holding a contest is the way to do it. The key, though, to keeping those followers is to encourage engagement. You can offer a prize of one of your own products and ask followers to post a photo of their own marked with a unique hash tag or company name.

Create a contest and offer prizes that make sense for your business. You want to promote your own products and not someone else’s. So, while you could definitely see a huge increase by offering an iPad as a prize, you will only be earning short-term followers.

If you are a custom jewelry designer, offer one of your pieces as the prize. For the contest, you can ask followers to post a picture of them wearing their favorite accessory. Remember, the goal is to build a strong fan base, not to just give away expensive gifts.

Photo-a-Day Engagement

Something that has grown in popularity with Instagram is the “Photo-a-Day” Challenge. Many bloggers and businesses will create new lists and post them at the start of the month, encouraging followers to create new photos every day. You can easily find samples of these photos a day lists online to get some inspiration. You can also tie a contest in with these challenges to gain even more exposure for your brand.

Unique Hashtags

Twitter has long-used the hashtag to make it easy for users to find tweets that refer to a specific topic. Instagram uses hashtags in much the same way. They make it easy for users to enter contests and for businesses to locate those entries. Find hash tags that fit with your business and any contests. You can find a list of the most current popular hashtags with sites like Top-hashtags.com.

Cross Promote

When you set up your Instagram account, it is a good idea to link up your other social networks to it as well. For instance, linking to your Facebook account and Twitter will allow your photos to be posted to those accounts automatically. This means increased exposure and higher user engagement.

Personalization

Instagram gives businesses a simple way to personalize their brand. It gives users an inside look at their favorite brands and celebrities. In addition to photos of your products, use this platform as a way to give your followers an inside look into how you operate. If your small business is in your home office, share pictures that shows your workspace, your cat included. If you are a larger business with a brick-and-mortar location, shoot a few pictures of your employees at work. Give your followers an inside perspective of how your business runs and you will create more of a bond.

Has your business been using Instagram to grow a strong following? What are some of the ways that you use the social network?

Search engine optimization is simply a process of making your blog more visible to search engines for particular targeted keywords or phrases. In other words, SEO is just a popularity contest among websites. The question is always which website is the most popular and relevant for specific keywords or phrases, according to a particular search engine? If the question is placed in this way and not in terms of SEO strategies and techniques, you will realize that SEO goes beyond quality content and link building.

It is not surprising that with the growth in social media networks, many people are utilizing these social media websites to reinforce their SEO efforts. The good news is that you do not need SEO training to make use of these social media websites because it takes very little to get the hang of these sites. Although some big companies hire an SEO company to manage their social media pages, there is no reason why you cannot do it to increase the popularity of your own website.

One particular social media site that has grown in popularity since it made its debut in 2010 is Instagram, a photo sharing social media website. Instagram started out as a mobile application for Apple users but then support was added in 2012 so that Android users can use it as well. Although the effect of Instagram on actual search engine rankings is debatable, it is a great tool for promoting your website, products, services, and basically, increasing your website’s popularity and generating organic traffic. Below are some tips to help you use Instagram in promoting your website.

• Create a focused theme. If your Instagram account is for your website or business then make it evident from the get-go. Make sure that another Instagram user visiting your profile page will have no doubt in his or her mind what your account is all about. This means limiting your non-website related posts.

• Describe your images. Since Instagram is a photo sharing service, the only way to put content is to accurately describe your images or photos. Never post a picture that has no description. Even a single-word description is much better than none.

• Make proper use of hash tags. Hash tags are popularly used to associate your image to a particular topic or subject. You can think of these hash tags as keywords in the usual way you would promote your website.

• Engage with other users. Go beyond just posting images. Connect with other users by commenting on images of others and by responding to comments on your images.