Tips: Use Instagram to Click with Consumers

Instagram has become one of the best tools for e-commerce. According to a new report from eMarketer,  Instagram's shift from a solely social media channel to a driver of e-commerce has created a lot of pent-up demand. "The rollout of new features over the next several months means that by the end of 2015, Instagram will have a host of new ad products for advertisers large and small," said Debra Aho Williamshon, eMarketer principal analyst.
But in order to earn new business, marketers first need to earn engagement. Many marketers new to the cannel don't use it wisely by posting old prepackaged content, or by trying to fill their feeds with user-generated content. The key to earn engagement is to create great content, to see how socially savvy brands are getting creative with Instagram content, The Wall Street Journal shared their inspired social media marketing strategies.

1. Be The First To Use New Features
Social media platforms are constantly adding innovative features and tools, yet some marketers are afraid to try them before they have been "tested". Being the first has its advantages, take for instance Airbnb, one of the first brands to use Instagram's carousel feature. Through a brilliant campaign that allowed users to book a listing directly from its Instagram feed, Airbnb was able to create great impact. Many brands have followed suit by creating similar content with great success.

2. Engage Consumers Through Crowdsourcing
Opening up a brand's Instagram feed to consumers is a great idea to connect with them since a brand's feeds should reflect consumers' interests by featuring their content submissions. Lenovo used this approach with its #ihackedlife campaign. They opened up Instagram and carefully curated its video submissions to ensure that they where aligned with the brand image. When they posted the user videos, they increased engagement and connected with their consumers through this campaign.

4. A Little Planning Goes a Long Way
While Instagram content may seem spontaneous, the wisest marketers plan ahead for their Instagram feeds. A great example is Bacardi Limon, they created a pool party video for TV to promote its "Turn Up Your Summer" #Limonade program. The campaign was well planned and additional content for other platforms, especially Instagram, was collected. The made-for-Instagram videos where posted on their feed, which increased engagement with the brand.

Use these ideas for inspiration on creating Instagram content that brings consumers closer to brands.

Discover how to engage with your consumers. Contact SEED Branding Studio today at 305.987.0876 or visit seedbrandingstudio.com

6 Steps to a Stronger Social Media Presence

Having a social media account is not enough. Firms should take advantage of the free traffic by engaging in meaningful ways. Here we share 6 ways to build a strong social media presence.

1. Immediacy 

Real time engagement is the key. Make a habit of searching what customers are saying about your brand and interact immediately. Plan to monitor continuously during key events or breaking news and react quickly by engaging your audience. 

2. Monitor Reputation

It is human nature to be more inclined to write a review or comment when things go wrong, so it is only natural that online conversations always tend to degrade. Don't ignore bad comments or reviews, engage and try to recover the user from a bad experience. Be on top of what is happening and learn from bad reviews to improve the customer experience.

3. "P" for Place

Your social media strategy should include a place where your community can have free conversations, try to allocate strategically wether so you can be able to better monitor 

4. Content
Content should be engaging, in order to win with social media create by using the three most important factors:

Information - Peaks under the curtain, exclusive access, teach something and give a vehicle to teach someone else. 

Identity - Anything that furthers someone's identity is more likely to be shared.

Emotion - Stirring powerful emotions that move people.

5. Community

Give your product a voice, a personality. Community is very important because a big part of the purchase decision is based in belonging to something that enhances your lifestyle. 

6. Think Ad-Hoc
In order to engage your customer base try to customize as much as possible. By creating sub-communities tied by #hashtags you can target and engage different smaller groups with more personalized communications.

Brand Newsrooms at the Speed of Social

With the increase usage of Social Media marketing "on-the-fly"or real-time marketing is gaining increased interest. Consumers have higher expectations for responsiveness, participation and relevance than ever before. A study conducted by Edison research shows that 42% of consumers think brands should respond to their questions within an hour; they also expect brands to react to breaking news and engage in conversations about trending topics at the speed of social.

There is 60 times more content from brands in our newsfeeds than just two years ago, as the amount of branded content increases our attention spans keep getting shorter, in fact they have dropped by 58% in the last 10 years, from 12 minutes to 5. Here is where Brand Newsrooms have become an essential part of the modern business model allowing the brand to engage customer with precise content and timing. The poster child and most successful example to date is the Oreo tweet during the 2012 Superbowl blackout, the tweet read "You can still dunk in the dark" "Power out? No problem." that single tweet generated more buzz than their Superbowl ad.

Here we share the best ways to ensure that you create an effective brand newsroom:

1. Define your reader

Clearly define the brand traits into a social persona and create your ideal reader including tone, linguistics, attitude, enthusiasm, humor and cadence. Then every time you create content think about whether he or she would want to read, watch, or share it. Consider their needs and wants. 

2. Have a pulse on your audience

Explore the interests and affinities of your audience, make sure you know what is trending, what is engaging them in real time, most importantly be ready to REACT to breaking news. The more a brand talks about itself, the more likely it is to turn a potential audience off, instead provide news and information that are useful and valuable to your audience. 

3. Develop a content plan

Use an editorial calendar to help you pinpoint and plan stories that connect to your audience at particular points throughout the year. Establish a critical filter for evaluating whether news, events, trends or memes are relevant for your brand and its audience. 

4. Establish no-go areas

Just as important as defining what you will talk about it is critical to define upfront the subject areas that should be never used for newsroom content, or that should be handled with extreme care. 

Ready to sprout your brand to the next level? Take the first step. Call us at 305.454.4106

Facebook's Controversial Mood Manipulation

Did you know that in early 2012 for one week Facebook manipulated the content viewed on its News Feeds? Facebook conducted a research manipulating what 690,000 subjects saw, the results of this experiment where published this month on the prestigious journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

The research was designed to show two groups of people different types of content in their News Feeds, one group saw mostly positive posts from their friends while the other group was shown mostly negative posts. Interestingly the people in the negative posts group wrote a higher number of negative posts themselves and the positive group wrote a higher number of positive posts. The implications? Facebook successfully manipulated subjects mood making them happier or sadder for a week. 

Facebook's terms of service allows them to perform this kind of research but many users are outraged and believe that this experiment is a dangerous form of social manipulation. Also, users feel that their privacy was violated because they were was not informed consent which raises ethical concerns.

Adam D. I. Kramer, the Facebook researcher who designed the experiment said "I can understand why some people have concerns about it, and my coauthors and I are very sorry for the way the paper described the research and any anxiety it caused" Kramer wrote. "In hindsight, the research benefits of the paper may not have justified all of this anxiety."

Susan Fiske, the Princeton professor who edited the research stated to The Atlantic "I was concerned, until I queried the authors and they said their local institutional review board had approved it, and apparently on the grounds that Facebook apparently manipulates people's News Feeds all the time...I understand why people have concerns. I think their beef is with Facebook, really, not the research."

Gabriela Borja

SEED Branding Studio