In a shorter run it is easier to manage social media accounts but in a longer run when there are so many tasks – creation of content, finding right audience, interaction with customers, social listening, analysing what is working and how to improve and so on. It is itself a project. Creating and managing social media campaigns is not an overnight process. In order to create a powerful campaign and getting results out of it, these tools will help in achieving milestones. These tools will help you in answering all your questions.

#1. Brand24

This tool is effective for monitoring brand or product on internet. One can monitor what people are talking about brand and its products on all social media platform. This tool is apt for businesses of all kind and size. It helps to figure out sudden changes in discussion volume to protect company’s image. It helps you to respond on immediate basis. It gives you analysis of mention of brand on internet, influencer score and sentimental score. Many big brands are associated with it such as IKEA, OLX, H&M and many more. This tool provides 14-day free trial followed by 3 payment plan.

#2. Brandwatch

This tool helps you in reaching customers, know about customers and give insights how they react with your brand. It provides three products: “Analytics” for online conversation analysis, “vizia” for data visualisation, and “audiences” for understanding of targeted audience. This tool has access to various integration like salesforce, google analytics, Hootsuite etc. Pricing is on request but they have demo videos on website for how they work.

#3. Buffer

This tool helps in managing multiple social media accounts at the same time. This tool helps in planning and scheduling of content from anywhere on the web. It helps in publishing, managing engagement and analysis of campaigns on different social media channel. It also helps in replying to customers on various social media platforms at one screen. It manages posts on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. It provides you 7-14 days free trial and 4 kinds of offer depending on business size. One can manage upto 8-150 social accounts with up to 26 users at max. One can operate this tool in its Buffer app.

#4. Hootsuite

This tool helps in providing one stop solution for all social media needs. It helps a person to create, run and schedule campaigns on various social media platforms. It also helps in managing different campaign running at different social media channels at the same time. It even measures performance and ROI of the campaigns. It is easy to use and preferred by most of the companies. It provides you 60-days free trial to manage and grow.

#5. Sprout Social

This tool is the most robust and cohesive social media solution. It gives you in-depth knowledge of audience. It provides social media analytics, engagement, publishing and social listing. It gives you reports within few days and are more customer centric. Their customer support is also very good. It provides 30-days free trial without any credit card requirement. This tool gives clarity on what services will be provided while selecting payment plans.

#6. Crowdfireapp

This tool helps in elevating social media channels. Additionally, it helps in discovering relevant content based on interest topic, publishing content from your blog and sites, scheduling of posts and creating tailored posts for every social media channel. It also helps in creating your own RSS feed and sharing your own article with the help of chrome extension. It helps to find relevant audience by filtering it who are following and engaging despite of you not following them, who are following you back, and who unfollowed recently. This too allows free trial. One can choose payment plans monthly and yearly.

#7. Socialoomph

This tool provides platform for scheduling of content on various social media channels. It gives separate access for companies to work in a team. It provides plethora of other features like Self-destructing posts, precise scheduling, RSS feeds, bulk uploading, shortening of link and many more. It provides 30-days free trial. It also holds an affiliate program so that one can earn from references without any limit. Terms and condition are clearly mentioned on the website.

#8. Keyhole

This tool helps to understand how people are engaging with brand, campaigns, and influencers on social media platforms (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube) and web. It analyses keywords, old campaigns, influencers, hashtags. It helps in brand monitoring and market research. It assures analysis for big and small brands. One can request a demo for trial.

#9. Tweetdeck

Tweetdeck is the tool for real-time tracking, organising and engagement on Twitter. One can monitor Twitter campaigns, automate them and measure performance with a great ease. It is one platform, where one can see all the tweet mention and replying on the same time. One can analyse pattern of responses by people of the brand. It also helps in managing multiple Twitter accounts and hashtags. One can add negative keywords and specify authors one want to track. This tool is owned by Twitter and is free of cost.

#10. Social Mention

This tool is a social media search and analysis platform that aggregates user generated content into single stream of information. It easily tracks and measures what people are talking about brand, product in real-time all across social media platforms. It is also a free tool.

#11. NUVI & Groundspark

Brickfish run these two tools. Both has unique features. NUVI is intelligent, platform for social listening, analytics and reporting. NUVI helps in creating brand awareness, engage & influence customers and works on crisis management by sending alerts on critical issues and feedbacks. Whereas Grounspark is a social management and publishing solution to promote creativity and engagement Grounspark helps in managing different posts/events, publishing them on different social media channels and analysing how effective results are. One has to request for demo for pricing.

#12. Followerwonk

This tool is very interactive for Twitter analytics. It helps to find, analyse and optimise social growth on twitter. It helps to find answers to who the audiences are, where are they located and time they tweet. It also helps to find relevant influencers. It easily shares reports to the world. To manage one account its free.

#13.  Digimind

This tool is a AI powered for measuring social listening, engagement, analysis and reporting. It helps in targeting right audiences and analyse sentiments of customers for the brand. It provides plethora of features for managing social media content. It is mobile friendly too. One has to request for demo and even plans are on request.

#14. Canva

This tool helps in designing social media posts. From Facebook cover photo to Instagram stories, one can choose from various predefined templates or can create their own. It has both free and paid templates to work on. It is free tool and user friendly. It also suggests same colour scheme from your previous designs and save all your work in a folder for future use.

#15. Coschedule

This tool helps in planning, scheduling and managing various social media content on various social media channels. It is like a calendar and pre plan of posting a content. It helps to stay focused and deliver project on time. It also suggests best time to post a content depending on maximum engagement with the brand. It brings entire promotional workflow into one centralised location where one can manage, publish, monitor and analyse. One can sign up for free or request for demo. They have various success stories to tell.

#16. contactus

contactus by workwave is a tool lead generation and lead management at one place. It helps in tracking, managing and optimising sales and marketing team using key performance metrics. It is a platform where one can create forms for lead generation or forms for customer feedbacks and reviews. It provides solution for online presence, building brand, managing reputation and driving new business. One has to fill a form for contact.

#17. Dlvr.it

This tool is an automated platform for posting new articles or posts on various social media platform. If you have a business where you have to posts on regular basis and sharing those posts to every social media channel is a cumbersome task, dlvr.it is the platform for you. It also analyses the relevancy and reach of the posts on various platforms. This tool works on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumbler, Pinterest, slack, Google business and LinkedIn. It gives you free login with limited social media accounts access.

#18. Sendible

This tool helps in managing and oversee all social media accounts in one place. It gives direct access to canva, Google drive, YouTube and dropbox. It helps in creating dashboards, publishing content, collaboration with people, analyse the trends and social listening. It provides a unified social inbox for each brand so that work doesn’t get mixed. It constantly analyses social media profiles and suggest best content that will resonate with audience. It provides a 30-day trial.

#19. Repost

This tool helps in reposting your favourite photos and videos on Instagram while giving credit to original Instagram user. It is both iOS and android friendly. It is free tool

#20 later

later is a marketing platform for Instagram. Getting traffic on Instagram account is not easy. One can upload all the photos at one time and schedule it on visual planner for exact date. Later will auto publish. One can preview it in the account whenever required. It analyses what is working and what isn’t with your Instagram account. It helps in audience interaction and suggest best time to post, measuring ROI. It also helps in adding multiple tags or links in your feed or Instagram bio. One can sign in for free in individual account.

Learn social media marketing online, take Vskills certification to upgrade your skills.

Free Practice tests:https://www.vskills.in/practice/skills/digital-media/social-media-marketing

The post 20 Best Social Media Marketing Tools appeared first on Vskills Blog.

SMALL INVESTMENTS CAN MAKE YOU GROW BIGGER IN FUTURE

Any company can go with either paid ads or organic ads. Paid ads acts as a game changer for any business because organic ads need huge amount of time to convert. In my opinion, main reasons for which one should go for paid ads along with SEO strategy are:

1. Increases Reach

In every business, reach is very important. For expansion of businesses, increase in audience reach is very much required. Whether the goal is to increase awareness of product/services, to sell a product, creating brand awareness, paid ads plays very important role in achieving target objectives. Google paid ads helps in increasing brands reach by reaching Google ads search network or display network. It helps you boost your ad and gives you a chance to come on first page depending on ad relevancy, landing page of website and search keywords used. With the help of ad targeting tool, Google helps you target via location, time, language, interest, time of the day, behavior, similar audience and so on.

In addition, paid search ads brings potential customers, who are searching for specific product or services, to the brand. These potential customers are already on a mission to find an answer or making a purchase decision. With this, you can expect shorter buying cycles and higher transactions from your paid campaigns.

2. Increases efficiency

Paid ads takes lesser time than organic ads. With the same keyword search, chances of your ads showing up increases. You get access to more potential customers in very less time. Paid ads helps you add negative keywords. By negative keywords I mean keywords that are not relevant to your search/ company. By adding negative keywords, your ad will not show up when those terms are used for search. As described in below example, your ad will not show if anyone searches with keywords like hotels in Lansdowne, budgeted hotels etc.

How to choose negative keywords

Best way to choose negative keywords relevant to your business is to identify the AdWords which are bringing in traffic but aren’t converting or using keyword planner. To master it, you have to make a list of keywords which matches your ads and eliminate those which are not relevant.

With the use of negative keywords, you will be able to save money by not reaching to all search queries. It will help you filter potential customers.

By improving the quality of your CTR (click through rate), Google will rank your ad with a stronger Relevancy Score, which increases relevant search results.

3. Increases accuracy

With paid ads, you target right audience at right time; You tend to target those audience, who are interested in your products. Paid Ads helps you reach as many relevant audience as it can. It is searched on google network and its subsidiaries. It helps to search on various social media platform to get the relevant audience. It also helps when product is niche. At this very early stage paid ads helps in avoiding unnecessary disturbance and reaches right set of audiences at the right time. It also helps you create and run multiple ads in same budget. You can choose between different keyword match types. Details of different match types are mentioned below:

• Broad match: This is a default keyword type. As the name suggest, it is the keyword match type that allows you to reach widest audience. In this type you are allowed to appear whenever a user searches any keyword in your ad phrase. It includes misspellings, synonyms, related searches, and relevant variations. No special symbol is used before the keyword. For example, if you use broad match on keyword “pink dress”, your ad might show when user searches for “red dress” or “pink scarf”. It will increase the traffic but problem is those traffic might not be relevant to your business
• Broad match modifier: It allows you to be more specific around queries that will trigger your ad. It works byappending a ‘+’ to the specific word in your keyword phrase that you want to lock in place. Your ad will show only when that word appears in search query. For example, if you use “+red dress”, your ad will appear only when red dress is searched for. It shows results for searches that contain modified terms (or closer variations), but not synonyms, in any order.
• Phrase match: Your ad will appear only when a user searches for exact keyword phrase. To use this, add keywords in double inverted commas (“,”). For example, if user searches red dress, your ad will appear in “red dress for wedding” or “red dress for women” but not for “red women dress” or “dress for women”. It matches searches with additional words before or after, but not in between or in a different order.
• Exact match: It is the most restricted match type. It is used in those cases in which you are very particular for the keyword. To use this, add keyword in square brackets [,]. For example, if search term is [red dress for women], your ad will appear only then. Ads will show only when search keywords are exact term or its close variation.

In line with what is mentioned above, we can conclude that we can be more accurate in finding our audiences and get better results by using keyword match type. With extremely relevant keywords in ad copy, your quality score and CTR increases and CPC decreases.

4. Increases cost effectiveness

With Google paid ads you will pay only when user clicks on your ad irrespective of how many impressions were made. Thus no money wasted on irrelevant impressions. Also, there is no minimum budget that you have to spend. It’s up to companies, what they are willing to pay. Each company has different needs and ad budget; therefore, it is very important to allocate the budget in such a way that it should not get exhausted in few days.

Evaluation of marketing strategy is very important here. With Google paid ads you can optimize your bids depending upon device from which your ad is accessed more, time of day your ad gains maximum engagement, geography from which ads are accessed more, important keywords etc. This helps brands in achieving better ROI.

5. Increases flexibility

Another advantage of paid ads is flexibility to optimise. Everything in ad campaign is controllable. To achieve higher results, you can always optimise your ad at any stage depending on the traffic and behaviour with the ad. The parameters that can be optimised are mentioned below:

• Keywords: You can add or remove as many keywords as you want depending on the relevancy with the ad and engagement at any given point of time. I recommend, in a particular campaign, we should add different set of keywords for different ads of the campaign. In a set, for the start, you can 10-15 keywords.
• Ad copy: You can have multiple ad copies in single campaign and same budget. Ad copies can further be edited depending on the interaction with user
• Ad extensions: You can add extensions to the ad like location extension, seller ratings, consumer ratings, call extension, sitelinks depending upon need and objective of the campaign
• Landing page: You can always improve landing page depending on the the user behaviour.

6. Increases measurable results

One of my favourite thing about digital marketing is being able to deliver results of my campaign. It helps in analysing the areas of improvement and understanding data funnel. One can track the campaign from the day it is published. Google paid ads can be measured at each and every step, from ad copy to its landing page. Connecting your ad to google analytics account helps you in changing and improving your marketing strategy. In your ad, you can measure what is working and what is not working. From the time ad is published, in no time and minimal cost, paid search campaigns start analysing all the factors associated with the ad. It even provides you funnel report in which you can evaluate the point of customer exit and areas of improvement.

Paid ads allows us to show immediate results for added keywords. Paid accounts also suggests which keywords can be added. Unlike organic ads, campaigns are quick to set up and don’t require long term care. It just need to be monitored and optimised to ensure long term results.

7. Increases visibility

Unlike organic search, you can definitely outreach the competition. Paid ads help you in increasing visibility of your ad copy on the first page when a search happens and hence increases the chances to be clicked. With the help of auction insight feature in your Google AdWords account, you can find how your competitors are performing and areas of improvement. You can measure how much impressions competitors are getting. With the same set of keywords, good content and good ad copy, you can increase the visibility even with low budget.

In this screenshot, you can see performance of campaigns of different travel companies and the factors in which the companies are leading or lagging. You can craft your ad copy accordingly and increases the likelihood of conversion.

It’s now or never, start investing and grow bigger.

The post Top 7 Reasons to Spend on Paid Advertisements appeared first on Vskills Blog.

What I think of Email marketing?

There are enough definitions when you search online. According to Wikipedia, every email sent to potential or existing customer is known as email marketing. But according to me, email marketing is a trust building platform which grows slowly and steadily by sending emails to new and existing customers.

In current era, companies are promoting themselves through email marketing by asking customers to opt- in for their newsletters, which provide updates on new blogposts, products or services. This ensures that your brand is visible and customers have a higher recall value of your brand. With higher recall value, brand has higher share of awareness that further helps in increasing the market share.

There is a common myth – Some people believe social media channels are more effective than email marketing. Various reports suggest that companies using email marketing have a better conversion rate. The reason for higher conversion rate is simple – Email marketing strategy helps a company in connecting with their customers more closely and effectively.

Why email marketing?

The key reasons that drives email marketing for building a brand are:

• Increases website visitors: With exponential growth of internet users and smart phone users, people who are accessing emails on a daily basis have increased manifolds in comparison to the users who are active on social media.
• Increases repeat customers: Personalized offers through email marketing helps in attracting customers for repeat purchases
• Increases new opportunities/prospects: It acts as a quick mechanism to update customers regarding new products, services, sales events etc. This increases the awareness level of customers and attracts them to visit the website.
• Increases loyalty: Personalized offers specifically customized for customers as per his past purchases and requirements helps build trust with the customer and ensures better loyalty, in longer run
• Increases transparency: Through emails, we can provide end to end visibility into an order life cycle thus gaining trust of the customer.Eg: When we place an order on bigbasket.com, we get the email notification at each step of the process – Order confirmation – Order preparation – Order dispatch – Order delivered – Payment confirmation End to end visibility is very important in ensuring that the customer is aware of the movement of his order.
• Increases brand engagement: Weekly newsletters, sale announcement, new product launch helps users in engaging more with the brand
• Increases attendance: With busy schedules, it is difficult to be updated with all the upcoming events. To ensure that customers are aware of any future events, email marketing works as a very effective medium
• Increases lead conversion: Periodic reminders and updates helps in staying connected with prospective leads and increasing the chances of lead conversion by making yourself present in the mind of customer.
• Maintaining personal connect: With the help of email campaigns, companies can maintain personal connect with the customers by sending birthday/ anniversary wishes, customized discounts and feedback forms to evaluate customer experience.

What are the objectives or what to achieve with email marketing campaign?

Before starting any email marketing campaign one must define the objectives of the campaign and what can be achieved with the campaign. For this, one must answer the following questions:

• What is my plan? What I want to achieve?
• Who is my target audience?
• Where is my target audience?
• What template should I use for the campaign?
• What is the content?
• Whether email should be personalized or generic?
• What was the earlier trend?
• How many spam complaints were reported earlier?
• How many users unsubscribed from the email list?
• How many opened the email campaign and how many click the call-to-action button?

Note: to check the history and how genuine the company is, one can visit www.whois.com. This website will tell the details of the company.

What are the key points to consider while drafting an email marketing strategy?

One must check the key points before drafting an email marketing campaign: the email id from which mail is sent (it is very important as it is one of deciding factor of deciding whether mail is a spam or not); recipients mail id (if recipients email id is wrong mail will not be delivered); email content; email design template; SPF and DNS friendly (it helps to check authentication and reputation of domains and lastly, corporate firewall.

While defining email marketing strategy, one should follow the CURVE framework (Curiosity, Urgency, Relevancy, Value and Emotion). Every email campaign is drafted in such a manner that it makes a customer Curious enough to open your email, after that what is the urgency behind email marketing campaign, then show what is the relevancy of the product/ services with the customer who is seeing your campaign, then what value your company holds and lastly what is the emotional connect.

Subject line

For creating curiosity, subject line plays a very important role. First and the foremost thing a customer scans through its mailbox is brand name and subject line. Do not use long sentences in subject line and it should be interesting and catchy. Also, keep in mind it should address the content of the email. For most users, there is no statistical link between subject line length and open rate. But for subscribers reading your campaigns on mobile devices, shorter may be better. You can also personalize the subject line. People consider those email which are specially addressed to them. Do not waste precious space with fillers like “hello”, “nice to meet you” and so on. Do not use words in caps in subject line. In order to increase curiosity to open email, you can add deadline in your subject line like “few day left, grab the offer”, “offer is ending soon”, “limited period offer”.

Content

The content should be short, simple and relevant. It should reflect the culture of the company. Majority of people don’t want to read long emails. Try to write in bullet points or small paragraphs. You can also add visuals in your mail content as they are more effective than words. Keep in mind that you don’t upload heavy images as it will increase time to open and result in exiting without even looking at it. Use file optimization to avoid this error. But, if you deal in such businesses where you need long mails, try to give either a link to the site or use an attachment. One should not feel distracted from the topic; if it happens then there are chances that they may either unsubscribe from mailing list or report as spam or start ignoring your company’s mails in near future. It is not compulsory that you follow the same rules. You have to be very clear on the objectives of email marketing campaigns, purpose it serves and the targeted audience.

Closing of emails

While closing the email, one should always add call-to-action button. One must have unsubscribe button, email address of the firm and address/ contact number of the firm, if possible. This will help you to build trust that it is sent via company and not a spam email. In the below example; there is a call-to-action button, email id and contact details of company is given and also, there is a unsubscribe button. Also, company add brands who are influencers, who trusted the company and wrote good about them.

Optimizing email marketing campaign for all devices

Email marketing campaign should be designed in such a way that it supports all the devices. There was a time when people used only desktops to check emails. But now, with the increase in technology, people are using smart phones and tablets, most of the time, to access their email accounts and same is the case with the website. You can use mail chimp or any similar software for drafting and check responsiveness of the mail. You can use imageoptim.com to compress images for website/email without shredding pixels.

Note: images with .png extension cannot be compressed; .jpg can be compressed.

Frequency and timings of email sent

It is important to understand the geographic presence of your customers. While sending emails, one should take into account the time difference between the two locations and send the mails accordingly. Also, keep a tab on the frequency of the emails. You would want to make your presence felt, but not irritate the customer.

Note: email overall size should be <=120 kb or 2 mb. For creating, testing and removal of spam words in email marketing templates one can use www.getresponsenow.com or www.quiteo.com.

Responsiveness of email

Sending an email campaign is one part and sending response to the customers is other. Sending response to customer creates a connect between brand and customer. For this, make sure you have a company address like admin@xyz.com or customerservice@xyz.com. It help customers identify the brand and understand the efforts that brands are putting in resolving the customers queries and concerns. By paying attention to your customer’s queries, you can improve your email marketing strategy from potential email mishaps. It also helps in deliverability as email service providers (ESP) will not considered it a spam.

Take an hour or two to send replies to the customer queries and complaints. Do not let customers wait for too long. To avoid this, you can use automated response letting customers know that you will reply within 24 to 48 hours or so and providing them a phone number in case of emergency. Responding in such a way helps customer to understand that their concerns are not taken lightly and hence helps in building the brand. Customers will enjoy good experience and thus resulting in higher customer retention.

Show compassion with negative replies. Negative replies help you to understand what mistakes you as brand and your team is making. See them as an opportunity to change an irate customer into a loyal one. Reply to negative mails very carefully and strategically. While doing this, you can find out what mistakes has been done, its patterns and turn them in making good email marketing strategy. With the help of good responsiveness of email, you can increase the forward rate of email marketing campaign. High forward rate justifies better email marketing campaign and high customer engagement.

Tracking email marketing metrics

Once you have started your email marketing campaign, you should track its progress using email marketing tools like mailchimp, saleshandy, mailshake, Gmass etc. what needs to tracked in email marketing campaign? You need to track.

• Number of unique customers opening emails.
• Number of customers unsubscribing the emails/ newsletters.
• Number of unique customers report it as a spam.
• Number of customers who are not opening your email marketing campaign.
• Number of email bounces due to incorrect email addresses.
• Number of persons who are clicking the link provided in email marketing campaign
• What is the CTR (click through rate)
• Number of shared emails
• Number of hard bounces (you have sent email to those email ids’ which are no longer in run)
• Number of soft bounce (you have sent email to those email ids’ whose mail box is full but is a valid email id)
• Number of signups, lead generation, conversion and so on

Best practices to include in your email marketing campaign

• In order to gain maximum number of conversions through email marketing campaign, you have make your campaign quirky, short and relevant. No one likes to read long and boring emails. Keep it simple and short.
• Try to tell your story. Storytelling is the best practice. But if you have long content then provide additional link (it also acts as call-to-action button, and helps you to know whether a customer is interested in your content).
• Do not get too pushy, it may lead to increase in report spam or un-subscriptions.
• Your campaign should be more generic; with this I mean to say you frame in such a way that it should cover maximum number of readers as you cannot make campaigns specific to each and every person.
• You should divide your customers into small groups depending on demographics, age and interest.

What to keep in mind while building a brand in near future?

Targeted messages

What tactics you choose to send emails those are relevant to the client base? Effective segmentation is very important, try to send differentiated campaigns to the customers based on their sex, age, location and past behavior. Customers now-a-days, are used receiving personalized messages and expected companies to deliver emails by personalizing it. Personalized messages are the key that connects company to customers. A very good example: Amazon and Netflix are sending personalized emails to the customers based on their prior behavior history.

Sending emails at right time to right contact with right automated messages helps in increasing sales and brand loyalty. For example, sending emails on birthdays/ anniversary with an offer or discount is cleverly picked up selling opportunities.

One should be responsive enough to reply negative emails in a positive and professional manner. Don’t let your customers wait for too long. Respond them in 24- 48 hours at max.

Make emails interactive

With interactive email marketing campaigns, I don’t just mean that the email should look visibly cooler or animated, it should help in bridging the gap between user visiting the mail and clicking on the call-to-action button. Emails should be interactive enough to help user to start their purchase with the given link/ call-to-action. Recently, a big fashion brand Burberry, allowed user to personalize their scarf via emails and people made a purchase without leaving the inbox.

Brand humanization

With the increase in online competition, customer loyalty with the brand has become company’s top priority. And humanization of the brand is even more important. Creating emotional connect between brand and its customers is the key to sustain loyalty and brand building.

In 2018, many brands have already, started speaking about what makes them unique and what values it holds to bond with the customer. For example, environment is a major concern now-a-days, so a company like amazon now, recently reduced using of paper bags and sending their delivery in a crate which can be reused, therefore addressing the environmental concern.

Start making a positive impact and tell a story. Customers are bored of aggressive selling, and are becoming receptive of brand storytelling and brand value.

Last, but not the least is data privacy or e-privacy. With the introduction of new GDPR rules, customers are regaining control over their personal data. Companies have to adapt to the GDPR rules to ensure compliance. This new regulation has transformed the way companies targeting their users online. It allows companies to specify whether users want to accept website cookies or not. But GDPR reach is only to protect privacy of people of Europe; India has to learn and go a long way. So, you have to be very clear on which countries you are targeting; what are their internet laws and do you abide them or not.

Happy selling!!

The post Tips for Creating Email Marketing Strategies appeared first on Vskills Blog.

It possesses a huge opportunity to build and promote a brand, as the target audience you want to reach is present on this platform. Out of the total Instagram users, 68% are females. 6 out of 10 adults have Instagram accounts and 72% of teens use Instagram.

So, what strategies we should adopt to build our brand on Instagram?

Create a simple & clear profile

Your Instagram business profile is the face of your brand. The key areas to be focused are:

• profile picture
• profile description
• URL link.

Profile Picture

It should be of good quality, clear, related to your business and fits into frame. If you use a logo as profile picture, make sure it is same as on your website or any other platform. Users recognize a brand with picture.

Profile Description

Owing to 150 characters’ limit, it is important to tell visitors who you are, what values you follow and what they expect to experience when they follow you. It is always better to be concise. Use bullet points to explain your profile; Don’t write paragraphs. Keywords are a plus- highlight them. Be sure that the description is connecting with the expectation of the audience. A poor description can not only disconnect the audience from your brand, but also ruin your brand. Lastly, add your website link or email address (in hyperlink, it acts as a call to action button), as it helps your followers to get in touch in a professional manner, if required (in case direct message option is missed out).

URL

Try to keep it simple and easy to remember.

Facts: 72% of users have bought a product they saw on Instagram. On an average, users spend 53 minutes a day on the Android Instagram app.

Create right content

It is the most important for a brand. Think twice before creating a content. To do so, write an objective you want to achieve by this post. Design a user friendly, bright, colorful content. Content is the king. Posting breathtaking images, editing with fun filled image editors, posting one-minute loop videos, slow-motion videos, adding locations are some of top features that Instagram provides. Use canva.com to create content (posts and stories), it will help you enhance your posts. You can use pre available background image or can create your own. It is quite simple and easy.

Facts: Till now, more than 50 million photos have been uploaded on Instagram. User generated content has 4.5% Higher Conversion Rate. Photos with faces get 38% more likes and posts with location gets 79% more engagement.

It will be wise to write less and in bullets in pictures, rather write in description. Even while writing description, try using compendious sentences that relate to your audience very well. Add relevant keywords to the description that are related to your business and brand’s objective. It also increases reach of your post.

You can use the same content on other social media channels like Facebook, Pinterest etc.

Relevant hashtags

If you want to get noticed on Instagram, use of hashtags are very important. You can research top hashtags that are in sync with the post you want to publish on Instagram. It helps to link the subject of the photo/video to other Instagram content with same theme. Try to use 4-5 sets of different hashtags, and in each set 11-15 hashtags are sufficient. Though there is no hard and fast rule but too many hashtags will lose the impact and message of the post connected with them. Also, it makes a brand looks amateur.

You can use www.hashtagify.com to see relevant hashtags for your posts. All you have to do is add one hashtag in search option and tool will generate other popular hashtags related to it. Post that, you can decide which all hashtags you want to add in your posts for your campaign.

Facts: 7 out of 10 hashtags on Instagram are branded; post with at least one hashtag on an average has 12.6% more engagement.

Create Instagram Stories

Instagram introduced this feature in August 2016.Instagram stories is not only important, but also unique. The story features for next 24 hours and then disappears. It is shown on top of Instagram account. This will help you to track who visits your story and how frequently. You can also get the name of viewers that can be later used for creating a dynamic remarketing campaign for the selected few.

You can add stories to appear on your profile as highlights, even after they disappear.

Note: Even after the original story has disappeared, highlighted stories remain visible as highlights, until you remove the. Keep in mind that those you’ve allowed to see your story can also see your highlights.

You can even archive your stories for future reference. Only you can see the stories saved in your archive after they disappear from your story. If you delete a photo or video from your story before it disappears, it won’t be saved to your archive. So be wise while deleting. You don’t have to save manually as it automatically archives.

500+ million stories are published daily– Up from 300 million in October 2017. Most brands (2 million brands) are telling their stories with Instagram stories. One of every 10 stories on Instagram is created by brands. This clearly states that stories, unless copied, works for brands.

Facts: In 2018, around 71% of US businesses were on Instagram. Instagram has more than 1 million monthly advertisers and 8 million Business Profiles. 55% of Influencers use Instagram Stories for Sponsored campaigns.

Live broadcast streams and videos

Videos or live videos accelerate like and trust factors that compel Instagram users to become potential customers to make an investment in your brand and product. Videos are good means of storytelling. Which can be prerecorded or live streamed.

Instagram videos is a short snippet you want to share with your audience. The video will automatically share on your Instagram story feed. You can edit videos in black and white, chrome and sepia, which adds more creativity into your feed.

Live video is an exceptional method to discuss your business. It also helps you to understand what queries does your client is facing and doubts about your product. It helps you to solve their problems instantly and convince them to follow your brand or make a purchase. Unlike Instagram stories you can add it to your Instagram story option by clicking share. It lets users to know: why they should come and visit your page. It helps to increase followers and drive high user engagement, building trust. Live videos are an incredible business blessing or act as a super hero.

Unlike stories Live streams videos cannot be archived which is both good and bad. It creates a sense of urgency in users that if he/she don’t connect, then they might lose something very important information. It is very authentic by its nature.

Many celebrities and influencers also use it to showcase their reach and importance. Facts: every year, there is an increase of 80%. Users love their video posts, right from the start. In 2013 when the feature was launched, 5 million videos were uploaded in first 24 hours. Although it is not a thumb rule, you have to evaluate depending on business too.

Posts regularly

It is very important to post about or product or services regularly. If you don’t post regularly, there might be chances where people forget about your brand and shift to your competitor because they post regularly. Since Instagram users recognize their brand, you might lose the market share.

You can post daily or 2-3 times a week depending on your business objectives and needs. According to me, posting 2-3 times a week is a good option, since posting daily will irritate a viewer too. They might scroll down ignoring your campaign. But again it totally depends on your business requirements. On the contrary, if you are running a campaign for upcoming special occasion such as Holi, then maybe daily posting will be an add on. This is only a suggestion. Again telling it is totally optional and business oriented.

Now question here is, how to do it? Everyday posting a post is a task, creating fresh ideas and posting it daily is a challenge. You work on 2-3 post at a time about various products you have and objectives behind it. For this you can use www.canva.com, as we discussed this earlier (it even helps suggest you different ideas depending you prior templates history). After that you can use software’s like Hootsuite for scheduling your campaigns. You can choose which campaign to be posted on which date, day and time. And plan your campaigns accordingly. You can use Hootsuite for other scheduling other social media planning. But here you have to be sure that you must login same Instagram account which you use in Hootsuite.

You can also download the Hootsuite app on your phone too, there is no need to go and open a desktop site. When you send or schedule to your Instagram profile from Hootsuite, a reminder notification is sent to your Hootsuite mobile app when the post is ready to publish. From the notification you can easily publish the post via Instagram.

Similar to Facebook, Instagram to allow you to post sponsored ads (paid ads). This feature also helps a brand to increase its reach depending on your budget to spend.

Facts: Having said that, Instagram did start sponsored ads for big brands like Nike, General Electric, and Walt Disney and they certainly make a portion of their ad revenue from Instagram.

Stay responsive

Stay connected with your followers is very important. It gives you a fair idea how your brand is performing and which areas you need to improve. Regular posting is one thing and interacting with them is another. If you keep on posting the ads and posts and responding to the customers, then also there are chances that you might lose your market share. People will start telling bad about your brand and your brand value will decrease. Responding to your followers and following back who are important, is very necessary.

You can position your brand as engaging only if you are responding to your followers or users. You appreciate them if praised and if they angry, apologize and try to resolve their problem. But again, addressing them is must. This will help you to attract new ones by tapping user generated campaigns. Big brands are also spending time on social media platforms to engage with customers and resolve their problems. If you are a start-up, then also it’s a must to spend at least 2-3 hours a day to respond on social media.

Recently, I was going through my Instagram account, I saw a sponsored ad by a salon services brand posting few discount services, and in comment section there were lot of people who were not happy with the prior services and hidden charges. This campaign was running since 2-3 days and nobody in the company has addressed even one customer, good or bad. Being a new to this brand I might probably not go for this company’s services. Hence, opportunity of upcoming business is lost. There are so many other users will be there who thinks same like me. Therefore, it is very important to stay responsive and connected with your followers.

Try multiple ad campaigns

Don’t hesitate in trying new strategies in different ads. Also, don’t rely on one campaign. Try to build more than one campaign for a particular objective. And try A/B testing. It means try to test all the ads/posts you had made simultaneously. Also, try to run those ads at different intervals of time and days. There might be changes if one ad will not perform the other ads will outreach. Therefore, you to keep testing which ad helps you in getting the response of the users. A/B testing helps you to cater aspects like frequency of posts, time of day your which ad is showing, popular hashtags, offbeat captions, and calls to action.

A very good example related to this is: During IPL season 2, Vodafone created a series of 30 different ads showing zoo zoos at different ad breaks. Idea behind it was to engage as much as possible. Because of the multiple different ads, it was easy to catch the eyes of the viewers. The viewers were not bored seeing them. This helped them in solving the engagement problem. So is the case with multiple campaigns in Instagram. It will help you to become experienced brand from an amateur one.

Another very good example is Myntra.com, a fashion ecommerce company started different memory games to attract customers to its “end of reason sale”. They showcased different ads and in their ads visitors had to locate the brands. After completion they will get some points which can be redeemed in their end of reason sale.

Follow the influencers

For massive reach you should follow the influencers, celebrities depending upon your business. Follow the trending posts and keep an eye on what’s going on in the market. Keep a close watch on competitor’s business strategy and ads. Then compare how you can improve and take an advantage.

There are various reasons why you should follow an influencer or prefer paid influencers. Some of them are as follows: A. people trust them, they follow them and make decisions on their advice. B. due to increase in social media activities they listen to celebrities and opinion leaders, they are more interactive and have similar way of thinking. C. Influencers are itself a brand. So associating with it or following them will add a point extra in your brand building.

“A brand is no longer what we tell the consumers it is- it is what consumers tell each other it is.” (Gensler, Völckner, Liu-Thompkins & Wiertz, 2013).

Facts: 78% of the Influencers prefer Instagram for brand collaboration. The most popular Brand on Instagram? National Geographic, with over 91 million fans. With Christiano Renaldo, Beyoncé, and my favourite, Dwayne Johnson, the Rock—all between 141 and 115 million Instagram groupies.

Incorporate user generated content

This approach is slightly different from creating right content. Content is king that’s true but people are bored of seeing a boring pictures of product. They want to see fresh content and if it is a user generated content it is like cherry on the pie. This approach is not limited to specific time frame or single user. It is you asking your user to share pictures or videos of them with the product or sharing of their experience with the product. Your followers are much likely to interact with your brand on social media if you not only respond to their tags but, also share their brand inspired content with your other followers.

This kind of user generated content is more followed or preferred due to its authenticity. These content creators have no monetary incentive to share their experience in brand related content. They are simply sharing their experience and helping others to make a decision. You can also ask them to add a relevant hashtag/ hashtags which is only associated with your brand.

Encourage your followers to post their content by providing an event or asking them to answer how they incorporate your brand in their daily lives. Ask them to tag your brand or use the specific hashtags. You can later post their success stories on your timeline or website or you can give them a cash prize or vouchers for the few best one.

For example: Airbnb is a trusted community for people to list and discover their unique accommodations around the world. In 2017, they used Instagram to encourage their followers to find out more about their services. They sell an experience, they used user generated photos and caption to paint a story behind each photo. They asked the users to use popular hashtag #WeAccept. This campaign received a mass engagement and the campaign was a hit.

If you are looking for ways to differentiate yourself on Instagram, consider tapping into topics in a creative way that matters to your following. Sometimes it is not about selling a product, being true to the brand and sharing things you are good at can also have a great impact. Such as National geographic has highest followers as told earlier, it is clear that their social media marketing strategy is right. They post a beautiful picture with a detailed caption explaining what this picture is all about and what its purpose. Because of this strategy they got two times more engagement than any other brand.

You have to be very careful with what you follow for building your strategy. This article will definitely help you in increasing your follower base and building a brand. To sum up, don’t forget to be simple, creative, true and engaging. Follow the instructions to build a strong brand.

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