3 Tips to Effectively Use Instagram in Brand Marketing
More and more major players in various retail industries have begun using this free picture-sharing platform to broaden their consumer base. Just like other major social venues, Instagram can be a seriously helpful tool for branding your business and ultimately increasing sales. However, like all newer social avenues out there, business owners often wonder how to use this application in the most effective way possible.
Seeking reputation management is one of the best and most hassle-free ways to ensure a quality online, social presence in general, and something to seriously consider. But for those more keen on the DIY approach, here are a few tips for using this free application to effectively market your brand.
1. Unique Content
It’s important to keep in mind that while people want to see interesting pictures, they should be uniquely tied to your brand or business in some way. Take nH Hoteles for example… This Hotel brands itself well by adding unique pictures of various sunrises from their many locations, in addition to other pictures dealing with various hotel-related items like menu offerings or nearby attractions. Keeping the pictures interesting but simultaneously related to their brand keeps users coming back while making them aware of nH Hoteles offerings at the same time.
2. Consistency
Consumers like to be entertained but not overwhelmed by your presence. By keeping your picture number consistent and relatively low is the best way to ensure a continued following. Something like two or three quality photos a day is probably enough to keep followers interested without overloading their picture wall and turning them off to your brand.
3. Consumer Involvement
Brands like Levi’s are using Instagram in a uniquely customer-oriented way. In their latest campaign to find the next top Levi’s models, they have simply asked that users tag photos of themselves wearing Levi’s products with the #iamlevis hashtag. This is not only a brilliant marketing strategy, but it’s also a great way for Levi’s to leverage the free medium to find untapped potential in new models for their clothing. Genius. Getting the customer involved is always a plus in this day and age.
No matter what your brand happens to be, Instagram offers a distinctly unique and incredibly easy way to market that brand. As the retailers continue jumping on the bandwagon, it’s becoming more and more apparent that the effects are indeed positive; the platform is proving effective. Best of all, there is virtually no cost associated with this method, and therefore, virtually no reason not to give it a try.
Read MoreWhy Online Rep Management is a Must for Any Affiliate Marketer
As an affiliate marketer, the internet is essentially your life. You’re online all the time and your existence is based off how well you are able to distribute yourself across the web. The name of the game is to get to the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs) and stay there. However, in addition to selling specific products, you are essentially selling yourself, and because of this, you must be in control of your online reputation at all times.
Simply purchasing the best SEO software used could grant you a solid spot on the search engines. You could simply plug yourself in, and gain instant popularity. You really didn’t have to worry about others discovering precarious information about yourself, or about unwanted information taking precedence over your well-created websites.
However, the rise of social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn have made maintaining top positions and an online image much more difficult. Just within the last year, we have watched companies and politicians destroy themselves with one wrong Tweet or wall post.
Old school SEO simply cannot protect you anymore. You have to remain proactive about managing your online reputation by incorporating the use of SEO, social networking sites, and your blog. If you don’t, you risk having your reputation hurt or ultimately destroyed by either your own negligence or a competitor.
If you choose to use social networking sites to help manage your affiliate marketing image, and you should, here are a few tips to making sure that you are using your accounts to effectively manage your online reputation:
- Acquire multiple social networking accounts
- Actively post to each site daily
- Quickly and politely respond to any negative comments
- Keep your Followers actively engaged through varied media
- Maintain a consistent message across all sites
Finding success with affiliate marketing is no easy task. You have to expend time and energy to produce substantial income, and then you have to maintain a positive online image to stay ahead, not to mention additional time spent traveling for speaker events and conferences.
Affiliate marketing may not be super easy, but maintaining a positive online image can definitely make it easier for you. Not only will you be able to gain a stronger following, but you will also be more likely to gain the attention of bigger clients. So don’t place all your hope into basic SEO. Take control of your online reputation by incorporating social media and common management practices.
Read MoreComfortable Branding by Name
The name of the marketing game is branding, and using your name as your personal brand is a time honored tradition. Watch the video and I’ll tell you more!
Read MoreReputation Management Made Easy – By Trackur!
I wish I could tell you all that this amazing service is free, but alas like most good things nowadays there’s a price to pay. This is definitely a service that’s worth the coin.
Trackur.com, launched earlier this year by Andy Beal of MarketingPilgrim.com, is an amazing tool that basically scours the web for you to find references to your keyword. I enjoyed my free trial, and am excited to see that the minimum price has gone down to $18/month. It’ll be much easier to sell execs on using this service now that it’s ultra affordable.
This ain’t yo mama’s reputation management!
Google Alerts have pretty much been the standard in the past, but once you try Trackur I promise you’ll cancel half those alerts. I found SO much more on Trackur that the Google Alerts never mentioned. Trackur scours all of the web, so if something happens to get past Google’s spiders (not likely but hey, it’s possible) it’ll show up on Trackur.
So don’t let me sing the praises for it – go sign up for the free trial. It’s a great tool that I’ll definitely be hounding the execs here to use. And I know this sounds like I have something to gain from this post, but I don’t. It’s just such a great service I think it deserves more recognition!
Read MoreCribbed Content for February 22nd
Yes, it’s that time again… time for me to ignore my writing degree and grab content to share from other sources. It’s not plagiarism… it’s flattery & link bait 🙂
- Trackur is live! My dreams of total reputation management are coming true! Now, to fulfill my dream of the company reimbursing me to buy Andy Beal’s new book Radically Transparent.
- Google launched a beta version of AdWords for Video. If I were a bit easier on the eyes I’d be posting AdWord laden videos left & right!
- Affiliate Summit West 08 kicks off on Sunday for set up & the Meet Market. As if I haven’t already mentioned this a million times.
Tonight I forfeit my own bed for accommodations at the Rio in Las Vegas to get my training on Saturday. See you there!
Avoiding Former CoWorkers in San Jose
Sometimes it’s pleasant to see an old coworker… other times, it’s best to avoid them. Which is what I did at Search Engine Strategies last week in San Jose. I’m not necessarily proud of what I did, but I successfully avoided what could have been a rather awkward situation, so it worked out for the best.
I spent the majority of the day in the Social Media track of the conference, learning more about the inner workings of Digg, Technorati, Del.icio.us, and Wikipedia than I ever thought I wanted to know. Of course, one of the first things I did when getting back to the office was apply some of this and set up a Digg profile and a Technorati profile and an account on Del.icio.us. Since PsPrint doesn’t sell it’s content, I don’t really see Wikipedia as being that huge of an opportunity for us. But the others… well I’m shocked I wasn’t on them personally for awhile.
Now, my roots in social media lie in the likes of MySpace, message boards, and chat rooms. I’m not the seasoned internet user you’ll hear speaking at trade shows that’s been online since 1997… but that’s mostly because back in ’97 I was still writing history essays and doing math homework in High School. I’ve been online since about the time I got to college, Fall of 1999. Going away to college and having to make all new friends, I immediately found chat rooms as a place to connect with like minded people. A friend introduced me to Live Journal back in ’03 and I’ve been blogging ever since. When MySpace came around big time in ’05 I jumped on that bandwagon and haven’t looked back.
Has it really been 2 years on MySpace? How time flies. But, I digress. SES was a great show for me to attend. Very informative, and my favorite part was how organized all the panelists were. Everyone had a neat & tidy Power Point presentation that will be available online this week, so I barely had to take any notes. I’ve also decided that the next time I go to one of these shows and attend the educational panels I’m going to be bringing a laptop. Since there was really no need for me to take many notes, it would have been great to be able to surf the websites that the panelists talked about while they were talking about them. I’m all about multi-tasking, so getting some work done while learning is my ideal.
This is becoming an exciting time for me. Learning more and more about the field I’m working in and exploring social media marketing is really exciting me to be moving onward here at PsPrint.
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