You Have $100 to Spend on Social Media Marketing. Here’s One Way to Spend It.

How big is your social media budget?

I’ve heard of companies that spend millions on marketing and others who spend zero (we skew toward the zero side at Buffer).

Regardless of how much you spend, you aim to spend it well. That’s why a hypothetical situation like — what would you do with $100 to spend on social media marketing? — can be an extremely valuable exercise.

I have some ideas on what I’d do with the $100, ways to wring the most value out of every penny. I’d love to hear any thoughts you have also.

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The average social media budget

Before we get into some answers and ideas, I thought it’d be interesting to see just how much social media takes up in an average marketing budget.

The answer:

The industry average settles between $200 to $350 per day.

This average comes from an analysis by The Content Factory, looking at the cost to outsource social media marketing services. They found that $4,000-$7,000 per month was the industry average, which works out to the above per-day costs.

As a percentage of the total marketing budget, The CMO Survey found that social media spending is at 11.7% in 2016 — a three-time increase since 2009.

How does this compare to yours? Is your budget higher or lower?

At Buffer, our marketing budget consists mainly of the tools we use. We have also recently started exploring Facebook ads to increase our brand reach and social engagement.

Imagine: You have $100 to spend on social media

Here’re the three possible ways to spend your $100:

Plan A: The all-in-one social media budget

Plan B: Invest in education

Plan C: Advertising-focused

Let’s dive in!

Plan A: The all-in-one social media budget

One of the first qualifications of spending $100 on social media is that the way you spend is likely to be quite unique: Everyone has their own specific niche and audience to serve, and most social media profiles are at varying degrees of completeness.

With this in mind, I’ve aimed to share some thoughts here that might fit the majority of profiles. Feel free to adjust as needed for your particular situation.

Graphics/photos/videos – $40

With visual design carrying such a large emphasis on social media, it feels great to put your best foot forward on the visuals front.

This can mean:

• Cover photos for each of your social profiles
• A professional profile picture, either a headshot (if you’re a person) or a logo (if you’re a company)
• Icons and stock photos to use in the images you create for your social media content
• Videos for your social media content

We’ve written some fun tutorials on what to do with certain resources — how to turn photos and graphics into ideal social media images. It’s possible that you’ll be able to create these images for free with the great, free tools out there. Two of our favorites are Unsplash for free high-resolution photos and Canva for quick graphic design.

If you choose to spend in this area, here’s one direction that your money could go.

• Animoto for simple video creation ($8/month) – Quickly create short social videos with pre-built storyboards.
• Fiverr for quick, small designs ($15) – Projects on Fiverr run $5 apiece, if you need a little extra hand with a certain design. They have a complete section for help with images and logos.
• Add some funds to Creative Market or IconFinder or The Noun Project ($17) – Each of these sites is a digital marketplace for designers to sell the cool things they make such as icons, website themes, templates, photos, graphics, and tons more.

Advertising – $40

If you’re just starting out and looking to grow your influence on social media, advertising can help build an initial audience. Even for established brands, it can be a great option.

Social media advertising is a huge topic with lots to consider. To help you get started, we have written guides on Facebook and Instagram advertising.

The takeaway: Test and see what works! Spend $5 per day on Facebook or Instagram ads for a little more exposure.

• Facebook or Instagram ads ($40) – Run an ad for several days to see if it’s a channel worth investing more in.

A study by Nanigans, a Facebook marketing partner, found that while Instagram ads cost less for impressions and clicks, Facebook ads have higher click-through rate.

Social media management – $10

Our top time-saving tip for social media managers is to manage your social media with a tool like Buffer. You can manage one social account per platform — Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Google+ — for free forever.

If you want to manage more accounts, the Awesome Plan is just $10/month. With Awesome, you can manage your brand’s accounts plus keep your personal queues full, too.

• Buffer for social media management ($10) – Schedule your posts ahead of time, follow up with full analytics afterward. Non-profits get a discount, too.

Analytics – $10

Your social media management tool likely has a good deal of analytics already built in. There are also many free social media analytics tools out there. To stay super lean, you could stick with these free options and move more of your money into design or advertising.

If you’re up for spending a little to learn what’s working on social, here’re some great options:

• Iconosquare for Instagram analytics and management ($9/month) – Iconosquare provides some advanced Instagram analytics and management features, allowing you to understand and improve your Instagram marketing.
• Chartbeat real-time analytics for your site ($10/month) – Useful for seeing in real-time which visitors on your site have come from social media. Recommended for websites big enough to have multiple people visiting at once.

Audience research – Free

One of the key things we’ve learned about social media is that it’s hugely helpful to listen to the people you’re talking with online. What are their needs? Their problems? Their favorite things? A lot of this falls under the umbrella of audience research.

Many elements of audience research can be had for free. If you find one that works well for you, that could be the one worth spending a bit of your $100.

• Followerwonk for Twitter research (free) – Managed by Moz, this tool lets you dig into your Twitter audience: Who are your followers? Where are they located? When do they tweet? The basic version is free, or you can upgrade by snagging a Moz Pro subscription ($99/month).
• Facebook Audience Insights (free) – The robust audience creation tool from Facebook lets you create any sort of target demographic—by region, by age and gender, by interest, by Page Likes, and more—and shows you the breakdown of the audience slice you’ve chosen.
• Instagram Insights (free) – The analytics in the Instagram app provides a wealth of information about your followers such as their demographics and the times and days when they are most active.
• Typeform for surveys (free) – Send out simple surveys with TypeForm to get to know your audience better. It works great to post these survey links to social.

Sharing buttons – Free

For your website or blog, you can boost your social media marketing by making it easy for others to share your content. If you’re after something a bit more customizable and premium, you might like one of the following tools.

• Flare (free)
• SumoMe (free)

Total spend: $100

Plan B: Invest in education

The inspiration for the $100 question came from a post on Inbound.org, asking what you’d do with $1,000 to start an online marketing strategy. (Tons of great answers there, too, if you’re curious!)

One of the takeaways I learned there is that it can sometimes be best to invest your money on educating yourself.

Here’re some options for how to spend $100 on social media education.

Great books – $80

We’re incredibly grateful for the chance to learn from so many good books. I read a cool quote from author Ryan Holiday:

I promised myself a long time ago that if I saw a book that interested me I’d never let time or money or anything else prevent me from having it.

It’s great advice, and we’ve taken it a bit to heart here with these book recommendations.

• Tribes by Seth Godin ($12)
• Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini ($10)
• Contagious: Why Things Catch On by Jonah Berger ($12)
• How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie ($12) – A Buffer favorite!
• Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook by Gary Vaynerchuk ($16)
• Inbound Marketing by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah ($10)

Helpful ebook and blogs – Free

• 25 Actionable Social Media Strategies You Can Implement Today (free) – ebook
• The 50 most-loved blogs of Buffer readers (free)
• 10 marketing blogs for intermediate and advanced marketers (free)

Great communities – Free

Being able to tap into the shared knowledge of a big group of experts or like-minded peers is a huge advantage and privilege. In terms of social media marketing, these few communities have some of the best advice and most knowledgeable participants:

• Inbound.org (free)
• Growth Hackers (free)
• Quibb (free) – A members-only network that shares useful link and news

Miscellaneous resources – Free

• Social Media Academy by Buffer (free)
• Primer by Google (free)
• The Science of Social Media and 15 other social media podcasts (free)
• 37 Free Marketing and Social Media Classes to Elevate Your Skills Today (free)
• Growth.Supply’s list of free social media resources (free)

Total spend: $80

Plan C: Advertising-focused

Let’s say you have a good grip on your social media marketing workflows. You’re in a groove with your scheduling, content, follow-up, and reporting. Maybe you’d just like to grow with a little paid promotion.

Here are some options for spending the $100 toward advertising particularly.

Facebook ads – $40

With Facebook, you have many different ways of approaching an ad campaign, and all these ways can typically fall within these four  categories of benefits:

• Reach: Expand your reach to new potential customers who can interact with your content.
• Interaction: Having your ad right on the News Feed allows users to interact with it like they do any other piece of social content.
• Followers: Brands also report a notable increase in followers through social advertising since brand visibility increases significantly.
• Traffic and leads: You can use ads to drive traffic to your landing pages or blog or to generate leads directly.

(The same goes for Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn ads, too. And since the creation of Instagram ads and Facebook ads are very similar — through the Facebook Ads Manager, you can spend this amount on Instagram ads instead if you think your audience are on Instagram more than they are on Facebook.)

For small budgets, you’re likely to get the most bang for your buck with boosting reach.

Twitter ads – $40

Like Facebook, Twitter gives you a number of ways to get your content in front of more people. Here’s a list of possible paid routes with Twitter:

• Drive website clicks or conversions
• Get more followers
• Maximize brand awareness
• Increase tweet engagements
• Promote your video
• Drive app installs or re-engagements

Many of these advertising options have to do with Twitter cards, which are a media-rich version of a standard tweet.

LinkedIn – $20

LinkedIn gives you the options of

• sponsoring existing content (similar to boosting a post)
• creating a text ad (which will appear on the top or the right side of many LinkedIn pages)
• sending an InMail directly to your target audience

Total spend: $100

Big-picture ideas on how to spend money

1. Spend your money on what you can’t do well

If you lack a certain expertise in an area, this could be a great signal that it’d be worth it to pay someone else to take over.

2. Spend your money on what takes you the most time

Time is money, as they say. Your time is super valuable, especially if you’re juggling all the many tasks of a social media manager by yourself.

Look at what takes you the most time to do. Can you spend a bit of money to make these processes a bit easier?

3. Spend money in such a way that you can make more money to spend

Especially when you’re first starting out, it’s likely that money might be a bit lean. The idea here is that you’d spend your budget on only those activities that could lead directly to you making more money. If you have $100 to spend, it’d be great to have a way to get $100 to spend again the following month.

Your plan

Over to you: How might you spend $100 on social media marketing? 

I’d love to hear your ideas, or maybe even how you’ve spent it in real life, too! Any insights you have would be so great to hear.

source http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bufferapp/~3/WH0buspUiZg/social-media-marketing-budget

Understanding the Instagram Algorithm: 7 Key Factors and Why the Algorithm is Great for Marketers

The Instagram algorithm, just like the Facebook News Feed algorithm, is so mysterious yet ingenious and brilliant in showing the best content to the most people.

If you are creating great content, more followers — and non-followers — are going to see it.

But how does the Instagram algorithm work?

In this post, we’ll break it all down for you. We’ll go through the factors that could influence the ranking of your content on your followers’ feed and explain why the Instagram algorithm is actually great for marketers.

Let’s go

How does the Instagram algorithm work?

The short answer is… it’s complicated.

While we might not know exactly how the Instagram algorithm works, I’d love to help you decipher the mysterious Instagram algorithm (as much as I can). I dug into several sources and distilled my findings into the following seven key factors.

Here’s a quick overview of the seven key factors we’ll go through below:

1. Engagement: How popular the post is
2. Relevancy: The genres of content you are interested in and have interacted with
3. Relationships: The accounts you regularly interact with
4. Timeliness: How recent the posts are
5. Profile Searches: The accounts you check out often
6. Direct Shares: Whose posts you are sharing
7. Time Spent: The duration spent viewing a post

Let’s dive in!

1. Engagement: How popular the post is

According to Michael Stelzner, CEO and Founder of Social Media Examiner, when a person or brand publishes a post, social media algorithms would typically show the post to a sample audience and see how the audience react to it. If the audience reacts positively to the post right away, the algorithm would show the post to more people.

This implies that a post with more engagement is likely going to rank higher on your Instagram feed. The types of engagement that the Instagram algorithm considers can include likes, comments, video views, shares (via direct message), saves, story views, and live video views.

If someone you follow has engaged with a post, too, Instagram might also assume that you could be interested in that post and included it within your feed.

Here’s the great news: An Instagram spokesperson told Business Insider that ranking of Instagram posts will not be a popularity contest. Posts with less engagement but which are more relevant to you can still appear right at the top of your feed.

2. Relevancy: The genres of content you are interested in and have interacted with

When the algorithmic timeline was annouced, Instagram mentioned that it would show you content that you’ll likely be interested in first:

The order of photos and videos in your feed will be based on the likelihood you’ll be interested in the content, your relationship with the person posting and the timeliness of the post.

This implies that content that is relevant to your interests will likely rank higher on your feed. But how does Instagram know your interests? One way could be to look at the genres of content (e.g. travel, food, fashion, sports, etc.) you have interacted with in the past.

With the level of photo recognition technologies available now, I believe it’s possible for the algorithm to categorize posts into simple genres such as travel, food, fashion, and more — and possibly even more sophisticated genres. The algorithm could also look at the hashtags used.

If there’s a certain genre of content that you engage with more frequently (e.g. food), Instagram might rank content of that genre (e.g. food, restaurants, etc.) higher on your feed.

3. Relationships: The accounts you regularly interact with

In its second announcement about the new feed, Instagram stated the following:

And no matter how many accounts you follow, you should see your best friend’s latest posts.

Just like Facebook, Instagram doesn’t want you to miss important posts from your friends and family, such as a post about your friend’s engagement. This implies that content from your “best friends” likely ranks higher on your feed.

Since Instagram is owned by Facebook, Instagram could use data from Facebook to determine your relationships — family, friends, schoolmates, colleagues, etc.

I also believe that the Instagram algorithm studies your past interactions to determine your “best friends”. In a talk about designing and implementing the Instagram algorithm, Thomas Dimson, a software engineer at Instagram, shared how they could have determined the people you care about:

• People whose content you like (possibly including stories and live videos)
• People you direct message
• People you search for
• People you know in real life

While these might not be the exact criteria used in the Instagram algorithm, they give us a hint that Instagram probably considers the accounts you frequently interact with as “people you care about”. And it would rank their content higher on your feed.

4. Timeliness: How recent the posts are

The next key ingredient in the Instagram algorithm, as suggested by Instagram, is timeliness.

The order of photos and videos in your feed will be based on the likelihood you’ll be interested in the content, your relationship with the person posting and the timeliness of the post.

Instagram wants to show you posts that are recent and, consequently, more relevant.

Something from last week might not interest you as much as something from an hour ago, so Instagram will likely show you more recent posts rather than posts from a few days or weeks ago — even if the older post had received a lot of engagement.

This implies that recent posts likely rank higher in your feed and that the timing of your post is still relevant.

According to Thomas’s talk and my personal experience (admittedly, a sample size of only one), it seems that the Instagram algorithm re-orders only the new posts between your current visit and your last visit.

For example, I visited Instagram at 11 PM last night and again at 9 AM this morning, and there were 50 posts created in between. The algorithm would sort only those 50 posts created and not include posts from before 11 PM last night. Based on my personal experience, if I were to scroll past all those 50 posts, I’d see the same posts in the same order as when I last visited (11 PM last night).

(If your personal experience is different from this, it’d be great to hear from you!)

If this is true, it could mean that the best time to post is when your followers are most active as there would be less competition (e.g. between 9 to 10 AM in the image below).

(Image from Thomas’s slide deck)

5. Profile Searches: The accounts you check out often

An Instagram spokesperson said to Business Insider that profile searches are a signal Instagram looks at when ranking posts in your feed. When you search (regularly) for certain profiles, it likely indicates that you are interested in the account’s posts and might not have seen them on your feed.

Instagram might then rank their posts higher on your feed so that you don’t have to search for their profiles to see their posts, improving your Instagram experience.

Thomas from Instagram also mentioned in his talk that when they experimented with the new algorithm, the number of searches went down. They took it as a good sign as it meant that people are seeing the posts they are interested in without having to search for their favorite profiles.

6. Direct Shares: Whose posts you are sharing

Instagram has made it really easy for users to share a post they see on their feed with their friends. According to the Business Insider article, direct shares through Instagram is also another signal Instagram looks at to understand your interests.

There are two parts to this. One, sharing a post shows that you are probably interested in the posts by that account. The Instagram algorithm would then consider this when ranking posts on your feed.

Two, it sounds like Instagram would also consider the people you have shared the post with. Going back to factor two, relationships, the act of sharing a post with another person informs Instagram that you care about the person so Instagram might rank her posts higher on your feed.

7. Time Spent: The duration spent viewing a post

It’s possible that the Instagram feed algorithm shares some similarities with the Facebook News Feed algorithm since the aim of both algorithms is to show you the posts that you care about the most.

Facebook discovered that if “people spend significantly more time on a particular story in News Feed than the majority of other stories they look at, this is a good sign that content was relevant to them”, even if they didn’t like or comment on it. More specifically, Facebook said the following:

Based on the fact that you didn’t scroll straight past this post and it was on the screen for more time than other posts that were in your News Feed, we infer that it was something you found interesting and we may start to surface more posts like that higher up in your News Feed in the future.

If this factor is included in the Instagram algorithm, when you spend more time on an Instagram post than other posts, Instagram will surface posts similar to that Instagram post higher up on your feed.

While there isn’t confirmation about this factor, it wouldn’t be surprising if Instagram included this factor in its algorithm.

8. Others

There are probably a whole bunch of other signals that the Instagram algorithm considers, and the algorithm changes constantly to give its users the best experience possible. (For context, Facebook’s algorithm takes into account hundreds of factors.)

Stef Lewandowski of Makelight put together a list of other signals that the algorithm might consider:

• How regularly you open the app
• How regularly you post
• How many likes an image has in total
• What an image’s recent like-rate is
• How old the image is
• Whether the post is a video
• Whether an image is from a “business” account versus a personal one
• How active the image poster has been today – how many comments and likes have they made?
• How many of an image poster’s images you’ve commented on or liked recently
• How many hashtags the image has

Why is the new algorithm great for marketers?

As the number of users on Instagram increases, the number of posts will likely increase, too.

When users follow more people, the number of posts in their feed will increase. The natural result of this is that the impressions (or organic reach) of each post will fall — unless every user spends more time on Instagram looking at all the additional posts.

The reality is that people usually don’t see all the new posts when they visit Instagram. A study by Instagram themselves found that, on average, users miss 70 percent of the posts on their feeds when the posts were arranged in a reverse-chronological order.

But as long as you are creating engaging, relevant, and timely content, the algorithm is actually an advantage to you. It will help to surface your great content to more of your followers than when posts were arranged reverse-chronologically.

(Graphic inspired by Thomas’s slide)

Here’s another way to look at it: Without this algorithm, one quick way to get your Instagram followers’ attention would be to post many times a day. If most brands follow this strategy, the number of Instagram posts would increase dramatically, and the organic reach of each post would fall proportionally — even if it’s a quality post.

With this algorithm, brands are encouraged to post only their best content, and the quality of their content will determine their reach. Brands with the best content overall will stand out more easily now than without the algorithm.

Here’s a bonus: The Explore tab also uses an algorithm to surface content based on the user’s interests and past behaviors. It is another brilliant way for your great content to reach more people!

10 ways to increase your Instagram organic reach

While the Instagram algorithm might be rather mysterious and complicated, it is a brilliant way to help brands with great content reach more of their followers than before.

Once you have learned about the Instagram algorithm, we thought you might be interested in getting some actionable tips to increase your organic reach through the algorithm. If you want the tips, simply hit the button below:

Get the tips now

It’d also be great to learn from your experience as I’m sure I’m missing many other key factors of the Instagram algorithm. What other factors do you think the Instagram algorithm considers when ranking posts?

—

Image credit: Unsplash

source http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bufferapp/~3/onDequI1U7g/instagram-algorithm

Optimal Timing, Videos, and More: 10 Easy Ways to Boost Your Instagram Reach

Since Instagram started sorting posts on users’ feed with an algorithm, many marketers have noticed a decline in their organic reach and engagement.

But that doesn’t have to be the case for you. In fact, it could be possible for you to reach more of your followers now than without the new Instagram algorithm.

In this post, we’ll share 10 straightforward ways you can use to increase your organic reach on Instagram today.

Understanding the Instagram Algorithm

Here’s a quick side-note: Understanding how the Instagram algorithm works can be helpful in figuring out how to increase your organic reach in the algorithmic-feed world.

We’ve dug into the Instagram algorithm and broken down the seven key factors of the Instagram algorithm. If you’d like to learn about the algorithm and how it ranks content on users’ feed, feel free to hit the button below to read the post first.

Learn about the Instagram algorithm

10 Ways to Boost Your Instagram Reach Today

So how can you increase your organic reach on Instagram? Here are the 10 powerful ways you can do that:

1. Find your optimal posting times
2. Experiment with videos
3. Host contests or ask questions to encourage engagement
4. Curate user-generated content
5. Tell Instagram Stories
6. Go live on Instagram
7. Use Instagram ads
8. Post less
9. Create specifically for Instagram
10. Be a great Instagram user

Let’s dive in!

1. Find your optimal posting times

Even though Instagram uses an algorithmic timeline now, optimal posting times are still relevant as timing is a factor in the algorithm.

Posting at the right times can help generate an initial round of engagement on your posts which can, in turn, prompt the Instagram algorithm to push your posts higher on your followers’ feed.

Instagram Expert, Sue B. Zimmerman, suggests posting when the majority of your audience is online:

It may take time to get a long-term understanding of your followers’ activity, but it’s important to make sure you’re posting when the majority of your audience is online.

If you are using an Instagram Business Profile, you can check your Instagram Insights to find out when your followers are most active by the day of the week and the time of the day.

To access your Instagram Insights (link to Instagram analytics post), tap on the profile tab in the Instagram app and then the bar chart icon () on the upper-right corner. There will be a section for your followers’ activity information, and you can tap on “See More” to see more detailed insights. Here’s an example of what you’ll see:

2. Experiment with videos

Several studies have found that photos tend to get more overall engagement (i.e. likes and comments) than videos on Instagram. On first look, it might seem that photos are better than videos for engagement — and it could well be!

On closer examination, we might draw a different conclusion. News Whip studied the Instagram accounts of 31 news publishers and made an interesting discovery. While photos, on average, get more likes (and overall engagement) than videos, videos generate more comments than photos. In fact, videos, on average, received more than twice the amount of comments than photos!

It is not certain if the Instagram algorithm values likes and comments equally or one more than another. But since commenting requires more effort from a user than liking, it’s possible that the algorithm values comments more than likes and would rank posts with more comments higher than posts with more likes.

Last year, Instagram found that the video watch time on Instagram increased by more than 40 percent over a six-month period. At this growth rate, it could be great to experiment with videos to see if it increases your engagement and organic reach on Instagram.

3. Host contests or ask questions to encourage engagement

Asking questions or calling for an action is one of the fun ways to encourage your followers to interact with your Instagram posts. We found that hosting a giveaway contest is an effective way to engage our followers.

Some of the call-to-actions we have tried are:

• Enter to win by sharing your favorite emoji party combo in the comments below
• To enter, simply tag a friend below who you would “Vote” for as your favorite marketer and you’ll both be entered to win!
• To enter tag a friend below who you know is rocking it on social media!
• What’s on your reading list this week? Drop your book suggestions below for a chance to win a free book of your choice from the Buffer team! ❤

While giveaway contests usually generate more comments than usual posts, we try to give it a few months in between each contest to keep things fun and exciting.

Something that we do more often is asking a question in our Instagram posts. Several of our most-commented posts (excluding contest posts) are posts with a question such as this, this, and this.

4. Curate user-generated content

Brian Peters, our digital marketing strategist, grew our Instagram account following by about 500% (4,250 to 21,000) in under six months. His secret? User-generated content.

Curating user-generated content can encourage those users to engage with and share those content. Since the Instagram algorithm considers users’ relationships when ranking content on their feed, building relationships with your users through Instagram might also help your content rank higher on their feeds.

Apart from organic reach, Crowdtap found that user-generated content is 35 percent more memorable and 50 percent more trusted than traditional media and other non-user-generated content. This makes user-generated content a valuable strategy to try.

5. Tell Instagram Stories

In our State of Social Media 2016 report, we found that while 63 percent of marketers surveyed use Instagram, only 16 percent have created Instagram Stories. There’s a great opportunity to stand out before it gets too crowded!

Instagram Stories take a prominent position on the Instagram app — above the feed. This allows you to stay on top of your followers’ feed and grab more of their attention. If your followers view your Stories regularly, it could possibly even help your Instagram posts rank higher on their feeds.

It’s worth noting that the Stories are also ranked by an algorithm; possibly one very similar to the feed algorithm. Spend the time to craft great Stories to help them rank better.

6. Go live on Instagram

A similar “trick” is to go live on Instagram. When you use live video, you will appear right at the front of the Stories feed, assuming no one else is live at the same time. The “LIVE” logo also makes your profile photo more prominent in the Instagram app.

Social Media Examiner found that the more they went live on Facebook, the more their non-live content received exposure. Michael Stelzner said that one reason might be their brand is in front of their fans more often so the fans might go to their Page to see their content more — even if the fans don’t watch the live video.

This effect could play out on Instagram, too. Seeing your logo at the top of their feed might encourage your followers to check out your Instagram profile.

From our State of Social Media 2016 report, we concluded that live video has yet to hit mass adoption as only 27 percent of marketers surveyed had created live video content. While the percentage might be higher today, I believe live videos aren’t mainstream yet. So it’s another perfect way to stand out and deliver great content!

7. Use Instagram ads

This might sound a little counter-intuitive but Instagram ads can be an effective way to grow your organic reach.

If you have an Instagram Business Profile, you can promote your existing posts from within the Instagram app. (Here’s how!) By boosting an existing post and selecting the appropriate target audience, you can drive more engagement to the post and help it rank better on your followers’ feed. The paid reach can eventually help to drive organic reach!

So which post should you promote?

Here’s a quick way to pick a good post to promote:

1. Go to your Instagram Insights on the mobile app (tap on the profile tab and then the bar chart icon).
2. Tap “See More” under the “Top Posts” section.
3. Tap on “Impressions” at the top (a pop-up should apply to let you adjust your stats filters).
4. For the first filter, you can choose “All”, “Photos”, or “Videos” according to your preference.
5. For the second filter, select “Engagement”.
6. For the third filter, select “7 days”.
7. You will see your top posts by engagement for the last seven days. From there, you can pick a post to promote.

As these posts have received the most engagement from your followers, they would likely also resonate with the people you promote to (assuming you have targeted people like your followers).

8. Post less

When explaining social media algorithms, Michael Stelzner encouraged marketers to re-think your posting strategy.

Rethink is the keyword here. Rethink your posting strategy on social media – Less is actually more!

Sue B. Zimmerman also gave a similar advice for marketers who want to overcome the Instagram algorithm.

If you truly want to connect with your audience, it’s better to share one fabulous photo instead of 20 mediocre images. So next time, before you hit post, take a moment and consider how this content contributes to your brand, and does it effectively encourage engagement from your followers.

I believe this is about the allocation of your resources and time. Instead of publishing 20 posts a week, use the same resources and time for just one or two posts and make them great.

Quality content that is relevant to your followers has a higher chance of eliciting a positive response from your followers. In turn, this can help your posts rank higher on your followers’ feed.

9. Create specifically for Instagram

One way to create quality content is to create content specifically for Instagram. Instagram, being a very visual platform, has a greater focus on the photo or video itself than the text. So a post that would do well on Instagram is probably different from one that would do well on Twitter or Facebook.

For smaller social media teams or solo social media manager, it can be challenging to always create unique content for each platform. Crossposting and repurposing content from other platforms can be great, too. If you are doing that, it’d be best to craft specific caption for each social media platform as your followers likely follow you for a different reason for each of the platforms.

We are in the process of rolling out our new Multiple Composer which will allow you to write customized captions for each social network. We’re hoping that this feature would encourage you to be (even) more creative with your social media posts and would help you drive more engagement.

10. Be a great Instagram user

This last point might be a little vague but it nicely wraps up many of the points above.

Social media algorithms are built to encourage genuine, positive behaviors on the platforms such as sharing, showing appreciation, quick replies, and more. Often, they would also try to discourage abuse or hacks.

My gut feeling here is that being a great Instagram user will help you grow your organic reach over time. That includes:

• Posting quality content that is relevant to your followers (be it informative, inspiring, or entertaining)
• Answering questions on your posts quickly
• Thanking people for commenting on your posts
• Exploring other people’s profiles, engaging with their posts, and building a relationship with them

What’s your Instagram strategy?

The main objective of Instagram (and most social media platforms) is to make users happy and let them enjoy the experience. As brands on Instagram (and social media), I think we can do a lot to create great experiences for our followers — which will, in turn, benefit ourselves.

I’d love to learn from you, too! What’s your strategy on Instagram? Is anything in particular that is working well for you on Instagram? Thanks.

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Image credit: Unsplash

source http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bufferapp/~3/cQ3g1k6DO3g/increase-instagram-reach

Social Media for Small Businesses: Less Is More – Marie Forleo [SSM041]

Managing social media for a small business is a unique and sometimes overwhelming challenge for so many entrepreneurs and marketers.

On one hand, you have a business to run. On the other, you want that business to grow and flourish.

And although you know that social media has the power to be an important part of your overall marketing strategy, there’s tons of completely valid reasons why it never quite happens. Time, resources, energy, knowledge… the list goes on!

Marie Forleo has been helping small businesses with their online marketing strategies with incredilbe success for more than 15 years. We had the pleasure of chatting with her in episode #41 of The Science of Social Media.

Marie shares specific ways that you can use social media to build an audience, connect with your customers, and eventually, grow your business. Whether you’re just starting out on social media or you’ve been using social media for years, you’ll learn the best-practices that thousands of businesses have used to succeed online.

A huge thank you to Marie for packing this episode full of inspiration and actionable takeaways for entrepreneurs and marketers looking for solid social media strategies to grow their small business.

How to listen: iTunes | Google Play | SoundCloud | Stitcher | RSS

This episode is available on:

• iTunes
• Google Play
• Stitcher
• Sound Cloud

In this episode, here’s what you’ll learn:

Marie Forleo shares her expert insights into the strategies and tactics that she uses to help business achieve real growth online. You’ll also learn tons of other great things like:

• How Marie got started way before social media was a “thing”
• How to not let social media become overwhelming for your business
• Social media campaigns vs. ongoing strategies and how to approach each
• The importance of providing value, building trust, and being patience
• Quality over quantity and how small businesses can achieve that balance

Actionable Advice for Small Businesses to Looking to Rock Your Social Media Strategy

In Marie’s words…

1. Less is more. Quality over quantity.

Allow yourself the freedom to focus on one or two platforms and do it from a place of joyful creation – have fun with social media!

2. Is this a brand social media strategy or campaign

What you can do is think about if your real goal is more brand social or a single campaign. For example, how many times are you going to post to social media each week? Is this really good for your small business? Will it help you reach your goals? Or, do you need to create a social media campaign for a specific end purpose?

3. Continuously set boundaries and bumpers

Try and set boundaries and bumpers for yourself when it comes to how often you engage on social media. When it comes to social on your phone, if you don’t want to be addicted (and you’d like to help yourself be productive) try not to put social media icons on your homescreen. Make yourself swipe at least 3-5 screens to get to your apps, which will help you stop the addictive habit.

A Great Moment

“My core philosophy, when it comes to business, is: always create value, build up that trust over time, and have patience.”

– Marie Forleo

Awesome People and Stuff Mentioned in the Show

• MarieTV
• B-School: Make Money, Change the World

Favorite Quotes

• I used to walk around with a yellow Legal Pad and have people sign up for my email list manually… because that’s what you did when you didn’t have another option!
• In growing my business it was non-stop hustle. It was about always looking for ways to share knowledge and support people.
• Social media is an important part of the mix for 90-95% of modern business owners. And what I want to do is to help people not allow social media to overwhelm them.
• As long as you’re creative – meaning the posts that you share, the copy that you write, the images that you create – is in the sense of generosity and true service, then you as a small business can pull it off.
• I suggest that marketers and small businesses choose one, maybe two, social media platforms to really dominate.
• When you’re thinking about creating content for social media, really think about your strengths that you can leverage.
• Social media is such a gift and there’s all of these beautiful things that come along with it, but we cannot be bling to the downside. We cannot be ignorant to the “comparison cycles”.
• I’m a big fan of less is more. I would rather have a small business crush it with their email marketing and one social media channel rather than trying to be super-human and do it all (and constantly feel like you’re failing.)

How to Say Hello to Marie (and us)

Marie is always sharing incredible marketing and social media tips for small businesses across all of her platforms. If you’d like to follow along and learn from the best, you can find Marie on Twitter here, YouTube here, or on her own website at marieforleo.com.

Thanks for listening! We’d love to connect with you at @buffer on Twitter or with the hashtag #bufferpodcast.

Enjoy the show? It’d mean the world to us if you’d be up for giving us a rating and review on iTunes!

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About the Show

The Science of Social Media is a podcast for marketers and social media managers looking for inspiration, ideas, and results for their social media strategies. Each week, we interview one of the very best in social media marketing from brands in every industry. You will learn the latest tactics on social media, the best tools to use, the smartest workflows, and the best goal-setting advice. It is our hope that each episode you’ll find one or two gems to use with your social media marketing!

The Science of Social Media is proudly made by the Buffer team. Feel free to get in touch with us for any thoughts, ideas, or feedback.

source http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bufferapp/~3/p5-kuHQlwZ4/marie-forleo-show-notes