'Net Features : instagram

Instagram More Effective than Pinterest?

Allison Howen — Fri, 10 May 2013 13:15:00 GMT

Being acquired by Facebook does a brand good, according to a new study by Simply Measured.

In fact, just a year after being acquired by Facebook, Simply Measured reports that 67 percent of the top brands are now using Instagram – which has seen a 500 percent increase in users since its acquisition, with more than 100 million active monthly users.

According to Simply Measured’s study, which evaluates brands and verticals within the Interbrand 100, Instagram is actually growing faster and proving more valuable to brands than Pinterest. This is because the data reveals that as of May 1, the collective audience of the 76 top companies on Pinterest was less than 500,000, while the 67 top companies on Instagram reach more than 7 million audience members.

It is also important to note that Simply Measured’s quarterly study found that since Instagram's acquisition, engagement rates with images from the social network have dropped on Twitter. This is probably due to Instagram dropping support for embedded images on the micro-blogging social network. Conversely, engagement with Instagram images on Facebook is up by 23 percent quarter over quarter, which is likely the result of moves such as integrating “like” sharing and introducing Instagram Web profiles. For example, the study reports that more than 2 million likes, comments and shares of Instagram photos have occurred on Facebook since its acquisition of the image-based social networking app.

That said, the study also found that top brands are using Instagram more frequently, with 23 percent of the top companies on Instagram posting more than 50 times a month – which is up 20 percent from the previous quarter. Plus, those brands are receiving more than 5,600 engagements per photo, which is up 16 percent from last quarter. The study also rates Nike, MTV and Starbucks as the top brands on Instagram, with Nike becoming the third brand (joining MTV and Starbucks) to reach 1 million followers.

“A year ago, many people were skeptical about Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram and whether it would hinder the network’s growth,” said Adam Schoenfeld, CEO of Simply Measured. “However today it’s very clear that the synergies are not only bringing new users on board, but also creating incredible opportunities for brands to connect with consumers.”

Gnip Adds Reddit, Instagram API’s

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 14:00:00 GMT

Data aggregation platform Gnip announced the addition of public APIs for Instagram, Reddit, bitly, Stack Overflow, Panaramio and Plurk to its Enterprise Data Collector.

Gnip, the firm responsible for marketing the Twitter and Tumblr firehoses, is a popular source of data for developers. Each month it delivers more than 100 billion “social data activities” to its clients making it a powerful platform for those looking for opportunities to enrich their application’s experience for end-users.

Let’s take a closer look at the API’s that have been added to Gnip and what developers now have at their disposal by using its Enterprise Data Collector:

- Instagram: Users will be able to access popular posts, conduct tag searches and geo-related searches

- Reddit: Gnip users will be able to search by keyword and hot topics; ideal for monitoring brand mentions, particularly in a crisis communication context.

- Bitly: Users are able to search keywords, destination page titles and URLs, and some of the content and header tags. See some recent coverage of bitly's API from Website Magazine.

- Stack Overflow: Gnip customers will have access to the entire firehose of Stack Overflow answers and be able to search tags, reputation and comments by keyword.

- Panoramio: Gnip customers will be able to use the photo-sharing website to monitor social activity within a certain geographic area.

- Plurk: Gnip customers will be able to search the microblogging site for keywords within posts to understand trending content and monitor the platform for specific brand mentions.

Curalate for Instagram: Analytics for Visual Social Platforms

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 15:30:00 GMT

Social media analytics are the hot sector right now among the digerati and big brands are jumping on the bandwagon in digital droves.

Zappos’ recent selection of Pinfluencer, for example, to help manage and analyze its promotional efforts on the network is sufficient proof for many that brands are finally starting to figure this whole "visual social media" thing out - at least in part. As many brands are quickly discovering, Pinterest is far from the only horse in the visual/social race. Facebook-owned Instagram is making moves and the savviest social media analytics providers are well aware of its potential to influence prospective and existing customers and users.

Case in point, visual analytics and marketing platform Curalate recently announced the availability of analytics and promotion solutions for Instagram, making it the first (if not only) vendor to bring analytics from Pinterest and Instagram analytics into one consolidated dashboard.

The updated platform enables brands to understand image popularity (and recency), consolidate conversations on both Pinterst and Instagram into one feed, create promotions on the two visual networks (and Facebook), share photos directly from within the platform's dashboard, and analyze performance of their Instagram campaigns as well. One of the more appealing features is the ability for brand users to differentiate between engagement on fan-posted and brand-posted images.

“Images drive emotions with an immediacy that no other medium offers. Brands are rapidly tapping into the power of imagery to connect with consumers and drive real business results,” said Apu Gupta, CEO and co-founder, Curalate. “By adding Instagram to our successful Pinterest solution we’re helping brands see the bigger picture. Curalate enables brands to engage audiences across networks based on what’s most relevant rather than what’s most recent.”

Screenshot of the Hashtag feature within Curalate which is used for tracking social promotions on Pinterest and now Instagram

Profile Optimization for 2nd-Tier Social Networks

Allison Howen — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 19:45:00 GMT

For brands, maintaining a social presence on the Web is hard work. Not only do social media managers need to focus on engaging audience members, but they must also stay current with new features, redesigns and updates from social networks.

While most brands tend to focus on maintaining a profile on the Web’s top social platforms, like Facebook, Twitter and Google+, they should not forget to stay connected with popular second-tier social networks as well, like Instagram, YouTube and Pinterest. In order to do this, brands must first create a profile on these social sites before they can start interacting with their audience.

Earlier this month, Website Magazine published an infographic to help brands optimize their profile design on the Web’s big three social networks. Today, however, we would like to help brands do the same for some of the Web’s most popular second-tier social networks – Instagram, YouTube and Pinterest. Read below to discover some optimization tips for these social networks, in addition to some design examples of brands that do it right.

Instagram

Instagram finally made its platform available on the Web this week, allowing users to browse and interact with photos from their desktop (although it is still not possible to upload images outside of the mobile app). This is certainly the genesis of this mobile application’s migration to the Web, which means that changes are imminent. However, there are a few ways that social media managers can still optimize their profiles for the Web.

While every photo uploaded to Instagram is cropped to fit the social network’s square proportions, users should make sure that their images will look good when enlarged to 410x410 px, as this is the size of the largest (middle) image on Instagram Web profiles. Moreover, brands should make sure that their profile image (110x110 px) is a good representation of their company and that their bio and website information is correct. It is also important to note that the images displayed on the header of the Web profile pages are currently not customizable, and instead are images from the user's photo stream that are featured at random. This means that brand managers might want to consider uploading images that not only compliment one another, but also consider using filters that look good together so that the profile header is as visually appealing as possible (like Taco Bell's seen below).

YouTube

Once a brand has successfully had its account converted into a brand channel on YouTube, it is time to customize the profile design. Branded channels feature a 970-pixel wide and 150-pixel high channel banner, which support an image map so that areas on the banner are clickable. This aspect of the brand channel is very important because brands can add website links or other pertinent digital properties here. Branded channels also feature a channel navigation bar, which displays the channel title, a subscription button, the number of current subscribers, the number of video views and tabs for navigating to different content pages. Furthermore, there is a custom tab promo unit and sidebar on the right side of branded profile pages, where brands can add information about its channel and links to other social networks.

That being said, brands have a lot of customizable options on YouTube, and nearly every brand channel has a different look. However, the most important part about optimizing a brand channel is to connect it with other digital properties, just as BuzzFeed has done in the example below.

Pinterest

This popular image-based social network launched business pages toward the end of 2012. While these pages have a similar look to regular profile pages, they also come with a verified checkmark and allow brands to leverage new buttons and widgets that can be integrated into websites and content to increase engagement and drive traffic back to a business’s website.

The stand-out element on Pinterest business pages is the profile image, which is 160x165 px. Next to this image, brands need to enter a business description (200 characters or less) and a link to their website. After optimizing this part of the profile, the only thing left to do is create boards and start pinning. While the images within Pinterest vary in size, social media managers should know that the big thumbnail of each board is 222x150 px, with the smaller thumbnail images (featured directly below the bigger image) being 55x55 px. That being said, Pinterest is also a fairly new social network, and social managers should keep an eye out for new profile design features in the future. In the meantime, check out Etsy's profile for some "pinspiration."

Social Media for Home-Based Businesses

Administrator — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 13:15:00 GMT

When running a home-based business, the pressure of completing vital daily actions, in addition to time constraints, means social media strategy may not be your highest priority. But to outreach to an extensive customer base, build your online authority and gain a valuable platform for real-time customer service, it should be.

All social networks are not created equal, however. Brand social media is not a tool exclusive to large organizations, and for home businesses especially, can be crucially beneficial and should play an active role in daily business. Choosing a social channel for business depends on a number of variables, so before selecting one (or jumping straight into all networks) consider:

• What the home business is

• Who the target market is and which channel they are most likely to be active and responsive on

• The nature of the products and services sold

Considering what you want your social strategy to achieve can also help with your decision. For example, if you want to build yourself up as an industry leader, network, or promote your company and yourself through industry based discussion, then LinkedIn may be the most suitable network. But if you're likely to post numerous, frequent news, product and offer updates, and want to target and interact with potential clients more directly, using Facebook or Twitter may be a better route to take.

Of course there's nothing to stop you from using both! If you can meet the time requirements to maintain a dedicated and active presence across numerous social media channels, you'll be presenting a more varied, accessible and authoritative business profile. Just note that you don't have to join all networks at once, and be wary of the dangers and damaging effects which incomplete and sloppy social profiling can have.

Key social networks you may consider choosing include:

LinkedIn

LinkedIn acts as a virtual CV, networking and job-hunting tool, and for that reason works well as a B2B social network. Giving you the social status to network as a business figurehead, creating a LinkedIn company page can inform LinkedIn users of your home business, as well as your personal attributes and will showcase your services and company updates. Networking to contact key industry individuals and participation in regular discussion groups can establish your authority as a thought leader within your industry or area of business. It can also allow you as a business owner to advance, network, and raise your professional profile.

Depending upon your business or service offering (this may work well for freelance services for example), LinkedIn can also be an excellent way to source clients.

Twitter

For most organizations, Twitter is the go-to network. With users expectant and tolerant of much more frequent posting (some more brand active profiles post upward of 10 tweets a day), news, links relevant to your industry, retweets and other shared content can boost your profile. Plus, by taking advantage of Twitter features, such as hashtags, your tweets can be easily found in searches and your presence raised. Allowing you to present an accessible front, promote new product and converse with your client base, Twitter lets you directly access a much wider potential customer base, and can be a great way to gather feedback. Have an active follow and interaction strategy to boost and interact with followers and spread the name of your business.

Regarding the time restraints of being commercially active on Twitter, tweets can be scheduled, searched for and ordered using management applications, such as HootSuite or TweetDeck - meaning all daily social activity can be done at once.

Pinterest & Instagram

For businesses that offer a visually appealing product, having a Pinterest or Instagram account can be incredibly beneficial. Whilst Instagram works well in conjunction with Twitter (owing to its use of hashtags allowing users to locate images) and can be a way to encourage customers to create social content/ their own images related to your brand product, Pinterest works more as a virtual pinboard. Allowing users to 'repin' images of your product (once you have a developed profile), if your product can be aesthetically endorsed, both networks could work very well to an advantage.

Facebook

This is an excellent tool for home businesses with small audiences who wish to get to know their audience and fans. You can use your page insights to see what sort of content garners the best responses. Facebook is ideal for sharing and is more directly personal than Twitter, so knowing what content (images, links, competitions, etc.) your Facebook followers respond best to, can work to a business advantage in that you can encourage those followers to share your brand content to their own friends and followers as well. As a great place to share news, offers and promotions, Facebook works well for businesses with a wider consumer base, such as fashion or food, and offers a simple approach to customer service (comments and interaction).

Google +

Though less popular than the other networks, a Google + presence can be just as important. More relaxed when it comes to self-promotion, Google + allows for status and content sharing as with Facebook and LinkedIn, but importantly, as a Google owned service, means it is linked with all of Google's other products. An active account can provide additional SEO benefit: especially useful for smaller, location-dependent businesses.

Once you've decided which network to use:

Any social network can encourage customers to move from your social profile to your business site, and once you've decided which network(s) to be active on, you should consider some form of basic strategy to build a following - this can be as basic as deciding to use HootSuite to schedule in a certain number of tweets a day and replying to any customer feedback (good or bad), to forming a more comprehensive approach such as following targeted users and ensuring you mix your content between status updates, links, images etc.

The approach you take toward social media will vary depending on the time you have to invest in it, but making this investment can really help launch the profile of a whole business, especially if targeting a local market. You should make it easy for people to access your social networks, connect, share and promote you.

About the Author: Alastair Kane is a freelance writer working for 2touch, a leading provider of fulfillment services helping businesses keep their customers happy.

A Lack of Social Media Cohesion

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 19:50:00 GMT

New research from eCommerce and digital marketing company Acquity Group reveals that more than 75 percent of brands lacked a cohesive social media presence across the major platforms.

Results from the agency’s 2012 Brand eCommerce Audit, which evaluated Interbrand’s 2012 Best Retail Brands on customer engagement across major digital channels, indicated that while every brand on the list (except one) had a Facebook page, and 45 out of 50 are on Twitter, only 12 of the brands had a cohesive presence across all five of the major social networks that were analyzed ( Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and YouTube.

Twitter had the largest gap between usage and interaction according to the study. Less than 27 percent of brands analyzed actively participated in Twitter conversations with consumers, even though 90 percent of those brands had a presence.

Other highlights from the Acquity study include:

- 80 percent of the brands analyzed leveraged YouTube with an impressive 85 percent engagement rate.
- 56 percent of brands do not yet utilize Instagram, but there is a high level of interaction at 79 percent.
- 60 percent of the brands had adopted Pinterest and interaction rates on the social pin-board were 70 percent.

Acquity Group also profiled 10 brands that scored best overall in social interaction including Target, Home Depot, RadioShack, Bath and Body Works, Nordstrom, Gap, eBay, Coach, American Eagle Outfitters and Banana Republic (in the order of their ranking).

"Although most brands are signed up for the major social networks, many struggle to understand how they fit into their overarching business strategy. As a result, our audit revealed several critical areas of improvement when it comes to actually connecting with consumers across social channels," said Jay Dettling, Executive Vice President at Acquity Group.

"The important take away for brands is to avoid haphazard or sporadic use of social media. When a new social media channel is introduced, brands need to take the time to analyze the potential impact and return, and develop a solid strategy from there."

In-Stream Transactions Come to Instagram

Michael Garrity — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 19:21:00 GMT

Social commerce payment system Chirpify is no longer just looking to monetize content on Twitter. In fact, it seems to be banking on the hope that a picture can be worth a thousand dollars, as the company recently expanded its platform to include in-stream commerce from Instagram.

At present, approximately 40 percent of the world’s largest brands have a presence on Instagram, but until now, they never had any way of turning that directly into dollars. Chirpify for Instagram is now the only way for businesses and consumers to either buy, sell, donate or otherwise exchange funds on the social network by turning comments on the site into real-time in-stream transactions.

Sellers (or fundraisers) can create a listing from within the Instagram application; all they have to do is post a photo and make sure that the initial comment reads, “#InstaSale $amount” (with “amount” actually being the price of the item being sold). Once this is done, Chirpify automatically creates a listing, and buyers can make a transaction by simply commenting.

Once a buyer comments, Chirpify will post another comment with purchase instructions. The shopper’s Instagram account will be securely connected to his or her PayPal account, and then they just have to leave a comment that says either “buy” or “donate” (depending on what they’re doing). It’s as easy as that, and then Chirpify will email them a secure download or receipt.

There are already many notable names using Instagram commerce, including Bogs, Fearless Records, Invisible Children, Kat Von D and many others.

Instagram Adoption On The Rise

Allison Howen — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 17:00:00 GMT

If your brand hasn’t jumped on the Instagram bandwagon yet, it may be time to reconsider your social strategy.

This is because more than half of the world’s top brands have already started making a name for themselves on the mobile-only photo sharing site, according to a recent study from social media analytics provider Simply Measured, which revealed that Instagram has grown 35 percent among brands in the last quarter, outpacing the growth of both Google+ and Pinterest.

“Seeing this level of activity, it’s more clear than ever that Instagram has graduated from a ‘fun new social network’ to an integral component of a brand’s social strategy,” said Adam Schoenfeld, CEO at Simply Measured. “While early adopters are seeing a majority of the engagement, there’s still time for newer brands to jump in and leverage the visual nature of the platform to engage and grow their audiences.”

Simply Measured’s Instagram study found that 54 percent of brands within the Interbrand 100 are now active on Instagram. Additionally, the study shows that cross-channel activity is important when it comes to sharing photos, with more than 90 percent of brand's Instagram photos also being shared to Facebook and 60 percent of the photos being tweeted. This allows consumers to engage with images from whichever network they use the most.

Also, in case you were wondering what the most popular filter for brands on Instagram is, Lo-fi takes the win – receiving 16 percent of the filter usage. Check out Simply Measured's chart below to view the rest of the filter stats.

Best Practices for Instagram Inspiration

Allison Howen — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 09:51:00 GMT

Even after it was purchased by Facebook for $1 billion, many businesses are still unsure of how valuable the photo-sharing social network Instagram can be in their online marketing efforts.

That is quickly changing, thanks to a recent report from Simply Measured, which states 40 percent of the world’s top-100 brands now have a presence on Instagram. These major brands taking to Instagram seems like a natural choice in a day and age when the Web is increasingly social and interconnected. It’s no longer enough to just put your marketing message out there to be absorbed; these days, consumers want to connect with your brand, and photos are a great way to do that (after all, each one is worth at least a thousand words, which is a huge relief to your copywriters).

Instagram allows companies to share even more of themselves with their customers. It also provides greater opportunities to extend their reach and influence across the social Web, thanks to the ability (and desire) of users to share content on and across social networks.

In order to help you find sepia-filtered success with this relatively uncharted social channel, we’ve mined some of the top brands on Instagram to determine three best practice strategies, and then looked deeper into three different business sectors (retail, services and content publishing) to show you how different brands are using the service.

Best Practices:

#1 Be Consistent: The key to building a successful brand has always been to provide a clear and consistent tone or theme across your marketing channels. Keep this in mind with Instagram. While it may be fun to upload various types of content, you should keep your message consistent so that your followers know what to expect. One way to ensure you do this is to regularly post something specific on a daily or weekly basis that is unique to your brand and message, and can help consumers get a sense of what you’re all about. That being said…

#2 Keep It Interesting: Establishing a tone for your brand is essential, but that doesn’t mean that your followers have any interest in seeing you post basically the exact same picture all day, every day. Make an effort to mix things up. For example, don’t always just post pictures of your latest products, but also include images of your employees, industry events you may be attending (e.g. trade shows), people using your products, general lifestyle photos related to your business and anything else you can think of that is in line with the tone of your brand. In other words, keep things interesting to keep consumers engaged, which leads us to…

#3 Post Engaging Content: Success with social media has always been directly related to how well you’re able to engage your followers, and it’s no different on Instagram. Actively using hashtags to tag photos is a great way to get them noticed and generate user interest, and asking questions in your photo captions can help create discussions among your followers. Also, liberally respond with @replies to foster conversations directly with users. And don’t forget to take advantage of Instagram’s ability to allow users to publish their own content and interact with your brand by uploading photos and tagging them with a unique themed hashtag.

Examples:

Retailers

Many types of merchants are currently on the image-based social network – from apparel retailers like H&M to fast food companies like Taco Bell. However, it is important for these companies to not only use this social network to upload pictures of their latest products or promotions, but also to engage their audience. For example, Starbucks offers an interactive way for consumers to participate with its brand on the social network by telling consumers in the company’s “about” section to tag their photos with “#Starbucks!”. The coffee specialty retailer also makes their posts interactive by asking questions on the posted photos, such as, “loving the lighter #blonderoast. Have you tried it yet?”

Service Providers

Service providers may need to plan out their strategy a little more than the aforementioned merchants, but this industry can still take full advantage of Instagram’s image-packed social network. It is important for professionals within the service industry to provide a consistent tone on Instagram, so their audience can know what kind of content to expect. For example, The Knot’s Instagram profile not only offers wedding inspiration ideas, but also provides audience members with insight into the company’s staff. This means that brides can view floral photos for insights on bouquet arrangements, while also relating to the company’s employees by checking out a photo from the staff’s summer outing.

Content Producers

For content producers, the biggest challenge is turning content, which many times is in the form of written articles or blog posts, into interesting and engaging images. The best way to do this is to repurpose content, especially content that is visually appealing. ESPNSports does a great job at providing interesting and relevant content to its Instagram audience. The company has taken snapshots from memorable moments in sports – such as Felix Hernandez’s recent perfect game or Michael Phelps’ Olympic accomplishments – and posts them as Instagram photos that include hashtags, as well as attract a lot of comments and likes.