Using Instagram For Your Business

#ShareSaturday - sharing useful content from fellow digital believers. 

Share your Instagram photos to your business’ fanpage and other useful places with the help of IFTTT.com.

When I first discovered IFTTT I realized it gave me an ability missing from Instagram that kept me from using it more for business purposes.
I wanted the photos I had taken with Instagram and shared on my Facebook fanpage to be saved to an album so I could do more with them. It’s great that people who are already on Instagram can Like and Share the photos but that’s a limited audience compared to the number of Fans on our Facebook Page. Instagram photos also have a limited amount of time to gain attention before they fall too far down in the stream an no one sees them again. This is why I like having Instagram photos stored in albums on Facebook. It allows for easy access and discovery of previous photos.

Another thing that will help your Instagram photos from getting lost and forgotten is the efficient use of hashtags. Hashtags are one of the main ways people search for and find photos; so you should seriously consider creating a unique hashtag for your brand, event or promotion and get others to use it, too.

1. Tags – Tagging fanpages of partners and sponsors may get them to share your photos on their business pages exposing your content to their fans.
2. Comments – Getting people to comment on Facebook increases your EdgeRank and adds to your reach. Not everyone has an Instagram account and without one they can’t leave a comment on your photo. Asking someone to join Instagram just to leave a comment on your photo creates an obstacle to get that comment and many won’t do it.
3. Location – Adding a location to a photo is basically tagging the business the photos were taken at. They will get a notification that they’ve been tagged and this may lead to some cross promotion; the location/business may now share the photo with their fans and help make your event or promotion even more successful by exposing it to a wider audience.
4. Sharing – If you use the built-in sharing feature in Instagram to post photos to your Facebook wall, your photo will only be visible or accessible to your Facebook audience for a short time. Posts are said to have a viable lifetime of merely 3 or 4 hours. After that, the level of likes, shares and comments drops off considerably. It’s said that your fans almost never go back to your Facebook page, that they see your content in their newsfeed only. If a Fan does go back to your page – how far down, or back in time do you expect him to scroll?

Read the rest on: http://inlinevision.com/blog/using-instagram-for-your-business-integrating-social-media/

How to Find out if Your Social Media Manager Posseses the Right Qualities

Anybody can sell their social media services in an interview based on the knowledge they have. Knowledge is good, but it's not the number one must-have quality when it comes to managing your social media accounts.

Pro-active

Kony 2012 was one of the fastest growing campaigns on Facebook this year and it was one of the longest lasting ones. Now there's not a sign of Kony on anybody's timeline. One day is like a year in the social media world so timing is crucial. It's crazy how fast trending/popular topics become a thing of the past. If your social media manager is not pro-active there may be lost opportunities to be part of a movement #justsayin

Interest

It's called SOCIAL media not news media or information media. Whoever you hire to manage your accounts and post comments on your behalf should have a genuine interest in your company. After all, they're the ones that will be engaging online every day about your brand. The last thing you need is dry, news-like posts that nobody cares about.

 

Read Mikal E. Belicove's article for "6 Must-Have Attributes of Social Media Managers"

How will you know if they have a genuine interest? Ask them to show you their past work to see if there is a trend somewhere. Also pay attention to the questions they ask. Interest-showing-questions include:

• What have you done so far that has worked or failed? (taking advantage of trial and error)
• What are the demographics of your target audience? (creating the appropriate voice and language)
• What about your company/brand would you like to highlight?
• What events do you have coming up?  
 
"How To Choose a Social Media Agency" will give you some more of these types of questions.

These types of questions will tell you that your social media manager is planning a strategy towards successful social media management. Don't have one yet? Contact 020digitalbelievers@gmail.com for a guaranteed success in social media management for your brand at low cost.