7 Ways to Use Images to Boost Conversion Rates

The fact that images can help boost your content marketing is old news. Still, it’s impressive that blogs with images receive 94 percent more views than those without.

High quality images can be an excellent way to increase conversions if used to their fullest capacity. All it takes is a little knowledge of how images and customer psychology go hand-in-hand. Here are just a few ways you can use images to boost conversions on your website:

1. Use High Quality Images

Pixilated images, clipart, cheesy stock photos, and irrelevant pictures all detract from your brand’s reputation. It’s hard to convince customers to purchase a product if it doesn’t look stunning in photos.

For example, consider real estate. Without high quality images, online listings would be irrelevant. People would be much more hesitant to buy properties without seeing them first in person. Great photos are vital and serve to drive conversions in a real estate setting, just as they would in any retail setting.

2. Replace Copy With Graphics

“A picture speaks a thousand words.” There’s a lot of truth to that saying when it comes to conversions, especially if you’re trying to explain a great deal of information or describe a complex concept. It’s better to replace text with a helpful graphic that can explain things more clearly.

For example, you could use an infographic with intricate charts and graphs to explain how a certain type of software could increase collaborative efficiencies. This information display makes it significantly easier for customers to get on board with your products and services.

3. Showcase Your Product

High quality product photos that show the product from multiple angles are a must. The images should also be highly detailed with no background distractions. Furthermore, avoid using confusing images that make it difficult to immediately pick out the product in question.

For example, if you’re selling a pair of jeans, but you show the full body of the model, it can be difficult for the consumer to determine if you’re selling the top, accessories, or bottoms. In addition, photos with plain backgrounds always convert better because they show the image in the best possible light.

4. Show the Product in Action

Provide the customer context for how they would use the product. If you’re selling a pair of sunglasses, show what they would look like with someone wearing them on the beach. If you’re selling a sofa, show how it would look in a well-designed room. It’s amazing how many more sofas you’ll sell when customers can see a product in action.

5. Allow a Zoom Feature

Let customers see every detail of your product up close, particularly if there are small, intricate details. Being able to zoom in to see the stitching on a pair of boots can mean the difference between customers making the purchase and abandoning their cart.

6. Include Images in Site Search

Good search features within a website are very important to customers, and adding images to the drop-down menu within the site search windows can boost conversions.

This concept was put to the test by BrickHouse Security. “With the product images in the site search drop-down window, we get a 100 percent lift in conversion rate among shoppers who use site search,” explained Ryan Urban, BrickHouse manager of customer acquisition and analytics, to Internet Retailer.

7. Let Images Guide the Customer

Finally, make sure that the images you use to enhance your website serve to guide the customer’s eye. For example, if you’re trying to make a bottle of shampoo stand out, show a picture of a woman with luscious locks splayed around her head, looking at the bottle. This will direct the customers’ focus and make the product look more enticing.

Internet retailers make mistakes that impact their conversions all the time, but poor images shouldn’t be one of them. With the right placement and context, significantly higher conversions can be a reality for any company. Images in every aspect of your marketing strategy can be exactly what your blog and website need to bring in more customers and exchanges.

Sourdce : http://bit.ly/1OOjDGM

7 Worst Mistakes That Are Eating Up Your Content Marketing Success

We’re all rushing to create piles and piles of content to serve our customers, upkeep an online image, and create more brand awareness. Despite that, few organizations have it really figured out when it comes to content marketing. The people they’ve targeted aren’t “taking action”. Visitors come and go and analytics aren’t as great as they should be. What could have gone wrong??

Content marketing is a tricky game and unfortunately, there are a number of ways you could mess up your content marketing success. Here are some of the worst and most common mistakes made by content marketers that you should avoid making.

• Not Writing up Your Goals and Plans: First of all, you need have clear goals and content marketing strategies to begin with. Secondly, you need to make sure you outline and document and every single one of these goals on paper. The importance of taking this step is to have a clear idea of what worked, what didn’t work, how long it took to work, etc. Not only will you know which goals to focus on currently, but you will also have clear idea of when to change your methods and stick to the ones that are actually working.

• Not Being Consistent: Whether you are writing up blog posts, uploading a fresh stream of videos, or promoting a new product, it has to be consistent! They say consistency is the key – and in this case, it couldn’t be put more accurately. It takes months, maybe even several years, to create regular fans of content and not being consistent means that you’re not being predictable enough for your loyal fans to come back regularly.

• Not Providing Value: If you’re too focused on sales and conversions, you’re missing the point. Content marketing cannot be all about your company and fulfilling company needs. Agreed, that this is the “ultimate goal”, however, that’s not how it should seem to your online visitors. Get rid of excessively promotional content because that is a major turn off for an online audience. Instead, focus on providing value to customers by knowing exactly what they care about. What issues, challenges, and problems does this target audience face? What makes them tick? Choose those topics and write inspiring content that somehow solves, addresses, or capitalizes on these issues, ideas, or topics.

• Choosing Only One Form of Content: Sharing inspirational blog posts is definitely a plus for content marketing, but since online visitors are particularly fond of diversity, it’s not always enough. The idea behind content marketing is not only to craft large chunks of text, contrary to what many amateurs may think. Quality content can be in the form of videos, images, infographics, and other forms of visual content. A large portion of online visitors prefer visual content to readable forms content. By ignoring that lump of potential visitors, you run the risk of alienating them completely.

• Participating on Every Social Media Platform: Believe it or not, but content marketers actually run the risk of damaging business reputation by signing up for more networks than they can manage.Trying to occupy as much “social media space” as possible is an overwhelming and ineffective strategy. Not every social media platform is best for a particular business.  Instead, start out with just one or two social media network(s). Give some time, thought, and consideration to answer questions such as, “How does this platform contribute to my end goals?” and “where would I expect to find my target audience?” Pick one that fits the needs of your business and customers best. Posting frequently and consistently on those selected networks is important to ensure that your customers stay in the loop.

• Ignoring Your Customer’s Questions: Ask yourself what could your target audience want to know—not from About.com or Wikipedia—but from you and you only? These are the topics, problems, or questions you should be addressing. For example, if your business provides auto-repair service to customers, you may write about the latest car event, which is fine. But there are some crucial questions your customers may have about your business which should be a number one priority. For example, they might want to know about your service plans, how long a certain repair service would take, or who you’ve partnered with for your products. Never ignore this type of useful, valuable, and audience-oriented content.

• Promoting Only Once: There is no rule that says you have to share a certain piece of content only once. Given that your subscribers could be following tons of other individuals as well, there is no guarantee that your message has been heard by all of your followers. Consequently, there is nothing wrong with giving your blog post or video a second or third round. Share it in different ways on different times, using different platforms. Share it again a month later. There’s no reason to put down a valuable piece of content just because has already been shared once.

Source : http://bit.ly/1QNjAZ9

5 Ways Entrepreneurs Escape the Daily Grind

Even entrepreneurs have to take an occasional break.

While the life of an entrepreneur is anything but routine, sometimes we get caught in a nonstop cycle of work, work, and more work. It's exciting, important, and at times, all-consuming, and that's exactly why we have to take a step back on occasion and clear our minds. Let's step out of the norm and escape the daily grind.

1. Hone a Skill

It's true; entrepreneurs are learning every day. However, this typically means improving in one area or industry. Sure, we work in a lot if different fields, but that's no substitute for honing a skill that's independent of work. Activities like these can open an individual up to a more creative perspective and even boost entrepreneurial skills. Plus, creative activities give the mind a break from work, so this serves a way to relax and unwind.

There are a number of ways to find these opportunities. Organize a painting class with your friends or staff. Find a local dance class and invite a friend or partner. You can even sign up for an online writing or language course. Local class platform Dabble CEO Jay Swoboda suggests, "Drop your to-do list and pick up your bucket list. The opportunity to re-invent yourself and find creative inspiration can be found by supporting other entrepreneurs sharing and monetizing their skills. Go take a class." Whatever it may be, make sure it happens.

2. Get Out of the Office at the End of the Day

At some point each day, everyone needs to physically leave the office. If you're just heading home to eat and sleep before another day of work, your mind will have a hard time shutting down. There are plenty of ways to mentally leave the office and take a break from hard work. Attend a sporting event, meet friends for a happy hour at a new bar or restaurant - just get out and enjoy your evening. If you're concerned about still being productive, networking events are everywhere, and they're more entertaining than the stereotypically bad events we've heard about.

3. Cook Healthy Meals and Exercise

Take care of yourself! By getting regular exercise and eating healthy meals, professionals can accomplish more at work. Plus, client meetings over meals are rapidly becoming the norm for entrepreneurs. A home-cooked meal is a welcome break from this. "Cooking is therapeutic and the perfect solution for putting life's hectic challenges on hold," says Home Chef Founder and CEO Pat Vihtelic. "That's why we want our customers to focus on the fun part - cooking the actual dish."

Mix up your exercise routine. Try spinning if you're usually a distance runner. Take a cardio class instead of lifting alone. This shift in routine will keep you inspired and motivated without disrupting a healthy habit.

4. Collaborate and Network With Other Entrepreneurs

Invite business leaders and entrepreneurs to join you at lunch or industry events. Working with other leaders and motivators provides an opportunity to explore new ideas and get feedback on current projects or issues. There are plenty of conferences and workshops to learn new trends and meet new people in any industry, like TechWeek or Chicago Ideas Week. Block out time on your calendar each week (or even month) to attend events like these. Even easier, you can just grab coffee with a mentor or business partner to catch up and make new connections.

5. Take a Vacation--For Real 

It's difficult to put work aside and take a real vacation from a business that has become your heart and soul. However, a good leader should trust the talent of their team. Leave them to run the business for a week or two and truly remove yourself from the stress and chaos. A good vacation has benefits beyond the initial escape, and having faith in your team to hold down the fort will make them and the company that much stronger.

Source : http://bit.ly/1LUNeNW

7 essentials for gauging the real value of PR and social media

Despite what we've said elsewhere about the difficulty of determining ROI for PR and social media, gauging the value of what you do is eminently doable and highly recommended. You just have to do it right.

Follow these seven steps, and your calculations will resonate with your top executives:

1. Count all costs.

Calculate ROI as an accountant or CFO would: Use "all in" costs. Take into account all costs, not just your paid ad spending or what your agency billed you. Factor in internal time and resources, as well as any miscellaneous expenses and, of course, salaries. It's better to be accurate and transparent than appear to be fudging your numbers.

2. Be conservative with your counting.

Always err on the downside. You don't want to appear to be massaging numbers to make them look good, so take the low end of any estimate on the "results." Be conservative; let senior leaders do the inflating if they want to.

3. Explain everything.

Even if it seems obvious to you as a professional communicator, it will not be as obvious to those green-eyeshade guys. We throw around terms that CFOs may never have heard of. So make sure you can explain your "engagement index" or "quality index" to your mother before you bring it to a meeting. Always include that explanation on any chart that has an index.

4. Make sure the value matches the objectives and/or goals.

There is no point in demonstrating value in terms of leads if the goal was to change perceptions. Make sure that whatever value you are assigning reflects the goals of the program. Just as important, the value you are claiming must be relevant to the priority stakeholders or business objectives. So if saving money isn't a priority (and I've worked for clients for whom it hasn't been), then measuring cost efficiency won't be perceived as a value.

5. Don't try to measure a long-term strategy with short-term value.

Increasingly, social media is being dismissed as "not worth it" or seen as lacking a sufficient payout. The problem with this thinking is that, done correctly, social media can build long-term value in customer relationships, trust, forgiveness, enhanced perceptions and recruitment—none of which is measured by "likes," pins or follows. If the goal is building relationships, then you should measure that over time. If the goal is to sell stuff instantly, then social media probably isn't your best bet. (Hint: Email has been shown to be more effective in that regard.)

6. Don't use the lingo of accountants to articulate social change.

Unless you've done the math, borrowing the lingo of accountants will not help you articulate value to your senior management or board. Quite the opposite is true. If you use the term ROI improperly, you are very likely to confuse and frustrate your organization's leaders.

7. Don't fall for the "ROI" excuse.

Communications skeptics use "What's the ROI?" or "What's the dollar return we can expect?" as ways to resist new campaigns or any sort of change. They question the true value of these programs and seek a convenient way to reject them.

If you are feeling cocky, you might reply by asking whether they know the ROI of the potted plants in the lobby, or whether they demand precise ROI analyses for their lunches with potential big clients or donors.

The point is that ROI cannot be easily calculated for many investments, but that doesn't mean they are bad investments. So don't automatically accept "What's the ROI?" as a legitimate critique of a program that you propose. Be prepared for this tactic by presenting the value of your proposal in terms that are closely aligned with the social change and/or financial goals of the organization.

Source : http://bit.ly/1RIIaLr

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8 Things I Learned About Twitter

I already thought Twitter was brilliant but I am amazed after reading “140 things you don’t know about twitter.” I love that Langer chose to find 140 facts in relation to the 140-character limit for tweets. If you have 30 minutes and are a frequent tweeter, I highly suggest giving the article a read.

The elimination process was hard but here are my 9 favorite facts about Twitter that I didn’t know:

• .Twitter was created on a playground. Founding team member Dom Sagolla says the group went on the top of a slide at a playground in South Park, a small neighborhood in San Francisco, and Jack Dorsey discussed an “idea so simple that you don’t even think about it—you just write.” This moment of inspiration has turned into a multibillion-dollar company

1. The official name of Twitter’s bird is Larry. Yes, his name is Larry Bird. The iconic little fellow—seen in Twitter’s logo shown in TV commercials, print ads and practically every website—was named after Boston Celtics legend Larry Bird.
2. Twitter was almost called Twitch. Before finalizing on the name, the team looked at the Oxford English Dictionary. “We found the word Twitter,” Dorsey says. “And Twitter means a short inconsequential burst of information, chirps from birds. And we were like, that describes exactly what we’re doing here.”
3. Ending a tweet with an empty hashtag is called a hangtag, and it’s Twitter’s version of the mic drop, the team at Medium declared recently.
4. You can find your first ever tweet at First-Tweets.com.
5. Twitter’s fourth co-founder Noah Glass was kicked out of the company, according to the book “Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal,” by Nick Bilton of The New York Times. Glass is said to have made almost no money from Twitter’s IPO, according to Bilton.
6. Glass has only tweeted five times over the last five years. His bio reads, “I started this.”
7. The “unfollow” button was almost called “leave.”
8. The cost of a Promoted Trend in the United States for one day is $200,000.

Source : http://bit.ly/1OuYCk3

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How to Hire Content Marketers Who Think Like Entrepreneurs

You’ve seen the stats, you’ve heard the success stories – content marketing is an effective way to grow and market your business. In fact, 82% of consumers feel more positive about a company after reading custom content.

You want consumers to have positive feelings about your brand, and you know it’s time to bring in some help to ramp up your content marketing, but you’re not sure where to start. Hiring a content marketer who thinks like an entrepreneur could be just the answer for you. Why, you ask?

Start-ups are often more successful at content marketing than large companies are. Knowing this, Joe Pulizzi, author of Content Inc., and Clare McDermott, editor of Chief Content Officermagazine, interviewed dozens of entrepreneurs about their content marketing strategies. From this, they discovered two main commonalities – entrepreneurs tend to:

• Take a content-first approach to business – They identify a content niche, build a loyal audience around that niche, and then develop products and services to sell.

• Use passion and patience (not big budgets) to drive content marketing success

Successful content marketers also share other entrepreneurial qualities, such as drive, goal-oriented behavior, an analytical mindset, curiosity, creativity, agility, leadership, empathy, transparency, and project management skills.

If for no other reason, you should hire content marketers who think like entrepreneurs because they know how to get stuff done, effectively, and with purpose.

If you’re a content marketer, this probably makes total sense. If you’re new to the field, you may wonder why a blogger should have these qualities. You see, content marketing is far more than blogging. At the bare minimum, a successful full-stack content marketer needs to:

• Understand the audience and develop personas
• Define goals and objectives that align with overall business goals
• Develop a strategy to meet these goals
• Execute on the strategy
• Identify relevant channels to promote the business’ content
• Measure the effectiveness of content efforts
• Communicate their findings
• Iterate, improve, and measure again

Here’s how to tell if a candidate possesses entrepreneurial qualities and knows how to apply them to content marketing.

Ask them to present fresh ideas

When screening candidates, ask them less about what they’ve done in the past, and more about what they will do for you. Ask them what they think about your existing content and strategy and how they’d improve on it. It’s even better if they offer suggestions on their own accord. This shows initiative, expertise, and that they’ve done their research.

A content marketer who thinks like an entrepreneur will approach an interview like it’s an investor pitch – they have a story to tell, growth projections to present, and reports on past experience.

Test if they’re growth-minded

Your ideal candidate treats content like a tool to grow and sustain your business. Candidates who are growth-minded will ask about your existing business, content growth goals, and the tactics you’re using to achieve them. You can ask how they’ve grown audiences and/or communities, or how they’ve converted customers with content in the past.

To be growth-minded also means to think about retention. Content marketers should understand that content exists for multiple reasons. Ask the candidate what role they see content playing for your business, and look for them to identify at least one of these purposes:

• Educating on topics relevant to your offering, adding value to drive conversions
• Increasing engagement with thought-provoking content
• Educating and informing on your offering and company/product updates
• Building community by connecting with your audience through personal stories and highlights

Determine if they’re data-driven

By now, you should have discussed numbers enough to know whether a candidate is comfortable with metrics. One of the best ways to determine if candidates have an analyticalmindset is to ask what tools they use. If they mention Google Analytics, Mixpanel, Kissmetrics, or HubSpot, it’s likely that they know the importance of measuring the effectiveness of a strategy and have experience in reporting findings.

Get to know their management skills

Just like entrepreneurs, content marketers are always juggling several projects and smaller tasks at once. It could be that they’re launching a content-based academy, but still have to write a blog post and a contributed post, and edit three guest posts. Not to mention, they must publish a newsletter and promote all of these things to the right audience.

Ask the candidates how they stay organized. If they mention processes they’ve established then they’ve likely got a solid grip on what it takes to manage a content marketing strategy. Ask them what tools they use to stay organized. The more focus they put on organization, the more likely they are focused on getting things done and meeting deadlines.

Their management responsibilities don’t stop at tasks and deadlines. Content marketers often are required to manage writers – paid and volunteer – and sometimes social media managers as well. This is where empathy and communication skills come into play.

A good content manager knows how to communicate expectations, guidelines, and processes clearly. They need to ensure work is being delivered to them on time, while keeping their own workload in check. Ask your candidates to give an example of when they had to manage a project end-to-end with a team and to describe the results.

Determine how visionary and creative they are

Throughout the interview, listen for cues that indicate whether your candidates think about the big picture. Have they only mentioned results on a month-to-month basis? Or have they said that content takes time to provide results and explained the role it plays in the bigger picture? Yes, you want someone who’s going to help your company grow today, but you also want someone who’s invested in the long-term success and sustainability of your business.

Today’s digital environment is crazy-crowded with people competing for your audience’s attention. You need a content marketer who is going to think creatively to cut through – someone who’s going to come up with campaign ideas that you never heard and can draw attention. You need someone who has a handle on trends, but always thinks one step further. Ask them what they read, how they keep up with trends, who they follow. This is a good indicator of their industry know-how.

Why you should consider a freelance content marketer

Freelancers are entrepreneurs in many aspects. They may not be growing a start-up, but they are growing and running a business. They’re constantly challenged to make changes and iterate to help clients achieve success in order to attract more business for themselves. They’re competitive, a characteristic that often drives creativity. Freelancers have to think of creative, new ways to attract new clients while keeping their clients happy. They have to produce the best work to support themselves.

Because they work with so many clients, they should already have the content experience you want and the ability to both drive the strategy and execute it. Give it a try. Another benefit of hiring a freelancer is that if it’s not working out, you can end the contract without all the messy paperwork of a full-time employee.

Source : http://bit.ly/1hbBFUe

5 Ways to Protect Your Brand's Online Reputation

We live in a search-happy world. Take it as a given: Before customers consider doing business with your company, they’re going to Google it first.

So it’s imperative that your brand has a strong online presence. Creating reputable, sharable, easily searchable content is the best defense against a negative comment or review appearing first in a search result for your company.

The following five online reputation management practices will help you shape your brand’s search results by boosting its credibility online.

1. Keep your company’s website up to date

Your website is the first place people go when researching your business, so make sure you leave a strong first impression.

Once the basics -- such as a landing page, contact information and service or product offerings -- are taken care of,  you can add extra features.

A bio page is a good place to start. People want to work with a company that isn’t afraid to show off its team. Writing strong bios for your employees is a great way to introduce the people building your company while also humanizing your brand. A strong bio includes the person’s name, profession, area of expertise and past experiences. Be sure to add major career highlights, awards or any other notable accomplishments. Lastly, provide space for hobbies and interests, which gives consumers a fuller picture of you, your employees and by extension, your company.

By keeping your website up to date and providing an extensive bio page, you can help legitimize your company.

2. Create a company blog 

A company blog can do more than just increase your visibility in search engines; it can also drive traffic to your site and is a good way to build relationships with your customers. But perhaps most importantly, a company blog can position your team as an industry leader. For instance if your head of marketing is continuously providing insights into the latest industry trends, that provides your company with both authority and exposure. 

3. Manage online reviews

Considering that 88 percent of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations, showcasing your customers experiences on your website is a great way to create positive expectations right off the bat. In addition, having a large number of positive reviews helps  balance out any negative reviews that may pop up in the future.

The best way to get more positive reviews for your business is to treat your customers with respect on and offline -- it will be reflected in the online feedback. In addition, make sure it’s easy for people to write a review on your website, and advertise the fact that you would like to hear from your customers. Consider putting a call to action in your email signature, on your website or even on a sign in your store’s window.

4. Socialize relevant company content

Not only do popular social-media sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter rank highly in search results, but they’re great places to push out company news and content. If you’re doing something newsworthy, make sure your customers know about it! Sharing recent press, upcoming events or notable company announcements over social media is a great way to illustrate that your company is active and relevant. 

Bottom line: The more social media sites your company is on, the more of its search results you control.

5. Don’t ignore your personal brand

If you develop your personal brand the same way you develop your company’s brand, you’ll have even more visibility and influence over your business’s search results. In many cases, especially when your business is still starting up, your name will be Googled more than your company’s name. It’s important, then, for potential investors, clients and employees to find a positive representation of you online. Your online reputation can be the thing that makes or breaks your business.

Source : http://entm.ag/1j0DuFq 

Instagram Images: How to Stand Out on Instagram

Is your business on Instagram?Are you curious about what to post?

More About This Show

The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It’s designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing.

In this episode I interview Peg Fitzpatrick, the co-author of The Art of Social Media: Power Tips for Power Users, which she wrote with Guy Kawasaki. She is also a social media strategist and an expert in visual marketing. Her clients include Motorola, Audi, Google, Virgin and others.

Peg will explore Instagram marketing ideas that are easy to put to use right away.

You’ll discover tools to use for your Instagram images.

Instagram Images

How Peg got started on Instagram

Peg first discovered Instagram when looking for apps for her iPad. This was shortly after the iPad first came out. She loaded Instagram and loved it, but no one she knew was on it.

Then, when Pinterest came out, Peg, like a lot of people, thought Pinterest and Instagram were the same, because they were both about images. Although she initially chose to focus on Pinterest, after she learned more about both platforms, Peg discovered how different the two were.

When Peg went back to Instagram, she saw it was a great place for people to have conversations.

Even if you know lots of people on Facebook, Peg believes Instagram is where you can build a community. As a blogger or entrepreneur, it’s the kind of place you want to go to meet new people.

Listen to the show to learn about why more people didn’t get on Instagram immediately.

Instagram challenges for marketers

Peg believes social media is challenging for marketers because they want to look at things in a more traditional way: how to get people to do x, y and z. The newer platforms, like Snapchat and Instagram, are even more challenging. It’s not easy to write a viral blog post or post a YouTube video that goes viral.

Instagram is limited, Peg says, because you just get that one link in your bio and there are no links in the comments.

While a blogger might not see the value in Instagram (“Why should my blog be on Instagram if there’s no link for people to click every day?”), brands are getting more engagement on Instagram than any other social platform. It creates brand awareness that leads more people to your business, events and products.

The biggest mistake marketers make, Peg says, is they aren’t posting enough. On a recent panel, Peg heard Instagram people who have 500,000+ followers say they post multiple times per day. One of them posts 8 or 10 times per day. And they post excellent content.

It takes more time to create an Instagram post. Although you can share a blog post immediately, with Instagram you have to create the image, write the text and figure out all of the things that go with it.

On Facebook, people don’t post enough either. On Martha Stewart’s Facebook pagethey post every hour. Of course she probably has the biggest backlog of content of any person ever, Peg adds.

Ideas for what to post

Peg says there are basic things to post on Instagram, such as pictures of what you’re doing or where you are. If you’re at an event, it’s fun to post pictures of people you meet or do selfies. You can post a day in the life at your blog or business, pictures of your team or behind the scenes at your company.

Show pictures of wherever you happen to be to give more of a human connection with your company.

For example, Peg explains how she uses Instagram to promote a webinar before it starts to give people one more chance to click and join. She’ll share a photo of her computer monitor with something related to the webinar on it.

Before a Google+ hangout, she’ll take pictures in the green room to share. She’ll either take a photo with her phone or do a picture of the screen. For example, if she’s about to do a Google hangout with Guy Kawasaki and Gary Vaynerchuk, she’ll take a behind-the-scenes photo that’s interesting and funny, and also chronicles what they’re doing.

It’s part of creating and sharing your journey, as well as celebrating the things that go on.

Listen to the show to hear what picture Peg posted when she was a guest at the first Social Media Marketing World.

What to put in an Instagram post

Peg explains her method for creating Instagram posts for her blog content.

She creates a square image and then treats the description as a mini blog post, rather than a quick update. It’s important to give enough information in the post that people will get a sense of it and start a conversation.

Start with a good image. While 640 x 640 pixels is the official Instagram biggest size, they will scale it down. You never want to have them scale images up, because that’s when they get blurry. Peg does a 735 x 735 image.

Next, write an intro in the text. Peg will ask a question, add a couple of sentences and then ask a closing question. She also writes “click the link in my bio” in the description, as well as in the “location” for the photo.

Instagram allows you to add a location. If you’re somewhere else, that’s one thing. However, if you’re at home or in your office, you can put a call to action in the location section manually. It will save to your phone too, so you can pull it up again.

Another option is to put the link as text in the comments. This is especially easy, given the way Instagram looks on desktop. Rather than say “cut and paste this,” write it as a call to action that reads, “If you’re on desktop or mobile, just cut and paste this.”

When you add that in your comments, it stays on your Instagram post. So next week when you switch your main link to a different blog post, someone who’s looking back through your old content will be able to cut and paste the exact link.

Listen to the show to discover what kinds of behind-the-scenes photos we took while getting ready for Social Media Marketing World.

Instagram marketing strategy

Peg says you don’t want to build your entire Instagram marketing plan on quotes, but they really are popular. She tries to put her own spin on everything, so if she does a quote, she asks a question with it. Just make sure the content you’re sharing relates to your business goals somehow. There needs to be a reason to share it, other than to post a quote.

Infographics and anything with bullet points or lists are also good. For example, on list posts, share a few tips and tell your audience to click through to read the rest.

Another idea is to put multiple pictures together using a tool like Canva. If you take a bunch of photos at an event, just make a collage to share, rather than overwhelm your audience (and yourself) with tons of photos.

Peg suggests branding your Instagram images. Unless you do this, when people repost your images, their audience won’t know they came from you. Include a watermark with your URL or a line at the bottom with your logo or website.

Listen to the show to learn about Iconosquare and the Facebook Mentions app.

Instagram tools

Peg doesn’t take photos in the Instagram app, because they don’t save on your phone. If you take a few pictures and only share one, the others could get lost.

Instead, she takes pictures in SmugMug’s Camera Awesome app for iOS and Android. It has a grid, plus you can crop and edit photos in the app. Peg doesn’t spend a lot of time editing. She’ll just take the photo and use one filter in Instagram.

Peg also likes the Over app, also for iOS and Android. It takes photos and adds different fonts and overlays. For example, if you’re a coffee fan, they have coffee art. They also do seasonal updates for things like back to school or holidays.

Word Swag, a popular iOS app, allows you to add your logo to photos. Word Swag looks templated because there are tons of things you can do with it, and Over looks more personalized and customized.

Peg also mentions a video tool called Phhhoto, which makes animated GIF videos that are perfect for Instagram.

As far as scheduling is concerned, Hootsuite came out with a brand-new Instagram integration. Now, you can load images for your Instagram account into Hootsuite ahead of time.

Although Hootsuite calls it “scheduling,” what it actually does is send a message to your phone telling you to post. Then you go into the app, and manually post the image to Instagram. This is great for brands that have several people posting for them.

Listen to the show to discover how to find people to follow on Instagram.

Discovery of the Week

Katch.me is for all the diehard Meerkat and Periscope users who want more functionality from those apps, and are frustrated with some of their limitations. For example, you can’t have replays after 24 hours on certain apps and there isn’t a quick way to easily share. Katch offers solutions.

Sign in to Katch, connect it to your Meerkat or Periscope account or both, and it will collect your broadcasts in one place with cloud storage and instant replays.

It works automatically, as long as the account is hooked up. Shortly after you finish your broadcast, Katch sends out a tweet to watch the replay.

Katch is a free app.

Source : http://bit.ly/1FlteBu  If you have time you must listen the podcast .