How to Navigate the Instagram Algorithm

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You’re scrolling through your Instagram feed. What’s that restaurant your friend is at? Click. Where are his shoes from? Click. A Hawaiian resort giveaway? Tag all your friends in the comments. Next thing you know, you’re seeing that restaurant, those shoes, and those travel pictures of Hawaii all over your discover page. Why are you seeing this? We’re breaking down the Instagram algorithm and how its demands for specific content, increased interactions, and a thorough understanding of your post analytics mean your brand might could benefit from an Instagram marketing agency.

With today’s Instagram algorithm, promoting your brand without proper performance analytics is like sailing out to sea without the proper tools to navigate your way towards your destination. The steps you take after posting on Instagram are just as—if not more—important than the actual content you put out. Why? Because Instagram is becoming increasingly personalized. With this, it can be an exhausting task to stay afloat the current algorithm in order to avoid sinking deeper into your target audience’s feed, especially if you have multiple accounts. More than ever, your brand needs to put out the right content, interact with your audience, and further examine your engagement analytics in order to effectively navigate your way through the ever-changing Instagram algorithm. As a social media agency in Los Angeles, we utilize Instagram’s method of maximizing the amount of time people spend on their platform to your brand’s advantage.

 

Content

Recently, brands have been using one of Instagram’s newest features, IGTV, to supplement their content. With the current algorithm, all kinds of video,like time lapses and boomerangs, can be used to promote audience engagement in a creative way that is unique to your brand.

 

Instagram marketing agencyInstagram marketing agency

With all of this focus on content, the question is: Are hashtags out? No. In fact, Instagram now allows for its users to follow hashtags. As a result, including relevant, brand-specific hashtags on your posts not only enhances your searchability, but also expands your community by automatically showing up in interested users’ feeds.Instagram marketing agency

Interaction

The Instagram algorithm pushes content to users that have existing relationships with your brand; therefore, building individualized connections with your audience is an important driving force in promoting your posts. Instagram influencers have caught onto this concept and often ask questions in their captions, chat in the comments, and like their followers’ posts to create these authentic relationships. Social media monitoring (keeping track of and responding to interactions in your community) and social media listening (analyzing trends in your industry and brand) are both highly necessary when developing future strategies, so taking advantage of an Instagram marketing agency with the right tools will quickly open up the Instagram algorithm atlas towards success for your brand.

Since the algorithm thrives off of attention, contests and giveaways that encourage audience interaction are one of the most effective ways for your brand to promote its posts on the platform. With an emphasis on exclusivity and market relatability, our social media agency in Los Angeles is experienced in using contests and giveaways as a fun way to bring awareness to your brand and increase audience involvement.Instagram marketing agencyInstagram marketing agency

Understanding Post Analytics: Utilizing an Instagram Marketing Agency

Post and done, right? Not with today’s Instagram algorithm. The key to success for your brand on a platform like Instagram is a thorough understanding of your individual post analytics and knowing what to do for your future posts. Creating content that resonates with your target audience heavily depends on a comprehensive and transparent interpretation of your brand’s analytics and reporting. As a social media agency in Los Angeles, we utilize social media monitoring and listening tools to track, present, and evaluate post analytics in order to optimize the success of your brand on platforms like Instagram.

We are also aware that navigating through the Instagram algorithm becomes a particularly overwhelming task when overseeing a broad range of accounts, but that doesn’t mean you need to narrow down your goals for success. An Instagram marketing agency equipped with the right tools and experience can efficiently manage multiple, related accounts with the ultimate goal of utilizing the algorithm to your brand’s best interest.

Why Running Online Contests and Giveaways Are Useful for a Businesses

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Running online contests and giveaways are a fun and tactical way to recognize your audience while encouraging traffic to your business. A full-service digital agency will positively impact your business’ audience and provide them with recognition for their loyalty. Movie theatres for example, implement their contests and giveaways on all of their location’s social platforms. When running online contests and giveaways, there are three topics to focus on: contest set-up, timing, and meaningful prizes. Once all three of those topics are implemented, your business is ready to begin posting. 

When setting up the online contest and giveaway, your company should present a fresh and creative outlook. A full-service digital agency will be able to assist you in this creative process. By incorporating unique perspectives for running online contests and giveaways, your audience will become more intrigued with what your business has to offer. There are many ways that a contest and giveaway can be set-up. For a movie theatre, its common practice to use a hashtag, answering a question, tagging friends/family members or using an online contest/giveaway landing page to track entries. All four options are engaging and fun ways to connect with your audience and give them a prize to look forward to winning. Within the initial posting it is important to provide all necessary details regarding the giveaway to prevent confusion or miscommunication later on.

Another topic that will be necessary to provide a successful online contest or giveaway will be to appropriately time the initial posting. Using a full-service digital agency will benefit your business by accurately targeting the audience and demographics that your business is focused on. Similar to being consistent with posting on your social platforms, it will also be beneficial to research peak activity to monitor the performance of the initial post. Many individuals are more likely to be present on social media outside of typical office hours, therefore posting about a contest and giveaway will likely run better during the weekends. Posting should run monthly or once every two months to strategically engage your audience, keeping them excited for more giveaways and contests.

When running online contests and giveaways, it is important to not use random prizes for winners as this method will decrease your audience engagement and online presence. The prizes that are being given away will reflect your brand and your overall social media presence. For a movie theatre, giveaway themes are based upon current movies that are playing and posted between all the individual locations to welcome larger entries. In order to increase entries a full-service digital agency will be able to find neighboring cities to your business and be able to boost the promotion in order to increase impressions and engagements. By using themed prizes, your audience will be more likely to engage with the post, and the prizes will be beneficial and not lack value.

Running online contests and giveaways will be useful for your business to build a meaningful relationship with your audience. Giving your audience the chance to win a contest/giveaway is a valuable way to show your appreciation and grow your following. Choosing your contest or giveaway setup, timing your post accurately, along with having appropriate and meaningful prizes are three essential topics that should be properly thought out. With all three topics in place and the assistance of a full-service digital agency, your online contests and giveaways will be a useful tactic to grow your business.

How Hashtag Optimization Can Help Grow Your Brand’s Online Presence

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As social media continues to elevate its services, branding and maintaining an online presence becomes more difficult. This article will be able to assist your brand using hashtags to grow your online presence in this competitive day and age. There are three essential concepts that your brand should focus on. The first is creating a brand hashtag. Second, is being consistent with hashtags across all platforms and posts. The final concept is keeping up with current trends. Follow along with our Los Angeles social media agency to better understand how hashtags can grow your online presence.

 

Brand Specific Hashtags

Creating a brand is the first step in growing your online presence. Let us help you take your brand a step further. By creating a brand-specific hashtag, you increase the traffic flow on your social sites. When we say, “brand-specific hashtag,” your brand should have a hashtag that is closely related to either the brand name itself or using the novelty of the company. Let’s say that you are the owner of a luxury fashion boutique, here are some examples of brand-specific hashtags we recommend:

#boutique name   # boutique location   #boutique’s name + fashion   #boutique name + location

Once your brand-specific hashtag is created, viewers will be able to associate the hashtag with your specific brand.The Power of Hashtags

Consistency 

Use consistent and engaging hashtags to grow your online presence. Using Instagram, Facebook and Twitter are the perfect platforms to use your hashtags. For Instagram and Facebook, there are options to create stories and posts that are not directly on your feed but are on your profile. Using the “Hashtag” feature on Instagram stories will increase traffic flow as well.  Consistently using your hashtags draws in viewers to backtrack and re-discover your socials. Using a Los Angeles social media agency increases your chances of growing your online presence to its greatest potential. An agency is able to target an audiences, demographics, locations, and ideal followers that your brand is looking for.

Instagram Hashtags

Trends

A tactical way to boost your online presence in keeping up to date with trendy hashtags. For example, on February 24th, 2019 the Oscar Awards premiered, having #oscar trending on Instagram and #2019OscarsIn5Words trending on Twitter. By using these hashtags on your platforms, you allow a wider audience to find your socials. Events such as the Oscars and national social media holidays, such as #NationalLoveYourPetDay increases a brand’s online traffic immensely. Keeping up with these trends can definitely be exhausting, so leave it up to our Los Angeles social media agency. We keep up with all the new and latest trends in the social media world.

Group on their phones

As the years progress, the expansion of social media grows. Using hashtags to grow your online presence is essential to keep up with online traffic flow. The three concepts mentioned throughout the article play an important role in your brand’s online presence. Using the branded hashtag allows individuals to associate the hashtag with your brand specifically. Consistency shows viewers that you’re eager and ready a positive future. In conclusion, keep up with the social trends and events throughout the years. All three concepts positively increase your online presence by using hashtags throughout your social platforms.

 

Biggest Digital Marketing Trends of 2019

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In this day and age, social media is constantly growing and changing. New trends are arising and we must constantly adapt to the additions that social media brings. Not only does the everyday user need to keep up to date with what is new and developing, but so do businesses. Social media now more than ever is necessary for a business to stay relevant when compared to their competition. Knowledge in digital marketing in Los Angeles, as well as all over the world, has really proved to be beneficial to all users.

2019 is no exception to these changes. With social media only seeming to get bigger and better, it is important to stay up to date with these enhancements. Many digital marketing agencies specialize in these platforms and focus on making sure they are always up to date and ahead of the curve. By having people who specialize in the digital marketing world on your side, it can put businesses at ease when it comes to their social media.

Social Listening 

By the looks of it, social listening is on the track to become more and more popular in 2019. This is the process of having digital conversations monitored to really understand what customers are saying about an industry or a brand online. This process provides valuable insights and helps companies look for ways to put what was learned into action. Social listening has proven very beneficial for customer service and reputation management especially. This growing trend has also been a great tool for lead generation and social selling. Here, anyone is able to find the exact services people desire by looking on people’s posts on social media. Since the sharing of customers’ ideas, questions, recommendations, and concerns on social media will not cease, social listening will only continue to grow.

 

Real-time Communication

Social media never sleeps. People continue to talk about, use, and buy products and services even after the business may be closed for the day. With new technology such as scheduled posts and chatbots, social media gives companies the opportunity to never fall behind. Instant gratification is more common than ever. People want their Twitter complaints or questions answered in a matter of seconds. This is exactly why real-time communication is so vital in the customer service realm. Many digital marketing companies specialize in these services and take the burden off of companies that may not have the time to do so themselves. A simple reply in a timely manner can make the biggest difference.

Community Management

Community management is the act of cultivating a community and creating relationships within a brand’s owned social space to attract potential customers or influence them to make a purchasing decision. It is quite a large umbrella that covers acquisition and content validity, social customer care, crisis management, retention, and advocacy. The best practice in regards to this is to continuously take note of what has worked and what has not. By constantly personalizing and attending to the customers, people tend to trust the brand more and will likely buy the product or use the services.

It is always exciting to see the new trends that will take center stage each year. Though 2019 may prove to be challenging with marketers and businesses getting used to new tools and trying to adapt, once mastered, they will prove beneficial and will only expand the ways in which people connect and consume.

Social Media Ad Objectives and Targeting Abilities for Brands and Businesses

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Using social media for your business is an absolute necessity these days. If your competitor is on social media and you aren’t, they are going to get all of your business. One of the most important strategies for social media marketing is knowing how to target the right audience for your brand or business. This is a very strategic process, however, and will be done most successfully by our Los Angeles digital marketing agency because we create and publish custom daily content and manage paid social media ads.

Brainstorm

A key step in the targeting process is narrowing down your specific audience. Begin by noting the obvious about your consumers and go from there. Simple demographic questions will help you accomplish this task. Consider the following to help you get you started: Where do they live? How old are they? What is their education status? Then dive into the more complicated inquiries to really narrow down the audience from your simple demographic qualities. What are their interests? Do they follow a competitor? Social media, particularly Facebook, is very advanced in regard to targeting a specific audience. Don’t be afraid to target every detail about their personality. Remember, it’s more ideal to target a narrow, accurate audience than to just send your ad out to people who won’t interact with it.Los Angeles Digital Marketing Agency

Which Social Media Platform?

Every social media networking site is different, so pick one that best fits your company and target audience. Facebook is a widely-used platform that gives the marketer a wide array of choices in order to target their audience. For example, in Facebook Business Manager, they give you the option of specifying your marketing objective first and then selecting the qualities of your target audience. However, while Facebook is the most in-depth for brands and businesses to target consumers, it may not be the best choice for your brand. If you want to target a younger audience, you may want to go with Instagram. A more sophisticated audience? LinkedIn. This is why hiring our Los Angeles digital marketing agency is in your best interest. There are a lot of details and aspects to this process that can be utilized to their fullest potential by professionals.  To sum up, use Facebook and Instagram if you want an experience with more choices in regard to the specific demographics and psychographics of your audience. Use Twitter and LinkedIn if you believe that specific user handles and hashtags are more pertinent to targeting your audience.Los Angeles Digital Marketing Agency

Diving Deeper into Facebook Targeting

Because Facebook Business Manager is such a complex system, we thought it best to really dive into some of the details that come with using this platform. First off, what is your marketing objective? If you want to get your name out there and reach a large amount of people, consider awareness as your main objective. Perhaps you want to increase website/social media traffic and have consumers look into your product or service, then your objective should be a consideration. Lastly, conversion is also an objective in Facebook targeting. Through this objective, your main goal should be to increase the amount of people on your website or app by tracking conversions. Through this, you can even control whether people who have already viewed your website, will view your ad.

Los Angeles Digital Marketing Agency

By hiring our Los Angeles digital marketing agency, we can walk you through this process even further to ensure your brand or business is getting the most out of the different social media ad objectives and targeting methods. See your business flourish by implementing these various social media targeting steps!

How to Engage Your Target Audience with Facebook Advertising

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What are Facebook Ads?

Facebook ads are very commonly seen when scrolling through your Facebook news feed. These are ads that companies pay for so they show up on the screens of their target audiences. They do exactly what their name says; advertise. They are just like any other advertisements, but these are limited to just Facebook.

How to Target on Facebook?

Many question how they should target their audience. There are many different methods that a business owner may use to create the audience they need. There’s location (by where a person resides), age (a certain age or a range), interests (anything they do that could be related to your business), and demographics (statistics) as the base methods. Then you can get into more detail with the behaviors of consumers, how they engage with the brand and their connections with/to the company. Knowing how to target an audience specifically is key to building that target audience for your company. Every brand is always looking for more consumers and getting more specific with how they target customers is the way to go.

 

Building a Successful Facebook Audience

Every company wants to know exactly who their audience is. By using Facebook Business Manager, you can create a specific type of audience with their Saved Audiences feature. You can create different audiences and save them there. You can also create an audience using emails or phone numbers of people whom you already know and would like to show the advertisements to. Once you’ve created your custom target audiences and saved them, you can start building your lookalike audiences.

 

Who to Target

New and upcoming business owners may not know who to target to create their perfect target audience. You target the people that are most likely going to click on the advertisement that you put out there. For example, you could target people who did not complete a purchase on your website. The other day I was online shopping and had a few things in my cart, but never actually bought them. The next day I had ads from that site all over my Facebook and other social media. They offered more deals and discounts and eventually I went back on that site and purchased what I wanted with a very good deal. Another option for target audiences are people who frequently visit the site or even engage with things like blogs, coupons, information, and other amenities from your website. You can make these different groups of people into separate, custom audiences that will help create your overall target audience.

Although at first, this may seem tedious and annoying, Facebook Advertisements do pay off in the end. It’s the little things that grab people’s attention. A business owner always wants to increase their audience, and any social media advertising will help. This will take a lot of time, effort, and patience, but in the end, you will see the results you want.

The Power of Stories in Social Media Marketing for Businesses

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Stories on Instagram are the hot, new, marketing tool that every business should be utilizing. They provide a sense of importance, and urgency, due to their time-sensitive nature. They also allow businesses’ to create a more unique and personalized experience for their followers. With the help of a social media marketing agency, these stories can dramatically change your brand, for the better. Read on to discover just how important Instagram stories can be for your growing business.

Interaction

Stories can be an ideal tool for interacting with followers. Features such as polls can create a sense of involvement, and increase activity on your social media. They can also be used to directly interact with fans. Some instances of this could be question and answer sessions, or simply reposting fan photos. With increased community engagement, follower loyalty, in conjunction, will also skyrocket.  The bottom-line seems to be, if you can engage more with followers the more likely they are to continue to follow. Stories are a great way to do this without it being overwhelming, or annoying. The story’s time-sensitive nature provides a reminder that you care about the individuals that follow your business.

 

Special Offers/ Announcements

Stories are a fantastic way to highlight promotions, especially if they are time sensitive. It also incentivizes following your business, because viewing the story is the sole way to receive the deal. Additionally, using the stories feature to make announcements is a fantastic way to avoid cluttering your main feed. It also makes your announcement feel special and can keep your followers on their toes.

 

Behind the Scenes

Behind the scenes, stories are a great way to humanize your brand. Showing how the “sausage is made” can create a more personal feel and make your business seem less corporate, and warm and inviting. These kinds of stories show that there are real people involved in your business and can give a new dimension to your brand’s image.

Ads

Promoting your brand through a story is a great way to grab an individual’s attention. There is even an option available, through paid ads, where the viewer can swipe up to be directed to your website. If you are aware of your target audience, this is a perfect option to promote your brand. They can almost be considered as mini commercials!

Instagram Stories are becoming a critical feature when it comes to promoting your brand online. They are quick, effective, and can be used in numerous capacities.  With the assistance of a social media marketing agency, your brand’s Instagram stories could become the main marketing campaign for your entire business!

The Top Ways to Use Instagram Marketing to Grow Your Brand

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Instagram is an extremely effective platform when attempting to market your growing brand. For one, the platform is essentially built to showcase images; one of which could be your business. And in fact, one should be your business. With the assistance of an Instagram marketing agency and these tips, you can easily promote your brand on Instagram. Read on to find out how.

Use the Story Feature

The story feature may be one of the newest, yet one of the most useful, tools to market your brand on Instagram.  Stories are temporary, yet effective ways to remind people of your presence on a day to day basis. They can also be used to interact, and show the fun side of your brand. Using polling options, your business can even engage with your fans. Additionally, the new IGTV tool is a great option to create videos marketing your brand that are slightly longer than what a story could allow. These can even be treated as a place to make your brand’s own, “commercials”. The story feature is easily one of the strongest outlets to market your brand, and should absolutely be utilized to enhance growth.

Exciting Themes

Creating consistency in your images is important; however, your brand’s posts should be exciting, and represent what your brand is all about. Branching out to images beyond your product or service is a great way to keep fans on their toes. Monotony is boring, so being exciting and original is imperative to the retention of followers.

 

 

Shoppable Tags
Shoppable tags are extremely effective when marketing your brand on Instagram. Many Instagram marketing agencies suggest implementing these icons to send the customer straight to the product featured, in order to purchase. This can dramatically increase your sales and fight the fickle nature of the indecisive, online shopper. These tags also showcase your services directly to your audience and create transparency in what you offer.

Engagement

Creating ads for your brand is great, but they are not going to fully take you where you want to go. In order to continually keep individuals interested in your business, and accumulate new fans, the key is to stay active and maintain engagement. There are numerous ways to do this. As mentioned earlier, utilizing the stories feature is a fantastic avenue to take. Additionally, interacting with followers on a regular basis can create loyalty and will encourage your fans to also contribute.

Instagram has proven time and time again, that it is a very fruitful platform on which to market your growing brand. If you utilize these tips, and tools, with the consultation of an Instagram marketing agency, your brand has the potential to grow exponentially.

Top Ways to Use Social Media to Increase Brand Awareness

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It can be difficult to create a following for your brand on social media. Many individuals find themselves desperately trying to increase their brand awareness, to no avail. However, growing your social media presence is simpler than one may believe. Read on to discover the top ways to use social media to increase brand awareness.

Be Unique               

It is easy to compare your brand to others, especially when everyone is so deeply interconnected through the internet. However, there is a massive difference between taking inspiration from other brands, and completely duplicating their style. What will really cause your brand to stand out and be discovered is to be innovative and original. Seeing what works for others is a fantastic jumping off point for brands looking to define themselves. Though, what will really spark the recognition every brand strives for, is creating a one-of-a-kind experience for the customer.

Be Recognizable

The absolute key to increasing social media brand awareness is through having a customer recognize your brand. Individuals have very short attention spans, so your brand has mere seconds to make a lasting impression. The goal should be that the customer, if encountering your brand again or thinking of anything related to your brand, will recall who you are. The most fool-proof way to do this is through logos. Individuals are very visual; so being able to be identified, through an image, is imperative to brand growth. Because of this, your brand’s logo should be clean, representative, and unique.

Tagging and Creating a Network

Your brand’s social media accounts are their own little world. Everything in them is content from you, but that is a very closed circuit. If nothing from the outside world ever comes in, it is significantly more difficult to create a community. Posting things that inspire you, or relate to your brand is a great way to broaden your community. Tagging relatable brands, individuals, or events can alert others, “Hey we’re here too”.  More individuals than one would think, click on tagged images. If they can find you, with stellar content, your brand will speak for itself.

Oh Caption, My Caption

Whether or not you enjoyed my pun referencing Walt Whitman, it caught your attention, right? This highlights a major point that captions do not have to be so serious! Whether it’s a pun, a joke, or even a more casual way of writing; captions can engage your viewers, and draw them into your content. It is an innovative way to highlight who you are and can give your brand a unique voice. Individuals are also far more likely to engage, share, and like if they see something new, or intriguing. This tip is also applicable to commenting and engaging with fans. It is oh so common to receive a corporate, “thanks for sharing” or, “great pic”. These types of replies are lacking in both personality and enthusiasm. Individuals appreciate personalization, so taking a minute of your time to handcraft a response will go a long way.

 Consistency

To play, you have to show up. This saying perfectly describes the necessity of being a consistent presence on social media. If your brand posts rarely, there will be no opportunity to engage with followers and accumulate new ones. Because truly, who wants to waste their time on a brand that is never active on their accounts? By consistently posting, and building your presence, individuals will be more susceptible to discovering your accounts, and subsequently, more inclined to stay updated on your brand.

Attempting to generate social media brand awareness for your company can often seem daunting, and even slightly overwhelming. Rather than shooting in the dark, there are tactics that can minimize this stress. By utilizing the tips listed above, or by consulting with a social media agency, expanding your reach on social media can be significantly simplified, and much more effective.

The Top Industries that Should Maximize Social Media Marketing

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Social Media marketing is easily one of the most important resources of today’s business’ and industries. But you may be asking yourself, is it really that necessary for companies to invest in. In short, the answer is yes, absolutely. Put simply, businesses, companies, and industries cannot experience maximum growth without attempting to maximize social media marketing, […]

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