YouTube, with its staggering 2.7 billion logged-in monthly users (that’s about 1/4th of the global population) – is not just a website or an app – it’s a cultural phenomenon. The statistics are mind-boggling: over 400 hours of video are uploaded every minute. and the platform is available in more than 100 countries and 80 languages. 

The numbers don’t lie; YouTube’s reach is truly global.

But what’s most intriguing about YouTube isn’t just the statistics; it’s the opportunities it presents. This includes the relatively recent addition of YouTube Shorts, a platform for creating and sharing short-form videos. It follows the steps of TikTok – the short-form video-creating platform that has taken the internet by storm.

In this article, we’ll guide you through the world of YouTube Shorts, sharing insights, tips, and strategies to help you turn your creativity into cash, all in an easily digestible manner. 

So, get ready to learn how to make money on YouTube Shorts and ride the wave of this trend.

Why Monetize Your YouTube Shorts?

Before we dive into the ‘how,’ let’s tackle the ‘why’ of making money on YouTube Shorts. After all, understanding the motivation behind any venture is key to its success.

1) Engage with a wider audience:

Short, snappy videos are perfect for capturing viewers’ attention with short attention spans. Whether you’re a seasoned content creator or just starting, Shorts can help you reach a broader and more diverse audience.

Plus, with the YouTube algorithm favouring Shorts, your content has a better chance of getting discovered.

2) Low-cost production:

Another aspect of YouTube Shorts is its low production costs.

No need for fancy cameras, professional lighting, or elaborate sets. Your smartphone and a pinch of creativity are often all you need. This means you can experiment without breaking the bank, and every view can translate into potential earnings.

3) Monetization potential:

YouTube Shorts has opened up exciting monetization opportunities. There are multiple ways to turn your passion into a paycheck, from ad revenue to channel memberships, merchandise shelf integration, and Super Chats during live streams. Maybe check out the 2023 YouTube Shorts Richlist to see how much you can earn.

4) Express Your Creativity:

YouTube Shorts provides an outlet for your creative spark. Do you have a wild idea, a hilarious skit, or a quick life hack to share? Shorts allow you to showcase your creativity in under a minute. No need for long-winded explanations or elaborate setups. Just grab your phone and let your imagination flow. So, why not make an income out of it?

How Much Can You Earn?

Are you wondering how much money do YouTube shorts make?

As mentioned earlier, you can check out the list of the top 23 richest YouTubers to see how much you can really make on YouTube.

The amount of money you can earn from YouTube Shorts will vary depending on several factors, such as the number of views your Shorts get, the type of ads displayed, and your engagement rate.

According to a recent study by VidIQ, the average YouTube Shorts creator earns around $0.01 per Shorts view. However, top Shorts creators can earn significantly more, with some earning upwards of $100 per 100,000 views.

Now you might be wondering how YouTube shorts make money.

5 Ways to Earn Money With YouTube Shorts

1) YouTube Partner Program

The YouTube Partner Program (YPP) is a service that allows YouTube content creators to earn money from their videos. To join the YPP, you must meet the following requirements:

• Have at least 1,000 subscribers and have at least 4,000 watch hours in the past 12 months

or

• Have at least 1,000 subscribers and have 10 million Shorts views in the last 90 days.

Once you have joined the YPP, you will be able to monetize your YouTube Shorts in two main ways:

1. Shorts Ad Revenue Sharing: YouTube shares a portion of the ad revenue generated from Shorts views with creators. The amount of money you earn per Shorts view will vary depending on many factors, such as the country of your viewers and the type of ads displayed.
   
2. Super Chat and Super Stickers: Super Chat and Super Stickers are features that allow viewers to support their favorite creators with paid messages. When a viewer sends a Super Chat or Super Sticker, their message is highlighted in the chat and the creator earns a portion of the money spent.

2) Affiliate Programs

Affiliate programs are a type of performance-based marketing. It allows you to earn a commission for selling other people’s services or products.

To get started, you simply join an affiliate program and promote the services or products you are interested in.

When someone buys a product through your affiliate link, you will earn a commission on the sale.

Affiliate programs can be a great way for YouTube Shorts creators to make money. You can earn a commission on any sales you generate by promoting relevant products or services in your Shorts videos.

Here are a few tips for using affiliate programs to make money from YouTube Shorts:

• Choose the right affiliate programs: When choosing affiliate programs to promote, it’s important to choose programs relevant to your audience and offering competitive commission rates.

You can find a variety of affiliate programs to choose from through affiliate networks such as

• Amazon Associates
• eBay Partner Network
• Etsy Affiliate Program
• Shopify Affiliate Program
• ClickBank
• ShareASale
• And many other niche programs
  
• Promote affiliate products or services in your Shorts videos: After choosing an affiliate program to promote, you can start promoting them in your Shorts videos. Be sure to disclose to your viewers that you are using affiliate links and may earn a commission if they purchase a product or service through your link.

3) Brand Partnerships

A brand partnership is a collaboration between a YouTube Shorts creator and a brand. In a brand partnership, the creator will create content that promotes the brand’s products or services. The brand will then pay the creator for their services.

Brand partnerships are a great way for YouTube Shorts creators to make money. Brands are always looking for new and innovative ways to reach their target audience, and YouTube Shorts is a great platform for them to do that.

Here are a few tips for getting brand partnerships on YouTube Shorts:

• Create high-quality content: The first step is to create high-quality content relevant to your niche that your audience will enjoy. If your content is good, brands will likely want to partner with you.
  
• Build a large audience: Brands are typically more interested in partnering with creators with a large audience. So, the more subscribers and views you have, the more likely you are to be able to get brand partnerships.
  
• Reach out to brands: Once you have a large audience and create high-quality content, you can start reaching out to brands you think would be a good fit for your channel. You can do this by sending them an email or messaging them.

Be sure to explain why you think a partnership would benefit both of you.

Here are a few examples of brand partnerships that YouTube Shorts creators have done:

• MrBeast with Honey and Quidd
• Charli D’Amelio with Dunkin’ and Hollister.
• Addison Rae with Reebok and American Eagle.

4) Channel Memberships

Channel memberships allow YouTube creators to earn money by offering exclusive perks to their paid members. Members can receive badges, emotes, exclusive content, Discord server access, and early video access, etc.

Channel memberships are a great way for YouTube Shorts creators to make money, especially if they have a large and engaged audience. Members are typically more likely to watch and share the creator’s content, which can help the creator grow their channel and reach a wider audience.

Here are a few tips for using channel memberships to make money from YouTube Shorts:

• Offer exclusive perks to members: Give your members a reason to sign up for your channel membership by offering them exclusive perks they can’t get anywhere else. This could include early access to videos, exclusive content, or behind-the-scenes footage.
  
• Interact with your members: Respond to their comments and questions, and host live streams where you can interact with them in real-time. This will help you build a stronger relationship with your members and give them more incentives to buy your membership package.

5) Selling Merchandise

Selling merchandise is a great way for YouTube Shorts creators to make money and build a stronger relationship with their fans. By selling merchandise, creators can give their fans a way to show their support.

There are a few different ways that YouTube Shorts creators can sell merchandise.

• One option is to create their online store and sell merchandise directly to their fans.
• Another option is to partner with a merchandise company that specializes in selling merchandise for YouTube creators.

In the image below you can see the YouTube Star Jelly made his own merch.

Can You Earn Money Under 1k Subscribers?

To qualify for complete monetization on YouTube Shorts, it is necessary to possess at least 1,000 subscribers. Additionally, you must meet one of the following criteria: either have garnered 10 million valid public Shorts views within the last 90 days or accumulated 4,000 valid public watch hours from long-form videos in the past 12 months.

It’s important to note that watch hours from Shorts in the Shorts Feed do not contribute to meeting the watch hour threshold. Therefore, if your primary content focus is on Shorts, achieving the required Shorts views is the preferable goal to pursue.

How can a Social Scheduling Tool Help?

A social media scheduling tool like Hopper HQ can be a game-changer when it comes to monetizing YouTube Shorts. YouTube Shorts is a powerful platform for short-form video content, and leveraging it effectively can lead to substantial income. Here’s how Hopper HQ can help:

1. Consistent Posting: Hopper HQ allows you to schedule your YouTube Shorts in advance. This consistency is crucial for building an engaged audience. Regular uploads keep viewers coming back for more, increasing your monetization potential.
2. Optimal Timing: The tool helps you post at the best times for your target audience, maximizing views and engagement. This can lead to higher watch time and ultimately, more ad revenue.
3. Cross-Promotion: Hopper HQ also supports cross-promotion across other social media platforms, increasing your Shorts’ visibility and driving more traffic to your YouTube channel.
4. Data Insights: With analytics features, you can track the performance of your Shorts, understanding what works best. This knowledge allows you to refine your content strategy, potentially leading to even greater monetization opportunities.

In summary, Hopper HQ streamlines your YouTube Shorts posting process, enhancing your chances of making money through increased views, engagement, and audience growth!

Closing Thoughts

So, are you dreaming of racking millions of views on your shorts? YouTube Shorts has the potential to turn that dream into a reality. So, go ahead, hit that record button, and start crafting content that captivates and entertains. 

Tools like Hopper HQ can be a game-changer if you need extra help to optimize your YouTube Shorts strategy.

They offer valuable insights, analytics, and scheduling capabilities to help you maximize your Shorts and boost your earning potential.

So, what are you waiting for? Start creating, start sharing, and start earning on YouTube Shorts.

The post How to Make Money on YouTube Shorts appeared first on Hopper HQ.

This article aims to guide users through this essential aspect. Perfect timing boosts post visibility, essential for businesses and individuals looking to grow their audience. It also enhances user engagement, fostering a stronger connection between the poster and their active followers. 

Additionally, these insights are invaluable for strategic digital marketing, enabling content creators to optimize their impact and engagement. Stay tuned as we uncover when to post on Instagram in 2024.

The Best time to post on Instagram 

The best time to post on Instagram is 9 to 10 am on Wednesdays.

• Monday: 12 pm to 2 pm

• Tuesday: 8 am to 10 am

• Wednesday: 11 am to 1 pm

• Thursday: 12 pm to 2 pm

• Friday: 4 pm to 6 pm

• Saturday: 10 am to 1 pm

• Sunday: 5 pm to 7 pm

Best times during the weekday :

• 7am – 9am (morning commute)
• 12 pm – 2 pm (lunch hours)
• 5 pm – 6 pm (end of workday)
• 9 pm – 11 pm (bedtime scrolling)

Best time on weekends:

• 9 am to 11 am
• 2 pm to 5 pm 

The Best day to post on Instagram: Wednesdays

The worst day to post on Instagram: Mondays

When is the best time to post on Instagram?

It is not easy to figure out when is the best time to post on Instagram for every day of the week. Many factors need to be taken into consideration, like your target audience, geography, cultural celebrations and more.

But we’ve curated a few data-based suggestions below:

Best time to post on Instagram on Monday:

The best time to post on Instagram on Monday is between 12 pm and 2 pm. It seems like most people on Mondays are motivated and focused on their work. Only being active on social media, which includes Instagram starting during their lunch break. 

Best time to post on Instagram on Tuesday:

On Tuesdays, the best time to post seems to be earlier in the morning when users are commuting to work. After getting over the Monday blues, from 8 am to 10 am individuals spend less time stressed out providing space for some more leisure time. 

Best time to post on Instagram on Wednesday:

Interestingly Wednesday seems to be the day when most users are active, especially later in the morning around 11 am. You may also notice more activity throughout working hours as people start getting tired of their week. 

Best time to post on Instagram on Thursday:

Similar to Mondays, during lunch breaks would be the best time to post on Thursday. Starting from 12pm until about 2pm would be when most of your target audience is active. However, you need to take into consideration industry and age. 

Best time to post on Instagram on Friday:

On Fridays compared to the other weekdays, it might make more sense to post closer to the end of the afternoon. Starting around 4pm until 7pm. Users are more likely to be online as their work week has ended and they cna start unwinding for their weekend. 

Best time to post on Instagram on Saturday:

On Saturdays, it might sound non-intuitive but posting earlier in the morning could be the way to go! Between the window of 10 am to about 1 pm lunchtime, your posts can get higher engagement. As people sleep in or have slower mornings, it is more likely that they’d be on the gram. 

Best time to post on Instagram on Sunday:

The best time to post on Instagram on Sunday would be closer to the evening starting at 5 pm to 7 pm. This is when users are prepping themselves for the coming week and would most likely spend their evenings at home or just relaxing. 

Best time to post Reels on Instagram

We all know that each type of Instagram content serves its purpose. So, we can’t assume that all of them would be successful at the same time. When speaking about Instagram Reels, timing your post can make a substantial difference in maximizing engagement. 

For this reason and backed with data, we believe that the best time to post Instagram Reels is during lunch hours 11 am to 2 pm, and evenings after 6 pm. However, remember that these times can vary depending on your target audience. This is why using an external tool like Hopper HQ can help. 

Analyzing your Instagram Insights can provide a more tailored understanding of when your followers are most engaged. Remember, consistency in posting and quality of content also play a crucial role in the success of your Reels.

Best time to post Stories on Instagram

Instagram Stories is one of the most popular types of content shared on the platform. It allows you to keep your current following up-to-date with what you’re doing or even use them as reminders for events or to promote newly published posts. 

Similar to Instagram Reels, the best time to post Stories is during lunch breaks, between 11 am and 2 pm.  Also, you may want to consider posting on weekends or Fridays as users tend to spend more time active on the app as well as gain a growing curiosity to see what their close network is up to. 

Keep in mind that the impact of Stories varies depending on if your profile is an individual or a brand. Individuals would have more success on weekends compared to a brand. 

How to find when to post on Instagram

There are two primary ways in which you can figure out the best time to point on Instagram. One way is by using the Instagram app and the other option is to use a social media management tool like Hopper HQ: 

1) Using the Instagram app:

Instagram provides you with basic data on the best time to post, however, you’d need to have a business or creator account to see this. 

1. Open the app and head to your Instagram profile
2. Click on the hamburger icon and select insights 
3. Select on the option “Total Followers” and scroll down 
4. On the bottom of the screen, you should see a graph similar to the one below. 

Unfortunately, even though Instagram has this graph available, it doesn’t provide any more details. Like for example, you won’t know how many users are active during each time frame. You’ll only be told that it’s the best time. 

2) Using Hopper HQ:

Hopper HQ works out the best time to post on Instagram for you and your audience based on follower activity and post engagement.

Once you connect your Business Instagram account to Hopper HQ, it analyzes your follower activity to tell you which followers are active at each hour of each day 

Here’s how it works:

1. Create a Hopper HQ account and connect your Instagram and Facebook profile 
2. When everything is set up, head to your Instagram analytics
3. Click on the “Best Time to Post” tab and you’ll be shown a similar table to the one below. 

In this table, you can easily see a customized schedule for when is the best time to post on your Instagram account. You can then play around with the toggle to see when your least or most amount of followers are online. 

Hopper HQ provides you with other detailed analytics that can also help you better understand what to post and when. The Hopper HQ analytics also looks at your post history; It notes what day of the week and hour each of your posts was published, It then looks at the engagement (total number of likes and comments) for each post in each hour of the day, and divides them by the total number of posts in that hour 

Hopper HQ is a visual planning and scheduling tool for Instagram, bringing the creativity back to social media management and freeing up time to focus on the areas of marketing you love most  Try it free today with our 14-day trial.

Other best times to posts you might want to check out:

• Best time to post on TikTok
• Best time to post on X
• Best time to post on YouTube Shorts
• Best time to post on Threads

The post Best Time To Post On Instagram In 2024 appeared first on Hopper HQ.

However, not everyone knows that AI in social media helps gain a competitive edge when creating marketing campaigns.

In a world where the popularity and power of AI are growing each day, it only makes sense to jump on the bandwagon and make it work to your advantage! Read on to explore how AI can be used to scale your marketing effort in social media and drive your business value with our insights.

What Is AI?

Before we dive in, let’s first answer the question of what AI is. While most of us have heard of it or even used it, not everyone completely understands it. Nonetheless, it’s much less fanciful than many people think. 

AI is the ability of a computer program or a machine to recreate human thought patterns to complete tasks and learn, thus reducing the effort on the human part. To accomplish those goals, researchers study how our brain thinks and, based on the outcomes of this study, develop intelligent system models. 

Machine learning (ML) is a sub-field of AI that is a way to create problem-solving systems. It’s a bit limited in capabilities, but when it comes to predicting outcomes, the accuracy of ML is hard to beat. 

So how do researchers study the brain? In case you ask, they don’t connect electrodes to neurons or anything like that. What they do is collect data. This explains why almost every organization is now so desperate to collect data on the activity of their users.  For example, they can order react native app development services, collect arrays of user data, and feed it to the machines for delivering even a higher level of user experience.   

AI in Social Media?

When it comes to social media, they owe their existence to AI technology. Take, for example, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, or LinkedIn. These platforms constantly track the behavior patterns of users. Offering them profiles and ads they are most likely to engage with. 

Similarly, Amazon’s algorithms effectively increase engagement by using view history to find more content you might be interested in.

However, not only are platforms themselves using AI. AI offers lots of advantages to social media users, too, making it a hidden gem for influencers and marketing specialists.

One simple application of AI in social media is its ability to help you identify and track posts that include mentions. This not only keeps you informed about current trends, but also enables you to establish a strong and effective online presence. By closely monitoring these posts, you can gain valuable insights that will inform and enhance your overall social media marketing strategy

Plan & Schedule Your Social Media Posts

Visually plan your posts. Drag & drop everywhere in seconds

Create Your First Post

How Can AI and ML Help You Supercharge Social Media?

Now that you know how big an impact AI has on pretty much any aspect of business and marketing. Let’s take a closer look at how you can leverage it for your social media marketing strategy.

Create and Manage Social Media Content

Content has never been in such demand as it is today. It’s at the base of everything: 

• Launching a new e-commerce website that needs product descriptions;
• Post a job offer;
• Writing an ad to sell your phone. 

By creating compelling content, you can differentiate yourself from your competitors and attract the target audience.

Marketers are constantly generating content to distribute across various channels. Not only that, but they are also responsible for managing it and tracking its performance. This can be a huge amount of work if you have to deal with multiple accounts. 

To make this job easier, companies use regular social management tools for the automatization of scheduling and monitoring processes. (Check out Hopper HQ the social media scheduling tool) However, with AI, you can up the ante and take your social media content to a whole new level. 

First off, many tools can be used to auto-generate posts. Some of them, like copyAI, can even include hashtags and shortened links so there’s no human effort. Besides, some tools can auto-schedule your posts, enabling you to create and share posts in bulk. This would normally take a big chunk of your work time. 

By and large, AI offers lots of advantages for content creation, making it a smart weapon in the arsenal of any marketing manager or business. AI can find employment not only in social networks but also in the creation of content for the website blog. For example, when digital transformation in the insurance industry, this is a frequently used tactic.

More Accurate Insights for Increased Revenue

Social media is a great tool to analyze customer behavior. The only catch is, it relies on such a big volume of data. No man on earth would be prepared to process that information manually. That’s where machine learning (ML) comes into play. 

With ML, you can accurately process all those thousands of random conversations that happen every day. As well as scaling your social media analysis to any amount of data you want. As a result, you’ll be far ahead of your competitors. And your marketing efforts will most likely pay off in increased revenue.

Let’s look at some examples of how you can harness the potential of ML for improved social media strategy. 

Simple Post, Story + Reel Scheduling

Visually plan your social content. Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn + Pinterest

Try Hopper HQ Now

Engaging Words, Headlines, Videos, and Images

The ability of ML to recognize language patterns, images, videos, and even metadata makes it a useful tool for categorizing posts. However, this isn’t the only strength of ML. Its biggest advantage is that it can detect new topics and trends that haven’t been covered yet, thus giving you a source of inspiration. 

On top of that, AI technology comes in handy when you need to create a catchy headline or find powerful words to appeal to your audience. Unlike humans, it can crawl through trillions of posts virtually in minutes to pick out the most effective parts that people are explicitly looking for. 

What about visual platforms like Snapchat, Pinterest, and similar that have only a little bit of text? That’s where ML shines again. Where most traditional tools are helpless, ML algorithms have no difficulty recognizing things like faces, logos, and objects, making it easy for you to track what people are sharing about your brand on social networks. 

Use AI-based Social Monitoring or Listening Tools

While almost every brand claims to listen to customers, only those who use AI-based social media listening tools do so. If you’re not using them yet, now is the time to start. 

There are many goals you can accomplish with social media listening tools, but the most important one is that you can hear what people think about your product and brand and translate this voice data into actionable insights. Sprinklr, Mention, and SentiOne are just a few of the tools you can try.

Find the Most Relevant Posts and Reduce Costs

Writing just for the sake of writing is rarely a good idea, especially given the cost and effort it involves. This is why every future-oriented business will benefit from AI implementation. AI algorithms can analyze how existing content aligns with current trends and customer interests, and give you ideas for the next most relevant posts. 

Plus, AI can do all the marketing work for you, determining the most effective content strategy, including:

• What keywords to use; 
• When to publish; 
• How often to publish; 
• Which channels to use for content distribution. 

So you can save time and further reduce costs.

Use Content Creation Software

Today there is such a choice of content creation tools that everyone, regardless of their marketing initiatives, will be able to find the most suitable one. So, whether you’re looking to create a quiz or infographics to post on your Facebook account, or you need a powerful social media ad for an upcoming product release, AI-based content creation software has you covered. 

Using content creation software also allows you to save money and time that you’d otherwise spend creating and resizing your creatives. It only takes one good ad, and AI will automatically tweak it so you can distribute it across different social media channels.

Finally, many AI-powered tools can write Instagram and Facebook social media ads for you, sparing you the need to hire professional copywriters.

Multilingual Analysis

From time to time, it’s important to perform a sentimental analysis. Sentimental analysis is a great tool to determine what people feel about your product or service and fine-tune the marketing strategy accordingly. For example, if the overall impression of your brand is low, you can take a step back to analyze the reason. If it’s high, you can consider going public.

But what do you do if you have an international user base? If you don’t have a multilingual team who can assess the emotion behind every social post correctly, you should resort to the use of ML. 

Luckily, there are tons of tools like: 

• MonkeyLearn, 
• Lexalytics, 
• Brandwatch, etc. 

These are designed to conduct multilingual analysis in more than one language.

Image and Video Recognition

The diversity of content on social media presents a challenge for traditional social media management tools, as they struggle to capture both text-based and multimedia content. However, AI overcomes this challenge, and is able to handle a wide range of content with ease.

How Can AI in Social Media Help You Identify Visuals?

Visual AI, or computer vision as it’s also known, can identify images and videos in more ways than one. What it does is it teaches machines to “see” images the same way people do so they can recognize an object and pinpoint its location and orientation in the image. 

Visual AI comes in especially helpful when it comes to categorizing objects. Not only will it provide you with information on how many objects there are in an image, but it will also label them all correctly, by making a quick comparison with the images it has in its library. 

It may sound a bit futuristic, but in fact, many of these tools are already widely used. Facial recognition function, QR code scanning, and visual search are just a few examples worth mentioning.

Understand What Your Audience Means

The purpose of a social post is to attract an audience. That said, you don’t want to attract just any audience if your marketing campaign is focused on conversion optimization. That’s where ML comes to your rescue. 

Unlike traditional tools that segment audiences according to static attributes, ML allows you to expand your reach by targeting people based on predictions of their future behavior. As a result, you can attract those users who are the most valuable to your business. 

One example widely used in digital marketing is programming advertising.

Utilize ML for Sentiment Analysis

As we’ve already mentioned, it’s important to measure the effectiveness of your marketing effort by conducting sentiment analysis. If the people you are targeting have a low opinion of your product or service or are not interested in it, your marketing campaign will fail. 

However, with the use of ML, you can monitor those trends and make timely adjustments.

Find New Audiences, Trends, and Topics

If you notice that people come to your brand but then leave without taking any action, chances are they haven’t found the answers they were looking for. To increase engagement and reach new audiences, you can use AI. It will come up with new topics for the content as well as add specific details to ensure that it keeps your audience highly engaged at all times.

Track Global Brand Mentions

While marketing encourages creativity, it often boils down to testing techniques that have already been proven to work. So why not take a peek at global brands? AI allows you to go the extra mile. Not only can you find all world-known brands by simply entering relevant hashtags but you can also highlight posts that offer the most value to you.

Identify Relevant Influencers and Engaging Accounts

Sometimes, all it takes to liven up your social media account is to find the right influencer. But where do you look for one? You can take advantage of AI-powered influencer research platforms. These platforms will guide you to the best one based on an analysis of their account activity and your marketing goals. 

You could go in the footsteps of McFedries. McFedries produced an artificial avatar Li Miquela and create your own AI influencer. With technology, the sky’s the limit!

Analyze in a Smart Way

If you are struggling with structuring your efforts on social media, AI can lend you a helping hand. Here are a few examples of how it can be used to leverage social media advertising and drive outcomes. 

Make Accurate Predictions

Marketing requires a deep understanding of customer behavior patterns. This is why marketers spend a lot of time analyzing data. However, they often don’t have access to the same level of tools as AI, which can generate more accurate predictions

AI nails this job. Whether it’s social media or any other channel you use to distribute the content. AI can help you predict LTV and extend it, by giving you insights into how the user experience can be improved.

Prioritize Content on Your Website

With all of the insights AI can give you, it should be easier for you to give users what they want by focusing on the topics they’re looking for. Likewise, you’ll never have difficulty understanding what posts don’t perform well. As AI will always provide you with up-to-date suggestions through the lens of business capabilities.

FAQ

What is Artificial Intelligence (AI)?

In layman’s terms, artificial intelligence is the ability of a computer to think like a human and learn. This is achieved through constant training based on the data collected from multiple sources. 

What are the benefits of AI in social media?

The benefits of AI are numerous. The most important one of them is it can help you save a lot of marketing costs while notably accelerating revenue. 

For example, rather than hiring a copywriter, you can use AI to generate posts at a frequency you want and optimize them for various social media platforms. 

If you want to improve your digital marketing strategy, you can take advantage of AI programming advertising. This will let you reach the audience most likely to be interested in your ad. 

How is social media using AI?

Social media is using AI extensively. From showing users an ad that will most likely grab their attention to listening to their conversations and processing visuals. There is tons of data that social media processing with AI every day. Even such services as Netflix use AI technology, which allows it to come up with visuals that are most likely to captivate the viewer.

TRY HOPPER HQ FREERefreshingly Simple Post, Story + Reel Scheduling

Visually plan all your social channels. Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook + LinkedIn.

Try Hopper HQ Now

The post AI in Social Media: How to Use AI to Supercharge Your Social Media Marketing appeared first on Hopper HQ.

Now an almost $2 billion industry, Instagram influencer marketing has taken the social media world by storm. In recent years, Instagram users around the globe have begun making a living from paid posts and collaborative marketing campaigns.

The app offers the perfect space for brand ambassadorship, with influential users authentically recommending products and services to their loyal audience. With the influencer space estimated to grow to a $5-10 billion industry by 2021, it’s clearly a marketing force that isn’t going anywhere…

We’ve compiled all you need to know about Instagram influencer marketing and the way it works into this simple guide!

Contents:

1. Instagram Influencer Marketing: In A Nutshell
2. Why Instagram Influencer Marketing Works
3. How Much Do Instagram Influencers Cost?
4. What Makes An Instagram Influencer?
5. How To Work With Influencers On Instagram
6. The Future Of Instagram Influencer Marketing

1. Instagram Influencer Marketing: In A Nutshell

People who have built a large and engaged following on Instagram are known as ‘influencers’, due to the fact that their followers idolise them and respect their opinions. They may have acquired a loyal following due to their lifestyle, their job or hobby, the clothes they wear or the stories they tell.

The pool of influencers is vast and diverse, meaning almost any brand has the potential to utilise Instagram influencer marketing for their industry and target demographic. 

The emergence of Instagram influencers opened up huge opportunities for businesses looking to authentically market their products to their target audience, and thus the ‘paid post’ phenomenon was born.

In the early days, it might have been enough for a brand to send an influencer one of their products as a gift, in return for them posting about it on their profile. But this changed with the rapid growth of the space, as influencers realised they could not only gain free products, but actually charge brands for grid real estate on their profile.

Plan & Schedule Your Social Media Posts

Visually plan your posts. Drag & drop everywhere in seconds

Create Your First Post

2. Why Instagram Influencer Marketing Works

Influencer marketing allows brands to reach their target audience in a way that feels far more genuine than traditional advertising.

Rather than businesses selling directly to consumers, they are building relationships with influencers who can sell for them. Instagram influencers have a strong and loyal relationship with their followers, as they share many aspects of their lives with them. This leads us to feel like we know them personally, so when an influencer we like recommends something, we listen as we would if it were a friend.

For example, if you follow a travel blogger for their beautiful photos or funny captions, and they post about an airplane pillow that gave them the best night’s sleep on a long haul flight, you’re more inclined to remember the brand and buy it for your next holiday because you like and trust them. Makes sense, right?

With 800 million active users, Instagram has become the platform of choice for influencer marketing. 72% of users said they have made fashion, beauty or style-related purchases after seeing something on the app, proving its power in the digital marketing landscape of 2020. 

72% of Instagram users said they have made fashion, beauty or style-related purchases after seeing something on the app, proving its power in the digital marketing landscape of 2020. By @Nicola_HHQ
Click To Tweet

3. How Much Do Instagram Influencers Cost?

To give an idea of numbers in the Instagram influencer marketing world, Hopper HQ’s annual Instagram Rich List disclosed just how much money the top influencers and celebrities can earn from a single post.

Kylie Jenner bagged the top spot, charging over $1 million for a product-related post on her Instagram profile. Considering the 21 year old wiped out $1.3 billion of Snapchat’s market value with a single tweet earlier last year, her influence — and that of her whole family — is certainly not to be underestimated.

The amount an influencer can charge per post will vary depending on a number of factors, including follow number, engagement rate, and industry.

Elle Cuthbert-Edkins, our Customer Success Manager here at Hopper HQ, spoke on the BBC about the current state of Instagram influencer marketing. She emphasised the importance of engagement over follower number, explaining that “we’re typically seeing brands work exclusively with influencers who have a 10-20% engagement rate”, ensuring that the followers are truly interested in what the influencer is posting.

Engagement rate = no. of likes and comments ÷ no. of followers

'We’re typically seeing brands work exclusively with influencers who have a 10-20% engagement rate' @Elle_HopperHQ on influencer marketing
Click To Tweet

From our Rich List methodology and data, we found that many collaboration deals are worked out by 100,000 followers. For example, the beauty industry charges on average £162 per 100,000 followers for a single post. For many influencers that have followers in the millions, this level of sponsorship enables them to make a living from Instagram.

Check out the Hopper HQ 2023 Instagram Rich List to see which celebrities and influencers topped the charts across all industries

4. What Makes An Instagram Influencer?

There’s no strict criteria for being classed as an Instagram influencer. Any user who has a fairly high, engaged following — of people who actually care about what they do — will have an influence over their audience and is a valuable marketing proposition for brands.

If you’re a social media manager looking to start Instagram influencer marketing, do your research to ensure:

1. Their follower demographic is well matched to your target audience
2. Their following and engagement is genuine

Due to the existence of bots giving out likes and comments on users’ behalves, as well as the ability to buy followers, some Instagram accounts may look like influencers, but actually don’t have a loyal following or any real influence at all — we call them ‘ghost followers’.

Generic comments such as ‘’ or ‘Awesome shot!’ are likely to be from accounts using an engagement bot, so if these are the only kinds of interactions on an influencer’s posts, it’s likely that they don’t actually have the influence they’re making out.

NOTE: these bots will comment on posts of users in a chosen target demographic or using certain hashtags in order to increase brand awareness and get more followers. It makes sense, however they have become very easy to spot and don’t actually start genuine conversations! 

Another important indicator of a good influencer is that they are responsible with their partnership choices, truly taking into consideration their followers’ interests and ensuring they only do sponsored posts with brands they believe their audience would be likely to engage with.

Going hand in hand with this is that the influencers make their own content for a brand, hence why it’s often referred to as a ‘partnership’ or a ‘collaboration’, rather than them simply posting a photo the brand sends them.

Building an engaged following is hard work, and a good influencer will not want to post anything that looks alien to their audience or their feed. When strategising an influencer marketing campaign, it’s therefore important to make sure your brand image complements the influencer you’re looking to reach out to!

5. How To Work With Influencers On Instagram

If you decide that Instagram influencer marketing is the right step for your business, the first thing to do is set your budget. It’s an expensive game, and with influencers charging per post and for Stories, a whole campaign can set you back a long way.

With a smaller budget, you will be looking for micro influencers to promote your brand. These are influencers with a relatively smaller following (1,000 – 10,000) but who have a high engagement rate on their posts.

It is a far more cost effective option for smaller businesses, and micro influencers can have a great deal of influence over a specific audience. On a larger budget, you can think about bigger influencers, but try not to be fooled by vanity metrics such as number of followers and focus predominantly on engagement rate.

Once you’ve found people you think could be perfect, do your research as we mentioned above. Ensure they have a genuine following and a trusted, loyal community. See if they’ve worked on influencer campaigns in the past and look at the kinds of products or brands they promote, this will help to inform if they would be a good fit for your company.

As well as this, take a read of their comments to see if your target demographic are engaging with their content. And finally, check out which type of posts they’re excelling at (i.e Stories, video, gallery posts) to help inform your campaign. 

Then reach out to them! Micro influencers are likely to manage themselves, so contact them through the email on their profile or send them a direct message within Instagram. If you’re looking at a larger influencer, they will probably have an agency who manage their campaign requests – this is typically listed in their bio.

When approaching agencies, ask for the influencer’s rate card and explain your brand and the campaign brief you have in mind. Go into as much detail as possible (i.e budget, how many posts, the type of content etc) in order to best manage expectations on both side of the collaboration.

If you’re looking for inspiration, check out this report of the best performing brands in influencer marketing last year!

 Importantly, treat your working relationships with Instagram influencers as partnerships. Remember that they know what their followers engage with best, and to trust them in the content creation process!

6. The Future Of Instagram Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing has had its fair share of criticism in recent years. Consumers have felt misled as a result of being unaware somebody they follow was getting paid to recommend certain products.

This has led to a huge push for transparency among influencers. Hashtags such as #ad and #spon have become standard in a paid post caption, in order to distinguish the sponsorship deals from ‘genuine’ recommendations. Instagram also created their official ‘Paid partnership’ tag, which sits above a post to inform users that a brand is collaborating with that influencer.

While on some levels this takes away from the authenticity that made Instagram influencer marketing so successful, influencers also feel a loyalty to let their followers know they’ve earned money from a post. 

At one of our events last year, ‘The Power Of Influencer Marketing in 2018’, our panelist Harry Hugo, Co-Founder of The Goat Agency commented on the problematic nature of these CMA regulations, due to the fact that it’s not universal across other advertising channels or promotional sponsorship deals.

He gave the example of Neymar walking on to the football pitch wearing Nike boots as a result of his multi-million dollar sponsorship deal. A notice does not appear on our television screens to tell us the boots are being marketed to us, and the suggestion of such would seem ludicrous.

Therefore it’s one rule for traditional methods of advertising, and another for Instagram influencer marketing, and it will be interesting to see how the regulations change as the space develops.

Read the other top takeaway from our influencer event here

At Hopper HQ we work with hundreds of influencers all over the world, and always encourage them to only accept partnerships with brands and products they truly like and would use themselves. False promotion eventually becomes obvious, meaning the influence the person actually has shrinks.

As a digital population we are developing ‘ad blindness’, meaning we’re essentially becoming immune to marketing. The fact that we click ‘Skip Ad’ on YouTube the second it becomes available, and even pay for the privilege of not being sold to with services like Spotify Premium highlights this.

Consumers are becoming more and more savvy when it comes to advertising, and it’s no different with Instagram influencer marketing. As the industry gets more and more concentrated, brands and influencers will need to think outside of the box to keep creating highly engaging marketing campaigns, and we can’t wait to see them!

Is there any other areas of influencer marketing you’d like to know more about? Let us know in the comments!

Hopper HQ is a social media scheduling and management platform that frees up time for the fun creative stuff! Named in the Top 5 Most Popular Social Media Marketing Software list 2018. Start your 14-day trial today.

TRY HOPPER HQ FREERefreshingly Simple Post, Story + Reel Scheduling

Visually plan all your social channels. Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook + LinkedIn.

Try Hopper HQ Now

We have a new article about digital marketing trends for 2022, read it now!

The post A Simple Guide To Instagram Influencer Marketing in 2024 appeared first on Hopper HQ.

Social proof is a powerful tool that any business can leverage to increase its brand reputation and fuel growth. In this blog, we’ll dive deeper into what social proof is, the different types of social proof, and how brands can use social proof to grow their businesses.

Plan & Schedule Your Social Media Posts

Visually plan your posts. Drag & drop everywhere in seconds

Create Your First Post

What is social proof?

Social proof refers to the psychological impulse to take a cue from the crowd in order to conform to the “correct behaviour.” The social influence of the “crowd” can come from our friends, family, close work networks, or even random strangers on the internet. Alongside social proof, there sits a common concept known as word-of-mouth, which fuels social proof and can give consumers confidence when trying or buying something new. 

The concept of social proof is at work all around us; We consult our friends and families before eating out or going to a holiday destination. People check recommendations from search engines such as Google and Amazon before buying a product. Nearly 97% of people read product reviews before making a final purchasing decision.

Brands are well aware of the impact of social proof. Check this out.

The Native Deodorant listing on Amazon is basking in social proof. Not just due to its 4.5+ rating based on nearly 70,000 reviews. You’ll notice the conveniently located #1 Best Seller tag right next to the ratings. There are also 261 questions answered for this particular product in the community.

Amazon uses social proof to get prospects across the line and generate more sales.

Why is social proof important in your marketing strategy?

The underlying importance of social proof for any business is to increase revenues. Product descriptions, excellent sales copy, and a great content strategy will only get you so far. Social proof is that extra fuel that amps up prospective customers to make a purchase.

But besides increased revenues, there are other ways that social proof is important, including:

• Showcasing your expertise and authority
• Creating a community of long-term brand advocates
• Reducing your overall marketing expenses
• Accelerating sales

Don’t forget – Google loves social proof.  Google crawlers and bots constantly scrape web pages for affirmations of credibility and authority. Recommendations, reviews, and social proof aggregators, such as links to consumer websites, can boost rankings – especially for local businesses.

In the example above, we have a keyword search, i.e., “best BBQ restaurants in Atlanta.” Google pops up a couple of recommendations with results in the 4.5+ range.

This would explain why local businesses optimize their Google Business Profiles by adding ratings. The more and better ratings a business has, the higher the chances to generate more clicks from the search engine results pages (SERPs). Companies often use Google SERP API to understand exactly what the customer likes. In this way they can optimize their website for their needs.

Types of social proof

Now that we have a solid idea of what social proof is, we’ll dive deeper into the various types of social proof. We’ll look at five types of social proof:

1. User social proof

User social proof is the most common type of social proof. It stems from user reviews, testimonials, and product recommendations. Such content is important because it comes from an unbiased happy customer rather than being promoted by a brand. 

Check out the testimonials page of migration experts – This is Australia. We can count at least nine 5-star reviews from this one testimonials page alone, and there are several of these pages. The reviews look genuine based on the fact that full names, company names, and even profile pictures, are displayed.

Yelp is a popular crowdsourced review platform that can help businesses bolster their online visibility. While Yelp doesn’t verify users or the authenticity of reviews, its sophisticated algorithms can detect bots and other fakes. Accordingly, Yelp reviews are highly trusted compared to other review sites.

This makes Yelp another incredible source of trustworthy user social proof. You can pick reviews from this platform and even embed them on your website and landing pages.

Find your best time to post

Schedule your social media posts at your optimal times and watch your engagement skyrocket with Hopper HQ! 

START FREE TRIAL!

2. Expert social proof

Expert social proof is where an industry expert such as a business blogger or a niche influencer approves or endorses your product or brand. 

The image above is from Anne Handley, a digital content marketing expert and author of the bestseller Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content. In this tweet, she endorses an industry summit to increase awareness and sign-ups.

3. Celebrity social proof

People are strongly influenced by their favourite celebrities and influencers. The social proof generated by these high-profile personalities can be very beneficial to most brands.

For example, Porsche partnered with Alexandra Daddario – the Baywatch and True Detective actress, for this post.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by alexandra daddario (@alexandradaddario)

Celebrity social proof may not work with all products, though. For example, customer testimonials and reviews may work better for highly specialized products in the SaaS industry than a celebrity endorsement.

Also, celebrity social proof can be pretty expensive. That makes perfect sense since you’ll need a bigger budget to get a celebrity talking about your brand. That’s why this is usually an option for well-established brands that generate more revenue.

Post TikTok Videos to Instagram

Repurpose Tiktok videos to Instagram without the Watermark.

Try Hopper HQ Now

4. Wisdom of the crowd social proof

This is a phenomenon where having a huge number of customers causes other people to want to use your product. This plays into the crowd’s fear of missing out (FOMO). For example, during the Pandemic, Zoom’s year-on-year revenues increased by over 300% since 2019 due to the demand for remote work platforms.

Zoom’s exceptional quality drove its mega success. However, a significant part of this sales boom also came from the FOMO perspective of people transitioning to remote work and not wanting to miss out on this hot new phenomenon called Zoom.

5. Wisdom of friends’ social proof

This type of social proof extends to family and close associates. For example, you are more likely to visit a hotel or restaurant recommended to you by a family member or colleague than one with only recommendations from online strangers.

Social proof and social media

Any brand can use social media to level up advertising without spending a fortune. Social media can also support your efforts to generate social proof. Not only that, but you can also use your existing social proof to enhance your social media campaigns. It works both ways.

How do brands leverage social media for social proof? 

1. #Hashtag campaigns

First, you can create #hashtag campaigns. These will encourage more customers to share their moments using your products. That means more authentic social proof for you. Moreover, it makes it easier for you to track the social proof since it’s all under a single hashtag. 

Grow Your Audience With #Hashtags

Discover better hashtags to reach the more people, grow your follower count and get more engagement on your posts.

Try Hopper HQ Now

Dunkin Doughnuts is an excellent example of a brand that leveraged this technique. The coffee and doughnut company partnered with Charli, one of TikTok’s most followed personalities. Under the #Charlierunsondunkin hashtag campaign, the brand generated tons of social proof on TikTok. The hashtag campaign saw over 218 million views on TikTok:

They even went ahead to create the Charli Dunkin drink:

@dunkin So official, we put it in writing @charlidamelio. Order ‘The Charli’ on the Dunkin’ app! #CharliRunsOnDunkin #TheCharli #Dunkin ♬ original sound – Dunkin’

Schedule TikTok Posts from Your PC

Visually plan and schedule your TikTok videos right from your desktop with Hopper HQ

Get Started

2. User-generated content

You can also pull user-generated content from your social networks straight onto your website. This is a great way to use showcase social proof on your homepage, landing page, and other critical pages on your website. And since the users can click on social media posts, this technique makes your social proof look even more authentic.

Next-gen applications and APIs allow you to integrate social media posts, likes, comments, shares, etc., into different web resources. You could embed your Instagram feed into your landing page. Displaying reviews from the real customers, you’re interacting with on social media (for example, during a webinar, Q&A, or live video feed) allows you to display credibility.

Simple Post, Story + Reel Scheduling

Visually plan your social content. Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn + Pinterest

Try Hopper HQ Now

10 ways to use social proof in your marketing

The advantages of social proof extend beyond brand recognition, trust, and increased revenues. Let’s explore how you can leverage the power of social proof in your marketing strategies.

1. Partner with influencers and experts

B2B and SaaS businesses fair well with marketing techniques like case studies, product recommendations, and testimonials. SEO for SaaS is also vital in getting your product out there through a foolproof digital marketing strategy. 

However, beyond these options, SaaS, B2B, and B2C companies can also leverage the power of niche influencers and industry experts. These experts/influencers have built a steady following on social media. In addition, they boast the credibility of being experts in their field, thus earning the trust of their followers.

For example, GymShark partnered with Vikstar, a popular UK YouTube gamer and social media influencer.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Gymshark (@gymshark)

Repost TikTok Videos to Instagram

Automatically post your TikTok videos to Instagram. without watermark!

Start Your Free Trial

SaaS brands are also keen on influencer partnerships. But unlike B2C brands, SaaS and B2B companies have to be more strategic. You have to partner with a reputable influencer and expert.

A classic example of an industry influencer expert is Neil Patel, who recommends several different SaaS/B2B products. 

In the image below, Neil recommends Zoho CRM as the best budget CRM. This one endorsement alone is enough to boost revenues significantly for Zoho CRM.

Meller is another excellent example of a brand that leverages the power of niche influencer marketing to promote its eyewear brand. The brand has a dedicated page for all its influencers, most of whom are models or beauticians. 

Despite the advantages provided by influencers in terms of social proof, brands should partner with the right people since this strategy can backfire. Influencers should align with your brand values and be enthusiastic about your product/brand. They should also be able to appeal to your target audience by sharing the same qualities.

2. Add testimonials on sales pages and social media

Satisfied customers are the best kind of marketing for any business. Market on South is a plant-based restaurant and bakery in Orlando, South Florida. The restaurant is reaping significant benefits from recommendations and reviews on Facebook. Not only are folks able to write reviews and leave ratings, but they can also share pictures or videos of their best moments. 

Check out the tasty photo from a customer upload below.

A potential customer can view the ratings, reviews, and kinds of food to expect. They can also make reservations, place orders directly from the Facebook page, and recommend the restaurant to their friends and loved ones.

3. Share results from customer surveys

Sharing results from customer surveys helps you utilize the wisdom of the crowd social proof. Let’s say you ran a quick poll or survey asking users something about your product or service. It could be a comparison between two of your product offerings. Then, the poll generates insane engagements from your customers. You can share the results from this survey to show other prospects what they are missing out on.

Netflix is a great example of a brand that leverages the customer feedback loop to tailor its content. On its debut in 2016, the show Stranger Things averaged viewership numbers of 14 million adults. The viewership had increased to 18 million on average by the second season, making it one of the most popular shows on the network.

Naturally, Netflix would want viewer feedback to know whether the show was a hit or miss and if the fans wanted more seasons or not. Netflix conducted a quick survey on Twitter. A majority of viewers overwhelmingly voted to create the second series of the show.

But here is the interesting bit. With such social proof, even Netflix subscribers who had not watched a single episode of Stranger Things would probably jump onto the bandwagon to watch the show.

4. Establish a referral program

Referrals are important because they tell new customers that someone they know has used a product/service and is satisfied with it. 

For example, if you are a website that teaches folks how to create free online courses, getting your business off the ground can be quite a challenge. However, if one customer successfully creates a course with your tools, they can now recommend your services through the referral program while giving a first-hand experience of how good your services are. 

How do you use referrals to generate social proof for your business? Well, a referral program by itself takes advantage of social proof. You are asking users who are satisfied with your product to recommend it to their peers for an incentive. Therefore, satisfied customers will be using their own testimonials or experiences to pitch your product to their friends. 

Make your referral program simple enough and make the reward scheme quick. Customers who’ve made a successful referral don’t want to wait a lifetime for you to fulfill your promise. Also, the best-performing referral programs reward both the referral and the referrer. Therefore, create a double-sided reward system for your referral program.

5. Use case studies

Case studies are a powerful tool that demonstrates what potential customers can expect from your product or service. Beyond sentimental marketing, case studies dive deep into the numbers and provide an in-depth analysis of past and present results.

For data-driven industries such as B2B and SaaS, it’s not enough to say, “Our product offers XYZ that can boost your revenue.” Evidence-based marketing, such as a case study, backs your claims with real results. 

That is one of the marketing strategies used at Audiense. It’s not enough to tell users what audience intelligence tools can do. So, Audiense created a dedicated page for case studies. These case studies are proving to be far more effective than mere customer reviews. 

Why are case studies important? They back brand claims by providing real data. They also demonstrate how someone used your product successfully through a first-hand customer account. Finally, they build credibility and trust. With so many claims and numbers floating around, it’s difficult to tell who is fake and who isn’t.

So, how do you create a winning case study? Follow the tips below:

• Use tools like Audiense to conduct audience research and create an accurate customer persona. Then use that persona to build your case study. Remember, your case study will only be effective if it’s relevant to your target audience, So make sure your prospects can see themselves in that case study.
• Use storytelling to create an emotional connection. Who is your customer, and what’s their story? What were their goals and pain points? How did you satisfy these needs?
• Create a visually appealing case study. Use strong headlines and clear high-definition pictures of the product and your customers. 
• Include dates, real numbers, charts, and graphs to share success stories such as increased sales or profits. 

Finally, don’t forget to include a strong CTA with each case study. You can direct the readers to sign up for a free trial or book a call with your customer reps, for example. 

Simple Post, Story + Reel Scheduling

Visually plan your social content. Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn + Pinterest

Try Hopper HQ Now

6. Share important milestones

Even if not in a case study, you can still showcase your achievements by sharing milestone data. You can do that on your landing page or social media profiles. Use percentages to make the figures relatable to the average person.

Slack is a productivity app that does this quite effectively. Not only does the Slack team display important metrics concerning customers – but it also integrates customer success stories into its website.

Milestones tap into the wisdom of the crowd social proof. For example, showing year-over-year growth in users can help other prospects want to see what the fuss is about. That means more signups for your product.

7. Tap into media mentions

Don’t underestimate the power of a media mention in building social proof. Media mentions, whether printed or audio-visual, can sway the masses or even a niche viewership to your brand. 

LifeSaber capitalizes on media mentions. LifeSaber is a portable personal emergency generator for wilderness survival.

Besides the authoritativeness of the media, psychologically, there is a power in being mentioned positively by different independent outlets. It reinforces your credibility and exposes your brand to different audiences.

8. Add trust badges

Badges, certificates, and awards will automatically capture the attention of potential customers. 

Craven’s Professional Painting proudly displays its badges, certificates, and achievements on Home Advisor. The social proof from these badges is only amplified further by the 4.97 ratings it has received from 25 verified reviews.

With certifications, awards, and badges, third parties also affirm that you are an expert and have fulfilled certain criteria to be accredited. 

9. Leverage user-generated content (UGC)

User-generated content (UGC) is one of the most powerful ways to generate social proof, especially on social media. By encouraging your audience to submit brand-related content, you can build trust and authenticity and leverage the power of connections outside your network.

GoPro is a prime example of a brand that leverages user-generated content within its brand community to promote new products, promotions, and awards. From sponsoring space jumps and partnering with Marriot Hotel guests to partnering with thousands of influencers to generate new content, GoPro has mastered UGC. 

In fact, their Instagram page is a goldmine of UGC. They share stunning content from their creators and other GoPro product users. 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by GoPro (@gopro)

Mejuri is another brand that uses UGC brilliantly. The lifestyle brand that successfully leverages UGC as a marketing tactic on Instagram and Pinterest. In the image below, IG user @karenbritchick highlights her Mejuri collection while showing off her dance moves.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Mejuri (@mejuri)

On Pinterest, Mejuri highlights its different jewelry collections with exclusive pins from its customers or models. With 10million+ monthly views on Pinterest, not counting its other social handles, Mejuri is basking in the glory of social proof.  

10. Incentivize customers to write reviews

Customer reviews are highlighted in many content strategy tips as being the “trust” that search engines like Google desire. Google prominently displays positive reviews in the top tier of its SERPs, especially for local businesses. Facebook will also make recommendations for businesses or services based on reviews.

If you have a new product but very few or no available reviews, you could convince customers to write a testimonial through incentives. For example, you could share the following information with a new customer through email:

“Your feedback helps people like you who are new to our products make better purchasing decisions. Please leave a review to enjoy a $10 discount on your next purchase with this coupon.”

Wrapping up

Social proof is not just an abstract psychological concept. When leveraged correctly, it can be the growth engine you need to apply to your marketing strategy to move your business or brand to the next level and boost conversion rates, sales, networks, and customer loyalty.

Social proof also builds brand trust and credibility, provides richer search engine results, and reduces your overall marketing expenses. Use methods such as referrals, customer testimonials, influencer marketing, case studies, awards, and trust badges to display social proof.

Most importantly, your social proof strategy should be centered around familiarizing yourself with your target audience. Identify which channels and types of social proof would be most effective for them before unrolling any new strategy.

Good luck unlocking your new social proof prowess!

Carlos Serra

Carlos Serra is the head of corporate development and strategy at Audiense, a customer insights and engagement company, where he is responsible for managing partner and integration channels, ensuring seamless commercial expansion. He was named a pioneer in The Social Intelligence Insider 50 (2022) by The Social Intelligence Lab.

TRY HOPPER HQ FREERefreshingly Simple Post, Story + Reel Scheduling

Visually plan all your social channels. Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook + LinkedIn.

Try Hopper HQ Now

The post 10 Creative Ways to Use Social Proof in your Marketing Strategy appeared first on Hopper HQ.

In a world where we instinctually reject a lot of advertising (‘Skip Ad’ on YouTube) and even pay to not be marketed to (Spotify Premium) — Instagram Stories offer a saving grace.

It’s like a conveyor belt of consumption: you get on it by innocently clicking on a photo of your friend’s dinner. Before you know it you’ve tapped through 30 people’s Instagram Stories, watched 5 adverts, swiped up to see links from influencers’ wardrobes, and you’re not sure where the last 20 minutes of your life went.

Once you’re on the conveyor belt, it’s hard to get off.

The addictive design of Instagram Stories has us stuck viewing them for longer than we ever plan to. We don’t know what’s coming up next, and it’s easy to keep clicking through rather than exiting.

I’m not basing this on my personal experience alone. Instagram Business insights show you how many people clicked forward on to the next Story from yours, and how many left the conveyor belt. Looking at Hopper HQ’s account, on average 80% of users ‘Forward Tap’ through Instagram Stories rather than ‘Exit’, proving that people like to stay on for the ride.

Instagram Stories therefore lock users into watching things they didn’t even know they wanted to, which is why it’s the perfect place for businesses to be. Don’t believe us? Check out this infographic for 30 amazing business case studies!

Without further ado, here are 14 things you can start doing on Instagram Stories now to raise your brand’s profile, grow engagement and convert more customers!

Instagram Stories lock users into watching things they didn’t even know they wanted to, which is why it’s the perfect place for businesses to be!
Click To Tweet

P.S for more tips for your business Instagram account, check out:
 How To Create A Winning Instagram Marketing Strategy 

Contents:
1. Announcements
2. Collaborations 
3. Highlights 
4. Polls 
5. Questions 
6. Reaction Slider 
7. Countdown 
8. Links 
9. Templates 
10. Location Stickers 
11. Hashtag Stickers #⃣
12. ‘New Post’ 
13. Contests 
14. Live 

1) Announcements

Due to the instant nature of Instagram Stories, they’re a great way to share company announcements such as new products, new staff members and general updates!

These moments are a brilliant opportunity to post behind-the-scenes footage of the company that wouldn’t necessarily earn a spot on your main profile. Your followers will feel like they’re privy to the latest info, as well as getting to know you and the business. You can add multiple photos to your Instagram Story to make it more engaging for your followers.

These personal insights could be anything from packaging a new product to playing a prank on a colleague. They will help convey the human side of your company, and consequently boost brand awareness and engagement!

            
We used an Instagram Story to announce the arrival of Analytics. Click here to start your free trial today!

2) Collaborations

Instagram Stories offer a great way for brands and influencers to collaborate!

You can team up with a relevant business you think your followers could benefit from getting to know, or perhaps a customer who happens to be an influencer. I’ll give you an example…

Content curators Quuu are a start-up operating in a fully remote team, and so their Instagram account concentrates on all aspects of remote work and co-working!

During the month of February, Hopper HQ were working remotely from Thailand, and we saw a great opportunity for a collaboration. We prepared ‘A Day In The Life Of A Remote Team’ to feature on their profile, and their team put together a series of video tips for staying productive while working remotely, which we posted on our Story.

This gave both businesses some new exposure, and was generally a lot of fun to produce! Similarly, we could’ve posted a Q&A interview with Quuu, or mutually shouted out/promoted one another.

Just a heads up, some of these kinds of collaborations might be paid for, particularly if they involve influencers! Even so, there’s loads of different ways you could collaborate over Instagram Story, so think about how your business could benefit from it.

Simple Post, Story + Reel Scheduling

Visually plan your social content. Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn + Pinterest

Try Hopper HQ Now

3) Story Highlights

Instagram Story Highlights have been a game changer since they were released in December 2017.

For regular users they act as a personal show reel of ‘best bits’. But for brands, being able to pin Stories to the top of your profile essentially acts as an extension of your bio.

As a business you can utilise highlights to tell people that land on your page who you are, what you do and why you do it, as well as displaying your product or service! Create Stories for the purpose of being Highlights, with an eye catching cover they’ll transform your Instagram page into a brochure!

These are both great examples of companies utilising Highlights in their Instagram marketing! They have attention grabbing covers, and provide so much more content for users to look through, ultimately keeping people on their page for longer.

4) Polls

Gone are the days of boring customer questionnaires, get your answers with just a tap!

Using polls in your Instagram Stories is a great way to drive interaction with your followers. You can use them for market research, customer feedback, or just to get to know your audience and have a bit of fun!

The possibilities with polls are endless, and it’s possible to think of highly relevant creative campaigns specific to your brand or target demographic!

For example, Swell (whose Instagram game is fantastic – check them out) have used polls to share important information with their audience in the form of a quiz:

We think brand client interaction on Stories is a trend that will only get bigger! As Instagram keep releasing features to encourage real conversation and brand loyalty. Bringing us on to our next suggestion…

5) Questions

The questions sticker made it possible for brands to invite their audience to ask them any burning questions, as well as ask their audience questions themselves!

This is such a great feature for building a community and encouraging customer interaction. By showing they care about their customers opinion, and also that they’re present to answer questions positions a brand as reliable, human, and kind — which in turn engenders customer loyalty!

Here are two different examples of how to use the questions sticker on Stories, either open forum, or specific feedback:

Simple Post, Story + Reel Scheduling

Visually plan your social content. Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn + Pinterest

Try Hopper HQ Now

6) Reaction Slider

A fun addition to Instagram Stories, allowing users to respond to the content of your Stories. ]

Interactions on Instagram Stories all feed back to the algorithm about how good content is and how engaged users are with it. It’s therefore a good tactic for brands to use reaction sliders to boost their engagement rate!

Most of the time, brands use this feature with heart eyes, to gage how much their audience like a product. However, there are many creative ways to utilise the slider on your Instagram Stories, check out the example below from Colour Pop Cosmetics:

7) Countdown

A recent addition to Instagram Stories, the countdown sticker is a great feature for brands to promote competitions, sales, and announcements.

Users can set reminders for the countdown deadline, and brands receive this data so they know exactly how many (and which) of their audience are most engaged!

This data is another great feature for helping build community, and we can see Instagram continuing to develop these kinds of features in 2022.

Explore The Data Behind Your Social Media Accounts

Find the best time to post, track your follower growth, and understand what content works best with post and account analytics.

Try Hopper HQ Now

8) Links

 Sadly, this feature is currently only available for accounts with 10k followers or more.

If you belong to that lucky group of businesses, then you get to include external links in your Instagram Stories!

As we all know, Instagram doesn’t allow functioning links anywhere but the bio (they’re trying to keep us on their app, and it’s working) so to have them in Stories is a serious bonus. The link will redirect users to a browser within Instagram, meaning when you cross off you’ll pick up right where you left off.

Make the most of this feature by including clear call to actions in your Stories: ‘SHOP SALE NOW’, ‘START FREE TRIAL’, ‘BOOK TODAY’ so people know where they’re heading when they ‘Swipe Up’.

9) Story Templates

You might have noticed an emergence of Story Templates being used by influencers and on-trend brands on Instagram Stories last year. These are nicely designed templates that can be screenshotted and completed by users, predominantly so their followers can get to know them. For example:

As you can see, these templates are branded by the influencer who designed them. When their followers screenshot them and fill them in on their own Instagram Stories, they are essentially doing their marketing for them.

There is a great opportunity for brands to get involved here! Think about your target audience and the things that they engage with. Then make a Story Template in your company branding for them to complete and share. Fill it in yourself too, as it’s a great way to give your followers some more information about your business or company culture.

 Anyone who makes a template off the back of this blog, I’d love to see them! Drop me a tweet (@Nicola_HHQ) or send them direct to @hopper_hq on Instagram!

10) Location Stickers

Instagram is all about community and bringing people together over shared interests. Increase the discoverability of your Instagram Stories by always tagging locations!

They will be added to that location’s official Story, and therefore people that don’t follow you will be able to watch them. Such a quick and simple trick that will get you far more impressions on your Stories.

11) Hashtag Stickers #⃣

Similarly, hashtags in Instagram Stories work to the same effect, meaning that your Story will be added to a larger Story compiling every Story using that hashtag (that was a mouthful).

Do your research on which hashtags are most used by your target audience and your competitors and include these in your Stories! Check out our All In One Guide To Instagram Hashtags for more info on hashtag strategy!

Instagram is all about bringing people together over a shared interest
Click To Tweet

12) ‘New Post’

Due to the current workings of the Instagram Algorithm, it matters how fast your Instagram posts get engagement (read more here). As a result, more and more users have begun promoting their most recent post on their Instagram Stories, usually blocking out the thumbnail to entice people to click on to their profile to see it.

Those with over 10k followers can link to the post with a CTA to ‘Swipe Up To Like’, encouraging higher and faster engagement. This trick must be working from the huge amount of accounts doing it right now, so go give it a try on your business Instagram!

            

13) Contests

Got a great product or service to give away? Create a bit of buzz by hosting a contest on your brand’s Instagram Story!

The good thing with hosting competitions over Stories is that there’s only 24 hours to enter, creating a sense of urgency for your followers. Photograph or video the prize and include rules for entering, i.e ‘reply to this Story with your email address to enter’. You can then collate all the data to randomly pick a winner after the competition has ended!

You can also use Instagram Stories to promote a competition being run on your main profile! As a result of the current algorithm, many of your followers might not see a post announcing a giveaway.

Use Stories to tell your followers and push them in the right direction to enter! Using hashtags such as #giveaway,  #contest and #competition will make your Story discoverable to people that don’t follow you, and therefore increase your reach!

14) Live

Instagram Live offers a great way for businesses to drive engagement! Prepare for it in advance so you can let your followers know it will be happening and promote it elsewhere.

The more viewers and engagement your Live video gets, the more likely it is to be featured in ‘Top live’ on the Explore page, so it’s good to try and get as many people tuned in as possible. This will also give you and your colleagues time to plan what you’ll be doing and saying during the live stream!

If you’re wondering what kinds of things your business could use Live for, the possibilities are endless! Many brands use Live to unveil new products or features, document events, film interviews, hold Q&As with their followers or offer limited-time discounts.

Instagram are trying to push Live to become the next big thing, so they help promote it by notifying your followers that you’ve started a live stream. Live videos also hold pride of place at the top of the Stories bar! This means your video will be the first thing people see when they get on the Story conveyor belt.

Parting Words

With over 300 million people on the Instagram Story conveyor belt every day, it’s a no-brainer to include in your social media marketing strategy. Utilise the temporary and laid-back nature of Stories to show off how awesome your company and product/service is!

Happy posting

 Do you use Stories in any other ways? I’d love to hear about what works for your business! Leave a comment or tweet me @Nicola_HHQ!

Utilise the temporary and laid-back nature of Instagram Stories to share how awesome your company is!
Click To Tweet

Hopper HQ is the Instagram scheduling tool that saves social media managers and agencies time. Start your 14-day trial today!

The post 14 Brilliant Ways To Use Instagram Stories For Business appeared first on Hopper HQ.

Top-rated digital marketing experts could be the key to your online success!

Marketers today need to be more than average talent to stand out from the crowd, likely through experience and evidence of outstanding results.

Considering their achievements, we gathered a group of digital marketing experts who have succeeded in their field of expertise. Be sure to track their success and listen to what they say!

What is a digital marketing expert?

They are leaders in online marketing and influencers in social media. Their work has an excellent track record in their field.

These people have been active on social media for years. They grow their audience daily with valuable content that helps others succeed in digital marketing.

The best digital marketers have learned from their mistakes and failures to become successful.

Hence, inspiring us by their success and wisdom from their journey.

Why is digital marketing expertise so necessary?

These digital marketers’ experiences are essential because internet marketing is a relatively new industry that many do not know how it works.

They show us how to do it by doing it themselves. Besides, you can learn directly from digital marketing leaders by following their proven tactics.

Although digital marketing has a few decades under its belt, it’s still in its developmental phase. Here are a few interesting facts to give you an idea of how young the industry is.

• The first clickable banner was released in 1994
• Geocities was the first social media website founded in 1994
• The term Search Engine Optimization came into use in 1997
• The Google Ads campaign started in 2000
• Facebook was born in 2004, and the rest is history

Now you can realize why it can be challenging to learn digital marketing on your own.

There are so many things to acknowledge; for instance, today, you dominate the latest tactics and be immersed in new marketing trends to learn.

Of course, to pay for an agency or have a marketing team is possible but can be daunting for small businesses with a tight budget.

Therefore, following those skilled marketers already thriving can lead to growth and, at the same time, frustration and money-saving.

Can I access the top leaders in online marketing?

It can be expensive to hire an online marketing expert; some of these marketers have even consulted for companies worth millions of dollars. But it turns out you can have access to the best marketing experts!

Fortunately, in the world of modern marketing, there are influencers on social media who are willing to show off their expertise and share quality content regularly. 

For this reason, adding their content to your social media feeds will help you, undoubtedly, to get the best from the internet marketing experts around.

Who should follow these social media marketing influencers?

If you are still reading this post, you are probably on the hunt for the right way to make the most of your digital marketing strategy. So, here it is for you.

Anyone can use this list, but if you are a marketing agency, business, brand, or influencer, you can find answers such as how can you increase conversion rates on your website? Does video marketing work? Does marketing automation work? And so on.

Simple Post, Story + Reel Scheduling

Visually plan your social content. Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn + Pinterest

Try Hopper HQ Now

Who is leading the way in the digital marketing space?

In this group, we find founders, marketing managers, best-selling authors, writers for significant publications, search engine experts, popular speakers who have found ways to excel in online marketing.

The following social media influencers are perfect for staying ahead of the curve!

They are digital marketing experts known for their ethics and success in the industry. Not only do they know their stuff, but also they have failed and learned and overcame many challenges.

The List. The ultimate collection of the best digital marketing experts

#01 Neil Patel:

Neil Patel is one of the top digital marketing influencers. Listed as the world’s leading marketing ad consultant, and now boasts a track record as an investor and co-founder of software companies. For instance, Crazy egg and other startups.

His digital marketing course and free resources in digital marketing advertising, and his groundbreaking efforts in obtaining organic search results, have helped his business clients achieve outstanding returns.

Neil Patel specializes in explaining the fundamentals of the internet business world and has become one of its leading online marketers.

He keeps them engaged by sharing his latest blog posts, insights, and thoughts on digital marketing.

LinkedIn: Neil Patel

Twitter: @neilpatel

In his YouTube, Neil Patel discusses his career and explains the progression of his own business. Check it out,

#02 Ann Handle

One of today’s most widely read and influential DMEs, Ann Handley’s passion for social media, content marketing, integrated marketing communications, and customer experience is contagious.

Ann Handley is the co-founder of MarketingProfs, which helps business professionals learn about digital marketing and stay up to date.

Ann is a best-selling author on content creation, writing for the Huffington Post. She covers topics like finding your voice in writing or tips for improving your blog posts. Ann’s articles are intelligent and actionable: she makes you want to take notes! 

Her Twitter account has over 457k followers, and she seems to share her blog posts frequently. Her feed is a great way for digital marketing experts to stay updated with the best content creation practices!

Ann Handley’s LinkedIn account has over 450k followers (and counting)!

#03. Rand Fishkin

Rand Fishkin is a hard working SEO professional with a notable reputation in digital marketing. He was the co-founder of SparkToro and MOZ, an SEO company, and is very active on Twitter and other social media platforms.

Rand Fishkin is a digital marketing expert with a lot of knowledge to share on search engine optimization; in the case of his SEO company (MOZ) has received many awards.

Rand’s Twitter account has over 454k followers, and he tweets about a variety of digital marketing topics, from SEO to online advertising. Moreover, it is nice to know that he likes to answer questions and interact with other DMEs.

LinkedIn: Rand Fishkin

Twitter: @randfish

#04. Andrew Warner

Andrew Warner, Founder and CEO of Mixergy. An online business school that teaches budding entrepreneurs how to get started online.

Mixergy is a fantastic story to read. His high-quality interviews are must-listen-to content for anyone looking to gain valuable online marketing skills.

Andrew Warner has more than 35,500 followers on Twitter. He tweets about a variety of digital marketing topics, including SEO to online advertising.

LinkedIn: Andrew Warner

Twitter: @andrewwarner

In addition to creating excellent resources for digital marketing advice. Andrew Warner does an incredible job of extracting actionable insights from his guests.

#05. Neil Strauss

American author and journalist. New York Times Best Seller Neil Strauss is an award-winning journalist who authored several dating and relationships books.

His investigative journalism background was instrumental in applying new knowledge of digital marketing to create success online, helping men learn the secrets of online dating. He is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone and a regular contributor for The New York Times.

Neil writes about pickup artist culture and other topics related to dating advice. He has written for Men’s Health, Rolling Stone, Esquire, and The New York Times. His Twitter account has over 122k followers! 

Neil Strauss’s Twitter account is an excellent resource for dating advice, pickup artist culture, and other topics related to men’s health. His tweets are funny and engaging, making it worth the follow!

Twitter: @neilstrauss

#06. Ben Settle:

Ben Settle is a New York Times bestselling author and the founder of “The Ad Commune,” an agency specializing in digital marketing.  

The best-selling author is known for providing up-to-date information and tools that allow entrepreneurs to use the power of social media. To show that Facebook marketing can generate leads, boost sales, and land new customers.

Facebook: Ben Settle

#07. Shama Hyder

A best-selling author and international keynote speaker, and media personality. Forbes recognized her as one of the “Top 30 under 30” entrepreneurs in marketing.

Her success led to her becoming a winner of several awards. LinkedIn has named her one of their “Top Voices” in Marketing & Social Media. Hence, her outstanding followers +600k. 

Shama Hyder’s Twitter account has over 45k followers (and counting)! Her tweets are engaging and informational.

LinkedIn: Shamahyder

Twitter: @Shama

08. Tim Ash

Former digital agency & conference founder. He is one of the world’s foremost experts on search engine optimization and pay-per-click advertising.

Tim, CEO and co-founder of SiteTuners for 19 years, has deep expertise in user-centered design, persuasion, understanding consumer behavior, and neuromarketing and landing page testing.

In the mid-1990s, he became an early innovator in website conversion rate optimization.

Twitter: @tim_ash (with more than 28k followers)

LinkedIn: Tim Ash

#09 Jay Baer

Get your site converted by Jay Baer, a leading digital marketing consultant. Born and raised in the suburbs of New York City, Jay Baer has always been a big-city guy. 

He is an internationally acclaimed speaker and bestselling author. He was featured in the Wall Street Journal, The Harvard Business Review, and The Atlantic.

Apart from being a strong proponent of community, Jay also has always spent a large portion of his time on issues relevant to people outside the business world.

Twitter: @jaybaer +276K followers

LinkedIn: Jaybaer +32k followers

#10 Mike Allton

The founder of The Social Media Hat provides extensive information and regular updates about social media, tools, and best practices. While he offers paid services, his updates give a detailed, actionable explanation.

Twitter: @mike_allton with 49.6K accumulated Followers

#11 Brian Fanzo:

He becomes a well-known keynote speaker and panelist for his vast knowledge of digital marketing, social media, and technology. As a result, He has been featured in Forbes and Entrepreneur Magazine.

Brian has a passion for digital marketing. Furthermore, Fanzo welcomes new developments and technologies openly and looks into using them in the best possible way.

LinkedIn: Brian Fanzo (with more than 19k followers)

#12 Melonie Dorado

Author of top dog’s social network websites, Dorado has been listed as a leading Digital Marketing Specialist. Moreover, she teaches how to leverage social networking to get maximum results using LinkedIn.

LinkedIn: Melonie Dorado 53,778 followers

Twitter: @meloniedorado 94.2K Followers

#13 Tami Cannizzaro

Tami is a proven marketing executive with a high-performance track record of building category market leadership teams and driving revenue.

Her expertise includes digital marketing, social media, Web, SaaS, and communications. Evidently, Tami has been successful in all her roles, managing demand generation for both B2B and B2C markets. She has won numerous awards.

LinkedIn: Tami Cannizzaro

Twitter: @tamicann

Trends, Tips & Inspiration to Supercharge Your Instagram Marketing.

Join 50,000 other subscribers. Getting inspired & supercharge your social media marketing with tips from our experts. Prepare for upcoming trends and social media holidays before they happen.

EmailEnter your email

SUBSCRIBE

#14 Mari Smith

Mari Smith has been ranked fourth on Forbes among 100 social media influencers and thereafter named the queen of Facebook. So, go and follow her; I think she holds some hacks that we all should know.

IG: @mari_smith with 43.6k followers

LinkedIn: Mari Smith

Twitter: @MariSmith (566.1K Followers)

#15 Linsey Anderson

Digital Marketing Expert Linsey Anderson is a well-known digital marketing expert. She is the Manager at Search Engine Land as well. In addition, Lindsey Anderson is an expert in search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click advertising (PPC).

LinkedIn: thelindseyanderson (4,238 followers)

IG: @the.lindsay.anderson (6,329 followers)

FB: Buildandmonetize

#16 John Lee

John Lee is the co-founder and CEO of Wealth Dragons Group PLC. Which is set to become one of the largest E-learning platforms for business entrepreneurs. Additionally, He started investing in property in his early 20s and by the time he was 27, John had achieved his goal of becoming a self-made millionaire. Certainly, worth checking!

IG: @john_lee_official ( 2.7m followers)

LinkedIn: John Lee

Anita has been working in the industry since 2003 and has more than 12 years of experience in digital marketing. Currently, she’s focused on the industrial internet marketing sector. As a result, Anita excels at what she does best: helping businesses grow their online presence through innovation. She manages topics such as Search Engine Optimization (SEO), website development, pay-per-click (PPC) management, content creation, and marketing campaigns.

Twitter: @arpvaldez

LinkedIn: Anita Perez

#18 Gary Vaynerchuk

Gary Vaynerchuk is the self-made entrepreneur and social media influencer known as the “King of Twitter.” As a result, his story, and success, embody all about building a brand. Although the business space can be intense at times, people worldwide can’t get enough of Gary, his sassy style, and how he uses social media to break down barriers in business.

Twitter: @garyvee (2.8M Followers)

Finally, we hope you enjoy our ever-expanding list of top digital marketing experts that will continue to grow, so keep an eye out for new and noteworthy names to add to your network.

We also want to hear from you. For instance, share with us who would you add to this list? Let us know in the comments below, and we might feature it in this article or a future blog post!

Furthermore, If you enjoyed this list, please share using the social sharing icons below, so your audience can benefit from this list as well.

Thank you!

About the Author: Mariela Casanova is a creative content writer, digital marketing expert, and marketing researcher. She is always on the hunt for the best strategy to scale your content marketing.

The post Best Digital Marketing Experts to Follow appeared first on Hopper HQ.

Digital Marketing trends have changed drastically over the last few years. In part because Social Media (SM) channels, such as Instagram, are growing in popularity among users, advertisers, and companies who want to reach their target audience.

Simple Post, Story + Reel Scheduling

Visually plan your social content. Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn + Pinterest

Try Hopper HQ Now

With new trends popping up every day, keeping up with what works best for your business cannot be easy. This blog post will discuss how you can use some of the newest marketing trends for a strategy to bring home the bacon.

Yes, I know! New year, new trends!

It’s time to focus on what it’s going on, in the online space, in 2023. Therefore, we set up, this guide to support you.

What is digital marketing in today’s world?

Digital marketing (DM) is the process of marketing your products or services through digital channels. We can infer that online marketing provides an excellent opportunity to boost your products and services online.

An online marketing specialist: Why do you need one?

In today’s world where almost all can be found online, it’s imperative to have some sort of online presence. This means that eventually, you will need a DM specialist.

What kind of role will online marketing trends play in the future?

DM is constantly changing. To stay ahead, we need to update our strategies. We will review some changes in online marketing and suggest what you can do to get the best results.

The aims of this article?

Find some of the latest trends in the online marketing space to smash your strategies on SM.

Suggestions in how the trends can be utilized to reach the best results on your brands.

Resources for marketers, as digital marketing continues to evolve, so should professionals employed in it.

Analyzes some of the most interesting emerging trends for next year and how to implement them.

For who is this article?

Digital marketer, business owner, Influencer, and brands! Everyone is interested in the trends in online marketing.

To stay competitive in the market, you need to keep up with the latest digital marketing trends and social media changes!

Almost most business owners are setting the next year’s goals too. Take the latest marketing predictions to thrive online and be on-trend. 

Trend #01 – Invest in personalization marketing

As consumers are becoming more sophisticated, businesses need to understand the one size fits all approach, it’s not working as before. Brands need to provide a better personalized marketing experience that will keep your clients coming back.

To achieve this, it’s vital for businesses to understand what it is that keeps consumers coming back for more. This is where search results (SEO) and web analytics tools really come into play for digital marketers’ daily work.

What it is personalization marketing?

Personalization Marketing is a marketing method based on adapting any online advertising message to the behavioral and preference patterns of consumers.

When you know your customer, you can understand what drives their choices and their purchase intent. This path to connect with your audience can be achieved by researching and targeting your products to customers’ favorite interests.

Key takeaways Trend #01 – Personalize your offer following the digital marketing trends

• The best and first advice for next year is to get to know your consumers!
• Get your statistics and analytics set up to understand your audience.
• Send personalized email marketing and engaging content that matters to your audience.
• Social platforms, Google Ads, and choosing Keywords with Search-Driven intent are the way to go.

Trend #02 – “Cause marketing” has become increasingly popular

Rather than just buying products and services, this strategy encourages customers to endorse your company’s cause.

Ethos and values are important to your marketing. You need to offer real value without hidden costs. Your audience needs to trust you to become more than a mere client, actually loyal customers.

What makes this campaign “cause marketing” unique is that the company attempted to be transparent and unselfish.

Nowadays, customers are more likely to engage with honest companies that support causes they care about.

Key takeaways Trend #02 – “Cause marketing” has become increasingly fashionable

• Define your ethos and values, and be coherent through your marketing actions.
• Take care even of your personal branding and the causes you support.
• Offer real value with no hidden costs, and at the same time let your audience decide whether to buy or not.
• If you have a cause that people care about, then your customers will support it and your brand.

Trend #03 – The public prefers conversational marketing

People prefer talking to other people. People love technology, artificial intelligence, and so on, but the users want to talk to humans. After hashtags and chatbots, even people loving automation tools, it turns out that most users ironically prefer talking to humans innately.

We enjoy talking to real people, showing a genuine interest in consumer concerns, and engaging through authentic content marketing even through SM networks or messaging apps, but please with human beings rather than robotic answers!

During the COVID-19 pandemic, social media was a lifesaving tool. It helped people to connect and build relationships. The trend still stays, and actually, we discover that those followers ideally convert digital users to be clients of your brand.

Key takeaways Trend #03 – The public prefers informal marketing

• Show genuine interest in consumer concerns and engage with authentic curiosity.
• It’s essential to use social platforms—in addition to traditional media—to communicate with your consumers.
• Try to be authentic and sincere in your conversations and messages like email marketing and other campaigns.

Trend #04 – Shopping experiences are becoming more social

In successful sales in the past few years, people used digital advertising. Nowadays, there are other ways to increase sales. For example, search marketing, organic rankings, and engagement on social networks.

User search intent, organic reach through SEO, and user engagement through content published by social networks are just as positive as paid advertising. Start with a Google rank checker to track which keywords perform better and fulfil user search intent. With the rise of people, using social media is the best way to put your business where the potential customer is. (At some point of the scrolling social media posts)

Today, people use SM to sell anything. Certainly, we can see some marketing tools are gaining space in social channels like social media stories, bio links, video marketing, customer relationship management (CRM), and other resources offered within the social networks platforms.

In DM, businesses also use the recognized persona of the “social media marketing influencer” as a very useful marketing tactic. They share reviews with their followers, increasing your reach to other potential customers.

Key takeaways Trend #04 – Shopping experiences are becoming more social

• With SM channels and smartphone users on the rise, that is to say, businesses have more digital channels to sell.
• Paid search has always been associated with successful web traffic and marketing campaigns;
• But now is a rising trend to drive traffic to get new customers through social posts and personalized experiences.
• With SM marketing, you can make one-click sales while staying in touch with your audience.
• Businesses are also harnessing the power of the influencer marketing persona in SM marketing.

Trend #05 – Social Media Marketing is the king

No doubt, social platforms lead the way in digital marketing trends. If you don’t have an online presence or a strategy in place, now is the time to start one.

The rise of social networks and the rise of mobile devices have changed how we communicate. It also changed how businesses market their products and services. Business owners engage followers through stories, interactive posts.

People want a strong connection with their favorite brands. As a result, people often tell their friends about the products they like, giving valuable and direct promotion to your brand.

Key takeaways Trend #05 – Social Media Marketing is the king

• Prepare your SM strategy in the same way that you prepare any paid campaign.
• With social platforms and mobile technology on the rise, businesses have more digital channels to sell through.
• Social platforms help people share product information and reviews with their friends.

Trend #06 – Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and paid advertising

In light of the rise of the digital presence of businesses, to appear in the Google search becomes relevant for an online business. Following the search queries that your customers are interested in is very valuable. This means you can create what your audience needs, to become the best option to appear at the top of their search.

SEO and paid advertising are a way to make sure that your business can be found when people search for it. As a result, the best practice to make sure you get seen is to investigate with keyword research of your potential clients and their interest and behaves.

This year includes learning about “search marketing”, “voice search”, “search engine” which aims to use machine learning and progressive web apps to understand your clients (customer data) and use the right plan of action to improve the volume or quality of traffic and web visitors to your website.

Search Engine Optimization or Paid Ads, even both.

SEO is based on algorithms, still, they are many others “behind the scenes” SEO skills that you can learn to understand the Search Engine Land better. Above all, learning the basics of SEO to follow along with the web design trends, needs to do proper investigation research, etc. takes time and some headaches at the beginning.

If you want to avoid getting deep in organic reach since it takes more time and knowledge, you can always get some paid advertising running to get faster results or do a combination of both.

Moreover, another solution is to find a professional, freelance, or agency that can help you!

Key takeaways Trend #06 – SEO and Google Ads

• Online growth makes SEO (Blogs) and content for SM (Posts) increasingly important for brands.
• Potential customers can find the businesses that best meet their needs on search engine results pages (SERPs).
• When you have a web business, it is an efficient way to increase customer loyalty, through observing your consumer behavior.
• You can try to grow your traffic to your website through SEO and Google Ads.

Trends #07 – The focus should be on Content, Content, and Content!

Digital marketing is a way to show people your company’s services and products. It is used to reach potential customers through the internet with interactive content and other DM techniques.

This year, you should make sure that your marketing is providing the right content for the right audience. Also, it is the user generated content that comes as a consequence of good customer relationships and your brands.

In 2023 focus on a content marketing plan of action.

Grow Your Audience With #Hashtags

Discover better hashtags to reach the more people, grow your follower count and get more engagement on your posts.

Try Hopper HQ Now

Tips:

Online Marketers can plan a DM strategy that’s low cost and can provide results. For example; using keywords research within more SEO-orientated blog posts on your web page; similarly using hashtags, on Social Media to be found organically.

A tactic to magnify your CMS is repurposing the content marketing for use in different DM channels that can be coordinated by your digital marketing teams or by yourself.

Key takeaways Trends #07 – Where needs to be your focus when you are planning your Online Marketing Strategies?

• Digital marketing activities should focus on creating good content that targets the interests of your audience.
• Use SEO as a cost effective strategy to bring results as part of your DMS.
• Content marketing can be multiplied by reusing your fabulous content on different channels.

Trend #08 – To have a Digital Marketing Strategy, is part of the trends!

The online marketing space has created a lot of noise recently, and all the buzz was justified. In other words, SM Marketing will be the most important DM strategy for any business in 2023.

Social Media platforms are everywhere these days, making it tough for companies to keep up with the competition. In short, start to create your DMS while you write your list of goals for 2023.

Tip for medium size and big brands:

New tools for marketing come out every day. But most businesses do not have enough time or money to invest in all of them.

As a solution, you can contract virtual assistants or freelancers, and eventually, create a marketing team or an agency. The most important whatever you decide is choosing the right tools that help automate part of the process.

Key takeaways – To have an Online Marketing Strategy is a must!

• If you own a Business account on SM and you don’t have a strategy, create a DM strategy, it doesn’t matter the industry you are in!
• Create a content strategy plan to use across your email marketing campaigns and DM activities.
• Create marketing campaigns in coordination with all the marketing channels, organic reach, and paid ads as well.

Conclusion about the Latest Online Marketing Trends

Thanks to the latest changes, digital marketing offers a wealth of paths to grow our brands in the online space.

The new year is a perfect time to make positive changes in your life and business.

First, you need to be authentic by being genuine with your user and potential customers;

Second, define your value proposition and ethos and be coherent in your communication;

Third, get the right tools that will help keep consistency on your marketing messages;

Last, still vital, learn about what makes people connect with you and your brands and with help of a data collection and daily interaction and to respond to your audience needs.

In conclusion, Digital Marketing and SMS with interactive content will be the most important strategies for any business in 2023.

In the coming year, many social networks will be growing. We think Instagram will grow the fastest.
.

Take a look at The 2023 Instagram Trend Report

Do you want to schedule your Instagram posts from your computer?

Hopper HQ is an SM scheduler that helps you plan and manage all of your content, so it’s ready when you are.

Now that visual search and image search is in our daily way to interact on SM. As a result, Hopper HQ makes it easy for anyone who wants to share videos and images on Instagram. With our intuitive interface, scheduling outstanding visual content has never been easier!

You can easily create new posts or edit existing ones in just a few clicks with the drag-and-drop editor. And if you ever need help, we’ve got an outstanding support team standing by 24/7. It’s time to take control of your feed and start sharing like a pro!

Sign up for a free trial of Hooper HQ today!

Hopper HQ has a 14-day free trial so that you can check it out today (Tip: You might be asked for your credit card information when you sign up but won’t be charging anything until the trial period ends!!).

About the Author: Mariela Casanova is a creative content writer, digital marketing expert, and well-being advocate.

Trends, Tips & Inspiration to Supercharge Your Instagram Marketing.

Join 50,000 other subscribers. Getting inspired & supercharge your social media marketing with tips from our experts. Prepare for upcoming trends and social media holidays before they happen.

EmailEnter your email

SUBSCRIBE

The post Top 8 digital marketing trends in 2024 appeared first on Hopper HQ.

Whether you’re just starting out with Instagram marketing, or you’re looking to fine-tune your strategy with some hashtag research to optimise your Instagram hashtags game, this resource will help you each step of the way…

Grow Your Audience With #Hashtags

Discover better hashtags to reach the more people, grow your follower count and get more engagement on your posts.

Try Hopper HQ Now

1. The Basics #⃣

What are Instagram hashtags?

Essentially, Instagram hashtags are a way of categorising posts in order to discover new content and increase reach. Instagram is set up so that using a hash sign followed by a keyword will create a link to a collection of other photos, videos and Stories tagged with that same word!

For example, if you want to find posts relevant to the topic of ‘travel‘, you can search for Instagram hashtags using that keyword and see how many posts on the app have posts containing it.

If we pick the hashtag #travelphotography, Instagram will pull up all the public posts on the app using that hashtag, dividing them into ‘Top’ and ‘Recent’.

Where can I use Instagram hashtags?

Hashtags can be used in captions, comments, bios and Instagram Stories.

Many users prefer to put their Instagram hashtags into the first comment of their posts rather than the caption, in order to separate the two.

The screenshot on the left shows Instagram hashtags displayed at the bottom of a caption, and the screenshot on the right shows them in the comments.

As for Instagram Stories, there are 2 ways to include hashtags:

One is by simply typing the # key followed by the keyword, and the other is using the hashtag sticker available from the sticker menu. Similar hashtag suggestions appear underneath as you type.

How many hashtags can I use on Instagram?

Instagram limits users to 30 hashtags per post — this is counted across captions AND comments. If you try to post 20 in your caption and another 20 in your first comment, the comment will not post. In Stories, the hashtag limit is 10 per Story.

Can I use punctuation in Instagram hashtags?

No — punctuation will break the link

Can I use numbers in Instagram hashtags?

Yes!

Can I use emojis in Instagram hashtags?

Definitely

Simple Post, Story + Reel Scheduling

Visually plan your social content. Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn + Pinterest

Try Hopper HQ Now

2. How To Choose Instagram Hashtags

Hashtags span all industries and topics, and there are literally millions to choose from and compete with. So how do you know which Instagram hashtags to use?

Firstly, you’ll have to do some research! Using the app itself you can gather loads of data around popular hashtags in your niche, as Instagram will always offer ‘suggested’ and ‘related’ hashtags when you search.

What Instagram hashtags is your target audience using?

Find the types of people you are aiming to reach and see what Instagram hashtags they frequently use! Think of their wider interests and lifestyle, and research hashtags around those topics.

(More on this in How To Create A Winning Instagram Marketing Strategy)

What hashtags are your competitors using?

Remember, their target audience is your target audience. Find a competitor who is excelling at Instagram marketing and take note of what hashtags they are using!

What hashtags should you NOT use?

Make sure you’re also steering clear of the wrong Instagram hashtags for your brand and audience! While hashtags increase your reach on Instagram, there’s no point using ones that aren’t relevant to your post.

The Instagram algorithm is getting smarter and will pick up on people using consistently spammy or irrelevant hashtags.

Try to avoid ‘quick fix’ Instagram hashtags that specifically ask people to follow you, such as #follow4follow and #like4like — they might work in the short term, but these followers are unlikely to engage with your content (or even be real people).

Track your hashtags

Keep a note of what Instagram hashtags you’re using, and track your engagement rates on posts to figure out which are working best!

Using an analytics tool like we have on Hopper HQ, you can track content performance by every metric, including reach, impressions and engagement. By tracking and keeping record of this data, you can ensure you’re always improving and optimising your Instagram hashtag strategy.

Explore The Data Behind Your Social Media Accounts

Find the best time to post, track your follower growth, and understand what content works best with post and account analytics.

Try Hopper HQ Now

Create your own brand Instagram hashtags!

Big event, product release, or something else worthy of a personal hashtag coming up? Make your own Instagram hashtags and encourage others to use them to drive new people to your profile! We’ll go into this in more detail in the next section.

Go niche! Check out our Instagram hashtags guides by industry…

Top Photography Hashtags
Top Food Hashtags
Top Health & Fitness Hashtags
Top Fashion Hashtags
Top Travel Hashtags

3. Hopper HQ’s Hashtag Top Tips

By implementing the right hashtags into your Instagram marketing strategy, you can reach hundreds more people in your target demographic, as well as generally increase your engagement on Instagram.

#1 Instagram Hashtags in Stories

Instagram automatically collate all Stories using a hashtag into a collective ‘hashtag Story’. So by including relevant hashtags in your Stories, you’re publicising it to far more eyeballs than you would without – it’s a no brainer really!

#2 Hashtags in Your Bio

In 2018, Instagram made it possible to include hashtags in your profile bio! Due to the limitation of only being allowed one link in the bio, this was a great addition to tell people more about your account.

Use this spot in your bio to highlight a key hashtag associated with your brand — people will become familiar with it and hopefully start to use it themselves! Which brings us on to…

#3 User-Generated Content

Your customers can be your best marketers, and Instagram hashtags are the easiest way to find great user-generated content.

Photos other people have posted on Instagram of your product, establishment or service make really valuable content.

The best way to encourage and keep track of customer Instagram content is by creating a brand hashtag, such as River Island’s ‘#ImWearingRI’. You can include this in your bio with a call to action for followers to ‘tag to be featured’:

#4 Keep an eye on hashtag trends and social media holidays

Current affairs (#WorldCup) social media trends (#ThrowbackThursday) and commemorative holidays (#EarthDay) all pull in a huge amount of traffic.

If you can find relevant and inventive ways to get involved with these time-sensitive hashtags on Instagram, you’ll stand a good chance of significantly increasing your reach. For a full list of upcoming trends, check out:

 2020 Social Media Holiday Calendar

#5 Follow Instagram hashtags

An update in 2018 allowed you to start following Instagram hashtags the same way you follow Instagram accounts!

This was a great new feature for a number of reasons:

Firstly, you can encourage users to follow your branded hashtags to keep up to date with any updates or announcements.

Secondly, you can follow key Instagram hashtags in your niche to stay on top of new trends.

And thirdly, you can follow competitors’ hashtags to see what the big players in your space are up to!

Follow any hashtag by clicking the blue follow button at the top of any hashtag collection. Posts will then appear in your feed that contain that hashtag, as pictured on the right.

#6 Schedule your hashtags

Instagram hashtags are a key part of your marketing strategy, therefore they shouldn’t be rushed on the spot! Not to mention, typing up to 30 hashtags on a mobile can get quite tedious.

Using Hopper HQ you can schedule your captions and first comments in advance with your posts, so regardless of where you prefer to keep your hashtags, they will be automatically published when your photos and videos are.

We personally recommend splitting your Instagram hashtags between your caption and first comment, and always keeping them highly relevant to what you’re posting.

Using our in-app hashtag tool, you can explore the strength of each hashtag and find new ones to include!

Start scheduling your hashtags today with a free 14-day trial of Hopper HQ! 

Do you have any other hashtag top tips?

Let us know in the comments! Happy posting

Hopper HQ is a content scheduling and management platform that saves social media managers and agencies heaps of time. Start your 14-day trial today!

TRY HOPPER HQ FREERefreshingly Simple Post, Story + Reel Scheduling

Visually plan all your social channels. Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook + LinkedIn.

Try Hopper HQ Now

The post The All-In-One Guide To Instagram Hashtags appeared first on Hopper HQ.

Working with almost 2000 businesses in a team of just 30 people, Jumper has grown rapidly since it was born in 2016, and isn’t slowing down anytime soon. With its headquarters set against a Californian coast, their company culture leaves nothing to be desired, as I learnt when stalking the business on Instagram – team bonding aboard a yacht anyone?

       
An insight into Californian agency life at Jumper Media, we’re not jealous at all.

Even though I didn’t get to go to San Diego to meet the team (or try out the company branded surfboards) for myself, I was lucky enough to have a chat with Colton Bollinger, CEO and Co-Founder of Jumper Media, to talk all things Instagram and find out a bit more about the agency and their awesome client work!

After some classic chat about British vs. Californian weather, we got on to the good stuff…

So Colton, what were you up to before Jumper Media, and what led you to establish it?

Before Jumper I was actually working in another start up in the golf industry! We were running an app for golf instructors to schedule and manage online payments. That’s what drove me into Instagram and social media, as I was managing that side of things for the business. I had a prominent golf company reach out to me after they’d seen how I’d grown both my personal and the company’s social profiles. They asked me to manage theirs as well, which is really what jump started everything! I picked up more and more clients to the point where I couldn’t do it myself anymore. My 2 best friends were in San Fransisco at the time and we came together and decided to form the company – and somehow the clients kept rolling in!

Colton Bollinger, CEO & Co-Founder of Jumper Media

So Jumper Media is a social media agency, but it’s Instagram specific?

Yeah it’s primarily Instagram, we offer full management as well as content creation. We also manage paid ads on Facebook, but don’t tend to create content or do general account management for any other social network. 

Awesome! So why did you decide to focus on Instagram?

When I first started in this industry, content seemed to be created Facebook first and then it was shared to Twitter and Instagram. Over the past two and a half years, I’ve seen that shift. Basically 100% of content is Instagram first now, and I’ve been along with the clients as that shift has happened and they’ve been trying to keep up. There’s many different dynamics that go into creating content for Instagram versus Facebook, with stuff like Boomerang and Stories, people have had to adapt. Quite honestly I just think people are spending more time on it! In my first sales pitches when potential clients asked me why they should invest in Instagram, I would just ask them what they did when they went to the bathroom these days, and most of the time they weren’t on Facebook anymore, they were scrolling Instagram. 

The Jumper Media team in their collaborative office space in San Diego

That makes sense, Instagram is undeniably addictive and has become a necessity in any social media strategy! So say a client comes to you guys wanting full Instagram management as well as a certain amount of content creation, what’s Jumper Media’s process from there? Could you talk me through it?

Sure, so for content creation the first thing to do is understand all the finer details like where they’re based, what the product is, whether it’s going to be shipped to us or if we can travel to them etc. Typically with our content creation packages, we include a 3-4 hour video/photoshoot for a client’s product, service or business. So we’ll schedule out the videographer to get a date in the calendar, then they’ll either send us the product and we’ll plan the shoot internally, or where possible we’ll go to shoot at their location. 

From there we put together a rough shot list and get some clear ideas from the client of what they want us to capture or create. If there’s any models necessary we aim to plan around it – most of our clients are small to medium businesses so we try and save them that expense by suggesting they use people they know!

If the client has given us some content in advance we start publishing that prior to the shoot to get some buzz going. If not, we can shoot and edit everything up in under a week and get it over to the client for approval. Once that’s done we create a 2 week content schedule which the client can approve and make amendments to, and then we start posting! With any client, that first month is all about learning the voice of the brand, getting feedback from them on what they liked and what they didn’t – and most importantly, finding out if they want to carry on working with us or not!

With any client, that first month is all about learning the voice of the brand, says Colton Bollinger, CEO of Jumper Media. Read the full interview here!
Click To Tweet

That last part must be pretty vital, as I’m sure it takes a great deal of empathy and communication to get into the mindset of another business in order to produce unique and authentic content for them?

Completely, and we never create 100% of content for a client. Even if we’re doing content creation, it’s only ever a supplemental amount to their overall content strategy. We still want them to be telling company stories you know? Like posting boomerangs of their company culture and their colleagues doing funny stuff in the office. We want them to capture a sense of the behind-the-scenes fun aspect of the business, as that’s something we can’t really create for them day to day. It’s a collaborative effort!

Some of the team at Jumper Media in their office headquarters in San Diego

I think that’s really important, especially with Instagram making it easier than ever to get to know the humans behind a business with Stories and Live! So Colton, agency life must have its trials and tribulations, what issues would you say you struggle with day to day?

Hmm…mostly managing communication with the client! There’s a lot of people who can run an Instagram account, you can read enough blogs on best practise and watch enough videos to educate yourself to be a social media manager. But what sets anyone apart in order to work with clients at scale, is really the communication and expectation between both parties, and how you handle and meet those expectations.

I suppose it’s not just managing and nurturing Instagram accounts, but also the relationship between you and the client!

Exactly, and that’s our biggest challenge day-to-day I’d say: how can we get better at communicating with our clients, setting expectations and ensuring we meet them. A client is never unhappy when they agree to expectations and you meet them, but they’re always going to be unhappy when you set expectations that are not met!

Strong selfie game from the women at Jumper Media

Definitely. Now Jumper Media gets amazing engagement on Instagram, so you guys clearly practise what you preach! One grievance we often hear at Hopper HQ is that it can be hard to think of content ideas when you don’t have a product to photograph. What advice would you give to other B2B companies to improve their Instagram content?

Okay so there’s 2 good approaches here. I think most B2B businesses realise Instagram is never going to be their biggest avenue of sales. Instagram is more of a consumer facing platform, it’s just how it works. So the app may not be the best place to spend lots of time and resources to gain clientele, BUT, it’s a great source to motivate and attract new employees! Some businesses will focus their efforts primarily on recruiting through Instagram. They invest time in showing company culture and giving the consumer an idea of what they do – it’s a tactic that we’ve used with our own clients. At Jumper we’ll strategise a content plan around the question: ‘how do we show people how awesome your company is and attract them to want to work for you?’. 

For B2B companies, Instagram is a great source to motivate and attract new employees! - Colton Bollinger, Jumper Media.
Click To Tweet

That’s a really interesting strategy! And if your profile is appealing to your ideal employee, chances are it’ll have the same effect on your ideal customer too. What’s the second approach?

Precisely! The other approach is becoming the thought leader in your industry, which is kind of what we did with our own profile. We just look for other businesses who do a great job with their online marketing – they could be some of our clients, local businesses, or even lead gen! If we highlight a business we’d like to work with on our Instagram, we’ll point out what they’re doing really well and maybe even something they could improve on. But the big takeaway from that is that they get a notification on their Instagram saying ‘@jumpermedia tagged you in a post’ and they’re gonna be like “who the hell are jumper media??”.

It’s a great conversation opener, they’ll come to our page and get an idea of who we are as a brand and hopefully research what we do. Granted, not every business is going to be managing their own Instagram, they could have an agency like ourselves managing their accounts, and chances are the person at the company might never actually see it! In that sense it may not be the best lead gen, but it’s still a good strategy. It makes your page look good and then when people visit they can see businesses that are succeeding on Instagram and get inspired to improve their own content.

Any final tips?

I’d suggest using this strategy to highlight existing customers! That’s one thing we’ve definitely learnt – whenever we highlight a current client, they really love the gesture and the exposure, and they see a lot of value in it. It’s a great way to keep clients happy and potentially attract a few new ones!

Also, keep in mind that the number 1 goal with any Instagram content is consumer value – Instagram is first and foremost a consumer facing platform – so if you’re not giving something for the consumers to come back to and value, they’re not going to want to follow you. 

We’ve featured @jumpermedia on our Instagram #HopperHQSpotlight – check it out

Great thanks Colton! Are there any industries or sectors you think Instagram marketing is most difficult for?

The hardest one that we’ve come across is service providers like lawyers. They’re quite difficult businesses to market on social media, so then it’s really about showing a sense of humility and personality around the professionals in the company. There’s undeniably pre-conceived notions about professions like law, people might think the employees are sly or even untrustworthy. So the way you need to go about a content strategy is by thinking: ‘how can we dismiss those stereotypes from a consumer who comes to the page?’. For example, showing that they have kids, they like to play volleyball, drive cars and so on, it shifts the ‘sleazy lawyer’ image into a real, relatable human being. Every company is different, but I think that’s a great first step for businesses who you perhaps wouldn’t traditionally think would be on Instagram. 

For my final question, I’d love to know what you look for online to help you stay at the top of your Instagram game?

For the most part just being on Instagram all the time, that’s the number one thing. My team follow blogs from all our competitors and news sources to keep up to date with what’s being posted, what’s not, what people are looking for, and we’ll go to Google to see what’s being searched for in the Instagram space. Personally I just go to Instagram itself, I look at sponsored ads, see what other businesses are doing well, get inspiration and ideas for our own clients. There’s a lot of stuff you wouldn’t see unless you’re on the platform a lot, as everything people are writing about and sharing is already dated! 

Amazing!  Thanks for your time Colton.

No problem, thanks for reaching out!

Keep up to date with Colton and Jumper Media on Instagram

Simple Post, Story + Reel Scheduling

Visually plan your social content. Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn + Pinterest

Try Hopper HQ Now

The post Jumper Media CEO Reveals Instagram Top Tips appeared first on Hopper HQ.