Many Ways Instagram Can Boost Your Marketing Plan

From Levi’s to the local craft foods shop, businesses of all sizes are flocking to Facebook’s free photo-sharing app Instagram, hoping to get noticed by its 80 million active users and expand their reach. social media marketing plan sample What makes Instagram different from other social media sites such as Facebook, Pinterest or Twitter? It's almost entirely photo-based and available only on Apple iOS and Android mobile phones and devices. Instagram has emerged as an effective marketing tool because companies can quickly build brand recognition and consumer loyalty through an ongoing stream of photos that help personalize their brand.That Greek yogurt brand Chobani for example. In just a matter of weeks after joining Instagram a year and a half ago, Chobani (@Chobani) attracted a loyal clique of some 9,000 “Chobaniac” followers, which helped catapult the company from little-known to must-have. Chobani generated buzz about its brand on Instagram by encouraging followers to share their own pictures and holding weekly contests. A recent Chobani Instagram contest showcased Chobani fans' photos of their favorite yogurt mix-in ingredients. Chobani chose a winning fan picture each week and awarded winners free cases of yogurt.There are a few fundamentals that you must know before you begin spending your hard-earned cash advertising your business on Facebook. These terms and definitions are so important that you really should understand them comfortably and completely before giving Facebook your credit card and telling them to have at it.An ad in Facebook is content displayed to Facebook users at an advertiser's specific request. Up to five different ads may show at one time. Where ads are displayed, what they are called, how they work, marketing on social media how they are presented and how many are shown at a time are subject to change at any time.Here are six terms you'll want to get familiar with before embarking on a Facebook advertising campaign.Every time an ad is displayed, a user could potentially read the ad. Facebook calls that an impression; it's an opportunity for someone to see your ad.

Promote your goods and services

Post creative snapshots of your company’s products and services and avoid boring stock photos, social media marketing campaign infographics or text-heavy images.Show some flair when you tell your followers -- potential clients, customers and business partners -- who you are and what you do. Starbucks (@Starbucks) does this right. The coffee powerhouse posts casual, quirky close-ups of Frappuccinos, cake pops and other products for its 858,000-plus Instagram followers daily, as well as images of baristas frothing milk and sampling pumpkin spice lattes.To avoid brand burnout, don’t show photos of your products more than three to four times a day. And avoid posting the same picture twice. Repeat photos are generally a turn-off in the Instagram community, which thrives on fresh, new imagery.For example, if an ad has 1.4 million impressions, then the ad had 1.4 million opportunities to be seen.But that doesn't mean 1.4 million separate people have had the chance to see the ad. The estimated reach for this ad is 200,000, the number of Facebook users who meet the criteria that the advertiser has selected for people the advertiser wants to see the ad.If an ad has 1.4 million impressions and an estimated reach of 200,000 people, we know that, on average, each of those 200,000 people has had seven opportunities to see the ad.Most people don't click on an ad on the first impression. As users browse Facebook, moving from page to page, the same ads are displayed multiple times.If the ad title is good and the ad image is compelling, the ad may capture a Facebook user's attention and they may actually read the ad. If the user clicks on the ad, he is taken to a new destination specified by the advertiser. Facebook captures and reports the number of times all users have clicked on each ad. social media marketing degree One of the first questions everyone asks is "How well is my ad working?" There are many measures, but we'll focus on whether the ad encourages users to click.2. Click-through rates. Facebook reports how well an ad encourages a user to click, in a statistic called the click-through rate (CTR).

Create images that feature promotional codes

Promoting exclusive discount and coupon codes for new products and services within a single Instagram photo is a fast, social media marketing los angeles low-cost way to attract fans and boost sales. British clothing retailer Topshop (@topshop), which boasts more than 218,000 Instagram followers, uses Twitter and Facebook to drive consumers to Instagram images that reveal "secret" discount codes and sneak peeks at new store locations.Don't forget to hashtag your special-offer photos with promocode. Hashtags on Instagram work exactly as they do on Twitter. They’re an effective way to attract and track deal seekers.For example, Sharpie (@Sharpie) showcases Instagram images posted by followers who draw impressive doodles and sketches using, of course, Sharpie markers and pens. The result? Sharpie has attracted nearly 39,000 Instagram followers so far.This identifies how many impressions it takes, on average, before a user clicks on the ad. CTR is the number of clicks divided by the number of impressions. If your ad had 1,000 total impressions and users have clicked on the ad 10 times, then your CTR is 1%.The page that is displayed after a user clicks on an ad is called a landing page. The advertiser specifies the landing page when the ad is created in a field called destination URL.Facebook does not display ads out of the goodness of its heart. It wants cold, hard cash. You have to provide a credit card before Facebook will even think of displaying your ad. Once it has your payment information, it lets you create an ad. During this process it asks if you want to bid for clicks or for impressions.If you choose to bid for clicks, you will be charged only if a user clicks on the ad. You can specify the amount you are willing to pay for a click, the cost-per-click (CPC), starting at one cent per click. social media marketing strategy template If you say that you are willing to pay a maximum of 45 cents for a click, then that is the most you will be charged for a click.You can send a user who clicks on an ad anywhere that doesn't violate Facebook's landing page policies. You may send users to your own web page or you may send users to other locations within Facebook -- such as a Facebook page, event, application or group.