The Ultimate Beginner's Guide to Instagram Stories

Stories were launched on Instagram back in August of 2016, but there are still TONS of lingering questions out there so without further ado, here is the 4-1-1 on all things stories.

First things first…What are Instagram Stories?

Instagram stories are “magical” posts of short videos (up to 15 seconds) or photos that after 24 hours, POOF! disappear. These stories are visible to the user’s followers and can even be sent to specific followers.

Where can I find Instagram Stories & how can I view them?

These stories don’t live within the traditional, tiled-grid profile. Stories are published separately. Your story and the stories of those you follow can be found above your “Home” (house icon) feed within their profile photo. Having a colorful circle around the profile photo means there is a story you haven’t viewed. A white circle means there isn’t a story or you have already viewed it.

P.S.A. Instagram stories are NOW available for viewing through the desktop website.

What else I should know about Stories?

• As mentioned above, story videos can be up to 15 seconds BUT they can continue with another follow up video allowing you to complete your message.

• Your past stories can be reviewed after the 24-hour time period by only you

• Story highlights are great ways to keep your story content alive past the 24-hour mark.

Why are Stories Successful?

Although Instagram Stories are only available for 24 hours, they are driving TONS of engagement! A total of 250 million users are utilizing stories, surpassing Snapchat. Stories have also increased the number of minutes spent on the app by nearly 10 minutes every day.

Need assistance to make your Instagram stories shine? Let’s get started!

For more information on Instagram, read my Instagram blog series, including The Real Deal about Instagram Reels.

How to Market During a Crisis

I’m sure many of us would love to be “business as usual”, but even essential businesses have had to shift how they operate during times of crisis. The recent global impact of COVID-19 has been…yes, UNPRECEDENTED. But what does this mean for your existing marketing efforts?

While marketing pre-crisis had been a GO! In times of crisis, it is important to STOP and evaluate:

1. PAUSE and reflect on your upcoming campaigns and how/what you’d like to communicate with current and prospective customers. Everything should be up for review. Images used, content, call to actions, and tone. If posts, blogs, ads aren’t hitting the mark, shelf them. They can always be repurposed at a later date.

2. PROCEED with caution - the red light may be a temporary, but when we resume, messages may be a bit different. If your content is based on push marketing, (pushing products/services to your audience), you may need to try a more human approach.

3. Have empathy - engage in genuine conversations. Keep in mind your post frequency to ensure you don’t come off as spammy or advantageous of the crisis. Communicate with your customers with added care and concern. These are hard times for everyone, after all.

The Ultimate Ecommerce Checklist

While the popular saying, “never judge a book by its cover” may be true for many things, it may not be true for websites. According to Blue Corona, 48% of people use website design as a deciding factor when determining the business’s creditability.

Whether you are new to the ecommerce world or looking to improve your existing site, these five tips will come in handy.

1. Ensure your website is user-friendly and responsive for mobile devices - overly cluttered navigation bars, poor call to actions, and busy homepages distract from closing the sale. Add in a disproportionate view on a cell phone or tablet and you have a lose-lose combination.

2. Make sure the checkout progress is secure - giving customers peace of mind is key. Having an SSL certificate is 100% necessary. Add additional messaging at checkout notifying shoppers that their information is protected and encrypted.

3. Curate descriptive product summaries while keeping SEO in mind - educating your customers on the product you are selling is a MUST, however, there is nothing worse than investing in copy to have no one read it. Keep your descriptions fun and true to your brand.

4. Integrate social media sharing on products - let your customers help you get the word out! This will broaden your audience to their friends and family. Isn’t word-of-mouth advertising the best?

5. Include a seamless site-search with faceted filters - many consumers already know what they are looking for. Faceted filters can include product type, colors, size, price range, etc.

Need help building an ecommerce website or looking to polish up an existing one? Let’s get started!

Increase Sales with Amazon Advertising

In a recent blog post, we covered wanting a piece of the ecommerce pie and now with mass closures to non-essential businesses, the need to get your business in front of consumers has never been more important.

Amazon advertising has been a successful and cost-effective solution for several of my clients and the options are virtually endless!

Here’s how they work…

Sponsored campaigns on Amazon allow your brand or product to be featured in key areas of Amazon.com. The campaigns include images of your product, product name, their star rating, and the coveted Prime logo (if applicable). Simply having your ad show up doesn’t cost you money until the ad is clicked on. You pay for each click, commonly referred to as your cost per click.

The average cost per click (CPC) for Amazon advertising is $0.97 according to Ad Badger. This is pretty similar, if not less, than Google advertising. The benefit to using Amazon advertising for your products is that the shopper is “ready to buy”, whereas many users refer to Google for their pre-buying research.

To get started you’ll need:

1. A budget - daily spend or spend amount for the entire lifetime of the campaign

2. Campaign Type - sponsored products, sponsored brand, display ads etc. We can work together to ensure you are getting your product and brand in front of the right audience.

3. Keywords - targeted keywords to verify you are getting relevant clicks: broad match, phrase match and exact match. This is a vital step otherwise you are literally throwing money away. Optimizing keywords as the campaign progresses is also an important step. Never. Stop. Optimizing.

What you’ll get from me once the above is implemented:

1. REPORTING! Learning about what worked and what didn’t is crucial to ensuring your dollars are working hard for you. Reporting in real-time allows for nearly instant adjustments, pausing of lackluster campaigns and making tweaks to ensure your advertising cost of sale (ACOS) is as low as it can possibly be.

Ready to advertise on Amazon? Let’s get started.

Get Started with Messenger Marketing

Answering your prospective (and current) customers as quickly as possible should always be top of mind. Are you utilizing all of the latest tools to enhance your customers’ experiences like Messenger Marketing?

What is Messenger Marketing?

Messenger Marketing is using messaging apps like Facebook Messenger to communicate and market to your customers.

Did you know that 80% of customer questions have been resolved by chatbots without having ANY human interactions? Chatbots are an excellent source of cost reduction for customer service teams and the busy small business owner already wearing way too many hats. (We covered chatbots briefly in our blog, Get (Even) More Social with Conversational Marketing.)

Since your business can’t initiate new conversations with customers through messaging, you can encourage them to start conversations with you. Here are options to get you started…

1. Think of your most frequently asked questions and set up automated responses. Do this with more than just a standard answer. Let your brand’s personality shine! Some FAQs may be:

   • Products you sell/services you provide

   • Price range of your products/services

   • Operating Hours

   • Business location

2. Create reminders and follow up messages for appointments booked through Facebook. For those with this feature set up, it allows you to send automatic reminders to customers the day before their appointment. This is a great way to keep users engaged with your business.

3. Boost your events! You will be able to chat with attendees regarding their event registration with Facebook Messenger.

4. Send Messages in News Feeds Posts - your Facebook posts can include call to actions, like “Get Messages” to start a conversation regarding a specific post.

Ready to tackle Messenger Marketing and optimize it for your business? Let’s get started today!