A First Look at New Instagram Business Tools (And What They Mean for Your Business)

Businesses have been using Instagram as a way to build their audience and connect with customers for a while now without too much insight on how their content is performing. But soon, they'll be able to dive way beyond total likes and views.

Instagram has officially announced the launch of its tools for business users, including new business profiles, analytics and the ability to create ads from posts directly within the app.

The Facebook-owned company worked with hundreds of business users to understand what was needed to enhance their Instagram experience, and three key needs became clear-stand out, get insights and find new customers.

Most importantly, they found that businesses want the ability to stand out on Instagram. Secondly, they realised that businesses needed more insights into their post-performance. During their research, a retailer in Austin explained that many analytics are overwhelming and hard to apply to its marketing. And third, businesses want to reach even more customers.

With these insights in mind, the company developed new Instagram Business Tools and we'd love to share what's coming with you.

Let's jump in!

Business profiles

Business profiles are a free feature for accounts wanting to be recognized as a business on Instagram. As noted previously, brands with a business profile can choose how they want their customers to get in touch with them: call, text or email with a tap of the contact button as well as get directions.

Business profiles will only be open to those who already have a Facebook Page for their business. Instagram's Global Head of Business and Brand Development, James Quarles explained the reasoning behind this decision to TechCrunch: “In doing that, it gives us the payment credentials, as well as if they want to prepopulate some of the information like their street address, the phone number, and the website.”

The 'Contact' button will appear next to the Following button in the profile information section of the page. Upon clicking the button, users will have the option to get in touch with the business or get directions to their location.

The 'Location' tag will be displayed underneath the current website link on a business page and when tapped, will open up a map showing the business location and enable users to get directions from their current location.

Insights

Insights on Instagram give businesses actionable information about who their followers are and which posts resonate better than others-all from within the mobile app. By learning more about the behavior and demographics of your audience, Instagram believe you can create more relevant and timely content.

Insights will feature metrics like top posts, reach, impressions and engagement around posts, as well as more data on your followers like their gender, age, and location. Here's a look at how the Insights will be displayed on iOS, as reported on Later.com:

Instagram business users will be able to identify where their followers are from, even going as deep as the city they're in. This will be incredibly valuable for marketers, especially when it comes to figuring out when to post content to their profiles to maximise reach and engagement. The new Insights will also show you the most popular times of day your followers are using Instagram.

Later also report that you'll able to view the top posts sorted by Impressions for both a 7 day and a 30 day period. This will help business users to work out an engagement rate based on how many people have seen their post and how many decided to engage with it.

Here's a quick video showing Instagram's new Insights in action:

Promote

The ability to promote lets you turn well-performing posts into ads right within the Instagram app-helping you connect with even more customers.

To run an ad, you'll be able to simply pick a post you've already shared on Instagram and add a button encouraging people to take action. You can select a target audience or allow Instagram to suggest targeting for you. After that, your post will be promoted as an ad for any length of time you choose.

The new ads functionality is designed to let business get started with ads in just a few taps. Speaking to AdWeek, Jim Squires, director of market operations at Instagram, said: “The way I envision this is there are a lot of businesses on the platform that may be new to advertising, or not advertising yet, and this is a straightforward, easy way to start advertising on the platform.”

The simplicity of this tool means that businesses may not have the flexibility and targeting options available using tools like Facebook's Ads Manager or Power Editor. Though, as TechCrunch reports, advertisers will be able to define and save custom audiences based on data from Facebook users' profiles such as gender, age and location and interests.

Over to you

Instagram business tools are just some of the ways Instagram say they hope to make growing a business on much easier. Business profiles, insights and the ability to promote will be rolling out in the US, Australia and New Zealand in the coming months, and will be available in all regions globally by the end of the year.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on these new features and how they may make your Instagram experience smoother. Feel free to leave a comment and I'd be excited to jump in and join the conversation.

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Airbnb's new site lets neighbors complain about noisy guests

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Airbnb is making moves to show it can be a good corporate citizen. Instead of just showing how it can build up market share in cities around the world, it's building an experience. But it recognizes that not everything will go the right way in a community, which is why today it launched a site dedicated to hearing complaints from neighbors.

Those that suspect an Airbnb property is near them and in which the tenants are behaving badly will now have a dedicated place to inform the company. The submissions can by done anonymously or you can have your information passed along to provide feedback to the host. Issues that you can complain about include noise, personal safety, common spaces, or other general concerns.

While Airbnb has no fantasies about the perfect behaviors of its hosts and guests, it does admit that it wants to “help our community members be good neighbors in the places our hosts call home.” The company claimed that “complaints and issues are incredibly rare.”

The launch of this portal comes as the company moves forward with its new marketing campaign that encourages you to “live there” in that guests shouldn't just stop in a city for a split second and leave, but actually take it all in like a local. And as such it means to be a good community member. But sometimes things can get out of hand and in order to avoid local governments and its citizens from putting forth potential regulations, such as what Airbnb faced in San Francisco with Proposition F, it has to show that it's taking the needs of non-guests and non-hosts very seriously.

What Airbnb is providing now is an easier way for neighbors to file complaints about listings in their neighborhood and gain some transparency into whatever investigation transpires. Now there's a central place for you to get your voice heard instead of having to tweet madly at the company or even emailing with the hopes that it'll be seen and catalogued.

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How to Get Ahead of This Year's Social Media Trends

As mid-year approaches, you may be looking back at your social media plans and goals for the year and realizing they need attention. What was set in motion less than six months ago now causes us to pause. In this ever-evolving industry, key social media networks consistently pivot, refresh, or introduce new features that require social media marketers to change their strategy on the fly. So far in 2016, we've already seen the following moves:

• Facebook launched Reactions and Facebook Live video to all users, and doubled down on Messenger.


• Instagram expanded video lengths to four times their previous length and implemented an algorithmic news feed to show top content first.


• Twitter changed their Home feed, introduced GIF search, and just announced updates to the 140 character limit.


• Snapchat rolled out Chat 2.0 and opened up geofilters.

In a recent webinar with Mention, I addressed the interruption of platform changes and identified four digital trends for marketers to get out in front of now. (Watch the replay here.) These aren't the only changes happening in the ever-evolving social media industry, but if you need help choosing how to position your brand and your content for success, it's a good place to start.

Think of Social Channels as Content Hubs

Imagine if you were to be invited to a friend's house for dinner. Upon your arrival, you immediately tell your host that you have a casserole cooking in your oven, and they should come with you instead to your home, to eat your dinner and get the recipe too. That wouldn't go over well, neither with your host nor the other guests. The more you do this, the fewer invitations you're likely to receive.

So why do brands insist on treating their audience in social media the same way? Too many brands (and people!) think of social media as a way to redirect the audience back to their own website, instead of joining them in that channel. To be a good guest, begin creating content that fits organically within the social media channel. Use each social channel's unique characteristics to inspire creativity, rather than perceive them as limitations. Create content that adds value, not noise.

While fresh content should live on your domain for SEO and conversion purposes, recognize that sending users to your website is not always necessary. Join the party-don't always insist on being the host.

Make Content That Moves, Sings, and Smiles

Content comes in many forms. Even so, there are three specific keys for producing content that gets noticed and earns engagement.

Move

Video is here to stay. Horizontal or vertical. Long form or quick hits. Consumed live on a mobile device or in a virtual reality environment. Audiences vote with their time, and they're increasingly spending time watching video online. In fact, Cisco predicts mobile video will make up the three-fourths of all the world's internet traffic by 2020. (highlight to tweet) Your content strategy should include video in all forms, with the intent of allowing your audiences to consume it natively in whatever channel they interact with your brand.

Sing

Audio is underutilized as a medium for marketers, even though audiences increasingly consume audio content. The same number of people listen to podcasts today as use Twitter. Get started by seeking out opportunities to join podcasts as an interview guest or co-host. When you are ready to launch a podcast, this guide can point the way. If music is more natural for you or your brand, follow the example of Hamburger Helper, and leverage music streaming services as a key community to participate with.

Smile

Don't limit your emoji to text messages. Those ever-lovable pictographs are increasingly part of everyday communication, so much so that the “face with tears of joy” emoji was named the 2015 Word of the Year by Oxford Dictionary. Whether in display advertising or email subject lines, brands are getting comfortable using emoji in marketing messages. Twitter has jumped in with custom Twitter Emoji for historical moments, sports and entertainment events, and elections (and has made them for sale too). If none of the 1,281 characters in Unicode 8.0 fit your needs, than go the way of IKEA and Kim Kardashian, who have both released their own custom emoji keyboards.

Targeted Reach Trumps Mass Reach

Facebook is commonly blamed as the primary culprit for declining organic reach, but the truth is that each of the primary social networks have moved to an algorithmic feed in an attempt to serve up the most relevant content to each individual user. Rumors are that Snapchat will soon follow suit within their Stories and Discovery modules. Now that total followers is a vanity metric and not an indication of views or engagement, what options are left to ensure content reaches the masses?

Social marketers can respond by honing in on intended audiences through organic and paid targeting options. It's time to include “audience“ in the content planning process, alongside intended channel, post type, and time/date to publish. With your paid social budgets, take advantage of the retargeting functionality offered by Facebook and Twitter advertising platforms to continue to reach an audience who has already indicated their interest by visiting your website or downloading gated content. Create unique content specifically for these audiences who are already midway down your marketing funnel.

Consumers Trust People, Not Brands

Who your audience trusts has changed. It's extremely important to understand the role of influence and who truly wields power of influence over your audience. Most likely, your brand and your CEO, or even a paid celebrity spokesperson, are not trusted to the degree of a “person like yourself.” Influencers can help bridge that trust gap with your social audience. Strong influencer campaigns can result in changing perceptions and reaching new audiences.

Working with influencers can be daunting at first. Be prepared to give up control of the message and medium, but do so with trust in the influencers you hire. Outline your own expectations and goals before launching a campaign, but also be sure to understand what outcomes the influencer expects. Offer access to restricted or one-of-a kind experiences, but don't forget that for many influencers, their online brand is a financial venture. Be prepared to compensate them fairly for their time and effort. An influencer's priority is to their audience first, and keeping their message authentic is the key to their (and ultimately your) success.

Get Ahead of the Trends for Success in Social Media Marketing from Lauren Teague

There is no crystal ball in our industry-no way to guarantee the plans we put forth today will result in the outcomes we predict. Every social marketer or community manager understands this nuance and (mostly) embraces it. By reading this post and watching the webinar replay, you've already set yourself apart by staying one step ahead of the masses.

Get more content like this, plus the very BEST marketing education, totally free. Get our Definitive email newsletter.

       

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Reddit CEO Steve Huffman: 'We know your dark secrets. We know everything.'

I had a chance to interview Reddit CEO Steve Huffman at our conference last week, which was interesting and a lot of fun. And when I asked Steve about monetization, or simply 'making money' he replied with what I thought was just a funny statement: We know all of your interests. Not only just your interests you are willing to declare publicly on Facebook – we know your dark secrets, we know everything… The community at Reddit was a bit more critical, and surprised, and the video of the interview quickly reached the #1 spot on the Reddit homepage and collected…

This story continues at The Next Web

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Facebook, MSQRD Kick Off Custom Filters for Copa América Centenario 2016

The U.S. will host the Copa América soccer tournament for the first time, and Facebook and MSQRD have fans covered, literally.

Soccer fans can use custom-created filters via MSQRD or the Copa América Centenario 2016 Facebook page to “paint” their faces with their country's flag and create video selfie animations or still images, which can be shared with friends or set as temporary profile pictures.

Copa América Centenario 2016 kicks off June 3 and runs through June 26.

Readers: Are you ready to represent your country?

Facebook, MSQRD Kick Off Custom Filters for Copa América Centenario 2016

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Storytelling at Face Value: Visual Stories at Work

The “Next Generation” of Visual Story

Doug Drexler is the first Academy, Oscar, and Emmy Award Winning story artist to join us on the Business of Story Podcast.

As a master visual storyteller and one of the FX and makeup geniuses behind operations such as “Dick Tracy,” “Battlestar Galactica,” and ”Star Trek: The Next Generation,” Doug knows his way around the storytelling realm of Hollywood.

Today we tap into his keen visual expertise to better understand the elusive ability to influence clients and customers by crafting game changing visual stories.

Maximize your visual presentations by understanding the psychology behind visual storytelling, the tools at your disposal, and how to use your innated visual storytelling powers for good.

In This Episode

• The squint test for story visuals


• How to gain utter confidence in front of an audience


• The difference between seeing and looking


• How to tap back into your innately creative storytelling powers

 

Quotes From This Episode

“Know how to get information across and keep it charming or funny or make people see it in a way that relates to their everyday life. That's the trick. It's learning how to ring those psychological bells that make Pavlov's dogs salivate.” -Doug Drexler

“Wear your story on your face, or wear the story in your graphics or your PowerPoint. Monitor your graphics. Make sure they give data but can still be understood. Show respect, but get the information across immediately.” -Doug Drexler

“There's a difference between seeing and looking. Everything just breezes by you when you're just looking. But actually seeing it, that's a whole different thing and it takes some learning.” -Doug Drexler

“When you're communicating in a business meeting, yes, you want to get the facts across, but at the same time, you want to manipulate the feelings that the people who were watching are having-a feeling of dread or a feeling of warm-and-fuzzy, that's for you to figure out.” -Doug Drexler

“When you're painting a face you're pushing it larger than life. It's a little bit operatic. You bring out the bone structure, and in different ways you can make them more sympathetic, you can make them scarier, you can make them look unwell. So you're telling a story about someone through their face.” -Doug Drexler

 

Resources

• “C.H.U.D.“


• “Manhunter“


• “The Cotton Club“


• “Three Men and a Little Lady“


• “The Making of Star Trek,” by Stephen E. Whitfield


• “Battlestar Galactica“


• “Dick Tracy“


• “Star Trek: The Next Generation“


• Moving Forward Podcast with John Lim


• Dick Smith, makeup artist


• “The Naked City”


• Mike Westmore, makeup artist


• Warren Beatty, director


• Jack Palance in “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde“


• Doug Murray


• BusinessofStory.com


• Park@BusinessOfStory.com

 

       

Storytelling at Face Value: Visual Stories at Work

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6 Simple Tricks To Make More Money From Your Blog

Are you getting traffic to your blog, but still struggling to make a good income?

Blogging is a great career option but only if you do it the right way. Of course, everything starts with providing great content to your readers and steadily growing your traffic. Once you have decent traffic to your blog and a loyal audience, it's time to focus on the revenue.

You may have heard a lot of people say that your blog revenue is directly proportional to the traffic coming in, but that's not really true. It's all about executing the money-making ideas in the right way.

So here are six marketing tips to make more money from your blog:

1. Place your ads better

Placing ads on your website is not enough, you have to place ads where your readers are more likely to click on them.

Before placing an advertisement, ask yourself why the readers are here and where exactly you should place the ads so that they don't hamper the user experience and yet, are starkly visible.

Here are a few ideas for ad placement for a better click-through-rate:

• Sidebar banner


• Above a blog post title


• Right below the post title


• Between different sections of your post


• At the end of your post, above the author bio

But, of course, every website is different, and that is why I would recommend checking your website's heat map which could tell you where exactly your users tend to click more, and that is where you should place the majority of your ads.

I also recommend checking Google's ad placement policies at regular intervals so you can stay on top of any changes. Also, it's in Google's best interests to make sure the user experience isn't affected, so you won't have to worry about bothering your readers either if you follow their guidelines.

Here is an image that depicts the best places to put ads, the darker the orange the better the placement;

Image Source: Shout Me Loud

2. Go beyond AdSense

Yes, Google AdSense generates the most intuitive ads for your readers, since Google already knows what the readers have been searching and surfing. But, with a minimum payout threshold of $100 and a difficult approval process, it doesn't hurt to look at some other options as well.

Here a few ad platforms you should definitely consider (all of them work alongside AdSense):

Infolinks

With in-text and in-frame ads, Infolinks can monetize your blog in a completely different way. Getting approval on Infolinks is extremely easy and there is a minimum payout of $50 through PayPal.

BuySellAds

This is one of the premier ad platforms which gets you direct advertisements from clients and takes a 25% commission charge. With a minimum payout of $20, the only downside to BuySellAds is that it's not that easy to get approved.

Viglink

What Viglink does is, it monetizes your outbound links. It turns your ordinary links into affiliate links, so when a reader clicks on your link and buys something, you get a commission through it. This brings the power of affiliate marketing to natural link building.

3. Explore native languages

With so many languages in the world, why should you only focus on English? Google AdSense now supports over 35 languages, and this gives you no reason to ignore native languages.

While English might be one of the most popular languages on the internet, there is an array of readers looking for blogs in their regional languages and you can be the first few to exploit that market.

I launched my blog's Hindi version, ShoutMeHindi, back in June 2015 and I've been getting great feedback ever since.

You don't need to make it exclusively in your local language – you can mix and match English terms, as people tend to be familiar with the digital marketing terminology in English.

4. Collaborate with brands for sponsored posts and reviews

This is the quickest way to earn some good cash, but at the same time, you have to be very cautious about it.

Sponsored posts are where you talk about a product in general, or you try to incorporate something associated with the product naturally into your content. Sponsored reviews are when the company pays you to write reviews about their products.

Sponsored posts should only be done when you can talk about products or brands that your readers would be interested in. I don't need to tell you that when you attempt blatant advertising, readers' trust evaporates.

Now, sponsored reviews are a very sensitive ground. You might be getting paid by the company, but you don't have to completely sell the product. It's important to be unbiased and write your honest thoughts about the products.

Test the product extensively, and then list down all the pros and cons. Be sure to let the company know beforehand that you would be writing an honest review.

To connect with brands, you can create a media kit explaining what advertisers can expect from sponsored posts and reviews and how much you would be charging them.

Suggested networks;

• Famebit (Popular among Youtubers but not limited to it)


• Tapinfluence


• Fango.me


• Blogmint (Popular brand to get sponsored posts for blogs & social media channels.)

5. Implement affiliate programs

Affiliate marketing, in a nutshell, is where you refer your readers a product and when they buy it through your recommendation, you get a commission out of it.

Our very own Jeff described affiliate marketing as one of the top ways to make money by blogging in 2016. Every affiliate program has a different commission rate and minimum payout. But the reason why it's so popular among bloggers is because you only have to set it up once and you can get paid from all your posts, whether they are old or new.

Even the traffic doesn't matter so much, because it all depends upon the readers buying products through your recommendation.

There are many different kinds of affiliate programs available, and you can select the ones that relate the most to your blog niche.

6. Write an impressive Ebook

One of the best ways to get revenue from your blog is by developing premium content for your readers. Creating ebooks are cheap, and they also make you a niche expert, which can drive in more business later.

You can also build up your subscriber list with an ebook by providing the book – or the first few chapters, depending on your inclination and the worth of the information – free of charge for every subscriber.

But, there is a burning question plaguing every blogger who creates an ebook – should you sell it on your blog or Amazon?

Well, the answer is not as simple as you would want it to be. To make the right decision, you should definitely check out this post by Jeff.

Your turn

Now that you have some amazing tips for how to make more money from your blog, it's your turn to implement them. Remember that what might not work for some, might work for you. You need to be patient, monitor your analytics and keep a track of all the revenue being generated by every method.

What are the techniques you currently use to increase blog revenue? Please share in the comments.

Guest Author: Harsh Agrawal, a blog scientist and CEO of ShoutDreams Media, started blogging in 2008 and since then has written numerous posts on Blogging, SEO, Social media, Technology, Affiliate Marketing and more. He has also partnered with various international companies, helping them promote their online businesses. His blog ShoutMeLoud has more than 832K subscribers and receives 1 million Pageviews per month.

The post 6 Simple Tricks To Make More Money From Your Blog appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.

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Twitter investors were sharply divided over Jack Dorsey's stock plan

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While Twitter's shareholders approved CEO Jack Dorsey's plan to give his stock to employees last week, an unusually large number of investors voted against the plan hinting at the continued divisions over the company's leadership.

Twitter revealed the vote totals from its annual shareholders meeting in a document filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange commission on Friday. While there were four items on which shareholders were asked to vote on this past Wednesday, the most notable on the list was a plan Dorsey announced last fall when he returned to the company as CEO.

At the time, Dorsey said he would return 6.8 million shares to the Twitter stock employee pool to be given out over time to employees old and new. It was gesture intended to show the deep faith Dorsey had in the future of Twitter at a time when many on Wall Street were questioning its future and there was large turnover in the executive ranks.

Turns out, it wasn't a slam dunk with investors.

According to the filing, 223,121,744 shares of stock were voted in favor of the proposal, while 123,907,045 shares voted to “withhold” their approval. Another 1,847,614 shares abstained from voting, and there 202,867,909 shares held by brokers who were not authorized by the shareholders to vote on any proxy matters.

Approval of the plan required the affirmative votes of a majority of the votes cast. The abstentions were counted as a vote against, while the non-votes were not counted.

While it wasn't exactly a nail-biter, the level of opposition was clearly high. In general, it's highly unusual for corporate shareholders to buck the recommendations of a company's board or executive team on any proxy vote.

Compare those results on the stock issue, for instance, on another proxy matter: The appointment of the company's accounting firm. There were 544 million shares voted in favor, and only 4.5 million voted against. That lopsided vote total is more typical of proxy matters.

Twitter signaled that some shareholders were restless about Dorsey's proposal in a previous filing on May 20. The company said it had agreed to change the terms of the plan to prohibit the price of the options from being repriced, something that could affect the value and also trigger some potential tax issues.

“We appreciate the stockholder feedback we have received on our proposal to approve the Twitter, Inc. 2016 Equity Incentive Plan at our 2016 Annual Meeting of Stockholders,” the company said in a filing. “Based on discussions with our stockholders, we have committed to amend the 2016 Plan after the Annual Meeting to prohibit the repricing of stock options, including through an option exchange program or cash buyout, without the consent of Twitter's stockholders. We recognize the importance of protecting the value of your investment in Twitter and we also endeavor to be responsive to stockholder feedback on our compensation programs.”

That apparently was enough to win the necessary approval this past week. Still, the fact that Dorsey was working so hard until the final minutes to sway votes shows that investors are not ready to give him the benefit of the doubt.

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