Advertising on Instagram

While Instagram is still in the early stages of rolling out advertising options, it’s still important to be in the know on what features early adopters are seeing. The platform has been running experimental campaigns with companies like General Electric and Levis, but has not yet opened this feature to all users.

They recently gave an inside look at what real-time tools advertisers on the platform can expect to find.

·      Account insights

These insights offer information on impressions, reach, and engagement, which give a big picture of overall brand awareness.

·      Ad insights

Here you’ll find detailed statistics on how your advertising campaigns are working in regard to impressions, reach, and frequency.

·      Ad staging

In this area, you can create and collaborate on an advertising campaign to make sure everything is just right before it’s launched.

With this information, you can get a better grasp on the ROI of your Instagram ad campaigns and find out what works (and what doesn’t) for your audience.

But until Instagram ads are fully open to businesses, there are a few best practices you can follow to ensure the content you’re sharing on this platform is resonating.

1.  Curate

All of your images should have a unified look and feel. Use a standard filter for all images and be sure the content works with your other images to communicate a brand persona.

2.  Quality over quantity

You may be tempted to post more frequently in hopes of getting more likes and followers, but try to focus on crafting a gallery of selective images rather than posting around the clock.

3.  Lifestyle, not product placement

It’s tempting to showcase your products in a typical product shot way—but use this platform to express your inner photographer. Show products in use (think lookbook or editorial-type photos) rather than just saying, “Hey, here’s my product.”

4.  It’s not about your logo

You don’t need to showcase your logo in your images. Instead, let your products speak louder than your brand. When your content is strong, looks uniform, and communicates your brand persona—your audience won’t need to see your logo to know it’s you.

What are some of your favorite brand Instagram accounts? Tweet your favorites to @wearelumen.

Adventures in Public Speaking

Over the first two weeks in September, I had the opportunity to speak at two different conferences in central Illinois.

Now, public speaking is not everyone’s first love. It certainly wasn’t mine. But I first got my feet wet with public speaking while working in PR for an Illinois non-profit, and started to learn what worked for me as a speaker.

Over time, it’s gotten easier. I’ve learned to write notes to myself on my speaking outline, practice aloud beforehand, and prepare simple, effective slides that help illustrate the ideas and concepts of the talk.

So, when it came time to hop up on stage again, I was ready for it.

Up first was the @Midwest social media conference in Bloomington, IL. I had the auditorium space, and about 50 attendees joined my session to learn more about social media content creation.

AtMidwest Conference, 2014.

The gist of this session: Content creation can be daunting, and coming up with fresh material for social media isn’t always easy. So, during the session, we talked about new ideas to test out, ways to repackage old content, went over some examples of people who execute those ideas well, and discussed general best practices for social media.

Next up was the Illinois Women in Leadership’s Women Symposium. This time, I spoke to a room of 45 about Motivating Millennials. This is a subject I often cover for my copywriting assignments, so we went over some of the statistics about Millennial priorities, the challenges they face in our modern world, and how bosses and mentors can challenge them to be better employees and leaders.

Both sessions had a lot of great questions and I was thrilled to hear their feedback on what their stumbling blocks and obstacles were with these two subjects. This started a dialogue between audience members about how to overcome those challenges (which was wonderful to see!).

Overall, these speaking engagements were a great way to start conversations so people can ask each other, “What works? What doesn’t?”

It’s not always easy to hop back in to public speaking, but I’d call these events successes. Want me to come speak at your next event? Get in touch.

Conducting a Social Media Contest

You’ve been doing the same thing on social media for a while now…and it’s getting a little dry. You want something fresh and exciting for your audience—so you’re considering hosting a social media contest to mix things up.

The question is: Where do you begin?

Today, we’ll walk you through the steps of hosting a social media contest that is both successful and well planned.

Step 1: Set a Goal

Before you can begin thinking about the contest itself, you need to decide what you’re trying to achieve with your contest. Do you want to gain new followers? Start a conversation around your brand? Encourage website traffic?

Your goal is what shapes your contest. Once you’ve decided on the main objective, you can start bouncing around ideas on how you’ll accomplish the goal.

Example: If your goal is to increase followers for your Twitter account, you might make it a stipulation that in order to be entered in the contest, a participant must follow your Twitter account.

Step 2: Define the Parameters

Now it’s time for the specifics. You’ll need to answer a few main questions to ensure your ducks are in a row.

• When will the contest start and end?
• How will you choose a winner?
• What is the prize?
•  How will the prize be delivered (and by when)?

The last thing you want is to launch a social media contest without thinking through the logistics—so make a clear plan of action. Think of any question that may arise and have a planned response for it.

Step 3: Choose a Platform

Where will you host your social media contest? That question probably depends on your goal. Just keep in mind that there are guidelines for Facebook,Twitter, and Pinterest you’ll want to follow.

A few ideas for social media contests on different platforms:

A retweet contest on Twitter

A share/comment/like contest on Facebook

A Pinterest board creation contest

Instagram your favorite (X)

A good way to keep track of your contest entries is to create a unique hashtag that accompanies any valid entry.

And that’s it! Now you’re ready to launch your next social media contest. Give it a shot and see if it helps gain exposure for your brand.