Call us! 732-784-8890
Call us! 732-784-8890
If you're using Instagram or Facebook for business, you have probably asked yourself how often you should be posting stories. Some businesses are posting anywhere from 1- 7 or even more stories per day on Instagram. So how much should you be posting?
The answer is complicated and, of course, depends on your audience and industry. However, most social media sites recommend posting to stories anywhere from 1 time per day to 7.
The idea is to spread out your posts throughout the day, and not to post one long video breaking it up into 10 different segments. If you have to post a longer video and segment it, that's ok, but just don't make it routine!
Consistency is of utmost importance when posting. Make sure you are posting at similar times each day, and don't suddenly ghost your followers. It doesn't take long for your followers to find what you're not offering them from someone else online.
One of the best parts about posting stories is that followers expect minimal, unstaged content. They are looking for natural, spur-of-the-moment glimpses into your everyday life, not professional videos made in a Hollywood studio!
So if you are developing stories, feel free to make them with your phone and improvise. Don't worry as much about production quality with your stories. Your viewers consider them as a backstage pass of sorts. The main show is on the stage, your Instagram account. Your stories are the backstage feature.
If you do want to shoot several more professional stories, add them to your highlights and keep them on your page. But don't worry when posting daily stories as much!
An important aspect of stories is community, and one of the best ways to impart that to your followers is by tagging people, brands, and places in your stories. That also increases the chances your stories will be shared on their Instagram pages as well.
Don't forget to use all of Instagram's tools and techniques to make your stories more attractive and interactive. You can add stickers or polls to your stories to help engage your followers. Countdowns are another effective tool to make your customers keep track of your special events such as sales or product releases.
If you're looking for help with your Instagram story feature, contact us today!
You're confident. You're savvy. You're smart.
You're one of those people who thinks, "In the time it takes for me to communicate what I need or want done to someone, I could have completed the task myself."
You take ownership of your business and staff.
You're an entrepreneur and you have a clear vision of your goals.
You understand your message AND your target audience.
You have a real understanding of your buyer personas.
You listen to your current customers, and you speak their language.
There's a specific lingo you speak in your industry and you know it best.
You understand the ins and outs of everything going on in your profession.
You have a real vision of your organization's look: colors, photography, video.
You're good with computers and managing programs.
You understand budgeting and auctions.
You're good with Excel and/or Google Sheets. CSV, you think, I totally understand what that means.
If you think you possess any of these qualities or even ALL of these qualities, you have probably thought to yourself, "I can manage my own Facebook Instagram Business Manager." In fact, maybe you already ARE managing your own Facebook Instagram Business Manager if you have these qualities.
But if you are this savvy, you probably haven't gotten there thinking you know everything. You understand that even the best of us need help now and then. And that sometimes (maybe occasionally) we make a misstep in our programming or set-up.
Or maybe you haven't even made a miscalculation, and you're looking for reassurance, a supportive person to tell you you have set your programming up correctly. Such reassurance can give you confidence.
Yes, Cote Media can help you.
How so?
Cote Media runs workshops of various sizes for anyone who wants to manage their own Facebook Instagram Business Manager. The response to these workshops is overwhelmingly positive. Take this review for example:
“This class is game-changing!! Thought provoking, inspiring, and exciting, so much inside knowledge I had no idea about before! I learned how to use new tools for better content, how to use tools I had and didn’t know were there-how to use the tools to make the fun side of social media work for business and attract the people you want! Russ has such fun, down to earth and hilarious energy-love him, love the class, love the time spent. Thank you so much!” - A. Horsewood.
Or this one . . .
"Nobody is more passionate about this topic than Russ...buckle up, take his class, and watch your ROI soar." - Shawn R.
Which type of workshop is right for you depends on your experience with the Business Manager. If you're a beginner, you should probably start with our Beginner Workshop. We then have a more experienced Workshop for those who are more knowledgeable. But we will assess that before signing you up for either!
We also organize small and large group workshops for entire organizations. This is a good option for teams and businesses who want several members of their staff to contribute to their online advertising strategy. Depending on the size of your group, you can come to us, or we bring the workshop to you!
If you are inclined to manage your own Facebook Instagram Business Manager, look no further. Call Cote Media today at 732-747-4300.
New growth insights improve users' ability to monitor the effectiveness of their accounts. Primarily, you can now see which posts and stories generate the most followers. This data can help businesses and advertisers make better decisions on the type of content that attracts new audiences.
This update also improves the level and frequency of data about your users' activity. You can now access and monitor these changes by day or week. Users will be able to, therefore, make immediate accommodations to respond to a campaign's effectiveness.
Instagram allows for three primary insights: interactions, discovery, and insights. Businesses must be monitoring this data or their campaigns may be a waste of their time.
Now stories that mention you within the past 24 hours are aggregated for review on the Activity tab. This feature will only appear under certain circumstances. For example:
"The Stories About You feature is only available to Instagram users with a Business Account or Creator Account. Eligible accounts will only see Stories About You if they were mentioned in a story at least once in the past 24 hours," says Instagram.
The update makes interacting with story mentions far more convenient. Previously, users needed to respond and interact via the message inbox. Now mentions are displayed as a reel, allowing users to easily respond and share.
Now users can control who see their accounts by limiting ages. Users can seta global minimum age, or more specifically, restrict ages by country of origin. This new feature can be accessed in the Instagram settings panel.
Users with questionable or controversial content may choose to restrict access to their accounts. The new age gating feature is a preliminary to far stricter Instagram feature restrictions in the future.
"Share the profile information that works best for your business. With this feature, you have the option to hide contact information and the business-category label on your profile," according to Instagram.
Businesses can now make their profiles far more cleaner and sleeker with fewer options in their profile. You can now choose to hide or display your business category. This update is likely a huge relief to businesses who felt the required category description was redundant and potentially confusing.
Looking for help managing your accounts? We can manage them for you or we can teach you how to manage them using these and other best practices. Contact us today and learn more about our services on our shop page.
Online bullying is real and can be traumatic for its victims. But it’s not just a problem for social interactions; many businesses suffer online bullying, often from unhappy customers or competitors.
Competitors are often the first people businesses blame when they receive negative reviews or comments online. The struggle is also real. Some businesses do recruit customers to post negative reviews, ratings and comments in an effort to sink their competition.
The pain business owners feel is also often compounded by the sometimes difficult challenges they experience when attempting to delete the reviews from their accounts. The plain enormity of businesses who are all contacting Google, Facebook and Instagram on a daily basis makes businesses frustrated by waiting in line for a response.
Deleting negative comments is much easier, but still when comments sit for hours or even days with public scrutiny, business owners can be upset by even the momentary negativity.
All the platforms make every attempt to engage AI and machine learning in an effort to make dealing with these issues more efficient. And Instagram is now at the forefront creating AI options that automate bullying prevention.
Recently they announced several new additions that are useful to business owners who deal with negative comments. Specifically, suggestions to discourage negative comments and restrictive commenting.
The suggestion feature is automated by Instagram. “In the last few days, we started rolling out a new feature powered by AI that notifies people when their comment may be considered offensive before it’s posted. This intervention gives people a chance to reflect and undo their comment and prevents the recipient from receiving the harmful comment notification. From early tests of this feature, we have found that it encourages some people to undo their comment and share something less hurtful once they have had a chance to reflect.” (Via Instagram)
The restriction feature is likely more useful for business owners. This feature allows users to restrict users who tend to positive negative comments without the user knowing they have been restricted. The user continues to see their own comments, but the general public can not see the negative comments.
Unlike blocking, where the user is aware of being banned from a page. Restrictions don’t inform the user of their status, making it less likely for them to grow offended or angered.
“We wanted to create a feature that allows people to control their Instagram experience, without notifying someone who may be targeting them. Soon, we will begin testing a new way to protect your account from unwanted interactions called Restrict. Once you Restrict someone, comments on your posts from that person will only be visible to that person. You can choose to make a restricted person’s comments visible to others by approving their comments. Restricted people won’t be able to see when you’re active on Instagram or when you’ve read their direct messages,” Instagram describes.
Online bullying is a source of stress for business owners. Cote Media helps ease our clients fear of bullying by staying informed of all these developments then putting them into action when required. Looking for someone to manage your social media campaigns? Message us today!
Instagram Story Ad Polls are personalizing advertising and leading the way for far more interactive methods in the future. This new addition to the Facebook / Instagram advertising structure is earning a lot of praise in the past few months since its launch. So far, marketers are reporting HUGE gains from this feature's deployment. According to Instagram:
Advertisers in our beta launch have already seen success using the polling sticker in ads. Brands like Dunkin' achieved a 20% lower cost-per-video-view using the polling sticker, and Next Games' polling ad drove 40% more app installs.
Why should you use story ads? Instagram reports that 500 million of their users use Instagram stories every day. Furthermore, they report that adding an interactive feature to your brand's story lengthens the time that an audience views an ad.
The poll feature prompts your audience to engage with your story and provides valuable, actionable data that you can use to improve any of your business. If you're looking to make your ads more attractive and boost engagement, the story ad poll feature is a creative and proven option. The story feature is also particularly favored by millennial audiences, who are adept at using stories within their territories.
Interactivity adds a whole new dimension to the world of stories ads on Instagram that help bring people closer to brands. Interactive ads in Instagram Stories, starting with the polling sticker, allow businesses to be more engaging and playful in order to build better connections. Not only do they help stories ads stand out, but they can generate more impact for your campaigns by encouraging people to watch longer. In 9 out of 10 beta campaigns, the polling sticker increased 3-second video views. (Instagram)
How can you add the story feature? It's very simple to design a story ad. However, one consideration is that you cannot use the ad placement for multiple channels--make sure stories is the only placement selected. This requires you to have a different ad campaign for story ads than for Facebook or Instagram newsfeed ads. "Creating an interactive stories ad is simple. In Ads Manager, choose Instagram Stories as your only ad placement. Then, where you upload your creative and edit your ad's text, check the box Add an interactive poll," (Instagram).
What are some recommendations on how to best use the feature from Instagram?
If you're interested in boosting engagement with your online ads, interactive story-telling is particularly effective. Contact Cote Media today to learn more about growing your brand with Instagram stories.
Back on Valentines Day, February 14, 2005, when YouTube launched in San Mateo, California, only a select group foresaw that the site would become such a cultural phenomenon. Closing in on its 15th Anniversary, YouTube has upturned 80 years of television and radio history in less than two decades. Newer generations no longer feel like passive viewers to television's dominance. Instead, they start creating at a very young age on their own YouTube channels.
Competition is growing stiffer now for more established broadcasts. Even the Oscars have seen a decline in viewership over the period, and younger generations are questioning Hollywood's relevance. In a world where anonymous teenagers might shoot a low or no budget film on their iPhones that gets over a million views around the world, how important are the older institutions that once ruled Hollywood?
Customers are canceling their cable subscriptions and are instead streaming YouTube or Netflix directly onto their televisions. Independent video producers are profiting handsomely from this shift via the YouTube monetization process.
In 2018, YouTube updated the standards for monetization. In order to monetize on YouTube, creators must meet the following standards:
Facebook and Instagram are aggressive at fueling this uprising, providing free tools and education to its users on how to create for their spaces. Facebook for Creators provides inspiration and lessons for aspiring video makers.
The entrepreneurs who recognized YouTube's influence years ago are now receiving steady monthly profits from their channels. But there was a time when they faced uncertainty, unsure about YouTube's potential success. Still, they persisted; channels with regular monthly viewers receive significant profits from advertisers.
It's not difficult to foresee that Instagram's IGTV platform, launched only last year in 2018, might follow a similar pattern. Despite frustrations at the platform's vertical mode, that conflicts with pretty much all standard video development and TV platforms in existence, IGTV is still growing in popularity.
Anyone can launch their IGTV channel and create any type of content that meets their standards. IGTV allows users to post videos up to an hour long, so creators have flexibility in their productions.
One attraction of IGTV is it's informality. Even celebrities are making low-budget hand-held videos that receive millions of views. Users seem open to informal videos.
Launching your IGTV channel is pretty simple. In the feed mode, click on the TV icon in the upper right-hand corner. Upload a video and add a title and description. The IGTV icon will then become visible on your profile. You can delete videos as you choose, and upload unlimited content as well. Your channel will then appear visible to your followers. Using hashtags, your videos can also become discoverable by newer audiences.
Beauty and fashion seems to be leading on IGTV for now. Makeovers and makeup tutorials are very popular. Fashion channels also offer endless wardrobe tutorials. This is likely to expand, as professional TV producers find ways to use the channel.
IGTV can be an effective platform to share longer videos with your audience. If you're looking to start an IGTV channel, reach out to us. We can provide technical and creative guidance on developing your channel.
Check out the tutorial below for more on IGTV.
Will Instagram keep stealing traffic from television? New features like the question sticker seem to indicate that it may do so!
Twitter made asking questions to live TV anchors possible years ago, but now Instagram seems to be stealing the thunder by providing a TV like atmosphere and a live Q&A feature.
The feature is part of Instagram's end-of-year 2018 goal to make our connections "deeper."
How does the feature work? Instagram describes:
To ask a question and have it answered Live, go to someone’s story and respond to their questions sticker as you normally would. If they go Live to answer, you’ll see “Q&A” in your stories tray. Join the Live video and you’ll see the question they’re answering at that moment. If you want to ask more questions while they’re already live, you can go back to their story to ask a question and it’ll appear in their questions list. People going Live can also share photos and videos from their camera roll to their Live video, so you can see behind-the-scenes content from the creators you love.
If you need a better tutorial, check out this description from Tech Boomers. Here's their video:
So how is this useful for business owners? Question stickers are another way to build excitement around your brand, product launch, or offer. For influencers, they are also a way to prove your expertise in your field in order to gain more followers.
If you have expertise in a particular arena, Instagram questions are the ideal place to prove your knowledge and grow your following. Instagram accounts are growing in value, with some larger accounts earning $60,000 or more per sponsored post.
Check out your competition on Instagram. It may be that no one is using Instagram properly and that you can grow an audience quickly in your niche with little competition.
Don't wait to start growing an Instagram following for your business or expertise. Who knows how valuable these accounts may be in the future?
If you need advice on developing an Instagram account, reach out to us. We don't like to brag, but we manage accounts for international brands. We can offer businesses both strategic planning and creative solutions to make their Instagram accounts stand out from the crowd.
Above all, don't be afraid to have fun on Instagram! Many of Instagram's users comment that they look to the platform to see happy, loving and positive messages. Stay positive and supportive on Instagram to win followers' loyalty.
If you're looking to grow your following on Instagram, message Cote Media today!
Add a countdown sticker to your story by selecting it from the sticker tray after taking a photo or video. Name your countdown, add an end date or time and customize the color before sharing to your story. After you’ve created a countdown, it will be available in your sticker tray to reuse in new stories until the countdown ends. Your friends can tap on your countdown to follow or share it to their own story; anyone who follows or shares your countdown will get a notification when the countdown ends. The countdown sticker is available globally on iOS and Android – you can learn more about it in the Instagram Help Center here.
It’s never too late to talk about social media mishaps; they are happening all the time! The latest one to flood the internet: Adam Richman being under-educated about #Thinspiration. Not everyone is aware that the term is associated with eating disorders, often used to encourage less than healthy or safe ways of losing weight. Don’t stop reading there! This blog isn’t about healthy weight; it’s about healthy social networking!
Richman, former Man V. Food star of Food Network, is excited to share his new physique (having lost 60 pounds in the past year) with Instagram followers. He posted a photo of himself wearing a now oversized suit that he’d ordered a year ago, followed by the controversial tag. He was not expecting what followed.
Some assumed that Richman didn’t know the meaning behind the term (they would be correct), and educated him so he could think twice about using it. Others were quick to judge and ridiculed Richman. The TV show host attacked back, taking it way too far with way too harsh words. The harshest: “Grab a razor blade and draw a bath. I doubt anyone will miss you.” This is the line that coverage focused on. Well known journalism hosts like TIME Magazine, CNN, and Huffington Post spread the word!
The incident has not only overshadowed Richman’s new project, Man Finds Food, but it has indefinitely postponed the premiere! His current Wal-Mart commercials are more likely to get the response “Isn’t that the guy who attacked his fans on Instagram,” rather than “Oh! I could go for a burger! Where’s the nearest Wal-Mart?!” And we’re guessing he won’t be a spokesperson for long!
So how can your company or brand avoid such a mishap?
1.) Educate yourself on hashtags!
With so many terms out there, it’s not easy to know the multiple meanings behind them all! It’s okay to blush and rethink your tag!
2.) Take the high road.
If you’re using a tag incorrectly, it’s easiest to put your tail between your legs, admit you were in the wrong, and apologize. This will most likely end any controversy.
3.) Remove the post!
You don’t want that mess on your profile for future ammo! It’s like begging someone to hang your underwear from the summer camp flag pole… but in social media terms!
4.) If the responses keep coming after you’ve apologized and/or removed the post, DO NOT REPLY!
You’ll be the only one to blame for relighting that fire!
What could have easily been solved in minutes, turned into a s**t storm (to keep with the language of the story) that will go into the time capsule of social media “whoops” cases!
A picture is worth a thousand words. A picture that catches the attention of your target audience could be worth a thousand dollars! Combine that with the fact that over 200 million mobile users are on Instagram each month and your business has its next step!
Studies have shown that consumers are more likely to engage with brand posts on this social network. Instagram (IG) delivers 58 and 201 times more engagement (likes, comments, and shares) per follower than Facebook and Twitter, respectively.
So how do you take advantage of the picture based network? When new to Instagram, smart brands search for users with a large engaged audience, specifically the brand’s target audience. How?
Step 1: Using the star icon, search for a hashtag relevant to your business.
Step 2: From the results, reach out to IG gurus with consistent activity.
Step 3: Supply them with pictures or merchandise to promote the brand.
Step 4: Compensate users for growing the new business.
Clearly, Instagram is an option that your business should explore. Don’t just take our word for it, though. Businesses like SHREDZ and Bachelr boosted their following, as well as their revenue, by using Instagram the right way!
You could just start posting pictures and hope that the right people see them, or you could search for the right people! We highly suggest the latter. If you do it wrong, those pictures worth a thousand words could waste your business thousands of dollars!