Social Media

We’re excited to bring you new exciting features in the first quarter of 2022. As the unofficial member of your social team, Hootsuite’s promise is to empower all organizations—large and small—to strategically grow your brand, business, and customer relationships with social media.

Read on to find out what’s coming soon to your Hootsuite experience—we hope you’re as excited as we are! Before we get into it, here’s a quick recap our strategic focus for 2022:

• One Hootsuite: We’re working to provide a cohesive and streamlined user experience with the tools you need to be successful.
• Personalized guidance: We’re aiming to personalize your Hootsuite experience by including additional context on how to best use the platform’s functions.
• Social network depth: We’re working hard to provide the most up-to-date channel capabilities as social platforms continue to evolve.
• Time-saving workflows: We’re helping you increase efficiency, productivity, and collaboration. This is a longer term priority for our product teams.
• Extensibility: We’re deepening our focus on two-way integrations with the systems that matter most to you.
• Clear ROI: We’re committed to helping you measure the success of your social media initiatives and show the value of your social efforts.

Looking ahead into the future of our solutions, we’re focused on three different buckets in terms of our prioritization. The now, the next and the later.

Now (and In the short-term), we’re focused on setting you, our customers, up for success while delivering a single, cohesive experience. We want you to feel confident using social media to increase your brand awareness and customer engagement.

Next, we’re striving to become the most helpful and most insightful platform in our space by providing context within the Hootsuite platform that makes it easy for you to take action on insights and recommendations. Our goal is to help you gain better insight into your customers and markets so you can use those to forge better connections with your audience.

Later (and looking ahead), we’re set on delivering unparalleled performance. We’re committed to becoming an essential part of your marketing stack and becoming a competitive edge for you within your space, helping you to maximize your return on investment (ROI) and attract, retain, and develop top talent.

The new features and changes are categorized into three key groups: customer connections, digital intelligence, and workforce activation.

Customer connections

We’re committed to helping you build meaningful connections and engaging your customers and prospects through social media. These product updates will help.

Get a holistic view of your social calendar

In Q1, we’ll continue to improve your planning and publishing efficiency with Hootsuite. Now, you are able to view live posts sent live directly from Hootsuite alongside all scheduled posts in one combined Planner view.

This release helps you get a holistic view of your social calendar and will be available to all plans. Find this update in Hootsuite’s desktop version and mobile app.

Easily find relevant Tweets with the Advanced Twitter Search in Streams

Find relevant Tweets and stay ahead of conversations with Twitter Advanced Search. You’ll now be able to set up search queries using the advanced search options to narrow your results to specific words, people, locations with Twitter Search Streams.

The new Advanced Twitter Search in Streams makes it easy to set up search queries and narrow your results using keywords or phrases—whether you want to search for an exact phrase, keywords listed, or even exclude certain words from your searches.

Track the success of your posts with upgraded link settings on mobile

Are your links taking up too much space in your caption? You’ll be able to apply link settings when composing on the go from Hootsuite’s mobile app, so you can track the success of posts using link shorteners and tracking parameters.

Select where your ads are seen

Nearly one-third (33.1%) of the total global digital ad spend came from social media, according to our Digital 2022 Report.

Paid social is booming, so it’s important to make sure yours is working for you. A big part of that is choosing where your ads show up. That’s why we’re making it easier for you to select/deselect which Facebook and Instagram placements you want to include in your ad campaigns within Hootsuite Ads.

Get insights about why an error has occurred

Sometimes network restrictions mean that an ad campaign fails to publish. With any failed ad campaigns that haven’t been published successfully, you get a notification informing you that an error has occurred with your ad campaign.

Moving forward, this notification will also indicate what the problem was that caused the ad to fail AND suggest improvement ideas. That means you’ll have the information you need to fix the issue and publish your ad campaign correctly.

Leverage behavior and demographic targeting

Ensuring the right people see your social ads is key to their success.

Coming soon, you’ll be able to tailor your ad campaigns to a more specific audience based on their behavior and demographic criteria. We’re adding two more detailed targeting options which will allow you to better understand and reach your target audience on Facebook and Instagram within Hootsuite Social Advertising.

Create LinkedIn lead generation campaigns

You asked, we listened! LinkedIn lead generation campaigns are one of the most commonly used objectives for LinkedIn ads. Soon you’ll be able to select this objective through the Hootsuite dashboard directly without switching to the native ad manager.

Get a snapshot of your social media performance

Curious to see how you compare with businesses like yours? Soon, Hootsuite’s new Social Score feature on the new Homepage will give you a daily snapshot of your social media progress and performance.

Hootsuite will analyze your publishing habits and engagement rate, and compare these metrics with businesses like yours. you’ll also see personalized recommendations on how to increase your Social Score to achieve your social media goals and reach the top percentile of growing businesses.

This feature will be available to our Professional users.

Get the best experience in Hootsuite Advertising

As a part of our commitment to providing the best experience, we’re rolling out three exciting releases in Q1 2022 to improve overall efficiencies of Hootsuite Social Advertising and deliver a better user experience.

First, we’ve introduced a product messaging pop-up if you have an Ad Blocker enabled. The pop-up will inform you if your Ad Blocker is preventing Hootsuite functionality from operating properly.

Next, get a holistic view of all your ad campaigns in one place—including status, budget information, and main metadata. Within our Ad Campaigns page, you’ll be able to find an overview of all campaigns within your Ad Account.

Digital intelligence

We want to help you understand how your brand is perceived, adapt to changing customer behaviors, and stay ahead of industry trends. These product updates will help.

Compare results for saved searches

We understand that performance comparison is a key component in campaign and brand management, so we’re adding a highly anticipated feature in Insights powered by Brandwatch.

Soon, you’ll be able to easily compare the results of up to five saved searches. This new feature will make it easier to compare your performance metrics without having to dig and compile this info on your own. This feature will be available to Business and Enterprise plans that have access to Insights powered by Brandwatch.

Provide context to your reports

We’re adding the ability to add notes to your manually created reports to provide additional context about the insights that matter most and help your team understand what they’re looking at.

You’ll also be able to easily share reports with diagrams to add an extra layer of context for your stakeholders. This feature will be available to Business and Enterprise plans that have access to Insights powered by Brandwatch.

Use improved sentiment accuracy in your decision making

Get the insights you need to inform your decision making. We’ve made improvements to sentiment accuracy in Brandwatch. The update supports 16 new languages. This feature will be available to Business and Enterprise plans that have access to Insights powered by Brandwatch.

Export list tiles in CSV/XLSX

We’re excited to improve our export functionality within Hootsuite Analytics. You’ll be able to export your lists from Hootsuite Analytics into clean CSV or Excel files. This includes displaying the information in rows instead of columns and an increased result limit of 30,000 rows.

Organize your ads with updated layout and filtering options

Looking for easier segmentation of all your campaigns, ad sets, and ads? We’ve got you covered.

We’ll be improving the layout and filtering capability in Hootsuite Impact’s Advertising Performance function to make it easier and quicker to find and dig deeper into relevant ad data. This upgrade includes updating the filtering options to be a global sidebar, making it quicker and easier to segment your ads data for analysis.

Dive deeper into your metrics

We’ve made another improvement to Hootsuite Impact’s Advertising Performance that will provide an updated view on breakdown data for a more focused look at your ads data breakdown. Our new tooltips function will also help you better understand your metrics.

Improve your analytics and reporting with target page filters

We’ll be adding a target page filter to significantly improve your ad analysis and reporting functionality when you have multiple target pages under a singular ad account. This feature is available within Impact for our Enterprise customers.

Bolster your ads analysis with Twitter Ads reporting

Drumroll please… we will be including a highly anticipated feature this quarter: Twitter Ads analysis! Impact will soon include new Twitter Ads reporting data that will be added to Advertising Performance and reports.

Workforce activation

Employee advocacy and social selling have become a large focus for many organizations. We want to provide you with the tools you need to enable your workforce so they can reach customers and prospects alike, and help foster better connections. These product updates will help.

Experience Amplify within the Hootsuite mobile app

We wanted to build a unified experience for our users, so we’re thrilled to share that Amplify will now be part of the Hootsuite mobile app. You won’t need to download two separate apps anymore. This update will make the sharing experience simpler, seamless, and more efficient for all your employees.

Our app will dynamically identify users’ permission, enabling advocates and social sellers to have a customized experience. This feature will be available to Commercial and Enterprise ‘Admins’. Social sellers and advocates will be redirected to the Hootsuite app starting in February 2022.

Enable your advocates to share Amplify content from the tools they already use

Soon, Amplify for Slack will allow you to share your organization’s content, stay connected, and increase your brand’s reach—all within Slack. They’ll have access to all of the content they would in Amplify natively.

This feature will be available to all Commercial and Enterprise Amplify users on desktop.

Interested in learning more about any one of these features and what you can achieve with social? Ask to see Hootsuite in action with a custom live demo.

Request a Demo

The post Coming Soon to Hootsuite: Advertising, Amplify, Impact Updates, and More appeared first on Social Media Marketing & Management Dashboard.

How to Promote Affiliate Offers: At least 100,000 active affiliates promote things in today’s major affiliate networks [1]. Affiliate marketing is a simple process to get started with. There is no financial commitment required, and you will not be liable for order fulfillment. Affiliate marketing is particularly prevalent among digital publishers. This is driven by a desire to monetize the content they create. Being an affiliate may be on your mind whether you are already a digital artist or want to become one.

Although affiliate marketing is a passive money source, active promotion is required. People will be unaware of your one-of-a-kind affiliate connections until you publicize them. Until you build awareness, you will not be able to earn commissions from merchants or brands. There are several promotional strategies available for affiliate marketing. The strategies let you share and promote affiliate offerings to your target audience. If you’ve been stuck on how to market affiliate promotions, you’ve come to the right place.

Strategies to Promote Affiliate Offers

Share Your Unique Links in Blog Posts

The first step in acquiring the best affiliate offers is to identify your specialty. Following that, you may undertake research to select the best schools with appealing offers and large incomes. One of the most typical ways for people to market these discounts to their audience is through blog entries. You’re on the right road if you have a blog or want to start one. A blog gives people an easy way to get essential information from you.

As the popularity of your site grows, so will the number of people who visit and click on your affiliate links. You may promote affiliate offers on your blog in a variety of ways. Among the techniques are:

• Writing product or service reviews and incorporating links into articles
• Including affiliate offers or links in your blog’s resources section.
• Incorporating affiliate links into relevant blog material in a novel way.

Embed Affiliate Links into Video Content

If you’ve ever watched a YouTube video, you’ve probably noticed a bunch of affiliate links in the description box. Video is a wonderful marketing tool, and you should use it. YouTube [2] is the world’s second most visited site, so you can see how your offer may be seen by a significant number of people. Video footage is a visually appealing way to promote everything you have to offer. You may actively show and demonstrate the products to visitors, making them more enticing to purchase. After that, send people to your description box, where you’ll provide your affiliate link.

Grow and Utilize a Mailing List

Even if you don’t have a website or a YouTube channel, you may start creating a mailing list. Having a mailing list, as opposed to social networking platforms, gives you a sense of ownership and control. People who sign up for your email list show that they are interested in what you have to offer and are eager to listen. To keep readers from unsubscribing, your newsletters must be consistent and imaginative. In two methods, newsletters may be used to advertise affiliate deals:

• aggressively promoting the product or service In the case of a launch or relaunch, for example, distributing regular articles or stories and incorporating links in them.

In any case, be certain that you understand your target audience and deliver your offers in an enticing manner.

Use Paid Advertising

There are several kinds of internet advertising. Some of the most common types include Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and Instagram Ads. You may experiment with social media even if you don’t have a website or don’t want to spend a lot of money on Google Ads. Social media advertising offers a range of alternatives and forms for marketing your affiliate link. You may use enticing photos and graphics, as well as engaging films. However, in order to avoid spending more than you make, you must be astute and circumspect when it comes to sponsored advertising.

Using Social Media Platforms for Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing has increased in popularity over the years, and people are continuously looking for new ways to promote their businesses. With social media usage on the rise, incorporating social media platforms into your affiliate marketing strategy is only logical. With social media being used by 53.6 percent of the world’s population [3] it’s no wonder that marketers are increasingly embracing social platforms. This also applies to affiliates.

As an affiliate, social media networks may assist you in growing your business. It’s natural to desire to grow your affiliate marketing business, whether it’s a part-time or full-time endeavor. With consumers glued to their screens these days, you may want to put your products with caution. Using social media for affiliate marketing may assist you in increasing your affiliate income. It’s also a low-cost way to spread the word about what you have to offer.

Why Should You Use Social Media Platforms for Affiliate Marketing?

Under the affiliate marketing concept, affiliates are compensated for generating sales for a merchant via affiliate links. Many people do this as a side hustle, and many more have gone on to make it their full-time job. One of the most important components of starting an affiliate marketing business is establishing an audience. If you don’t have an audience, you’ll be speaking to no one and thus making no sales.

Social networking sites provide a low-cost, simple-to-implement method of increasing traffic and sales. Unlike other platforms, such as blogs, you can quickly establish a social media presence and begin growing your following. Social networking sites also include a number of content creation tools that you may employ. You may utilise these to create interesting content that can be seen by people all around the world. Increase your affiliate commissions by growing your audience naturally and through sponsored ways. While it is simple to set up social media accounts and share links, you must also be strategic.

How to Effectively Use Social Media For Affiliate Marketing

As previously said, you must utilize social media strategically. This is the distinction between a successful and a failing affiliate.

Choose the Right Social Media Platform

Creating accounts on all social media networks is one of the most common mistakes affiliates do. The problem with this method is that you could not receive the desired result. However, you will have a better chance of success if you chose your social media networks intelligently. Consider your goals, target audience, and the channels your competitors utilise when determining which platforms to leverage. This helps you to be more specific in your approach.

Create Landing Pages

If you develop landing pages, you have more control over what your audience sees when they click on your link. Instead of immediately diverting your viewers to the retailer’s website, a landing page allows you to provide extra information to them. A landing page is an amazing conversion tool that also allows you to give your audience reasons to trust you. Include eye-catching images, engaging text, and a clear call to action.

Create Valuable Content

People are more likely to trust you and buy from your affiliate links if you provide useful material. Avoid seeming too “salesy” in your content. Even if your ultimate goal is to generate cash through your connections, you must also provide value to your audience. Nobody likes a pushy marketer, yet everyone is constantly looking for relevant and relatable content. Be genuine when sharing items for sale. People may detect dishonesty fast, therefore you should only promote goods that you are familiar with.

By skillfully employing social media platforms in conjunction with other resources, you may progress from a novice to an expert affiliate. Choose the products or services you want to sell, then choose the proper channels and create high-quality content. Paid adverts on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram might be incorporated into your strategy. This will enable you to reach a larger number of individuals.

Conclusion

There are various ways to promote affiliate products. It is not enough to pick one and disregard the other creative approaches to get your products out there. You may start with one or two strategies, grow your audience, and then go on to other platforms and technologies. Knowing how to properly advertise affiliate offerings is important to making a lot of money with affiliate marketing.

References

[1] Rastas, J. Useful Affiliate Marketing Statistics in 2021

[2] Newberry, C. 25 YouTube Statistics that May Surprise You: 2021 Edition

[3] Chaffey, D. Global Social Media Statistics Research Summary 2021

The Article How to Promote Affiliate Offers Using Social Media Platforms was first found on https://limitsofstrategy.com

The post How to Promote Affiliate Offers Using Social Media Platforms appeared first on https://gqcentral.co.uk

Instagram marketing can be a hit or miss. Especially as you start implementing your social media strategy, it might take a while for your posts to start performing well.

When it does, your first instinct is to figure out what worked well and replicate it in future posts – a great move. What you can also do is boost your post to double down on its performance with a broader audience.

Find out how Instagram promotions work, how to set one up, and best practices to keep in mind when running one.

How are Instagram promotions different from ads?

Promotions give a second life to posts that have already been viewed and likely performed well. Ads, on the other hand, feature new content and are used as part of a campaign.

With a promotion, the goal is to reach a broader audience for more brand awareness and engagement. Or perhaps you want higher conversions on a particular post.

With an ad, however, you’re likely targeting a specific audience with a particular message in mind.

Whether it’s an ad or a promotion, it will show up the same way on Instagram with the “sponsored” label under the account name.

Instagram Promotion Goals

There are three main goals you can have when running an Instagram promotion:

• More profile visits
• More direct messages
• More website visits

The goal you choose will determine where users are led after clicking on the CTA. While the first two goals will keep users on the social platform, the third will lead users to your landing page (LP).

Knowing your goal ahead of time is key to preparing your assets and having a plan for the influx in traffic, whether it’s on your profile, your DMs, or LP.

The first thing to know about running an Instagram ad is that you must have a business account. However, you may not have to link your Instagram account to a Facebook account to run the ad, a previous requirement up until June 2020, if this will be your first promotion.

1. Access the post you want to promote and click on the “Promote” button.

For Stories or Highlights, access your archive, select the post and select ‘Boost.’

2. Select a goal.

If you select “More Website Visits,” you’ll have to choose a destination for your users as well as your action button, i.e. your CTA. Here are the six button options:

• Learn More
• Shop Now
• Watch More
• Contact Us
• Book Now
• Sign Up

3. Define your audience.

When you choose “Automatic,” Instagram will simply target users who match your current followers’ interests and demographics, specifically those who have engaged with your content before. With the “Create Your Own” option, you can filter your audience by location, interest, age, and gender.

4. Set up a daily budget and a promotion duration.

Your daily budget range from $1 to $1,000 and the promotion can last anywhere from 24 hours to 30 days. Instagram recommends starting with a least $5 to reach a good pool of users.

5. Review your promotion and click “Create promotion.”

One thing to note is that Instagram will run your promotion on feeds, Stories, and the Explore tab – regardless of where it was originally published. Based on initial data, it will determine to run it where it performs best.

Once you submit your ad, it will go through an approval process, which usually takes 24 hours.

Best Practices for Building a Good Instagram Promotion

1. Promote top-performing content.

While you may be tempted to promote posts that need a little love, resist the urge. You may end up wasting money on a post that doesn’t have great potential.

If your brand is considering boost a one-off post, focus instead on posts with already high engagement.

Why? Well, these posts have already performed well with your followers. This is a good indication that they may perform well with the audience you haven’t yet reached.

2. Make sure your landing page is mobile-friendly.

Instagram is a mobile-first application.

As such, if you’re taking users to a website, make sure it offers a good user experience for mobile users. If not, you’ll end up with a high bounce rate and a low return on ad spend (ROAS).

A few things to keep in mind when designing for mobile:

• Have a single-column layout – This makes the page much easier to scan and navigate.
• Avoid too many images and videos – They may up too much space and crowd the site. And they can cause slower loading speeds.
• Keep your copy short – What seems like perfectly spaced paragraphs on a desktop can easily become overwhelming on mobile.

3. Know your goal is ahead of time.

It’s important that you prepare your Instagram profile and/or landing page ahead of your promotion.

You want to make sure you’re ready to convert those users once they’ve clicked on your ad. Otherwise, what’s the point?

If your goal was to get more profile visits, be sure to have a visually appealing grid, a descriptive bio, and updated contact information.

If you’re hoping for more messages, consider adding a question in your ad to encourage conversation.

The earlier you start preparing, the more ideas you can develop to attract and convert your target audience.

Throughout the past two years, two of the most popular apps used by Gen Z and younger millennials were Instagram and TikTok.

While Instagram steadily pulled in more than 1 billion active users since its 2016 debut, TikTok made news when it surpassed 1 billion global downloads within 18 months of its launch.

Both networks have solid benefits and entertainment factors.. While Instagram’s visual layout allows users to see images, videos, Stories, and live streams from their favorite accounts, TikTok provides an endless feed of short, entertaining video clips.

But, late this summer, as countries including the U.S. considered banning TikTok due to privacy concerns, Instagram launched a handful of new audio and video editing features that are quite similar to what users would find on TikTok. This new set of mobile features, which can be accessed in the Stories section of the Instagram app, has been dubbed Instagram Reels.

Aside from allowing users to record videos with sound or audio overlays, the Reels camera and editor also includes the following features:

• More editing tools: These include augmented reality effects, transitions, and the ability to speed up or slow down videos.
• Audio attribution: If a user uploads native audio, other users can overlay the sound in their videos while the app credits the original user’s account for it.
• Stitchable takes: This enables users to share a video with just one long take or a combination of quicker takes.
• Shareability on the Instagram Feed, Explore, Stories, and your profile: Depending on the privacy settings of your profile, you can share Reels with just friends on your Stories or profile, or publicly in the Reels area of Explore.
• Mobile-only: Unlike Instagram profiles and Stories, you can’t view or upload Reels on a desktop.

Right now, it’s worth noting that ads are not yet supported in the Reels area of Instagram Explore. But since Reels show up in this public part of the app, and can be seen by people who don’t follow your brand, your business has the opportunity to reach new audiences across the globe.

At the time of this post, we also don’t know how the Instagram algorithm works for presenting Reels to audiences. But, based on our exploration of the Reels feed within Explore, it seems much like TikTok in that it prioritizes posts by location, people you follow, and content similar to what you’ve engaged with recently.

Why Instagram Launched Reels

According to Instagram — which started testing Reels in Brazil in November 2019 and launched the feature globally this August — the brand wanted to give users more content creation opportunities on its app.

“We’re excited to introduce Instagram Reels: a new way for anyone — people, creators, and businesses — to create and discover short, entertaining videos on Instagram,” notes an August announcement from Instagram.

While Instagram hasn’t acknowledged TikTok’s success or competition as a reason for launching Reels, several tech journalists have suggested that this was a strategic move.

“Instagram’s short-form video feature, Reels, launched Wednesday. Instagram is swooping in at a vulnerable time for its largest competitor, TikTok. Reels allows users to create 15-second clips, like TikTok, and share them publicly or with friends within the Instagram app,” wrote CNBC’s Jessica Bursztynsky.

While Reels is Instagram’s first attempt at launching similar features to TikTok, this certainly isn’t the first time a Facebook-owned company has launched similar video editing offerings.

In 2018, amid TikTok’s early success, Facebook quietly launched a competing app called Lasso.

Lasso, which offered similar portrait-style feed and video editing tools to TikTok, had fewer than 80,000 app downloads by June 2020. In July, one month before the launch of Reels, Lasso was discontinued.

“We place multiple bets across our family of apps to test and learn how people want to express themselves. One of these tests was Lasso, our stand-alone short-form video app, which we have decided to shut down. We thank everyone who shared their creativity and feedback with us, which we’ll look to incorporate in our other video experiences,” a Facebook spokesperson told TechCrunch.

At this point, knowing the history mentioned above, some marketers might wonder, “Will Instagram Reels be a great TikTok alternative for my brand, or will it fail like other TikTok competitors?”

The question above is fair. After all, as a marketer, you’ll only want to invest time and money into platforms with a solid track record, loyal audience, and great brand awareness opportunities, rather than those that could be discontinued a short time later.

While Reels might have been flocked to by Gen Z if TikTok were banned, TikTok’s partnership deal with Oracle and Walmart has ensured that this app will remain active in many countries — at least for now. This means that even if Reels is successful, some audiences might still spend all of their time surfing TikTok.

On the other hand, Instagram is a widely-used platform that has successfully launched competitive social media features before. Remember when the brand launched Stories and eventually surpassed the user count of Snapchat, which launched this feature first?

At the moment, it’s not clear whether Reels will be as successful as TikTok. But, since the feature only requires you to expand your Instagram strategy, rather than building out TikTok tactics from scratch, it could still be a great place for brands to test out highly experimental short-form content.

If you’re intrigued by Instagram Reels and ready to try it out, below I’ll walk through how brands are already using the feature, steps for creating Reels content, and a few takeaways marketers should keep in mind as they build it into their Instagram marketing.

How Brands Already Use Reels

Emmy Mae Bridal

Fashion and beauty are perfect for Reels, as is evident by this Reel from Emmy Mae Bridal in Queensland, Australia.

In Emmy Rae’s Reels, the brand presents videos and imagery of their wedding attire to the sounds classy music. Although we can’t embed Reels, here’s a screenshot of recent content the company posted

Earth Official

The travel industry is also finding Reels to be an excellent way to reach people. In this piece of Reels content, Earth Official, an account that highlights travel content, deals, and influencers, shows beautiful footage of Thailand’s lantern festival with native audio.

Critical Care Now

If your business isn’t exactly consumer-facing, Reels might still fit into your Instagram strategy, depending on how well you’ve cultivated your audience and how creative your content team is.

In the Reels post below from CriticalCareNow, an informative Instagram account run by resuscitation expert Haney Mallemat, Mallemat educates viewers about central and peripheral arterial lines used in the emergency response field.

Think the topic of the Reel above was too informative or formal for Instagram’s audience? Think again. At the time this blog post was written, this Reel had more than 30,200 views. Pretty amazing for content that isn’t the latest dance move.

Haney’s Reel might be so engaging because he’s done a great job of building a large, niche audience of over 24,000 Instagram followers and learned what types of content they value. While more followers could certainly get you more views, creating Reels around what your audience and similar users want to watch can also take your engagement a long way.

1. Enter Reels mode within Instagram Stories.

To get started with Reels, open the Instagram Stories camera and tap Reels.

2. Explore the editing tools.

Before and after you record footage on your Reels camera, you’ll see four editing icons on the left side of your camera screen.

The tools you’ll see include:

• Sound: Which enables you to add a pre-recorded sound from other users or Reels’ featured song list to your content.

• Playback Speed: This allows you to speed up or slow down content.

• Effects: Tapping this icon, which looks like an emoji outline, allows you to add stickers and filter effects to your video. The filters for Reels are similar to Instagram Stories and many of these effects crossover between both video formats

• Timer: If you can’t hold down the Record button for the full clip, but want to make a video that lasts for a certain amount of time, you can tap this icon to set recording time for your clip. When you press record, a countdown of three seconds will appear on your screen before Reels starts to record. Then Reels will automatically film for the amount of time you designated.

3. Hold Record to begin filming, or upload a pre-recorded video.

Once you press and hold the record button, you’ll start filming a clip. If you let go of the record button, but still have time left in your Reel video, you can hold the record button again to start a second clip that will begin immediately after the first ends.

As you record one or multiple clips for your Reel, the progress bar at the top of the screen shows you how much recording time you have left.

Alternatively, if you’ve already recorded a great video or TikTok that you think will be engaging on Reels, you can tap the camera icon to upload clips from your camera roll.

4. Add last-minute effects.

If you didn’t add effects before the video started recording, but want to after seeing how it came out, you can add stickers, drawings, and text to your Reel before publishing.

When you are finished, tap the arrow at the bottom when you’re ready to publish. Again, these effects are nearly the same as those you’ll see on Instagram Stories.

5. Prepare to publish your Reel.

When you press the arrow after reviewing the video and adding any last-minute effects, you’ll be taken to the post screen, where you can choose a cover image, write a caption, add hashtags, and publish your video to Reels.

6. View your Reels.

Once you’ve published one or more Reels, this content will appear on the Explore page, as well as a tab on your profile.

7. Share your Reels.

Along with posting Reels for Explore audiences, you can also post them to your feed which will also cause them to appear on your main profile grid. Reels can also be sent as direct messages or even posted to your Instagram Stories. Unless you share a Reel so it appears on your main grid, the content will behave like a Story and disappear within 24 hours.

8. Monitor your performance.

Currently, to view any insights for a Reel, you need to view the post itself. At this time, there isn’t a way to view the analytics of your Reels within Instagram Insights. Instead, look at the likes and comments to get a sense of engagement.

9. Watch Reels from other accounts.

To access Reels, simply go to search and you’ll see a featured Reel. Tap that and then you can easily scroll through the clips. From there, you can follow users and like, share, and comment on reels directly. You can find Reels on specific topics by searching for hashtags.

What to Keep in Mind with Instagram Reels

As you consider Reels, TikTok, and other emerging social media platforms in your marketing strategy, it’s important to weigh the pros, cons, and key marketing takeaways when determining if a channel or feature is right for your team.

Here are just a few things to remember as you consider Reels:

Reels competes against a unique, viral sensation:

Although Instagram has a huge audience that is loyal to its platform, many Gen Z users are used to going to TikTok for viral videos and general entertainment. Because the app has pulled in astounding fan loyalty in its short lifespan, you might find that Reels don’t have the same viral opportunities that TikTok videos might have.

What works on TikTok might not work on Reels

TikTok is a highly experimental platform with a younger, but huge, global audience. Because of these factors, there aren’t many rules about what you should and shouldn’t post on there. Meanwhile, Instagram has been around for years, has a slightly older audience, and has some content norms or audience expectations set in place

If you’ve already posted a handful of TikTok videos and want to test them on Reels, you can consider uploading a few, watching how they perform, and learning more about what works well on both platforms.

However, as you learn the differences between TikTok and Instagram audiences, you might find that high-performing TikToks aren’t as engaging to your Reels audience. If this is the case, you might want to consider creating specialized content for Reels.

There aren’t ad opportunities just yet.

Although you’ll want to keep the points above in mind as you consider testing out Reels, you’ll also want to remember the opportunities it offers. For example, Reels might be a great option for you if you’ve mastered Instagram, know what content your audiences want, and are eager to test out TikTok-styled content without using time and resources to build a full TikTok app strategy.

If you do begin to test out Reels, it can’t hurt to brush up on your Instagram marketing skills and Instagram platform knowledge to ensure that your profile, other content, and — ultimately — your Reels will be on point for your brand and optimized for brand awareness.

Be sure to check out our Ultimate Guide for Instagram Marketing, or sign up for the free HubSpot Academy course below.

With more than 1 billion monthly active users, Instagram has established itself as an obvious platform for brands looking to expand their reach and engage with their audience.

Figuring out how to launch a successful Instagram contest, however, is much less obvious. Sure, it sounds like an effective strategy for stirring up conversation — it capitalizes on user generated content (UGC) and typically requires very little commitment for participants. But where do you start? And how can you be sure that you’re covering all the bases?

How to Run an Instagram Contest: A 10-Step Guide

To help give you some direction, we put together a detailed list of steps to run through when planning an engaging Instagram contest. From setting goals to monitoring submissions, we’ve covered all of the basics below — and we’ve included some inspirational examples along the way. Check it out …

Disclaimer: This blog post includes some information on legal issues surrounding internet marketing, but legal information is not the same as legal advice — applying the law to a specific circumstance. We’ve conducted research to better ensure that our information is accurate and useful, but we insist that you talk to a lawyer if you want professional assurance that our information, and your interpretation of it, is accurate. In a nutshell, you may not rely on this information as legal advice, nor as a recommendation or endorsement of any particular legal understanding, and you should instead see this post’s info as for entertainment purposes only.

1. Plan objectives and goals.

Before you dive into an Instagram marketing contest, it’s important to plan it out first. The key to running a successful contest is to have a purpose — one that aligns with the interests and behaviors of your target audience.

Whether you’re looking to grow your brand presence on Instagram or build out your list of followers, it’s important that you set a specific goal so that you’re not left wondering whether or not you were successful in the end.

To help narrow your focus, think about the audience you’re trying to reach: What kinds of posts do they like seeing on your account? What kinds of posts do they enjoy posting on their own feeds? How do they behave on the platform? If you’re looking to drum up a lot of engagement, you should aim to center your goals and purpose around content that your audience actually wants to post and engage with.

Don’t forget to establish a time frame and budget for your contest, as determining these logistical details upfront will help you design a more effective contest.

2. Create an entry method.

Although the most effective and engaging Instagram contests are those that actually prompt your audience to post their own photos, there are number of different ways brands can create contests on Instagram. Because of this, it’s important to establish and emphasize what it takes for your audience to actually enter the contest.

Here are some ideas for how your audience might enter your contest:

• Have your audience post a photo or a video to Instagram with a specific hashtag and a specific theme.
• Have your audience solely follow you or do so in addition to creating a post.
• Have your audience tag your brand in their post.
• Have your audience Like or comment on one of your posts.

(For more ideas, click here.)

Make sure you establish what the guidelines are for entering the contest, and make that clear on your promotional materials. Maybe your contest is centered around a hashtag that doesn’t include your brand name. If you still want your brand to be tagged to gain recognition, you have to make that clear in your rules.

3. Find the perfect hashtag.

A good hashtag is a key to any engaging Instagram contest. Without it, there’s no link between the contest and the content being generated. In other words, hashtags help create brand and/or contest recognition by serving as a mechanism for sharing and driving participation.

Trouble is, creating the perfect hashtag can be tricky. If your contest is going to have a time frame (and it should), you want to create a hashtag that you’re not going to want to use over and over again. Not to mention, there are tons of hashtags being created each day, making it difficult to land on something unique and catchy.

To help you come up with the best fit, consider these contest hashtag guidelines:

• Short: Create a hashtag that sticks in people’s minds. The more readable and identifiable your hashtag is, the better it is for your contest.
• Relevant: Make sure you’re creating a hashtag that is very clearly related back to your brand name, product, or services. If you settle on a generic, crowded hashtag such as #ThrowbackThursday, it’s likely that you’ll have a hard time figuring out who your participants actually are.
• Memorable: Users are likely to see promotions for your contest prior to actually posting the content. This means your hashtag needs to be memorable enough for users to think about it once and remember to act sometime later. Try to make your hashtag catchy, easy to search, and easy to write. Avoid weird spellings and confusing word choices.
• Universal: Think about your audience. Does everyone speak the same language or use similar words? If you have an international audience, make sure you’re careful about using slang words or region-specific terms that might confuse people.
• Rare: Do a search before you choose a hashtag. Are there lots of users using your ideal hashtag for some other purposes? If so, you may want to head back to the drawing board.

An example of an effective, engaging hashtag:

Mint.com, an online personal budgeting and financial management company, hosted their #MyMintMoment contest.

The contest was well-designed for a number of reasons, one of which is its hashtag. The hashtag — #MyMintMoment — is simple, short, memorable, and easy to understand. It stayed on-brand and had a clear theme.

The goal of the contest was to get users to post about the things they were saving for. Participants posted pictures of tattoos, vacations, weddings, children, cars — you name it.

This is a great example of an effective hashtag, but it’s also a great example of how UGC can be used to drive marketing decisions. Think about it: Mint asked participants to share posts about things they were saving for. Sounds like an easy way to gain insight surrounding the unique motives and interests that fuel the usage of their service, doesn’t it?

4. Clearly define a theme.

Because most Instagram contests are UGC-based, it’s important to pick a theme so your users know what kinds of pictures and videos to post.

Ideally, you want to a pick a theme that aligns with your market, product, or services. But you can also take advantage of holidays, seasons, and events that align with your product or brand.

An example of an effective theme:

Last summer, D Magazine, a city and lifestyle magazine based in Dallas, used the Texas summer heat to create an effective #StayCoolDallas contest. The contest encouraged participants to submit photos of ways to stay cool in the Dallas heat. Submissions included everything from cold drinks at favorite bars and restaurants to fun summer activities.

This contest and hashtag worked particularly well because of the double meaning of the word “cool” — which ultimately left room for participants to get creative with their interpretations. This is a great example of how to make engagement super easy.

While the hashtag wasn’t totally brand-specific, the theme was very much in line with their brand and passion for all things Dallas. And as a result of the contest, they were left with a ton of new material to get ideas for their next issue.

5. Decide how winners will be chosen.

Part of a well-designed contest is informing your participants of how the winner will be chosen. Most contests are determined based on one of two ways: a vote or a jury. Let’s explore how each option works …

Voting:

A great way to boost the virality of your contest is to have participants compete for the most Likes. If the prize is valuable enough, your participants will likely share their posts with their friends across channels in order to get as many Likes as possible.

This strategy helps maximize your audience’s reach. At the same time, it can be detrimental to your contest, as you run into issues with folks using “Like bots” to gain artificial Likes. To avoid any complications here, you’ll want to put forth very specific rules that address the use of these types of workarounds.

Jury:

For the sake of quality and overall fairness, the jury method is the clear winner. With the jury method, you select a group of experts to decide upon a winner, rather than relying on a voting system.

There are pros and cons to votes or juries, but no matter the way you choose, make sure to clearly state your method so your users know what they’re vying for. Many brands choose to have a mixed-method approach and use a combination of voting and jury to determine the winner.

6. Choose an appropriate award.

When determining what the award for you contest should be, you need to consider your target audience, your budgetary constraints, and how aggressive your goals are.

Remember that by asking your audience to participate in the contest, you’re asking them to take action on something. As with any effort like this, you’ll need the value of the prize to outweigh the cost and energy required to enter the contest. While people might gloss over an opportunity to win a free t-shirt, it’s likely that they’d be willing to jump through a few hoops for something like a free trip.

While your prize should match the entry action, it should also align with the interests of your target audience. Ask yourself: What might my target audience like to have? Your list of answers for this — budget not considered — might be huge. Sure, everyone wants that free trip we mentioned earlier, but that’s not the point. The goal is to find a prize that’s both valuable and relevant to your brand.

Gift cards, free services, coupons, giveaways, and product goodie bags are all common prizes that brands use for contests, but we’re always in favor of getting creative, too.

Example of a creative contest prize:

One of our favorite examples of contest prizes was Sperry’s Photo Real Design Contest. Sperry encouraged users to post “epic photos” that represented an “odyssey.”

Participants then submitted photos of all kinds of things — nature shots, colorful art, real people, etc. — to be judged based on creativity and the number of Likes it received.

The winner that was chosen received a unique pair of Sperry shoes featuring their photo. Talk about a creative prize, right? Not to mention, it served as a great example of how brands can use contests to inspire real product ideas.

7. Create terms & conditions.

Don’t forget that when you create a competition with a prize, you must follow legal guidelines. The laws that will apply to you depend on where you’re based and who you allow to enter your contest, so you should consult your lawyer for help drafting your terms and conditions. Creating a terms & conditions page is a must.

Here are some common terms people include:

• The name and contact details of the promoting brand
• The dates of the contest
• The rules of who can enter (such as age and employee restrictions)
• The guidelines for how people enter
• The guidelines for how a winner is chosen
• The date and way winners will be announced
• The date and way the winner will be informed
• The time period the winner has to respond and claim their prize
• The specific of the prize (including number of prizes, description of prizes, and any caveats)
• The details of how the prize will be delivered
• Acknowledge that the promotion isn’t sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with Instagram or any other social media used throughout the contest.

Note: Check out Instagram’s Promotion guidelines and make sure to comply with their rules.

8. Promote like crazy.

Now that you’ve got a solid plan in place, it’s time to promote the heck out of your contest.

Where’s the best place to start spreading the word? The possibilities are seemingly endless, but here are a few ideas to inspire your promotion efforts:

• Your blog. Write a post on your site detailing the contest, and use it as a launch point for your contest’s landing page.

• Social media. What better place to launch a social media contest than on social media? Direct your existing followers to the contest by including a shortened link in your bio and referencing that link in your promotional posts.

• Email. Extend the invitation to participate to your email subscribers by sending over a quick and friendly email to announce the offer.

9. Monitor submissions.

Monitoring both your promotional efforts and the level of participation during your contest is essential for meeting your goals and creating a plan to follow up on your contest.

Make sure to determine what metrics you’d like to use and how you’ll keep track of them. Here are some metrics to consider using:

• Number of submissions – Total number of posts submitted in compliance with your terms and conditions.
• Likes per submission – Helps you keep track of potential winners if your contest is decided by vote.
• Number of participants – If users can submit more than one submission, how many unique participants contributed to your contest?
• Top participants – Who shared the most content during your campaign? Keeping track of this helps you better engage with your biggest fans.
• Total Likes – Measures the total number of Likes on all submissions in your contest.
• Total reach – Captures the number of followers of your participants at the time of submission. Meant to show you the potential reach of your campaign.
• Follower growth during contest – Measure how much your following increased during the contest’s time period.

If your current audience is relatively small, and you don’t expect more than 30 submissions to your contest, you may decide to monitor your contest manually. To do this, assign someone the task of keeping track of submissions each day. At the end of the contest, someone will have to go through each submission and measure and write down the results from each submission.

If you’re monitoring your contest manually, try using a tool like Tagboard or Google Alerts to keep track of when your hashtag is being mentioned online, making it easier to track submissions. (HubSpot customers: You can set up a custom Stream in your Social Monitoring tool to keep tabs on a specific hashtag. Learn more here.)

If you’re expecting well over 30 submissions, however, you can imagine how difficult monitoring your submissions might be. If that’s the case, you may want to explore an Instagram-specific tool such as Iconosquare.

10. Follow up accordingly.

Once the contest is over, you can’t forget to follow up on the rules you set in the first place. Keep your terms and conditions in mind when reviewing the submissions to ensure that you’re being 100% fair in your evaluation.

Again, this is why establishing your terms and conditions early on is so important, as it will provide you with an documented plan for selecting, contacting, and awarding the winner.

Once you’ve selected and notified the winner, don’t forget to make the announcement publicly. Here’s an example of how to do so from D Magazine‘s #StayCoolDallas contest:

Instagram Contest Ideas

Now that you know how to run a contest, you’ll need to dream up ways to make your contest interesting, compelling, and appropriate for your brands. Here are some of the top contest ideas for Instagram:

1. Caption Contest

The perfect caption can make or break an Instagram post, so why not source the creativity of your audience and get some laughs along the way?

The caption contest is a great choice for Instagram because it allows your audience to stop and think about the contest (and, in effect, your brand) while providing a low-friction way for them to participate.

2. User-Generated Content

User-generated content — or any content produced by unpaid contributors — is a win/win for a brand. They get to participate and possibly win prizes; you get to enjoy extended reach by tapping into your audience’s audiences (say that 10 times fast). Not to mention that your brand benefits from the social proof of de facto testimonials from their participation.

Plus, to get even more mileage from the contest, you can ask participants’ permission to feature their content on your channels, giving you more content to promote.

3. Trivia Contest

With a trivia contest, you’re challenging your audience to demonstrate what they know. This encourages engagement on your posts and generates awareness for your brand and/or the topic that you’re shining the spotlight on. All you have to do is ask a question and reward those who get the answer correct. That reward may come in the form of a prize or as entry to win a prize.

4. Engage to Win

These types of contests are perhaps one of the more popular on Instagram because they solicit direct engagement as a way to enter. This may come in the form of likes, follows, shares, or tagging people. By doing this, you receive a ton of engagement as a result of the incentive, and this can increase your brand reach.

5. 1 Like 1 Vote

This contest usually relies on user-generated content but takes it a step further. The content gets promoted, and the audience is asked to vote (with a like) on the best entry, whether it’s a song, drawing, selfie, or other showcase of talent/personality. For this reason, your “contestants” are further incentivized to promote your contest to their audiences.

6. Raffle or Game

A raffle is just as possible online as it is in person. You can direct your audience to participate in whatever way you see fit to choose a random number or receive a raffle ticket. At the end, use a random number generator to select the winner. You can also do games such as “guess how many marbles are in the jar” or “how many differences can you find in these two pictures” as a way for participants to win/enter.

7. Offline Challenge

Just because you’re spreading the word of your contest through Instagram doesn’t mean it has to be based or held on Instagram. You can incentivize your audience to do something outdoors, participate in a fitness challenge, or perform some other activity.

Ready to Run a Contest on Instagram?

Now that you know everything it takes to run a successful, engaging Instagram contest, go put your knowledge to work for your brand.

Not only will you end up engaging and expanding your audience, but you’ll also end up with great new content you can use to inspire future content and contests.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in July 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

83% of Instagram users say they find new products or services by browsing the platform. So, how can you ensure your brand attracts new audiences on Instagram?

One way is with Instagram Live.

The live feature is part of Instagram Stories and allows you to stream video and engage with followers in real-time. When a user goes live, Instagram notifies their followers and highlights their profile picture in the Stories section, making it appear first in line on their followers’ feeds.

Live video can be an effective tool to highlight your business offerings and host engaging events for users to join. In fact, 82% of people prefer live video over social posts from a brand according to a survey hosted by Vimeo Livestream and New York Magazine!

But enough from me — now, I’ll let you take inspiration from those already using Instagram Live to grow their brand.

How 6 Brands Use Instagram Live

1. Global Citizen

Global Citizen is a non-profit organization with a mission to end extreme poverty by 2030. Earlier this year, the brand used Instagram Live to promote their #TogetherAtHome campaign — an effort to encourage social distancing in order to slow the spread of coronavirus.

To attract viewers, Global Citizen partnered with numerous celebrities to host an at-home concert series. Below is their Instagram Live collaboration with H.E.R., a musical artist.

In this livestream, H.E.R. advocated for quarantine, performed a few songs, and responded to live comments to lift spirits during difficult times. Besides the many heart-eye emoji reactions, viewers also shared comments such as, “This song brings me so much peace.” and “Music does heal.” to express their enjoyment.

Our socially-distant world also helped to make the #TogetherAtHome campaign popular because it was able to bring people together virtually.

The takeaway for your business: Research influencers in your industry to collaborate with and host Instagram Live takeovers. By doing so, your business will likely reach new audiences who are more willing to learn about your brand. You can also interact with the viewers in real-time in the comments or have your guest share a message about your business.

Lastly, consider tying Lives to current events to make your livestreams relevant to national or global conversations. These actions will boost your brand awareness.

2. Barry’s Bootcamp

Barry’s Bootcamp is a worldwide fitness studio offering workout classes. The company has been using Instagram Live to their advantage by sharing high energy workout sessions.

The live feature works well here because it can be more engaging for viewers to follow along with a live class rather than watching a pre-recorded session. In Live, they can also see how many other viewers are tuning in and watch their reactions to the class. The instructors also offer motivational words of encouragement to keep the energy going.

For Barry’s Bootcamp, live fitness classes align with their company brand and mission while providing valuable content to fitness enthusiasts. This helps to increase their brand equity and capture future converting customers.

The takeaway for your business: Instagram Live can also be used to host live workshops from your business. Lives make it easy for users to follow along and can serve as something people look forward to in their day.

Think of Instagram Lives as a way to create a virtual community of people coming together to do something. Similarly, a wellness company may host live meditation sessions. Any activity is up for grabs as long as it supports the business vision.

3. Chipotle

Chipotle is a fast food chain serving Mexican food and the company uses Instagram Live to share tasty recipes. In the below example, Chipotle’s executive chef shares how to make margaritas for Cinco de Mayo.

In this Live, Chef Chad takes viewers step-by-step through his margarita-making process and explains his thought process behind each step. This tutorial is one that viewers can trust and learn from since it comes from a top chef at the restaurant, especially if they’re already a fan of Chipotle.

It’s also worth noting how this Instagram Live celebrates Cinco de Mayo, which naturally ties into the restaurant’s Mexican cuisine. Chipotle leveraged this holiday as a great opportunity to provide entertaining and informational content.

The takeaway for your business: Ask yourself: What can we, as a business, teach members of our audience? Depending on the answer to that question, Instagram Live could be a great place to educate your audience while responding to their feedback and questions in real-time.

From the above Chipotle example, you can also better understand how acknowledging well-known events and holidays (e.g. cultural events, sports, and awards seasons) can work in your favor for this type of marketing strategy.

4. Bon Appetit

Speaking of food, Bon Appetit is a magazine all about cooking and recipes. Recently, Bon Appetit used Instagram Live as an opportunity to host a virtual dinner party with various celebrity guests. Each guest pairing was also creatively named after courses of a meal, from appetizer to digestif. Below is a screenshot from dessert:

Throughout the series, the chefs and guests carried out relaxed and casual conversations about anything and everything (you know how it goes at a dinner party). Bon Appetit was able to create a laid-back, yet engaging atmosphere. For those watching, this could’ve been an immersive experience to feel as if they were chatting with their friends over dinner.

The takeaway for your business: Instagram Live doesn’t have to be formal. Let your guard down and show your authenticity. Bon Appetit’s Dinner Party concept is both fun and creative — brainstorm potential themes you may be able to incorporate into your livestreams to achieve the same results.

Moreover, creating a series of Lives will incentivize people to follow your account and stay tuned for new content. Also, take advantage of Instagram’s guest feature to add someone else into your brand’s conversation.

5. Chewy

If you prefer more structured programming, then look to Chewy, an online retailer for all pet essentials, for inspiration. Targeting pet owners, Chewy provides educational content on how to care for a variety of pets. An example of this is their Vet to Vet Live:

These Q&A sessions provide valuable insight from experts for pet owners. Pet parents can also input their questions in the comment section for instant expert advice. As a brand, these informational videos help Chewy establish itself not only as a place to shop, but also as a resource they can turn to for any pet-related needs.

The takeaway for your business: Using Instagram Live to conduct Q&As and interviews can provide insightful tips and advice for your audience. This educational content will be appreciated by your audience members who are eager to learn and help you increase customer loyalty. Additionally, listening to a conversation between multiple people, and watching that interaction live, can also be more enjoyable than a one-man show.

6. Origins

Origins is a cosmetics company creating products from naturally-derived ingredients. Origins aligns Instagram Live with their brand by showcasing products and hosting conversations about skincare.

As shown in the screenshot, the Origins representative presents one of their products up close to the camera. This is important because products online often only show the packaging of the product, so revealing what the product itself looks like lends potential customers a better understanding of how they might expect the product to look and feel.

The two hosts also share what they like about the products and how they use it in their day-to-day lives. Sharing their stories provokes viewers to consider how they can incorporate the product into their own routines, which ultimately pushes them closer to purchase.

The takeaway for your business: Live is the perfect place for product demos and to show customers what they can expect from your business. This can resolve any hesitations related to making a purchase. It also offers a place for experts and current users to answer any concerns about the product a prospect may have. Assess your current offerings and create a live session to discuss how the customer can use and benefit from your products.

No matter which industry your business is in, all successful Lives have one theme in common — they provide valuable content for viewers that’s entertaining and/or educational.

Now that you know how other companies are marketing with Instagram Live, see the exact steps you need to start your next Live.

In a moment we’ll get started on how to use Tumblr to generate income online, but before we start I’d like to give you a short pep talk! You are clearly intelligent enough to understand that it is very possible to generate income from Tumblr through microblogging and have arrived here. But, if just starting out in the competitive world of blogging, you may find yourself questioning whether it’s worth starting your own Tumblr blog. After all, there are over 153 million blogs overall across the web and that number grows by the day. 10 years ago blogging was the main method of expressing yourself and having your own little creative corner of the web, but that’s changed. Nowadays, sites such as Instagram, Facebook and Tumblr seem to be the ‘it’ places to express yourself. So, why spend time on Tumblr where the sheer numbers of competitors on that website alone might put you off of blogging.

The reason is the Tumblr community which is generally a lot more open to art and art forms, and less stuck on the funny cats and baby videos than most other places. Tumblr is a creative social platform where people share many types of content, including short articles, images, music and videos. The watchword is to be yourself and just “create”, and you will eventually get noticed. Posts are short that’s why it’s rather similar to Twitter. So, this combination of blogging tool and social community is developed for those who prefer brevity while writing. But, don’t just create, follow others, add notes, and comment, and use hashtags to your advantage.

How to Use Tumblr

If you’re not already on Tumblr you’ll need to create an account and start a blog. Think about whether you want your Tumblr to represent you as a person or whether you want Tumblr to be for your business. Of course, you can have more than one account, but it’s a good idea to focus your money-making energies on one or the other.

To create a new Tumblr blog, simply go to tumblr.com and make an account. If you already have a personal blog you can easily create a new Tumblr blog for say, your jewellery business or your consultancy. For each new Tumblr blog, pick a title and URL and then choose the privacy settings and make them public. You can change the URL at any time.

Success on Tumblr is a matter of having many followers for your blog and many “notes” on your posts. Posts get notes when someone likes or reblogs them. Having highly shareable images, quotes and GIFs can improve your chance of attracting followers on Tumblr. That means you will have plenty of opportunities to be genuinely creative in what you blog about and post. If you are artistic and can create your own stunning images, you will do well on the microblogging site.

Using keywords, tags and hashtags will help users find your Tumblr and help Tumblr recommend your blog to the right users. That’s because the first 20tags you add to any blog post (but not to re-blogs of others’ posts) will all be searchable on Tumblr. So, if a user decided to explore a tag you used (e.g. NYC) via a Tumblr tag page, he or she would be able to see your post. That’s why tags are so useful for gaining new followers. You can use hashtags or regular tags, and your tags can have spaces or periods in them.

You’ve now set up your Tumblr blog and decided on a look and tone. Now it’s time to keep up a consistent stream of posts. Experts suggest at least a few times a week. To start, you may want to follow some brands and people you admire and see how they use Tumblr. You could try emulating their posting schedule, but of course, you don’t want to copy their look and voice. You need to establish your own. Plus, to stay on users’ dashboards and on their minds you’ll need to post frequently. If you don’t, you won’t build the kind of engaged following that you need to make money on Tumblr. There are various services that let you queue up posts in advance.

Tumblr Tips for Beginners

1. Infographics usually perform well on Tumblr. Use them to promote a course or e-book you are selling by posting the infographic along with a link to your course or e-book to learn more.

2. Use any Tumblr affiliate program or post photos and videos as a guide to various sites and landscapes or create tutorials. You can publish quotes to promote some places of interest, ways of travelling, or offer win-win solutions for travellers.

3. You can add AdSense to a blog that’s hosted by Tumblr so long as it meets their guidelines, but one thing you can’t do is apply for Google Adsense using a blog with a Tumblr URL (like ). To obtain an Adsense Account you need to show them a TOS compliant website you own. You can do that by buying a domain and adding it to your Tumblr account as a custom URL. For those with an existing Adsense account, just add your Tumblr URL to your already approved account and add the Adsense ads script to each page.

4. Reblogging is an important Tumblr feature to keep in mind when trying to make money on their network. Reblogging is essentially the option other Tumblr users have to repost posts from your Tumblr blog to theirs. Another important feature to keep in mind is tagging: tag your posts with a few good keywords so that your posts show up when someone is searching on a tag. Now, without further ado, here are ways to make money on Tumblr.

5. If you want to raise an existing Tumblr income, use any Tumblr affiliate program, or post photos and videos as a guide to various sites and landscapes or tutorials. You can publish quotes to promote some places of interests, ways of travelling or tips to offer win-win solutions for travellers. Formats and content of posts depend on your niche in “travel”. For instance, the “insatiable traveller” blog shares tips on how to improve your photography skills and a helpful list of dos and don’ts for every country.

Tumblr: Further Reading

From social networking services to instant messaging apps, to video sharing websites, there are numerous means by which information can be shared online with others. However, when it comes to communicating thoughts and ideas effectively over the web, there’s hardly a medium that works better, than blogging. Probably this is the reason that these days, anyone and everyone, from individuals to big corporations, has a blog.

Out of the many blogging platforms available out there, the Verizon owned Tumblr is probably the most unique. Built around a “short-form” blogging approach, it lets users post text, pictures, as well as multimedia from an easy to use dashboard.

From the 1980s, porn has always been available for instant viewing via the internet, and Tumblr allowed it. It seems that with every new technological advance, the availability of sex and porn websites has followed. Recently x-rated content has been shutdown on Tumblr. With the rise of SOPA, many other sites have also removed their Adult content. Many parents are also using internet filter programs as a way to protect their computers and families from unwanted content.

Tumblr ads are a way to raise your profile on the platform. They are created as sponsored posts, sponsored video posts, or sponsored days. They are selectively shown to relevant audiences based on factors such as surrounding content users are viewing, the information provided, apps used, search history, and friends’ recommendations. Ads on Tumblr serve across desktop, mobile, and tablet. For the successful microbloggers reading this, Tumblr ads might be right for you.

Concluding: Using Tumblr to Generate Income Online

In the competitive world of blogging, you may find yourself questioning whether it’s worth starting your own blog. After all, there are over 153 million blogs and that number grows daily.

Yes, it is because Tumblr is a great platform, with a relatively attentive community to appreciate your efforts when finding your voice as a blogger.

Once you have a following you will know how to build more and larger followings and by showing even a small amount of business acuity, money-making opportunities will develop from there.

Tumblr Themes to Improve SEO and Send Traffic to a Main Website (or Sites)

A Tumblr theme will help you to improve the experience of your Tumblr blog by being more unique or visually interesting than competing blogs. There are a ton of free Tumblr themes bring in a lot of features, design styles, responsive interface, and much more. You can also go about and edit the themes by adjusting the raw HTML codes that go into building them.

However, once you have built yourself a nice following and want to branch out with a self-hosted blog on your own webspace you will benefit from an SEO theme like TumblriX, which will allow something called direct “follow” links (backlinks) on special static pages which it creates in a sidebar for you. These are most simply described as the opposite to “no-follow” links where a no-follow link is a link which the page creator/ owner is telling Google not to use the link to index the linked page either favourably or unfavourably.

Our Theme is a simple low “one time” cost Tumblr theme which comes with a clean look. We made it really, really simple for people to make a blog and put whatever they want on it. But, the real power is the static pages which it builds automatically. Add suitable text and anchor text links to those and you will find that those are powerful “follow” inks which convey a lot of Google “love” to any page or post you link them to. Once you have a popular Tumblr this theme is the one which will help you rank your related money making website. When the theme is used correctly, like that, it’s a wonderful traffic booster. It does this by raising the page-rank of your linked website. Once the content on your money-making website is seen by many people in the search engines you will have the opportunity to sell whatever you like, to them.

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