Instagram Analytics: What Metrics Matter

Social media is all about social engagement and engagement matters the most on Instagram. In fact, engagement on Instagram is said to be 4-12x more than that on other platforms. So now you have heard Instagram is a great platform for businesses and made a page for your brand. You have been active and also seeing some activity. You now want to know how well you are doing. Are you using the right Instagram analytics tool for that?

In this article, we try to help you understand which metrics are the most important to measure.

Can Instagram Analytics Help you?

If you look for them, there are tools aplenty that can help you with Instagram Analytics. You can choose according to your specific need or go for a robust platform that can handle multiple platforms, manage a posting schedule and offer various other features.

In this case, Instagram has its own in-built analytics to offer. If you have a business profile, you have access to Instagram’s app which gives you in-built analytics. This will assist you to know about your audience demographics, the times at which they are most active, their engagement rate (as in what they’re liking or commenting upon).

The data is collated by Instagram so it comes directly from the horse’s mouth. However, you can view the app-based data only if you have a business account. If you do not have a business profile, you can view it after you convert yours into one. However, the data cannot be viewed on a desktop or exported for further analysis.

How can Social Listening Tools Help?

Luckily you don’t have to depend fully on Instagram for the data you need. There are several Instagram analytics tools to help brands understand their audience and optimize their marketing decisions.

Auris

Auris is such a social listening tool that can be turned into a sound Instagram analytics tool. It lets you filter mentions from Instagram alone and run diagnostics. Auris’ platform makes measuring performance easy. It charts out the data and provides a dashboard with components to help you segment by sentiment, emotion, geography et cetera.

Social listening tools help your team visualize the data and be better able to find insights. Moreover, these tools allow you to access customizable reports. Besides Instagram, you can integrate dozens of other social media platforms and do a comparison all in one place.

Important Metrics to Track

Now that you know how to get started with the tracking process, you might start wondering how to set things up? In simpler words, what metrics should I measure diligently and what matters? Here are some important metrics you can set up on your dashboard right away.

Engagement Rate

Mostly your dashboard will display an average engagement rate for your page/posts and indicate any dip or rise. However, if you wish to know in detail average engagement across all posts is given by [post interactions ÷ total impressions x 100].

Almost all social media listening tools measure this because experts believe the total number of impressions is a better metric than the total number of followers.

Top Hashtags / Trending Keywords

One of the best features of Instagram is that its search feature runs on hashtags. This makes it easier for you to organically attract attention. But since hashtags are popular on Instagram, everybody is using them. You have to zero in on the right ones for your posts in order to avoid the noise. Social listening tools help you find niche hashtags that work best for your brand.

Influence Score

If your aim is to start a successful influencer marketing campaign you would need to track influencers on Instagram. If you are trying to find influencers for a niche market or on a tight budget, social listening tools can help. For instance, Auris assigns an influence score to individuals speaking about a specific keyword. This is based on their network size, engagement rate et cetera. So instead of getting muddled up with a thousand accounts and metrics, you have the precise data in your hands.

Demographics

Do you wish to know more about the people who engage with your posts? Because if you do, you’ll be able to judge the kind of content they appreciate and hence develop a long term bond. Understanding audience demographics does not stop at knowing their age and location. You need to know the best times to post during the day, the overall sentiment and the topics your audience is most fond of.

Trying to manage social media and online business in itself is an intense job. It gets more complex when you have different platforms for different purposes. Social media analytics is a remarkable way for you to start saving your energy and time. Start your social media marketing journey and let some of these smart tools help you through the process.

Top 5 Ways to Increase Reach on Instagram

It’s the dream of every brand, every influencer to have their business profile on Instagram go viral, and be visible to millions of people. Visibility brings new followers, building a relationship with your audience. This could eventually lead to them purchasing from you. Now, the key to increase visibility lies in increasing reach on Instagram.

Engagement and visibility on Instagram prove a little more complex than it is on Facebook or Twitter. On Facebook or Twitter, comments and interactions are publicly listed. So when a user comments on a post, their friends can see the post and then comment on their feed. On Instagram, the comment won’t be visible to a friend unless the user tags them. This alone makes Instagram a difficult place for increased organic reach.

Keep your worries aside. This post will tell you about 5 ways to boost your Instagram reach.

Increase Reach On Instagram

Let’s get started.

Understanding Instagram’s Algorithm

Before you try any other trick, you need to know about Instagram’s algorithm. With its immense popularity, Instagram had to introduce an algorithm. Now posts with high engagement rates are presented first on a user’s feed. This reduces the chances of visibility (and hence engagement) for brands who are just getting started. The bad news is, this algorithm seems to be permanent. So you’ll need to know how to work around it.

Instagram ranks posts on the basis of the interest users show in a post. One way to ensure that you attract more followers and make them engage with your posts is by posting the most carefully curated content. Use captivating descriptions and strong call to actions. And be consistent with the kind of content you post from the very beginning so they spend more time on your account.

Time of Posting

If your post receives a high rate of likes and comments within the first few hours, Instagram pushes your content higher up on the feed. Hence it is critical that you know when most of your users are active. Post consistently during that time and it should do the trick.

Also, it should be easy for you to know the exact time if you use an Instagram business account. The insights provided by Instagram tell you when most users are active. If you don’t have a business account, there are many social listening tools that can provide you with a detailed analysis.

Audience Engagement is the Goal

Remember, with Instagram, audience engagement is the key. The more engagement your content has, the further you increase the reach on Instagram. Keeping this in mind, post content that encourages your followers to engage with you. Asking questions or opinions or conducting a poll are great ‘call-to-actions’. We also see influencers hosting giveaways gain massive engagement on their posts. Some posts simply put rules like “to enter the contest tag three friends and like the post.” This is one way you are not just encouraging engagement but also gaining organic visibility.

Curate User-Generated Content

This is perhaps the best way to increase your reach on Instagram. When a consumer mentions your brand, make sure you engage with them and share their content. This would not only make them feel that you care. This also encourages them to engage and share your content on their feed or story. While you are building a relationship with your users on Instagram you are also being noticed by Instagram’s algorithm which then ranks you higher.

Crowdtrap found that user-generated content is 35% more memorable and 50% more trusted than your regular promotional ads. This makes it a great organic way to increase your reach.

Instagram Hashtags

We have spoken often about the importance of Instagram hashtags on this blog before. Hashtags are all the rage on Instagram and by using the right ones you could gain immense attention. People do follow hashtags on Instagram. If your content keeps featuring constantly on the feed, chances are you will gain the niche audience you have been looking for. Say your company manufactures whey protein. A user follows #WheyProteinShake. If your post includes this hashtag, chances are the user will regularly view your content and you may gain him/her as a follower.

These are the top 5 ways we thought you can use to start the quest to increase your Instagram reach. There are other ways too. You could invest in paid promotions, collaborate with social influencers et cetera. Try these tricks out before you try the others.

Is Influencer Marketing better than Facebook Advertising?

For years now brands have used Facebook’s native advertising to promote themselves. And it has helped them. Facebook has over 2 billion monthly active users. It provides the largest set of audiences for your content. As of late, other platforms have taken over. Brands are now experimenting with newer concepts like influencer marketing. This trend of marketing has gained popularity in no time. Is the popularity justified? Does influencer marketing score over Facebook’s native advertising?

Native Facebook Advertising vs. Influencer Marketing

Native advertisements on Facebook are ads or paid promotions exclusive to the platform. There’s an option to integrate other contents like photos, images or text directly into the user’s news feed. Such promotional material is also tagged as “sponsored” or “promotional” to help users distinguish them from regular content.

For influencer marketing, influencers create sponsored content and promote it via their personal accounts. Their content is mainly targeted towards family, friends and other followers. And unlike Facebook’s native ads, influencer marketing content is not tagged as “sponsored”.

Both these options may seem similar and viable, yet they have their own set of advantages and disadvantages. We tried listing them out to help brands identify a suitable option for their needs.

Influencer Marketing

Content marketing, social media analytics, social listening for better customer care, and influencer marketing are some of the top marketing trends right now. But that does not mean you will have to try out each category. Just pick a strategy which is most suited to your business model.

Advantages

Authenticity: Users follow influencers willingly. They want to know about the products influencers use. So a product-placement or brand shout-out on their feed is readily believed. Especially as influencers mix this information up with authentic posts about their daily activities, family, friends et cetera.
Lesser Restrictions: Compared to advertising on Facebook, influencer marketing has lesser restrictions. Facebook is also strict in terms of what you can publish in an ad. It restricts the word limit, use of certain pictures, format et cetera.
Content Creation becomes Easier: As a marketer, you already have a lot on your hands. With influencer marketing, you can relax a little. The task of content creation becomes the influencer’s responsibility. Sure, you will have to cast around and find the right influencer for your brand but social listening and databases can help you with that. The more tough tasks of ideation, creation, and implementation are taken care of by the influencer.
Niche Audience: Reaching niche audiences becomes easier with influencer marketing. Approaching micro-influencers instead of celebrity influencers is the way to go for this. Most micro-influencers produce industry-specific content. They are popular with the audience that follows that niche. @thecurvyrebel, for instance, is quite popular for promoting fashion and body positivity tips. If you are a brand in the plus-sized clothing industry, collaborating with her helps you reach the audience you have also been targeting.

Disadvantages

Influencer Management: Most brands worry about the task of finding the right influencer for their product. It is quite a tough task. Brands that do want to work with influencers will have to find the right talent, develop an understanding with them, define goals and expectations et cetera. This can take quite some research and effort on their part.
Accounts with Fake Followers: Social media users look for authentic content, but social media is also a place where it is easy to fake things. Also, the aspiration to become an influencer has grown among the younger generation. Some of these users even employ unethical ways to grow their network. It is crucial for brands to avoid such accounts. They need to thoroughly research the influencers they want to work with.
Measuring ROI: You would want to know if your investment reaped the expected returns. Here’s where there’s a slight glitch. There’s no definitive way to measure the results of influencer marketing. It can be assessed in many different ways – the KPIs you should look for include engagement and conversion rates.

Facebook’s Native Advertising

Having looked at the pros and cons of influencer marketing, it is time to move on to Facebook’s advertising options.

Advantages

Format: The best part of Facebook’s advertising is that it offers a wide variety of formats for you to display your content. You can choose from a variety of styles of displaying text or photos, videos, and carousels et cetera.
Measure Performance: When you use Facebook’s native advertising options, you also get help to measure the success rate. You get data on how your post is performing. They even let you A/B test different ads and features.
Budget Flexibility: Facebook allows marketers to adjust their spending when they are on a tight budget. Marketers can thus test things out. They can move their dollars around and scale up if only when they find something which works.

Disadvantages

Overt: As I mentioned earlier, Facebook advertisements would be marked “advertised” or “sponsored”. People tend to be wary of such ad banners and would avoid them. This is called “banner blindness”.
Lacks Engagement: People would rarely opt-in voluntarily to view ads. They also tend to skip ads. This only results in lesser engagement rates. People are less likely to like, share and comment on a Facebook ad.
Inorganic Audience: Native advertising runs on the algorithm created by Facebook. So, the audience may be too broad or too narrow or miss the niche you are trying to reach. Capturing the attention of the exact audience is a gamble with native advertising.

How can Facebook Advertising and Influencer Marketing Work Together?

By now it must be clear that both these formats clearly have their own sets of benefits. And they are not mutually exclusive forms. If you really want to scale up your business, you can have the best of both worlds. Marketers can choose to use the facilities in loop and in a complementary manner.

Brand scan collaborates with influencers. The content created reaches the followers of a particular influencer. This content can then be repurposed to reach other audience members via Facebook native advertising. This way the ad also acts as a testimonial from a well-known influencer.

Whichever method you choose to employ, market research and social media monitoring should be a part of your strategy. Use these insights and strategies to inform your campaign and enjoy better results.

How to Find Facebook Influencers?

It is true that the term Facebook influencers isn’t used too often. Other platforms like Instagram and YouTube are more popular for Influencer marketing. But Facebook sure is the world’s biggest social media with over 2.38 billion monthly active users.

With influencer marketing campaigns, you need a good understanding of your target market and a knowledge of where they hang out online. To understand which platform works best for your business, you could take the help of social listening tools. Social listening helps you manage and track mentions from different platforms at one go. Now, let’s say Facebook is where your audience interacts with you the most. Here’s where you need to implement your influencer campaigns. So then, how do you find and convert Facebook influencers to help your cause?

Who are Facebook Influencers?

Even though Facebook is not really known for influencer marketing, it is an immensely popular platform. It is a good platform to launch your early plans. If managed properly, Facebook can function as a PR agent for you. Facebook allows you to convey your message to audiences from around the world and build awareness for future campaigns.

Wondering if there’s really any difference between an Instagram and a Facebook Influencer? Well, there is and there isn’t. The top influencers for both these platforms are mostly celebrities and some lucky brands.

Now obviously you are looking for micro-influencers with a dedicated community of followers. Each of the social media platforms has its own effect on the kind of posts people share and talk about. Facebook is more content-oriented. So, you’ll find more influential pages that are focused on content rather than a person. Also, Facebook’s format encourages the sharing of content. This is how pages with sensational content, videos, and memes have a lot of influence. Their content is shared and becomes viral, gaining popularity.

Drawing from these insights, we can say that a typical Facebook influencer:

Shares highly engaging content that has the potential to go viral.
Has gained the trust of followers on the basis of their expertise in a certain field.
Has a community-driven page (where people share, comment and exchange opinions regarding the content).

If you think such influencers could help you, let’s talk about how to find the right Facebook influencer for your brand.

How to Find Facebook Influencers?

Hunting for Facebook influencers can get a little difficult because of the platform’s native search options. The options are limited and complex. On other platforms, people use hashtags to tag their content but rarely on Facebook. This makes hashtag search useless on Facebook.

You can use two solutions for this – refer to an influencer database or use a social listening tool.

Facebook Influencer Databases

Searching influencer databases is a simpler option. You just need to search for your niche and you’ll have the names. However, there are some downsides to influencer databases as compared to using social listening tools.

Firstly, these databases are limited. As in, you will only find influencers who applied or who were discovered by the people who created the database.

Secondly, the search filters may be too broad for your requirements. You may want to know about “functional training” and end up scrolling in the fitness section for hours.

Honestly, buying influencer databases for search isn’t really wise for your marketing budget unless you are a social media agency. You’ll probably not even need to use it enough so as to justify all the money spent on it.

Social Listening Tools

Using social listening tools eliminates all the problems that come along with databases. With a little effort, you will be able to gain more from a social listening tool. Some social listening tools are useful for a diverse range of marketing activities. So, first of all, try and find a good social listening tool that suits your brand’s requirements. You can use a social listening tool for anything from product development to online reputation management, and even for SEO purposes.

With the help of social listening tools, you can set up searches for specific keywords. For instance, you can start searching for any post that uses “Fitness” and “functional movements” in them. The tool collates all these comments and posts from across all platforms. Set up the filter such that you view only Facebook mentions. Remember, your job has not finished yet. On Facebook finding influencers isn’t easy because most of these posts are made by regular users. Thanks to the AI features available with most social listening tools, they will help you study the influence scores of the people. All the people who have spoken about fitness and functional movement are assigned a score based on the reach, engagement, and visibility of their content. The higher the score, the better their influence.

What’s more, you can even collate a list of these influencers and track their activities and the sentiment around their posts. Social media analytics has made this process much easier. If you are still unsure, you may opt for a free trial on a tool while you figure things out.

A Comprehensive Guide to Understanding Social Media Analytics

Do you believe in the power of data to help you make smart business decisions? If yes, where would you find such data? Having found the data, how will you analyze it right to glean actionable insights?

Social media analytics is, without a doubt, the right tool for this. A term used most often but also misunderstood most of the time, social media analytics is defined as the method of collecting data from social media sites and analyzing them for business decision making.

This describes the concept pretty well. But people tend to forget that social media isn’t just about brands and their products. People talk about their lives and get to know others on these platforms. This is where brands can step in to learn about the interests of their audience members. Social media enables brands and consumers to connect. Brands have to be on their best behavior at all times, lest they should turn people away with a negative action or interaction. It helps to keep in mind that the Internet has an elephant’s memory.

How does Social Media Analytics Work?

Like Google, social media analytics tools use crawlers. They collect public information from across the web. So when a user enters a keyword or query, the crawler searches the web for every conversation/incident with that keyword or query. This includes searching through social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and blogs, review sites, news channels et cetera.

Once the information is gathered, it is then organized. The platform allows the data to be categorized using various filters such as media type, location of origin, language, sentiment, etc. These platforms then help you visualize the data by processing the data into charts, numbers and virality maps et cetera.

Why Should You use Social Media Analytics Tools?

The primary benefits of using social media analytics tools include:

Measuring your ROI
Creating effective social media marketing campaigns
Finding the right influencers for your brand with ease
Competitive benchmarking
Identifying trending news and topics

This tool provides you with a wholesome social media marketing management experience. It includes every micro tool’s benefit starting from social listening to online reputation management to finding influencers.

Know Your Audience

Knowing your audience and their needs helps you improve your product, plan your strategy and advertising accordingly. Social media analytics help you track basic attributes like

When were they online? When were they most active? These insights help because it is useless to post at a time when your audience is not active.
What are their interests? How do they react to the content you put out? This helps you target your audience better.
Customer segmentation helps you develop more targeted campaigns.

Competitive Benchmarking

Competitive benchmarking is important if you really wish to measure how your company is doing within the industry. It can also be beneficial when you want to know more about your rival’s winning strategies. The competitive analysis feature in most social media analytics tools allows you to monitor each mention, each post of your competitors. You will gain a complete idea of what they are doing online. If they lack in something, you could start pitching your product/services to the customers who are unhappy with them.

Managing Online Brand Reputation

As a marketer, you should be able to see how your brand is being perceived across social networks, blogs, and review forums. This is vital because, in this day and age, a single bad review could go viral and ruin your brand’s image. Any social media analytics tool lets you integrate media monitoring services with social media analytics data. This helps you stay informed of any upcoming PR crisis moments.

Track Social Events and Trends

Say you strategize a lot and launch a campaign. Is the campaign working the way you planned? Is it drawing the expected results? What’s a way to know? You can monitor the details of your marketing campaigns using social media analytics tools. Use sentiment analysis to see how your audience feels about your campaign.

Besides, social media monitoring, analytics, and reporting help you study the current trends within your industry and design your online content around it. Use the insights to create viral content to draw leads in.

Some social media analytics tools go the extra mile here. For instance, Auris sends you a real-time report where you’ll find your performance data all visually laid out. Use this abundant and insightful information to structure your marketing efforts and plan a winning strategy.

Your Ultimate Guide to Emojis on Social Media

Emojis are fun, creative and engaging. Which is why you should include emoticons in your content. Do you agree? Think about it!

They are a creative way to communicate visually. They are about loving fun, which is what younger generations want. Most brands would react incredulously to the thought of using emoticons on their social media. Here’s why we think agencies should try out emojis while marketing on social media.

Emojis were developed in the late 1990s by NTT DoCoMo.
Around 5 billion emojis are sent daily on Facebook.
The world even celebrates an emoji day every year, on the 17th of July.
92% of Internet users use emojis.
25-29-year-olds use emoticons the most.

Here we try to break down some reasons why emojis are important for your brand’s marketing plan.

The Most Popular Emojis you could Use

There have been lists of top social media influencers, social media platforms et cetera. Why not a list of the top emojis used on social media? We did some social listening on the matter, to bring you the top 10 emoticons in use currently.

Face with Tears of Joy ?

Good to know that the world puts a laughter emoji at the top. Laughter is the best medicine after all.

Loudly Crying Face ?

Life is full of ups and downs. If laughter topped the list, crying out loudly came in next. Also, here’s a fun fact, men and women both had this emoticon in the second position. Who says boys don’t cry?

Smiling with Heart Eyes ?

Here’s your first love-themed emoji in the top 10. “Beautiful” and “cute” are the words most often used with this emoji.

Red Heart ❤️

Talking about love-theme emojis, the red heart – the symbol of love, is next.

Backhand Index Pointing Right ?

Unlike the other emoticons, this one is a surprising entry among the top 10. This one is popular because most tweets use it to point at links.

Purple Heart ?

6th on the list is the purple heart. BTS fans are particularly fond of this emoji. Even BTS’s official Twitter handle posts the purple heart often.

Two Hearts ?

So much love! The next emoji on the list is the one with two hearts. The word “happy” is most often used in combination with this emoji.

Smiling Face with Smiling Eyes ?

The blushing smiley face is a great way to accept a compliment gracefully. It can also say that you are feeling loved or even happy & warm. This emoticon is most used when wishing happy birthdays or good times.

Thinking Face ?

After love, happiness, and sadness, the top 10 emojis have one which depicts a question or expresses confusion. This emoji is most useful when discussing politics.

Folded Hands ?

Then we have an emoticon that passes for thanks, gratitude or even prayers, who knows! What’s sure is that it has made its way to the top ten emojis.

Why Should you use Emojis for Social Media Marketing?

Here are 4 reasons why and how you should use emojis in your social media marketing plan.

Emojis Present a Pleasant Visual Aspect

Emojis are like ideograms – a tiny visual depicting an idea. Marketing experts insist on the importance of engaging your audience with strong visuals. The fact is that it is extremely difficult to catch the attention of your audience for long. Make your brand stand out so you can hold on to their attention. Creating content with distinct visuals is one great way to do it.

Most of you would feel that an emoji is not the first thing that comes to mind when talking about strong visuals. But check this:

More and more brands are advertising using emojis. Google search for “best emoji advertising” turns up over 50 million results.
More than 50% of brands saw an increase in the number of email-opens when they used emoticons in the subject line.
Push notifications that had emojis in them saw an 85% increase in open rates and a 9% increase in conversion rates.

Not only do emoticons make your content more pleasant to look at. They also make your content seem less monotonous with fewer words and more colorful little signs.

Emojis are International in Reach

Emojis are most convenient when you are trying to reach people from around the world with differing cultures. Who doesn’t understand a smiley? An emoji for a pizza slice is the same across the world. So it’s easier to convey that your restaurant is serving pizzas now with an emoticon rather than trying to write a sentence in every language.

Millennials Relate to Your Brand

Unless you are trying to sell walking sticks, almost every product and service today tries to target the millennials. The use of emoticons is one of the primary ways to communicate with millennials and gen-Z. These new members of the consumer market do not care much for traditional ads. They respond when your brand begins to engage with them. You need to start speaking their language to get them interested in you.

How to Use Emojis on Social Media?

I hope I was able to convince you and that’s why you kept on reading till this point. Now if you are wondering how to make use of these little faces within your content, read on.

Using them doesn’t necessarily have to follow a rulebook. It is an unconventional form of marketing communication hence use it freely. But be sure not to overdo it. Use it creatively. Here’s a popular example of how Hillary Clinton used it:

Emojis are meant to be used as a complement to your message. So make sure that when you use them it makes sense in conjunction with the whole message. Once that is achieved you are good to go ?.

How to Find Trending Hashtags on Instagram?

The use of hashtags has become the norm for quite some time now. In fact, It’s been there for over a decade. A hashtag was first used on August 24th, 2007 by @chrismessina. Almost every social media platform implements the use of hashtags. Instagram ranks on the top when it comes to the usage of hashtags. Hashtags on Instagram are a powerful tool for influencers and marketers alike. A brand can use this powerful tool in multiple ways. Before you start looking at trending Instagram hashtags, let’s look at how and why it’s so important.

Instagram Hashtags – Power Tools for Marketers?

A hashtag on Instagram works almost like a search engine. You would have noticed that hashtags on Facebook don’t mean as much as they do on Instagram. This is because Instagram uses them for sorting the data. The hashtags on Instagram determine the reach for your posts, and how visible your content is. Say you want to launch a software product for phone photography and editing. You want to know what content covering the topic already exists. Simply look for #Phonephotography on Instagram’s search engine. You’ll have all the posts with the hashtag #phonephotography marking them. On the flip side, it also becomes a tool for tagging your content to make it more visible.

Find the Right Audience

Finding the right audience on Instagram also becomes easier. All thanks to Instagram hashtags and the platform’s intelligent algorithm. Trending hashtags related to your industry can help you find the people and influencers talking about it. You now have the opportunity to know more about the kind of audience you want to target. These accounts can also lead to additional information. For example, let’s say you are looking for the trending hashtag #ootd for your clothing brand. You might find popular accounts also tagging their content for #OutfitInspiration. In this way, you know your audience and also what hashtags they follow. Tag your content to these and increase your reach.

Find Influencers and Promotional Content

While you are discovering popular accounts via browsing trending hashtags, you may also find top and micro-influencers within your industry. You can visit their profiles to understand their engagement rates, follower base and take inspiration. Or even plan your event/product launch collab with them. Some companies get even more creative. They discover influencers, do a collab and come up with a special brand hashtag. The influencer then promotes the brand and the hashtag and they succeed in creating a unique space for themselves. Fiji Water did one such campaign.

So How to Find Trending Hashtags on Instagram?

Instagram marketing has proven to be a successful tool for businesses. This can be attributed to the way brands have used and gained an idea of trending hashtags. Here we discuss some very easy ways you can find and track hashtags to your benefit.

Organic Search

Like we mentioned earlier, hashtags are a way to aggregate content. So organic search is the cheapest and easiest way to find trending Instagram hashtags. So if you just type in a hashtag into Instagram’s search engine, it will display all the content available. Also, it begins to show other related trending hashtags. You could just tap on those and explore more. Initially, you may feel a little lost but give it some time. Even if you have no idea of any hashtag and are wondering what to type in, just type in your genre. Say you have a restaurant that serves Italian cuisine. Type in “#ItalianCuisine” or “#ItalianFood” and boom, you are there.

Social Listening Tools

An organic search is a great option but for someone who can invest a lot of time on it. As a marketing manager, usually, you’ll have many other things to take care of. In such cases, you can opt for social listening tools and so. These tools do the job for you and track the top trending keywords and hashtags for you. Let’s talk about some of the tools:

All Hashtag

In case you are searching for just the keywords to look for, allhashtag.com is the answer for you. It is a unique tool that can help you find the most trending hashtags and random hashtags too. The platform can also help you to create your own hashtag.

Auris

Looking for an in-depth analysis of the hashtags? Auris can help you track the trending hashtags and analyze the sentiment around them. It helps you gauge the kind of social following the hashtag or the keyword has. You’ll know what kind of audience follows it, posts related content et cetera. And finding influencers via this tool becomes easier thanks to the filters. The tool tracks the influencer scores of whoever posts regarding the topic helping you find your pick.

Instagram has been booming as a space for marketers, be it for Instagram hashtags or influencer marketing over Instagram. We have tried to study the platform and build our Auris platform around its nuances. You can check out our Instagram-related posts too, if interested.

Create an Appealing Social Listening Strategy for 2020

Social media sites have matured influencing the way businesses are carried out online. And this information may not be new to you. Social listening has become a tool to drive online sales. Savvy brands today listen in to their customers and stay informed of the sentiment around their brand.

As brands strive to survive amidst rising and falling trends, they are required to constantly keep an eye out for their rivals. Brands adopt creative marketing techniques like influencer marketing to be in sync with current trends. In 2020, one of your marketing goals should be to build a social listening strategy.

How does Social Listening Work? What exactly is Social Listening Strategy?

Social listening is made possible by a software tool, an application that monitors online conversations. Say your brand is called “A2B3 technologies” and the name gets mentioned online, on a social media site, a review platform or elsewhere. The social listening tool tracks the comment and send you an alert. It also tells you who commented, their age, gender, geographical location and even the tone of the comment.

Now with billions of Internet users, there could be hundreds of people talking about your brand. The tool aggregates all of this data. It then analyses the overall percentage of comments, whether negative or positive and presents them to you. It will also analyze the other demographic details to offer you insights into your popularity or lack thereof, by geographic location.

Social listening tools also help you zero in on a potential pain point or strength. Say 68% of your users commented repeatedly that your product is great but they would like “A2B3 technologies” to provide free installation services for their product. As a result, your potential customers might hesitate to buy your product and start looking for alternatives who do provide installation.

With the right social listening tool, you can learn about reviews that are likely to snowball, in real-time. You can respond to the unhappy customers almost immediately, get them to change their minds about you and avert a PR crisis for your brand. You can also gain insight into how to provide better customer service and improve your customers’ experience.

A social listening strategy is nothing but you planning your goals and selecting a social listening tool to get optimum results.

Let’s get started with creating a Social Listening Strategy

You now know what social listening is all about, which is great. In addition to this, you need to understand the steps to getting the process started. What you want from your social listening tool is usually dictated by your business goals. So here we break down the steps to offer some simple pointers for your social listening strategy.

Fix your goals

The basis for building a robust social listening campaign lies in knowing what you need from the tool. As we mentioned before, a social listening tool can be your ultimate stop for all your marketing needs. It can offer you information and insights into all the following:

Leads
Business insights
Real-time feedback
Sentiment analysis
Influencers and advocates
Pointers for customer service and many more

You might just be looking for a way to know your customers better, and gain leads. Or you might be looking for the current marketing trends and influencers. Once you define your goals, you can fine-tune the platform to deliver the results.

Engage in Market Research

With social listening tools, you have access to digital data. Use this for thorough market research. The information you receive from social listening comes directly from the users and usually isn’t biased. You can use it to know about your target audience. When you enter your brand’s name and the names of your competitors, the tools pull up the handles of people who mentioned you. Analyze their kind, the demographics, location, preferences et cetera. You will know who your target audience is. Similarly, use the data to monitor current trends or industry news. Trends are heavily discussed online, so it’s impossible to miss it if you wish to monitor trends related to your brand.

Customer Service and Reputation Management

The most common use of the real-time alerts you get via social listening tools is customer service. Marketers study the data to know the queries and perception their audience has. When you analyze the feedback from your customers, you understand the overall sentiment towards your brand. This helps you gauge ways to improve customer service and to monitor your brand’s online reputation. And when you engage with your customers in real-time, the focus and commitment demonstrated will only help your brand. According to research reports, 71% of customers who receive a quick response from a brand are more likely to recommend them.

Influencer Outreach

The purchasing behavior of youngsters today is driven by online and word-of-mouth reviews. If an influencer talks about a favorite product on his or her blog, chances are that his/her followers will try out the same product. It’s human nature to trust fellow human beings. In this scenario, social listening tools help you search for your perfect influencer. If you are into a tech business, find an influencer whose forte lies in tech reviews. If you wish to work with micro-influencers, social listening tools can help you find them too. Just set the filters to highlight the influencer scores.

An effective social listening strategy will require multiple iterations. But once you invest the time and energy, the results will prove worthy of the efforts you put in.

5 steps to Evaluate your PR Campaign Effectiveness

There is no, one definite, way to measure the impact or success of a PR campaign. But, companies generally invest money in PR campaigns hoping to create some impact. When we measure the impact, we can find loopholes in the campaign. Unfortunately, there isn’t one specific method by which we can measure the effectiveness of a PR campaign. Here we shall discuss some possible methods using which you could find your ideal approach.

How do you start measuring your PR Campaign Effectiveness?

Don’t be disheartened. While there is no specific measure for your PR campaign’s effectiveness, the evolution of social media management tools makes our task easy. They offer ways to measure your PR campaign’s effectiveness.

Traffic on your Website

The most obvious indicator of a successful campaign would be an increased inflow of visitors to your website. Straight metrics like ‘visitors per day’ can only tell you half the story though. A deeper look will analyze your web traffic to reveal the demographics. This would throw light on who you need to target more often.

Surveys

One way you can get definite answers is by asking the people themselves. Most PR professionals conduct market research surveys to track the impact of their PR campaigns and to measure their success. Yet it’s also worthwhile for you to seek the first-hand opinion of your audience. Are they aware of your campaign? Did they receive your message? Did they like the campaign? Most importantly, would they opt for your product based on the campaign?

Survey

Monitoring Brand Mentions

Evaluating your brand’s performance across different platforms is also crucial. Set up a social media monitoring tool to get notified every time there’s a mention of your brand. Additionally, social listening tools also help you decipher the overall sentiment around your brand. If they are satisfied with your services, connect with them and raise awareness further. Propose to collab with them and turn them into your brand influencers.

Engagement on Social Media

Social media metrics tell you how large the audience pool is for your campaign. The greater the engagement rate, the better the awareness. Anyone sharing, commenting or asking about your campaign or the promoted service/product (or, a similar product) is a potential customer. These actions of your audience members tell you how successful your campaign really is. Monitoring the engagement metrics for your PR campaign helps you gauge the effectiveness of your message. If it hasn’t worked, you may want to tweak the content or your approach and try again.

Sales Numbers

Last but not least, any product-based company knows that a spike in sales is proof that their campaign has worked. PR campaigns may not bring hundreds of customers to your door in a single night. However, with time, a successful campaign does generate significant sales. If you have a multi-location presence and sales haven’t picked up yet at a particular location, you may have to revise your PR strategy for that location. Also, it is key that you focus your marketing and sales activities on lucrative locations or during peak season.

In a world bustling with social media trends and influencers, the importance of PR campaigns cannot be overlooked. Having invested time efforts and money into a PR campaign, it is logical for you to try and track its effectiveness. We hope the ideas provided above can help you do so.

Are Micro-Influencers a Part of your Social Media Strategy?

Influencer marketing has been gaining popularity as a tool for social media promotions. Over a few years, brands have collaborated with influencers. As a result, the industry is now worth at least $5-10 billion. Currently, the emerging concept of micro-influencers is all the rage.

Who are these Micro-Influencers?

Influencer marketing with micro-influencers is the same concept on a smaller scale. Brands interact and collaborate with individuals who have a follower base of 1000 to 10000 people. These individuals are well informed and reputed in their areas of interest. They will also have a high rate of engagement on their posts. When brands are looking to reach niche audiences, they typically seek micro-influencers.

A fashion influencer may boast millions of followers and many boutiques et cetera. A micro-influencer, on the other hand, has a smaller audience but a dedicated one. A micro-influencer might only post daily boho outfit designs or videos about DIY outfits.

Are Micro-Influencers Important?

Markerly, in one of their studies, found that with the increase in the number of followers, the engagement rate of influencers went down. But, micro-influencers with less than 1000 followers received likes 8% of the time. In comparison, influencers only received 1.6% likes. ExpertVoice also found in a study that micro-influencers have 22.2 times more conversations than regular users. It is, therefore, logical to assume that businesses would achieve a higher engagement rate with micro-influencers.

Micro-influencers have a defined Target Market

Most celebrity influencers have millions of followers. If a fashion clothing brand collabs with them, the content will reach a lot of people. However, most of these followers aren’t interested in clothing. The brand could, instead, collaborate with 100 micro-fashion-bloggers each with about 1000 followers. The chances of gaining leads from these 100,000 followers, who actively seek fashion advice from these micro-influencers are higher.

Affordability

As a business owner, you would want to invest smartly. Micro-influencers help you achieve a better ROI. Let me explain this further to see how. Captiv8 reports that an influencer with 3 to 7 million followers can charge $75000 on an average for a post on Instagram. In contrast, a micro-influencer charges less than $500 for a post. So even if you employ 10 or even 100 micro-influencers, you spend less and actually reach more people.

Micro-influencers are usually honest with their audience. They have a small following and they don’t want to lose their trust by giving fake reviews. So most of the time, companies may simply send them free goodies for a review instead of paying hard cash. For instance, La Croix Sparkling Water sent free product vouchers to micro-influencers.

Authenticity

Millennials look for authenticity. It is the current trend almost because they know it is easier to fake something on social media. Micro-influencers with their smaller audience do engage with any comment on their posts. They are more likely to behave authentically in the fear of losing their following in case of a fake review. It is also true that Instagram’s algorithm now has adjusted to weed out fake influencers, comments, and followers. So brands now are looking for someone who would be genuine. And micro-influencers are the best bet.

La Croix for example targets micro-influencers by searching branded hashtags like “LiveLaCroix”. They then reach out to people posting these with a lower follower base. The company even reaches out to individuals who have tagged the brand in their posts. They specifically target these individuals with lesser followers to maintain the feel of authenticity or “realness”.

There are a number of other brands that have collaborated with micro-influencers. You can check out our blog post to know more about their success stories. Before you make up your mind to invest in this, make sure you consider your strategy well. Instagram influencer marketing might work well for visual products like sparkling water or a fashionable sweatshirt collection. If you want to promote software, you might have to get creative, move out of Instagram and look for influencers on YouTube perhaps.