15 Free Productivity Tools for Savvy Social Media Marketers

Note: This post was first published on July 5, 2017 and has since been updated with new tools.

Social media marketing can be overwhelming, for amateurs and professionals alike. The best social media marketers are excellent at multitasking and can work very well under pressure, but even they need assistance from time to time to complete their demanding routines.

That’s why companies invest in social media management tools, to reduce manual work and lessen the burden of multitasking.

There are social media tools for scheduling posts in advance, monitoring keywords and designing graphics, and then there are those that help you get organized, streamline your tasks and save invaluable time. This is a list of 13 social media productivity apps to get more done in less time.

1. DrumUp

DrumUp is a social media management tool that combines powerful scheduling features with easy content storage and organic content amplification on social.

Here’s how you can save time on social using DrumUp –

• Store your evergreen content, best posts, inspirational quotes, etc. in separate DrumUp libraries and set them on auto-post at a frequency of your choice.
• Schedule posts for clients or your brand weeks in advance, and use the social account groups feature to do this easily.
• Set up keywords and RSS feeds to curate fresh content related to your industry. 1-click schedule keyword based suggestions, and set your blog’s RSS feed on auto-post for effortless promotions.

Within 10 minutes, you could upload all of your content on DrumUp and set up a powerful social media marketing schedule for your brand.

Note: If you need help with the setup, write to support@drumup.io.

2. FAQFox

FAQFox is a real-time cross-web keyword search tool that focusses on finding questions that include the keyword that you wish to monitor.

Here’s how you can use FAQFox to boost your social media marketing productivity –

• Use FAQFox to find questions across specific websites or social media platforms and answer those questions using your blog or social media posts. By doing this, you can identify commonly asked questions, which can enable you to drive a serious source of traffic back to your web pages.
• Use FAQFox’s questions to create your product guides and FAQs. Sometimes, the questions you assume that people are asking are not in fact the ones that they are asking. By using a research tool, you eliminate the error caused by your bias.

 3. TweetDeck

TweetDeck is a Twitter management tool that can help you manage messages and mentions better.

Here’s how you can use TweetDeck to save time and boost your productivity while marketing on Twitter –

• TweetDeck allows you to create keyword monitoring streams. You can set up streams that concern important elements in your niche. The tweets that show up in this stream are gateways to more exposure and possibly sales.
• You can use TweetDeck to monitor your brand on Twitter and manage your mentions. Since the streams are real-time, you can even participate in Twitter chats and ongoing conversations using this tool.

4. Trello

Trello is a project management app that lets you set deadlines, keep track of team members and freelancers and communicate with them easily to get work done.

Here’s how you can save time on social using Trello –

• Add social media managers, copywriters, graphic designers, social ad specialists and social analysts to your Trello board.
• Create cards for each of these people, and list the details of their projects. Set deadlines for each project and add concerned parties to the cards.
• Graphic designers and copywriters can upload files to cards for social media managers’ review. Social analysts can upload sheets with data. Reviewed files can be moved to a separate column.

Within 10 minutes, you can create a board for easy approval of social media content and ideas. An additional 10-15 minutes is necessary to update project details and set deadlines. Once you have, you can monitor projects easily, even from your smartphone when on the go.

5. Evernote

Evernote is a strategist’s best friend. It’s a classic mobile notebook that lets you save quick notes, to-do lists, images and set reminders, share notes with other users and more.

Here’s how you can save time on social using Evernote –

• Save random epiphanies and content ideas quickly on text notes, webcam notes or audio notes, and share them with your social media team. Save screenshots or images of visuals that you intend to incorporate on future posts to refer to during discussions.
• Create to-do lists and share them with team members, and encourage team members to do the same. When tasks are updated on one list, they are automatically updated on everyone’s copies.
• Use IFTTT to automatically turn notes on Evernote into Trello cards.

Instead of spending hours trying to recall lost ideas, save them on any device and share them or look back at them when needed.

6. Time Doctor

Time Doctor is a time tracking tool to help track employee productivity. It lets you access data of tracked time based on your company’s work schedules and habits and analyzes them for actionable insights.

Here’s how you can use Time Doctor t improve general productivity –

• Time yourself and employees by logging tasks through the day.
• Access analytical data to assess your productivity and find leg room for improvement.
• Apply insights to significantly boost your productivity and results, in the process.

Since social media marketers are required to manage multiple, diverse tasks, Time Doctor can prove to be a useful tool in maximizing your productivity and managing capacity.

7. Cyfe

Cyfe is an analytics dashboard that you can use to monitor important metrics in one place. Social media marketers need to monitor progress on social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and track their effect on website traffic and activity. That’s where Cyfe comes in.

Here’s how you can use Cyfe to save time on social –

• Set up widgets side by side, for Google Analytics, and the social media platforms that you are using, like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
• Check likes, views, clicks on social posts and the resulting traffic using the same dashboard.
• Take subsequent measures to improve engagement and traffic, based on the results of your current social media tactics.

As things shift quickly in the social media world, you need a swift means of keeping an eye on your activity and its effects, so you can make quick decisions to change tracks when needed.

8. Social Mention

Social Mention is a real-time social media search and analysis tool. It lets you search keywords by their strength, sentiment, reach and passion.

Here’s how you can use Social Mention to save time you spend on social media marketing –

• Use Social Mention for any type of social media research. If you are looking for mentions of your brand, or want to assess conversations surrounding a topic, or want to see the footprint that someone (an influencer or blogger) has on social media, you can do it faster with this tool.
• Refer to the tool’s metrics like strength, passion, sentiment and reach to analyze each keyword. Use that data to make decisions. For instance, if you want to work with a certain influencer, use the strength, reach and sentiment data to understand the extent of their influence.
• Set up the tool on an RSS reader for instant alerts, or subscribe to have mentions sent to your email.

Manually scouting social networks is an impossible task. Using this tool, you can find the footprint of your brand, important keywords and influencers in under a second.

9. SumoMe

SumoMe is a web audience building tool that helps you grow your social media following and turn website visitors into leads. An essential part of marketing on social is making the most of the traffic it drives, and that’s where SumoMe comes into play.

Here’s how you can save time on social using SumoMe –

• Set up SumoMe’s social media share plugins on your blog. Website visitors are more likely to share content when it’s convenient for them to, leading to added exposure and reach for your brand.
• The tool’s social share plugins also have counters, and people are more likely to share posts when they know that others before them have (Social validation). The more people share your content, the lesser the burden is on you to promote it yourself.
• Use SumoMe’s lead capture form to build your email list. Your social media follow and share plugins on the newsletters you send to leads, so you can grow your social media following.

Social media referrals are the result of hard work. Letting them leave your website without activity is a waste of that effort. By installing a lead capture form and social share plugins, you can get your website visitors to promote your content or turn into leads.

10. Canva

Canva is a graphic design tool that helps amateur designers create professional-looking visuals for multiple purposes. Brilliantly designed graphics can help you stand out on social media, crowded as it is right now.

Here’s how you can save time on social using Canva –

• Instead of resizing your graphics to fit each social media platform, create them using Canva’s wide range of social media canvases. The canvases are already sized to fit posts and covers on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
• Work with Canva’s preexisting templates to simplify the graphic designing process.
• Share directly to Facebook and Twitter from Canva. When you don’t want to share them right away, you can schedule graphics using a social media management tool.

Creating great graphics is a tough task, if you don’t have a background in design. Using Canva, you can do it quickly and effortlessly and save yourself a lot of time. Canva also has templates for infographics and ads to be shared on social media.

11. Todoist

Todoist is an app to manage to-do lists in an organized and effortless manner. The gamification aspect of the app makes it a great motivator for multitaskers like social media marketers.

Here’s how you can save time on social media using Todoist –

• Create daily to-do lists using the app. Cross off tasks as they are completed, 
• On your smartphone. If you have a daily routine, you can copy the same template for everyday use.
• Build to-do lists for team members and assign tasks to them. Gamification will encourage them to be more productive and complete tasks more efficiently.
• Lists created for team members can be monitored from your smartphone.

If you want an app that solely focuses on tasks and tracking them, Todoist is a great option.

12. Pomodoro Time

Pomodoro Time is a tool to help users focus for specific periods of time. It prompts users to work for short, intense intervals of time (25 mins followed by a break of 5 mins) to maximize productivity.

Here’s how you can use Pomodoro Time to boost social media productivity –

• Pair Pomodoro time with a to-do list on an app like Evernote or Todoist. Split your day’s activities into 25-minute blocks that you can complete using Pomodoro Time.
• Check off tasks on your to-do list on completing focus periods on Pomodoro Time.
• Invite teammates to use Pomodoro time together, so your entire team’s productivity is enhanced.

Focusing on tasks is hard when you’re multitasking or constantly switching between different completely tasks like supervising content creation and social media scheduling. You can use Pomodoro Time to focus on one task at a time and complete them efficiently.

13. Dropbox

Dropbox is an essential app for file storage and sharing. Copywriters and graphic designers tend to work with a lot of files, that when haphazardly stored on random devices can be lost or difficult to search. That’s where Dropbox can play the hero.

Here’s how to use Dropbox to save time on social –

• Create shared folders of social media posts, research material, guidelines and other resources for your team to add to and access when necessary.
• Use Dropbox to securely share select files with freelancers, new team members or external social media agencies for collaborative working.
• Save material for inspiration to Dropbox, so you never run out of content ideas for your social media pages.

The free version of Dropbox offers users up to 2 GB storage. You can store almost everything related to your work comfortably and access it in seconds using the tool.

14. Google Docs

Google Docs is the best tool you can use to create online documents for easy and controlled sharing. As a social media marketer, you need to manage your social media marketing plan, templates, guidelines and brand related documents that need to be shared with your teammates, freelancers and external agencies. Google Docs makes it effortless.

Here’s how to use Google Docs to save time on social –

• Create a set of basic documents to manage your social media marketing. For instance, your social media marketing calendar (can be created on Google Sheets), guidelines for freelancers and goals are necessary to ensure consistency and quality of content created.
• Encourage copywriters and graphic designers to use Docs and Slides respectively, so they can share the link with concerned editors/reviewers to simplify the review process.
• Keep all content created on Google Docs for future reference and inspiration.

Google Docs offers users a lot of space and works well with Google Drive, so you can easily create, store and retrieve content without hassles.

15. Hemingway App

Hemingway App is a writing tool that will help you hone your skills. Content is a critical part of social media marketing, and Hemingway App helps writers ace content. Here’s how to save time on social using Hemingway App –

• Check your blog posts, social media posts, emails and copy on Hemingway app. It highlights passages that are complex, long-winding or grammatically erroneous.
• Identify passive voice sentences, complex sentence structures and unclear ideas, so you can step-up your style of writing.
• Clear basic grammar checks on all of your content.

The clearer and more precise your writing is, the better you will fare at social media marketing. Hemingway App can help you correct basic language errors in minutes.

Wrap

The more organized and efficient your social media marketing, the better your results will be because it is all about the hustle. With the help of productivity tools, you can get tasks done quicker and make room for other activities.

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15 Social Media Tools that Will Help You Survive the Fake News Phase & Its Repercussions

Fake news is a serious social media problem that could affect the relationship you share with your social media audience. How?

• People are starting to question the information that they receive via social media.
• People have always been wary about the information shared by brands on social media. In fact, people consider information shared by people like themselves more credible than the information shared by brands (Edelman 2018).

Note: To overcome this hurdle, you could explore employee advocacy as a social media marketing solution.

• Social media platforms such as Twitter have begun their battle against fake news, placing stringent rules to avoid the circulation of factually incorrect information. And they are doing that by making serious algorithm changes that could affect your social media marketing efforts.

So, how can you as a social media manager or small business owner ensure that your business survives the fake news phase and its repercussions? Here are 15 social media tools that can help you strengthen your relationship with social media fans.

1. DrumUp for fresh content & employee advocacy

Instead of sharing your own content, you could share content useful to your social media audience – content from sources that are universally trusted. That’s a great way to show that you’re neutral and trustworthy.

You could also have your brand’s content shared by employees, through whom you can effectively impact your target audience on social media.

DrumUp is a social media management tool that fulfils both these functions. You can use the tool to curate fresh content (using keyword streams and/or RSS feeds) and schedule them on social media accounts. You can also use the tool’s employee advocacy platform to enable employees to share your content effortlessly.

2. Canva for visual communication

Visuals are great way to drive a message home because they get processed by the human mind quicker than text does. Visuals are also offer you the opportunity to build trust with your social media audience. For instance, visual testimonials (such as a customer’s raving video review) can improve your credibility.

You can also use visuals such as graphs and screenshots to make your communication more transparent and effective by showing customers how your products and pricing work.

Canva is a graphic design tool that you can use to design most of the visuals that you can use on social media. The tool stocks canvases and templates optimized for most use cases on social media. The tool’s drag and drop feature and its flexibility make it a great choice for graphic design.

3. Brand24 for real & personal conversations

Successful social media managers see social media platforms as channels not only for publishing but also for conversations. You can use social media channels to connect with current and future customers, potential partners and co-marketers, influencers and brand ambassadors. You can also use social media channels to enable employee conversations and employee advocacy.

For social media to count, you have to show customers that you care. And you can’t do that at scale. You have to focus on one-on-one conversations.

Brand24 is a social media monitoring tool that you can use to identify mentions, important keywords – any indicator of important conversations. The tool’s alerts will give you opportunity to create real and personal conversations.

4. FAQFox for customer-centric content research

It’s not enough to just be in contact with current customers. You should also be in touch with prospect customers and know their wants, concerns and challenges. That involves assessing the temperament of different target groups of people. And doing this can be tricky.

The objective of understanding prospect customers is to be able to connect with them by creating/sharing content that’s most relevant to them.

FAQFox is an unorthodox content research tool which you can use to find questions that certain groups of people are asking. You can do this by running keyword searches across commonly used discussion forums such as Quora and those relevant to your niche.

5. FollowerWonk for influencer and ambassador hunting

Twitter is an excellent social media platform for influencer and ambassador outreach because it’s open and allows you to communicate with anyone from your friend to the POTUS.

When searching for influencers/ambassadors on Twitter, you need to analyze profiles to see who makes the best fit. This is easier done with the assistance of a tool than done manually.

FollowerWonk is a Twitter analytics tool that you can use to analyze profiles and filter them by matching keywords to Twitter bios. Using the tool, you can also identify influencers within your social circles and reach out to them with relevant content.

6. GIPHY for GIF based communication

GIFs are videos on caffeine. They are easy to consume as they take barely any space when compared with full-fledged videos and are much shorter in length. They are also more appealing, effective and affordable than full-fledged videos.

While curating videos is hard (videos are usually covered by copyrights because they’re expensive), curating GIFs is easy and inexpensive.

GIPHY is a copyright free extensive source of GIFs that you can use to spice-up your conversations on social media. The repository also has an API that we’ve used to enable GIF curation within DrumUp.

7. RelayThat for branded image creation

Branding is an important part of building trust on social media. The consistency that your messaging has affects how social media users see and interact with your brands. However, it’s difficult to keep track of colors and fonts when you are creating content on a large scale, everyday.

Many brands choose their colors, fonts and image creation styles in advance and stick to them perpetually, without deviating from them on any channel.

RelayThat is a graphic design tool that allows you to choose and maintain brand parameters that you can easily add to all of your social media images. RelayThat also allows you to add your logo and original images to standard templates effortlessly.

8. Rocketium for video content creation

Video is an indispensable part of social media marketing. An overwhelmingly large segment of social media users are beginning to consume video on a daily basis. Video has become everyone’s preferred format of content for consumption.

There’s a lot that you can do with video for social media, from creating How-to videos to conducting expert interviews and doing live QnAs.

Rocketium is a video builder that you can use to quickly put together videos for social media use. The tool has video templates that you can use to put together professional looking social media videos to make an impact on your target audience.

9. Pocket for niche content curation

Content curation is a smart way to build a relationship with your audience without spending too much on content creation. By curating content, you can the best content in the industry with your target users without to create it yourself on a daily basis.

However, it can be really hard curating content manually. Imagine having to visit multiple websites to find the content that you want to share, every single day.

Pocket is a content collection app that helps curate content for you, based on your preferences. The tool is smart and adapts to the posts you choose to read, eventually omitting all the content that you wouldn’t want to read.

10. TweetChat for Twitter networking & conversations

Yet another way to network with the right people is through Twitter chats. The people who participate in Twitter chats are usually very interested in specific niches and in meeting the right people.

Typically the format of Twitter chats allow you to exchange knowledge in areas within an industry and find others who are also doing the same.

TweetChat is a Twitter chat tool that you can use to follow hashtag specific conversations and participate in them real-time, which can otherwise be a nightmare. Within the tool, you can experience Twitter chats at your pace and never miss a tweet.

11. Socedo for social media lead generation

While social media conversations and content publishing are great for audience engagement, your social media efforts only affect your business when conversations turn into queries and eventually sales.

There’s plenty of opportunities on social media for you to turn conversations into business, but these opportunities usually take time to manifest.

Socedo is a social media lead generation tool which automatically assesses social media profiles and identifies the people who are most likely to be interested in your business and the products/services that you have to offer.

12. PitchBox for blogger outreach and off-social PR

Blogs are still relevant in many industries. If your company’s referrals are majorly driven through blogs and bloggers, building strategic relationships with them can be beneficial. And you don’t have to focus only on your niche. General blogs whose audience matches your target audience also count.

When building relationships with bloggers, it counts to make it as organic as possible. Identify individuals you admire and want to work with and let them know the same.

PitchBox is an influencer marketing tool that can be used to search for influencers and bloggers in your niche using keywords that you provide. The tool’s extensive search leverages integrations with major SEO tools such as Moz, SEMRush and Majestic.

13. BuzzSumo for targeted content promotion

One of the secrets of being successful on social media is building a network of loyal followers who engage with your content. However, building that network is a slow and time-consuming process.

The network of followers you build need not be restricted to just influencers. You can also work with micro-influencers or employees, customers and brand ambassadors.

BuzzSumo is a content research tool that you can use to identify people and blogs belonging to a certain niche, so you can reach out to the right people. Using the tool, you can breakdown the source of any article on the internet and access backlink and share data.

14. Twitter lists and Google Drive/Email for relationship building

Twitter lists are great for relationship building because you can create a context for every relationship that you build by adding people to certain lists. However, even Twitter lists can get messy once you have added too many people to too many lists. To ensure that the lists you create make sense, create small groups of people and limit your lists to only as many as you can handle.

One way to ensure that the Twitter lists you create have value, is by following up with Twitter list members away from the social media platform.

IFTTT is a cross-action app that has a few interesting recipes that you can consider using. One of them allows to store mentions in Drive or on email, after which you can personally make contact with the people who mention you.

15. SumoMe for social media referral based list building

Social media referrals are probably one of the top three or four sources of traffic to your website. So, what do you do with the traffic that comes to your website from social media? If you’re not converting it at the moment, you should probably consider focusing on that.

There are tons of ways to convert the traffic that lands on your website. Most of it involves connecting the right content on social media to the right landing pages on your website.

SumoMe is a website traffic analytics tool and traffic conversion tool that you can use to optimize website traffic and conversion. The tool even has customizable email signup forms that you can instal on your website to convert incoming referrals.

Wrap

With social media platforms undergoing major changes to battle fake news and survive its repercussions, it’s critical to invest in social media tools and strategies that are likely to survive the fallout. This list includes a collection of some of the smartest investments that you can make to ensure that your brand isn’t affected by drastic algorithm changes. Over to you.

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How Instagram Marketing Can Reshape Your Business Visually

One of the greatest boons of running a business today is the ability to carve a niche in the minds of the customers through social media. Of all the social media channels available, Instagram plays a very important role in carving this niche because it is entirely a visual medium. Unlike marketing on other social media channels, Instagram marketing is purely image based. This makes it a marketing favorite for most types of businesses.

Whether you are a product based or a service-based industry, Instagram helps in reshaping your business visually. Through the use of interesting images, GIFs and videos, Instagram is able to grab the attention of the customers and convey important messages to them. Instagram stories help in real time marketing thereby reaching the right audience at the right time. With the right social media management tool, you can make an impact for your business on Instagram.

Here’s a list of the advantages that social media marketers enjoy when marketing via Instagram.

1. Instagram allows businesses to introduce products to customers

Whether you want to introduce a new product or existing product to the customer, Instagram is the right choice. Through attractive and engaging visuals, you can explain to the customers how to use the product in everyday life, how to use the product creatively and how it can solve their problems.

For, e.g., Playdoh’s Instagram page has videos and images that show interesting and creative ways to use their products. Those who purchase Playdoh’s products can experiment with such creative ideas or get inspired by such images to try new products.

Companies can use such images with interesting copy, to keep target groups hooked. Marketers can use tools such as the Hemingway app when coming up with attractive and compelling copy for Instagram marketing posts.

2. Instagram allows customers insight into businesses

Transparency is a critical element that contributes to the success of a business. Customers like knowing what happens inside a company. Who is the face behind the posts customers see on Instagram? Who takes the beautiful pictures and videos that end up on a company’s profile?

These are just a few examples of the things that customers would be interested to know. By publishing pictures of employees, celebrations in the company and even meetings, your company can endear customers to the people that make your brand. This relationship-building can help in building brand loyalty and shaping your business online.

Tools like Activepresenter help in creating interesting “behind the scene” videos which can be shared with customers.

The above screenshot of Gucci’s Instagram page shows Behind the Scene shots of creating an ad campaign for the brand’s new men’s scent – Gucci Guilty Absolute. On seeing such pictures, customers feel like they’re a part of the process and develop loyalty towards brands that share such instances.

3. Instagram provides a platform for important event announcements

Instagram is the right platform to announce important upcoming events. Marketers can use Instagram to post an image of the brochure along with a video tour of the place where the event is to be conducted, or a video ad for the event. Such posts provide customers an immersive experience of what they can expect at the event.

The event details can be posted real time, or you can use a social media management app like Drumup to schedule the posts for publishing in advance. Managing an event can be nerve-wracking, because of tasks that have to completed in a timely manner. With Instagram scheduling, you can create your content calendar in advance and not rely on your memory to follow your publishing schedule.

Here’s an example of Alan Jackson’s Instagram post, which he has used to announce a tour date and venue. The event details are posted visually and ahead of time, allowing the message enough time to sink-in among his target audience who can take action accordingly. These kinds of posts help in building your personal brand and business.

4. Instagram is a great platform to highlight the social responsibility aspect of your business

The social responsible acts of a business have a direct impact on its perceived goodwill. Most businesses indulge in forms of social responsible activities to connect with their audience powerfully outside of business. Broadcasting of social responsibility activities helps in building customer loyalty and reshaping your business’s persona in the minds of customers.

Social media, and especially Instagram, is a great platform to let customers know about the social side of a business. For e.g., Southwestair’s Instagram picture shows how their old airplane seats are upcycled with help from indigenous artisans. This throws light on the social responsibility of the business and how it cares about matters such as upcycling that are super-relevant in today’s world.

5. Instagram is a great platform for employee appreciation

By posting pictures on Instagram of employees celebrating career milestones or other important events in their lives, or simply by posting employees’ opinions about something, the company not only boosts the morale of employees but also shows the customers that they care for their employees. This creates an impression in the minds of customers that the company is not just about business. Employees are an integral part of the company, and it’s important for the company to show loyalty to them as well. This helps in reshaping the company’s persona in the minds of customers.

In the above example, Mailchimp has posted a picture of one of its employees giving his opinion about the company and other general things. The background of the picture shows how “super cool” and relaxing MailChimp’s work atmosphere is. This provides an impression to customers that Mailchimp not only values employees and their opinions but also provides a very relaxing and comfortable place for employees to work. This helps in creating a good impression, which can have a positive impact on the business, in the minds of the customers.

The Instagram stories advantage

Instagram stories is a very important feature that helps companies to connect with their customers. The poll feature provided by Instagram stories help companies in obtaining the customer’s opinion about something. For, e.g., it is common for online jewellery shops to ask their customer’s opinion regarding the type of jewellery they would like to see. Thus, customers get an impression that the company values their opinion which in turn helps in building their loyalty and reshaping your business.

Instagram stories also appear above all posts in Instagram feeds, a premium space that gives businesses the chance to capture the attention of their audience. Plus, brand storytelling has always been a powerful means to making an impression on potential customers.

Thus, Instagram is a very powerful tool that companies can use to promote their product and service and get closer to their customers. By making use of the various features of Instagram in the most effective manner, companies are not only able to promote their business but also carve a niche in the minds of customers.

Feature image via Thought Catalogue, Unsplash 

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The Ultimate Instagram Marketing Guide

Just how important is Instagram marketing anyway? Many marketers who use Instagram for personal purposes, don’t quite see the full potential of the platform in brand marketing.

This guide is an attempt to provide perspective into Instagram’s marketing potential, discuss Instagram lingo and help social media managers and business owners create a fully-functional Instagram marketing plan. Before we delve into the details, here’s an overview of the guide.

I. Why invest in Instagram for marketing?

II. What a successful brand profile has & how you can create one

III. How to create an Instagram marketing strategy

IV. Instagram demographics – Which of your target groups should define your Instagram marketing?

V. Influencer marketing on Instagram

VI. Instagram Stories

VII. Instagram contests

VIII. How to create a content strategy for Instagram

IX. How often and when to post

X. How to grow your follower count & increase post engagement

I. Why invest in Instagram for marketing?

It has been 8 short years since Instagram was launched, and since then the social media platform has expanded its user base and engagement by an impressive amount. Here are a few stats to summarize Instagram’s potential as a social media marketing platform.

1. Instagram has 800 million MAU (Monthly Active Users) and over 2 million advertisers, clearly a sign of the platforms marketing potential.

2. Your audience engagement rate could be 15 times more on Instagram than on Facebook and 20 times more on Instagram than on Twitter.

3. Brands on Instagram with a following of greater than 100K can grow by over 100%biannually.

4. 75% of Instagram users who view brand posts act on the information in them.

Now that you’re convinced about investing in Instagram marketing, it’s time to discuss how you can get started. The next section focuses on how you can create an Instagram profile for your brand.

II. What a successful brand profile has & how you can create one

A brand’s Instagram profile acts like a homepage, gives space to include important information and holds the potential to drive traffic back to a website. That’s why your Instagram profile should be optimized for the best results in each of those areas.

Your Instagram bio

What should a brand’s Instagram bio contain? A bio is professional but personal, and should contain only what is truly representative of your brand. Here are a few examples of how brands have crafted their bios. As you will notice, some of them contain custom hashtags. This strategy makes sense only for large brands, who already have tons of people conversing about them.

AirBnB’s bio describes what they do and what you followers can expect to see on their profile, which sets the expectation for people who follow you.

Lorna Jane’s bio describes what her brand is about and invites followers to participate in a conversation, which is likely to increase social media engagement.

In addition to describing the brand’s focus, LetterFolk’s Instagram bio also includes a mention of the people behind the brand, which makes the brand appear more human and approachable.

Your Instagram profile picture

Your profile picture is what everyone will see when they arrive on your page and when they view your comments anywhere in Instagram. That’s why it’s important to –

Choose a memorable profile picture – something that’s representative of your brand and intriguing/thought-provoking, so people will remember it.
Pick a profile picture that’s consistent with all of your social accounts – the same people are likely to follow you across multiple platforms and consistency will affect recognition.

Your Instagram URL

There’s only one link that you can ever share on Instagram, and it goes in your profile, so your choice is critical. Most businesses display their website homepage link here, but this space can also be used to send traffic back to landing pages created for campaigns, contests or top converting blog posts.

WeWork’s bio features the link to an awards page for an ongoing contest.

FinFolk’s page links to a FundRaiser.

Shiseido’s Instagram profile advertises their YouTube page.

Now that you’ve figured out what your profile needs to have it’s time to move on to creating an Instagram marketing strategy.

III. How to create an Instagram marketing strategy

The first step is deciding your Instagram marketing goals. Why are you on Instagram? What do you wish to accomplish from Instagram marketing?

Setting goals will help you create a more effective strategy and achieve desired results. Here’s a list of goals that many brands chase on Instagram.

1. Community building – Since Instagram is great for audience engagement, it’s the perfect place to build a community of customers and fans.
2. Increasing brand awareness – Instagram’s visual platform makes it easy to build awareness about your brand and its products.
3. Showcasing products and services – Several brands are using Instagram to showcase their products, visuals, in the right context, to seduce their target audience.

Apart from these goals, brands also use Instagram marketing to share company culture, increase brand appeal and loyalty, and share company news and updates.

Once you are decided on goals, it’s time to create the right content that can advance those goals. An important part of this step is understanding who makes up your target audience.

IV. Instagram demographics – Which of your target groups should define your Instagram marketing?

The success of marketing depends on the relevance and timeliness of messages, and demographics can give you insights into how to create such messages.

Here’s an insight into what the Pew Research Group has discovered about Instagram demographics.

If your target audience is primarily female and young, Instagram marketing could be your primary source of audience engagement. Regardless of who your audience is, you can find and engage small target groups of them on Instagram.

The best part of social media is that once your get certain people on a social media platform, their friends are likely to follow. You simply need to engage the micro-influencers in friend circles, and you could create a community of loyal followers and customers to engage with on Instagram.

Once you know who your target groups on Instagram are, it’s time to identify influencers who can give you access to these groups more easily and effectively.

V. Influencer marketing on Instagram

As per Instagram’s 2016 algorithm update, posts with more engagement appear on the top of users’ feeds, as opposed to posts that were published first.

And that’s where influencer marketing comes in. Influencers can not only help you reach more fans, but also help you get more attention and engagement for your marketing messages.

To run a successful influencer marketing program on Instagram, follow this process –

1. Conduct enough research.

There’s a lot you can learn from analysing other brands and their marketing activities. By using a tool like Whalar Labs, you can compare your brand’s Instagram page to up to three others for factors like engagement rate, comment rate and frequency of posts. And based on numbers, you can decide on what works and doesn’t with respect to content.

2. Draft a clear brief.

Once you have a sense of what works and doesn’t with marketing content, it’s important to create a brief that can convey to influencers your standards for content. While it is important to set solid rules to follow, you should also allow influencers creative leeway so they can create genuine and engaging campaigns for you.

3. Find the right influencer.

Instagram has an interesting mix of influencers, covering a wide range of niches. The idea is to find the influencer who has a following of your target groups. The right influencer also feels relatable to your audience and can influence their decisions.

4. Create a framework for collaboration.

Once you have narrowed down on an influencer, it’s time to set up a collaboration process that works. How will you communicate? What will the timeframe on each campaign be? What content usage rights do you expect them to provide you with? How much will you pay them for creating and managing campaigns?

5. Focus on extensive distribution.

Influencer content can be maximized by publishing it across platforms. Many brands publish content on their product page, using apps like TagTray.

You could also use the content in Facebook ads, or share it on other social media networks. Embedding Instagram posts not only adds social proof, but also increases engagement and conversions in the long run.

Now that you have an idea of how you can create far-reaching content on Instagram, it’s time to explore the specific features the social media platform has to offer.

VI. Instagram Stories

In late 2016, Instagram launched a new type of content – Instagram stories – which disappears 24 hrs after you publish it. To create stories on Instagram, you need to click on the “+” button or swipe left on the dashboard, to enter the “stories” camera.

Once you have posted stories, you can view how many people and who have viewed each story.

How brands can use Instagram stories

First, why use Instagram stories?

Instagram stories has over 300 million users, surpassing SnapChat which originally introduced the story feature. And 33% of the most viewed Instagram stories are from brands. Plus, 1 in every 5 organic stories receives a direct message, which is a great deal of engagement (20%).

Brands can use Instagram stories in so many ways. Here are a few.

1. Promotions for products, product launches and events.

2. Interviews and host Instagram takeovers. (A host Instagram takeover is where a designated host takes over a brand account and shares content with their followers.

3. Behind the scenes at work and events.

4. News and information sharing.

Apart from using Instagram to promote products, share behind-the-scenes pictures and interviews, some brands also use the platform to conduct contests.

VII. Instagram contests

Instagram is a great platform for running contests because of its visual nature and its high rates of engagement. However, before you decide to run a contest on Instagram, it’s important to review the guidelines –

1. Don’t randomly tag content or users, and don’t encourage other users to do the same.
2. Clearly declare that Instagram won’t support, moderate or sponsor the contest in anyway.
3. Take lawful responsibility of the rules and restrictions that your contest includes.

Once you have considered the guidelines, it’s time to create a fun and engaging contest that your fans might want to participate in. The simplest way to do so is by picking from the popular contest types. Here are a few –

1. The comment on the post contest.

2. The like the post contest.

3. The post a photo contest.

You could choose one of the above types or run with a combination of them.

Next, choose a tool to manage your contest. Gleam, Woobox and Wishpond are both excellent options.

Once you have considered contests, it’s time to work on your daily content posting schedule.

VIII. How to create a content strategy for Instagram

There are certain key factors to focus on when deciding what to post regularly on your Instagram account, such as –

Style and color palette

Since Instagram is primarily visual, it pays to decide on a style and stick to it through your all of your posts, because consistency in your profile is important to appear professional and classy.
To create that consistency, you can come up with a style guide, for your content creators to follow. The style guide has to include preferred font styles, color palettes and filters you would like to use. You could even design a couple of post layouts to work with when creating daily posts.

Captions and hashtags

Instagram captions are usually under 2,200 words, and brands have to work with that space to make an impact on their viewers. Further, every post’s text is only visible for the first three lines, after which the para is cropped into three ellipses to maintain the text:visual ratio.

Captions can be used to enhance any image by adding micro tales or thought-provoking one-liners. But remember, this is where your personality comes through, so you have to be careful about what you decide to say.

MailChimp has a fun, friendly tone on Instagram that carries through very well on their posts.

Everlane has great one-liners for captions.

Hashtags are used by Instagrammers to discover new content and accounts to follow. The right hashtags can help your potential followers discover your account, so it’s very important to be choosy about the hashtags that you use on your posts.

Post composition

Finally, you have to decide what makes your posts and how to present them. Set a few composition rules, so you can create a great overall Instagram presence.

1. Choose a few background colors to work with
2. Decide the subjects of your photographs – employees, partners, customers, products, etc.
3. Finally, choose what tone you want to maintain on your posts – serious and informative, instructional, humorous or sassy.

IX. How often and when to post

How do you figure out what the best frequency is for posting on Instagram? And what times are best for publishing your Instagram posts? A consistent publishing schedule can help with building consistent engagement, because your followers will know when they can expect you to post content.

When to post on Instagram?

Create a publishing schedule calculator test. Schedule the same post on different times on different days and see which time on which day gets the most engagement.

Schedule your most important posts on those days and spread the rest of your posts through the rest of your week.

How often to post on Instagram?

According to a Union Metric study, brands post on Instagram daily. It’s not easy to publish content everyday, but you can effortlessly manage consistent posting using recycled best posts, curated posts and a social media management tool to schedule content in advance.

DrumUp just introduced Instagram management, and you can use the app to schedule reminders to accurately post your content.

X. How to grow your follower count & increase post engagement

Once you have created a solid Instagram presence, it’s time to focus on growing your follower count and engagement. Here are a couple of tips that can help you get started –

1. Use more UCG

User Generated Content is especially easy to curate on Instagram because your fans are already posting their organic content. Using already uploaded posts on Instagram, you can create a vibrant and engaging community around your brand.

If you’re running contests on Instagram, it’s even easier to curate UGC.

2. Share Instagram posts to Facebook

Another way of increasing reach and engagement for your Instagram posts is by automatically sharing them on Facebook. Doing this will help you engage both your Facebook and Instagram communities in one go, and a study has proved that images shared from Instagram to Facebook get more engagement in general.

3. Include more faces on your posts

A study by Georgia Tech has proven that images with faces get 38% more likes and 32% more comments. To increase engagement on your posts, simply share more posts with faces in them.

The faces could be of your customers, employees or partners, and the more people you include the more excitement you automatically create around your posts.

4. Use Instagram analytics to measure and improve performance

Both SimplyMeasured and Socialbakers are good tools to use to measure your brand’s engagement on Instagram.

Use the insights you get via these tools to assess the success of your content strategy, so you can refine it and improve your Instagram marketing performance.

Wrap

Instagram is has become an inevitable part of any brand’s social media marketing, and if you haven’t used the platform yet, it’s time to get started. This guide gives you everything you need to create a content plan for Instagram and begin your marketing.

Photo by Erik Lucatero on Unsplash

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