Stick with what works. There is no harm in trying a new social media platform, but make sure you have a strategy before you dive into it.

Not familiar with Instagram yet? No worries, it is still relatively new to brands and many are trying to grasp exactly what they should be doing with it. Instagram’s main draw right now is that it is completely focused on the love for visual messaging and sharing. From its early days in late 2010 with only two employees, the goal, according to co-founder Kevin Systrom, has always been to use the “power of images to connect people to what was happening in the world around them.”

Just a few years later, Instagram has been bought by Facebook and has more than 100 million monthly active users. Instagram gives brands a new and creative way to reach their consumer base. Best of all, it is easy to use no matter where you are and at any time.

So what exactly is it? Instagram is a mobile app where users share their life stories and events, using only photos with cool filters and captions. Similar to Facebook, photos are posted to a feed where followers can see what is being shared and leave comments or click on a ‘heart’ to ‘like’ the photo. Similar to Foursquare, people can tag a specific location to a photo. Similar to Twitter, users can view a feed of the most popular photos around the world from other public-sharing users or only view the photos in the feed of the people they are following.

Do you think your business should be on Instagram? Here are some things you should keep in mind.

1. Develop your creative strategy first.

Make sure you have a good idea of what you have to offer to people on Instagram. Give your followers something they can’t find anywhere else – something different from what you offer on Facebook and Twitter. Use Instagram to show off what you love about your business location and the surrounding community. Show your followers some behind-the-scenes shots to help them know and love your business. Show the pride you have in your brand. If you are a restaurant, feature your chef and show new specials before they are even introduced at the restaurant. If you are a workplace full of cubicles and 9-to-5ers, share your work environment, photos of your employees, and community outings.

This may seem strange, but if done right, it can work. Have you heard of Warby Parker? You might have if you are in the market for boutique eyeglasses. They are often applauded within the social media industry as being one of the most creative brands on Instagram. Why? They do a great job of showing off their merchandise in a completely non-salesy way, while capturing the unique culture of their employees and their community with every shot. They certainly found their strategy and are running with it.

Warby Parker Instagram

2. Use hashtags effectively.

Hashtags — love them or hate them — are important on Instagram. Hashtags are words or phrases marked with the # symbol (ex: #hashtag) and are used to enable collecting all content with that tag in one place. With public Instagram accounts, anyone searching for a hashtag used in a photo caption will be able to see that image. This is a great way to get specific photos and brand accounts a lot more attention. Like Twitter, users need to be smart with hashtags because they can be annoying. Don’t overuse them, and only use words that are actually relevant to the photo you are tagging. Some brands overuse hastags with the goal of getting more likes and followers. This is not going to get the followers they want to have and will likely attract spammy comments.

Also, become familiar with some of the popular hashtags and use those that can naturally work with the content you are sharing. Some popular hashtags on Instagram include #tbt (throw back Thursday), #photooftheday, #food and #instafood. There are also a lot of hashtags that are popular by city. For example, in Chicago, hashtags like #Chicago, #Chitecture, and #Instagram312 are popular. Our friends at Chicago Tribune capture some great engagement from their followers by using a weekly hashtag theme encouraging Chicago area users to share their photos of anything from their breakfast to the CTA by posting their pictures with the hashtag #Trib2013. At the end of the year, we will all be able to browse through an impressive album of Chicago area images that document our 2013.

Chicago Tribune Instagram

3. Decide how often you want to share.

You don’t need to post on Instagram every day. The ‘feed speed’ on Instagram is still mostly laid back. If you start posting a lot, you might over-saturate your followers’ feeds, and you don’t want to force yourself into the noise too often. Decide what you have ready to post and create a schedule to help you remember what to post when and to track what is working once you get going. If you see that your followers are starting to gravitate toward certain images, be flexible with your plan and change things to fit. Don’t forget to make engagement part of your strategy. Join the conversation, that’s what this is all about. Answer questions and thank people for being loyal.

4. Pay attention to your followers.

Take notice of who is following your brand. Follow them back, ‘heart’ their pictures if it makes sense — avoid the personal pictures unless you have a personal connection with them. Encourage your followers to share your photos and your page. This is a great way to spread your reach and attract other users. Once you get a good following, feature your fans’ photos by encouraging them to use a hashtag or tag your Instagram handle when they are posting a picture. Just be sure to give them credit for the photo. This is easy using an app like InstaRepost.

You can also reward your loyal fans with contests and promo codes based on user-generated content. There are a lot of brands catching on to this concept right now. Sony does a great job encouraging their customers and followers to post pictures using specific hashtags, and then featuring their favorites on the Sony feed. Bonobos and Free People essentially use their followers as models, encouraging them to post pictures while wearing the brand’s clothing. Starbucks customers are already used to using #starbucks to share their coffee breaks from all over the world.

Sony, Bonobos, Free People, and Starbucks on Instagram

Don’t forget to take some time regularly to search Instagram and Twitter for your brand name to find customers that may have already shared images or reviews from your business. I post photos of my food all the time when I eat out, and every once in a while a restaurant will take my shot and feature it in their feed. I think that’s cool. It shows they appreciate my business and interest in them.

Think your business is ready to start using Instagram? Take some of these tips and you should be in a good place to get going. Already finding success with Instagram? Send us your shots! We would love to see them.

The post 4 Tips to Create a Successful Instagram Strategy appeared first on 435 Digital.

Yesterday, the social network announced another new update to the news feed – your home page when logged into Facebook. This is the first big update Facebook has rolled out since Facebook Timeline launched in 2011. Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, sees the news feed as “the most personalized newspaper,” evolving with users and the way we are sharing content. The more relevant news feed gives us more information and more to do within the Facebook walls. If you are anything like me, you check Facebook a few (ok, multiple) times a day and scroll through your feed until you hit a post or two that you have already seen; then you move on to the next web page or activity in your day. Now, when you hit the end of interesting posts in one feed, you will have another feed to explore. Facebook is going to keep us engaging on the site longer.

So, what’s new?

Bigger Images
Everything is bigger, but a main focus of the new redesign will be on images, link posts, and videos – both from users and brand pages. Facebook and Instagram images, which consist of 50% of shared news feed content, will now be larger and more appealing. There will also be a separate feed showcasing only the posts that have photos.

Multiple Feeds
Speaking of separate feeds, there will now be multiple feeds available for users to toggle. Facebook users will now be able to subscribe to specific feeds: all friends, close friends, music, photos, news, games, and brand pages. For example, the music feed will show what music friends are listening to on apps like Spotify and Rdio, concert updates, news from artist pages, and album releases. There will still be a chronological main news feed – where brand page posts will still remain.

Mobile Consistency
One important aspect of this new Facebook look will be that it is even more mobile friendly. The new look was largely inspired by our increased use of different mobile devices. According to Facebook, the site has seen a large spike in mobile engagement recently with more than 680 million monthly active mobile users. This means that no matter what device you are using to pull up Facebook in a browser, the look will be consistent – similar to what we currently see when we use Facebook from a smartphone or tablet application.

Bigger, More Prominent Ads
The new redesign should open an opportunity for advertisers to serve ads similar to the rich media units they are used to on other websites. We will most likely see brands take advantage of offering big pictures and videos, a feature that hasn’t been provided to brands yet. Ads will blend in more with the content our friends are sharing, making them less annoying and more likely to encourage engagement. They will also likely cost a lot more. Everybody wins.

Want the new look? Get in line. Check out the information Facebook has shared on the new feature, and join the waiting list.

Are you going to embrace the new look? Let us know your thoughts.

The post The New Facebook News Feed: Bigger and Better appeared first on 435 Digital.

As with any new feature to Facebook, Graph Search was welcomed with some love and some criticism. The reality is, this has been a long time coming and it will probably prove to be a pretty important change to the social network. There is an ocean of information within Facebook and until now the search functionality has been less than ideal. I, for one, am excited to see what this will become.

So, what is Graph Search?

Let’s break it down. First of all, Graph Search is still in beta. This means a select crowd (invite only right now, get your invite here) will be able to test the functionality and provide feedback. It also means Facebook is still building and improving the search system before they roll it out to the general public. Graph Search will show up as a bigger search bar at the top of each page when you are within Facebook and will be used as a search engine for Facebook users to find specific content inside Facebook.

What will Graph Search do for us? Or, “Why should we care?”

With Graph Search, Facebook users will be able to:

• Ask specific questions: ‘Which of my friends live in Chicago?’ or ‘Which of my friends have been to Oktoberfest in Munich?’
• Search based on interests or places: ‘Which of my friends like Homeland?’ or ‘Restaurants my friends like in New York City’ or ‘Games my friends play’
• Search based on photos or your own past actions: ‘Photos I like’ or ‘Photos of my family’
• Search based on products or services (the things your friends ‘like’): which in turn could be useful for brands and marketers

An interesting feature to note about the listings you will receive when searching, is your Facebook friends will be ranked based on your interactions. The more you ‘like’ and comment on a friends photos and status updates, the more likely they will be at the top of the listings. Similar to the News Feed now. I do think Facebook will try different ways in the coming months to gather more specific information from users to feed Graph Search as it grows, but we can expect them to remain mindful of privacy settings. You will essentially only be able to find things that you already could find if you looked around for it. It will just be a lot easier.

So, the big question is… what does this mean for Google?

My opinion is: nothing really.

The main difference between the two right now is that Google (and other search engines) search based on keywords and serve you the best possible results from throughout the web based on those keywords and the authority of those pages. Facebook’s Graph Search will take a phrase or combined phrases and serve results based on people, places and photos shared only on Facebook (most of which is not public, but within your personal connections).

The similarity between the two is the personalization behind the search result. People are more likely to click on a result that is already endorsed by a trusted friend. Google has already brought this idea to life with Google+, serving content our personal Google network has given a +1. Facebook’s goal is to do everything it can to keep users inside Facebook, but if a user’s search does not return any results within Facebook content, the Bing web search integration will still be available to provide results from the web outside of Facebook’s walled garden.

For more information on Facebook’s Graph Search – check out Facebook’s Press Release

The post New Facebook Graph Search: What You Need To Know appeared first on 435 Digital.

• New customers
• Returning customers
• More ‘Likes’

The way we see it, there are 4 overarching ways for businesses to actively grow a Facebook page:

1. Run targeted Facebook Ads
2. Post with a goal of engagement
3. Incorporate social media in all of your in-store and marketing efforts
4. Run Facebook contests and sweepstakes

The goal of all of these is to attract quality and brand-loyal customers.

Facebook Contest Guidelines

Facebook contests, sweepstakes and prize giveaways are a great way to reward your current fan base, increase awareness for your brand online, and bring in new fans (or ‘Likes’) — more importantly potential customers! At 435 Digital, we work with many different businesses on successfully executing legitimate contests and sweepstakes through Facebook brand pages. Something many businesses may not be too familiar with is the fact that Facebook has strict promotion guidelines which are mandatory for running any kind of giveaway or promotion. The main guideline to remember is that all promotions must be administered within a third party application, this means brands cannot run any kind of contest or promotion from their Facebook wall.

Facebook Contest Quick Tips

Here are some quick tips for running a promotion on Facebook — the right way.

• Set a goal for your Facebook promotion. Yes, these promotions are a great way to get more likes from the community and ‘non-fans’, but what else is important to you? Remember, this is also a great way to gather information about your audience including valuable email addresses for your database. All the while, you are keeping your current followers engaged and rewarded, reminding them that they are appreciated. Keeps them loyal.
• Set your Facebook contest up right. Create an engaging contest landing page with a 3rd party application tool (we prefer ShortStack). There is still going to be some design and development work with any of these applications, but the software gives you some really cool tools to make unique contests, including the always-important mandatory ‘Like us to enter’ feature.
• Keep the contest easy. We like to keep the barrier of entry as simple and straightforward as possible. The more complex you make things, the less people will take the time to enter. It’s also important to make your sweepstakes or contest easy to find. Rearrange the top tabs on your Facebook timeline so it is easily accessible when someone gets to your page. Post regularly about it with links to the landing page so people can access it directly from their news feed when they see your post. Finally, run Facebook Ads to support your contest. Ads are a great way to extend your reach and drive non-fans straight into your page for a reason.
• Keep your Facebook contest relevant. Make the contest a worthwhile and fitting prize for your business or brand. You want people to like your page for a reason, and stay. You don’t want them to like your page, win an iPad and unlike it 2 days later. If you run a restaurant, reward your customers with what they love about you — the food or a party package! If you own an online cowboy boot company, give away a new pair of boots each week!
• Protect yourself. Make sure you have someone on your legal team write up some Terms and Conditions that clearly lay out the Facebook promotion rules and guidelines while also waiving Facebook from any form of sponsorship, endorsement, association, etc. Keep in mind there are different rules based on if you are running a sweepstakes or contest. Templates for these can easily be found online, but it is recommended to have someone at your company edit or develop terms that are specific to your Facebook promotions.
• Contact your contest winners off Facebook. This is one of the reasons you gather information like an email address in the contest or sweepstakes form. One of Facebook’s rules is that any winners must be contacted off of the Facebook platform. Reach out via email and congratulate your winner and get the information you will need to reward them with their prize. Speaking of email addresses: if you are planning on keeping email addresses for future use (a company email newsletter, for example), make sure your terms and conditions make clear that you will not pass on their information, but do plan to use it in future promotional outreach.

Facebook contests are no fun if they wind up getting your brand banned from Facebook, so make sure you know what you can and can’t do before you set your contest up. You can read up on the official rules on Facebook’s page here.

For more information or to schedule social media or SEO classes, please contact 435digitalsocial@gmail.com.

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